September 09 Books

[tbb113]

I finished By Chance by Martin Corrick and enjoyed it Not quite book club worthy but does leave you with some things to think about.

Next up is The Late, Lamented Molly Marx by Sally Koslow

[claire909]

Tell us about it more

[TieKitty]

I'm reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. It took me a few chapters to get into it, but I'm glad I was patient. Now I can't put it down and I'm looking forward to reading his new book, The Girl Who Played With Fire.

What's interesting is that he died in 2004, shortly after delivering the manuscripts for these two books. I think there is a third novel in the series still to be released. They were translated from Swedish to English by someone else.

[Terrytx]

I discovered a "new to me" author- Allan Folsom and I am going back and reading some of his old books. Right now it's The Day After Tomorrow.

[cocoa'smom]

Originally Posted by tbb113

Next up is The Late, Lamented Molly Marx by Sally Koslow

I just finished this and enjoyed it. Cute book.

[blazedog]

I've had great luck in the past week or so. I'm going to cheat by supplying reviews from other sources

Admisson - jean Hanff Korelitz. The author is married to a Princeton professor and was a part time reader for the admissions department. It veers a tad into soap opera at the end but it's interesting territory and the author is a smart perceptive woman -- it's high quality easy reading.

Olive Kitteredge - Elizabeth Strout --This reminded me of the Mr. & Mrs. Bridge books for its exploration of ordinary people in ordinary situations.

review of Oliver Kitteredge is from Booklist.

“Hell. We’re always alone. Born alone. Die alone,” says Olive Kitteridge, redoubtable seventh-grade math teacher in Crosby, Maine. Anyone who gets in Olive’s way had better watch out, for she crashes unapologetically through life like an emotional storm trooper. She forces her husband, Henry, the town pharmacist, into tactical retreat; and she drives her beloved son, Christopher, across the country and into therapy. But appalling though Olive can be, Strout manages to make her deeply human and even sympathetic, as are all of the characters in this “novel in stories.” Covering a period of 30-odd years, most of the stories (several of which were previously published in the New Yorker and other magazines) feature Olive as their focus, but in some she is bit player or even a footnote while other characters take center stage to sort through their own fears and insecurities. Though loneliness and loss haunt these pages, Strout also supplies gentle humor and a nourishing dose of hope. People are sustained by the rhythms of ordinary life and the natural wonders of coastal Maine, and even Olive is sometimes caught off guard by life’s baffling beauty.

[LakeMartinGal]

My current book-club book is Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. Here's the Amazon review. So, far, I'm not enthralled, but I'm not far into it, yet.

The Cultural Revolution of Chairman Mao Zedong altered Chinese history in the 1960s and '70s, forcibly sending hundreds of thousands of Chinese intellectuals to peasant villages for "re-education." This moving, often wrenching short novel by a writer who was himself re-educated in the '70s tells how two young men weather years of banishment, emphasizing the power of literature to free the mind. Sijie's unnamed 17-year-old protagonist and his best friend, Luo, are bourgeois doctors' sons, and so condemned to serve four years in a remote mountain village, carrying pails of excrement daily up a hill. Only their ingenuity helps them to survive. The two friends are good at storytelling, and the village headman commands them to put on "oral cinema shows" for the villagers, reciting the plots and dialogue of movies. When another city boy leaves the mountains, the friends steal a suitcase full of forbidden books he has been hiding, knowing he will be afraid to call the authorities. Enchanted by the prose of a host of European writers, they dare to tell the story of The Count of Monte Cristo to the village tailor and to read Balzac to his shy and beautiful young daughter. Luo, who adores the Little Seamstress, dreams of transforming her from a simple country girl into a sophisticated lover with his foreign tales. He succeeds beyond his expectations, but the result is not what he might have hoped for, and leads to an unexpected, droll and poignant conclusion. The warmth and humor of Sijie's prose and the clarity of Rilke's translation distinguish this slim first novel, a wonderfully human tale. (Sept. 17)Forecast: Sijie's debut was a best-seller and prize winner in France in 2000, and rights have been sold in 19 countries; it is also scheduled to be made into a film. Its charm translates admirably strong sales can be expected on this side of the Atlantic.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

[jtoepfert100]

I picked up Adam Langer's Duke Ellington Boulevard about a month ago randomly and absolutely loved it. I'm now almost finished with his first novel, Crossing California and I like it just as much. One of the best authors I've come across in awhile.

