Between the Lines discussion

Maybe we should try and see if Pillars of the Earth could be a read in the book club or something? I have it too and it's not really my type of book so it's been sitting on my shelf for ages!
Going to finish The Forest tonight - not recommended! Been fighting my way through the 880 pages!

Prodigal Summer is one of my all time faves - and Fiona's too, right Tweety??

LOVE IT!

Thanks for the encouragement you guys. Emilee - Prod. Summ. is on your list for 2009 too isn't it???

You guys are doing great!

Do you realize some people don't read 10 books in a YEAR?

Hard to believe.

Wouldn't it be cool if she wrote a sequel?

Laura and Fiona, I'm on pg 338 of Prodigal Summer so I'm near the end. Since you guys are thinking sequel does this mean that there are some things left unanswered? For instance, I'm dying to know what happened between Garnett and his son! And of course I figured that Deanna is...you know. I have the book sitting on my lap right now and it's killing me! I need to go finish it! I'm going to the library tonight so you know I'll be bringing home some more books.
Christina, I have Pillars of the Earth, too, waiting to be read. I wouldn't mind doing a group read with this one!

Don't you guys think it's weird that some people don't readd ANY books? My mother-in-law is like that. She reads the paper and magazines only. I don't think she even has one book in her house. I don't see how people can live that way! Luckily I converted my husband into a big reader. He works downtown and the only thing he loves about his train commute and that he gets to read.

On Prod. Sum. I think the loose ends are pretty much tied up, but you could always continue the story even so. I think esp. in this case. What do you think Fiona?

Yup, it counts!

Emilee wrote: "I actually am reading PS now. Thanks to book pusher Fiona! ha ha!

Fiona when are you starting MD????"

What do you think of PS so far, Emilee???

And I have another Q for you - how did you decide on your 100 books to read? They all look so good, I'm wondering where you got your inspiration from.

I think I'll try and remember to suggest Pillars of the Earth for the next group read then. Not sure if I'm ever going to read it otherwise....

How do you find time to read so much Emilee, when you have all those kiddies? I only have the one.

1. Flower Confidential
2. Alex & Me
3. Otherwise Normal People
4. Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
5. Within These Walls (so good I couldn't put it down).
6. Kabul Beauty School
7. The Family Tree (gasp, fiction, first in ages).
8. The Family That Couldn't Sleep: A Medical Mystery (neurology and prion diseases)
9. Rumpole and the Reign of Terror (more fiction)
10.Alek: From Sudanese Refugee to International Supermodel.
11. My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands by Chelsea Handler.
12. Annie May's Black Book.
13. The Mistress's Daugher. A.M. Homes (of "This Boo Will Save Your Life" fame) memoir of when her adoptive mother traced her and what followed on from their. Pretty amazing book.

Ok -- so far in 2009 (a lot of fluff!) Last read listed first --

11. When You Are Engulfed in Flames (Hardcover)
Sedaris, David

10.The Making of a Writer: Journals, 1961-1963 (Paperback)
Godwin, Gail

9.Miles from Nowhere (Hardcover)
Mun, Nami

8.Eclipse (The Twilight Saga, Book 3)
Meyer, Stephenie

7.Such a Pretty Fat: One Narcissist's Quest to Discover if Her Life Makes Her Ass Look Big, or Why Pie is Not the Answer (Paperback)
Lancaster, Jen

6.The Goldfish Went on Vacation: A Memoir of Loss (and Learning to Tell the Truth about It)
Dann, Patty

5.Story of My Life (Paperback)
McInerney, Jay

4.Tramps Like Us (Hardcover)
Buckley, Kristen

3.How to Travel with a Salmon & Other Essays (A Harvest Book)
Eco, Umberto

2.Endangered Pleasures: In Defense of Naps, Bacon, Martinis, Profanity, and Other Indulgences (Paperback)
Holland, Barbara

1.New Moon (The Twilight Saga, Book 2)
Meyer, Stephenie

I finished my #11 today: Prodigal Summer and it was really good.

I do too! What was your favorite "story" within the book?

Me too Fiona! I read that book the exact same way you did. What a great book.

Emilee, you're doing great, too. I'm the one who should be ashamed b/c I'm a SAHM and should really be able to do a lot more reading than I have. My youngest is in 2nd grade and my oldest is away at college so it's not like I'm taking care of a young child all day long! I need to get organized. I get out of bed at the last possible minute and spend too much time on my laptop and watching The Today Show. I've become really slow at doing housework, too. So I can't even blame that on my lack of reading time. I need to force myself out of bed, when I wake my husband up, instead of laying there watching the news. I'm so bad...

I know what you mean Beth I use to do the same thing before I started working this last summer.

I'm trying to be more disciplined by writing "to do" lists.

Ok, yikes! Right now I'm reading The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which is short and quick. I'm also reading Special Topics in Calamity Physics, which is long (very verbose)and slow. I may just read "quickies" this month just to catch up. I sort of feel like that's cheating but they are on my TBR list.

Emilee wrote: "we need to read 8 books a month for eight months and nine books a month for four months...

