What I'm Reading August 2012

[Barbara]

Sherry wrote: "I love Maria Doria Russell. I'll look for this audiobook, too. Has anyone read A Thread of Grace? I really enjoyed that one."

Thanks, Sherry. My library owns an audiobook production of this too!

[Rusty]

Reading "She" by H. Rider Haggerd.

[Lyn]

Just finished Wish You Were Here, and reading it after A Fine Balance was not good, making the O'Nan book seem trite and a bit like American fast food compared to more gourmet and exotic cuisine. I'd come to care a lot about the characters in Mistry's book, but just really did not much about O'Nan's. He even annoyingly left the case of a disappearance unresolved at the end.

On now to Gone Girl.

[Mary Ellen]

I am mid-way through Wide Sargasso Sea. I really, really want to love this book, but so far I'm appreciating it but not enjoying it.

So, I took a detour and began reading The Black Cat by Martha Grimes, which I feel like I've read before. Maybe I just started it before? We'll see which one I go back to first. Maybe I can finish them both off over a long weekend.

[Jennifer]

Finished Gone Girl . Meh.

[Rusty]

Interesting! I read an ARC and reviewed it on Amazon. Many people agreed with your assessment and mine.

[Jennifer]

Rusty wrote: "Interesting! I read and ARC and reviewed it on Amazon. Many people agreed with your assessment and mine."

Glad I'm not the only one! I picked it up because of all the raves.

[Ruth]

Today, How Italian Food Conquered the World by John Mariani

Here's the review I posted.

This could have been an interesting book. But if it jells into a coherent point of view it doesn't happen in the first half of the book. I'll never know about the second half, because Mariani's writing style is so deadly boring that I threw in the towel before then.

[Lone]

I've finished The Book of Margery Kempe and can recommend the book if you have an interest in the life in the Middles Ages. I found it very interesting to learn about a woman who went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and Rome and who at one point was close to getting burnt as a witch.

[Ann D]

Lone, is the book fiction or non-fiction?

[Geoff]

In the near-dark of my electricity-less house, I reread Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son for about the fourth time. Genius.

Started (for the second or third time) Bernhard's The Woodcutters.

Comfort reading in a time of stress.

[Anne]

I'm in a book lull right now. Finished Tana French's Broken Harbour and enjoyed that, but not as much as her others.

I read Doc a year or so ago, and loved it. As did my husband, who's not a big reader. My all time favorite of Russell's, though, is The Sparrow which brought me out of lurk-dome to Constant Reader back in the Prodigy days...

Faulkner on the Kindle is a great idea. I'm off to take a look at what's available. Have a great weekend, everyone!

[Marjorie]

Thanks, Mary Ellen, for reminding me about Martha Grimes' Richard Jury mysteries. I've read a couple (Jerusalem Inn and The Man With a Load of Mischief), all named after names of pubs. Especially loved Jury's friend Melrose Plant and his dippy Aunt Agatha, who, when they all had to go somewhere over Christmas and leave her alone, cried out, "Oh, but who will cook my goose!"

Have you read Grimes' Hotel Paradise (an Emma Graham mystery)? Very good story about a precocious little girl who is often left to her own devices because her mom is busy running the hotel. She delves into a mystery concerning the drowning 40 years ago of another young girl. I loved her musings and her interaction with the older people of the town (she has few friends her own age). There is a sequel, but I haven't read it yet.

[Marjorie]

Oh, darn, sorry to hear Gone Girl is only a "Meh," Jennifer. It's waiting for me at the library, and I was hoping for more, after having had such a run of disappointing mysteries lately, all DNFs: Blind Goddess by Anne Holt, Deadly Dance by M. C. Beaton, and Burial on Ave. B by Peter de Jonge.

Oh, well, I'll get on with two good nonfiction books I'm reading: The Presidents Club by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, and Eden's Outcasts by John Matteson.

Marge

[Marjorie]

Sorry to hear about your electricity (or rather, lack of), John. Were you in the path of Hurricane Isaac?

Glad to hear you liked Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son. I'll add it to my reading list. I really enjoyed his Train Dreams.

Marge

[Mary Anne]

It's time to move over to the Sept. 2012 thread.