Books, books, books
 

What are you reading lately? What have you read this year? :)

I just finished The Road by Cormac McCarthy and it was terrifying, however, tender. Highly recommend that one, loved it to pieces. It's the kind of book you finish and keep thinking about days later. I'm about to start the fourth volume in The Diary of Virginia Woolf and The Help by Kathryn Stockett.

Oh goody, another book nerd! I got a Kindle for my birthday and it's been the bst thing for me cause I read a lot. Anyways, I do sort of miss holding a book, but I can turn the page with the press of a button and the screen even looks like a page.

Anyways, I'm reading on it right now Heart of the Matter by Emily Giffin (yeah, I enjoy chick-lit, but she seems to write ones that get you thinkinga bit too). I think I'm abou 78% through it and i's very good so far, but what happens in the end is really gonna bug me till I finish it.

Now, since you're a reader too, I'm thinking of reading a classic next, but should I go with War of the Worlds or Frankenstein?

It's been a few years since I've actually sat down & read a book, but here's the last three I read:

The Source by James Michener

On The Road by Jack Kerouac

which inspired me to read: Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac

OOOPS! I lied, I momentarily forgot that I read both Eric Clapton's & Patti Boyd's autobiographies since I've read those three. Ok, so those previous three were the last FICTION books I read.

Definitely a book nerd myself ;) I've heard of Emily Giffin but haven't read her yet. I vote for Frankenstein! Mary Shelly was extraordinary. Not that War of the Worlds wasn't great too. Barnes and Noble often have classics at the front of the store dirt cheap (and in lovely hardcover!) However, I can totally see the excitement of the text on a Kindle.

Frankenstein! That's one of my all-time favorite novels.

I'm currently rereading Anita Diamant's The Red Tent but after that, I'm going to start The Fountainhead. My favorite books of all time:The Great Gatsby [/U][/U](and anything else Fitzgerald ever touched), White Oleander by Janet Fitch and, best of all, The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje. I love his novel Anil's Ghost as well.

I loved On The Road. How was Dharma Bums? I've never read that!

Speaking of biographies, if anybody is a fan of Julie Andrews, read her memoir A Home. She talks about WWII and her childhood in the theater and all that loveliness, so good.

Too creepy. I am also in love with The English Patient, White Oleander, and The Great Gatsby. Those are some of my favorite books ever. Janet Fitch is so poetic. Have you read her other novel, Paint it Black? It's great if you get the chance! I just read The English Patient this year and basically fell in love with every word. Haven't read Anil's Ghost yet but it's on my list.

The Red Tent, I've heard good things. Loved The Fountainhead but it's quite a heavy read. Admittedly, I love Ayn Rand but I enjoy her 'thinner' fiction, lol.

I'm being my usual and flaky self, so I have a couple on the go at the moment.

* The Idiot -Fyodor Dostoevsky
* My Life And Adventures In Fleetwood Mac - Mick Fleetwood
* The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Nighttime (rereading for the hundredth time)
* Ariel - Sylvia Plath

Forgot to put in Dani's comment, but Frankenstein it is! I used to read the B&N brand classics all the time (had Dracula, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Pride and Prejudice, etc.) and they were dirt cheap too.

Yeah, the Kindle's text, aside from reading like a page, can also be zoomed in too. Y'see, I'm very nearsighted and, while glasses and contacts correct it fine, I still have trouble reading small print (no mass market paperbacks or small-faced watches for me lol). So, the Kindle allows me to zoom (I only do it a bit) so i could read the print more easily, and on top of it all, it's the reason why I got my grandma wanting one.

It's similar to On The Road...not quite as easy of a read...the "flow of consciousness" is a little more disjointed than in On The Road

Of his works, I've also read The Subterranians & Desolation Angels both of which were very good...but very tough to get through...had to read each page a couple of times to get the gist of what he was describing. The only book of his I couldn't finish (or even get past chapter 2) was Visions Of Cody.

I read The Help recently. I found it enjoyable; a few parts were a little too saccharine, but there were also some genuinely moving passages. The Road was fantastic....beautifully hopeful and hopeless.

I'm currently reading The English Teacher by Lily King. It's okay so far.

As far as all-time favorites go, I like many of the ones mentioned here already. (Such good taste we have!) The Great Gatsby is easily in my top five. I really, really like Tender is the Night too.

I LOVE TENDER IS THE NIGHT.


