I recently read The Woman In Black, by Susan Hill (possibly an **Auntie Pam ** recommendation). It was an excellently done ghost story, though short. It was perfect for a rainy afternoon.
I also read Weekend Makeover : take your home from messy to magnificent in only 48 hours! by Don Aslett. Meh. It passed the time, but I was not inspired to take my home anywhere.
The kids and I just finished listening to our audiobook, the final volume of A Series of Unfortunate Events. An excellent job by Tim Curry as always, and we were pretty happy with it, although personally I’m still mourning Count Olaf.
Next up: The Gospel of Food : everything you think you know about food is wrong, by Barry Glassner.
A bio of Patrick Henry.
We’re planning a trip to Williamsburg over the summer.
Last read Jim Harrison’s memoir - long one of my favorite authors. An interesting life he has led.
I’m currently reading The Human Stain by Philip Roth, and for bathtub reading, Cod by Mark Kurlansky. Once I finish with those, I may move on to Snow by Orhan Pamuk, one of the latest Nobel literature prize recipients. If not, I may see if I can dig up an older Terry Pratchett novel that I have not yet read.
Last Bite by Nancy Verde Barr taught me about the culture behind the scenes at Good Morning America’s food segments–especially those involving Julia Child. (Who appears in slightly fictionalized form as Sally Woods).
** Tubby Meets Katrina**, a Tubby Dubonnet mystery by Anthony P. Dunbar showed a slightly fictionalized first hand view of life in New Orleans starting just before Katrina hit town. It’s the kind of book which is a mystery, because it’s one in a series of books that are mysteries, rather than the kind of book that is a mystery, if that makes sense. It’s not a mystery in a formulaic sense where the body is discovered on page 1 or maybe page 10, and the rest of the book follows the sleuth who must figure out whodunnit. It’s a neat book because of the descriptions of life in New Orleans right after Katrina, even if a little convenient (hmm, let’s give the main character a boat so he can help rescue people from flooded houses. And a friend with helicopter so he can fly over the city.) It’s kinda depressing but seemed worthwhile to me for the picture of life in New Orleans.
(Hmm, my description seems a little redundant. Tough.)
I Just Finished The Empire State Building by John Tauranac. Great book about a building I’ve loved ever since I was a kid. . Written in 1995, so it avoids any thoughts on the doomed World Trade Center.
I’ve got a stack of science fiction yet from the last con I went to, and am reading Two Tales and Eight Tomorrows by Harry Harrison (Which includes the wonderful parody “Captain Honorio Harpplayer, R.N”). I also picked by A Treasury of Great Science Fiction in 2 volumes, edited by Anthony Boucher. It’s the first SF anthology I ever read, and I’d like to read it again.
I’m reading The Book of Names by Jill Gregory and Karen Tintori, which is sort of a DaVinci Code-esqe religious thriller, but based on the Kabbalah. It’s pretty fun, kind of lightweight, not something I’d highly recommend, but if you like that kind of thing it’s pretty good.
The problem with books like this is that you can never be sure if the historical & religious “facts” the author talks about are true. I mean, sure the DaVinci Code was fun, but it makes me dizzy to think of how much stuff he gets dead wrong, and that some people who don’t know the difference seem to believe every word. I know enough about the Catholic Church and Renaissance art to know where Dan Brown was BSing, but I don’t know squat about Kabbalah, so I am taking the stuff this book says with a big grain of salt. For example, they inter-relate Kabbalah and tarot cards. That sounds fishy to me, but what do I know? You’d like to think that you could learn from stuff like this, but you have to be careful what you believe.
I’m glad you liked The Woman in Black. There aren’t enough simple ghost stories.
I was impressed with a recommendation from a Doper – Flanders by Patricia Anthony. Letters home from an American soldier in France in the early years of World War I. Indescribable. I’ve heard that Ms. Anthony has written a screenplay. I can’t imagine how this could be filmed, but I think Guillermo del Toro could do justice to it.
It was like reading two books – one set in the real world and the other in the cemetery in Travis’s head. There were times when the cemetery was more real. Awesome book.
So thanks for the recommendation, even though it gave me some nightmares.
Also enjoyed The Hummingbird’s Daughter by Luis Urrea, another Doper rec, I think.
I read both of Barack Obama’s books, Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope, in the last week or week and a half. Dreams in particualr was very well-written and engaging. I’m not sure what I’ll read next.
Just finished Jennifer Morgue by Charlie Stross and Overclocked by Cory Doctorow. Just starting Old Man’s war my John Scalzi. I’ve heard good things.
I just ordered Missle Gap, an alternative history novella from Stross, and on the to be read pile is A Touch of Strange by Sturgeon and The God Delusion. It’s going to be a good couple of weeks at the lebeef household.
I just read that recently, too…isn’t it good? My dad recommended it to me, and I was so surprised after I read it that he had never mentioned it to me before!
I highly recommend her book “Joy in the Morning” as well.
I just started my first Agatha Christie mystery, Murder At The Vicarage, a Jane Marple novel, which was recommended to me by the good folks here on the SDMB. I’m only a few pages into it, but I like it very much, despite having to memorize twelve or thirteen characters right from the get-go.
Heh, I just looked it up yesterday–our library doesn’t have it. I asked to put it on the purchasing list, but it’s the sort of thing the head librarian hopes will come through in a donation, so she won’t have to spend money on it. Maybe I’ll ILL it.
Right now, I’m nearly to the end of The Company Of Strangers by Robert Wilson. It’s a nicely crafted WW II spy novel that follows an 18-year old British woman as she goes to Portugal to keep an eye on the local Nazis. It picks her up again in 1981, as she rejoins the Company and goes to East Berlin.
I left out a lot about who’s allied with whom, and who’s romantically involved with whom.
I recently finished Catch-22 - which was great, one of the top 5 books I’ve ever read - and then read several mediocre graphic novels.
Now I’m reading Buddha by Osamu Tezuka. I read the first 3 books in 2006 but that’s all they had at the library. Today I happened to check online and they had 4-6 so I went and picked them up. Great story, but I wish I remembered more about the first 3.
I just finished Sunset Song by Lewish Grassic Gibbon which I really liked. Next up is ‘Tree Disease Concepts’ which I think I’ll like less. Both are for classes though. I can’t wait until break when I can read for fun again
