What Are We Currently Reading?

[SmithW6079]

27 minutes ago, GaT said:

Um, really?

Yes. It delves into how these seemingly ordinary people were able to tap into undiscovered/unknown physical abilities to keep the highly trained German army at bay. It's really quite fascinating,  with ties to some of the current fitness trends of today such as bodyweight training or things like parkour.

Here's a quote from the flyleaf:

Quote

"Natural Born Heroes" is a fascinating investigation into the lost art of the hero ... where modern-day athletes are honing ancient skills so they're ready for anything.  

[It] will inspire [people] to leave the gym and take their fitness routine to nature -- to climb, skip, throw, and jump to their way to their own heroic feats.

Edited July 2, 2016 by SmithW6079

[GaT]

59 minutes ago, Cobalt Stargazer said:

Yes, really. I hadn't heard of it, but here is the synopsis:

http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/207378/natural-born-heroes-by-christopher-mcdougall/9780307742223/

 

55 minutes ago, SmithW6079 said:

Yes. It delves into how these seemingly ordinary people were able to tap into undiscovered/unknown physical abilities to keep the highly trained German army at bay. It's really quite fascinating,  with ties to some of the current fitness trends of today such as bodyweight training or things like parkour.

 

Well, it certainly sounds intriguing, not something that I would really want to read, but intriguing nonetheless  :-)

[Haleth]

I just finished The Fireman by Stephen King's son, who writes under the name Joe Hill.  I'd heard there were a lot of parallels to The Stand and this is true.  It started out really well, an interesting take on an apocalyptic plague and how the afflicted learn to control it while the unafflicted try to avoid it, but in the later half I could no longer stand the protagonist.  She was just too dumb to live, constantly putting herself, the baby she was carrying, and her community at risk, trusting the wrong people, and generally thinking she knew better than anyone else.  In the end I did not care about any of the characters anymore.  An ending that should have been moving and heart wrenching left me cold.  Well, that happened.  On to something new.

Oh, and the other thing that annoyed me.  King/Hill has a tendency to end chapters with a throwaway line that hints that something big is about to happen.  He would write something like, Harper wanted to tell a character something but decided she could do it when she came back.  Next line: "But when she got back everything had changed."  He did that a lot, to the point I would roll my eyes at the cheesiness of his style of writing.

Edited July 3, 2016 by Haleth

[buffynut]

On 6/22/2016 at 1:41 PM, SierraMist said:

I finished The Summer Before The War and thought it was a waste of my time.  The characters were poorly developed and the writing felt like a paint by numbers work.  And then, there was the stupidly superfluous killing of a dog.  Sorry if that's a spoiler.  It's really such an insignificant part of the book, and it's treated as such.

That may be a spoiler, but it's enough to make me cancel the hold I had at the library for the e-book. So thanks for the warning. 

On 6/28/2016 at 7:33 PM, Rick Kitchen said:

Has anybody read The Interestings?  

No, never heard of it.

On 6/22/2016 at 1:29 PM, SierraMist said:

I am really over Liane Moriarty.  I recently read The Last Anniversary and it will be the last one.  I read What Alice Forgot, as well as The Husbands Secret and Big Little Lies.  To me there is a pattern in her writing of treating serious subjects in a very flippant way.  I guess she thinks it's cute to be frivolous, and I just find it superficial.  

I read Big Little Lies last summer and can't remember very much about it, so I guess I wasn't that impressed.

On 7/1/2016 at 4:12 PM, Pepper Mostly said:

How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran. Loved every word and laughed like a hyena. Gave it to a young friend to read, since I am old but kept thinking "I wish I was 20 so I could read this at that age". Well, I wish I was 20 for a lot of reasons...I read How to Be a Woman a year or so ago so I knew I loved her writing, but I don't read novels that much.

Sounds interesting. I've just put all her books on my "wish list" at the library.

....

I've just started "The Fiery Cross" the 5th book in the Outlander series. Not sure what I think of it yet. I'm 155 pages in, and it's still the same day! 

I can't even remember the other books I've read recently. Guess they didn't leave much of an impression!  

Ok, had to think about it.  I read 2 books by the same author - Holly Chamberlin - The Beach Quilt and Summer Friends. Didn't really like either of them.

