Let's talk books!

fox2star said:
Aqua Girl....could you check the author of that series? I tried looking it up but could not find anything by that author...
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Hi fox2star, I purchased the series from IBooks, the author is Jeanne Harrell, if you type in Jeanne in the search
Box, she should be one of them that pops up, it is the Rancher series, books 1-4 which I have and then there is
A second set, books 5-7. I am still on book 2, but I really like them. You might do what I did, you can download
The first one, ( I think Ranchers Girl) free. After I read that one, I figured there must be a second one, and found
The set, instead of purchasing each one separately, it's cheaper to get the set, of course, the first book is in the set,
But then I just deleted the first book that I had gotten free to see if I liked, didn't lose anything.
 
Great, hope you like it....I finished the second one yesterday and moving on and into #3. They are about a family and each book goes into
another member......I went ahead and purchased the second set as well (5-7) cause I know when I get there...I will want them!
 
Yesterday I was privileged to have Jo Nesbo come to Ann Arbor, MI to chat about his life, rock band, books, writing and latest release "Thirst," #11 in the Harry Hole mystery series. The man was funny, intellectual, drop-dead gorgeous, something of a Renaissance man and I can highly recommend all his novels. A copy of the new release was included in the cost of attendance at this session --hosted by the of the last remaining independent book stores in Ann Arbor, Literati Books, --and I started reading as I waited for the man to take the stage. By page 11 I was hooked.

Get Jo Nesbo's books. Read Harry Hole. Fab, fab stuff. Read it before Michael Fassbender appears on our screens as Harry as imagined by Hollywood. Fassbender is great, an excellent actor, but Harry Hole is even better!

Clare
 
maddiesmum said:
Yesterday I was privileged to have Jo Nesbo come to Ann Arbor, MI to chat about his life, rock band, books, writing and latest release "Thirst," #11 in the Harry Hole mystery series. The man was funny, intellectual, drop-dead gorgeous, something of a Renaissance man and I can highly recommend all his novels. A copy of the new release was included in the cost of attendance at this session --hosted by the of the last remaining independent book stores in Ann Arbor, Literati Books, --and I started reading as I waited for the man to take the stage. By page 11 I was hooked.

Get Jo Nesbo's books. Read Harry Hole. Fab, fab stuff. Read it before Michael Fassbender appears on our screens as Harry as imagined by Hollywood. Fassbender is great, an excellent actor, but Harry Hole is even better!

Clare
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Whoa!!! Thanks Clare! Sounds like something I would love!
 
Wow, how I would love to meet an author. Of course I had to look him up....he really IS handsome! Yummy! I've looked over my reading history and wanted to add these as suggestions. If I'm repeating myself, I apologize. "The life we bury" Allan Eskens- very good! "Wife 22" Melanie Gideon- very cute. "Orphan Train" Christina Baker Kline- this one has stayed w/ me. "The Passenger" Lisa Lutz- nice pace w/ decent suspense. "Tell the wolves I'm home" Carol Rifka Brundt- another one that has settled into my head. "Where'd you go Bernadette" Maria Semple- I read this one a while ago but still think about it, very cute & quirky, loved it. "The vacationers" Emma Straub- another one I read some time ago but still think about, lighthearted, cute. Also "The murder house" James Patterson- I stopped reading his stuff because it was the same old, same old but this one is NOT part of a series and it had pretty good suspense. I recently read a couple by Fannie Flagg, she has very light, upbeat stories that I can mix in w/ my murder/suspense/psych thrillers. She wrote "Fried green tomatoes".
 
tlc93 said:
Wow, how I would love to meet an author. Of course I had to look him up....he really IS handsome! Yummy! I've looked over my reading history and wanted to add these as suggestions. If I'm repeating myself, I apologize. "The life we bury" Allan Eskens- very good! "Wife 22" Melanie Gideon- very cute. "Orphan Train" Christina Baker Kline- this one has stayed w/ me. "The Passenger" Lisa Lutz- nice pace w/ decent suspense. "Tell the wolves I'm home" Carol Rifka Brundt- another one that has settled into my head. "Where'd you go Bernadette" Maria Semple- I read this one a while ago but still think about it, very cute & quirky, loved it. "The vacationers" Emma Straub- another one I read some time ago but still think about, lighthearted, cute. Also "The murder house" James Patterson- I stopped reading his stuff because it was the same old, same old but this one is NOT part of a series and it had pretty good suspense. I recently read a couple by Fannie Flagg, she has very light, upbeat stories that I can mix in w/ my murder/suspense/psych thrillers. She wrote "Fried green tomatoes".
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Hi Peg:

I have read and can second your recommendation for all the following:

Wife 22 ( a delight, pure fun), The Passenger (great to listen to while on the move, loved the BOCD version from the library), Tell the Wolves I'm Home (highly original, deeply moving), Where'd you Go Bernadette? (although Semple's second novel strives to repeat Bernadette's success, it is not as good: probably because Semple sticks way too closely to this same formula.....), The Vacationers (also preferred this so much more than Straub's latest).

Clare
 
I just finished "Missing, presumed" by Susie Steiner. It was advertised as being excellent. While I thought it was pretty good, I wouldn't call it a "can't put down" book. I listened to the audiobook. It was engaging and at times laugh out loud funny while being in the suspense/murder mystery genre. I would recommend it because it had some interesting twists. I love the British sense of humor.
 
