Book Nook Cafe discussion

Dem.........I also prefer paper books except that if I get any more I will be sleeping in the yard!!! I have been using the library instead when possible. Of course, then they have book sales and........well, you know what happens!! :D

madrano wrote: " I sometimes run into a web site which i think is called Atlas Obscura. Is this book related to it? I can't locate the site now that i'm actually searching for it.."

Love that site, but it is a huge time-sink. It's here, btw.

Alias Reader wrote: "Dem wrote: "I joined the Library last Monday for the First time (I have no idea why it took me so long and the fortune I have spent) I checked out two books [book:The Whisperers: Private Life in St..."

I agree Alias, I love writing in books and have to use a note pad along with the Library book. I had an appointment today and knew I would have quite a wait and took along the Library book and was worrying then I would leave it behind me. Still I love the fact you can check out audio books which is really handy. I guess I will mix and match between buying, borrowing and listening. :-)

Jill wrote: "Dem.........I also prefer paper books except that if I get any more I will be sleeping in the yard!!! I have been using the library instead when possible. Of course, then they have book sales and....."

Now Jill you got me wondering if my Library has book sales. Agree storing books is a problem but I love nothing better when visiting a friends house than checking out their book shelfs.

I bet they do and it will be your downfall into chronic bibliophilia but it is probably too late to worry about that!! :D

I'm really enjoying my current library book: Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine.

I found out about the website Overdrive the other day and it led me to borrowing these three ebooks from my library:

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell. I'm currently reading this and I'm almost done with it. I read a lot of the audiobook in my car as well.

Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead

The Sun Is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon

John wrote: "I'm really enjoying my current library book: Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine."

Interesting premise that" American food is united by eight flavors: black pepper, vanilla, curry powder, chili powder, soy sauce, garlic, MSG, and Sriracha"

Personally, I don't use curry powder or siracha ever. I seldom use the others on the list except garlic.

I am surprised not to see salt. Unfortunately, salt seems to be in most processed foods. I would have also guessed sugar in some form.

Jaci wrote: "I found out about the website Overdrive the other day and it led me to borrowing these three ebooks from my library:

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell. I'm currently re..."

Overdrive is the best !

It really is! I also just got these two on Overdrive from the library:

It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

I just bought these three from Book Depository online even though I'm on a book buying ban (oops!):

The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson

Geekerella by Ashley Poston

and Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

LOL Jaci. You are on a book gathering roll ! Enjoy.

Jaci.....i don't think there is such a thing as a book buying ban. We just can't help ourselves!!!

I finished Clockwork Princess today and absolutely had to get these three from Book Depository:

The Bane Chronicles by Cassandra Clare

Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy by Cassandra Clare

and The Shadowhunter's Codex by Cassandra Clare

I still have to finish City of Lost Souls and City of Heavenly Fire. My mom bought me Lady Midnight. Now I have to buy Lord of Shadows so I can have the full current collection of Cassandra Clare books.

Jaci wrote: "I finished Clockwork Princess today and absolutely had to get these three from Book Depository:"

:)

I just bought two more books from Book Depository. I have a serious problem.

The Wrath & the Dawn by Renee Ahdieh

An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

Jaci......we all share that problem!!!! :D

Alias Reader wrote: "Jaci wrote: "I finished Clockwork Princess today and absolutely had to get these three from Book Depository:"

:)"

You came to the right place Jaci !

I got this on Overdrive from the library:

The Demon King by Cinda Williams Chima

And these two in physical book form at the library:

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Illuminae by Amie Kaufman

Charlatan: America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam by Pope Brock.

