One down and frankly most of us in the US canNOT wait until spring. So crawl back into your blanket forts for another month and READ!
It is looking like I will be reading The Lincoln Lawyer through at least Saturday, but it’s an enjoyable ride!
Khadaji was one of the earlier members of the SDMB, and he was well known as a kindly person who always had something encouraging to say, particularly in the self-improvement threads. He was also a voracious, omnivorous reader; and he started these monthly book threads. Sadly, he passed away in January 2013, and we decided to rename these monthly threads in his honour.
Started this morning on The Haunting of Maddy Clare by Simone St. James. It’s a great ghost story so far, though I know there will be a romance element as well. I really enjoyed the last book I read by this author and am planning to find them all.
Rapidly closing in on the end of The Stand, by Stephen King. I have another 112 pages to go in my 1325-page expanded 1990 edition. I am enjoying it thoroughly and will hate to see it end. But I’m seeing what people mean about King’s sloppy factual errors. (Note to King: Jim Morrison of The Doors, his father was in the Navy, not the Air Force. In fact, IIRC his father was at one time the youngest admiral in US naval history.)
I just finished The Year of the Woman by Jonathan Gash, which I liked but was bit of a slog for me to read. I guess it’s because the locale seems so very foreign to me. (Hong Kong just before the handover from the UK to China.) I really loved the heroine though–my heart just broke for that tired girl just trying to do the right thing.
Now I’m reading The Lonely Polygamist by Bradley Udall. (Both were books I picked up from a Goodwill in Florida when we were vacationing.) I’m 85 pages in and I like it very much, but I have NO idea where it’s going.
I started a Book Club on that other (long neck) board and we’ll be reading Rebecca in February. I still consider myself new to the reading world (it’s been a few years now though), but I finished The Bell Jar a few days ago and it still feels weird to not read for a half an hour or an hour every night…but it is kind of a nice break.
Finished The Haunting of Maddy Clare by Simone St. James, and picked up another book by the same author, An Inquiry Into Love and Death. This lady seems to write the same book over and over again (1920’s England, independent young female, handsome and well-built man, and last but not least ghosts). Fortunately it’s a book I quite like, although I could do without the romance and sex scenes.
Working on two speeches for April (for two different audiences) on Lincoln’s Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, and on Tolkien and Christianity. Big piles of books around the house at the moment on both topics; no standouts, as such.
I am reading and greatly enjoying Everything is Obvious: Once You Know the Answer by Duncan Watts. It addresses the fallacies of common sense and the ubiquity of circular reasoning. Everything is clearly explained, easy to understand, and fascinating because it rather transforms my world view.
But after reading a chunk of that book, I was in the mood to take a break and read something that wasn’t at all intellectual, so I started Confessions of a Hater by Caprice Crane. It’s basically Mean Girls in book form. One of my favorite lines from the book: “Every time you lie to your kid and tell her that some dumb thing she did is ‘great,’ you’re potentially creating the next Ke$ha.” (Apologies to Ke$ha fans, but as someone who can’t stand her music, this line made me laugh.)
Finished The Stand, by Stephen King. An excellent read, and King can be forgiven his little factual slips. I wonder if he’s ever considered a sequel.
I’d always thought of King as just a writer of popular ghost stories, but after 11/23/64 and now The Stand, I see that’s unfair. Definitely plan to read more King.
But first, next up is Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, by Mark Twain. I’m pretty sure I read this a long time ago, but my friend upcountry is a huge Twain fan and loaned me his copy.
I saw the film version of Misery way back then and liked that. I think our library has quite a lot of King, so I’ll dig through there.
Meanwhile, I tried to find the latest Michael Connelly, The Burning Room, this past weekend, but the bookstores here don’t have it yet. (That’s a main reason we went to Siam Paragon Saturday morning, the shopping center that got bombed Sunday night.)
I’ve always remembered one little bit from Firestarter. Someone is watching the girl from behind. She stands with one foot resting on the backs of its toes. I don’t remember King’s words (25 years later), but you could see her foot. You knew exactly how it looked.
Jesus Christ, Mr. K! Take a sweat bath or a month by the sea, play with a litter of Corgi puppies, read a Mary Oliver book, buy yourself a bunch of daffodils. You can afford them. This was the bleakest of all the novels of his I’ve read and it would have been devastating had it not been for the goofy malevolent ant creatures on the other side of eternity.
I’m going to need something light and optimistic next. I’m thinking Jeeves.
on tuesday one of my favourite writers new book arrived. i waited 'til today to start it as i have trouble stopping once i start. once again mr reilly did not disappoint. his “the great zoo of china” is brilliant!
fast action, the pages just fly by; as do the hours.
Started New York to Dallas by J D Robb, the mystery is good, well plotted and the Mary Sueness of the characters so fabulous. Seriously, I swear she’s parodying the mystery and romance genres.