May! What are you reading?

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Beverly
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May! What are you reading?

Post by Beverly »

I'm working on Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, a semi-autobiographical novel by Jeanette Winterson. It's an easy read, and I'm liking it a lot.
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Re: May! What are you reading?

Post by Spudd »

I am reading Walk to New York, about a guy who walks from Thunder Bay, Ontario to NYC. It is pretty interesting. There are no quotes or apostrophes in this post because I am on the computer belonging to my husband, which is set to have a Swedish keyboard right now, so I have no clue how to make them.
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Re: May! What are you reading?

Post by Beverly »

Spudd wrote:I am reading Walk to New York, about a guy who walks from Thunder Bay, Ontario to NYC. It is pretty interesting. There are no quotes or apostrophes in this post because I am on the computer belonging to my husband, which is set to have a Swedish keyboard right now, so I have no clue how to make them.
Quotation marks are at shift+2 and the apostrophe is the last character on the right end of the qwerty row. :lol
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Re: May! What are you reading?

Post by mellenhead »

I just finished two books. "A Reliable Wife" by Robert Goolrick. Excellent book, I couldn't put it down. Sort of a modern goth mystery tale. The other books I finished is "Jesus Land" by Julia Scheeres. It's a memoir about a girl and her uber religious family and all the crazy that went on. It was a good read but really sad to read about her and her adopted brothers childhood.

On deck is "The Heretics Wife" by Brenda Rickman Vantrease.
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Re: May! What are you reading?

Post by Rachael »

I just finished "While My Sister Sleeps" by Barbara Delinsky and "The Store" by Bentley Little". Both were pretty good.

I have been trying really hard to finish "True Believer" by Nicholas Sparks, but just can't get into it. I decided to give it up this morning, even though I've trudged through half of it. I usually enjoy his books, but not this one.
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Re: May! What are you reading?

Post by Spudd »

I finished "Walk to New York"... pretty entertaining.

Now I'm reading "Oryx and Crake" by Margaret Atwood. I'm only a little ways in so far, but I'm loving it already.
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Re: May! What are you reading?

Post by Trillian »

I just finished reading Stephen King's "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon", just started - and am also almost finished - "The Titan's Curse", the 3rd book in the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan (my 11 year old got me started on these :P)

Not sure what's next...I have a ton of books lined up and I'll probably finish Titan's Curse tonight, but I have to wait for the 10 year old to finish with book 4 before I can read it... ;)
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Re: May! What are you reading?

Post by Beverly »

I just started The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris (thanks for mentioning it, Blush ... I didn't know he had another one out!). I'm only a few chapters in, but I'm enjoying it a lot. I really love the way he writes.
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Re: May! What are you reading?

Post by Sílvia »

Man, Watermelon was bad. Blush, you're our in-house Marian Keyes specialist, right? I've read Sushi for Beginners, which I didn't like very much, then Rachel's Holiday, The Other Side of the Story and Anybody Out There?, and I enjoyed them all. But I thought Watermelon was... silly. I'm glad it was not my first of hers, or I would have given up on her. Anyway, my point is, what do you recommend next? Is Angels any good? What about This Charming Man? These are the ones I think I saw at my bookstore last week in English. Oh, and The Brightest Star in the Sky.

I'm now reading The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. It's super short, so I should finish it soon. It's supposed to be great, but I haven't gotten to the greatness yet. So far it's just readable.
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Re: May! What are you reading?

Post by Trillian »

Sílvia wrote:I'm now reading The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. It's super short, so I should finish it soon. It's supposed to be great, but I haven't gotten to the greatness yet. So far it's just readable.
My 13 year old said she watched the movie in school and that it was sad, but that she liked it (she became a fan of it on facebook, but that doesn't mean anything - she becomes a fan of everything on there :p). Let me know if the book gets any better. ;)

I started reading "Memoirs of a Geisha." A friend had given it to me to borrow and I'd been putting it off because it really wasn't the type of book I usually go for. I'm a little more than 100 pages into it and so far it's been better than I was expecting.
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Re: May! What are you reading?

