| Author |
Message |
Kappy
Member
06-28-2002
| Wednesday, March 09, 2016 - 12:56 pm 
Finished Broken Promise by Linwood Barclay last night and while I wasn't sure about it in the first half, I flew through the 2nd half loving it! As the reader, you figure a few things out in the beginning as to who did what but it's the 2nd half that becomes a thriller as you wait to see how long before the various characters put it all together and if they get out safe. I'm ready to move on to the next one as it's part of a trilogy. Thank you, Uncle Ricky, as I think you're the one who mentioned this writer!
Next up, I have just dowloaded The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah after being on the hold list at the library for a few months.
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Heckagirl631
Member
09-08-2010
| Wednesday, March 09, 2016 - 8:35 pm
Just finished The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings. The movie with George Clooney is based on it, but I haven't seen the movie. The book was okay. It was different.
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Uncle_ricky
Member
07-02-2007
| Thursday, March 10, 2016 - 1:06 am
Very glad you liked it so much, Kappy! I do rave about Barclay evangelically, but there are plenty of others here who like him as much as I do. The important thing is that you enjoyed the book - I'm thrilled about that above all!
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Mamie316
Member
07-08-2003
| Thursday, March 10, 2016 - 8:53 am
I just read The Two-Family House by Linda Cohen Loigman. I'm on a roll. I have loved the past two books that I have read. She did a bang up job on her debut. Hopefully, the next one I pick keeps up the momentum.
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Mamie316
Member
07-08-2003
| Thursday, March 10, 2016 - 3:28 pm
I started the new Harlan Coben book that comes out later this month, Fool Me Once. So far, so good.
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Uncle_ricky
Member
07-02-2007
| Monday, March 14, 2016 - 11:00 am
Insanely jealous (what else is new?) that you get to read the new Coben, Mamie! 
Over the weekend, I finished and thoroughly enjoyed Carly Simon's memoir Boys in the Trees. I'm a fair-weather fan of her music, i.e., the only recording of hers I ever bought was her greatest hits album. So I was totally SHOCKED by how much I loved her book.
Interestingly, she restricts the focus to her life and career up to age 35. But the amount of detail she packs in is quite formidable. She also writes very openly about all of her relationships, not just the big-ticket one with James Taylor. I found it quite charming when she'd launch into a story about meeting male celebrity A or male celebrity B and then, ever so casually, mention that she'd had a physical relationship with the celebrity, more or less in an afterthought sort of way -- not a trace of salaciousness either (very refreshing). I highly recommend it!
This morning I dove into Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life -- at 720 pages, and after skimming a handful of reviews, it promises to be an epic experience. We'll see. This is the follow-up to her heavily praised debut, The People in the Trees, which I did not read.
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Rupertbear2
Member
07-15-2015
| Monday, March 14, 2016 - 11:14 am
Boys in the Trees
The People in the Trees
Seems to be a lot of people in the trees, this weather. ;)
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Jimmer
Moderator
08-30-2000
| Monday, March 14, 2016 - 11:48 am
I don't usually enjoy memoirs but Carly Simon's sounds intriguing. I've always found her interesting. I assume she skirted the infamous questions surrounding You're So Vain? 
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Uncle_ricky
Member
07-02-2007
| Monday, March 14, 2016 - 12:29 pm
She didn't address it directly in the book, no, Jimmer.
During a recent interview (with USA Today, I think), she did openly reveal that the second verse of the song is about Warren Beatty.
In the book, and this I found a lot more interesting, she explains the genesis of the song and how different it was initially and how she'd scribble various parts of the lyrics in her notebook until she was finally ready to write/record the final version - it took a couple of years altogether, I believe. (Whereas one of her other biggest hits took 15 minutes to compose.)
RB2, thanks for the observation about the "Trees" thing, I didn't notice that until you pointed it out.
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Seamonkey
Moderator
09-07-2000
| Monday, March 14, 2016 - 3:39 pm
LOL, Ric, you were seeing the forest, not the trees!
