What book are you reading?

[ladyvibrant]

I started this memoir this morning and I am relishing the experience. She has a lovely descriptive style.

[Mayvenne]

Well, I finished A Thousand Acres yesterday and it definitely was not a sleepy read. I agree that in the beginning, it seemed that it would go that way. The writing was very good and engrossing.
I have to digest this, because so much happens and there is so much drama, and a fair amount of leaps in time and circumstance ( saying as best as I can without "spoiling" too much).
I thought it was a very good book, and would be great for a book club but I don't think I got from it as much as others did.
I also think it's so heady that I'm not sure it would be good for each of my book clubs. I 'm in 3 and I think for sure one of them it would not be a good match.
I'm glad I read it. I would rate it 4 stars.
On a very much lighter note, I started Dial A for Aunty which is funny and very very light. I just looked through and see that it was Clara C who mentioned it. I guess I didn't read the post that thoroughly because she also said once you get to such and such part, stop.
Anyway for now, it's a good filler. Enjoyable, silly, and not heady of heavy.

[LookinForMayberry]

I just finished "Welcome to Lagos," by Chibundu Onuzo and loved it. I also loved her "Sankofa." Her writing is very fresh.

I also read the first two (of three, so far) the Kate Waters series by Fiona Barton, which I really liked, though I thought the first ("The Widow") was a better story than the second ("The Child"). Both ended much differently than I'd anticipated, and that's nice. I'm planning to read the next one soon, "The Suspect."

If you like a touch of mystical fantasy, Maggie Stiefvater's Raven series was absorbing, despite it being targeted to teens. This 66 year old loved all four of them: https://www.goodreads.com/series/73675-the-raven-cycle

Kat Rosenfield's "No One Will Miss Her," was very good, and suspenseful.

[Riley.]

Reading Fatal Grace by Louise Penny (almost done with all her books) but I ordered and received Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr who wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning All the Light We Cannot See (which was a beautiful book despite the theme). Cloud is next up.

Still waiting for Donna Tartt!!!!

[Firehorse66]

Originally Posted by Riley.

Reading Fatal Grace by Louise Penny (almost done with all her books) but I ordered and received Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr who wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning All the Light We Cannot See (which was a beautiful book despite the theme). Cloud is next up.

Still waiting for Donna Tartt!!!!

I am reading Cloud Cuckoo Land right now, and I am Loving it!!

[jbgusa]

I am reading The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World by Jonathan Freedland. Credit goes to the OP on this thread, The Escape Artist.

[miguel's mom]

Originally Posted by Mayvenne

I then decided to try Power of the Dog
which I had no familiarity with. It was for a different book club. I wasn't looking forward to it as the title just turned me off, but the library had it readily available on kindle so I figured I would try it. I really drew me in pretty quickly, and I ended up really "enjoying" it. (At the beginning it reminded me of The Whistling Season or Virgil Wander.)
I use the quotes because it was a great read, somewhat intense - but so well written and so well crafted.
I learned it is a movie and people say the movie is just abot as good as the book. I haven't seen the movie.
I rate the book 5 stars.

And now, I am in the middle of A Thousand Acres. It's also pretty interesting but intense. I don't know what to make of it yet.
.

Thank you Mayvenne, I've put both on my to-read list.

[Enduringwone]

Thistlefoot by Gennarose Nethercott.

[jbgusa]

Originally Posted by Excerpt from The Escape Artist by Jonathan Freedland

Jewish tradition says that to save one life is to save the whole world. By their report, Fred and Rudi saved 200,000 Budapest Jews from immediate deportation to Auschwitz. Some would die a few months later at the hands of the Arrow Cross, but many more would not. And each one of those lives, and the lives of their descendants, would not have been possible without Rudolf Vrba.

******

Rudolf Vrba was an escape artist whose achievement ranks among the very greatest of the century. By escaping from Auschwitz, he did what no Jew had ever done before - and then he told the world what he had seen. And though he never escaped Auschwitz's shadow, he lived a life in full, as a man in full. He became a scientist and a scholar, a husband, a father and a grandfather. He had helped the world, and history, know the truth of the Holocaust. And, thanks to him, tens of thousands of others went on to live lives that were long and rich, as did their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren - so many, even he could not count them all.

I just finished reading The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World by Jonathan Freedland. I learned in this book that the most famous escape artist, Harry Houdini, was a Hungarian Jew but I digress. Rudolf Vrba (born Walter Rosenberg) was deported first to Majdanek, then to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1942. He and another he traveled with were the first two Jewish escapees from Birkenau in 1944. The first 3/4 of the book details their incarceration and escape. Early, he came to the realization that Auschwitz-Birkenau's role was as a death factory. He believed that if he could only tell the world what was happening, either the world would stop the planned massacre, or the Jews would resist, i.e. behave like "deer, not like lambs" and gum up the works on the expressway to death. Sadly, as we all know, this was not to be.

As the author, writing in 2022 lays out, the leadership of the U.S., Great Britain and others knew what was happening. The book also lays out the deep betrayal by much of Jewish leadership at the time.

[uggabugga]

hatchet, by gary paulsen. it's a young adult novel that has been banned in some places. pretty good if want something you can burn through in a couple hours.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_HgO17gPZ4