| Author |
Message |
Zeyna
Member
07-15-2001
| Friday, November 09, 2018 - 4:21 pm 
Thanks Sea, I'll check it out
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Uncle_ricky
Member
07-02-2007
| Friday, November 09, 2018 - 4:28 pm
Sea, that's definitely well-deserved (and thrilling!).
Zeyna,
If you plan on taking more than one book on your vacation, I can almost guarantee you'll like either of these two titles (which I've begged everyone I know to read) 
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman and A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles.
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Zeyna
Member
07-15-2001
| Friday, November 09, 2018 - 5:24 pm
Thank you Uncle_ricky, I read Eleanor already (loved it!!), and will definitely try a Gentelan in Moscow
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Egbok
Member
07-13-2000
| Friday, November 09, 2018 - 7:12 pm
Weinermr/Michael, it is really good to see you posting!! Thanks for the recommendation of J.K. Rowlings' series under her pseudonym Robert Galbraith. I'll look into it!
To everyone who posts here, I appreciate your reviews and recommendations. As a result, I've read many of the books you have mentioned in this thread. Thank you so much!
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Seamonkey
Moderator
09-07-2000
| Friday, November 09, 2018 - 7:17 pm
If I finally hook up to borrow e books, there are a ton .. Books that are priced high on Kindle.
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Teachmichigan
Member
07-22-2001
| Friday, November 09, 2018 - 7:48 pm
Zenya - have you read the Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo? Fabulous, fun book that I read in 24 hours of travel last summer. I also thoroughly enjoyed My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman - who wrote A Man Called Ove (a book I read in 4 hours! SOOO good!). I didn't find it quite as good as Ove, but it's definitely a good read.
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Zeyna
Member
07-15-2001
| Saturday, November 10, 2018 - 6:41 pm
Thanks Teach, I haven't read either of those, but I did read A man called Ove and enjoyed it very much.
I want to second what Egbok said, I really appreciate all the reviews and have also read many books previously recommended here.
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Teachmichigan
Member
07-22-2001
| Tuesday, November 13, 2018 - 6:42 pm
Holy. Cow. I just listened to The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn as I traveled. SUCH a good ending!
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Seamonkey
Moderator
09-07-2000
| Thursday, November 15, 2018 - 3:00 am
Elinor Oliphant was good.
I finished The Family Gene, which was really interesting, and just finished another Catherine Ryan Hyde novel, Heaven Adjacent, which I liked. I always like her endings more than the beginnings.
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Seamonkey
Moderator
09-07-2000
| Thursday, November 15, 2018 - 3:10 am
I also read a memoir by Christine Hyung-Oak, Tell Me Everything You Don't Remember: The stroke that changed my life. She had a stroke at a very young age because a hole in her heart let through a blood clot.
She and her husband did not seek treatment for several days. She Later researched and explains well about her stroke location and aftermath.
She had a child, post partum, he had an affair, they divorced. She married a longtime great friend and wrote her book.
So now I am starting to read Detroit: An American Autopsy by Charlie LeDuff, who is from Detroit and is a journalist.
I did live there for 9 years.
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Kappy
Member
06-28-2002
| Thursday, November 15, 2018 - 9:58 am
I would like to echo Egbok in giving a THANK YOU to everyone who has posted about the books they've read!
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Uncle_ricky
Member
07-02-2007
| Saturday, November 17, 2018 - 5:05 pm
I had a dilemma (of sorts) as I contemplated the next book on my list.
Many years ago I made the difficult decision to end a friendship. I'd been friends with this man for about 10 years and in 1997 I think it was, I determined that my friend's ego had just grown too huge for me to tolerate. He lived in Brooklyn, NY and I lived here in Los Angeles, so we only saw each other a couple of times a year, though we did travel together in 1989 for a week in Italy and got along fine.
But with each passing year, his ego just grew unbearable and I ended the friendship by telling him that it (the friendship) had run its course. My friend was stunned and refused to acknowledge that he'd done anything wrong - I totally expected that would be his response. But I held firm and never spoke to him again nor did he try to patch things up (also not a surprise).
