What Are You Reading Showing 3,451-3,500 of 6,935

[Barbara]

I"m in Arizona and suffering from a late arrival last night (3:30 am my time, 1:30 am here) and the altitude. I have started reading All the Light We Cannot See and loving it and brought the audiobook Final Silence with me.
I won't be online much in the next few days, but don't worry, I;m still around.

[Susan]

Sara, Steve Cavanagh's story was my favorite. Allan did some research for me and said his debut is coming out in March and set in NYC. I am excited about it.

[Allan]

Aside from hopefully finishing In the Seventies: Adventures in the Counterculture, which I'm finding hard going at times, this weekend, I hope to start Fallen by Lia Mills, set at the time of the Rising, and listen to a little of my new 26 hour long audiobook, A Prayer for Owen Meany, which I've decided to listen to mainly because it's length will stop me from buying any more Audible titles this month, having already raced through 3 shorter titles. It is a book that gets great reviews, so hopefully I'll enjoy it!

[Barbara]

Allan- I have the audiobook of A Prayer for Owen Meany and look forward to your review.

[Donna]

Finished The Handmaid's Talewhich I loved, loved, LOVED and am starting The Unimaginable, a kindle book, since we are going away for the weekend to check out a college Conn is interested in.

[Donna]

Will definitely check those out, Emma!

[Cathleen]

I'll finish Harry Potter today. What a fun read :) Then I'll start The Handmaid's Tale or The Thing About December. I checked the Ryan book out from the library, so I'll have to double check when that's due! That might be the next up. I've also started listening to Charles Dickens. It's brilliant. The only glitch for me is that I listen during my commute; I drive an hour each way to work, and sometimes I lose bits and pieces of the narrative when I have to pay attention to driving and traffic.

[Trelawn]

I haven't read that biography of Dickens, I read the Peter Ackroyd one. Dickens had a very interesting life.

[[deleted user]]

Claire Tomalin is probably my favourite biographer. I read her Charles Dickens one summer and mde it last ages as it was so enjoyable. I have the Ackroyd also but the Tomalin just clicks with me.

You're right there, Trelawn, Dickens certainly had an interesting life. Have you read Tomalin's Invisible Woman? I keep meaning to.

[[deleted user]]

It's the way Tomalin handles her sources that leaves you knowing that you are in safe hands, and she writes well too.

[Sara]

I haven't read any biographies by Tomalin myself, but it looks like she writes some interesting ones. One of my favorite nonfiction genres is the biography/memoir.

A couple of literary biographies I've really enjoyed are:

James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon
James Joyce
Walt Whitman, A Life
Virginia Woolf

[Sara]

The only reading I've done so far today is listening to an hour+ of audiobook at the gym. The Speed of Dark reminds me a bit of the classic Flowers for Algernon. It's also one of the few books I've read with an autistic protagonist, and the author portrays him in a dignified compassionate manner. Later I'm going to dig into Spin for my science fiction book group. I should be able to finish it by tomorrow!

[[deleted user]]

Sara, you've just added to my TBR....Virginia Woolf. It looks excellent.

[Seraphina]

Me too Theresa :)

[Trelawn]

@ Theresa The Invisible Woman looks very interesting. It'll be one to look out for.

[Sara]

I hope you both like it. Hermione Lee is an extremely through biographer.

[Barbara]

I've been wanting to read the new bio of Jonathan Swift.

I'm listening to Stuart Neville's newest The Final Silence and reading All the Light We Cannot See which is wonderful.

[[deleted user]]

My next book is Independent People by the Icelandic author Halldór Laxness who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1955. The translator only ever translated this one book and it was the 'labour of many years'. As this edition claims to be the 'finest' translation into any language of the work let's hope it lives up to my expectations.

[Trelawn]

I started reading Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz. So far I am not enjoying it as much as The House of Silk. I think I enjoyed the Dr Watson voice from the first one. This one is set after the Reichenbach Falls so there is no Sherlock. I will keep going for now because I loved the first one so much. I just don't know where this one is going at the moment.

