What are you reading?

[Cutielb99 0]

The next book in my book club is “The Dallas Women’s Guide to Gold-Digging With Pride” by J.C. Conklin. Has anyone read it? I'm not too thrilled, but will give it a shot.

[fykeylicious 1,099]

I just read Chuck Palahniuk's latest (SNUFF) which was so bad I'm fuming for having picked it up.

 

I'm also reading the latest by David Sedaris (WHEN YOU ARE ENGULFED IN FLAMES), which is really good, and I'm also reading a collection of short stories by Etgar Keret.

[bittermuch? 0]

I enjoyed the new David Sedaris - it came in the mail on Thursday and I read it Friday and Saturday. It was kind of pathetic how excited I was to see the little brown box on my doorstep and to know the book was inside. Each time I read one of his, I tell myself that next time I will take my time and savor the next one so that it lasts longer, and each time I read it compulsively until it's done. This latest collection wasn't my favorite - unfortunately I had read a number of them already, and a couple seemed to have been repurposed from years ago - but I still laughed out loud a number of times.

 

I was still thinking about Shutter Island when I woke up this morning. I liked the ending but then the last chapter kind of confused me and I was thinking about it as I fell asleep and then again when I woke up. Not sure how thinking about that caused me to dream that Barack Obama was in hiding at my parents' house, but that's another thing.

[Hoyaheel 1,874]

I liked the ending but then the last chapter kind of confused me and I was thinking about it as I fell asleep and then again when I woke up.

When that happens to me, I wonder if I had too many glasses of wine while finishing the book, and have to go back and re-read the final chapter again

[bittermuch? 0]

LOL too much wine (or too many margaritas...) is always a possibility.

[bittermuch? 0]

Just finished Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino. Really good, although I'm not sure I'm smart enough to "get" all of it.

[virginia4 0]

Has anyone read, "She's Come Undone"?

 

A woman in my book club raved about it and she is giving my a copy next week.

[bittermuch? 0]

Has anyone read Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott? I picked it up weekend before last when I got Shutter Island and Grotesque and am starting it tonight - looked interesting but I haven't heard anything about it. Premise is that modern day Cambridge historian is murdered while investigating mysterious deaths surrounding Sir Isaac Newton's career. Another writer takes over and "the seventeenth century slowly seeps into the twenty-first, with the city of Cambridge the bridge between them." Seems potentially interesting.

[boopster 0]

My book club read Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino. It has many levels, but it is very good. I also read Out by the same author. I liked it better.

[bittermuch? 0]

I liked Out better too.

 

Ghostwalk was pretty good. Brisk enough to keep me engaged but complex enough to make me think a little, which isn't always a bad thing Looking for something to read next.....

 

 

p.s. anyone on this site?: Good Reads

Edited June 22, 2008 by bittermuch?

[boopster 0]

I don't know if this has been covered, but has anyone read Iris Murdoch? This is the thing. My close friend is in my book club.

she loves Iris and we are reading The Philosopher's Pupil for our next book. I absolutely hate it. I hate her writing, her characters, and the glacial plotting of this book. I keep hoping it will improve but it is so wordy. Anyone read this? Maybe it's me.

[Hoyaheel 1,874]

I don't know if this has been covered, but has anyone read Iris Murdoch? This is the thing. My close friend is in my book club.

she loves Iris and we are reading The Philosopher's Pupil for our next book. I absolutely hate it. I hate her writing, her characters, and the glacial plotting of this book. I keep hoping it will improve but it is so wordy. Anyone read this? Maybe it's me.

Well, you've summed up the main reason I don't do book clubs

 

I feel certain I must have read a couple of her books at some point, but nothing is springing quickly to mind, which means I didn't enjoy them....

[hawaiidreamn 0]

I am reading the Ruins and so far loving it....

I just finished The Ruins by Scott Smith also. I though it was ok. It is an easy read. My friend loved it though.

 

I just started reading What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman. I've never read anything by her but so far it is pretty good.

[branchop 319]

Has anyone read, "She's Come Undone"?

 

A woman in my book club raved about it and she is giving my a copy next week.

 

Is that the one by Wally McLamb? I read it years ago and remember being underwhelmed. I think it was an Oprah book, and generally those are too women's fictiony for me. As a whole, I want to strangle the women Oprah has in her books and tell them to quite their whining.

[couleur 0]

Just started reading "The Enchantress of Florence" and am really enjoying it so far. I've never read any Salman Rushdie before, since I had him pegged as way too serious after the Satanic Verses fatwah mess.

