Author |
Message |
Seamonkey
Member
09-07-2000
| Monday, May 24, 2004 - 3:49 pm
Mary, you'll LOVE The Source.. I'd bump it right up on top!!
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Beachcomber
Member
08-26-2003
| Monday, May 24, 2004 - 6:24 pm
Just finished the Mitford Series by Jan Karon, loved all 8 books and the wonderful uplifting characters. Also read the 4 "Miss Julia" books by Ann B. Ross, hilarious characters and plots. My parents also loved them. A good historical novel series I would recommend are the John Jakes saga beginning with "The B*stard". His "Charleston" book is also great reading. Has anyone read the books by Joan Medlicott about the Covington ladies?
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Not1worry
Member
07-30-2002
| Monday, May 24, 2004 - 6:32 pm
Beach, what is the title of the 1st Miss Julia book? I'd like to give it a read. If you enjoyed Mitford, you will like Covington. I need to see if there's a new one out, it's been a while since I read the first 3. I definitely recommend them. (My mom loved them too, for what that's worth!)
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Beachcomber
Member
08-26-2003
| Monday, May 24, 2004 - 6:43 pm
Not, there are 5 books in the series and the first one is "Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind" by Ann B. Ross. Thanks for the Covington recommendation!
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Marysafan
Member
08-07-2000
| Tuesday, May 25, 2004 - 9:28 am
I decided that my next book would be "The Three Phases of Eve" an autobiography of Eve Arden that I found at a garage sale a couple of week ago. I have told this story before, but for those of you that don't know, I got to meet Eve Arden when hollywood came to my neighborhood in 1959 to film the movie "Anatomy of a Murder." I was a 9 year old stalker. I sat and watched the filming every day, and then followed MS Arden as she walked from the site of the filming to her hotel. One day my mother sent me off with my brownie camera and told me to bring her back some pictures. I spent the day hiding behind trees and trying to blend into the scenery without being noticed...while I snapped away. At the end of the day, I took my place on my friend Patty's front porch and waited for MS Eden to come strolling by. Sure enough, along she came with a woman reporter who was taking notes on a steno pad as they walked. I fell in behind them, and we went only a few steps when she stopped, said to the reporter, "Excuse me just a moment. This little girl would like to take my picture". That said, she turn around, whipped off her sunglasses, put her hand on her hip, and posed for me! Then she bent over, put her hands on her knees, looked me right in the eyes....and winked! I was very shy and was stunned beyond belief! I was speechlees and couldn't even summon the courage to thank her. So finding this book in excellent condition was a real treasure for me. I can hardly wait to get to the part where she meets a nine year old stalker in Ishpeming, Michigan.
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Jen
Member
07-27-2003
| Tuesday, May 25, 2004 - 11:16 am
Am reading The Last Juror by John Grisham. It is good so far.Has anyone finished it? What did you think?
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Not1worry
Member
07-30-2002
| Tuesday, May 25, 2004 - 12:19 pm
Jen, I read that a few weeks ago. I usually enjoy Grisham and this was a good one. There were so many fun characters, the trial almost seemed like a sub-plot instead of the main story. I think I like his books better when he gets to the heart of a small town and its people. I liked the Painted House too, and this one reminded me of it.
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Seamonkey
Member
09-07-2000
| Tuesday, May 25, 2004 - 12:22 pm
I finished Slave and recommend it to everyone.. slavery is alive and sicknotwell and flourishing in today's Sudan, with the help of the government. Mende Nazer tells her story with calm clarity and the simple direct voice of the child who was abducted and forced into slavery, first in her own country, then after years and at least bonding with the children in that family, was "given" to family in London, where she finally was able to escape. I'm now reading a memoir by Alison Smith, called Name All the Animals about the aftermath of the sudden death of her brother on the entire family. So far, written with amazing honesty.
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Cablejockey
Member
12-27-2001
| Tuesday, May 25, 2004 - 12:32 pm
What a wonderful story Marysafan, do you still have those pictures you took back then? Also, I find it amazing that a 9 yr old girl could wander around on her own like that, and nobody was worried anything bad could happen. I have just finished reading Farewell Jackie, by Edward Klein. Its about the last months of Jaqeline Kennedy Onnasiss, JBKO, as she was known by some. It also crosses back and forth thru her life. I must admit to being a bit of a Jackieophile, as I'm always reading some book or another about her. This one was interesting as a lot more people who were close to her are coming out and talking more about their memories of the woman.