Or just read 2 a week, 52 weeks in a year, 104 books! That sounds doable, right?

Beth,

I listen to books while doing my housework. I'm not the best housekeeper, but I do manage to get some reading time while doing the dishes/sweeping/picking up toys, ect.

I listen to audio-books on my ipod (Creative Zen). Luckily my local library has them available to check out online.

Beth I like that 2 books a week. Easier to swallow and we will surpass our goal.

Yes, that sounds good. That's why I want to catch up so bad this month so that starting in March I can do the 2 books/week thing. I just finished The Diving Bell and the Butterfly so now I just have to finish 4 more books by Feb. 28th.

Fiona wrote: "Yay! I love hearing it when people like the same book I do."

So do I, but it doesn't happen to me very much.

Emily you say I'm a readaholic. Why do you think I got a bookshop :-D

1. Flower Confidential
2. Alex & Me
3. Otherwise Normal People
4. Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
5. Within These Walls (so good I couldn't put it down).
6. Kabul Beauty School
7. The Family Tree (gasp, fiction, first in ages).
8. The Family That Couldn't Sleep: A Medical Mystery (neurology and prion diseases)
9. Rumpole and the Reign of Terror (more fiction)
10.Alek: From Sudanese Refugee to International Supermodel.
11. My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands by Chelsea Handler.
12. Annie May's Black Book. Chicklit.

13. The Dressing Station. Brilliant memoir by a surgeon with wanderlust of the soul who is a doctor, writer and film-maker specialising in war-torn areas but also with interludes such as being a cruise ship doctor on a rust bucket in the South China seas.

14. The Mistress's Daughter - adoptive mother finds her adult daughter and what ensues. Excellent and disturbing, not fiction.

15. Nowhere in Africa: An Autobiographical Novel. Tremendous book written by the little girl (now grown up) the story revolves around. Its about a family who escaped the Holocaust in Germany by emigrating to Kenya and how they integrated (or not) into the life of emigrees, farmers, tribespeople and the outcasts of society. The writing is most unusual and almost poetic.

Just started Plato and the Platypus Walk Into a Bar. Which is a history of philosophy through jokes. Very entertaining.

Wow Petra! you are just devouring the books! You are inspiring. If I owned a book shop I think I would read all day- hopefully!

Emilee's Completed books for 2009:

1. Clockwork Orange
2. Loving Frank
3. Marley & Me
4. Secret Life of Bees
5. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
6. The Comfort of Strangers
7. Moby Dick
8. Emotional Blackmail
9. A Room of One's own
10. A Seperate Peace
11. Nanny Diaries

Hey, Emilee, you're doing great!

Completed books '09:
1. One Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich (amazing book from nobel prize recipient about life in a Siberian work camp)
2. Beginner's Greek (nice novel about love...)
3. Rebecca (Last night I dreamt of Manderlay...)
4. Sippy Cups are not for Chardonnay (funny book about being a new mother)
5. The Rules of Attraction (my first Brett Easton Ellis - liked it a lot!)
6. Alias Grace (real life Canadian murder mystery)
7. The Social life of dogs (funny book about the author's dogs (some of them))
8. Anna Karenina (simply amazing!!!)
9. The Forest (about the history of the New Forest in UK, told in short stories about the people living there, didn't like this one very much)
10. Middlesex (Amazing book!)

So 10 so far - and almost done with The Audacity of Hope as well.

Emilee and Petra, you guys are doing really well! And love your profile picture, Emilee!!! ;-D

Thanks Christina! Enrique is one of my fav's.

Christina your doing great too!

The thing I love the most is that so many of us are reading a ton, and together!

Emilee's Completed books for 2009:

1. Clockwork Orange
2. Loving Frank
3. Marley & Me
4. Secret Life of Bees
5. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
6. The Comfort of Strangers
7. Moby Dick
8. Emotional Blackmail
9. A Room of One's own
10. A Seperate Peace
11. Nanny Diaries
12. Sacred Stone: The Temple at Nauvoo
13. A Grief Observed (read this today. Great book)

Here's my completed books for 2009:

1. Family Planning
2. Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging
3. Testimony
4. Knucklehead
5. The Gargoyle
6. Song for the Missing
7. Stuff White People Like
8. Multiple Blessings
9. The Trouble with Boys
10. Educating Esme
11. Prodigal Summer
12. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
13. I was Told There'd be Cake

Right now I'm reading Schooled by Anisha Lakhani. This is definitely fluff, but I'm enjoying it!

Beth: how did you like prodigal summer? so far I am really liking it.

Emilee, I liked Prodigal Summer a lot. I thought the characters were likable and I enjoyed their individual stories.

I just finished #14 last night (Schooled) and I'm now reading Twilight.

