I started reading What’s wrogn with Dorfman? by John Blumenthal after my last post. It is extremely rare for me to put a book down without finishing it. This one is supposed to be hilariously funny, but I just find it annoyingly whiney and had to put it down unfinished. I’ll probably pick it up again in a bit and see if I can finish it perhaps after I’ve had a mood/attitude change.
I picked up Dreaming the Eagle by Manda Scott. It’s an historical fiction and first in a trilogy about the life of Boudica, a warrior queen of Britannia who fought the Romans in the first century A.D. I am enjoying it well enough in spite of the less than glowing reviews.
I, too, have a translation of Harry Potter (I have the first 4) but my Chinese is not good enough yet to read them–I have hopes for later.
Currently I’m reading–trying to read–some of the fables that Chinese kids get from their moms growing up. The ones I have are in “Ancient China Fable Stories” and I’m working on the one about the farmer who sees a rabbit run into a stump. It takes me about a week to read each 2-page story, so I’ll be on this particular book for some time.
Matrimonio por obligación by Shirley Rogers. I’m learning Spanish and am reading a lot of Harlequin Romances in Spanish. It’s really helping me increase my vocabulary and comprehension, but of course I’ve got a lot more learning to do.
I just finished motoring through the Southern Vampire Series by Charlaine Harris. I can’t say I actually liked them (actually thought they were light-hearted versions of Laurel K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series, which isn’t much a compliment since I consider LKH’s books to be my light reading). Anyway, a friend loaned them to me, and I read them.
Now I’m rereading Bernard Cornwell’s Stonehenge, which I enjoyed thorougly the first time through due to its interesting characters and great gritty pagan setting. I have also read and enjoyed Cornwell’s Arthur series, while I’m obsessing about series.
On the back burner for me are a history of Mexico and Joyce Carol Oates’ We Were the Mulvaneys; I haven’t read any of her work and am starting to feel daft for having missed it, but not as daft as I feel for knowing almost zilch about my neighboring countries.
Chefguy: How’s the Shackleton book? Is it tough reading? I’m pretty enthralled by the mission (i.e. I’ve watched a couple History channel shows on it, read some stuff online and seen the IMAX movie), but don’t know if my interest could keep me going through a whole book. I’d love to hear your opinion.
You certainly are not, auliya. While I haven’t read the book, I know both my husband and my mother-in-law are fans of it. In fact, the hardcover version of the book sat for a very long time on my mother-in-law’s Christmas list, until she finally–gleefully–received it last year.
The local NPR station had that for a book club read a few weeks ago. The reader was a bit dull, but that was good, for this book; it didn’t need any emphatic interpretation. Lotsa good stuff there.
My last four books (and I’d recommend all of them):
Dust by Arthur Slade, YA, SF, reminded me a bit of Something Wicked This Way Comes. 1930’s Saskatchewan, dust bowl, stranger comes to town promising to make it rain and children start disappearing.
lost boy lost girl by Peter Straub, not as complex as some of his other books, shorter, but engaging and creepy.
The Winter Queen by Boris Akunin – the first Erast Fandorin book, a mystery, set in Russia in the late 1800’s. I love Fandorin and hope to see the rest of these out in English soon. Akunin can NOT write a dull sentence.
Darker Than You Think by Jack Williamson, one of Gollancz’s Fantasy Masterworks series. This is my first shapechanger book. Parts were a bit dated but once the story got going, there was a lot to think about (the allure of evil), and the references to “swanky” apartments for $200 a month just passed by without much notice.
Currently reading Daughter of My People by James Kilgo, it’s about an interracial romance in the deep south in 1918. Two men, uncle and nephew, love the same woman. Kilgo has either done his homework or spent a lot of time in the piney woods.
I just started this one tonight. I had a lot of high hopes for this book, since one of my favorite genres is fictionalized biographies, but I just can’t seem to get in to it. Tell me it gets better after the first couple of chapters.
Wow, vanilla, I have never read a book in which I agree with everything the author says. How incredible that you have found two.
After seeing Left Hand of Dorkness utterly absorbed in The Count of Monte Cristo for two weeks, I picked it up this morning. Man! I can’t believe I gotten this far in my life without reading Dumas. It’s fabulous! Gripping and convoluted and, so far, tons of fun.
Hamish, I loved The Robber Bride. Atwood is one of my favorite authors, and this one really resonated with me. (Maybe because I, too, am a shrimpy little historian.)
I now own Song of Susannah, and in fact, I have had it since Friday and I can’t seem to find the time for it! I don’t want to have to read it in ten-minute-long increments. Seems I’ll just have to choose reading over sleeping at some point during this week!