I went to the library today with a friend as she had to pick up a book she requested. So I browsed the New Books shelf and picked up

The Whole Foods Diet: The Lifesaving Plan for Health and Longevity---John Mackey

The definitive guide to the optimum diet for health and wellness, from the founder of Whole Foods Market and the doctors of Forks Over Knives

THE WHOLE FOODS DIET simplifies the huge body of science, research, and advice that is available today and reveals the undeniable consensus: a whole foods, plant-based diet is the optimum diet for health and longevity. Standing on the shoulders of the Whole Foods Market brand and featuring an accessible 28-day program, delicious recipes, inspirational success stories, and a guilt-free approach to plant-based eating, THE WHOLE FOODS DIET is a life-affirming invitation to become a Whole Foodie: someone who loves to eat, loves to live, and loves to nourish themselves with nature's bounty. If Whole Foods Market is "shorthand for a food revolution" (The New Yorker), then THE WHOLE FOODS DIET will give that revolution its bible - the unequivocal truth about what to eat for a long, healthy, disease-free life.

306 pages
Published April 11th 2017 by Grand Central Life & Style

I picked up Novel Explosives for some reason. I thought I had learned my lesson about not reading doorstops. Whups.

Mkfs wrote: "I picked up Novel Explosives for some reason. I thought I had learned my lesson about not reading doorstops. Whups."

My thoughts exactly, Mkfs, and then I buy a 900+ page history book!! We never learn. :D

I just received from Amazon

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's BerlinErik Larson
The Obituary WriterAnn Hood
Aunt Dimity and the Wishing WellNancy Atherton
Aunt Dimity and the Summer KingNancy Atherton

Meredith, I thought In The Garden of Beasts was excellent. I hope you enjoy it, too !

Alias Reader wrote: "Meredith, I thought In The Garden of Beasts was excellent. I hope you enjoy it, too !"

Larsen is a great writer and I too enjoyed that book but I think my favorite of his was Devil in the White City.

Almost finished with Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine, mentioned above. Solid writing, as well as a bit of envy for those she mentions as friends; she's that likeable. Re: salt and sugar, perhaps too much material for a single chapter. Choices of spice reflect a multicultural angle.

A bit into Booker Prize winner The Sea, the Sea, my first Iris Murdoch. Love the main character, though more in present day than flashbacks.

John wrote: "A bit into Booker Prize winner The Sea, the Sea, my first Iris Murdoch. Love the main character, though more in present day than flashbacks. "

I thought I owned one of her books but I don't see it in my card file. :(

I think I may put this one on my Library list.

"Her first published novel, Under the Net, was selected in 1998 as one of Modern Library's 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century."

Under the Net~~Iris Murdoch

Modern Library's 100 best list
http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/...

In the last two weeks, I checked out Lolita and now have Animal Farm. Can't wait (I love George Orwell)!!

I tried to read Lolita a few times. I just can't get into it.

We did a buddy read here of Animal farm. Here is the link.

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Alias Reader wrote: "I tried to read Lolita a few times. I just can't get into it...."

I couldn't either.

Trying to get caught up today. Apologies for any tardiness. Internet connections overseas are iffy, it seems. Anyway, thanks for the additional info on Atlas Obscura.

Also, it's neat to see that someone else has checked out books you liked. For instance, Jaci got The Sun is also a Star, a book i liked enormously. Thanks for the sharing.

I'm down to one book TBR on my nightstand, so I just did a quick mini spree on Amazon.

Spellcast
The Gates
Sandman Slim
The Patriot Witch

Purusing the New Books section at my library the other day, I decided to check out an essay collection by poet Anna Journey: An Arrangement of Skin: Essays. Some entries have resonated more with me than others, but the writing quality is very high.

Wow, Anita, how did you whittle down your nightstand stack? I'm impressed.

John, what a good name for a poet. I'm not familiar with her name/work but you've given me a starting place.

Madrano wrote: "John, what a good name for a poet. I'm not familiar with her name/work but you've given me a starting place."

I couldn't link to this yesterday, so will now. News of the World by Paulette Jiles is the most recent novel i've read which was written by a poet. Superb. It is set in Texas not long after the Civil War. It's about an old soldier who has agreed to return a kidnapped girl to her relatives after a 3 (?) year absence.

The author lives in San Antonio now and evokes the history, including small details, very well. As soon as I finished it i reserved another by her, something about lightning.