The Beach Quilt had a million chapters and each one changed to a different character's point of view.  The teens thoughts and dialogue seemed too old for their ages. The writing seemed preachy at times. The ending was unexpected, and not in a good way.  Didn't enjoy, but still decided to read another book by the same author.

Summer Friends wasn't much better than The Beach Quilt. The characters seemed more believable, but were not likable. And when I finally got to the end of the last chapter, there was an epilogue which seemed to go on forever!  

Don't think I'll be reading any more of her books.

[Haleth]

12 hours ago, buffynut said:

I've just started "The Fiery Cross" the 5th book in the Outlander series. Not sure what I think of it yet. I'm 155 pages in, and it's still the same day! 

Ha!  Yeah, I remember this.  

[Pepper Mostly]

I discovered the Outlander series when the first three books were already out and the fourth was imminent, so I was able to read the first four books in pretty rapid succession, and loved them. I tried to hang in but the wait between books got too long. I think I gave up after The Fiery Cross. I have A Breath of Snow and Ashes here someplace. By the time the next book came out I'd forgotten everything, and it was just too hard to keep everyone straight after a while!

[MeloraH]

I just finished LaRose and I did actually like it. It was far from perfect but the things I liked I really liked and they made up for the flaws. I think it wasn't terribly cohesive and some of the characters (especially Emmaline and her mother (the 4th LaRose)) weren't as developed as I would have liked. I also wish she'd have written more about the second and third LaRose...like really connected the past to the present...

[buffynut]

18 hours ago, Pepper Mostly said:

I discovered the Outlander series when the first three books were already out and the fourth was imminent, so I was able to read the first four books in pretty rapid succession, and loved them. I tried to hang in but the wait between books got too long. I think I gave up after The Fiery Cross. I have A Breath of Snow and Ashes here someplace. By the time the next book came out I'd forgotten everything, and it was just too hard to keep everyone straight after a while!

I just started the series back in the winter and read the first 3 quickly. Then had to wait a couple weeks for the 4th book. And the 5th I waited a couple months for it to be available at the library. So I can't imagine waiting years between the books. And unless you really love them, they are too long to quickly read again before the next one comes out.

[candall]

On ‎7‎/‎2‎/‎2016 at 7:42 AM, Haleth said:

I just finished The Fireman by Stephen King's son, who writes under the name Joe Hill.  I'd heard there were a lot of parallels to The Stand and this is true.  It started out really well, an interesting take on an apocalyptic plague and how the afflicted learn to control it while the unafflicted try to avoid it, but in the later half I could no longer stand the protagonist.  She was just too dumb to live, constantly putting herself, the baby she was carrying, and her community at risk, trusting the wrong people, and generally thinking she knew better than anyone else.  In the end I did not care about any of the characters anymore.  An ending that should have been moving and heart wrenching left me cold.  Well, that happened.  On to something new.

Too bad.  Sounds like King Jr. tackled an ambitious project too soon.  Weren't the Bachman books early efforts that King Sr. dug out and spruced up, post-celebrity?  They weren't, er, gems, either. 

My favorite King book is The Stand, however, and I always wanted to know MUCH more detail about how people initially dealt with the plague apocalypse.  So many tasty details to ponder--if everyone else is dead, do you hike your 'fraidy cat butt all the way over to a nice airy bridge or do you suck it up and shortcut through the pitch-black Holland Tunnel?  (Answer:  BRIDGE!!!) 

Note:  I keep forgetting there's a longer re-issue.  Maybe he wasn't in such a rush to get everyone to Denver/Vegas?

 

I just finished The Girl on the Train and it's such a bestseller, I'm sure there must be some discussion back there in those 24 pages, but I'll just put my complaint into a secret box. 

Spoiler

I enjoyed the story, in general, and Hawkins did a good job keeping the time-tripping clear, with multiple characters, which is often a stumbling block.  But it seems like a little bit of a cheat to base the whole plot on the crucial events happening during the main character's blackout periods.  Can't remember, can't remember, remembers a little bit, nope--confuses separate incidents, must remember. . . REMEMBERS!   Boom, nick of time, case solved, justice done, book over.

Ah well, entertaining afternoon.  I was definitely pleased enough to keep an eye out for Hawkins' next one.

[alias1]

I hated The Girl On The Train and thought the whole thing was pretty transparent.