[Thomas, Moderator]

Hi
I am reading Five: A Novel by Ursula Archer
It is a psychological thriller, set in Salzburg, Austria. The killer leaves grisly clues in Geo caches.
It is a Goodreads giveaway, a translation of the Austrian edition

[Barbara]

Thomas wrote: "Hi
I am reading Five: A Novel by Ursula Archer
It is a psychological thriller, set in Salzburg, Austria. The killer leaves grisly clues in Geo caches.
It i..."

Sounds good.

[Donna]

I've just started In the Heart of the Sea which is the November read for the local book club I found here on Goodreads, and The Book of Lost Things is waiting for me at the library.

[Barbara]

Donna wrote: "I've just started In the Heart of the Sea which is the November read for the local book club I found here on Goodreads, and The Book of Lost Things is waiting for me at t..."

I have that book on my shelves. Philbrick writes a lot of New England history and I have this and his book on the Mayflower on my shelves waiting to be read.

[Donna]

Barbara, it's going to have to wait a week or so as I just got a notification that Revival is now available for me at the library and I can only have it for fourteen days.

[Barbara]

Donna wrote: "Barbara, it's going to have to wait a week or so as I just got a notification that Revival is now available for me at the library and I can only have it for fourteen days."

You have hit on the main reason I don't use the library more. Having limited time to read a book sometimes limits my motivation to get down to it.

[[deleted user]]

Barbara, one thing you don't have a problem with is getting through books!

[Barbara]

Theresa wrote: "Barbara, one thing you don't have a problem with is getting through books!"

yes, but like buying yarn, I finish one and acquire 4. I knit up a skein or 2 of yarn and buy several more I can't live without.

[[deleted user]]

Having skeins of yarn around is the knitters equivalent of the TBR pile! Who'd be without it? :)

[Cathleen]

Barbara wrote: "Donna wrote: "I've just started In the Heart of the Sea which is the November read for the local book club I found here on Goodreads, and The Book of Lost Things is waiti..."

Barbara, you just reminded me I have Philbrick's Bunker Hill on my e-reader, yes, waiting to be read.

[Cathleen]

I'm in the midst of listening to Claire Tomalin's Charles Dickens, and it's fascinating. He's always been one of my favorite writers but I've known scant bits about his life--other than the commonly known facts. If anything, I'm struck by his intensity in emotions and in work habits. He certainly needed to be with lots of close friends and family members constantly; he often had multiple deadlines and worked furiously to crank out all of his writing--and so far, he seems mercurial. I'm beginning to see now--through his letters--how he could create highly sympathetic and often melodramatic characters.

I'm reading The Handmaid's Tale, and I'm still sorting it out. This week has been so busy that I haven't gotten home before 9:30 any night this week...so I haven't been able to make much reading progress. So far, the plot is a bit chilling--and I'm at sea with what's actually happening. It's definitely piqued my interest, though.

[[deleted user]]

Cathleen wrote: "I'm in the midst of listening to Claire Tomalin's Charles Dickens, and it's fascinating. He's always been one of my favorite writers but I've known scant bits about his life--other..."

A few years ago I heard Claire Tomalin give a lecture on her biography of Pepys. She was such a good speaker, clear, informative and entertaining. Who is narrating her biography of Dickens - which I read last summer and loved - ?

[Cathleen]

Theresa wrote: "Cathleen wrote: "I'm in the midst of listening to Claire Tomalin's Charles Dickens, and it's fascinating. He's always been one of my favorite writers but I've known scant bits abou..."

The narrator is Alex Jennings. Since I'm new to the world of audiobooks, I don't have a keen sense of what makes one narrator good or not. Most of the time, I'm so absorbed in the story, this narrator's voice doesn't register with me---until he does American accents :) They don't sound like any American I've ever heard, and so those sections give me pause.

[Barbara]

Theresa - I just posted a response to Sara that I am going to my local yarn shop and will probably stop by the library nearby which has a big used book store.

Kathleen - I forgot about Philbrick's Bunker Hill title.

[[deleted user]]

Barbara, a LYS and a used books store sounds like a good start to the weekend.

