My book club read that a few years back, and we all enjoyed it. The movie is disappointing, though, I thought.
I haven’t seen the movie, so I’m glad to hear I’m not missing much!
Here’s a thread on PBS’s very idiosyncratic The Great American Read list of 100 novels: https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=855932
Obviously they weren’t going for quality writing…
It’s a poll, not a curated list. Which makes me kind of wonder at all the classics on the list, actually :).
True.
Well I can’t be tto much of a snob, considering all my reading lately has been romances and urban fantasy. 
I am currently trying to slog my way through The Bell Curve, but I don’t like reading non-fiction, and while I am a very able reader, I don’t care for all the jargon.
Give me a story, with a beginning, middle, and end.
The local public library is a horrible place, and I have literally read every book they have that I want to (They haven’t bought a book that I want in months). Now I must survive on ebooks and interlibrary loan. So I just got Dead Man’s Island by Carolyn Hart. I gave up on the Death on Demand series because I got tired of the formulaic writing, and I am hoping this series is better.
My local library welcomes suggestions from the public as to books to acquire. (They just have to have been published at least a year ago). Have you tried doing that?
The state electronic library accepts requests for ebooks. Not the local library. Mostly, they just get new Amish romances. Blecch.
The local library built a new building 5 years ago. They spent all kinds of money on the building, but not on books. It is the worst I have seen, and I have been all over the world. All English language books are in one section (fiction books are 813 in the Dewey Decimal System), the sign for large print books has hand written lettering ONE INCH HIGH, and the entire English language collection takes up less than one-fourth of the building. Someone decided to burn Scentsy in there for years. I got them to stop because I couldn’t breathe whenever I walked in, but the odor has permeated everything in the place, so I can’t sit and read there. Yet another reason we want to move away from here.
I have a list of requests to the state going back 3 years. I have slowly been working my way through those as ILL requests, because I’m pretty sure that after 3 years, the state won’t get those books.
I don’t know it qualifies as nonfiction.
(I know, I know. I’ll hush now.)
Finished The Executioner’s Song, by Norman Mailer. His opus about the crimes and execution of Gary Gilmore, who in January 1977, and at his own insistence, became the first person executed in the US after a 10-year moratorium. It’s routinely hailed as Mailer’s best work. It won a Pulitzer. About 1000 pages long, it’s divided almost evenly into two halves – background, the two murders and the trial for the second one (they never tried him for the first one)l; then the media circus and the execution. Very good but I’m glad I’m done with it. Man, what a bunch of white-trash people.
Have started The Last Aloha, an award-winning first novel by Gaellen Quinn. Historical fiction set in late-19th-century Hawaii. Good so far.
I’m about 20% of the way into Mishell Baker’s Borderline, and last night I realized that – initially, at least – it’s another story about a woman who is broken (mentally and/or physically) and gets taken to live in a secret house with other “broken” people where she will eventually get better. The characters and plots are, of course, very different, but it shares this odd underlying similarity with Dietland.
Finished Catherine Asaro’s Diamond Star, which I enjoyed.
Started That Day the Rabbi Left Town: A Rabbi Small Mystery, by Harry Kemelman
I’d never heard of Dietland before, but a bit of googling makes it sound pretty good. Worth reading?
I finished rereading Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope. In the past year I watched the TV series “The Barchester Chronicles” and “Doctor Thorne” so I thought I might as well remind myself what comes next. I don’t think I’ll bother rereading The Small House at Allington though; I thought it dragged on too long for my tastes.
I talk about it in post #14. I found it well-written and compelling, but with an ultimately “meh” message. The TV show has started, and the first two episodes also were more compelling than I expected – especially after having just finished the book. YMMV. 
:smack: You sure did talk about it earlier. I read that but managed not to remember the name or make the connection.
I just finished A War in Crimson Embers. A book that includes the phrases “bloody snot rocket” and “greasy meat juice” in back-to-back paragraphs about an epic battle sequence–well, you’re either gonna love it or hate it, that’s for sure. I loved it in its nasty glory; it’s a fitting end to a very, very fun trilogy.
I’m about two-thirds through Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising and am enjoying it, despite the occasionally clunky dialogue. Clancy was always better at weapons systems than human beings.
Over the weekend I read Marc Andreyko, Patric Reynolds and Dave Stewart’s graphic novel Let Me In: Crossroads. It’s a prequel to the movie Let Me In, about a little-girl-appearing vampire and her human familiar (who passes for her dad) in a small Indiana town; they get caught up in the murderous plans of a local real-estate guy. It was meh.
Currently reading Into the Drowning Deep, a book about murderous science-fiction mermaids and the scientists who are eaten by them.
Goddamn this book takes itself seriously. How do you take this premise seriously? I mean, it’s a fine if conventionally-written thriller, is passing the time, but cannibal mermaids? And you’re gonna be all grimface about it?
I’ve nearly finished The Crippled God, the last book of Stephen Erikson’s Malazan series. I don’t know what to say about this sprawling epic, except that it’s unlike anything I’ve ever read. The plot doesn’t follow any conventional path–the whole point are the characters, who range from the banal to the sublime.