[alias1]

I'm a little farther than in the middle of Arcadia (Iain Pears) and really enjoying the three different worlds created by the author.  It's part fantasy, part future sci-fi, and part real time.  It was a little confusing in the beginning because of the three worlds and the many characters, but I love how it's coming together.  It's been a long time since I've enjoyed a book this much.  I hope the end doesn't disappoint.

[AuntiePam]

On 7/2/2016 at 7:42 AM, Haleth said:

I just finished The Fireman by Stephen King's son, who writes under the name Joe Hill.  I'd heard there were a lot of parallels to The Stand and this is true.  It started out really well, an interesting take on an apocalyptic plague and how the afflicted learn to control it while the unafflicted try to avoid it, but in the later half I could no longer stand the protagonist.  She was just too dumb to live, constantly putting herself, the baby she was carrying, and her community at risk, trusting the wrong people, and generally thinking she knew better than anyone else.  In the end I did not care about any of the characters anymore.  An ending that should have been moving and heart wrenching left me cold.  Well, that happened.  On to something new.

Oh, and the other thing that annoyed me.  King/Hill has a tendency to end chapters with a throwaway line that hints that something big is about to happen.  He would write something like, Harper wanted to tell a character something but decided she could do it when she came back.  Next line: "But when she got back everything had changed."  He did that a lot, to the point I would roll my eyes at the cheesiness of his style of writing.

King does that too -- the foreshadowing at the end of chapters.  One from Duma Key ruined the book halfway through, something like "It would be the last time he saw her alive".

I've read all of Joe's books, and while I liked The Fireman, I think it's his worst.  It's like he wanted to have some fun, riffing on The Stand, or maybe saying howdy to his dad. 

I'm almost halfway through The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and wish I was reading the paper version.  In some spots, it's difficult to tell what Shirer is writing and when he's quoting someone else.  It's really good though.

[DearEvette]

I am doing a re-read of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series.  Well, not the whole series, just the Nightwatch books.  I just started with Guards! Guards!  totally hysterical,  Added bonus, I am listening to them on audio (already read em' twice) and the voice actor who does them, Stephen Briggs, is wonderful.

[Rick Kitchen]

I love Captain Carrot.  What a bad ass honest man.

[Pepper Mostly]

Just finished The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson. I don't think I'm highbrow enough for it. Some of it was interesting and I was hoping to get some insight into gender issues but to me it ended up being just another "oh my god I had a baby and it changed my LIFE and do any of you women out there know how transformative this experience is and how profound and now I am going to explain that to you in gorgeous prose". Because no one on earth has ever had a baby before. I dunno. I don't even think the prose was so wonderful, tbh. But I'm not well educated and I'm certainly not highbrow so there you go.

[Qoass]

I'm almost halfway through Rich and Pretty by Rumaan Alam.  It's okay but so far the most interesting thing about it is that this "chick" book was written by a guy.

[alias1]

I have Eligible (Curtis Sittenfeld) on my kindle but after reading the reviews I'm going to skip it, unless someone here can convince me otherwise.

I read Dust And Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr John Watson.  This was the first novel by Lindsay Faye, who impressed me so much with her latest book, Jane Steele.  It's always an ambitious undertaking to try to mimic the style of Arthur Conan Doyle,  but she did a very nice job.   It was an enjoyable read, and kudos to her for not making the book overly graphic.

[Rilla-my-Rilla]

9 hours ago, SierraMist said:

I have Eligible (Curtis Sittenfeld) on my kindle but after reading the reviews I'm going to skip it, unless someone here can convince me otherwise.

I didn't read it, but I was going to when my coworker was done with it. I decided not to because she would tell us about the characters and read parts to us and it sounded terrible. She didn't like it at all, but finished once she started it. On the other hand, she read it fairly quickly so it shouldn't be a huge time suck if you decided to read it.

[Crs97]

Hated Eligible.  She may have stolen the names, but her characters bear no resemblance to Jane Austen's creation.  I found myself offended at many points.  It was bad!

[Maharincess]

I go through phases with my reading.  My last phase was survival stories, I read about the man who was stranded at sea in a small raft for 78 days and other books like that. 

I'm now in a true crime phase. I just finished one about the night stalker and am now reading about the Leonard Lake/Charles Ng murders.   Our world has too many scary evil monsters in it. 

After reading the true crime books I realized that I prefer the murders I read about to be the fictional kind. 

