May! What are you reading?

[Beverly]

I just finished up The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (I think Sílvia read it a little while ago, too). I thought it was pretty good -- definitely kept me turning the pages!

Not sure what I'll read next.

[mellenhead]

I finished The Diana Chronicles by Tina Brown. Good book, interesting look at the royal family and day to day life.

I cried my way through Two Kiss for Maddy by Matt Loghelin (sp?). His wife died 27 hours after giving birth to their 1st child. I had followed his blog when it happened but it was still so sad to read about it.

I have the The Pale King by Dave Foster Wallace at home but IDK if I'm going to read it. I read the first 3 chapters and I'm kind of lost. Not my kind of book.

[Blush]

I'm still slogging through "Very Valentine" by Adrianna Trigiani. I feel like I should finish because I'm developing a bad habit of dropping books but it's not great.


ETA: Ok I finished it. Not impressed. Shallow character development, glossing over major events in plot. Blech.

Now I've got "Fly Away Home" by Jennifer Weiner.

[mellenhead]

I gave up on The Pale King. Way over my head apparently.

I picked up some new stuff at the library last night. Started on Lions of Lucerne by Brad Thor last night. It's an old book - thriller/military type stuff. It'll be a quick read.

[Malanee]

These are still on my list:

Better : a surgeon's notes on performance / Atul Gawande.
The hidden reality : parallel universes and the deep laws of the cosmos / Brian Greene.
Saving the world and other extreme sports / James Patterson.
Booky wook 2 : this time it's personal / Russell Brand. - just started

Finished Bossy Pants by Tina Fey last night and liked it.
Evil at Heart by Chelsie Cain - liking this series - it's a bit graphic with the blood and guts though
Just started The Host by Stephenie Myer

[mellenhead]

I finished Lions of Lucerne by Brad Thor. I enjoyed it - it was a military type thriller.

I also read Lost in Shangri-La: a true story of survival, adventure and the most incredible rescue of World War II by Mitchell Zuckoff. The over all story was really interesting but the author spent waaaaay to much time on details that just didn't matter to the story.

I'm about halfway through Wicked Bugs: the louse that conguered Napoleon's Army and other diabolical insects by Amy Stewart. It's totally creeping me out.

Next up is In Zanesville by Jo Ann Beard.

[Spudd]

I'm still listening to Room, which is amazing and super suspenseful. It took me a little while to get used to the POV of a 5-year-old thing, but now I'm used to it and I'm dying to know what happens. I rarely get to listen so it'll take me a while. I think I'm about half way through right now.

I got Townie by Andre Dubus III from the library. I believe I got the recommendation from Entertainment Weekly. It's a memoir of a guy who grew up poor in New England, who then became a successful writer. So far I'm finding it fairly interesting, but not loving it.

[Sílvia]

Beverly, yes, I did read The Little Stranger and found it pretty good too. Funny, because I usually hate books with no clear explanation of things, but this one turned out great!

I finished Best Friends Forever by Jennifer Weiner and it was the first book by her that I didn't like. She always manages to entertain me (if not much else), but this one was just silly. And why do ALL her protagonists have to be overweight (in this case not anymore)? It gets old. Authors should let go of the autobiographical thing once in a while. Paul Auster's characters are always male writers, Isabel Allende's have always suffered through a dictatorship. Let it go. Try to write a little about something you do NOT know so well for a change.

Now I'm reading Water for Elephants 5 years after the rest of the universe. Not much of an opinion yet.

[Spudd]

I loved Water for Elephants.

[Sílvia]

Seems like everybody did, so I'm afraid it won't live up to the hype. But who knows? We do have similar tastes!

[mellenhead]

Sil I love Water for Elephants too. Loved it so much I'm afraid to see the movie! I think you will like it.

[Sílvia]

Ugh, did you guys like it from the very beginning? Because I'm on page 75 and so far I'm unimpressed.