I didn’t have high hopes as I had read less than glowing reviews. It was a slow start and does seem like maybe she worked to hard at it so it may not get much better for you. I plowed on as I was in a situation where it was that or nothing for a couple of hours, by then I wanted to know the rest of the story.
Right after Dreaming the Eagle I read another fictionalized biography, Beyond The Limit: The Dream of Sofya Kovalevskaya by Joan Spicci . It is about the first woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics. I liked it better than Dreaming the Eagle.
Tonight I finished A Bloodhound to Die For, by Virginia Lanier. It’s a light little intrigue novel about a dog trainer, easy read and nice change from the two prior.
I’m currently reading The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes for the first time ever and I’m gobbling as fast as I can around my other books, which are:
– First Spansih Reader: A Beginner’s Dual-Language Book, compiled by Angel Flores
I bought this for a quarter at the local thrift store. It’s filled with easy fables/stories in Spanish with the English translation on the opposite page. I’m slowly remembering what I learned in high school, though my grasp of idiom has flown completely.
– Domestic Life in England by Norah Lofts
Non-fiction which briefly covers domestic life in England (you don’t say! ) from the Norman Conquest in 1066 to about the 1970s. I’m reading it because I’ve decided to start writing Sherlock Holmes fanfiction and it’s going to be historically accurate while still agreeing with canon, dammit. sigh I need to find a sport that doesn’t involve spelling . . .
– The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
I’ve been picking this up and reading random sections of it since, erm, Easter, I think. I’ve read it so many times that I can just pick the story up from everywhere. I adore her portrayal of Lancelot. Consequently, I’m experiencing histrionic outrage at that dumb-dumb Jerry Bruckheimer, who is somehow contradicting the King Arthur legend even more than Ms. Bradley. Here’s hoping that movie’s better than the TNN bauble. :rolleyes:
And, Walloon, I’ve always read “Goblin’s Market” as Laura being impregnanted by some wandering gypsy-man and then Lizzie ferreting out an abortifacent (sp?) for her, but that’s just my crazy mind at work.
Lissa - I agree, it takes awhile to get into that one but stick with it - it really does get better. I just re-read it a month or so ago to be ready to read book two (Dreaming the Bull - on order from Amazon). I understand it is to be a 4 book series.
You might also try The Eagle and the Raven by Pauline Gedge. It is out of print, but I see that Amazon has some used copies. It is roughly the same story, but from a different point of view. I had read that first so I figured that was why I had a hard time getting into Dreaming the Eagle.
‘I’ve done my research and every word of it is going to be crammed down your throat until it reaches the point that if I say one more word about yet another bloody ritual your ass will explode.’
My ass exploded. It’s one of those books that life is too short to bother reading. There’s plenty of better stuff in that general genre around.
Can I recommend ‘Hound’ by George Green? It’s Irish legendary hero Cuculethan (you know who I mean!) seen through the eyes of a shipwrecked Germanic tribesman who was a charioteer in Rome. More action and characterisation, less unnecessary background.
I loved that book so much when I read it the first time twenty-five years ago that I went on what I called a post-apopalyptic book binge last winter. Lucifer’s Hammer, Earth Abides and Alas Babylon are all that comes to mind at the moment, there was proabably a few more.
Now I’m reading “Eyewitness to History” edited by John Carey, which is all first hand accounts of history starting with the plague in Athens in 430 B.C. by Thucydides. This is my third go round with this book. Excellent reading for someone with an interest in history.
My “downstairs” book right now is Flashman and the Redskins by George MacDonald Fraser. Funny, funny series of books.
Currently I’m in the middle of The Professor and the Madman, which is a really fascinating history of the Oxford English Dictionary.
I’ve also just started Christopher Moore’s Fluke, which I came across serendipitously while browsing the local book store - it seems all of Moore’s earlier books have just recently been republished (yay!) in new trade paper editions. I’d previously read and enjoyed immensely Practical Demonkeeping and Lamb, so I’m looking forward to catching up on the back-catalog: Coyote Blue, Bloodsucking Fiends, Island of the Sequined Love Nun, and The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove. For those interested, jinty’s summation of Moore’s style is spot-on - he’s laugh-out-loud funny.
I just finished the book on color that gobear recommended earlier in this thread, and enjoyed it very much, so thanks gobear.
Now I’m reading America’s women: 400 years of dolls, drudges, helpmates, and heroines, a long book filled with short sketches of various American women’s lives, along with explanations of conditions, especially how housework was done and so on. It’s a lot of fun, very interesting–and makes me tremendously grateful to live now.
) from the Norman Conquest in 1066 to about the 1970s. I’m reading it because I’ve decided to start writing Sherlock Holmes fanfiction and it’s going to be historically accurate while still agreeing with canon, dammit. sigh I need to find a sport that doesn’t involve spelling . . .