Golden Oldies out there...what books are you reading right now?

[daveb]

3 hours ago, arielle18 said:

Powell's. I definitely recommend it to anyone visiting Portland.

Or living there.

[Tanwen]

Half way through my latest Kathy Reich book - differences between the books and 'Bones' but very readable  

[Guest Jetsun Milarepa]

I'm reading the 'Bone Collection' by Kathy Reichs....scary bedtime reading....

[Guest Jetsun Milarepa]

PS, Powells sounds like my kind of paradise....

[daveb]

Finished the Neil deGrasse Tyson book and now I'm reading The Good, the Bad and the Smug, by Tom Holt. He's British author who writes humourous fantasy.

[Tja]

I found the 3 books of Thomas Covenant: The Unbeliever, by Stephen R Donaldson, in hardcover, at an antique mall. So, re-reading those.

[Guest Jetsun Milarepa]

Finished with the Kathy Reichs book, which was really engrossing, now on to one I'm so pleased to have found!

I used to work with a neurosurgeon called Henry Marsh, firstly at Atkinson Morley Hospital, then at St. George's for a while when Atkinson Morley closed down. Now I find he has written two great books, so I'm reading 'First do no harm' then the next will be 'Admissions'....he is a very engaging writer and I feel drawn into his story right away. He grabs a reader by immediately describing the medicine kit he keeps handy for suicide in case he gets a dementia diagnosis....now, that would put some readers off, but me...I was right in there!

[Greenbeard]

Fifth book of the summer for me, and - at last! - the first one I don't have any major gripes with...

 

Alice and the Fly by James Rice

If you've ever, at any time, considered yourself an outsider at variance with 'the crowd', perhaps because of mental health difficulties, then you might like to give this book a go. Written, for the most part, in the form of a series of diary entries over a period of about eight weeks, it's the story of a rather obsessive, deeply introverted and hopelessly lovelorn (though, to my mind, pretty asexual) teenage boy, ostracised (and worse) by his peers and virtually ignored by his self-absorbed parents, who starts to lose his grip on reality and begins to slide towards what will prove to be a fateful (i.e. life-changing) psychotic episode. ...Sounds grim, I know, and it is, ultimately, a dark and tragic tale, but the central character's various idiosyncrasies and his (unintentionally) wry - and pointed - commentary on the 'normality' that surrounds him peppers the book with a lighter tone reminiscent of Mark Haddon's novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. I highly recommend it: it'll give you food for thought aplenty, I think. It's one of those books that I just know is going to haunt me for quite some time to come!    

[Decaf]

I'm rereading 'The Shock of the Fall' by Nathan Filer.
It's a novel which deals with themes of schizophrenia and family dysfunction.
Also, I'm reading some collected works by Maya Angelou.

[InariYana]

"Woman - an intimate geography" by Natalie Angier. It's a very detailed tour all over the female body, with maybe a bit too much poetic & dramatic language  Very informative though.  

[Debris]

I love books. I write, too, and have only recently realised that all my stories stay away from any sexual shenanigans. Sometimes it's like books/films/tv shove in a sex scene (or several) just to get the ratings and have nothing to do with plot or character development. Dull. Dull. Dull.

 

I'm currently reading Elizabeth is Missing, which I nearly discarded until the flashbacks began.

 

Fave authors are Kate Atkinson, Sarah Waters, Maggie O'Farrell...

 

Chandrakirti - presumably you've read Manda Scott's Boudicca books?

 

I'm so happy this discussion exists!

[birdybudge]

I'm reading Gently By the Shore by Alan Hunter, mainly because it's a summery murder-mystery set by the seaside, and I wanted something "crime-y" and fun to read.  Gosh, though, it isn't very well written.  This is the second book in a series of 46!  I hope the writing improved over the years, otherwise how on earth...?   Agatha Christie would eat this guy for breakfast.

[Guest Jetsun Milarepa]

Well I've just eaten through both books by Henry Marsh and now eyeing up another, this time Val McDermid again, but still deciding which to go for.

[Tja]

The Second Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant.

[Mocha Jo]

I just got my 20th anniversary Harry Potter first book in my Ravenclaw colors, and I have been re-reading that. I haven't actually read the books in ages- I think I am going to go through the whole series again. The movies are a nice shorthand for the story, but the books are so much better.

[mindlife]

The Puritans in the New World.  An anthology of Puritan literature from New England compiled by David D. Hall.

Another edition of Edmund Burke, "Vindication of Natural Society," An Enquiry into Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful.

Penguin edition, great bibliography and introduction.

[Debris]

I'm on my first ever Kathy Reichs book (Speaking in Bones), athough I've seen some of Bones tv - did she script write it?

Very readable but different to what I expected style wise. Don't know why.

