stacks of books piled by your bedside

[flying snow]

Re: stacks of books piled by your bedside

The Tipping Point

Empress by Shan Sa.

Haven't been reading much...too busy playing Civ 4 and Myst.

[flying snow]

Re: stacks of books piled by your bedside

Oh. If you guys want a good trilogy, check out Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials Trilogy. I absolutely loved these books. Really loved them.

[U'ilani]

Re: stacks of books piled by your bedside

I've got a bit too much piled up on my nightstand, but I read a review on these 2 books and had to put myself in the queue for them at my library: Theft: A Love Story by Peter Carey and Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. There are 60 to 80 holds on each of them--a good sign, I hope. The reviewer said that Water for Elephants had one of the happiest endings she's ever read. I'm looking forward to that; Lost Boys, my current book, is quite a downer.

[Pua'i Mana'o]

Re: stacks of books piled by your bedside

I just finished a WONDERFUL novel entitled "Ireland" by Frank Delaney. It was one of those books that I simply did not want to end!!!! Googling him, I found an npr link, and have decided that I must chuck up the bucks to hear him read the audio cd version. Aint gonna be no finer way of sitting in traffic I can guarrantee!

[sinjin]

Re: stacks of books piled by your bedside

I'm rereading Garrett Hongo's "Volcano: A Memoir of Hawai‘i" after many years. Mr. Hongo is firstly a poet and as such his memoir has some very beautiful prose. The textures he communicates transports one to that place, especially if one is familiar through personal experience.

[Adri]

Re: stacks of books piled by your bedside

I think I've read almost all of Diane Mott Davidson's books in the Goldilocks Catering series and now that I'm at the end, it strikes me that the main character is really kinda annoying. I guess not too annoying, since I did read almost the whole series, but still.

I'm going to read Japanese Eyes, American Heart (waiting for it from the library).

[U'ilani]

Re: stacks of books piled by your bedside

I just finished Paranoia by Joseph Finder. Excellent corporate espionage suspense thriller right up to the denouement--a real deus ex machina ending.

I finally got my turn at Teacher Man by Frank McCourt from my library. Following that, I will read the sequel to Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card.

[U'ilani]

Re: stacks of books piled by your bedside

What a disappointment Teacher Man was. His prose goes down easily enough; completely effortless. Wish that I had that talent. I also wish I admired the man as much as I do his prose. This memoir reveals him to be a highly insecure, directionless, and adulteress man who never seemed to get what life was all about. I was also surprised to find that he was not a great teacher--he seemed to want to just "get by," for the most part. Don't expect this one to be a feel-good teacher-hero story a la To Sir With Love.

[Linkmeister]

Re: stacks of books piled by your bedside

I bought Ron Suskind's "One Percent Doctrine" yesterday, helping push it to the top of the best-seller lists. I'd have started it, but the two newsweeklies arrived in the mail, too. On the "read current info first" principle, the book will have to wait till this afternoon/evening before I start in.

[U'ilani]

Re: stacks of books piled by your bedside

I finally got this book from my library (I was in the queue for it for months). It truly rates FIVE STARS! I plan to buy it as a Christmas gift for my in-laws. Here's my review of it:

Hungry Planet: What the World Eats by Peter Menzel

What does your family eat over the course of one week? How does that compare with another family half a world away from you? Photographer Peter Menzel visited 30 families in 24 countries and did a comparative photo-chronicle to identify this very thing. This is a large hardcover book that you might want to check out of the library rather than buy (it retails for $40). Most interesting is the family from Greenland whose weekly food intake includes musk ox, walrus, and arctic geese. Most sad is the family in a Darfur refugee camp whose weekly food expenditure is $1.23. And then there's the United States... Wow, what a contrast.

[U'ilani]

Re: stacks of books piled by your bedside

Just started Keeping Faith by Jodi Picoult last night. I've never read anything by her before and I'm not sure why. She's a very engaging, readable writer, and this looks to be quite an interesting story.

Friends have been urging me to read These is My Words [sic ] by Nancy Turner, and I managed to snag a copy from my library. This book was written in 1999 and is a YA novel, and yet it just recently seems to have hit the book club circuit. Not sure why. I won't be able to start it for at least another week. Recently-borrowed books and audiobooks are piling up.

[mamapuleta]

Re: stacks of books piled by your bedside

I kinda deal with "The Lord of the Rings" like they do the Golden Gate Bridge. The maintenance crew starts at one end painting, then when they get all the way across, take a quick breather and start again.

Ha ha, me too, except I alway run out of paint before the end, and the rest of the maintenance crew finished long time ago and went home already.

I'm re-reading "Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers." That always gets me started. First I laugh a lot, and loud too like a camel, fall outta my chair, get up, get something to eat, chase the grand babies around the house, put em in their car seats, then we all gotta drive to the library so I can get the other "Dwarf" books.

[U'ilani]

Re: stacks of books piled by your bedside

I just finished M. M. Kaye's Shadow of the Moon. It was a wonderful historical fiction novel full of adventure, danger and romance. I felt as if I just watched a 4-hour movie--M. M. Kaye's writing is so vivid, the characters and the settings so fully developed, and the storyline itself--based on historical fact: India's violent revolution against its British masters--so interesting.

The one downside is that the book is sooo long (614 pages if you read it--or 22 tapes if you listen to it on audiobook as I did).

[sinjin]

Re: stacks of books piled by your bedside

I'm into "A Thousand Miles In The Rob Roy Canoe" by J. MacGregor, M.A.

It chronicles a kayak trip on European river in the 1860's. Exactly my cup of tea.

"It is, as in life, that each care and hardship is a very Mentor of living. Our minds would only vegetate if all life were like a straight canal, and we in a boat being towed along it. The afflictions that agitate the soul are as its shallows, rocks, and whirlpools, and the bark that has not been tossed on billows knows not half the sweetness of the harbor of rest."

[Linkmeister]

Re: stacks of books piled by your bedside

If that's your cup of tea, try this one: The Strong Brown God about the exploration of the Niger River. It's on my shelves (and read!), and it's very good.