[tbb113]

Originally Posted by claire909

Tell us about it more

I'm horrible at summaries. This is from Publisher's Weekly
Corrick follows his promising debut (The Navigation Log) with another intricate novel where readers must work to detect the story within a sparse yet elegant narrative. This time the setting is contemporary England, the protagonist a man whose life passes quietly until an extraordinary event strikes. James Watson Bolsover is first seen seated on a dock, waiting for a ferry. Raised by parents who leave him their house and little else, Bolsover, at age 20, finds his home and income as a technical writer enough to attract a delicate 19-year-old wife, Katherine. Bolsover tries to work out what love and life are about as he puzzles over his bride's budding passion. After 16 years, he becomes a widower, adding grief to the emotions he experiences without understanding. An accident in middle age then propels him into the nightmare that puts him on the dock. Corrick proves as meticulous as Bolsover at crafting a story that will send readers racing back to reread so they can retrace Bolsover's steps and savor Corrick's language

[claire909]

Originally Posted by tbb113

I'm horrible at summaries. This is from Publisher's Weekly
Corrick follows his promising debut (The Navigation Log) with another intricate novel where readers must work to detect the story within a sparse yet elegant narrative. This time the setting is contemporary England, the protagonist a man whose life passes quietly until an extraordinary event strikes. James Watson Bolsover is first seen seated on a dock, waiting for a ferry. Raised by parents who leave him their house and little else, Bolsover, at age 20, finds his home and income as a technical writer enough to attract a delicate 19-year-old wife, Katherine. Bolsover tries to work out what love and life are about as he puzzles over his bride's budding passion. After 16 years, he becomes a widower, adding grief to the emotions he experiences without understanding. An accident in middle age then propels him into the nightmare that puts him on the dock. Corrick proves as meticulous as Bolsover at crafting a story that will send readers racing back to reread so they can retrace Bolsover's steps and savor Corrick's language

Thanx a lot for very very nice summary . I have understood everything.

[sneezles]

Originally Posted by TieKitty

I'm reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. It took me a few chapters to get into it, but I'm glad I was patient. Now I can't put it down and I'm looking forward to reading his new book, The Girl Who Played With Fire.

What's interesting is that he died in 2004, shortly after delivering the manuscripts for these two books. I think there is a third novel in the series still to be released. They were translated from Swedish to English by someone else.

I just finished The Girl Who Played With Fire and I found it better than the first both in characters and translation (there were some phrases in Tattoo I found annoying but chalked it up to translation. I am anxiously awaiting the third and I am sad that he died as he was a great writer.

[NancyR]

Originally Posted by Terrytx

I discovered a "new to me" author- Allan Folsom and I am going back and reading some of his old books. Right now it's The Day After Tomorrow.

Thanks for the tip. I just read the summaries and reviews on amazon for this author and he is definitely on my TBR list.

[Canice]

I finished the two wildly different titles I noted last month:
Desperate Passage, an outstanding recent recounting of the Donner Party, and Andy Raskin's The Raman King and I -- both highly recommended, if not for parallel reading!

The subtitle of Raskin's book is "How the inventor of instant noodles fixed my love life" and it's actually true...sort of. The title makes it sound frivolous, though, and it's not at all - even if it's sometimes humorous and often light in tone. Raskin had been a management consultant in Japan and speaks fluent Japanese and is deeply engaged with Japanese popular culture. He's also a scoundrel. The book wonderfully weaves three main narratives: Raskin's love life, Momofuku Ando's life (he being the inventor of instant ramen), and a series of unmailed letters that Raskin writes to Ando as confessional. Ando's struggles and aphorisms are Raskin's guides as he comes to terms with his failings and dishonesty and seeks to be his better self. I loved that the book was at once funny and light-hearted, but also utterly sincere and incredibly revealing on several levels.