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Seamonkey
Member
09-07-2000
| Tuesday, May 25, 2004 - 4:58 pm
Cable, you'd probably like the recent book about Caroline Kennedy as well, Sweet Caroline which also gives some new insights.. or maybe you are the one who clude me into it?
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Cablejockey
Member
12-27-2001
| Wednesday, May 26, 2004 - 9:32 am
Well, yes I did read it last month, and learned all kinds of things that arent generally known about Caroline and her family---such as how much her and mother were stalked by absolute crazies over the years.
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Seamonkey
Member
09-07-2000
| Sunday, May 30, 2004 - 11:43 am
Oh, I finished Name All the Animals and am reading a book Hermi mentioned, The Dirty Girls Social Club by Alisa Valdes Rodriguez.
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Mamie316
Member
07-08-2003
| Sunday, May 30, 2004 - 1:01 pm
I am going to start The Goddesses Of Kitchen Avenue. How was Name All The Animals?
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Seamonkey
Member
09-07-2000
| Sunday, May 30, 2004 - 3:11 pm
I thought it was very well-written..
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Trishan
Member
06-21-2003
| Sunday, May 30, 2004 - 9:32 pm
Hi everyone. Recently read Tall Pine Polka} by Lorna Landvik. Enjoyed the beginning, not so much the middle nor the ending. “In the small town of Tall Pine, Minnesota, at the Cup O’Delight Cafe, the townsfolk gather for what they call the Tall Pine Polka, an event in which heavenly coffee, good food, and that feeling of being alive among friends inspires both body and soul to dance. There’s the cafe owner, the robust and beautiful Lee O’Leary, who escaped to the northwoods from an abusive husband; Miss Penk and Frau Katt, the town’s only lesbian couple (“Well, we’re za only ones who admit it.”); Pete, proprietor of the Shoe Shack, who spends nights crafting beautiful shoes to present to Lee, along with his declarations of love; Mary, whose bad poetry can clear out the cafe in seconds flat; and, most important of all, Lee’s best friend, Fenny Ness, a smart and sassy twenty-two-year-old going on eighty. When Hollywood rolls into Tall Pine to shoot a movie, and a handsome musician known as Big Bill appears on the scene, Lee and Fenny find their friendship put to the test, as events push their hearts in unexplored directions—where endings can turn into new beginnings. . . .” Also read Girl from the South by Joanna Trollope. Liked it okay—only wish the author had written more about the “girl” from the South: “An admired English author of wryly intelligent family dramas, Trollope has never enjoyed a particularly wide American readership. This very likable novel, which features a protagonist from South Carolina involved with an English visitor, might change that. It even offers the notion that American family traditions, particularly Southern ones, offer a stability that contemporary English relationships often lack. Gillon Stokes is the odd girl out in her tradition-bound Charleston family, and when she goes to London on a typically whimsical impulse to pursue art research, she catches the eye of nature photographer Henry. When she casually invites him back home for a visit, Henry is charmed by the same folkways that Gillon finds so stifling, and he soon becomes so much part of her family that he begins turning their sense of themselves and each other upside down. Back in London, Henry's girlfriend, Tilly, is having problems keeping his friend William at bay, and discovers that she cares more than she expected she would about Henry's defection. The contrast between the casual, rootless Londoners and the rather rigid, assured Southerners is deliciously pointed, and Trollope (The Best of Friends, etc.) offers two splendid scenes of very different mothers and daughters coming to terms with their dissimilarities. This is subtle, delicate entertainment that skillfully avoids romantic cliché‚ while offering a group of believably quirky characters learning to adjust to new maturity.” A couple of months ago read a wonderful novel by Nicole Krauss (her first) titled Man Walks Into a Room. (A Los Angeles Times best book of the year). “Mysterious and compelling…Krauss brings to her work a poet’s gift for seizing upon small but potent details…[A] novel that…is hard to forget.” --Los Angeles Times Book Review. “A man is found wandering the desert outside Las Vegas. The cards in his wallet identify him as Samson Greene, a Columbia University English professor last seen leaving campus eight days ago. Thirty-six years old, with a wife, Anna, and a dog, Frank. But Samson doesn’t even recognize his own name, and by the time Anna has made her away across the country to pick him up, doctors have discovered a cherry-sized tumor in his brain; its removal eradicates the last twenty-four years of Samson’s memories. Samson and Anna return to New York together, where Samson struggles to connect with the woman he knows he is supposed to love, with his career, with his home, with his “life.” He remembers his mother, his