I got the first three Stephanie Plum mysteries from Linda on Tuesday evening and started reading them Wednesday morning. I just finished reading #3 and I guess I am hooked. What can I say, I told you I had nothing to do all day
Thanks Linda!

I like Grandma - she's a hoot . She reminds me of Sophia on Golden Girls.

I am going to get "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter".

It's on the Modern Library list of 100 Best Novels, the Time Magazine 100 best list, and an Oprah's Book Club selection.

I really liked the three William Faulkner books that she recommended.

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quote:

Originally posted by johnbol:
I just finished Joan Didion's A Year of Magical Thinking. It's a very special book covering the time after the sudden death of her husband.
Linda

I've been wanting to read this one. Maybe our library has it -- my shelves are already crammed with books, and my wallet is not crammed with cash.

I just finished Joan Didion's A Year of Magical Thinking. It's a very special book covering the time after the sudden death of her husband. [p]Immediately before that, I finished The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards. This was a page turner. I couldn't wait to see how it all turn out. Almost as good as The Time Traveler's Wife. I'm still touting that book to anyone who will listen.

Linda

I loved Time Traveler's Wife too and also found it very unique. My mother, on the other hand, had a hard time with it and didn't like it as much.

I just finished reading the "Woman with the Alabaster Jar" a non-fiction account of the story of Mary Magdalene. I found it very fascinating.

quote:

Originally posted by Kat N.:
I just finished "The Time Traveler's Wife" and it was awesome.

Wasn't that a lovely story? SO unique and creative. It was one of my 3 favorite books either last year or year before last. I remember saying to someone in my book chat that I would have loved to have seen her outline for that book because I don't know how she kept up with it all. Can't have been an easy write!

I just finished "The Time Traveler's Wife" and it was awesome. It was so bizarre that I couldn't put it down cuz I wanted to know what happened next! I love it when I can't put a book down

I found a nifty new cookbook this weekend.
It is called "The 1200-Calorie-a-Day Menu Cookbook" by Nancy S Hughes.

It has full menus for 350 calorie breakfasts, 350 calorie lunches & dinners & 100 calorie deserts. You can mix and match any breakfast, lunch, dinner & desert menu and your whole day will total 1200 (or less).

It gives the calories & fat content for each complete menu but also gives them for the individual recipes.

For example: A Breakfast Menu --

total calories 350, fat 9.6 gr. (25%)

Overnight Egg Casserole with Sausage and Cheese
cal.277, fat 9.6 gr.

Citrus Cups
cal.38, fat 0

Chilled Tomato Juice
cal.35, fat 0

I am definately trying that one in spite of our kitchen drawbacks. I will however have to do something other than citrus cups and tomato juice unless I want the acid reflux to kick in.

I enjoyed Mick Jackson's Ten Sorry Tales very much and Paul Auster's Brooklyn Follies less. Auster's New York Trilogy is very good though. I also liked the Ladies Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith.

quote:

Originally posted by johnbol:
Finished Twelve Sharp by Janet Evanovich in about 24 hours. It hinges on Evanovich's 10th book which was a favorite, so this one was gulped.

Started The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards and am hooked.

Spending today in the library to try to stay cool!

Linda

SEE! I TOLD you it was a good one!
Dawn

I finally got around to reading this play, and found it to be a very powerful work; one of torment, and regret, and hopelessness. A sample:

"None of us can help the things life has done to us. They're done before you realize it, and once they're done they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you'd like to be, and you've lost your true self forever."

quote:

After that, I am going to read the Eugene O'Neil play "Long Day's Journey Into Night".

According to the back cover, O'Neil describes it as a "play of sorrow, written in tears and blood". The cover also states that it won a Pulitzer Prize.

Finished Twelve Sharp by Janet Evanovich in about 24 hours. It hinges on Evanovich's 10th book which was a favorite, so this one was gulped.

Started The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards and am hooked.