[Sara]

Barbara if it's the LYS and bookstore I'm thinking of, your bank account is definitely in mortal danger. I've resumed my read of Belfast Noir. It's nice to be reading this practically perfect collection again after a couple of science fiction and fantasy books, each of which I found disappointing in one way or another. I read the last three stories in the "City of Commerce" section this afternoon. Claire McGowan's "Rosie Grant's Finger," had a great Hardy Boys meets noir quality to it. I plan to do some video game playing this afternoon, but will return to finish Belfast Noir later. I'm a bit under the weather, so I plan to spend most of the weekend at home.

[Susan]

You're not getting home until 9:30 pm? You are working too hard. Tell them they need to give you some reading time. :)

[Susan]

So I'm reading Ratlines now and I like it very much. Thank goodness, I have been tutored by Allan so the conflict wasn't as surprising. Still I have a few questions.

1. Did they really still have outhouse in Dublin in the 1960's?

2. I was surprised to read that the ROI did not fight in WWII although the character's explanation of just being tired of war after fighting WWI, Independence War and the Civil War in such a short time made sense. Still, were people who fought in the war really despised as this novel implies?

[Paul]

My grandad was in the RAF and certainly wasnt despised for it at any point

[Kevin]

I wouldn't say it was the fact that they fought in the war as the reason for them being despised, but the fact they joined the British army. Tensions were high.

[Paul]

It was quite common at the time though to join. A lot of Dubliners joined with little trouble

[Kevin]

I'd say the rural communities were less understanding than the cities. My mother often tells me how brothers and sisters who married a protestant and were practically excommunicated.

[Kevin]

I'd agree Emma. Theres still lots of stigmas etc. around the country that should be long gone.

[Susan]

Emma, that was fascinating. The book called it an emergency too. I didn't realize in such big cities they would have still had outhouses but maybe there were some cities here that did too. I was always interested in my mom's outhouse stories.

Kevin, you're right. In this story, the character's family was from a small town and when he joined the British Army many people ostracized his parents.

Emma, I am well aware of America's entry in WWII and I was not trying to imply anything about the Irish other than it was something I didn't know. America had a lot of involvement in WWII before war was declared. My uncle was on a ship that was sunk by the Germans before war was declared. The government would only tell my grandmother he was MIA because they couldn't admit the situation. They couldn't admit they were spying. My grandmother lived the war not knowing if my uncle was dead and refused to move so he could find his way home. There were many Americans who joined the RAF. Maybe we didn't declare war until we were involved but it wasn't like we ignored it either.

[Cathleen]

Susan wrote: "You're not getting home until 9:30 pm? You are working too hard. Tell them they need to give you some reading time. :)"

Ha ha. Yes, Susan. Two different nights we had to take candidates for a position out to dinner--so...I did get nice dinners :) Another night I showed a film to one of my classes (Etre et Avoir, but with subtitles--"To Be and To Have" about a teacher in a one-room school house in rural France), so that was my own doing. And the other nights were just plain old work :)

[Kevin]

I'm not sure if it is known but Ireland had a friendly bond with Germany a long time before WW2. For instance, the Germans sent a ship with munitions( the Aud if I remember) to try and aid the 1916 rising. There are lots of stories of how German soldiers, should they find themselves in Ireland from U-boats sinking etc., were looked after very well in The Curragh, Co.Kildare.
I think well of Ireland's neutrality in the war.

[Kevin]

Having said that I don't think the true horrors of the Holocaust were known to the Irish. I wonder if it was would we have acted differently.
Should probably move to the Irish History thread if we want to talk further. :)

[Seraphina]

You should read 'the dream of the celt' Kevin. It discuss' the topic a bit Kevin and shows that the Germans didn't support the Irish. A very good read

[Kevin]

Really? I think I shall, Seraphina. It seems I can't trust my primary school teachings at all these days haha

[Paul]

I havent read tgat book but read a lot on Casement and the Germans saw helping him as little more than a tactic to distract Britain.
Interestingly on Germany relatung to Ireland they made a series of films dyring WW2 about Ireland fighting for freedom against the British as propaganda to show how bad the British were but they backfired as they were viewed by many as a small country fighting an oppressor and the Germans had to ban their own propaganda films. The German take on Irish dancing in tge films is hilarious.

[Seraphina]

Well it just shows that the Germans were asked for help but didn't respond and as such many Irish were killed because of it, they were relying on the Germans