What I Just Put Down, and what I just began

[Jennifer]

I just finished The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein. Very heartwarming story.

And now I've started on Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon. Not far enough along yet to really comment or decide if I'll continue through the series once I finish.

[[deleted user]]

Started Brideshead Revisited this morning. Loved the television series, not sure yet if I want to see the movie.

[Leslie]

I just put down The Namesake and just picked up The English Patient, Too Late the Phalarope and Three Cups of Tea. I was ganna re-read Vanity Fair but it was bumped.

[Liz]

Glad you enjoyed "The Art of Racing in the Rain" Fireheart223 - one of my favorites this year! I rate it better than the best seller "Marley and Me"!

[[deleted user]]

Since I began this thread... I shall post again. I have been so busy reviewing books for blogcritics that I have had little time for other things. I thought I might post links to books here for y'all to check out. Lots of interesting stuff!!!!!!
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/...
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/...
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/...
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/...

You can go to the home page of blogcritics.com, check the list of writers to the right, click on my name and all my essays, politics pieces, and reviews come up.....
happy reading. These are ALL great reads.....

[[deleted user]]

Finished Noorderlicht by Ferdinand Bordewijk and started reading the wind-up bird chronicles in Dutch translation (unabridged)

[Rajan]

I finished crisis by robin cook sometime back. Found it very average. Currently reading everyone worth knowing by Lauren Weisberger. read some 100 pages and its looking interesting.. :)

[Denise]

K, I read The Stand over 20 years ago and I still think of it whenever I suffer a little post nasal drip. It was a good book.

I just finished The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and thought it was wonderful.

I just picked up The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster and have the Wind-up Bird Chronicle in the on-deck circle.

[Rosana]

Denise, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is a favorite of mine too.

I finished The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason, which I loved. It is lyric and dreamy.

And I picked up The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. So far, I am really enjoying it.

[JG (Introverted Reader)]

Denise, it's been a while since I read The Piano Tuner, but I do remember loving the language.

I'm starting The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle today.

[Silvana]

Currently reading Moby Dick (H. Melville).
What a poetic book! Didn't expect that before.

[[deleted user]]

Barbara, I'd definitely support the Peavear and Volokhonsky version as well. Have it in the stack already.

[Candy]

I loved The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter. I've read it a couple times and I think we had a group discussion of it here a few years ago. I also think the movie is brilliant. I always feel like I actually know those characters...a feeling I get with Dickens.

I love WUBC and look forward to catching up with any discussion of it here.

I liked Paul Asters The Book of Illusions opening sentence is such a good one..."everyone thought he was dead". It was a hard read for me. And I had many mixed feelings...it's a heavy story. I hadn't read a Paul Auster for a long time...I had been a big fan of his NY stories/novels. But he had lost me with Leviathan I loved his dog book...Timbuktu.

The Stand still gives me freaky dreams.

[Ruth]

Just tossed the audio version of The Abstinence Teacher. Read in the hushed voice of a golf announcer, this book has all the subtlety of a hamburger in the face. Pah!

[JG (Introverted Reader)]

I finished The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and moved on to Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. So far her normally-sly little observations and critiques of society are more obvious and barbed than in her other books I've read. Not that I'm complaining, it's just a difference I've noticed.

[Jon]

I just finished an ebook version of A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Also finished reading October's theme book for the GoodReads SciFi & Fantasy book club A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny. I'm still also making my way through 50 Short Science Fiction Tales. I just started the other October book for the S&F book club - Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein and started Frankenstein as another ebook.

[[deleted user]]

Yesterday I finished rereading Perfume and today I started reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Despite the gruesome world it is about is a very fast read. I'll probably finish it later today.

[Candy]

Sibyl, wow, those are two heavy books in a row! You're going to need to go outside and stand in the sunlight after them, heh. I really liked Perfume...I haven't seen the movie version yet...I keep saying I should...(although I don't think many people liked it)

[[deleted user]]

I enjoyed the movie Pefume, although I wouldn't recommend viewing it shortly before or after reading the book, because that's still much better.

[Candy]

Okay...it's been quite a while since I read the book. I'm going to hunt down movie now!

:)

[Kara]

I picked up Anna Karenina for the second time in a month. I think it will take this time. :) I got intimidated (even though I've read it before)and shelved it for a few weeks, but now I'm having difficulty putting it down.

Was it in this group that some people were talking about reading War and Peace in December?

[Sherry, Doyenne]

It wasn't this group, Kara. We are reading The Habit of Being in December. But we did talk of putting up the newest translation of Anna Karenina for the next round of voting.

[Rosana]

No one has posted here for a while, and I just love to check on what everybody else is reading, so I am resurrecting this thread.

I finished Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, which I found amazing.

Now I have started on The Wasp Factory: A Novel by Ian Banks. It is a book for my upcoming bookclub meeting in a week, but I am having trouble just diving into it. I read only about 50 pages, but going into the mind of a teenage psychopath is already giving me goosebumps. I wish we had picked up something lighter for this month. December with all its promises of Christmas somehow does not seem like the right time to read it.

[Andy]

I'm going to start Gilead as soon as I'm done here.

I'm also two stories into the short story collection of Aimee Bender. I liked the first two and I think I will like the rest. Should be interesting to read them in counterpoint to Gilead.

[[deleted user]]

I'm reading 3 books at the moment.
The book of sand by Jorge Luis Borges
Wees genadig (be merciful) by Arto Paasilinna about a Finnish tower crane driver who is chosen to replace God while he's on a well-earned vacation
Metamorphoses by Ovidius

[Kathy]

I just finished a wonderful YA book last night, An Abundance of Katherines by John Green. What a witty, allusion-filled, fun book! I am starting Company of Liars by Karen Maitland today. It deals with one of my favorite subjects, the Black Plague in the Fourteenth Century (the year being 1348 at the start of this book). This historical fiction novel is described as "a dazzling reinterpretation of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales--an ingenious alchemy of history, mystery, and powerful human drama." I'm close to drooling over this book already.