Fast forward to the present day. My ex-friend, Robert Rorke, got his first novel, Car Trouble, published a couple of months ago (by Harper Perennial) and I spent the past week reading it.
It's very good, but not great. A 406-page family drama about an Irish-Catholic family in 1970s Brooklyn. The protagonist is the family's only son (he has 4 sisters) and his parents. The father is a hellion who terrorizes the family while supplying it with luxury cars -- purchased dirt cheaply at NYPD auctions -- every few years.
The dilemma I faced was whether to write a review of it on Twitter, knowing Robert would see it. I wanted him to know I read it (and liked it), but I didn't want it to be misinterpreted as a gesture to rekindle our friendship. I post reviews of all the books I read on Twitter, so I ultimately posted my review of Robert's book this morning.
And, as expected, Robert replied to it, thusly: "Whoa! A voice from the past! Thanks for reading my book and plugging it on social media. Do you still live in LA?"
And here's my reply to that: "You're welcome. I'm not surprised you finally wrote a book, only that it took so long to release it. I'm still in LA, yes, happily married (17 yrs) and still reading voraciously. I'll be on the lookout for your next book. Congratulations again on getting the first one published."
I'm hoping my response comes across as what I intended it to be, which is: I'm glad you got your book published -- I've read it and will read your future books, but that's it.
Do you guys think he'll get the message that I don't want to be his friend again? Keep in mind he was always terribly narcissistic and I don't think he's eased up on that all these years later.
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Jimmer
Moderator
08-30-2000
| Saturday, November 17, 2018 - 6:26 pm
I think your comments were perfect. However, I suspect that he will frame them in whatever manner he wants to which may not create the result that you intended.
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Uncle_ricky
Member
07-02-2007
| Saturday, November 17, 2018 - 7:26 pm
First, thank you for reading that hideously long post. And thanks for your opinion, too!
I'm honestly very surprised by Robert's follow-up reply. I think his narcissism has softened because they (narcissists) usually don't give credit to others -- I'm very relieved this was his reply:
"It was a matter of finding the right tone. And structure, with the cars. That wouldn't have occurred to me 10 years ago. It took a very long time, indeed. Many, many revisions. But once I went to school and met the right teachers I was able to get a grip. Finding the right editor was also the trick. Thanks for the good wishes."
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Mamie316
Member
07-08-2003
| Sunday, November 18, 2018 - 8:34 am
It sounds like he got the message from your post. (I am going to run to Twitter) I think you wrote it beautifully but then again, you always write beautifully.
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Seamonkey
Moderator
09-07-2000
| Sunday, November 18, 2018 - 8:50 am
I think you handled it very well!
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Mameblanche
Member
08-24-2002
| Sunday, November 18, 2018 - 11:47 am
Wow, I agree, your review was extremely well-crafted and your response diplomatic. And maybe, possibly, hopefully, he's outgrown most of his youthful narcissism, (sp) and is once again the congenial fellow you enjoyed travelling with through Italy.
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Teachmichigan
Member
07-22-2001
| Sunday, November 18, 2018 - 6:34 pm
Just when I think I can't adore you more, Ricky...your heart is always in the right place. If only the world had more like you.
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Uncle_ricky
Member
07-02-2007
| Sunday, November 18, 2018 - 7:49 pm
Awww, thank you so much, Teach - you're going to make cry. You know that I cry, scare and bruise easily. And thank you Mamie, Sea and Mame as well - you're all kindness itself. I really appreciate the feedback!
And note to Mame, you might recall a year or two ago, you and I chatted about when you wrote for Soap Opera Daily. That emanated from me mentioning my friend who wrote for Soap Opera Digest. That friend was Robert Rorke. He now writes for the New York Post - he's one of their TV columnists, focusing on night-time shows (reviews, interviews, etc.). I guess that'll always be his day job until he strikes it rich as a full-time novelist (which might be never since that's pretty much a million-to-one longshot).
