Constant Reader discussion

I only read trade paperbacks. That's also because of arthritis in my hands--trades are larger and better made. But the print size is definitely larger too, though not the same as hardback.

I have Olive Kitteridge on my list. I think I'll try to fit it in after the Russians and a couple of my shelf books. It certainly does seem to be a popular book here.

Olive is a fairly "quick", but absorbing read.

Good to know after several "slow" ones. I need some quick ones.

Rebecca wrote: "I am currently reading four books right now.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason by Helen Fielding
The Chalice & the Blade by Riane Eisler
The Girl Who Stopped Swimmin..."

I am reading "The Road" as well... it is beautifully written... and the way that apocaliptical athmosphere is described is so realistic, but it is not a book I would recommend for those in search of a feel-good book :)

I started Freedomand I just love it so far. I am on page 90. For my mystery, I am reading The Pale Blue Eye: A Novel. It is a fun book to read, because Edgar Allen Poe is one of the characters in the novel.

I just finished Townie, a memoir by Andre Dubus III. One of the best books about writing I've ever read, it's also about many other things, too. Childhood wasn't no crystal stair for Dubus (to borrow from Langston Hughes), in spite of the fact that his dad was a well-known writer.

Thanks for the review of Townie, Susan. I disliked his novel (House of Sand and Fog) so intensely that I felt the need to ignore this memoir. But given that you've said it's great on the subject of writing, I may have to check it out.

The Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

For anyone interested, here's my review of "The Captive Mind" by Czeslaw Milosz, the classic book about Communism and the magnetic effect it had on intellectuals and artists before, during, and after World War II. Enjoy.

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Sara, there is a LOT of fighting in Townie, and at first I had a hard time with that. But I hung with it and loved the way Dubus wrote about his transformation into a writer--about the last third of the book. Townie is also a lot about forgiveness.

Susan_T. wrote: "Sara, there is a LOT of fighting in Townie, and at first I had a hard time with that. But I hung with it and loved the way Dubus wrote about his transformation into a writer--about the last third o..."

I plan to read Townie , because I like Dubus's books. The father was a wonderful writer too!In the Bedroom ,which was the title story made into a movie, was a stirring short story book.

I'm currently 1/2 way thru The Secret of Lost Things and so far I really like it.

I am currently reading The Storyteller of Marrakesh. I won it at a goodreads giveaway. So far it is a nicely woven story.

I am half way through The Jane Austen Book Club and about a fourth of the way through Every Crooked Nanny.

Enjoying both but both quite different.

Ruth wrote: "I was so impressed by the audiobook of Neverwhere, that I'm now reading (in print) Anansi Boys Not at all what I expected, I almost dropped out a few chapte..."

I'm not sure if you are aware but I believe that is a spin-off to American Gods.

Nope, didn't know that. And know nothing of American Gods. I'm by turns absorbed in, then irritated by Anansi Boys.

American Gods was one of my favorite books. But I think I would read Neverwhere before I read Anansi Boys. I'm never big for series or sequels, anyway. If I like the first book a lot, chances are the next one will be disappointing. Maybe there's less of an element of surprise.

Listening to Neverwhere is what made me pick up Anansi boys, but I can't see that it's a sequel.

I'm reading Home ,but despite all of the rave reviews, I found the first half of the book was tedious. I continued because of the fine recommendations. I'm beginning to see sparks of life!

Interesting to know Barb. Gilead is on my list to read soon and I was wondering about Home. I'll be interested in your final impression.

Thought I would jump right in, as I have been reading a lot lately. Have been enjoying reading this thread for quite awhile and getting a lot of good suggestions for reading from it, thanks! I get most of my reading from the library, and most I get by putting on hold with others in line, so when I read what is somewhat determined by fate!

Recently read Olive Kitteridge (good), Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (yay, got it before discussion), tried but ultimately did not enjoy The Bushwhacked Piano enough to finish, and just finished Winter Solstice, which was a very lovely book to read in winter curled up in bed and I'm slightly cranky to finish it and leave its world. But I have just gotten the Mark Twain autobiography from the library, and it is huge, so reading it next.

(I am something like 142 of 184 on the holds list for Freedom, but looking forward to it!)

So, how do you guys make the book titles appear as links?

Lyn, if you click on the "add book/author" above the comment box, you will be able to type in a title and create a link.

I gave up on Hawksmoor. Though I liked parts of it, I just couldn't keep with it. I actually enjoyed the historical part but couldn't keep with the contemporary. I have so many other books to read, I decided to put it aside. Maybe I'll try again in a few months. We'll see.

Now I'll finish Dr Zhivago and begin The Quickening Maze.

Welcome to Constant Reader, Lyn. I've just started Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.

Welcome, Lyn!

Susan wrote: "Lyn, if you click on the "add book/author" above the comment box, you will be able to type in a title and create a link."

Duh. How long have I been here and I didn't notice that? Sometimes I can't see the forest for the trees- especially when it comes to links on websites. Thanks.

Just finished a nonfiction book, "The Unknown War with Russia; Wilson's Siberian Intervention" by Robert James Maddox. Interesting story about President Wilson's sending U.S. troops to Siberia in 1918 during Russia's civil war after their revolution had deposed the Tsar.

Now I want to read WHITE GUARD, a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov (Master and Margarita), about how a family was affected by this turbalent period of fighting between the Red and White Russians. I'd read Dr. Zhivago some years ago, but did not realize that that book was also set during this period.

