What I'm Reading DECEMBER 2014

[Lyn]

I'll save it for the discussion, but I have more to say, and will be able to say it a heck of a lot more concisely and less self-importantly than that novel.

[Portia]

I'm reading it the old-fashioned way so don't know what % I've read, but I'm still reading.

[Portia]

I'm reading paper, so don't have a %, but I am still going. Another groups is reading The Goldfinch and the love/hate reactions are very similar to CR's members' reactions to The Luminaries. Do we have any members who are social scientists and therefor able to explain this behavior to us?:)

[Gina]

I read The Joy of Doing Things Badly: A Girl's Guide to Love, Life and Foolish Bravery by Veronica Chambers. From the reviews, it appeared you either loved or hated this book. I hated it. Maybe this "how to" was good for younger women. I admit - I'm old.

[Book Concierge]

Hell or High Water by Joy Castro – 4****
A fast-paced psychological thriller set in post-Katrina New Orleans and featuring a strong female lead. When reporter Nola Cespedes begins writing a feature story on the city’s sex offenders, her own unresolved issues begin to surface. I’d read another book by Castro.
Link to my full review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Alex]

Portia, you can view your percentage in the 'my books' section of the goodreads app and on the right side of the main page on the goodreads website if you updated your status to the page you are currently on.

I am loving The Luminaries, granted I am only a quarter of the way through. There is a lot to keep up with but Catton drops pieces into a section of the plot that connects it to another much like a complex jigsaw puzzle.

I am also reading Robert Jordan's prequel, New Spring, to his Wheel of Time series. I am enjoying the story thus far though I am not sure if this is how I should have started the rather large series. Though this is the first book chronologically in the WoT series, however there may be aspects that Jordan expected the reader to know (or explained in his earlier writings) that he did not rehash in this later prequel. This book makes for a lighter read and a good way to break up The Luminaries.

[Gina]

I had jury duty today. Was never called so I read a small book, The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. Very moving story about Vietnam. The writer questions whether the stories are actually true - yet at the end you believe they are. There were stories of childhood, but mostly of the war, the deaths, the humor, and how the soldiers lived and died there.

[Sherry, Doyenne]

Gina wrote: "I had jury duty today. Was never called so I read a small book, The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. Very moving story about Vietnam. The writer questions whether t..."

That was a wonderful book.

[Larry]

Cateline wrote: "I finished Malice by Keigo Higashino the other day, but was unable to gather my thoughts sufficiently to write anything about it. It's a mindbender. Seemingly simple......but far from it.
My revi..."

I reserved Malice: A Mystery at our library, Cateline ... waiting with some trepidation. :-)

[Cateline]

Hah...yes. It's a deceptive book.
Have you read his others? The Devotion of Suspect X is the first I read...really hooked me.

[Ruth]

Gina wrote: "I had jury duty today. Was never called so I read a small book, The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. Very moving story about Vietnam. The writer questions whether t..."

Marvelous book.

[Kat]

Ruth wrote: "Gina wrote: "I had jury duty today. Was never called so I read a small book, The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. Very moving story about Vietnam. The writer questi..."

Funny, I just read a ref to this today in the NYT, in an op-ed piece written by someone who was an interrogator at Abu Ghraib and now teaches a creative writing about war and writing. Not sure if this link will work but you can try it: http://www.nytimes.com/pages/opinion/...

[Larry]

Cateline wrote: "Hah...yes. It's a deceptive book.
Have you read his others? The Devotion of Suspect X is the first I read...really hooked me."

Cateline, I did read the first one and enjoyed it. I'll probably read the others after this latest one. Always up for Japanese stuff.

[Kat]

I'm deeply enjoying both the novels I'm reading right now, which is a nice change. All My Puny Sorrows is by a Canadian writer, Miriam Toews. The other is Cranford.

[Book Concierge]

The Amazing Mrs Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman – 3***
This is a delightfully imaginative (and highly improbable) cozy series. Mrs Pollifax is a marvelous main character – a widowed grandmother who occasional serves as a courier for the CIA. Her ability to make friends of total strangers and gather about her a variety of allies makes for a colorful cast of characters and some unexpected turns in the plot. A fast-paced, easy read. I’ll definitely keep on with the series.
Link to my full review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Gina]

Ruth wrote: "Gina wrote: "I had jury duty today. Was never called so I read a small book, The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. Very moving story about Vietnam. The writer questi..."