And Kayli, I've been meaning to check out Paint It Black. I actually have a tattoo on my ribcage of a quote from The English Patient in my own handwriting :)

I just reread Mick's book for the second time. Love it. And anything Sylvia Plath, especially all of Ariel, is perfect. You have good taste! ;)

So cool you've read so much of his work! I need more Kerouk in my life.

Yeah, I fell in love with the dialogue in The Road, that hopelessness mixed with that kind of emotion was brilliant. Ohhh I love Tender is the Night! I also recommend Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and Damned, similar to Gatsby in context but great on its own. At least once.

Are you serious? That is so awesome! I'm jealous and I haven't seen it. If it's not too much trouble, I'd love to see a picture! What passage? What quote? Love this, lol.

Interesting about the Kindle. I didn't know you could zoom in and zoom out and so forth (I mean, that makes sense but I didn't know it, lol). I'm far-sighted, so I know the struggle, however, at a distance :laugh: And by distance I mean six feet away!

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-..._2270739_n.jpg


:]

Before I left California, I had a really good friend that owns a book store in Palo Alto. Bless his sweet large heart, he loaded me up with SO many books. Which is REALLY great...until you go to move them. LMAO. OMFG, books are heavy! Doesnt help that I have a LOT of Hollywood hardbound books.
I'm a pretty diverse reader that loves to read, but I read anything and everything. Lately i've gone to the silly side and am devouring up (hahahah) Zombie fiction. I read a lot of heavy metaphysical stuff. For realism, I like science & biography's. For fun, I like vintage erotica, and sci-fi/horror. I met one of my favorite authors a few times, Kat Richardson. For fans of X-Files, she does that kind of sublime paranormal a LOT of justice. Check her out...support her <3
For classics, I found I liked Camu, Poe and Huxley.

Anita, what book store? I live 20 minutes from Palo Alto and spend a LOT of time there.

Just be thankful that anything a foot away from you isn't a blurry mess :laugh:

Tender is the Night is my all-time favorite novel.

I write a bit about its influence on my film/culture criticism in my upcoming book The Community of Desire . . . jus' sayin'


I just finished:
Without Roots

And I just started--and am blown away by:
The Origins of Totalitarianism

Totally diggin' all the Cormac McCarthy love up in this thread. McCarthy is one of my all-time favorite writers. The Road is stunning, but as stunning as it is, it's not even his best work (I vote for Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West on that one).

It IS, however, his most accessible, I think. I cracked up when Oprah picked The Road for her book club, because it's so good, I knew people would read it and then want to check out other McCarthy books. Oprah has a wide reach and it's a good thing to bring McCarthy into the spotlight more, but I can just envision some random mild-mannered housewife out there picking up Child of God and going all head a'splodey.

I'm currently re-reading Connie Willis' Dooms Day Book, one of my all-time fav books. Highly recommended.

Blood Meridian is excellent...and you're right, probably his greatest achievement.

Do you think The Road was his last work?

I revisited Ariel not that long ago. It was the edition edited by her daughter and featured Plath's original selections and sequencing. LOVE her.

I picked up her collected journals recently, but haven't started it. Might be something I get into during the winter.

I love books and people who read/write them. I am reading Gone with the Wind - I have lost track of how many times I have read it - and Cold Mountain.

I just finished a book from the Charlie Parker series called the Lovers - not bad - I like John Connolly's writing a lot - his creepy short stories are great - loved Nocturnes. - love short stories

Ah, you've read it? Wonderful! I find that most people that I run across that have read McCarthy have only read The Road. Which is fine - it's the most popular right now, due to all that Oprah attention, and at least they've read SOMETHING he's written. Everyone should experience McCarthy at least once.

But man...Blood Meridian. That book is pure poetry - grotesque and gorgeous - definitely McCarthy at his best, in my opinion, and definitely not something anyone other than McCarthy could have pulled off so beautifully. I can't count how many times I've read it now.

I hear they are making a movie, which concerns me greatly. I don't think the film adaptation of The Road came even close to capturing the book, and with The Road being so much more accessible than Blood Meridian is, I just don't think a film is a good idea. For me, McCarthy's brilliance is partly story, but mostly language - the WAY he tells that story. "Your heart's desire is to be told some mystery. The mystery is that there is no mystery."

But yeah - I honestly hope it is not his last book, because I hate the idea of never getting to read something new from him again. But if it is, then I'd have it "just so and no different," like the man in The Road would, because I consider each of his books to be a gift and I'm lucky I got to read what I did.