[mellenhead]

No, it took me awhile to get into it. It's been a few years since I read it though so I don't really recall around when that happened.

[Blush]

I finished "Fly Away Home" by Jennifer Weiner and it was meh. I just didn't care much for the characters. That's happening a lot to me lately; maybe I'm just going through a bitchy phase.

I also read "The Book of Even More Awesome" by Neil Pasricha. It was good, but I found a lot of repetition from the first book. I guess I should have expected that.

Now I'm reading "So Much Pretty" by Cara Hoffman. The premise is intriguing:

When she disappeared from her rural hometown, Wendy White was a sweet, family-oriented girl, a late bloomer who’d recently moved out on her own, with her first real boyfriend and a job waiting tables at the local tavern. It happens all the time—a woman goes missing, a family mourns, and the case remains unsolved. Stacy Flynn is a reporter looking for her big break. She moved east from Cleveland, a city known for its violent crime, but that’s the last thing she expected to cover in Haeden. This small, upstate New York town counts a dairy farm as its main employer and is home to families who’ve set down roots and never left—people who don’t take kindly to outsiders. Flynn is researching the environmental impact of the dairy, and the way money flows outward like the chemical runoff, eventually poisoning those who live at the edges of its reach.

Five months after she disappeared, Wendy’s body is found in a ditch just off one of Haeden’s main roads. Suddenly, Flynn has a big story, but no one wants to talk to her. No one seems to think that Wendy’s killer could still be among them. A drifter, they say. Someone “not from here.”

Fifteen-year-old Alice Piper is an imaginative student with a genius IQ and strong ideals. The precocious, confident girl has stood out in Haeden since the day her eccentric hippie parents moved there from New York City, seeking a better life for their only child. When Alice reads Flynn’s passionate article in the Haeden Free Press about violence against women—about the staggering number of women who are killed each day by people they know—she begins to connect the dots of Wendy’s disappearance and death, leading her to make a choice: join the rest in turning a blind eye, or risk getting involved. As Flynn and Alice separately observe the locals’ failure to acknowledge a murderer in their midst, Alice’s fate is forever entwined with Wendy’s when a second crime rocks the town to its core.

[Bugsy]

I finished "Time Traveler's Wife" a week or so ago. Loved it! Something worth rereading at some point, I think.

I started "A Reliable Wife" by I-forget-who, and it's really not doing it for me so far (about 60 pages in). Someone here read it, I think (Blush?). Does it get better? It just seems so words and overly descriptive.

[Blush]

I have never read Reliable Wife. I've read "A Wife's Tale" and "American Wife" and "Husband and Wife", all of which I would recommend.

So far "So Much Pretty" is pulling me in. This is a good thing; I was beginning to think I was becoming despondent about books.

[Bugsy]

Hmm, maybe it wasn't recommended here then, cuz I really thought it was you. I'm thinking of giving up on it. I just don't have time to waste on ho-hum books.

I do have a Sookie book waiting for me at the library. Gonna take it along when we go camping this weekend.

[mellenhead]

I read A Reliable Wife, if you don't like it by now I'd drop it. The whole book is VERY wordy and over detailed. I didn't love the book by any means. There was one section that I found pretty interesting and then it just thudded to the end.

Bugsy, is it the new Sookie book? Dead Reckoning? I just finished it, it was quite good in the usual ridiculous way.

[Bugsy]

Ugh, ok, thanks, Mellenhead. I'm throwing in the towel. It's been ages since I've done that with a book, but it's got to be done.

Not the new Sookie...maybe #6 or so? Pretty sure it's called Definitely Dead. Should be a good light read for camping, I think.

[Anna]

I'm reading "I'd Know YOu Anywhere" by Lippman. It is right up my alley. A woman was abducted as a teen in the 80s and was found after many weeks. her abductor is about to be put to death (he had killed many other girls) and she is in a society picture he finds here and writes to her... so far it's great.