Thank you Kat, It was a very interesting article. Will we ever learn?

[Sheila]

Gina wrote: "I had jury duty today. Was never called so I read a small book, The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. Very moving story about Vietnam. The writer questions whether t..."
Lovely collection

[Kat]

Finished All My Puny Sorrows, which I loved. A superb, humane, voice-driven novel--sad on every page in spite of being very often funny. It's full of memorable images, such as "I was gripping the steering wheel the way my father used to, like he was towing a newly discovered planet behind him, one that held the secrets to the universe." Or she turns a cliche into a joke: "...my tears were beginning to sting my eyes. A low point is when you can't even depend on your tears not to hurt you."

[Sherry, Doyenne]

Kat wrote: "Finished All My Puny Sorrows, which I loved. A superb, humane, voice-driven novel--sad on every page in spite of being very often funny. It's full of memorable images, such as "I wa..."

That sounds so good, Kat.

[Larry]

Gina wrote: "I had jury duty today. Was never called so I read a small book, The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. Very moving story about Vietnam. The writer questions whether t..."

There were many good books about Vietnam. I think that the two best were Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried and Michael Herr's Dispatches.

[Gina]

Larry wrote: "Gina wrote: "I had jury duty today. Was never called so I read a small book, The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. Very moving story about Vietnam. The writer questi..."

Thanks Larry. It goes on the TBR list.

[Gina]

i just finished an audio book for The Double Comfort Safari Club by Alexander McCall Smith. I like to listen to audio books while I'm beading. It is a cute story with warmth and humor.

[Kat]

Just finished CRANFORD--wish it weren't over. Started WE ARE ALL COMPLETELY BESIDE OURSELVES and then remembered we're discussing it in May so put it reluctantly aside, otherwise I'll have forgotten it by then! Am reading a novel called The Wallcreeper, which is a bit strange but fascinating.

[Barbara]

I need to start Cranford. I'm going to try and alternate it with finishing The Luminaries but I'm afraid I will get all the characters confused. I've also done a slight detour into Yes Please by Amy Poehler. I will have it read in about another day or two. It came in on a Hold from the library and is a little bit better than okay.

[Kat]

Barbara wrote: "I need to start Cranford. I'm going to try and alternate it with finishing The Luminaries but I'm afraid I will get all the characters confused. I've also done a slight detour into [book:Yes Plea..."

I haven't read The Luminaries, but something I read about it said the cast was very male. In Cranford it is nearly all female, so I doubt there would be much confusion!

[Nicole]

I'm in the middle of Cranford right now, and enjoying it tremendously.

I also just finished Middle C, which was beautifully written. I ended up slowing down just to enjoy it more fully.

[Joan]

For a variety of reasons, I haven't been keeping up with this thread, but here's a list of books I read and liked from mid-December on.

I Want to Show You More--stories by Jamie Quatro
Beautiful in the Mouth--poems by Keetje Kuipers
The Cold Dish by Craig Johnson
Red Azalea by Anchee Min
Black Dahlia and White Rose--stories by Joyce Carol Oates
The Trip to Echo Springs by Olivia Laing
Hemingway's Women by Bernice Kert
The Light Keeper's Legacy by Kathleen Ernst
The Hot Zone by Richard Preston
Mud Season by Ellen Stinson

[Book Concierge]

We Are Water by Wally Lamb – 5*****
Intricate and nuanced, Wally Lamb has given us a portrait of one American family’s disintegration and coming back together. Rather than use a single narrator, Lamb gives voice to various characters, switching point of view from chapter to chapter. All these characters suffer trauma and loss, and struggle to find their way back to hope. There were some very distressing scenes dealing with pedophilia and hate crimes. But we should be bothered by those issues and facing what makes us uncomfortable is a theme of this book. The audio book is narrated by a cast of voice artists, including the author himself.
Link to my full review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Ann D]

I'm looking forward to Cranford. I saw the British TV miniseries and it was really good.