childhood in California, the basic shape and processes of the world, but everything else remains blank. In the meantime, Anna sees the same husband she has always seen, but every day has to steel herself against the notion that the man she loves is the Samson who remembers the last quarter century, the Samson who has been shaped by the history of their lives together. Into these daily lives fraught with a peculiarly intimate tension comes a charismatic scientist who invites Samson to take part in a groundbreaking, experimental project involving the transfer of memories from one mind to another–all it requires is a trip back to the Nevada desert. It doesn’t take much to lure Samson away from his profound loneliness in the City–where he is stuck between missing the past life that surrounds him and yearning to enjoy the fresh start he’s been given–though Anna is never far from his thoughts as he embarks on the adventure that could mean the end of the old Samson Greene. In Samson, Nicole Krauss creates an ordinary man who his facing a searingly new world with gritty poignancy and purely instinctual empathy. Reminiscent of early DeLillo, but with the emotional sensitivity of a budding Cheever, Krauss’s sharp, intelligent storytelling effortlessly peels away the layers of quotidian circumstances to reveal the subtle joys and woes of simple survival.” Highly recommend The Monk Downstairs by Tim Farrington. I liked this book so much that I’m looking for some of Farrington’s other work. “Rebecca Martin is a single mother with an apartment to rent and a sense that she has used up her illusions. I had the romantic thing with my first husband, thank you very much, she tells a hapless suitor. I'm thirty-eight years old, and I've got a daughter learning to read and a job I don't quite like. I don't need the violin music. But when the new tenant in her in-law apartment turns out to be Michael Christopher, on the lam after twenty years in a monastery and smack dab in the middle of a dark night of the soul, Rebecca begins to suspect that she is not as thoroughly disillusioned as she had thought. Her daughter, Mary Martha, is delighted with the new arrival, as is Rebecca's mother, Phoebe, a rollicking widow making a new life for herself among the spiritual eccentrics of the coastal town of Bolinas. Even Rebecca's best friend, Bonnie, once a confirmed cynic in matters of the heart, urges Rebecca on. But none of them, Rebecca feels, understands how complicated and dangerous love actually is. As her unlikely friendship with the ex-monk grows toward something deeper, and Michael wrestles with his despair while adjusting to a second career flipping hamburgers at McDonald's, Rebecca struggles with her own temptation to hope. But it is not until she is brought up short by the realities of life and death that she begins to glimpse the real mystery of love, and the unfathomable depths of faith. Beautifully written and playfully engaging, this novel. is about one man wrestling with his yearning for a life of contemplation and the need for a life of action in the world. But it's Rebecca's spirit, as well as her relationships with Mary Martha, Phoebe, her irresponsible surfer ex-husband Rory -- and, of course, the monk downstairs -- that makes this story shine.” On to a couple of new (to me) British authors: Katherine Leiner—enjoyed her Digging Out immensely, but should not have kept on reading on a Wednesday night at home because my eyes were swollen the next morning after much weeping. (Felt a little strange at work the next day…) This one is better suited for Fri-Sun reading: “Set against the backdrop of the magnificent Welsh landscape, this is a haunting, inspiring, and heart-lifting novel of loss, family reconciliation, and the healing power of love... When she was eight years old, Alys Davies survived a tragedy in the small Welsh town where she was born. It shattered the village with guilt and stunning disbelief and destroyed her family. Each sought their own private-and devastating-escape. For Alys it was to flee to the United States where, far away from the memories, she could rebuild her life, realize her budding career as a poet, and marry. Now, a new tragedy unfolds in Alys's life, forcing her to face her demons. Grieving for her past, Alys decides to return to it. Step by step, she makes the long journey back home to Wales, to embrace the memories of all that she lost, and to finally open herself to love... ” “Digging Out tells a profoundly moving story that spans past and present, Wales and California, disaster and recovery. The characters become so real it’s like having a new family.” Noelle Oxenhandler I found Emily Barr’s Cuba different and quite enjoyable: “Maggie's idea of starting over after breaking up with her boyfriend isn't working out as planned. Instead of the fabulous career, shopping with friends, and dinner parties she'd imagined, all she has is a lonely flat, and although it pays well, her job at Vixenz isn't worth writing home about. Life picks up for Maggie when she accidentally discovers that she can overhear everything in her neighbors' flat. When her new neighbor David