What are you reading the week of October 25, 2009?

[DUgosh]

The Last Coyote by Michael Connelly

[Liberal Veteran]

1. The Gathering Storm, Book 12 in the Wheel of Time

[LearnedHand]

2. Just started reading "Darkly Dreaming Dexter"

Jeff Lindsay. I LOVE the Dexter series on ShowTime, so I thought I'd read the books.

[Mojambo]

3. Spent: Sex, Evolution and Consumer Behavior by Geoffrey Miller

As for my next fiction book, I'm waiting for the library to send me Absolute Friends by John Le Carre. I hear it's really good.

[safeinOhio]

4. "Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us"

Ralph Nader

[FredStembottom]

5. My Country and my People by Lin Yutang and

The Indiscretions of Archie by P.G. Wodehouse and

Twin Cities by Trolley by Diers and Isaacs

(A.D.D. fighter: Read several books at once, rotating them as needed)

Edit: Oops! I'm in Books:Fiction. Sorry.

Well, Indiscretions of Archie is guaranteed to be one of the funniest Fiction Books you have ever read!

[Bobbieo]

6. Am still wading through Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol" . It is not easy

for an dyslexic agnostic.

[FredStembottom]

12. For dyslexia, you might try audiobooks.

Although they remain stubbornly expensive - and the selection at the library is always kinda slim. The Lost Symbol is sure to be a library audiobook buy.... I would think.

[oldtime dfl_er]

7. Malcolm Gladwell

"Outliers: The Story of Success"

Fascinating stuff.

[saracat]

8. Mademoiselle Boleyn by Robin Maxwell + Revelation by CJ Sansome

[shimmergal]

9. Just finished "Blame" by

Michelle Huneven.

[japple]

21. I read Blame, too, and enjoyed it. Have also read Michelle

Huneven's other two books and my favorite is still Round Rock. What a wonderful writer.

[hippywife]

10. Small Wonder by Barbara Kingsolver

I love Kingsolver. She's my favorite author, and aside from the Studs Terkel I've been reading lately, I usually don't pick up essay collections. I did check this out of the library knowing that it was a collection of essays but not the focus of them. They are her thoughts after September 11, 2001. She is an exquisite writer who expresses so much better than I ever could the thoughts that were, and have been ever since, rambling around in my head and heart the past eight years about our place in the world and our hubris.

:hi:

[Flaxbee]

16. Small Wonder is on my bedside table... can't read too much

at once b/c it brings back some tough memories. But I love Kingsolver. She has a new book out, called "The Lacuna".

:hi: hippywife!


Here's a description from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Lacuna-Novel-Barbara-Kingsolver/dp/0060852577/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256528020&sr=8-1

In her most accomplished novel, Barbara Kingsolver takes us on an epic journey from the Mexico City of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to the America of Pearl Harbor, FDR, and J. Edgar Hoover. The Lacuna is a poignant story of a man pulled between two nations as they invent their modern identities.

Born in the United States, reared in a series of provisional households in Mexico—from a coastal island jungle to 1930s Mexico City—Harrison Shepherd finds precarious shelter but no sense of home on his thrilling odyssey. Life is whatever he learns from housekeepers who put him to work in the kitchen, errands he runs in the streets, and one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. He discovers a passion for Aztec history and meets the exotic, imperious artist Frida Kahlo, who will become his lifelong friend. When he goes to work for Lev Trotsky, an exiled political leader fighting for his life, Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution, newspaper headlines and howling gossip, and a risk of terrible violence.

Meanwhile, to the north, the United States will soon be caught up in the internationalist goodwill of World War II. There in the land of his birth, Shepherd believes he might remake himself in America's hopeful image and claim a voice of his own. He finds support from an unlikely kindred soul, his stenographer, Mrs. Brown, who will be far more valuable to her employer than he could ever know. Through darkening years, political winds continue to toss him between north and south in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach—the lacuna—between truth and public presumption.

With deeply compelling characters, a vivid sense of place, and a clear grasp of how history and public opinion can shape a life, Barbara Kingsolver has created an unforgettable portrait of the artist—and of art itself. The Lacuna is a rich and daring work of literature, establishing its author as one of the most provocative and important of her time.

[hippywife]

17. Hi, Flaxbee.

I'm not very far into it yet, maybe the first six essays, but I find that she doesn't directly refer to 9/11 very much (so far) but does ask the questions and comes to the conclusions that echo my own.

I just read the essay last night about the San Pedro river. I found that sadder than the terrorist attacks, the purposeful destruction of a water source and all the wild life who can't survive without it. People can pretty much adapt and survive anywhere, many species only have a single place where they can thrive. That is extermination on a grand scale that can't be undone. :(

I always look forward to a new Kingsolver book. She is truly an awesome, thoughful writer.

