Books on the Nightstand discussion

Esther: That was my exact reaction to Eat Pray Love.

Frankie wrote: "Just finished The Year of Magical Thinking, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, and The Sparrow. Ann, why did I not listen to you sooner on The Sparrow? Seriously. This is the best book I've read ..."

I love The Sparrow - what a wonderful, beautiful book. I agree, maybe the best book I've ever read as well.

Lara wrote: "Esther: That was my exact reaction to Eat Pray Love."

My reaction was similar to The Happiness Project (the book makes me angry just to think about)...

I'm rereading The Hobbit both in book and audiobook form, in time for the new movie. I haven't read it since I was 12, and I'm enjoying it so much the second time around. Alas, I decided not to bring it with me this weekend, so I grabbed The Devil All the Time. I think people around here liked it? It was literally on the corner of my desk and the easiest thing to grab when I ran out the door this morning!

i started a YA book .

I just finished Suite Française which was very good, I'm not sure of my rating yet, I think it's between 3 and 4.
I've just started listening to Where'd You Go, Bernadette and I am loving it. The story is great and the narration is excellent. I love a book that can make me laugh out loud in Christmas season traffic.

Lara wrote: "Esther: That was my exact reaction to Eat Pray Love."

That is why I have decided to forego Eat Pray Love.
(My favourite film reviewer dislikes the film so much he has nick-named it Eat Pray Love Vomit)

The Snow Child started out so well, but the second half of the book was not as compelling. 3 stars. Review: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Would highly recommend The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. 4 stars. Review: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12...

I finally gave up on Little Fuzzy (by H. Beam Piper)! I put it back into the TBR stacks for another day!


I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (by Roald Dahl) last week. I lingered over the lyrics of the Oompa Loompas' songs, over the illustrations and generally took my time with it! For those who may not know the story, it's about a boy named Charlie who wins entree into the famed chocolate factory of Willie Wonka. The factory is a place of wonder and temptation...

This book will hold a special place on my bookshelves for an entirely different reason than literary excellence however: It turned out to be the gateway book for my daughter! My nine-year old has always eschewed narrative in favor of non-fiction reference books. This year, even though she is not participating in the Oregon Battle of Books, she has been encouraged to read a selection of OBOB titles, of which Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was one. She read Roald Dahl's classic and averred that she "loved this book!" and that it is her "favorite book ever!" I am incredibly relieved as it's not easy being the "Fiction Parents of a Non-Fiction Child!"

Anyway, she is now reading The Mysterious Howling (The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place #1) by Maryrose Wood and, even though she doesn't like it as much as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I'm happy that she's made the commitment to it :-)



Next Up:


The Kitchen House (by Kathleen Grissom)

Elizabeth wrote: "Really liked The Arrival, a wordless graphic novel. 4 stars. Review: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...."

I read this a couple of years ago and thought the story and illustrations beautifully poignant :-)

The funny (now) story I have about this book was that I checked it out of the library then went to the Friends of the Library bookstore. I set the book down while browsing through the stacks and, someone else picked it up and bought it for a dollar! I hadn't realized where I had lost it and I kept renewing it in the hopes of finding it. The lady who had purchased it realized that she had an actual library book and returned it, much to everyone's relief!

Tanya/dog eared copy wrote: "Elizabeth wrote: "Really liked The Arrival, a wordless graphic novel. 4 stars. Review: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...."

I read this a couple of years ago and thought the story and illust..."

Misadventures often make the best stories :-)

Esther wrote: "After Ann and another friend's recommendation I am reading To the End of the Land. I heard a lot of praise for this book when I worked in the library but wasn't sure I was up to reading it in the H..."

Oh! Esther! you are not alone. . . I got that book out for my husband and he gave up halfway through. . . found the woman very self-absorbed and annoying. . . he was worried that maybe that was b/c he wasn't Jewish, but now I can tell him that his reaction was not ethnically/culturally based!?

Becky wrote: "Esther wrote: "After Ann and another friend's recommendation I am reading To the End of the Land. I heard a lot of praise for this book when I worked in the library but wasn't sure I was up to read..."
And not just Jewish but Israeli. I have friends with children in the army and my husband, who has served in the reserves for years, was still young enough to be called up for the war in 2006. So I get the worry, I just can't empathize with the attitude.