Spending today in the library to try to stay cool!

Linda

Ehrenreich has had a follow-up book (kind of) this year. Bait and Switch has her trying to get a job based on her college degrees and experience without giving her identity. This time she did spend a lot of her own money for agencies, portfolios, resumes, life coaches, etc.

She paints a pretty bleak picture.

Linda

quote:

Originally posted by Tayhudson:
Judy,
I heard a special on NPR about her and that book, the interview was facinating.

Dawn

The book was also. She did not use the money in her bank account while she was doing this. She kept her identity a secret and lived totally on the money she made on the job.

Judy,
I heard a special on NPR about her and that book, the interview was facinating.

Dawn

Nickeled and Dimed: On (Not) getting by in America

It was a very interesting book. Here is what they say about it on Barnes & Noble:

FROM THE EDITORS
To understand life beyond boom-time America, Barbara Ehrenreich spent months laboring as a cleaning woman; as a waitress; and as a Wal-Mart sales clerk. Her revelations about these hard, supposedly "unskilled" jobs and the difficulty of making ends meet in the U.S. gives this book a powerful, personal edge.

ANNOTATION
Our sharpest and most original social critic goes "undercover" as an unskilled worker to reveal the dark side of American prosperity.

FROM THE PUBLISHER
Millions of Americans work for poverty-level wages, and one day Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that any job equals a better life. But how can anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 to $7 an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, taking the cheapest lodgings available and accepting work as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson. She soon discovered that even the "lowliest" occupations require exhausting mental and physical efforts. And one job is not enough; you need at least two if you intend to live indoors.

Nickel and Dimed reveals low-wage America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity--a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate strategies for survival. Instantly acclaimed for its insight, humor, and passion, this book is changing the way America perceives its working poor.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of Blood Rites; The Worst Years of Our Lives (a New York Times bestseller); Fear of Falling, which was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award; and eight other books. A frequent contributer to Time, Harper's, Esquire, The New Republic, Mirabella, The Nation, and The New York Times Magazine, she lives near Key West, Florida.

Well, obviously, I need to pay more attention to the board. I didn't know this thread existed - I thought you would have continued the old one, and I would have known since I was part of the old one - I've learned my lesson.

I went back and made a quick list of everything I have read or am reading since the first posing on this thread:

Isaac's Storm - true story of the hurrican which hit Gavelsont in 1901

A Man Named Dave - the only one of the trilogy to start in the "library" and stay there.

Answered Prayers - by Truman Capote (why was he such a sensation - I had read "Breakfast at Tiffany's just before this)

Drinking Coffee Elsewhere - a book of short stories by ZZ Packer. I enjoyed this and brought some new thoughts and ideas

How to Loose Friends and Alienate People - a memoir of a Brit's attempt to work for Condé Nast

Son of "It Was A Dark and Stormy Night" - a compilation of the best of the Bulwer-Lytton contest

Dispatches from the Edge - Anderson Cooper's memoir. Better than I expected

The Devil Wears Prada - mind candy - read it just before "How to alientate friends" and has some of the same people in it

The Bookwoman's Last Fling - John Dunning - MY 2nd or 3rd favorite mystery writer - 'nuf said.

The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea - a book of poems by Mark Haddon who wrote The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime

The Thurber Carnival - James Thurber - hoping for insight from a fellow Buckeye and a successful writer and humourist

The Naked Consumer - by the same person who wrote Isaac's Storm - written in 1993 about Consumerism - enlightning

Little Women - my childhood favorite - interesting to read as a 15 year old plus 40!

Six Wives - Book on CD - total of 29 and through #15, Henry wasn't even married to Ann Boleyn yet - they were fooling around, but not married (I need to know more about world history if I'm going to be successful on Jeopardy - IF I get on Jeopardy)

The German Empire - as above to broaden the horizons, but the tape player in my car decided its hunger was more important - made it into the 3rd of the 3 tapes.