1. Flower Confidential
2. Alex & Me
3. Otherwise Normal People
4. Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
5. Within These Walls
6. Kabul Beauty School
7. The Family Tree
8. The Family That Couldn't Sleep: A Medical Mystery
9. Rumpole and the Reign of Terror
10 Alek: From Sudanese Refugee to International Supermodel.
11 My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands
12 Annie May's Black Book
13 The Dressing Station
14 The Mistress's Daughter
15 Nowhere in Africa
16 Complications - Atul Gawande's book of medical stories, not as broad a sweep or as philosophical as Better.
17 Plato and the Platypus Walk Into a Bar - history of philosophy through jokes. Light reading, quite fun, doesn't live up to its title.

Christina, of the books you've read so far this year, I've read four and One Day in the Life of Evan Denisovitch and the Social Life of Dogs are among my favourite books. (The other two are Rebecca and Anna Karenina which I also loved). You might enjoy Elizabeth Marshall Thomas's Tribe of Tiger which is even better than her dog book, and since you like heavy Russian novels, you might really like Solzhenitzin's Cancer Ward.

Petra, I'm definitely planning on reading Cancer Ward. Actually, I'm just starting reading Russian novels this year and planning on reading several more. I really liked both Anna Karenina and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich so I hopefully will get some more read.
I'm more of a dog person than a cat person but I'm considering reading Tribe of Tiger.
Thanks for the recommendations - always nice to get!
And I haven't read a single book you've read...!

You're going to do it Emilee! I'm still reading #14.

Wow - you guys are moving really fast. I'm working at #13 only ...

Wow Emilee, you did it! Congratulations!!!!

Ok, I'm an idiot! I finished book 14 two days ago (schooled) and I'm reading #15 (Twilight) now. I realized this when I woke up this morning. So now I just have to read 1.5 more books before I reach my goal of completing a total of 16 books in Jan/Feb! I think I can, I think I can....

Thanks Emilee!

Completed books '09:
1. One Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich (amazing book from nobel prize recipient about life in a Siberian work camp)
2. Beginner's Greek (nice novel about love...)
3. Rebecca (Last night I dreamt of Manderlay...)
4. Sippy Cups are not for Chardonnay (funny book about being a new mother)
5. The Rules of Attraction (my first Brett Easton Ellis - liked it a lot!)
6. Alias Grace (real life Canadian murder mystery)
7. The Social life of dogs (funny book about the author's dogs (some of them))
8. Anna Karenina (simply amazing!!!)
9. The Year of Fog (interesting book about a child gone missing)
10. The Forest (about the history of the New Forest in UK, told in short stories about the people living there, didn't like this one very much)
11. Middlesex (Amazing book!)
12. The Audacity of Hope (interesting - especially to see the differences between US and Danish/European politics)
13. Chicago (about Egyptians muslims - a very different read from what I'm used to)

And about halfway through Hogfather - but my goal is to to reach 17 books for Jan-Feb because I read 9 in January.
I want to reach a 100 books - but the number isn't the most important thing. Reaching 100 is easy if you just read low fantasy or young adult all the way - I want to read a lot of different books, both fiction and non-fiction, both classics and fluff - so my goal is a combination of reaching 100 books and having it be balanced... even though I can't definite exactly what balanced is...

I finished #15 last night (Twilight) and now reading The Last Chinese Chef.

I just received my copy of The White Tiger from Amazon.com so I'm going to put aside The Last Chinese Chef for later. I've heard so many good things about The White Tiger that I just have to read it now..for my 16th book of 2009.

Great job, Emilee. I'm on #16 now so I know I'll reach my goal.

1. Flower Confidential
2. Alex & Me
3. Otherwise Normal People
4. Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
5. Within These Walls
6. Kabul Beauty School
7. The Family Tree
8. The Family That Couldn't Sleep: A Medical Mystery
9. Rumpole and the Reign of Terror
10 Alek: From Sudanese Refugee to International Supermodel.
11 My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands
12 Annie May's Black Book
13 The Dressing Station
14 The Mistress's Daughter
15 Nowhere in Africa
16 Complications - Atul
17 Plato and the Platypus Walk Into a Bar
18 Great Big Beautiful Doll - nasty, hatchet-job biography of Anna Nicole Smith by Eric Redding and his fatuously-named wife, D'eva.

I just finished #16 The White Tiger. I'm so glad I caught up. I'm going to start reading Coraline now.

1. Flower Confidential
2. Alex & Me
3. Otherwise Normal People
4. Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
5. Within These Walls
6. Kabul Beauty School
7. The Family Tree
8. The Family That Couldn't Sleep: A Medical Mystery
9. Rumpole and the Reign of Terror
10 Alek: From Sudanese Refugee to International Supermodel.
11 My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands
12 Annie May's Black Book
13 The Dressing Station
14 The Mistress's Daughter
15 Nowhere in Africa
16 Complications - Atul
17 Plato and the Platypus Walk Into a Bar
18 Great Big Beautiful Doll
19 If I Did It - O.J. Simpson's confession although it is preceded by the word 'If'. No other way to read it. He makes out Nicole to be a dreadful human being and himself just perfect. Its a good read, but creepy.

I finished #17 (Coraline)last night at around 11:30. Jacob (just turned 8) wants to read it and I told him it's a little too scary for him right now. I don't want him sleeping in our room until he goes away to college!