Finished up The Rook audio style and moved on to book four in the Georgina Kinkaid series Succubus Heat. The hubby is listening to Spartan Gold.

I'm reading Hidden and the hubby is working through The Saint and wants to finish the first book before reading Deep Six to finish off the year!

Amy wrote: "I started The Thirteenth Tale over the weekend for this month's book club next Monday..."

I think a couple of others were reading this book recently too. I did not vote for this book in my book club, but that goodness enough others did. I really loved the set up. The plot was good, not spectacular, but the writing and premise were terrific!

I have just finished The Revenant A YA ghost story which was pretty good for a genre that is one of my favourites.
Now I am reading Vampire Academy which is also good but I think I am overdosing a little on the High School drama.

I finished The Kitchen House (by Kathleen Grissom) last night. It had been sitting on my bookshelf for at least two years and I finally got around to it a couple days ago! It's the double and alternating narrative of two servants on a Southern Virginian tobacco plantation: one an Irish indentured (white) slave and the other a black slave. The Kitchen House covers the late 18th/early 19th century life both at the plantation and in Williamsburg. At times the research is a little obvious and the characters run to stereotypical form (grief-maddened mistress of the Big House; comforting Black Mammie, cruel and vicious overseer, etc.); but overall, Kathleen Grissom's novel is a great interplay of emotions and tensions. The final chapters are a bit anticlamtic and rough, almost like they were the draft versions of the ending rather than the final; but I'm nonetheless looking forward to the author's next novel which is going to be about a Crow woman who marries a Saskatchewan fur trapper.

Up Next:


Maximum Bob (by Elmore Leonard)

and


The Twelve Tribes of Hattie (by Ayana Mathis)

Becky wrote: "Esther wrote: "After Ann and another friend's recommendation I am reading To the End of the Land. I heard a lot of praise for this book when I worked in the library but wasn't sure I was up to read..."
I am Jewish and found it boring and laborious...
maybe because I listened to it..instead of reading it.

December reading: I loved Where'd You Go Bernadette and
Learning to Swim...both real page turners.
Next up The Malice of Fortune, The Light Between the Oceans and then
Arcadia. I'm hoping to slip The Middlesteins in too.
Finally finishing the Panther on audio and thinking about starting the audio of Matterhorn on Tanya Perez's recommendation from Booktopia Santa Cruz.

Still plodding my way through Les Miserables and Anna Karenina. Just started Mockingjay this afternoon

Callie wrote: "Lara wrote: "Esther: That was my exact reaction to Eat Pray Love."

My reaction was similar to The Happiness Project (the book makes me angry just to think about)...

I'm rereading The Hobbit both..."

Callie, I loved The Devil All the Time. Very, very dark but very well done.

I finished The Vanishers by Heidi Julavits and What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank by Nathan Englander this week. Both of them were hard to put down. The Vanishers definitely didn't get the attention it deserved.

I am reading 2 at the moment...Jack Kennedy - Elusive Hero by Chris Matthews and The lady of the rivers by Phillippa Gregory. I find myself addicted to her books. The Jack Kennedy book is good, well worth reading.

I'm reading Crime and Punishment. My partner is away for 9 days so I thought I'd have plenty of me time to get stuck in! Sadly life has continued to be hectic so I've not got very far yet. I imagine that will occupy my whole month.

A week in bed sick is no fun....except for the fact that I got to read ;). Whiteout is murder mystery told in graphic novel form. Wonderfully done. I had great fun (virtually) hanging out at Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. It had a great mix of mystery, fantasy, and adventure.
Currently I'm reading The Whiskey Rebels as I've been a DAvid Liss fan for some time now. I'm also intrigued and disgusted by the antics of hackers in We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency

While I was sitting on the couch reading Maximum Bob (by Elmore Leonard) the other night, DH practically leaped across the room and grabbed the book out of my hands, "You're reading Maximum Bob! I loveMaximum Bob!" He then proceeded to read aloud his favorite passages while I was screaming "Don't you dare spoil this for me!" but I didn't really mind as DH was being very entertaining with all of his character voices :-) Apparently, DH had narrated a few Elmore Leonard books about twenty or so years ago; but they are all out of print now; though he still has the voices in his head :-)

Maximum Bob is about a judge infamous for handing out harsh sentences and, who appears to
be a target of revenge from any number of people! It's quirky in that Florida School tradition (ref Carl Hiassen's novels, The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady (by Elizabeth Stuckey-French) and Paul Levine's Solomon & Lord series.) It's a light and fun read. I'm sorry I missed the TV series all those years ago...