[fykeylicious 1,099]

Just started reading "The Enchantress of Florence" and am really enjoying it so far. I've never read any Salman Rushdie before, since I had him pegged as way too serious after the Satanic Verses fatwah mess.

ooh! me too! i'm only at the very very beginning though. I'm a little nervous cause this one got horrible reviews.

 

The Satanic Verses was oookay - actually pretty non-serious (I read it a few years ago but basically it came down to either Mohammed imagining the revelations given to him by the angel or else the angel was from the devil and was just effing with him). I heard Midnight's Children is his best, but I haven't read that.

[bittermuch? 0]

Just finished a great, fascinating book: Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx Is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City. I was a kid in the 1970s and vividly remember Reggie Jackson beating my Dodgers in the 1977 World Series (and also remember having a huge - and highly disloyal - crush on him, something that my parents still tease me about to this day), and at the same time I vividly remember the impression of a decaying, crime-befouled, terrifying city that I got from reading about and watching movies about New York at the time. I'd highly recommend this book to anyone who loves urban history, or baseball, or New York - or especially all three.

 

Also recently finished another good non-fiction read that, like Bronx is Burning, had interesting things to say about how the media frames our perceptions of events and fuels the events themselves - a book called Love on Trial: An American Scandal in Black and White, about the 1925 anullment trial of Leonard Rhinelander and Alice Jones. Rhinelander alleged that Jones had deceived him about her race - Rhinelander was from an old New York Social Register family, and Jones's father was a black English-immigrant cab driver. The excerpts from the newspaper coverage across the country - which forms the basis for much of the book, as the trial transcripts have disappeared, the key players are all dead, and the Jones family refused requests for interviews - are dismaying but fascinating.

[Hoyaheel 1,874]

Does anyone read Clive Cussler? I've been reading them for years (since I was old enough to figure out how to use a chair to reach Raise the Titanic on the upper shelf in the living room bookshelf ) Anyway, I just finished the newest book, Plague Ship, and despite the formulaic writing (he uses co-writers now, has for years--guess it's better than ghosting because the co-author gets credit?) Anyhoo, the villains in the new book are a cult called the Responsivists. Based in Hollywood with some weird alien beliefs. Sound familiar??? Who said with the end of the Cold War we'd run out of good fictitious villains??

[bittermuch? 0]

Just read The Party of the Century about Truman Capote and his 1966 Black & White Ball. Interesting, but I thought it would go into more depth. On vacation finally finished Waterfront: A Walk Around Manhattan by Phillip Lopate. Really interesting - the only drawback is that the author's ego and personality intruded a bit too much. Just started 740 Park.

[Hoyaheel 1,874]

Just started 740 Park.

Read that last year and LOVED it!! BUt I drool over Town & Country and Architectural Digest too.....

[BobbyD 2]

The Watchmen...the graphic novel that I'm slowly trying to understand.

[GovMarley 90]

Just finished Mistaken Identity, about two college students who were in an accident. One died, the other was in a coma, and they were mis-identified for 5 weeks until the family realized it wasn't their daughter. Unreal!

 

Started reading Plain Secrets, about an Amish family. Very good so far.

[pitt-lover 0]

I just started "Devil in the White City" and so far it is pretty interesting. A lot of history. Anyone ever read this?

I also just read a Coco Chanel biography, but I forget the title. It was very interesting as well.

[Hoyaheel 1,874]

Just finished Stealing Athena by Karen Essex--overlapping history (fictional) of Mary Nisbet, Lady Elgin and her husband (Lord Elgin--he of the infamous Elgin Marbles) and Aspasia, courtesan of Perikles of Athens (who commissioned the marbles/the Parthenon). Very good book.

 

I like well researched historical fiction, so I'll have to look at her other novels as well

http://www.karenessex.com/books.html

 

Next up--quick read by Meg Cabot, Queen of Babble (quickly followed by a couple of other Queen of Babble books in the series if it's any good--if not, straight back to the library )

[bittermuch? 0]

I started Devil in the White City a couple of years ago and got about halfway through before I had to abandon it for a while because of work craziness, and then I felt like I'd have to start over again to remember everything that had happened. I liked what I read of it, though.

 

I've put aside 740 Park momentarily and am reading The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe. 740 was ok but the pattern got kind of tedious (introduce personality who moved into building, backtrack to briefly trace family, business, and personal history, perhaps a tangent here and there, back to the time they moved into the building, etc.) I'll probably go back to it after I finish the other.