I’ll want to hear what you think of March, AuntiePam. I enjoyed it a lot.
I’m a third of the way through Devil in the White City right now. That other one sounds good too.
Finished:
Dancing Bears ~ A book about werebears in Russia. Not very good at all. The characters are absolutely boring & action just too convenient.
Chang & Eng ~ A fictionalized book about their birth in Siam and their marriage. It was ok but the author seemed to take too much literary freedom and came across as trying too hard to make an interesting story.
The Divide ~ A hand-me-down that started promising with a body found in the mountains, then turned into a book about a divorce between two uninteresting characters and the effect it had on their uninteresting children.
Summerland ~ What a fun book this was! I know this was for young readers but I ate it up. It starts out on a small island in Puget Sound and then enters another world with werebeasts, sasquatches and giants.
Just started Mountains of the Mind this morning. So far I’m liking it.
Dat be he. I read I, Claudius the God a few years ago during a hurricane. Like I said, I love two-thousand-year-old gossip. Was there any man in Rome who had not slept with Augustus’ daughter? 
And I shall begin that today, Claudius the God, by Robert Graves. I thoroughly enjoyed reading his I, Claudius some years ago but never got around to reading the sequel. Then last month, I came across a copy in a used-book store in the town of Pai up in the North and bought it.
I finished My Thai Girl and I: How I Found a New Life in Thailand, by Andrew Hicks. An excellent read, and I shall enjoy telling him so. The book has received some local publicity lately, but I first learned Andrew had a new book out when he e-mailed me about it. Not me alone, but rather a mass e-mailing to everyone he knew. But he got right back to me when I responded. This book is autobiographical, but the title is a nod to his fictional novel, Thai Girl. A super-nice guy, Andrew is an ex-London lawyer who has taught law in Nigeria, Hong Kong and Singapore and is now retired in Thailand. He lives with his Thai wife upcountry in the province of Surin, near Cambodia, in the large house they’ve built. He keeps an interesting blog about their life together here.
I’ve been reading the first three of the Rabbi Small mysteries: Friday the Rabbi Slept Late, Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry, and Sunday the Rabbi Stayed Home. They’re short, quiet little murder mysteries written in the 1960’s, centered around a young Rabbi in a small town in New England. There’s a lot of information in them about the Jewish religion - in particular the rabbi has several conversations with people about the differences between Christianity and Judaism, and the role of a rabbi versus that of a priest or minister. They’re a light read.
Right now ( I tend to read several books at once, skipping between them ), I’m rereading Roger Zelazny’s Amber series, and Simon R. Green’s Nightside series. I just finished re-reading David Weber & Steve White’s Starfire collaborations, and picked up Iain M. Bank’s new Culture book Matter from the library.
I’m now reading Jules Verne’s Hector Servadac, better known as Off on a Comet. I’ve had this copy for years, and hadn’t read it until now. I’d read an abridged version several years ago, but I want the Real Thing.
I have dug out or purchased several Verne books recently – his obscure Meridiana, the recently translated version of his original manuscript of [b} The Golden Volcano** (without his son’s additions), the jusy-translated-for-the-first-time The Mighty Orinoco.
And that’s not counting the stack left from Father’s Day and the books MilliCal is pushing me to read (Series of Unfortunate Events, Goosebumps)
Finished The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wrobleski last night. Much of the story was mesmerizing. There were sections where I forgot I was reading. I was right there in Edgar’s skin, holding my breath. The writing was beautiful, not pretentious, and the relationships were believable.
But I was very disappointed with the ending. I thought it was a bit too contrived. I realize that Wrobleski was doing Hamlet and that the ending had to be tragic, but it was almost silly, how he got there. So the tragedy was diminished, and I felt cheated out of a good cry.
Is anyone else reading this? It’s #2 on Amazon’s best seller list. It’s definitely worth reading, IMHO.
I’ll finish March now.
Stop it.
Stop making odd books I’ve never heard of so freakingly inviting.
You are a cruel woman.
On a lighter note, I bought The Third Place
I am completely and totally digging it.
And the book store I bought it from is featured in this book. Horizon Books in Traverse City. A MUST stop when you go to Traverse City. It is an awesome, SDMB kinda bookstore.
Only an hour left in June so this may be the last relevant entry in this thread. I finished off Devil In the White City and Longitude (they were very good) and have now moved on to Enigma: The Battle for the Code by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore 2000. I hope it’s as good as it looks on the cover.