Glens Falls (NY) Online Book Discussion Group discussion
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ABOUT BOOKS AND READING
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What are U reading these days? (PART EIGHT (2012) (ONGOING THREAD for 2012)
I just happened to notice that Han Suyin, the author of one of my favorite books, has died. I'll never forget her book: Till Morning Comes. It was a touching love story.She also wrote: Many Splendoured Thing which was adapted to film.
See her obituary at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/06/wor...
She was a physician as well as an author. She is known "for her outspoken championing of China under Mao Zedong." "She was believed to have been 96."
"The daughter of a Chinese father and a Belgian mother, Dr. Han was born and reared in China but wrote primarily in English and French. In more than two dozen books, including novels, a multivolume memoir and laudatory biographies of Mao and Zhou Enlai, she had the singular task, during the 1950s and afterward, of simultaneously explaining China to the West and the West to China."
Jackie and I decided to go ahead and read the whole Bright Empires trilogy together. So, I'm on to the next book, The Bone House!
Werner wrote: "Jackie and I decided to go ahead and read the whole Bright Empires trilogy together. So, I'm on to the next book, The Bone House!"Wow! Sounds like great fun!
Last night I went to our library's Monday Night Book Group. We talked about the fictionalized bio: The Paris Wife. I hadn't been to the group in a while and it was fun to get back with them. There was a retired lit professor there.
Werner, guess where he had taught! Iowa! :)
I thought of you!
Werner wrote: "Joy, it's a small world! :-)"Yes, seems I'm getting to meet lots of people from Iowa! :)
Joy H. wrote: "I just happened to notice that Han Suyin, the author of one of my favorite books, has died. I'll never forget her book: Till Morning Comes. It was a touching love story.She also wrote: Many Splen..."Sounds intriguing. I have it on my list.
Joy H. wrote: "Werner wrote: "Jackie and I decided to go ahead and read the whole Bright Empires trilogy together. So, I'm on to the next book, The Bone House!"I got discouraged with the people in The Paris Wife after a while.Wow! Sounds like great fun!
Last night I went to..."
After wrapping up Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle (which we both liked), Barb and I started another long --though not quite as long!-- epic fantasy series, the omnibus volume of Elizabeth Moon's trilogy
. Two of my Goodreads friends really liked this one, so I've been looking forward to reading it ever since I snagged a copy on BookMooch. (I'm a sucker for warrior heroines, and Barb appreciates the archetype as well. :-) )
Werner, I think it's great the way Barb and you enjoy the same genres!
Joy, Barb and I do have a lot of overlapping tastes in fictional genres, which makes it easier to find books to read together. She doesn't get into supernatural fiction of the type she considers 'scary," nor many of the older, 19th-century classics, and I don't usually enjoy stereotypical "romances" or most Westerns. But we both like a pretty broad range of fiction, especially fantasy and SF.
Jim wrote: "Claus: Legend of the Fat Man is free on Amazon today. It's a fun, quick read."I guess that means it's FREE on Kindle, no?
I don't have Kindle.
Werner wrote: "Joy, Barb and I do have a lot of overlapping tastes in fictional genres, which makes it easier to find books to read together. She doesn't get into supernatural fiction of the type she considers '..."I see. Still, you're lucky enough to have so much in common reading-wise. I do share some of my library books with Eddie, come to think of it. But Eddie reads anything. :)
Werner, I've got Deeds on my To Buy list, for the same reason, friends recommended it. Your assessment will determine how fast, or how slow, I move on getting it.
Joy, anyone can get the Kindle app for their PC. It's not my favorite way to read, though. I usually download the book to it & then PM the author & ask for it in another format. They almost always oblige. Tony, the author of "Claus" did. Still, I don't think it's your kind of book. Jackie would probably get a kick out of it, though. her sense of humor is almost as warped & twisted as my own.
;-)
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I saw a really cute Calvin & Hobbs today.
Frame 1: Calvin walks up to his mom & asks, "Can I learn to parachute out of a plane?"
Frame 2: His mother looks down at him & says, "Why don't you just play chicken on the railroad tracks? It would be a cheaper way to toy with death, I'm sure."
Frame 3: Calvin walking away saying, "Mom's so practical."
No, men do not do subtle or sarcasm well. I haven't improved much with age, either.
;-)
Jim wrote: her sense of humor is almost as warped & twisted as my own.Why thank you, Jim!
Anthony loves Calvin and Hobbs, we have a bunch of their books I bought as a set for him.
I'll catch Fat Man one of these days.
Jim wrote: "Joy, anyone can get the Kindle app for their PC. It's not my favorite way to read, though. I usually download the book to it & then PM the author & ask for it in another format. They almost alwa..."Jim, I'll ask my boys about that Kindle app.
