Unraveled Sleeve
by Monica Ferris
2001 / 256 pgs
read by Susan Boyce: 8 hrs
rating – B
I’m a sucker for a good cozy mystery and once in awhile I need a good one, when I’ve been reading “hard” books in which I get so involved – see several of the books for Sept – but the Mantel book just did me in. Soooo…..
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Bring Up the Bodies
by Hilary Mantel
2012/ 410 pages
Rating 9.5 – 10 ?
Whew – insomnia (my friend) woke me up at about 3:30 this AM and I was able to finish the book. Finally! I’d had such a great start – got interrupted for something (? – maybe sleep) and when I got back to it I had to check all the names and stuff again. I’d get only about 50 pages read a day. But I was really enjoying what I could get read – Maybe there was a part of me that was savoring it so much I didn’t want it to end? I doubt it, but I did get more and more involved after 1/2 way – >>>>MORE >>>>
A Cool Breeze On the Underground
by Don Winslow
1991- 250 pages
narrated by Joe Barrett – 9h. 55m
rating B+
Interesting series – new to me – I may follow this. Years ago Joe Graham, a PI for the rich and dirty, found a wandering child who turned out to be the son of an addict/prostitute mother and an unknown father. Graham trained the young Neal in the ways of the underworld and detection and now, many years later, Neal is in grad school (with the help of Graham and his “friends,” but works for Graham occasionally – as needed – by them. >>>> MORE >>>>
The Sound and the Fury
by William Faulkner –
1929 / paper & audio
199 pages (of story + 246 in Norton Critical Edition)
8:51 audio
rating 9.5
I’ve read this twice before and I’m sure there’s always something more to get out of it but this time I’m not getting a whole lot of good stuff. In my opinion at the moment, it’s a great story but a bit more artificially complex than necessary. >>> MORE >>>
Arctic Chill
by Arnaldur Indridason
2011/ Audio
George Guidall 9h 24
Rating B+
Iceland is a popular place for Thai immigrants and a woman named Sunee lives there with her Thai son and her Icelandic son. But they’re still outsiders to many – and undesirables. She and her >>> MORE>>>>
Eden’s Outcasts: Louisa May Alcott and Her Father
by John Matteson
2008 / p’back 497 pages
Biography
Rating – 9
Well it looks like I’m rereading this for the All-nonfiction group. I read it back in 2009 and can’t find my review but I do remember enjoying it quite a lot. It was a self-select back then. It’s quite good – enjoy. >>>> MORE >>>>
The Idiot
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
1868 / Kindle (about 600 pages)
Rating: 10
I read this once before – I think I listened to it several years ago – so I’m kind of primed for a good read. The first time there was so much going on, so many names, so many speeches, that I had a hard time keeping track of everything. This time the characters were pretty much my main focus. (I think I got the main theme and plot the first time round but …) >>>> MORE >>>>
Behind a Mask: or, A Woman’s Power
by Louisa May Alcott (A.M. Barnard)
1866 / (not long – a novella really)
rating – ? 7.5 (but it is a classic)
While rereading and discussing the Pulitzer winner (2008) Louisa May Alcott and Her Father I got interested in reading some of her other books. I’ve read Little Women, Little Men, Jo’s Boys but that was it. I read them all at about age 12 and Little Women again about 10-12 years ago. Anyway, >>> MORE >>>
Gone Girl
by Gillian Flynn
2012/ 432 pgs –
Narrated by Julian Whelan & Kirby Heyborne / 19h 11m
Rating: B+ (crime rating)
Oh my – what a page-turning suspense filled psychological crime novel. Who is the first suspect when a woman disappears right out of her kitchen, blood has been mopped up off the floor and her husband >>>> MORE >>>>
The Pen Literary Awards were announced the other day. The winner of the Science Writing award was James Gleick for “The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood which I read about in August 2011. Yes, it deserves a prize. (There’s a blurb here which I condensed from my dot.mac site before Apple destroyed dot.mac.)
I love awards – I don’t believe they always give the top prize to the best book but I do believe that there are some books which need a bit of a push to get in front of the public. There are too many books out there (Hunger Games, Twilight) which absolutely don’t need any help with public attention. But books like “The Information,” (above) or some of the Booker nominees and the Pulitzer (most categories) most definitely do! I follow The National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle, Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the Dublin Literary Award, Nobel for Literature, Man Booker International, the Orange Prize for fiction– etc. – a list of Awards –
Just my thoughts as I read (reread) Eden’s Outcasts: Louisa May Alcott and Her Father by John Matteson.
To the End of the Land
by David Grossman
2008 / 653 pages
Israeli Lit – (translated)
Rating 7.5
I have a feeling I would have enjoyed this book a lot more had I not just finished Wish You Were Here which was structurally very much like this. There’s a frame story in which a woman’s son has gone to a military action and she takes off to walk around Israel with the boy’s father – that’s about 1/4 of the way in the book. As they walk, the woman tells the man a lot of stories, the story of the life of his son, really. The tale became dreadfully boring (at least to me). >>> MORE >>>>
Home
by Toni Morrison
2012/147 pages
genre: historical fiction (1952)
rating: 8
In the pre-dawn hours 24-year old Frank Money, a recently discharged Korea War vet, manages to feign sleep, escape his cuffs and sneak out of an asylum in Oregon or Washington to make his way to the AME Zion church for help. Frank has no money, no memory of why >>>> MORE >>>>
Wish You Were Here
by Graham Swift
2012 / 336 pages
Genre – contemp issues-relationships (literary)
Rating – 9.5
Graham Swift now has a number of novels to his credit – I’ve read two, ”Final Orders” and Waterland,” prior to Wish You Were Here and found them both to be wonderful. But as far as I can see he does seem to be a >>>> MORE>>>>
The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose (also Who Do You Think You Are?)
by Alice Munro
1978 / 224 pages
short stories about one young woman, Rose
rating – 9
This was first published in 1978 by Canadian author Alice Munro. It was selected for the Booker Short list in 1980, when Rites of Passage by William Golding won. Although Munro won the Booker International >>>>MORE>>>>
By Nightfall
by Michael Cunningham
2012 / 256 pgs
genre – relationships – (?)
Rating – 7.5
Peter and Rebecca Harris live an upscale life in New York where he is an art dealer with his own gallery while she edits an art magazine. Her much younger brother Ethan (known as Mizzy – for Mistake), a recovering drug addict, comes to visit for awhile, confiding in Peter that he wants to get into “something artistic.” Their daughter Bea is in Boston tending bar. Peter’s brilliant gay older brother is dead
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The Better Angels of Our Natures: Why Violence Has Declined
by Steven Pinker
2011 / 832 pages
Read by Arthur Morey – 36h. 43m.
Rating – 8.5
I chose to read this because of a recommendation from Bill Gates on his web-site, The Gates Notes, and also because >>>MORE>>>
Dubliners
by James Joyce
1914 / 190 pages
Rating 10
I read this collection of 15 short stories several years ago and very much enjoyed it – now another group is reading it and I decided to go for a reread. This is Joyce’s most accessible work but that’s not to say it holds no secrets for the second or third time reader. Even studying it turns up >>>>MORE>>>>
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