Marge

Well, my March reading list included A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music. Since its inception in the 60's, I have listened with great awe and respect to the music coming from Chicago's AACM (Association For The Advancement of Creative Musicians.) Some of the most important and neglected experimental composers of our times have found their home in the AACM. Their music is by turns cerebral, spiritual, funky and esoteric. I was really interested in learning more about their history and approach to music.

I gave up on the book after one too many sentences like this: "Thus embodied in the issue bought to the table by Dogan was a complex dynamic of personal and professional interaction, crucially mediated by race and culture, where mappings of whiteness and blackness to insider-outsider binaries were defined not so much by phenotype as by issues of trust, collegiality--and power."

Give me a break! Why is this necessary.

I think I may replace this gobbledygook with a good old Elmore Leonard tale of dumb but lovable grifters.

Sorry, I just had to vent. ;)

On the other hand, I'm very much enjoying Let the Great World Spin.

I don't blame you, Brian. That is indeed gobbledygook.

Have to agree with Sherry on that one.

Janet wrote: "Susan wrote: "Lyn, if you click on the "add book/author" above the comment box, you will be able to type in a title and create a link."

Duh. How long have I been here and I didn't notice that? S..."

I'm thankful to some nice GR member who pointed this out to me last year. Have to admit I didn't work this out on my own.

Brian, I had you pegged as someone that might have some background with reading literary criticism, in which a sentence like that one could be considered one of the most cogent and concise ever written. After reading it for years, I guess I don't even recognize the inability to artfully sting words together into a good sentence anymore. Thanks, university English department.

I too get lots of ideas for reading from this discussion group-enjoying constant reader very much. Often do not have time to comment-but run through and read comments and get book ideas all of the time.
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Sorry, John, but my deconstructionist decoder ring has never worked too well.

I enjoy a good complex sentence when it is elegantly poetic or imparts some meaning that probably couldn't be captured in a more direct statement. Otherwise, I'm in the "say what you mean" camp.

In their defense, a lot of the things they have to say (and the school of deconstruction is really just the tip of the iceberg) can't be said in simply. Plus, even if they could, part of the point, at least according to them, is to reconfigure language so as to make it obviously a thing that isn't obviously objective and neutral - and at least the labyrinthine sentences do a good job at that. But I know where you're coming from.

I cannot force myself through that kind of writing. I just can't.

Okay, I'm going to try the links, because I forgot to thank those who were recently talking about Gardam, which led me to read Old Filthand God on the Rocks. I very much enjoyed her skill at slowly creating and building characters.

Have started Volume I of the Mark Twain autobiography, and the observance which might be pertinent to the John/Brian discussion above, was that I skimmed through most of the researcher comments rather bored, but was immediately engaged with the actual writing of Clemens.

Lyn, thankfully most academics know that that kind of thing makes the eyes of most readers glaze over. As Stephen Hawking's editors told him when he first wrote "A Brief History of Time," with every equation, you lose half of your readership. The same principle, in effect.

Also, I was in Borders last night and just happened to see the autobiography "in person" for the first time. I'd heard people on NPR talk about how physically big it was, but it's huge. Not just thick, but it looks like it was printed on newspaper. You can always use it as a doorstop when you're done.

Brian wrote: "Well, my March reading list included A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music. Since its inception in the 60's, I have listened with great awe and respe..."

I really like Elmore Leonard!

I'm reading Swamplandia! by Karen Russell. It's not really my type of book as I like to stick to reality-based fiction that tends toward the melancholic, but Russell is highly imaginative and her prose is good. The book has its faults, though, things that bog it down.

I've begun The Quickening Maze and I'm enjoying it. It does have a poetic sense in it's description of the setting.

Barbara wrote: "I'm reading Home ,but despite all of the rave reviews, I found the first half of the book was tedious. I continued because of the fine recommendations. I'm beginning to see sparks of..."

I also found the first half of Home tedious and I almost quit reading it. But I was glad I kept reading it. It was a good book - quiet and reflective.

I finished Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet - early! - and will save my comments for the discussion. Now I'm going back to The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse and Major Pettigrew's Last Stand.

Major Pettigrew was a sweet story.

I am debating whether to nominate The Storyteller of Marrakesh for the next time. Let me know what others think. I don't know if it is up to CR standards . It is a very charming story, by that I mean hypnotic and exotic. It has an Arabian Nights feel to it.

I'm reading WIRED FOR WAR by Peter Singer
it's about robotics and war.

I certainly don't understand all the material but the military is spending a lot, a lot of money on unmanned drones,ships, developing warrior robots and a lot more things that sound like science fiction.

apparently there's more science out there than fiction when it comes to automating warfare.

I just finished Tehanu which I absolutely loved.

I'm gonna try to drag myself thru the rest of Kraken and then start The Wise Man's Fear

Just got from Audible, 4 this time because 2 of them were on special for $4.95. Great deal on audios! I'm really looking forward to listening to all these. Great books! I have to get through these thick Fantasy monthly reads. Halfway through The Blade Itself. Good story.

The Idiot
Ayn Rand and the World She Made
The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory
The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos

Ugh, Ayn Rand.

I've never read Rand and, must say, I've never had the urge. I know she's a must read for many.

I haven't read her, and lack any desire to do so either.

On a more positive note, I'm about 2/3 of the way though Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life. A few dry patches here and there, but overall it's a cracking good read so far.