Marley and Me by John Grogan - for any animal lover [b]you have to read this book[b]. Grogan has a wonderful sense of himself, his dog and mostly his humor.

BTW - I will finish Anderson Cooper this afternoon and then I'm into Evanovich's 12. I don't wait until they're in paper. I get them at the library as soon as I can!

Happy Reading!

Linda

I am reading The Alchemist by Paul Cohelo(sp?). I finished The Kite Runner which was an excellent book, I highly recommend it.

Jill

What's everyone reading this summer?

Since I just finished both my at-home and at-work books, I started some new ones. Started Life of Pi by Yann Martel at work and The Vanishing Man by Jeffery Deaver at home. Since I'm always reading at least 2 books at the same time (in different places), I try to pick books that are quite different. I usually pick a "serious literature" book for work and something lighter or less brain intensive at home.

I don't usually start and finish a book in one week because I'm only reading in short bits either at bedtime or while I eat my lunch at work; but last week I started and finished a small but powerful book recommended to me by a coworker:

Durable Goods by Elizabeth Berg

This is a small book and an easy read (at least in terms of speed, though not so easy in emotional ways). It is the story of a military family that does the usual moving around. Mom dies and Dad must manage 2 daughters (one 17 or 18 and the other about 12) on his own.

I related a lot to this book because it was about a father whose wife dies (in my life, she just moved out) and he has to manage raising 2 kids on his own. Like my own life, the father is violent and there is one child who walks on eggshells and always tries to please him and one child who always pushes the envelope. The difference with my life is that it was me, the older child, who was the quiet pleaser and my brother, the baby, who was the envelope pusher, where in the book it was the older girl who was the rebel and the younger one was quiet.

What really touched me deeply was how the pleaser's fear of her father led her to do things she otherwise wouldn't do--like not come to the aid of her sibling when under fire from the father--for fear of bringing her father's wrath on herself. I still carry guilt about doing that in my own childhood.

The book is well written from the perspective of the young girl. It feels SO REAL sometimes that you really think you're sitting there hearing this 12-yo talk to you about how frustrated she is with her life. She wants to be grown up and be able to go where she pleases so she can finally have a life of peace. I know that feeling--I left home 3 days after high school graduation to move to DC. In doing so, I chose fear of the unknown over the fear I lived with every day.

The Twelfth Card by Jeffery Deaver

I finished this last night and, like pretty much all Deaver's novels in the Lincoln Rhyme series, it was very entertaining and well done. This novel features a crime with multi-layered possible motives, some of which date back to the 1800s. The killer, as with most killers who appear as Rhyme's nemesis, is a cold-hearted machine. He has to work at appearing normal and showing emotion because it doesn't come naturally to him. He is especially smart because he purposely plants evidence to lead Rhyme astray, hence all the layers. The layers make the story interesting but also make it frustrating. You're trying to keep all this stuff in your head at one time and it gets a bit much. Not my favorite of the Rhyme series, but ultimately satisfying.

I use tape tags to mark inspiring or impactful passages in "serious" books but don't do so in stuff like Deaver, Evanovich, Sandford, etc. However, this time is different. Toward the end of this book was a passage that really touched me. It requires a bit of explanation.

The storyline from the 1800s involves a slave whose owner freed him. He was an educated man and involved with Frederick Douglas and others in that era's early civil rights movement. He speaks often of being judged by the white society of the time as being "three-fifths a man" because he was black and how hard he is working to be judged a full man. Rhyme, a brilliant criminalist and quadriplegic, knows how it feels to be judged less than a full man because he lives in a wheelchair. Toward the end of the book, Rhyme reflects on the crime and on this man from the 1800s.

"He realized that nothing else--not politicians or fellow citizens or your haywire body--could make you a three-fifths man; it was solely your decision to view yourself as a complete or partial person and to live your life accordingly."

And I think that can apply to most of us, despite how "whole" we may appear to the world.

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