Right now I am reading A Replacement Life by Boris Fishman. Slava, the main character, is a Soviet Jew whose family immigrates to the United States. He is an aspiring writer who gets roped into writing fake stories for his kinsman who are trying to get
German reparation payments for Nazi atrocities. It sounds weird, but it is funny and touching at the same time and keeps me guessing about where it is going to go next.

[Larry]

I really don't like the fantasy genre very much, and a lot of that has to do with what I feel is the laziness of fantasy authors just throwing together what they think is a medieval world and adding a few elements of the fantastic to that world. That's probably why the few fantasy books that I read in recent decades that I like don't have much to do with a medieval environment. Books like John Crowley's Little, Big or Peter Beagle's A Fine and Private Place. But then along comes Patrick Rothfuss with the first two books of his trilogy, and I'm swept away. I'm halfway through the first book, The Name of the Wind, and I cannot find enough words to praise this book. Here's a link (it is on Rothfuss's own site, but that's okay by me) that captures what other reviewers have said about it. http://www.patrickrothfuss.com/conten...

Maybe this one excerpted review gets it about right, ""THE NAME OF THE WIND is quite simply the best fantasy novel of the past 10 years, although attaching a genre qualification threatens to damn it with faint praise. Say instead that THE NAME OF THE WIND is one of the best stories told in any medium in a decade. "

Oh, and the Rothfuss books are set in a medieval environment, :-)

Also the highest rated book I've ever seen on GoodReads at 4.55, with over 222,000 ratings.

[Gina]

Book Concierge wrote: " We Are Water by Wally Lamb – 5*****
Intricate and nuanced, Wally Lamb has given us a portrait of one American family’s disintegration and coming back together...."

B.C., I really like anything Wally Lamb has written. My all-time favorite was She's Come Undone. We are Water is my least favorite of his but that doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy it. I think Lamb is a fantastic writer. I recommend all his books.

[Joan]

Read "Crimes of Southern Indiana" by Frank Bill. I hate to trash a book, but this one is so bad it deserves it. I'm no opponent of blood and gore (I love Cormac McCarthy, Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Daniel Woodrell, et al)but that's all this book has to offer. No character development, no interesting narrative, nothing but what I guess the author thinks of as "original descriptions" and what I think of as "dreadful writing". You'd think it would be tough to make a book that focuses on rednecks, brutality, gross murders, meth, and abuse, boring...but Bill manages to do it.

[Carol]

Skimmed through The Paying Guests. Not a fan of this one, the character's seemed flat, especially Frances.

I started Cranford already chuckling.

[Lyn]

I just finished Dirty Love and found the writing engaging and the human frailties true in this quartet of short stories. (Now I am wondering whether I should read Dubus' House of Sand and Fog? Any input from someone who's read it?).

I happened to be the first on hold to see a new copy of the coffee table book, You Are Here: Around the World in 92 Minutes and read it. It ended up making me just sad, the same as I am when I look down from an airplane and see how human beings have chopped up almost all of nature down there. The only non-chopped up parts of earth he shows are totally barren desert.

Next up is We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves and on my Kindle The Orchardist. (I tend to read in the order things come up for my holds at the library for paper books and on Library2Go for my Kindle, and these are next up!)

[Cateline]

Lyn wrote: "I just finished Dirty Love and found the writing engaging and the human frailties true in this quartet of short stories. (Now I am wondering whether I should read Dubus' [book:Hous..."

Yes, yes, yes! :)
House of Sand and Fog is more intense. Even though I haven't seen the film, I could only see Ben Kingsley in the main role. Thus the power of advertising is proven. :)

My review...... https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Kat]

Cateline wrote: "Lyn wrote: "I just finished Dirty Love and found the writing engaging and the human frailties true in this quartet of short stories. (Now I am wondering whether I should read Dubus..."

I read House of Sand and Fog some years back in a book group. Some of the group members couldn't finish it because they found it so emotionally difficult to read. I made it through, but it wasn't easy. Terrific novel, though!

[Joan]

Kat wrote: "Cateline wrote: "Lyn wrote: "I just finished Dirty Love and found the writing engaging and the human frailties true in this quartet of short stories. (Now I am wondering whether I ..."

I thought House of Sand and Fog was splendid and I also enjoyed Dirty Love a lot.