[Haleth]

I don't know what it is lately but everything I've read has left me disappointed.  Just finished All the Birds in the Sky, a new novel about a couple of bullied kids who grow up to be highly talented; she at magic and he at electronics.  So it's basically old nature and new physics and they go out to save the world.   It wasn't good, despite being well reviewed.  I felt as if I'd read this a million times before and had to keep checking to make sure it wasn't a YA novel since the plot and characterizations were pretty shallow.  And the author has the nerve in her acknowledgments to say (paraphrasing) that if you don't like her book she'll kick your ass.  Really?  Next time try something a little more original.

[stillshimpy]

I just read The Girl from the Garden for a local bookclub.  It took me less than a day and it was an interesting if very uneven read.  First time author with a really nice turn of phrase and poetic style, as well as the ability to render a character who is, at once, sympathetic and repellent.  No small feat, that.  Like a lot of first-timers, it's semi-autobiographical and that has its pitfalls.  

As it turned out, I'm not going to be attending the book club, because the freaking author is attending which is a strange feature of this particular bookclub and not one that thrills me much because by necessity of kindness and compassion discussion is naturally curtailed.  I discovered this when I went to check the time for the book club, after reading the book and saw the note that the author would be in attendance.  Argh.  Frustrating because there's actually a fair amount to say about the positives (very promising author) and a rather substantial narrative mistake:  she essentially makes the St. Elsewhere snowglobe mistake.  Almost nothing is more irksome to people trying to invest in a story is to do that "none of it was real, within the story" thing.  At a certain point it becomes clear that this entire story is something the elderly woman in Los Angeles is imagining to explain her family's history.  Or if it isn't, it sure as hell reads like that.  Huge mistake, because by the end of the book you can't help but be incredibly intrigued by what the hell did happen, but the author is a relatively young woman in Los Angeles and she probably should have committed to the freaking bit rather than Mary Sueing herself with a time machine.  

Thanks for letting me vent my frustration because it was a good book and I would recommend it with that reservation and definitely think the author is worth watching, although rookie mistake number 482:  not only is her title a fairly common one, it's also incredibly similar to an Indian author's very similar work that even involves familial estates and young women being married off.  

All of which would have been really fun to discuss with people, but damned if I'm going to sit in the same room with someone, who worked hard to craft a tale and shoot her down in any way, shape, or form, because she is a good writer.  She probably does have a good future, but there is a reason that criticism is best absorbed via reviews in a written form so that no one involved will have to a) put a good face on it (the author should be in a setting where she's free to tell me just how much shit she thinks I'm full of and why, even if it is only within the confines of her head or her living room) b) I don't have to mute, buffer and sensitively pad every natural reaction to the book because among other things, she's a person with feelings.  Also?  It's her freaking family history and no way in this world, the next and the one after that in the back of beyond, am I willing to tell her stuff she probably needs to know in front of a group of people.  That turns critical reception into public shaming.  

I'm a tiny bit ticked because why in the bloody hell do they want the authors there?? GAH. 

[cherrypj]

6 hours ago, Haleth said:

Just finished All the Birds in the Sky, a new novel about a couple of bullied kids who grow up to be highly talented; she at magic and he at electronics.  So it's basically old nature and new physics and they go out to save the world.   It wasn't good, despite being well reviewed.  I felt as if I'd read this a million times before and had to keep checking to make sure it wasn't a YA novel since the plot and characterizations were pretty shallow.  And the author has the nerve in her acknowledgments to say (paraphrasing) that if you don't like her book she'll kick your ass.  Really?  Next time try something a little more original.

God, yes. I hated how badly the parents were portrayed. Awful book.

[GaT]

6 hours ago, Haleth said:

I don't know what it is lately but everything I've read has left me disappointed.  J

I know exactly how you feel. After a number of recommendations, I decided to try The Mindspace Investigations series by Alex Hughes so I bought 4 books. I started out OK with them, but got so tired of the "hero" of the books being beaten down (mentally) over & over & treated like crap by everybody & his "love interest" being such a bitch, that I had to force myself to finish them. I love the Jane Yellowrock series by Faith Hunter, so I thought I would give her Rogue Mage (only 3 books) series a try. I can't understand how the Jane Yellowrock series can be so good, & this series...not. Even the way the third book ended felt like Hunter just walked away from it because it was so bad. Then I read The Last Star by Rick Yancey, the final book in The 5th Wave trilogy. Big disappointment, & a major plotline that he had been working toward for the 2 previous books suddenly just went away. I'm so tired of the 3rd book in trilogies being such letdowns. 