He's an incredibly gifted writer and many of his columns are laugh-out-loud funny (as they were when he wrote for S.O.D.). And had it not been for Robert, I never would've gotten to meet my two all-time favorite daytime actresses, Beverlee McKinsey (Iris Carrington on AW) and Elizabeth Hubbard (Lucinda Walsh on ATWT). I was his +1 one year at the Soap Opera Digest Awards, back when they were televised on TBS.
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Mameblanche
Member
08-24-2002
| Sunday, November 18, 2018 - 11:10 pm
Yes I remember our discussion about it. I was a fairly regular contributor to SOD's sister publication Soap Opera Weekly. One of my columns was called Do Tell. I did several celebrity roundups for them and a huge profile of Anna Stuart of Another World who went on to marry actor James Cromwell. Anyhow I was very familiar with Rorke's articles and columns.
I covered the Daytime Emmy's 2 or 3 times in the 80s. Wonder if we were there at the same time?
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Mamie316
Member
07-08-2003
| Monday, November 19, 2018 - 9:22 am
I love Elizabeth Hubbard! I used to watch that show with my mom regularly.
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Uncle_ricky
Member
07-02-2007
| Monday, November 19, 2018 - 12:23 pm
Oh, drat, MB, I'm such a bozo - forgive me for calling it Soap Opera Daily instead of Weekly. I'm jealous you got to interview Anna Stuart - loved her so much on AW. Robert went to all the daytime Emmy ceremonies, so I'm sure your paths crossed there at some point. He wasn't allowed to bring a guest to that one, only to the poor-relations (S.O.D. Awards).
Mamie, I'm so glad to know that. I got my picture taken with Ms. Hubbard and I treasure it. I always have a devil of a time posting photos here. But it's her birthday next month (Dec. 22), so I'll post that photo on Twitter on that day and then I'll "cc:" you on that tweet!
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Uncle_ricky
Member
07-02-2007
| Tuesday, November 20, 2018 - 4:25 pm
Back in August, Mak1 wrote:
Lol, Ricky! In my opinion, this Anne Tyler book was awful! I would like to have your opinion of it, however. I was very disappointed. I didn't like the way the book jumped ahead 10 and 20 years with very little explanation of what had happened in between. Just as stories were becoming interesting to me, they were dropped.
I just now finished Clock Dance - it took forever for my copy to arrive from the library.
I totally understand why you would be disappointed, I really do. I agree that the shifting of the years was jarring, especially because I wanted to know more about what happened to the characters. But that's her style -- she's definitely risking alienating the reader by using devices like that.
I guess I just love her writing so much that I can (even after all these years of reading her) overlook things like unfleshy descriptions and still relish her novels. There's an extreme ordinariness to how she writes. I'd go so far as to say there's zero flashiness. But, book after book, I just keep connecting with her characters because of how quirky and ordinary they are.
As I was working my way through this latest one I kept thinking to myself how other readers (such as Mak) would probably not find the story and characters very compelling. I feared I wouldn't like the book either, but she grabbed my emotions again and I ultimately really liked it, but I didn't love it the way I've loved some of her others. Her level of genius is simply amazing to me -- it's just really hard to describe what her books mean to me because the tugging-at-one's-emotions is so difficult to explain. 
Thanks again for your very honest opinion, Mak!
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Mak1
Member
08-11-2002
| Tuesday, November 20, 2018 - 5:17 pm
Thank you for your thoughts, Ricky. I can relate to loving an author's writing so much that you relish her whole body of work, especially when they connect to your emotions. I am really glad you did like the book.
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Teachmichigan
Member
07-22-2001
| Wednesday, November 21, 2018 - 4:39 pm
I am about halfway through Educated, and it is compelling, interesting, and next-to-impossible to put down! This is NOT a good thing as I have 12 sets of papers to grade over this holiday weekend!
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