I am proud of you for being able to read a followup without the first one being read!!
I've finished Jenna Miscavige Hill's book about escaping from Scientology.. and wow do they make it difficult.. She wasn't a "public Scientologist" like Leah Remini, Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Juliette Lewis, Greta VanSustern , et. al., but her parents took the whole family in when she was quite young, which meant she was living the life, which is overwhelmingly chaotic, controlled and deeply brainwashed. And strictly isolating.
She didn't get much time with her parents and that is typical. Eventually her older brother left, whih meant they couldn't have contact with him, then her parents left and this a huge deal since her mom was very high up in the organization AND.. her father is David Miscavige's brother Quite a scandal. And at that time Jenna was told she pretty much was done with her position in Sea Org but she didn't want to leave and managed to stay.
They have so many rules about dating and marriage within Scientology (yes there are rules for public Scientologists and the group messes with those marriages too, but for those inside the organization it is SO much harder) but she managed to get married, they were shipped off to Australia, where they were told to somehow get millions in donations but there was nothing to offer people.. they still felt like the actual training was a good thing, but could see that it was nothing like California or Florida).
Anyway, so much went on and when they wanted to leave they were physically restrained, his parents were coerced to disown him or threaten to.
But finally they did get out and have two kids.. those in Scientology are not to get pregnant or have kids.. the kids in Scientology came in with a whole family who joined.
I've read other books about Scientology so much of this wasn't a huge surprise but she really showed how brainwashed and isolated these people are.
Then I started and am almost done with a book about beekeeping and the importance of bees for so many crops and all about honey. A big more detailed than necessary, but very interesting.
And if you like honey (I don't) beware.. because the Chinese got into the business but with no conscience so they used very dangerous treatments to keep their bees alive, which leave very dangerous stuff in the honey. They were eventually banned, or their honey was, but then suspiciously, various countries who had not been a source of imported honey to the US, such as Singapore, which has no place for bees, or Australia, which does, but they hadn't exported much, and other countries.. they suddenly were exporting large quantities.. which clearly were from China.
Sounds like you cannot trust anyone to give you pure honey, as there aren't good standards here but at least the stuff from Canada and the US are safer.
A test you can make is to turn the container upside down and if bubbles rise with any speed at all it is not pure honey.
The book is The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America by Hannah Nordhaus.
The feeding of America isn't from honey but from crops that need bees to do the pollinating.
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Mamie316
Member
07-08-2003
| Monday, March 14, 2016 - 3:59 pm
I read Jenna's book. I am fascinated by Scientology. Not fascinated in wanting to become one, but just in how they get these people sucked in and the stuff that happens is just so shocking.
I love a good Celeb bio. I have to get Carly's book. I've been eyeballing it and now that you enjoyed it Ricky, I am on board.
Harlan Coben's new book was a good one. Pure Coben at his finest with all the suspenseful twists and turns.
I also read The Two-Family House by Lynda Cohen Loigman and as Ricky will tell you, I don't give 5 stars often but I loved this book.
I am now reading Only Ever You and I can't think of the author but it's a good one so far.
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Seamonkey
Moderator
09-07-2000
| Monday, March 14, 2016 - 5:00 pm
I am fascinated too.. it really is scary how this is considered a religion and tax exempt and just how people are so brainwashed into it.
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Seamonkey
Moderator
09-07-2000
| Monday, March 14, 2016 - 9:11 pm
So I'm done with bees (and more concerned than before about the status of bees in terms of crops).
Next I'll read two books. One is Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy, whose face was disfigured by her cancer/treatment and who suffered much and underwent many surgeries. And then I'll read Truth & Beauty: A Friendship by Ann Patchett, written about her friendship with the late Lucy Grealy.
I knew I had the first book for awhile but was reminded when it had a recent price drop and I noticed the Patchett book suggested and was delighted that I had also previously purchased it when it was on sale. Looking forward to both.
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Seamonkey
Moderator
09-07-2000
| Thursday, March 17, 2016 - 8:14 am
Wow...Lucy really explains her life up to the point of publication..