[Crs97]

I feel your pain, stillshimpy, and completely agree.  We had an author call in to a book club meeting once years ago.  I had not particularly liked the book and had earlier mentioned my big problem with it.  When there was a lull in the conversation, because the book didn't merit much discussion, someone in the group told the author I had an issue with it and asked me to elaborate.  I was mortified!  We had also signed up to hear the author of Eligible.  I canceled as soon as I realized how bad the book was because I could picture it happening again.  Even when I hate the book I can appreciate the work in creating it and the courage in putting it out there for critiques.

[ratgirlagogo]

On 6/28/2016 at 6:33 PM, Rick Kitchen said:

Has anybody read The Interestings?

Yes, and like seemingly everyone here I didn't like it much either.  I wanted to read it because the East Village/Lower East Side in the 80's was my New York at the time, in my twenties.  I've never read anything else by Meg Wolitzer so I wasn't sure what to make of what bothered me most about the book.  To me, downtown NYC in the 80's was a thrilling place to live, full of people who were, well, interesting. Yet the book presents it as a depressing place of unsuccessful people living in cramped apartments, people who all wish they were successful people who could afford to live in large expensive apartments and townhouses  How anyone could actually have lived in this place at that time and felt that way - is completely beyond me.    I guess this might be intended to be the perspective of the main character, whose primary emotion in life is envy and as a result spends her life being sour and bitter - but a lot of it feels like the author's own ugly sniggering opinion and it left me not wanting to read anything else she wrote to find out.

Edited July 14, 2016 by ratgirlagogo

[Qoass]

I'm not loving anything I've been reading either.  I just started I'm Just a Person, Tig Notaro's memoir and her performance voice doesn't seem to carry over to the written word.

Previously, I returned Jen Doll's Save the Date to the library half unread.  For some reason, I get really irritated by authors, of both fiction and non, who take great pains to elaborate what everybody is wearing at all times.  It's the reason I couldn't get through The Nightingale even though everybody I know loved it.

Edited July 19, 2016 by Qoass

[GaT]

I'm reading The Curse of Tenth Grave by Darynda Jones, the latest in the Charley Davidson series. The overall plot of the series has gotten kind of stupid IMO, & nothing much seems to be happening in this book. I wish Jones would go back to writing it like the earlier books.

[DearEvette]

1 hour ago, GaT said:

I'm reading The Curse of Tenth Grave by Darynda Jones, the latest in the Charley Davidson series. The overall plot of the series has gotten kind of stupid IMO, & nothing much seems to be happening in this book. I wish Jones would go back to writing it like the earlier books.

The overall mythology of the series has gotten so convoluted and makes no sense.  I loved the earlier books when she was a funny PI who simply solved murders by talking to the dead people. This whole Battle of the Gods things is so dreary and feels like it is being made up as she goes along.

[GaT]

28 minutes ago, DearEvette said:

The overall mythology of the series has gotten so convoluted and makes no sense.  I loved the earlier books when she was a funny PI who simply solved murders by talking to the dead people. This whole Battle of the Gods things is so dreary and feels like it is being made up as she goes along.

Exactly, I deliberately avoid books about gods, so the whole thing annoys me, & (just in case I'll put this in spoiler tag)

Spoiler

I hate that Jones killed off her father. Also, she just had to add a baby, a very special baby. This really pisses me off because the reason I know about Darynda Jones is.......Stephenie Meyers recommended her. Yeah, I read all the Twilight books & I used to read Meyers' blog & she recommended her so I guess I should have expected a special snowflake baby, but I hated Renesmee, & I'm not feeling any love for Beep.

[Cobalt Stargazer]

I finished My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok a few days ago, and I'm still not sure how I feel about the ending. I know the book was set after WW II, in a post-Holocaust world, but it bothers me that

 

 

Asher's parents decide to banish him from their lives pretty much because he won't give up his art. I don't know how you can justify telling someone you supposedly love that a talent they have might have come from something evil, no matter how religious you are

 

Its possible that I'm looking at it from too modern of a perspective, and it really is a very good book, but I don't know if I can pick up the sequel, The Gift of Asher Lev, when I'm so bothered by where the first book left off.. If anyone else has read this and/or the sequel, what would you suggest?