This is the first book since The Tipping Point where I've found myself a) unable to say what it's about and b) certain that every person who's read it --and the author-- would think I'd gotten it wrong.

Hope you don't find this, Andy!

[LakeMartinGal]

Originally Posted by LakeMartinGal

My current book-club book is Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. Here's the Amazon review. So, far, I'm not enthralled, but I'm not far into it, yet.

I've finished it, and I'm going to have to read it again, I think, because I didn't get much out of it. It is beautifully translated, and full of impressions of the time and the Chinese countryside, but I didn't think it was such an enthralling story at all. Kinda predictable, actually.

Next up is The Last Days of Dogtown, by Anita Diamant, who also wrote The Red Tent. I'm only a couple of chapters into that one, but it's already good! I'm surprised there are no reviews on Amazon...

[tbb113]

I flew through The Late, Lamented Molly Marx. My kind of book, one step up from mindless trash but still a quick entertaining read.

Next up is Blonde Roots by Bernanrdine Evaristo. Hopefully it grabs me right away because while the idea intrigues me, I'm not sure I'll like it Here is the description from Publisher's Weekly
British novelist Evaristo delivers an astonishing, uncomfortable and beautiful alternative history that goes back several centuries to flip the slave trade, with Aphrikans enslaving the people of Europa and exporting many of them to Amarika. The plot revolves around Doris, the daughter of a long line of proud cabbage farmers who live in serfdom. After she's kidnapped by slavers, she experiences the horror and inhumanity of slave transport, is sold and works her way back to freedom. The narrative cuts back and forth through time, contrasting the journey to freedom with the journey toward slavery. In a less skilled writer's hands, the premise easily could have worn itself out by the second chapter, but Evaristo's intellectually rigorous narrative constantly surprises, and, for all the barbarism on display, it's strikingly human. Evaristo's novel is a powerful, thoughtful reminder that diabolical behavior can take place in any culture, safety is an illusion and freedom is something easily taken for granted. This difficult and provocative book is a conversation sparker

[beckms]

I'm reading The Other by David Guterson, author of Snow Falling on Cedars. It's rather slow, but written with Guterson's lovely attention to detail and character development. It's a book for savoring, not for whipping through. Enjoying it so far.

[Robyncz]

Originally Posted by TieKitty

I'm reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. It took me a few chapters to get into it, but I'm glad I was patient.

Really? This came highly recommended from a friend and I've tried two or three times to get into it, but without any success. All the financial gobbledy gook puts me to sleep every time I try to read it. I wonder if I should give it another go.

[oceanjasper]

My most recent reads are The Shack, Water for Elephants, Julie and Julia, and Late Nights on Air. Late Nights on Air, written by Elizabeth Hay, isn't all that exciting, but it has wonderfully vivid imagery. I also fell hard for the characters and still think of them randomly throughout the day. Since then, I have been challenged by a friend to read Ulysses by James Joyce, so I am just starting that one. I have made it through the introduction, but not without having to look up quite a few words! I think this is going to be work! Once I make it through that one, I have The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill and The Origin of Species by Nino Ricci waiting.

ETA: A review and exerpt from Late Nights on Air (I figured that everyone is familiar with the other books, but perhaps not this one) from www.mcclelland.com:

Harry Boyd, a hard-bitten refugee from failure in Toronto television, has returned to a small radio station in the Canadian North. There, in Yellowknife, in the summer of 1975, he falls in love with a voice on air, though the real woman, Dido Paris, is both a surprise and even more than he imagined.

Dido and Harry are part of the cast of eccentric, utterly loveable characters, all transplants from elsewhere, who form an unlikely group at the station. Their loves and longings, their rivalries and entanglements, the stories of their pasts and what brought each of them to the North, form the centre. One summer, on a canoe trip four of them make into the Arctic wilderness (following in the steps of the legendary Englishman John Hornby, who, along with his small party, starved to death in the barrens in 1927), they find the balance of love shifting, much as the balance of power in the North is being changed by the proposed Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline, which threatens to displace Native people from their land.