announces to his wife Libby that they and their infant son Charlie are off to Cuba on sabbatical, the travel bug is very contagious, and it doesn't take Maggie long to decide that Libby and David are not going alone...” I’ve come to cherish Southern fiction. Just finished reading The Second Coming of Lucy Hatch (which I believe has been reviewed & recommended here before): “I was thirty-three years old when my husband walked out into a field one morning and never came back, and I went in one quick leap from wife to widow. Lucy Hatch never expected more of life than to spend it on an East Texas farm with her silent and stoic husband, Mitchell. Now that the curtain has abruptly come down, she's back where it all started -- in tiny Mooney -- living in a rundown old house perched on the edge of nowhere, meaning to carry out her widowhood in the manner of her old maid Aunt Dove, in peaceful solitude. But life, and the folks of Mooney, have other plans for Lucy. In hardly any time at all, she's mortified her entire family. And without even trying, she's caught the eye of the local handyman, Ash Farrell -- lifting eyebrows and setting tongues wagging. Everyone in town, it seems, thinks the guitar-playing, lady-loving Ash is the wrong choice of company for a brand new widow. All Lucy Hatch knows for sure is that she hasn't had much worth remembering in her first thirty-three years. This is her life, after all, and for the very first time, she intends to live it. Marsha Moyer's exhilarating debut is a funny, poignant, and winsome tale about self-discovery and starting over at the beginning -- and of love popping up in the most unlikely place and time to transform a heart and nourish a soul. You're never going to forget Lucy Hatch.” I have two more books in this genre. Will start reading The Piano Teacher by Lynn York, then will go on to Betty Sweet Tells All by Judith Minthorn Stacy.
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Seamonkey
Member
09-07-2000
| Monday, May 31, 2004 - 2:20 pm
Sounds like you are one busy reader Finished The Dirty Girls Social Club this morning and will be cracking open the newest Alex Delaware novel, Therapy by Jonathan Kellerman, when next I'm reading a book (after I finish the paper).
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Jen
Member
07-27-2003
| Tuesday, June 01, 2004 - 11:11 am
Thanks for the review of The Last Juror. I am still enjoying it but plodding along. I agree that when there are interesting character, his books can tell a wonderful story. His latest law books have seemed pretty formulatic, too predictable. None can compare to The Firm. I read it in high school in one day. I was mesmerized! Thanks again!
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Mak1
Member
08-12-2002
| Tuesday, June 01, 2004 - 6:57 pm
I just finished Ice Bound: A Doctor's Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole by Dr. Jerri Nielsen. This is a fascinating book, not only the story of the doctor performing her own breast biopsy and her daring, risky rescue from Antarctica. The book gives us a real inside look at the community of scientists and others who "winter over" and live in darkness on the ice, at -100+ degrees, connected to the rest of the world only by internet. I wouldn't want to do it, but I loved learning about it.
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Seamonkey
Member
09-07-2000
| Tuesday, June 01, 2004 - 9:33 pm
That was great read, Mak.. I read it quite some time back but just got it back from someone who borrowed is so I put it on my to read pile to go through again.
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Ophiliasgrandma
Member
09-04-2001
| Sunday, June 06, 2004 - 10:24 am
I also enjoyed 'Ice Bound'. Right now I'm reading an autobio by Lynn Cox...'Swimming To Antarctica'. It is hard to put down. I most heartily recommend this book. She was feature on 60 Minutes a few months ago.
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Ophiliasgrandma
Member
09-04-2001
| Sunday, June 06, 2004 - 10:31 am

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Max
Member
08-12-2000
| Sunday, June 06, 2004 - 12:11 pm
I just finished Steve Martin's "The Pleasure of My Company." It's highly entertaining and I liked it better than "Shopgirl." Steve Martin is really good at painting very quirky characters with his words. 
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Mamie316
Member
07-08-2003
| Sunday, June 06, 2004 - 2:15 pm
I loved that one Max. I laughed out loud quite a bit.
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Seamonkey
Member
09-07-2000
| Monday, June 07, 2004 - 1:54 am
I finished my Alex Delaware (Jonathan Kellerman) am starting The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht.. OG.. I liked the Lynne Cox book very much.. really a remarkable woman, huh?
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Puppylov3
Member
01-26-2004
| Monday, June 07, 2004 - 4:18 am
I"m in the Middle of Morgue Momma by CR Corwin. The main character is a librarian in a newspaper morgue. Rather funny at times. Good read so far.}
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