Edited July 20, 2016 by Cobalt Stargazer

[Princess Sparkle]

On May 30, 2016 at 10:59 AM, buffynut said:

I'm about 1/3 into "Wild" by Cheryl Strayed. For anyone who doesn't know, it's the book the Reese Witherspoon movie was based on.  

With her life a mess 4 years after her mother's death, Cheryl Strayed saw a book about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail and decided to hike it on her own.  

I'm not a hiker, in fact my outdoorsy activities consist of gardening in the summer and shoveling the driveway in the winter, so already I'm in awe of how she is hiking this trail all alone.

If you liked Wild, I can't recommend "Tiny Beautiful Things" enough. It's by the same author, and it's a collection of her best Dear Sugar advice columns when she wrote them at The Rumpus.  I read it last year, and it was the first book in quite some time that actually moved me to highlight passages because they were meaningful to me. 

I'm currently in the midst of reading The Girls and I'm liking it a lot. The prose can be a smidge overwrought at some points, which would normally annoy me, but in this case, I think it works with the feel and mood the book is trying to create. 

[Qoass]

I'm reading How to Be a Person in the World which is a collection of Ask Polly advice columns and it's worthwhile.

[bmasters9]

A 1953 Perry Mason mystery called The Case of the Hesitant Hostess

[topanga]

I've just finished Before The Fall by Noah Hawley. Very entertaining. Well-written plot with interesting characters. But nothing too intellectually heavy. His writing style reminds me of John Grisham's (without the law), and I know some people thumb their noses at Grisham, but the man knows how to tell a story. 

The novel has a pretty big mystery at its core, but it's also a slice of nice novel about American society. Hard to put down. 

[OakGoblinFly]

After sitting on my Kindle for months and being on my "I gotta get around to read it" list for years, I finally started reading Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams.

[DrSpaceman73]

Dirk Gently is OK but is a far cry from the Hitchhiker's series.  I believe I read a few of them way back 20 years ago or so, wasn't that interested further. 

[Qoass]

I agree, DrSpaceman73.

I recently finished Stephen King's latest End of Watch and while I enjoyed it, it felt like a throwaway with no particularly interesting characters or B-story.  I'm about 50 pages from finishing Emma Straub's Modern Lovers and for me it's an excellent premise that fails to pay off in execution.

[Danny Franks]

On 06/07/2016 at 0:42 AM, DearEvette said:

I am doing a re-read of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series.  Well, not the whole series, just the Nightwatch books.  I just started with Guards! Guards!  totally hysterical,  Added bonus, I am listening to them on audio (already read em' twice) and the voice actor who does them, Stephen Briggs, is wonderful.

I had audiobooks of some of the Discworld read by Tony Robinson, and they were great. But still not quite the voices I always imagined in my head when I read the books. The voice he used for Angua never really worked for me. I didn't know that there were other versions out there. 

I'm currently reading Solomon Creed by Simon Toyne. It's a bit of a holiday, trashy thriller, but so far it's easy enough and interesting enough to read.

Before that, I read Winter of the World by Ken Follett, the second in his Century Trilogy. He's not great at writing deep characters, by any means, but he's good enough that it brings the history to life. I've actually learned a few new things about the First and Second World Wars from these books. The third one is about the Cold War and Civil Rights, and I'll get to it at some point, I'm sure.

Edited August 1, 2016 by Danny Franks

[NutMeg]

3 hours ago, Danny Franks said:

...

Before that, I read Winter of the World by Ken Follett, the second in his Century Trilogy. He's not great at writing deep characters, by any means, but he's good enough that it brings the history to life. I've actually learned a few new things about the First and Second World Wars from these books. The third one is about the Cold War and Civil Rights, and I'll get to it at some point, I'm sure.