Madrano wrote: "Wow, Anita, how did you whittle down your nightstand stack? I'm impressed.

John, what a good name for a poet. I'm not familiar with her name/work but you've given me a starting place."

I'm surprised too, I usually have at least 5 or 6 books at all times. =]

Nice work!

madrano wrote: I couldn't link to this yesterday, so will now. News of the World by Paulette Jiles is the most recent novel i've read which was written by a poet. Superb. It is set in Texas not long after the Civil War. It's about an old soldier who has agreed to return a kidnapped girl to her relatives after a 3 (?) year absence.."

Deb, I can't recall if I read a very good review of that book in the NY Times Book Review or if it was your review. Either way, I took note of it for the future.

My library has 79 copies of the book !

Picked up Even This I Experience by Norman Lear and a horror book for my challenge - Universal Harvester by John Darnielle. If anyone has a good horror book to recommend, let me know - it is not a genre I usually read.

I don't read horror either, but a friend reviewed that one a while ago, making it seem likd an interesting possibility.

Julie wrote: " If anyone has a good horror book to recommend, let me know - it is not a genre I usually read. "

Dean Koontz

Watchers

Strangers
---------------------------------------

Robert McCammon

Swan Song

Boy's Life

Mine

Gone South
---------------------------------------

Stephen King

The Stand

Alias Reader wrote: "Julie wrote: " If anyone has a good horror book to recommend, let me know - it is not a genre I usually read. "

Thanks for the recommendations!

Amazon was having a sale on some of the "dummy" books so I purchased for my kindle

Italian All-In-One for Dummies

I have been using the free app Duolingo to learn a few words of Italian. I thought the book would be helpful.

You're welcome.

Alias, i read about News of the World from someone here, so maybe you did too. I don't think i wrote about it until yesterday. It is a slender book but very good. Your system has more copies than usual. Even my library, in Texas, for pity's sake, only had 5.

Julie wrote: "If anyone has a good horror book to recommend, let me know"

Most of the horror I read as a young lad seems pretty silly now - even the Lovecraft.

There is one quasi-horror novel that I've been meaning to read: The Green Man. I recall there being some awful supernatural spectacle that paled in comparison to the narrator's real-word problems.

madrano wrote: "Alias, i read about News of the World from someone here, so maybe you did too. I don't think i wrote about it until yesterday. It is a slender book but very good. Your system has more copies than u..."

Something tells me it might have been in one of our "what I read this month" threads.

Just and FYI

I received an email from the publisher to note that this book is now available in paperback.

The Gene: An Intimate History
Siddhartha Mukherjee


Now in paperback from the Pulitzer Prize winning author
The #1 New York Times bestseller

A New York Times Notable Book

A Washington Post and Seattle Times Best Book of the Year
The Gene

The Gene
An Intimate History
By Siddhartha Mukherjee
Now in paperback, Siddhartha Mukherjee’s intimate history of the gene—a book as deft, brilliant, and illuminating as The Emperor of all Maladies, his extraordinarily successful Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of cancer.

“Magnificent...The story of the gene has never before been told with the scope and grandeur that Siddhartha Mukherjee brings to his new history.” —James Gleick, The New York Times

“A magisterial account of how human minds have laboriously, ingeniously picked apart what makes us tick...The Gene will confirm Mukherjee as our era’s preeminent popular historian of medicine.” —Elle

“Prodigious, sweeping, and ultimately transcendent. If you’re interested in what it means to be human, today and in the tomorrows to come, you must read this book.” —Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See

Alias Reader wrote:"...Something tells me it might have been in one of our "what I read this month" threads.

I think you are right. That would also explain why i never wrote in down on my To Be Read list, i just ordered from the library.

Nice praise from Doerr for The Gene.

Just finished a title that should appeal to some folks here: The Odd Woman and the City: A Memoir, reflections of a writer, who's a native New Yorker. Really liked her comment on the early days of her career, describing output as " . . . never having been read above Fourteenth Street."