(I hope you all appreciate my in depth contribution to this book reading discussion)

[Guest Jetsun Milarepa]

Yes, it's very different to the TV show, I watched the shows first and was surprised at her writing style. I guess she has at least some input into the scripts as she appears to be a co-producer of the show along with David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel.

[Green Mandala]

On 6/29/2017 at 3:10 PM, Mocha Jo said:

I just got my 20th anniversary Harry Potter first book in my Ravenclaw colors, and I have been re-reading that. I haven't actually read the books in ages- I think I am going to go through the whole series again. The movies are a nice shorthand for the story, but the books are so much better.

I just re-read the whole series earlier this year. The books are so much better. I love that you got the book in Ravenclaw colors. Those it'd be my colors too.

[Green Mandala]

Right now, I'm reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. So love his Christmas Carol. I have some other books that I am double-dipping into but at the moment, my focus is on Dickens. Pip, oh, Pip.

[Guest Jetsun Milarepa]

Dickens , oh Dickens! Great stuff, never dates. People will be reading his works for another few centuries.

[Greenbeard]

Since my last post here, I've read two books...

 

What Lies Within - Tom Vowler

A thoughtful, cleverly constructed psychodrama come psychological thriller, about a young, idealistic school teacher who, after being raped by one of her male pupils and dismissed from her job, decides to move on and build her life anew. ...It's a novel about... well, starting again, obviously; but more than that: it's about the secrets that exist within families. And it explores the different ways that men - men in general - regard and relate to women sexually, which for someone like me (acarnal and sex-repulsed) makes for a sometimes perplexing and occasionally wince-inducing read. I'm glad I read it, though: it confirms what I've long-suspected about heterosexual males who have partners: that they look upon sex as something that is due to them as of right, as part of 'the deal': as something their partners are obliged to participate in whether they feel like it or not. ...It's a good book, a real page-turner; let down just a little bit, in my opinion, by the way the thriller element of the story is resolved.

 

The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi - Mark Hodder

It's 1859, and history has veered wildly off course: Queen Victoria is dead, and the Hanoverian George V rules over a British Empire that is technologically far more advanced than it really ought to be. Against this backdrop, the celebrated explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton, only recently knighted for locating the source of the River Nile, is now appointed 'King's Agent' and tasked not only with investigating the abductions of several of the Empires most esteemed servants (including Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Florence Nightingale) but with finding out why the government's other-worldly spirit guide, the wise and mysterious Abdu El Yezdi, has - all of a sudden - ended his communications and fallen silent. ...Wow! Part Holmesian detective story, part 007-style action-thriller (without the sex), part Gothic horror tale, and part philosophical treatise on the nature of time and reality, the fourth installment of the mind-scrambling 'Burton & Swinburne' steampunk sci-fi series is my kind of book! Love it, love it, love it! And, unlike the James Blaylock novel Homunculus I made mention of on the previous page, the light-and-shade balance, for me, is absolutely spot-on: a cast of gloriously eccentric characters juxtaposed against some genuine tragedy and high drama.   

[Debris]

"What lies within" sounds like a really tough read.

I watched Nocturnal Animals the other day and was interested to see that it was based on a novel from the 1990s, which I'm tempted to read to see how different it is/how it all works in the written word but I'm not sure I want to read things if they're too graphic. I "prefer" (I don't really prefer as in like, but hopefully you know what I mean) suggestion rather than gratuity - have I written that right?

[Gentle Giant]

I just finished The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner. The story was a bit on the boring side as most of the time was spent with the group traveling and not enough interesting things going on. I didn't think the ending was very good either.

 

Next up is The Accidental Hero by Matt Myklusch. I hope this will be a lot better story.

[Guest Jetsun Milarepa]

Has The Accidental Hero been made into a film @Gentle Giant? It sounds familiar in a visual way.

[Gentle Giant]

Hmm, I didn't know it was a movie so I did a quick look. I don't think this book is related to the movie with the same name. This book is about a kid named Jack Blank. The movie is also just called Hero and has Dustin Hoffman in it. I remember seeing previews for that movie and thinking I'd like to see it. I should put it on my movies to watch list.

[Guest Jetsun Milarepa]

Oh, that's good, at least it's another film you can tick off in tandem with reading the unrelated story. I think I got it mixed up with the accidental tourist!

[Green Mandala]

On 7/18/2017 at 4:35 AM, Greenbeard said:

The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi - Mark Hodder

This sounds interesting. I might have to check it out.

[teatree]

I just heard that they are making "A Wrinkle in Time" into a movie. No, no, no!!!! I loved that book when I was a kid and just cannot bear to see it as a movie. 

[EricaB]

Always fun to see what other people are reading! I'm getting ready to go to Alaska in about a month, so I'm currently reading "Two From the Far North" by Margaret Murie. But I've also been having fun reading the Tiffany Aching books in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series - I've just got one more to go, "The Shepherd's Crown."