What book are you reading?

[plaidmom]

Fiction:
The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen by Syrie James
Lavinia by Ursula K Le Guin
American Wife by Curtis Stittenfeld

Non-fiction:

Handmade Nation by Faythe Levine and Cortney Heimerl
Wild Wild East by Bobby Chinn
Things Cooks Love by Marie Simmons

I hope it rains this weekend so I can get a lot of reading time!

[tigerlily]

Originally Posted by plaidmom

Fiction:
The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen by Syrie James
Lavinia by Ursula K Le Guin
American Wife by Curtis Stittenfeld

Non-fiction:

Handmade Nation by Faythe Levine and Cortney Heimerl
Wild Wild East by Bobby Chinn
Things Cooks Love by Marie Simmons

I hope it rains this weekend so I can get a lot of reading time!

The last book I ever though worth reading was a book supposedly based on the life of Laura Bush. I picked it up the other day and cannot put it down. Sittenfeld certainly knows how to use metaphors.
Another book I really enjoyed based on a true story: The People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks. The book is based on the discovery of the Sarajeva Haggadah, rescued from Serb shelling during the Bosnian War. I now intend to read March authored by Brooks.
I'm halfway through Loving Frank, based on the affair between Mamah Cheney and Frank Lloyd Wright. The book is slow moving, but hope to finish.
An oldie that I wanted to read and have started Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter. Porter describes her characters in such detail that I can picture each and every one in my own mind.
Last but not least, The Girl with No Shadow by JoAnne Harris who wrote Chocolat and Five Quarters of the Orange a novel recommended on the book forum by Blue Willow Plate. The Girl with no Shadow is a sequel to Chocolat, but is described as a much darker chocolat. Mademoiselle Rocher has relocated to Paris and has assumed a new identity.
A non fiction book that I hope to read: The Invention of Air: A Study of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America by Steven Johnson
It is the story of Joseph Priestley, a scientist and theologian, protege of Benjamin Franklin, friend of Thomas Jefferson, an eighteenth-century radical thinker who played pivotal roles in the invention of ecosystem Johnson reveals that in the 165 letters passed between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, the name Benjamin Franklin is mentioned five times, George Washington three times, Alexander Hamilton twice — and Joseph Priestley, a foreign immigrant, is cited no fewer than 52 times. His discoveries include sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxide, ammonia gas and oxygen.

[lolagranola]

I read The Year of Wonders, by Geradine Brooks and thought it was just short of amazing. Picked up March, but returned it w/o reading...still plan to. People of the Book sounds good too...now that I know what a good writer she is.
(I think one of those 3 would make a great book discussion choice)

[tigerlily]

Originally Posted by lolagranola

I read The Year of Wonders, by Geradine Brooks and thought it was just short of amazing. Picked up March, but returned it w/o reading...still plan to. People of the Book sounds good too...now that I know what a good writer she is.
(I think one of those 3 would make a great book discussion choice)

I'll check out The Year of Wonders, too. Powell's only had March at the store.

[plaidmom]

Originally Posted by tigerlily

The last book I ever though worth reading was a book supposedly based on the life of Laura Bush. I picked it up the other day and cannot put it down. Sittenfeld certainly knows how to use metaphors.
.

Me too!

I'll have to check out some of your other recommendations . Thanks!

[GayleTX]

Tigerlily........I googled and found two books about Laura Bush - one by Gerhardt, one by Kessler. Which of these books are you referring to?

[tigerlily]

Originally Posted by GayleTX

Tigerlily........I googled and found two books about Laura Bush - one by Gerhardt, one by Kessler. Which of these books are you referring to?

Neither one. American Wife is a work of fiction. A book like Primary Colors supposedly based on the Clintons during the 1992 campaign. The book was reviewed by Joyce Carol Oates for the NYT in August and was just released in paperback.
Clip:
The “American wife” of Sittenfeld’s new novel, conspicuously modeled after the life of Laura Bush as recorded in Ann Gerhart’s biography “The Perfect Wife: The Life and Choices of Laura Bush” (2004), is a fictitious first lady named Alice Blackwell, née Lindgren, a Wisconsin-born former grade school teacher and librarian who comes belatedly to realize, in middle age, at the height of the Iraq war that her aggressively militant president-husband has initiated and stubbornly continues to defend, that she has compromised her youthful liberal ideals: “I lead a life in opposition to itself.” As a portraitist in prose, Sittenfeld never deviates from sympathetic respect for her high-profile subject:Clip:
The “American wife” of Sittenfeld’s new novel, conspicuously modeled after the life of Laura Bush as recorded in Ann Gerhart’s biography “The Perfect Wife: The Life and Choices of Laura Bush” (2004), is a fictitious first lady named Alice Blackwell, née Lindgren, a Wisconsin-born former grade school teacher and librarian who comes belatedly to realize, in middle age, at the height of the Iraq war that her aggressively militant president-husband has initiated and stubbornly continues to defend, that she has compromised her youthful liberal ideals: “I lead a life in opposition to itself.” As a portraitist in prose, Sittenfeld never deviates from sympathetic respect for her high-profile subject:
...Alice is never *other than “good” — “selfless” — stricken by conscience as she looks back upon the life that has become mysterious and problematic to her...
Link to review:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/31/bo...gewanted=print
Link to first chapter:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/29/bo...gewanted=print

[canibeyou]

Originally Posted by cpg35223

Hey, I just finished reading "Lolita" in Birmingham. I was so amazed by Nabokov's chops that I have moved on to "Pale Fire" by him.

Oh... the book is SO much better than any movie made of it, isn't it!

"Reading Lolita in Tehran" is the memoirs about a woman who held an "underground book club" in her home in Tehran, Iran (before she was kicked out of the country). Introducing the young minds of the Iranian's to the writings of Vladimir Nabokov, Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Henry James.

Note: it is illegal to have these books in Iran.

[lolagranola]

I just finished Road of Lost Innocence by Somaly Mam. Easy to read, hard subject matter.

[PinkString]

I'm almost finished with "52 pickup" by Elmore Leonard. I'll be starting "Mr.Murder" by Dean Koontz directly after.