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Location: Montreal -> CT -> MA -> Montreal -> Ottawa
17,330 posts, read 33,018,915 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by convextech
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
That's on my "to read" list. Was it you who posted on the What are you reading? thread that you were reading it? I hadn't heard of it until then, saw someone (you?) post about it, and looked it up. The reviews were outstanding!
That's on my "to read" list. Was it you who posted on the What are you reading? thread that you were reading it? I hadn't heard of it until then, saw someone (you?) post about it, and looked it up. The reviews were outstanding!
Yes, I believe that was me. I've read it twice now and it's a great book.
I can only think of one right off the bat. People of the Abyss by Jack London. It's the true story of class differences from the 1800s, if I can remember correctly. Such poverty and misery in the lives of the have-nots. Very riveting and sad. Makes me thankful for my life.
You know, I am a very happy, upbeat sort of person - I mean, like, well nearly all the time. I love happy conversations, jokes, happy music, active happy activities - but girl, I love me a heartbreaking book or movie.
Book crack! I just bought another bookshelf for my bedroom. I feel like a book hoarder.
I just have to keep some of them and reread them because they have different interpretations for me at different phases of my life.
Here are a few of the most formative off the top of my head:
The Joy of Cooking by Irma and Marion Rombauer
Alive Miller's trilogy - The Drama of the Gifted Child, For your own Good and Thou Shalt not be Aware People of the Lie by M. Scott Peck The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer My Mother, Myself by Nancy Friday
You named two of my all time favorite books - People of the Lie, and The Cost of Discipleship. FABULOUS books. Very, very deep and thought provoking.
I really like both authors a lot, too. Good stuff.
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
The Road Less Traveled by Scott Peck
The Divide by Nicholas Evans
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
I loved The Road Less Traveled, by M Scott Peck. Have you read People of the Lie? It's also excellent. If you're ever dealing with someone you're pretty sure is toxic as hell, and/or if you're struggling with establishing healthy personal boundaries with people you're sort of "stuck with," then this book is a real eye opener. I read it when realizing with growing horror that both my mother, my brother and my (now ex) husband all had abusive streaks a mile wide in them. Two of the three were later diagnosed with serious mental illness (and my ex husband probably needs a thorough evaluation but fuggetabouthim!), so my hunch was right. But mental illness, personality disorders, emotional issues, whatever - this book really, really helps when it comes to how to deal with very difficult people.
The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler. Tyler develops some of the richest character portrayals I have ever read, and she paints a beautiful story, offset by the quirky backdrop of Baltimore.
The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes. Whether Jayne's hypotheses are right or wrong, this book was eye-opening when I read it during college. The conceptual nature of his argument and its introduction to me of evolutionary history as related to human experiential history were illuminating.
The Golden Apples by Eudora Welty. A favorite short story was "June Recital" from high school days -- our 11th grade focus was on regionalism in American literature. I later read the whole book, as the stories really do belong together. I treasure obtaining Welty's signature in this volume before she passed in Jackson, Miss. during the summer of 2001.
Rabbit, Run by John Updike. This book, a bombshell in 1960, speaks to me about an almost bygone America, the way "things used to be" in the postwar period. Rabbit, Run (and the other Rabbit books along with works like The Human Stain by Philip Roth, foreshadowed the changes on the horizon. Not too many years ago, it didn't seem that the "Boomtime America" condition was exceptional. But so much about those days, and how they were lived in real-time, now feels archaic. Updike's books serve almost as a historical document as well as superb fiction.
The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro, Volumes 1-4 The Path to Power; Means of Ascent; Master of the Senate; The Passage of Power. The second book in this 35-years-and-counting biography appeared just as I graduated. I was hooked. The story of Johnson's 1948 election brinkmanship against Coke Stevenson defines the expression "could not put it down." No other series of book has me salivating, counting the days (many, many days) until the author completes the next volume. [Please publish the next installment soon, Mr. Caro!]
You named two of my all time favorite books - People of the Lie, and The Cost of Discipleship. FABULOUS books. Very, very deep and thought provoking.
I really like both authors a lot, too. Good stuff.
convextech mentioned F. Scott Peck, too. Both of the books of his I've read did require future reading as I matured. People of the Lie was something I read when I was struggling with the problem of evil and it was helpful.
If you like Bonhoeffer, Kathryn, you probably also like Corrie Tenboom, a Dutch woman, who was imprisoned by the Nazis. Her subject matter continues to be timely.
The Alice Miller books I read in my thirties when I was looking for understanding and healing in my relationship with my parents. She knocks it out of the ballpark.
Sounds like all I read is self-help books, but au contraire.
The book that was most influential in my casual reading was handed to me by my mother once when I was home sick with the flu - In Sunshine and Shadow, a collection of short stories by Edgar Allen Poe.
Every year I treat myself to a volume of The Year's Best New Fantasy and Horror editedby Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling and The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror edited by Stephen Jones. Beach reading to raise eyebrows.
Thanks a lot, Mom.
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