Elizabeth Hay has been compared to Annie Proulx, Alice Hoffman, and Isabel Allende, yet she is uniquely herself. With unforgettable characters, vividly evoked settings, in this new novel, Hay brings to bear her skewering intelligence into the frailties of the human heart and her ability to tell a spellbinding story. Written in gorgeous prose, laced with dark humour, Late Nights on Air is Hay’s most seductive and accomplished novel yet.

On the shortest night of the year, a golden evening without end, Dido climbed the wooden steps to Pilot’s Monument on top of the great Rock that formed the heart of old Yellowknife. In the Netherlands the light was long and gradual too, but more meadowy, more watery, or else hazier, depending on where you were. . . . Here, it was subarctic desert, virtually unpopulated, and the light was uniformly clear.

On the road below, a small man in a black beret was bending over his tripod just as her father used to bend over his tape recorder. Her father’s voice had become the wallpaper inside her skull, he’d made a home for himself there as improvised and unexpected as these little houses on the side of the Rock — houses with histories of instability, of changing from gambling den to barber shop to sheet metal shop to private home, and of being moved from one part of town to another since they had no foundations.—From Late Nights On Air

[kima]

I really enjoyed The Book of Negroes OJ. It is called "No one Knows my Name" in the States.

The book's original tltle is from an actual registry of black slaves who were allowed passage to Nova Scotia in the 1700s. It was called The Book of Negroes.The orginal registry is in New York somewhere but I have read excerpts from it and found it very moving.

I was very fortunate to be in Nova Scotia last week and was able to visit some historic spots and museums dealing with the black loyalists-brought that book to life for me.
I am now reading Hill's first book Any Known Blood and enjoying it just as much.

I just ordered Alice Munro's new collection of short stories and Lorrie Moore's new novel.

KValley has raved about Alastair McLeod's short stories and having just been to Cape Breton I can't wait to read these stories set in that rugged,beautiful part of Canada.

[oceanjasper]

Originally Posted by kima

I really enjoyed The Book of Negroes OJ. It is called "No one Knows my Name" in the States.

The book's original tltle is from an actual registry of black slaves who were allowed passage to Nova Scotia in the 1700s. It was called The Book of Negroes.The orginal registry is in New York somewhere but I have read excerpts from it and found it very moving.

I was very fortunate to be in Nova Scotia last week and was able to visit some historic spots and museums dealing with the black loyalists-brought that book to life for me.
I am now reading Hill's first book Any Known Blood and enjoying it just as much.

I just ordered Alice Munro's new collection of short stories and Lorrie Moore's new novel.

KValley has raved about Alastair McLeod's short stories and having just been to Cape Breton I can't wait to read these stories set in that rugged,beautiful part of Canada.

I would love to visit the Maritimes. How lucky that you were able to go there and see some of those places!

I know a woman who works in a library and she also raves about Alistair McLeod. I have never read anything he has written. I need to remember that the next time I am looking for a new read.

[Natasha]

Originally Posted by kima

...and having just been to Cape Breton I can't wait to read these stories set in that rugged,beautiful part of Canada.

Maureen, so glad you loved your trip down East! Will have to write more on the NS thread.

Don't forget to also read Causeway by Linden MacIntyre (if you haven't already) while Cape Breton's still fresh in your mind!

[kima]

Originally Posted by Natasha

Maureen, so glad you loved your trip down East! Will have to write more on the NS thread.

Don't forget to also read Causeway by Linden MacIntyre (if you haven't already) while Cape Breton's still fresh in your mind!

I read it months ago after you raved about it Nat.
I don't quite know what I expected from the causeway but it was kind of a letdown!

The Confederation Bridge was cool in a way. I kept thinking how difficult it would be build to build such a link where I live and how I wouldn't want it. It is great for that region...but we have Vancouverites to keep out!

I don't know if you got to PEI but much I liked NS PEI stole my heart . I thought my island was the most beautiful in the land.......