I just found out that "The glass castle" is coming out in a movie. It's an autobiography by Jeanette Walls. It's a quick read but excellent! It's about her life growing up in a dysfunctional type of family. It made me cry, laugh out loud, get angry..all of it. Very good book that I highly recommend.
 
tlc93 said:
I just found out that "The glass castle" is coming out in a movie. It's an autobiography by Jeanette Walls. It's a quick read but excellent! It's about her life growing up in a dysfunctional type of family. It made me cry, laugh out loud, get angry..all of it. Very good book that I highly recommend.
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Yes! Glass Castle is an all-consuming book. A must-read for all. I agree with Peg: a roller coaster of emotions ....
Clare
 
I'm just about to finish Anna Quindlen's "Rise and Shine." I realized, after starting it, I had read it before, but it reads like new all over again and the writing is of excellent quality. Anna does not publish every year and thank god for that: unlike authors who churn them out, her sentences are fab, she takes time with her craft and the sparkle, wit, sense of full character inhabiting each sentence, since it is all told from the perspective of one sister, is just something you want to hold onto. I usually skim read most books as the descriptive passages do not hold me and I have ADHD and can never sit still or be still --even in the mind-- for long, but I have not skimmed a single passage of this book: the writing is compelling to me. I wish every book were written so well.

Last year, I read Quindlen's "Still Life with Bread Crumbs" and loved that too! Enjoy folks!

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_1_13?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=anna+quindlen+books&sprefix=anna+quindlen,aps,206&crid=378AOEZC37TCN

Clare
 
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I should add, I also read The Expatriates recently and really enjoyed it. It took me a little while to get the point, but then I was hooked. A tale of mothers, of daughters also, but of women encountering each other as mothers and women also, and learning to like, love, learn and forgive each other in order to forge a community. The men in this book are shadows: this world of women and mothers is where meaning is constructed and lives are forged and the men seem to have very little, if anything, to do with it. The men, and their jobs in Hong Kong, which are the reason most of the female characters find themselves in HK, in the expatriate community, simply give occasion for the women to meet each other and decide what their world is really about.

https://www.amazon.com/Expatriates-...1&keywords=the+expatriates+by+janice+y.k.+lee

Clare
 
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My latest recommendation is Cathleen Schine's "They May Not Mean To But They Do," where her title of course comes from Philip Larkin's poem "They fuck you up/your Mum and Dad/ they may not mean to/but they do..." No, this is not a grisly narrative of parental torture and suffering children! It is a hilarious take on modern family dynamics, set amidst a Jewish family in New York. The patriarch is fading slowly from dementia as the book opens and the matriarch is coping bravely, their 2 kids, all very well-meaning, look on and try to help, but do they really understand what it is like to get older? and what their aging parents need? what parents are wiling to go through as they age to preserve independence and dignity? Schine takes that line from Larkin's poem and asks whether it might not actually be the other way around? Especially once the patriarch finally succumbs and the mother meets an old flame and takes a liking to him .... why should romance be the reservation of the young?!

How many books are there out there where dementia is treated as such a sad, negative, debilitating disease that wrecks devastation upon a family and nothing but? This is the antidote to that narrative: warm, funny, laugh out loud stuff, family characters you can recognize and with whom you empathize ...

I have also read, twice, and loved Schine's "The 3 Wiseman's of Westport" which is a modern re-telling of Austen's "Sense and Sensibility." Fabulous stuff.

Clare
 
Thanks for more recommendations Clare! Even though I have over 70 books on my library wish list and MANY at home I still watch for yet another story to take me away and intrigue me. I'm going to my library today to pick up "They may not mean to but they do". It sounds great!! I just finished listening to "Saving CeeCee Honeycut". It was very much like "The secret life of bees". Told from the perspective of a young (10 or 12 yr old) girl. Set in the south w/ strong, independent women. Ironically the story is read by the same woman who did "The secret life of bees". Very good, sweet and at times laugh out loud.
 
tlc93 said:
Thanks for more recommendations Clare! Even though I have over 70 books on my library wish list and MANY at home I still watch for yet another story to take me away and intrigue me. I'm going to my library today to pick up "They may not mean to but they do". It sounds great!! I just finished listening to "Saving CeeCee Honeycut". It was very much like "The secret life of bees". Told from the perspective of a young (10 or 12 yr old) girl. Set in the south w/ strong, independent women. Ironically the story is read by the same woman who did "The secret life of bees". Very good, sweet and at times laugh out loud.
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Hi Peg:

I have just ordered CeeCee from my local library and that author's second book, "Looking for me," so thanks! Tonight has been one of those evenings where, having put in 5 hours in the garden, 5 in the cooking department, everyone else is now in bed and I'm having a glass of wine while various dishes finish up in the oven and I catch up on email. I subscribe to various book list newsletters and save them all up for nights such as this. Then, I go through them all, one by one, and order about 30 books and books on CD from my wonderful local library and in a couple of days time, go and collect them all and it's like having a birthday with lots of presents all over again!

I have a whole cupboard in the corner of my living room and it is literally devoted to my library materials and nothing else, 5 shelves full! That way, I always have options ...... My daughter recently suggested to me that I use the "wish list" online feature through my library to record the titles of books I want to read and not request them all at the same time, thus sparing me the agony of having to return precious items in a few short weeks' time before I have read them because someone else has requested them, but I was unable to do so, I wanted to request them all NOW!!!!!!!!! I am a RIGHT NOW!!!! kind of person, not imbued with the gift of patience and I certainly do not believe in the adage, "less is more," rather MORE IS DEFINITELY MORE!!!!!!!

So, all in all, to cut a long story short, etc, etc: I think you and I could be twins!!!!!!!

Sadly, my library did not have the bocd version of CeeCee, but they did have the bocd version of Secret life, so, good things a-coming! Recently, I have been relying solely on long distance walking for my exercise, 3 or 4 11-14 mile walks per week and with a good bocd in my bag and earbuds, truly, I am in heaven. One foot in front of the other, the miles pass by pretty unheeded and I lose myself in other lives and worlds ....

Have a fab summer and keep the recommendations coming Peg, chat with you soon!

Clare
 
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