What book are you reading?

[pinetreelover]

I'm reading Dry by Jane Harper. I can't remember who recommended it (the story of my life), but I'm really digging it! It is the story of a small town Australian guy who returns to his home town following the death of a friend. The title, Dry, refers to the oppressive drought that the town is suffering and is almost a character in itself.

[ladyvibrant]

[AZgarden]

Rachel Hawkins The Wife Upstairs and I am loving it. Rachel Hawkins has a down to earthy way of writing, telling it like it is and that appeals to me. I can relate ! About half way done and hope there are more books by this author.

[Wintergirl80]

I finished Kristin Hannah's latest book about the 1930's dust bowl ( The Four Winds), it started off okay but went downhill, until the author was pushing a political agenda - advocating communism. I have read other reviewers who instead recommended: The Grapes of Wrath or Timothy Eagen's book about the dust bowl.

I also read The Paris Orphan, which was also a disappointment.

[Mayvenne]

I guess I haven't updated for a few weeks.
I read The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig. It's beautifully written and a pretty good story, although a little bit on the predictable side but still very worth reading and enjoyable. A very nice escape .
I then re-read On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. I had suggested it last year for book club and then ended up reading it. I really didn't enjoy it but it did get very good reviews ( and awards) so I decided to try it again since it is the book for March. I never re-read books but in this case, it was really a good idea. I liked it so much more. I still think it was a very different book and not always so easy to follow because it would go back and forth in time, but overall , it was a good book.
Now, I started The Reader. It's not what I expected at all, but it 's a pretty good read so far and I am hoping to agree with those who said it was really worthwhile. I believe it was also a movie but I never saw it.

Someone mentioned Miss Benson's Beetle, which I never heard of-- but it's by Rachel Joyce who wrote The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The Lovesong of Miss Queenie Hennessy ( both of which I adored). I just reserved the kindle version so hope to get it pretty soon.

[brava4]

In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson

https://eriklarsonbooks.com/book/in-...den-of-beasts/

[oeccscclhjhn]

Put down Gangsterland half way through, never a good sign..., I may pick it up again. Then I started Deadliest Enemy and got bogged down. I'll skip through that chapter later and probably finish it. A good chapter on influenza later I want to get to.

This one, the second from Blake Crouch I've read (after Recursion) turned out to be a good, fast read.

[jbgusa]

I just finished reading The Cruelest Miles: The Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race Against an Epidemic by Gay Salisbury and Laney Salisbury. This book was unexpectedly fascinating on many levels. The book is nominally about the carriage of diphtheria antitoxin from the railhead near Fairbanks, Alaska to the coast at Nome, through some of the coldest temperatures that state has experienced, and in unusually fierce blizzards. Nome had already been decimated by the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918, described in The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry. The book includes in its bibliography another book about the Arctic I read and enjoyed, Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez.

The story of the race would have been exciting on its own. The book paints a vivid picture of early 20th Century Alaska, in the throes of the decline after the Klondike and Alaska Gold Rush of approximately 1897-1901. The book also contained descriptions of the history of the Eskimos (Eskimo, contrary to urban legend apparently refers to snowshoes, not "Eaters of Raw Flesh" and is not a derogatory term). Much of that description was surprisingly familiar; I remember it from Mrs. Boyle's Fourth Grade class in academic 1966-7.

The people behind the heroic rescue of Nome take second fiddle in the book to Man's Best Friend. The book subliminally makes the case that man's development, in Alaska at least, would have been impossible without the domestication of the dog from its ancient lupine ancestors. I have always thought that all human development from mere animals to the species we are would not have occurred without domestication of the dog. Man could really accomplish things if they didn't have to keep a lookout for predators bigger and stronger than them, chief among those wolves. In the Arctic, dogs fulfill the vital function of providing transportation. Having a "doggedly" loyal and intelligent leader made travel over some very hazardous areas possible.

A solid five stars on Goodreads for this.

[ClaraC]

Just finished The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto by Mitch Albom. Fiction, About a guitar musician, told largely in memories by other (real) famous musicians. It was interesting to read in the acknowledgements, all the musicians had given him permission to weave them into the story, and he wrote in their "voices".

Really excellent. This is fiction, and many parts not believable, but it's a good tale.

[Khendra]

I'm reading the famous/infamous Jordan Peterson's latest, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life. It's interesting to me that he's so big and divisive right now, as what he writes wouldn't have been all that controversial 10-20 years ago. It's also interesting that Christian conservatives often support him, for he takes the Genesis account metaphorically, doesn't speak out against homosexuality or abortion, is an evolutionist, and often speaks of value from other faiths (Taoism, Buddhism, etc.). He would have been regarded as a mainline intellectual leftist back in the 20th century. Now the far left thinks he's some kind of advocate for the far right, and the right embraces him because even centrism is taken as conservatism now. I find I mostly like Peterson and think I might need to start taking Scripture a bit more metaphorically as well, despite lots of indoctrination from very right-leaning Calvinist associates on the Internet in the last decade.