As for Calvin, I love him too. Loved your post about him.
Below are two "Calvin" items I've saved. There's so much wisdom there, even if it sometimes appears to be sarcasm.
CLICK ON THE THUMBNAIL.
CLICK ON THE THUMBNAIL.Naturally, all the credit goes to Bill Watterson who created the cartoon characters and their personalities. Here's Watterson's Wiki page. It's interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Wat...
Jim wrote: "Claus: Legend of the Fat Man is free on Amazon today. It's a fun, quick read."I "looked inside" the book at Amazon just now (uh-oh, "a long dark tunnel..."):
http://www.amazon.com/Claus-Legend-Fa...
I love the "Look Inside" feature.
Jackie wrote, "Your assessment will determine how fast, or how slow, I move on getting it."Then, Jackie, I'll try hard to make my assessment both conscientious and informative! :-) Of course, it'll be awhile before we finish it --it's a thick book (three novels in one volume), and we usually read slowly, in bits and pieces over a period of months.
That's fine by me, I don't have any books sales planned in the near future.
I've started reading My Name is Mary Sutter (2010) by Robin Oliveira.It's the December selection of our local Crandall Library's Monday Night Book Group.
I'm on p. 10 and it's drawn me in already.
"An enthralling historical novel about a young woman's struggle to become a doctor during the Civil War." FROM: http://www.indiebound.org/book/978067...
"Rich with historical detail-including cameo appearances by Abraham Lincoln and Dorothea Dix, among others-My Name Is Mary Sutter is certain to be recognized as one of the great novels about the Civil War." –Amazon
Believe it or not, I'm still reading The Titans by John Jakes! It's not compelling but it's interesting enough to keep me going back to it whenever I feel motivated.
The novel you mentioned is sounding worth reading to me. I am now reading, "Death Comes to Pemberley," by P.D. James. It is good in fact very good and anyone who loves mysteries and/or Jane Austin should find it a fun read. Also, I am celebrating sixty five years of marriage tomorrow by staying at a B & B for the night and they have fabulous breakfasts. Host is a gourmet cook who has been written up in severaly food magazines. We are friends with the owners and their house is a splendid old mansion in town. Should be fun. Seventy degrees again on Sunday and Monday but still no rain.
Happy anniversary, Nina! Congratulations to you both.
When someone asked my husband how he managed to stay married that long his answer was, "I didn't die," and I still love him...
Happy 65 Anniversary, Nina! How wonderful!Best of luck and congratulations to you both!
Enjoy the B&B. That's a great idea.
Coincidentally, I've been asking to do something like that myself for my next birthday. There's a B&B overlooking Lake George which has always looked tempting to me.
About the book, Death Comes to Pemberley, I've never read anything by PD James. That sounds tempting too. :)
"A rare meeting of literary genius: P. D. James, long among the most admired mystery writers of our time, draws the characters of Jane Austen’s beloved novel Pride and Prejudice into a tale of murder and emotional mayhem." -from the GR description
PS-I never realized till now that P.D. James was a woman. :)
An interesting tidbit is that in one of the scenes a young lawyer is assisted in his problem by a Mr. Peck who is also mentioned a couple of times on that page. Interesting as that is my husband's surname and his family dates way back in England and of course, the author is English so she must be familiar with that name. We think he is related to any Pecks in Britian.
Nina, you must have enjoyed the following song back in its day:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufnwhl...
I had almost forgotten about it until now.
LYRICS:
I love you a bushel and a peck
A bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck
A hug around the neck and a barrel and a heap
A barrel and a heap and I'm talkin' in my sleep about you.
When we had our fourth child my husband put this on our mailbox, "A Bushel and a Peck."
Very apropos, Nina! :)
For some reason calling paper books 'dead tree books' is beginning to really irritate me. What's wrong with 'paper'? Is a semi-disposable electronic device that sucks up electricity & rare earth metals really so much better for the environment that we can disparage paper? Hasn't it served us well for centuries & doesn't it still do so?So, here's a big raspberry to all the wanna-be, hip environmentalists who call 'paper' 'dead tree'.
THHHWWWWWPPPP!!!!!
LOL - Jim, your "huge_smiley_with_tongue_out" really got a guffaw out of me this morning. :)I hadn't heard the "dead tree books" expression before this. Your point is well taken.
Reminded me of this:
Jim, a hearty "AMEN" to that raspberry!
I heartily agree!And how about the Pruis owners, so superior, except they don't realize that just for the batteries alone the strip mining involved plus the transport for assembly is ridiculous, it doesn't save the planet in any way. And just try telling them, oh boy, well, as Forrest Gump's mom used to say, 'stupid is as stupid does'.