/end total fangirl :laugh:

This was my first McCarthy read. I have no doubt I will love his other books. I might take up your recommendation and have Blood Meridian be my next McCarthy :)

You'll love her journals!

I love your tattoo! I remember that line in the book very well (the simplicity of it is so lovely)! How awesome :thumbsup: Thanks for sharing!

That book was so depressing, although the premise was great. Have you read To Say Nothing of the Dog? Same time-traveling set-up, but it's the 19th century instead. It's very funny.

@daniellaaarisen

Know Knew Books on California Ave. (415 S California ave)
Bill is the owner, and he's a wild one. Go visit...and beware. lol. So kidding. There isn't a single thing in the universe to NOT love about that guy!

Awesome! Let me know what you think. But be aware that it can get gruesome.

I haven't read that one, but I will keep an eye out for it. Why depressing, though? It's always been one of my favorites. It's sad, for sure, but I think Willis handled the sadness really well.

I guess I'm just relating the sadness of the story with depression. I certainly wasn't happy after I finished reading it, although it was a good read. I took a class on the history of disease as a grad student, so I think I've spent too much time with the Black Death.

Oh, I see. I would love to take a class like that - what was your degree in, that you would have that class, if you don't mind my asking?

I always cry much of my way through the last quarter of the book, but I also marvel at the way the experience made history real for Kivrin, and by extension, the reader. At the beginning, before she's sent through, she's all about observing quaint customs and crop rotations and whatnot, like she's going to look at an ant farm and make note of where the ants go instead of living with actual people she might actually come to care about.

I think, for a lot of people, things like the Black Death are just ideas - really remote. We can read scary statistics and say, "Wow, that must have been horrifying," but it happened so long ago, we don't have a frame of reference for really empathizing with the actual people that lived it. And we see through Kivrin's initial experiences that the ideas everyone had about what it was going to be like were really wrong. The concept fascinates me, so even though the book makes me cry, I guess I look at it differently?

Currently on my toilet or on my nightstand are Jacques Barzun & Wendell Hertig Taylor's "Catalogue of Crime," Bernard De Voto's "The Western Paradox," Miss Manners' "Common Courtesy," & the orchestral score of Vaughan Williams's Sea Symphony (sounds weird, but I read music quite well & I often read scores for fun).

This fall, I plan on tackling Edmund Wilson's book on the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Currently reading "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin."
It's actually kind of interesting, believe it or not! :)

I'm also reading "Shattered" by Dean Koontz - this is from 1973, well before he got famous; and I'm re-reading "Treasure Island," which is a lot of fun to "revisit." :D

I've been meaning to read that; I like Science Fiction a lot. :)

That's not weird. If anything, that is really cool you can read music like that. (And way over my head ;))

I love to read history and Ben Franklin is one of my favorite figures!

I'm not huge into Dean Koontz but once I read a novel of his called "The Strangers", such an intense, good read if you ever get the chance. Revisiting "Treasure Island" sounds fun, love that one :)

It was a history class. I specialized in British and Irish history during the Early Modern Period (1485-1714), although this class spanned from ancient times to modern. For this class my own research centered on the plague's last major appearance in London in 1665(of course I also read quite a bit about the original 14th century appearance of the Black Death). 1666 is the great fire which destroyed most of the thatched roof,wooden, etc. type buildings, thus the fleas and rats lost their homes and ability to spread the plague to humans. New construction used better materials less conducive to rats and the disease carrying fleas living in the home.

Back on topic I just finished reading The Red Queen by Philippa Gregory. Historical fiction about Margaret Beaufort (Henry VII's mother). I would not recommend it. The author had very little to go on to make Margaret a compelling figure. Next book is Adam Bede by George Eliot. I've read Middlemarch, the Mill on the Floss, and Daniel Deronda. I love her novels.

I just read a book called The Girls: A Novel by Lori Lansens. Very good (fictional) story about conjoined twins. I haven't been reading as much as I used to, and I read that book almost in one sitting (at the beach). thoroughly enjoyed it.:thumbsup:

Just started "Empire of Dreams". It's a biography of movie director Cecil B. DeMille and the beginnings of the movie industry. DeMille made the epics "Ben Hur" and "Ten Commandments".

I'm reading Val McDermind Fever Of The Bone. Great Tartan noir and very easy, yet dark, reading.

Do it! It's excellent.

I read that many moons ago - I enjoyed it, too.

I'm re-reading Life of Pi by Yann Martel now because I just found it in a box the other day. I love this book.