I've got The Twelve Tribes of Hattie (by Ayana Mathis) on my nook. It's about a woman, Hattie who has come north in the pre-War (WWII) Great Migration. I've recently become interested in African-American stories & history and so this selection was very timely. I have to say though that "Oprah's highlights" annoy the cr@p out of me. Next time, I'll just go for the print edition!


Next Up:


The Power and the Glory (by Graham Greene)

Tanya/dog eared copy wrote: "

While I was sitting on the couch reading Maximum Bob (by Elmore Leonard) the other night, DH practically leaped across the room and grabbed the book out of my hands..."

Sounds marvelous. I will definitely look for the audio/

This book has been marketed as literary horror. It reads as neither self-consciously literary nor as horror. It's more of a screwball social novel.

It's about how life is what you make it, no matter where you are. It's about the breakdown of institutions. It's about mass delusions.

The book opens with our protagonist, a man called Pepper, as he is being inappropriately admitted to a psych ward by three cops. His 72 hour stay ends up stretching to months, as he gets to know the other inmates as people, rather than as sketches based on a few outward characteristics. And Pepper learns about his own potential for altruism, even heroism.

The "Devil" of the title in an inmate who is sort of a bogeyman to the others; a creature of bestial appearance who periodically snatches one of the other inmates. Yet the "Devil", in the end, is a red herring. What Pepper finds out about himself is more important than beating the Devil.

To get over my reading hump with To the End of the Land I read two YA fantasy novels The Revenant and Vampire Academy which weren't bad but they weren't terribly thrilling either.
Now I have started Bethlehem Road Murder: A Michael Ohayon Mystery, yet another translation from Hebrew.
This author consistently gets good reviews but it hasn't pulled me in yet and I think the translation is the problem. There are some phrases which have been translated word for word and are pretty meaningless in English.
Sigh!!
Next I will try Cutting for Stone hopefully it will get me out of this slump.

I just finished IN NEED OF A GOOD WIFE by Kelly O'Connor McNees (Fabulous post civil war story about a women who starts up a mail order bride business).

Now I'm on to CITY OF WOMEN by David R. Gillham--beautiful writing, gripping story--Am loving it!

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, And Hope In A Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo. Can not put it down.

I just got finished with The Joyous Season by Patrick Dennis. It's been on my bookshelf for quite awhile and it sounded and looked like a good Christmas book. The story starts out at Christmas, and that's about the only link to the holiday season but it was was an absolutely hilarious story told from a 10 year old's point of view about the divorce of his parents. I absolutely fell in love with it. Patrick Dennis is best known for Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade which I'm embarrased to say I've never read or even seen the play or movie which will soon be rectified!

I'm in the midst of - which I'm finding entertaining. I also find it disturbing that it's so entertaining.
And for the holiday season I'm dipping into the short stories of .
Next up- .

Reading Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore and enjoying it quite a bit. May even be a 5-star read when I'm done.

Reading The Prisoner of Heaven by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Very good! As good as the first two? We'll see!

I picked up a 1962 Viking Compass edition of The Power and the Glory (by Graham Greene) at the Friends of the Library free book shelf and spent this past week-end reading it. Wow. This is a novel to carefully read: It's about a failed priest and an idealistic police officer intent on tracking the priest down. The time/place is 1930s Mexico, in the Tabasco region where Red Shirts have razed Churches and prohibited alcohol - both for being obstacles to Progress. In feel, the book reminds me of From Whom the Bell Tolls (by Ernest Hemingway) but The Power and the Glory has a much larger emotive core, playing on human fears and the struggle to be good. This is definitely headed toward my re-read stacks as I suspect that each reading will show me something new-to-me :-)

Next Up:


The Wide Window (by Lemony Snicket)

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. I was curious about this book because, as with many people, I have some bad habits I'd like to change. Very interesting stuff so far. Perhaps there is hope for me after all.