:hi:

[Flaxbee]

24. I can't read those essays. Just can't bear it.

And I'm a weak coward, I console myself with the thought that my sister and brother in law are two awesome marine biologists who do incredible work; I let them deal with the devastation and sadness for me.

I just can't cope with it, with what we're doing on a daily basis to the non-human life around us. I don't drink, don't do any drugs, I don't do anything to escape the sadness other than put my head in the sand. :(

However, I love her essays about social issues - televisions, self-esteem and young women (am just reading her essay/letter to her daughter), bookstores, etc. The nature issues, can't do it. When she writes about those issues in her fiction books, the images are less brutal and don't stay in my mind the way they do when I read her essays. I, too, searched all over the Internet about that story of the bear and the young boy, hoping that the bear hadn't been killed. But I don't think I want to know.

[japple]

22. A new Barbara Kingsolver book is always cause for celebration.

I've read all of her books and even went to hear her do a reading at a small college in Virginia some years ago. She read a chapter (the one about the snapping turtle) from Prodigal Summer and it was mesmerizing to hear her read her own work. At the beginning of the event--a dinner and reading, she made a special point of asking her audience to give applause to the people who prepared and served the dinner, which totally blew me away. What a wonderful evening.

[hippywife]

23. What fun to have gotten to see her

and share dinner, too. She does seem to be such a considerate, down-to-earth person.

I put myself on the waiting list for Lacuna. Number 63 on the list. I sure hope they purchase numerous copies. Right now it says 1 but I think that's probably because it's not been released yet.

:hi:

[MaineDem]

11. "Judas Strain"by James Rollins

Seems a lot like Clive Cussler so far.

[applegrove]

13. The new Freakonomics book. I think it is Super Freakonomics. Just like the last

one. Really interesting.

[la_chupa]

26. why couldn't econ have been this interesting in school

I love that book.

[bluethruandthru]

14. Just finished "Lost Symbol" by Dan Brown and now

I've started on Pat Conroy's Beach Music.

[hippywife]

15. I really enjoyed Beach Music.

Both times I read it. I've pretty much enjoyed everything he's written. :hi:

[BlueIris]

18. Finally getting around to Cormac McCarthy's "The Road."

It's...bleak, already. Not that I expected any different.

[BOSSHOG]

19. Pontoon by Garrisono Keillor

If ya wanna good laugh pick up one of Keillor's books. His characters are hilarious.

[azmouse]

20. "As Seen On TV" by Karal Ann Marling

It's about life in the 1950s. Pretty interesting.

[la_chupa]

25. I don't want to admit it

but I'm reading Lost Symbol by Dan Brown even though I know it's the hamburger and french fries of fiction

[hippywife]

27. It may not be a nutritious meal but

there's nothing wrong with a sweet snack every once in a while. :hi:

[fadedrose]

28. NEW TRICKS (2009) by David Rosenfelt

This is the latest of 7 books (mystery) about Andy Carpenter, fictional lawyer and dog lover.

Interesting characters, nice dialogue.

I like this author, and if you like dogs, you will, too.

[fadedrose]

32. I did not like this book at all.....nt

[LWolf]

29. I'm reading a stack of books

for my classroom library. Last night I read "The Wednesday Wars" by Gary Schmidt.

It was much better than I expected. I expected the usual slapstick physical comedy and social posturing popular with pre- and adolescent boys, and got...

some really, really funny physical and social comedy

Shakespeare

characters growing and changing

nostalgia for the 60s that the book is set in

family, community, and school dynamics and dysfunctions played poignantly.

[Mz Pip]

30. The Elegance of the Hedgehog

by Muriel Barbery.

I'm really liking this book. The characters are very unique.

[fishwax]

31. Faulkner's The Reivers

[Onceuponalife]

33. Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson

Volume one of The Malazan Book of the Fallen and it's pretty freakin' awesome.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

34. Bedside: Stalin's Ghost by Martin Cruz Smith

(It's slow, because it is a bedside book, and I've gone to bed tired lately.)

Purse book: The Falls by Ian Rankin

[japple]

35. Finally finished Promised Lands, A Novel of the Texas Rebellion

by Elizabeth Crook. Very good history lesson, but what a bloody, dismal, depressing story.

Now I'm reading Half Broke Horses by Jeanette Walls. I really, really enjoyed her first book, The Glass Castle.

[alliswellandsoitis]

36. Has anyone read "The Awakening" by Kate Chopin?

It's sitting on the table by my sofa and I am just getting to it...published in 1899 and considered a feminist work at a time when it was taboo.

[sueh]

37. Song of Susannah...from The Dark Tower series by Stephen King.

[yellowdogintexas]

38. "Saving Fish From Drowning" by Amy Tan ....I love her books nt