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Trillian wrote:I started reading "Memoirs of a Geisha." A friend had given it to me to borrow and I'd been putting it off because it really wasn't the type of book I usually go for. I'm a little more than 100 pages into it and so far it's been better than I was expecting.
I read that in high school and LOVED it. I even did my year-end project for AP English about that book. Hmm...that might be a good one to re-read.
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Re: May! What are you reading?

Post by Blush »

Silvia, The Brightest Star in the Sky was really really good. I also loved Last Chance Saloon, once I got into it. This Charming Man was also good.

I just had to go back and read the description for Sushi for Beginners and though I know I've read it, I don't remember it.

I'm now reading Words the Dog Knows by JR Carpenter.
J. R. Carpenter's long-awaited first novel Words the Dog Knows follows the criss-crossing paths of a quirky cast of characters through the Mile End neighbourhood of Montreal. Simone couldn't wait to get out of rural Nova Scotia. In Montreal she buries her head in books about far off places. Her best friend Julie gets her a job in the corporate world. Traveling for business cures Simone of her restlessness. One summer Julie's dog Mingus introduces Simone to Theo. They move in together. Theo is a man of few words. Until he and Simone get a dog, that is. They set about training Isaac the Wonder Dog to: sit, come, stay. Meanwhile, he has fifty girlfriends to keep track of and a master plan for the rearrangement of every stick in every alleyway in Mile End. He introduces Theo and Simone to their neighbours. He trains them to see the jumbled intimacy of Mile End's back alleyways with the immediacy of a dog's-eye-view. Carpenter writes with humour and directness, melding the emotional precision of her award-winning short fiction with the narrative ingenuity of her pioneering works in electronic literature. The result is a fresh and accessible first novel written and illustrated in the vernacular of the neighbourhood where cooking smells, noisy neighbours and laundry lines criss-cross the alleyway one sentence at a time. Words the Dog Knows is a story because of a dog.
It's short (under 200 pages) but it's awesome.
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Re: May! What are you reading?

Post by Sílvia »

Thanks, Blush! I did end up getting the Diana Gabaldon though, and since it has 900+ pages it'll probably take me 6 months to read.

Trillian, The Boy... is just about to get going (I'm halfway through). Oh, and I really enjoyed Memoirs of a Geisha.
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Re: May! What are you reading?

Post by Spudd »

I'm taking a break from Oryx and Crake because I got a hold book from the library, so I decided to read that first since it has a due date, while I own Oryx and Crake so that one can wait. So I'm now reading "Sweater Quest: My Year of Knitting Dangerously". So far it's entertaining (although if you're not a knitter, I don't think I'd recommend it).

Also, I started a new audiobook yesterday. "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen. So far it's really good, but the narrators are kind of annoying. The one character is 90 or 93, and they hired a narrator to play him who must be around that age himself. It's hard to understand him sometimes. Plus, he overacts. Kinda wish I'd gotten the paper book instead of the audiobook.
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Re: May! What are you reading?

Post by Trillian »

Bugsy wrote:I read that in high school and LOVED it. I even did my year-end project for AP English about that book. Hmm...that might be a good one to re-read.
I'm really starting to get into it now. Almost halfway through it now...stayed up too late reading it last night, actually...
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Re: May! What are you reading?

Post by mellenhead »

I adored Memoirs of a Geisha. So much that I refuse to see the movie because I can't imagine it does the book justice.

I finished "The Heretics Wife" by Brenda Rickman Vantrease. It was really quite good for historical fiction. It really weaved accurate portrayals of characters with some fiction ones. A good read.

I just started "Wolf Hall" by Hilary Mantel, which is about Tudor England - it's starting just as Henry wants to marry Anne Boleyn. I'm having trouble really getting into it as the POV of who is talking keeps changing without much of set up. Also have a bit of trouble with the direction the book is taking that Thomas More = evil and Thomas Cromwell = good. I've read really good things about this book though so I'm going to keep reading and hope I like it better the farther I get.
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Re: May! What are you reading?

Post by Sílvia »

I'm reading Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon. I'm on page 85 or so. So far it's good.
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Re: May! What are you reading?

Post by Blush »

I finished "Words the Dog Knows" by JR Carpenter and it was fantastic. Quick read but not the least bit fluffy. If you've ever owned a dog you would appreciate it.

Now I'm reading "Roxanna Slade" by Reynolds Price. I'm loving it so far; I like this guy's style.
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