[Tonya]

I would probably call House of Sand and Fog more "soul sucking" than emotionally difficult, but you get the gist. I cannot imagine why anyone would not read this book.

Tonya

[Cateline]

@Kat, I can believe some couldn't finish. But, boy was it ever worth it!

@Tonya, Yup, that's it. :)

@Lyn, and, there you have it! Opinionated bunch that we are.......:)

[Sherry, Doyenne]

Here's our discussion of House of Sand and Fog fourteen years ago. Don't read the discussion if you're worried about spoilers. I usually pretty much forget books I've read that long ago, but not this one.

http://constantreader.com/discussions...

[Carol]

I thought I would read House of Sand and Fog, but Tonya you got it right, it is soul sucking. I couldn't finish it. Maybe at this late date in my life, I don't like my soul sucked out of me. It is coming soon enough.

[Matthew]

I'm currently reading Savage Nation by Michael Savage, he's a ring -wing political commentator who I first heard being interviewed on Alex Jones and sorely after I found one of his books at our library, thought it looked interesting so I picked it up and haven't put it down since, I think he is right on the money with a lot of his views about the country

[Ann D]

Carol,
I read House of Sand and Fog before I knew anything about the story. I like stories about the immigrant experience. I couldn't put it down once I started it, but then I wasn't expecting the train wreck ending. For me, it was definitely a good book.

However, I know what you mean about avoiding some of those soul sucking books as you get older. I have had similar experiences.

[Cateline]

I think it depends on one's life experiences (and family history), as to whether we can stand to read certain books that are as The House of Sand and Fog.

I wanted to just smack them both.

[Barbara]

I tried to listen to House of Sand and Fog in an audiobook production and had to stop. I think I've said this before here but it made such an impression that I need to repeat myself. I stopped because the writing was too good. I could see the train wreck coming and I cared too much. I kept reminding my husband not to order the film from Netflix too. There was something about that form of tragedy that I just couldn't tolerate.

[Kat]

Barbara wrote: "I tried to listen to House of Sand and Fog in an audiobook production and had to stop. I think I've said this before here but it made such an impression that I need to repeat myself. I stopped be..."

For me the issue was this (and I may have said this before as well): In most books that include metaphorical train wrecks, you see the train wreck coming only a little while before it comes. But in this book you see it coming from miles away, and you have to live through all those pages knowing the train wreck is coming. It's pretty wrenching.

[Sheila]

This past week I finished Carlos Fuentes's short novel Inez which I summarised as Fuentes does Faust . If anyone knows the classical piece "The Damnation of Faust" by Berlioz, I'd love to hear their take on this book where this piece is key.

Yesterday evening I started and am charging through Ismail Kadare's The Fall of the Stone City which was shortlisted for the Independent's Foreign Literature Prize in 2013. Very readable, I can see why it was shortlisted and even only half way through I think it highly likely that I shall read more of this previous unknown to me author from Albania.

[Lyn]

Today I finished We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. I'll save detailed commentary for the discussion in May, but will remark that a few weeks ago I started to commit to becoming a permanent vegetarian, and it was something to be glad for as I read parts of this book.

Thank you for the comments on House of Sand and Fog. I think I will need to someday read it, as good writing is extremely compelling to me, but will not read it right now, especially after the one I have just read is in my head.

Hilarious that Goodreads sent me a summary of what it thinks are the books I read in 2014, congratulating me on reading 7 books! More like 500, but I've become used to just posting about maybe half of them here rather than doing any summaries on my Goodreads page. Perhaps I will someday when procrastinating something else, scroll back through these threads and do all the books I've read on my page. (Ok, why is my inner self laughing mockingly?)

[Mary]

Just finished reading The Bell Jar. I read this book because my mother loved Sylvia Plath's work. I think she also identified with her I'm many ways. I thought of my mom often while I was reading this tale. Sometimes I felt you could tell it was written by a poet because the figurative language was startlingly clear, precise, and evocative. At other times I thought it was an immature work, too self-referential - almost an attempt to exorcize demons - to achieve greatness.

[Portia]

Lyn wrote: "Today I finished We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. I'll save detailed commentary for the discussion in May, but will remark that a few weeks ago I started to commit to becomi..."

Lyn, I am moderating the discussion of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves and am really looking forward to your comments. Hope you took notes :)