She died very young of an overdose of heroin. I looked online to find this information and found this
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/aug/07/biography.features
from one of her sisters who points out it is all from Lucy's point of view.. and she hates that Ann Patchett wrote the book I am about to start..
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Reenie
Member
06-24-2006
| Thursday, March 17, 2016 - 7:20 pm
I just finished Kate Morton's "The Lake House". My first book by this author. It got such good reviews, but I found it too long (almost 500 pages) and with too many characters. The premise was good, a missing baby, so I plodded through it.
Anyone else read it?
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Seamonkey
Moderator
09-07-2000
| Friday, March 18, 2016 - 12:04 am
I haven't, but I bet someone here has.
I am now into the Ann Patchett.. the letters she includes are from Lucy to Ann so I don't get what beef Lucy's sister had there.. and the sister also snarked that Ann wasn't a real writer.. uh.. seems to me she's created a body of work.
Anyway Ann's reporting of Lucy shows an extreme person, but it is understandable after reading Lucy's book and knowing her issues.
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Kappy
Member
06-28-2002
| Friday, March 18, 2016 - 4:22 am
Stayed up until 4 am to finish The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah so that should tell you how much I liked it. So glad I had plenty of kleenex in the house! I'm not sure I would put it on the same level as All the Light We Cannot See but it definitely kept me interested in the lives of these two sisters who were so different in nature.
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Scout
Member
01-19-2005
| Friday, March 18, 2016 - 7:59 am
Reeinie - I thought it started slow, but I ended up really liking it.
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Reenie
Member
06-24-2006
| Friday, March 18, 2016 - 9:34 am
Thanks for your response! Variety makes the world go round!
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Aurora
Member
11-24-2006
| Friday, March 18, 2016 - 8:47 pm
I've read three of Kate Morton's novels. They all have the same theme of missing, misplaced or murdered children, and go back and forth between decades until the mysteries are solved. It's odd, actually. Even the houses are described similarly.
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Reenie
Member
06-24-2006
| Saturday, March 19, 2016 - 1:42 pm
Aurora, that is interesting! I guess she's got winner and she sticking with it.
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Heckagirl631
Member
09-08-2010
| Saturday, March 19, 2016 - 5:38 pm
Finished another really good book by Fannie Flagg, "The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion".
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Seamonkey
Moderator
09-07-2000
| Saturday, March 19, 2016 - 11:06 pm
Finished the Ann Patchett.. what a strange relationship.
Starting The Day Before 9/11 by Tucker Elliot.
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Seamonkey
Moderator
09-07-2000
| Sunday, March 20, 2016 - 6:58 pm
Finished The Day Before 9/11, which was when the author wished he could be transported, maybe to redo things a bit.
He was teaching on a military base in South Korea at that time, and coaching soccer too. He writes about specific kids and in general, how the whole family would be "serving" and of course how security was ramped up but also about kids being scared when parents deployed, an kids in abusive homes, and in specific kids he knows he failed to help and how he ran from that situation to teaching kids from military families in Germany but still there are kids at risk and in this case two kids were lost to murder/suicide by their mother after their father abandoned the family.
Anyway the book gets the points across, though it is circular in time, as his thoughts much have been.
So.. Now starting yet another of Catherine Ryan Hyde's books (I've read a bunch) Ask Him Why which deals with a dysfunctional family (families in her books are always dysfunctional) and the oldest son dishonorably discharged from the military for refusing to on out on a raid, as he realizes that the families who are being dragged from their homes are often doing nothing wrong.. and he comes home in disgrace to be raked over the coals by his step dad and he leaves (young people always leave home in her books) and we are hearing this from point of view of two other brothers in the family. Just starting.
Yes, I'm reading fiction today ;)
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Heckagirl631
Member
09-08-2010
| Sunday, March 20, 2016 - 7:05 pm
The book I just read is based somewhat on facts. It involves the WASP's who flew in WWII. Quite interesting. Yes, the Fannie Flagg book, I just mentioned yesterday.
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