[Natasha]

Originally Posted by kima

I don't know if you got to PEI but much I liked NS PEI stole my heart . I thought my island was the most beautiful in the land.......

Nope, either that or NL will be my next province to cross off my list - can't wait to see both but I admit that going back to NS remains a high priority as well! I've read pretty much every book set in NS that's come my way these past couple of years

I know you were there for track... hope the events went well!

[Kristena]

I always read these threads with my Amazon page opened in another window.

I really enjoyed The Book of Negroes OJ. It is called "No one Knows my Name" in the States

I was trying to find this title and I think the correct title is Someone Knows my Name. Here's the http://www.amazon.com/Someone-Knows-...6&sr=1-2Amazon link:


AND it's available on Kindle!

[kima]

Oops- I stand corrected.

Thanks Kristena.

That's what happens when I rely on my menopausal memory.

And looks like I spelt Alistair wrong too.


We found it very easy to see both provinces in a short period of time Natasha.


I so want to go to Newfounland...next time for sure!

[LakeMartinGal]

OJ -- I was interested to hear that Yellowknife is the scene for a book... isn't that the town where the Ice Road starts on "Ice Road Truckers"? I watched it a couple of times, but somehow it didn't hold the fascination of "Deadliest Catch!"

BTW, I really liked "The Last Days of Dogtown." An easy read about a small town that disappears due to attrition. Food for thought, there, and well written!

[rosen]

LakeMartinGal: I am so glad you liked Dogtown. You may also enjoy Diammant's Good Harbor.

jtoepfert100: I read and enjoyed Ellington Blvd based on a rec from Bob. This was one that got passed on to DH, who also liked it. Thanks for the good remarks for California - my library doesn't have that one and I think a search is called for.

Sneezles & TieKitty: DH just finished Played With Fire and agreed with me that it was a sad follow up to Dragon. (I love reading here how books leave such varied impressions on us!) To us, the repetition and lack of character activity almost makes us feel that this attempt was an afterthought. The third novel is in production and I am really curious how that one will play out. Larson submitted outlines for many more books for this series to his editor before he died and it should be interesting to see what they do with them.

oceanjasper: Thanks for the good review of Late NIghts - I've added that to my list. I loved Hay's A Student of The Weather and gave it one of my seldom awarded personal stars.

Last month Bob made a few recs that sounded interesting and now both DH and I have been working our way through Denise Mina. We both read Garnet Hill and thought it was very good, although DH didn’t think the second in that series was as well done. While he was reading that – I dove in to another trilogy. So far, Field of Blood and The Dead Hour have been great. Although I failed to fully appreciate the secondary storyline of the other Paddy Meehan in the first novel, I understood the ploy by the end of the second. Slip of The Knife is being saved for a vacation trip next week.

[SDMomChef]

I'm on a chick-lit, brain candy reading kick. Finished reading Sheer Abandon by Penny Vincenzi. Story about three women traveling in the 1980s. One girl becomes pregnant and abandons her baby. The story takes place 16 years later when the baby is searching for her birth mother and the three women are reunited by circumstance. Good quick read.

Lakemartingal- thanks for the info on the Last Days of Dogtown. That sounds very interesting and I loved The Red Tent.

Tiekitty - I'm another person who put the Dragon book down after a few chapters. I may need to pick it back up. Also interesting that the author has died - didn't realize that!

[oceanjasper]

Originally Posted by LakeMartinGal

OJ -- I was interested to hear that Yellowknife is the scene for a book... isn't that the town where the Ice Road starts on "Ice Road Truckers"? I watched it a couple of times, but somehow it didn't hold the fascination of "Deadliest Catch!"

That is very likely, since I know the ice roads are in the Northwest Territories. I have never seen that show.

[Kate B]

Although I'm not a regular poster in this monthly thread, I'm a major lurker.

Because of reviews I read in recent months, I recently finished both Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and Methland. I found both fascinating! I read most of Methland (finished last night) with my mouth hanging open. I hadn't even thought about corporate conglomerates (did I spell that right?) contributing to the problem, but it truly makes sense.

Thanks for the continued recommendations!

Kate