Melissa wrote: "The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. I was curious about this book because, as with many people, I have some bad habits I'd like to change. Very interesting stuff so far.

A lady in my book club was just telling us about this book last week. She enjoyed it. I added it to my to read list.

just finished "The Diviners" by Libba Bray, which was. . . well, divine. It's a YA novel unlike any I've read this year.

just started "Alif the Unseen" which I can already tell I'm going to enjoy immensely. In the middle of "The Lost Ones" by Ace Atkins (for my Southern noir kick); How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran (for my thoughtful humor kick), and Why Does the World Exist by Jim Holt (for my learning about stuff I don't know about kick).

next on the list: If on a winter's night a traveller by italo calvino, which i've been meaning to read for years. and years.

Dawn wrote: "I'm in the midst of - which I'm finding entertaining. I also find it disturbing that it's so entertaining.
And for the holiday season I'm dipping into the short stories..."

i'd like to know what you think of . Chabon's novels are hit or miss for me.

I'm listening to The Twelve Tribes of Hattie and reading
The Starboard Sea. Just starting both.

i started last night.

i finished which i found an interesting and poignant look at a lost part of history. it recounts stalin's reign of terror at the onset of WWII. he wiped the baltic nations off the map and sent dissidents to siberia. lina is the narrator of the story and she recounts her family's struggle for survival in the face of adversity. a YA, but a worthy read.

Just finished Clara and Mr. Tiffany by Susan Vreeland (lent to me by a friend). Interesting from a historical perspective, but not such a great novel - I never really felt pulled in and involved. Now I've started About Grace A Novel by Anthony Doerr, which I picked up in a used book store. It's dense and good so far.

Esther wrote: "To get over my reading hump with To the End of the Land I read two YA fantasy novels The Revenant and Vampire Academy which weren't bad but they weren't terribly thrilling either.
Now I have starte..."

This is wonderful. It should get you out of your slump immediately. Don't let the somewhat long delivery at the beginning deter you. It just gives you time to get to know several of the characters your going to be reading about.

just finish the the last book club book love it so much

Tanya/dog eared copy wrote:

I r..."

This was the book that addicted me to reading as child. It makes me smile every time I think about licking the flavored wallpaper.

Last week I finished listening to Everything That Rises Must Converge which was AMAZING in audio. Each story brilliantly read by different narrators. Can't recommend this one enough - especially in light of the short story discussion. I ended up spreading out the stories between other readings so that I could better enjoy each one.

I just finished The Middlesteins Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend and The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë. Enjoyed them all.

Now beginning The End of Your Life Book Club and grateful to Ann & Michael for the gift in Oxford. Also starting A Good Hard Look: A Novel on my ipad and listening to The Case of the Missing Servant.

Finally preparing to listen to Tim Curry's narration of A Christmas Carol to set the holiday mood.

Lori wrote: "Tanya/dog eared copy wrote:

I r..."

This was the book that addicted me to reading as child. It makes me smile every time I think about lickin..."

It's what started me licking the lead paint off the baseboards, and I haven't stopped since. To me, lead tastes just like I imagine snozzberries would taste.

Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey. Unique, history/mystery/psychological puzzle. Did Richard III kill his young nephews or has he been falsely reviled for centuries?

Eric wrote: "It's what started me licking the lead paint off the baseboards, and I haven't stopped since. To me, lead tastes just like I imagine snozzberries would taste. "

THAT explains soooooo much!

I read The Wide Window (by Lemony Snicket) last weekend and, as with the previous two installments in the Series of Unfortunate Events, enjoyed it immensely. In The Wide Window, the Beauledaire orphans are sent to yet another guardian, their Aunt Josephine is an omniphobic (afraid of everything.) Count Olaf, their nemesis, re-appears in another ingenius disguise and death & mayhem follow. I think this weekend I'll watch the movie :-)

Currently reading:
[random.org + goodreads TBR list = 193]


Empress (by Shan Sa)

Lori wrote: "Tanya/dog eared copy wrote:

I r..."

This was the book that addicted me to reading as child. It makes me smile every time I think about lickin..."

Lori, what did you think of The Middlesteins? Everyone's telling me I need to read it.