Totally agree on this about Ken Follett - I found the first book amazing and I learned a lot from it, I learned a bit less from the second because that period has been more covered overall, and found it so, so sad, tragic, depressing - but still very good. So now the third one has been sitting here for a while, waiting for me to dig in, but I keep getting sidetracked (most recently with Virginie Despentes' Vernon Subutex, 1 and 2, seems there is a 3 coming, yeah...) If you start the third Ken Folett before I do, please let me know what the general vibe of this last one is. I promise to do the same if  start first :)  

[Rick Kitchen]

Finally got around to start reading Ready Player One.  Really like it so far.  The 80s trivia is strong with this one.  I read that Steven Spielberg will be removing all references to his works out of the movie, in order to avoid being accused of playing favorites.  I think Tye Sheridan is too old and too good looking for the part, unless he's just going to be an avatar through the whole thing.

[alias1]

I read Ready Player One and really liked it.  Didn't realize it was going to be a movie.  I started his 2nd book (Armada) and gave up on it.   

[alias1]

I just finished The God of Gotham (Lindsay Faye), the first in a trilogy by this author.  And I continue to be so impressed with her writing style.  I'm about to start the 2nd in the trilogy, Seven For A Secret.

On 7/27/2016 at 1:58 PM, topanga said:

I've just finished Before The Fall by Noah Hawley. Very entertaining. Well-written plot with interesting characters. But nothing too intellectually heavy. His writing style reminds me of John Grisham's (without the law), and I know some people thumb their noses at Grisham, but the man knows how to tell a story. 

The novel has a pretty big mystery at its core, but it's also a slice of nice novel about American society. Hard to put down. 

I'm glad to see this positive review.  I have the book on hold and there's one person still ahead of me. 

[alias1]

I read Hard Boiled Wonderland And The End of the World (Haruki Murakami).  His books are fascinating, thought provoking and always a little baffling to me.  This one is no exception.  The chapters go back and forth between two stories.  Are they in some way the same story?   I think when I read this again, I'll read every other chapter straight through and then go back and read the chapters I skipped.  Murakami has numerous reference to (and uses the slang of) American hard boiled detective fiction.  Some of it is quite funny.

[Joe]

The History of Middle-earth, volume 1. It's a collection of Tolkien's oldest writings on LOTR, rounded up by his son. If anyone has had problems with the writing style of LOTR, stay well away. While I love LOTR, it's probably Tolkien's most readable work. HOME is written in an even more archaic style, and every time I pick it up I just feel incredibly tired. Maybe there's some hidden gems in there, I'm not sure I really want to find out.

[Rick Kitchen]

Just now, Joe said:

The History of Middle-earth, volume 1. It's a collection of Tolkien's oldest writings on LOTR, rounded up by his son. If anyone has had problems with the writing style of LOTR, stay well away. While I love LOTR, it's probably Tolkien's most readable work. HOME is written in an even more archaic style, and every time I pick it up I just feel incredibly tired. Maybe there's some hidden gems in there, I'm not sure I really want to find out.

I felt the same way about The Silmarillion. But The Children of Hurin is very readable.

[Joe]

I like the Silmarillion, but I'll never touch Children of Hurin. The abbreviated story of Turin is just so depressing that I don't want to read an expanded version.

[AuntiePam]

Finally finished The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer, who was there when most of it happened. 

The paperback is over 1200 pages, so I got the Kindle version, so save my wrists.  I wouldn't recommend the Kindle version -- the formatting was wonky in places, and of course no maps or photos.  And it's difficult to read footnotes -- they were all at the end of the chapter, and I couldn't figure out how to navigate to the footnotes.  Maybe it's not possible on my 1st gen Kindle.  ?? 

Anyway, excellent overview, lots of detail, rarely boring. 

Next up is Five Came Back by Mark Harris, about five filmmakers whose films influenced America during WWII.

[MeloraH]

On 8/7/2016 at 10:34 PM, SierraMist said:

I read Hard Boiled Wonderland And The End of the World (Haruki Murakami).  His books are fascinating, thought provoking and always a little baffling to me.  This one is no exception.  The chapters go back and forth between two stories.  Are they in some way the same story?   I think when I read this again, I'll read every other chapter straight through and then go back and read the chapters I skipped.  Murakami has numerous reference to (and uses the slang of) American hard boiled detective fiction.  Some of it is quite funny.

Hard Boiled Wonderland is my favorite Murakami so far with 1Q84 in second. I think they were the same story in like two different planes of existence (I should do a re-read, too, at some point).

[Qoass]

I'm enjoying Jennifer Close's The Hopefuls about young people in DC during the Obama administration.  It's a fun read.