Continuing our buddy read of the Bright Empires series (which turns out not to be a trilogy after all --the author is planning on five books in all, the fourth one to be published next year) Jackie and I are now both started on the third book, The Spirit Well. I'm considerably behind her at this point (late start, due to delay in picking up the book from the bookstore), but I'm hoping to catch up quickly!
Werner & Jackie, enjoy your Buddy-Read.I'm trying to give reading time to our local library group's selection for this month: My Name is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliveira. It's very promising.
Speaking of midwives, I have a memoir by Jennifer Worth, I can't find the link fo this particular book but here it is: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11...Recently there was a series on PBS based on this book, and since I already had the book, I refrained from watching it. I plan to read this one very soon so I can watch the TV show.
If Mary Sutter was made into a movie or TV series, I would watch it.
The best book awards have been announced:http://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards...
I didn't vote for any of them.
I'm usually so behind-hand in reading older books that I don't read very many new ones in the same year that they're published. (There are just too many older books ahead of them on the list!) So I don't bother to vote on annual polls like Goodreads Choice; I figure input that would be based on, at best, reading maybe one current-year book isn't going to be very useful to the pollsters. :-)
Jackie wrote: "I heartily agree!And how about the Pruis owners, so superior, except they don't realize that just for the batteries alone the strip mining involved plus the transport for assembly is ridiculous, i..."
I'm no where near 'green' enough to choose a car by its' environmental impact. During my long love affair with Ford (fix or repair daily) I suffered years thru their system of letting customers test out their 'better ideas'. I'm very suspicious of 'the latest' car technology. What does it cost to replace those Prius batteries? I just traded a Toyota Corolla which I thought had too much attention paid to electronics, not enough to the CAR. That said, I'm now in a Subaru Forester which is beginning to give me gas pump shock with the cold weather. Newspaper says GM has committed to hire bunches of new employees to upgrade their electronic gadgets. I'm all in favor of more workers to pay taxes, but I'd rather have them build a BETTER CAR. Back in the '50s Detroit COULD have built the very best car in the world (the rest of the world was trashed and catching up) but they refused to do it in favor of planned obsolescence. You shouldn't have got me going on cars, Jackie!
It's not only cars, Earl, it's everything we buy. They're built to break so we're forced to buy it over and over. Yay China!For example, as a kid we had a Farberware coffee pot, so when I moved up in with my husband 12 years ago he had a drip. Unacceptable to me. We spent $80 on a Farberware percolator coffee pot, before a year was up it died. Bought another, same thing, and again. We bought other brands, same thing, over and over. Anthony told his mother and she had an old Farberware not being used and gave it to us. So why is it that the 30 year old Farberware is still working 6 years later, while the newer models die before a year old? There's only one answer to that, and I've stated it above.
Jim and Werner, I don't vote in the new book polls unless I've read something on the list, like last year I voted for A Dance With Dragons. I didn't vote this year, though I did look over the list, somewhat.
Jackie, re message 1093, I agree with you 1,000%! Planned obsolescence is an idiotic way to operate an economic system, and needs to change (yesterday!). I don't expect it to change anytime soon, though --needing to change and being likely to unfortunately aren't identical concepts. :-(
I'm not a fan of planned obsolescence either. We rarely get rid of anything unless it wears out, sometimes not even then. One rear couch leg is broken & the skirt is off the front, but no one ever notices, so why should we spend $1000 or so on a new one? No, our house will never make Better Homes & Gardens, but we're comfortable with it.
I voted for a few books because I had read them, but skipped most. Some won just because of the author or the hype surrounding them.
Jim wrote: "Some won just because of the author or the hype surrounding them."Jim, I suspect that's what happens with a lot of these "year's best" polls/awards!
Jim wrote: "The best book awards have been announced:http://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards...
I didn't vote for any of them."
I didn't vote for any and I haven't read any. There are just too many books out to keep up with. I read what I can. I try to focus on a few special books and take the one or two at a time. Audio-books are a big help too.
Jackie wrote: "Speaking of midwives, I have a memoir by Jennifer Worth, I can't find the link fo this particular book but here it is: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11...Recently Recently there was a series on PBS based on this book..."
Thanks, Jackie. I found it at Netflix and have added it to my queue.
It says there's a long wait. That's OK. :)
"Call the Midwife" (2012– ) TV Series
http://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/Call-the...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1983079/?...
"The story is about a group of midwives based in East London in the 1950s."
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Glens Falls (NY) Online Book Discussion Group
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Keep enjoying your reading, MaryJL.
I'm way behind on mine. Must get back to it! Shame on me! :)