finally found my way to the part of a stack that contained Memoirs of a Geisha. It's my current transit reading and I'm really enjoying it. Can hardly wait to read tomorrow's installment.
@cicerone imposter,
He ought to have a money back guarantee to make a claim like that.
funny i posted all that other stuff about what i'm reading or have read, all the time listening to a book and never mentioned it
i'm currently listening to
@edgarblythe,
He did! That's a friend for you. LOL
"The Help"
Quote:Skeeter, a white Ole Miss graduate whose mother frets over her daughter's frizzy hair and ringless wedding finger, wants to write something with more substance than her piddly housecleaning-advice column
at the Jackson Journal. Buoyed by a chance conversation with a steely New York book editor, she decides to
anonymously record the experiences of black maids, paid to raise and nurture other people's children while
their employers insist they use a separate bathroom " preferably one outside the house. ''Everyone knows
how we white people feel [about] the glorified Mammy figure who dedicates her whole life to a white family,'' Skeeter tells her editor. ''But no one ever asked Mammy how she felt about it.''
The good old South in the 60s from the perspective of black maids. Very
interesting read. The author let's her black characters speak the language
of the South which is grammatically challenging at times, at least for me
as ESL.
@cicerone imposter,
edgar, BTW, Prof Bob Brodsky was a scientist and professor, so he has a very interesting background, and he knows how to tell his stories very well (as in his first book "The Cutting Edge"). I met him on the Mexican Riviera cruise last October, and we've kept in touch. A real nice guy who now lives in Southern California.
@cicerone imposter,
Sounds like a hell of a guy.
@ehBeth,
oh! I really enjoyed that book!
Right now I am reading 'Leaves of Grass' by Walt Whitman
TRIED BY WAR, -by J McPherson
Its a study of Lincoln as Commander in Chief. He was not , a hands off guy. He became a student of military strategy and, despite what Catton said about his penchant for "hapless meddling", McPherson is convinced that Lincolns meddling was the catalyst to winning the Civil War rather than having it end with a permanently split nation.
It was my turn to host my book club and I chose "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" by Alexander McCall Smith. I really liked it! So I'm making my way through the series now (on the third one). It's great summer reading -- diverting, with some real substance. (He has this light, straightforward tone but does some pretty sophisticated stuff under the surface.)
@sozobe,
Careful, Soz. Those books are addictive. I'm on the eighth.
@ehBeth,
ehBeth wrote:
finally found my way to the part of a stack that contained Memoirs of a Geisha. It's my current transit reading and I'm really enjoying it. Can hardly wait to read tomorrow's installment.
I read the entire book in the plane from NY to SD - I loved it!
How We Decide
Jonah Lehrer
@George,
Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell
Not my usual read...prodded by my husband. It is interesting - though I don't know that I agree with all of it.
@mismi,
I read
Outliers before
How We Decide.
My first impression was that Leherer was imitating Gladwell's format and style
-- and coming up short.
@mismi,
I, too, was "prodded". In my case by my son.
@CalamityJane,
I'm reading Richard Price's Lush Life. Oh, can that man write! I can tell already that I'll want to read Clockers and whatever else he's written. His descriptive powers are somewhat different than many police procedural writers, or even other sorts of novel writers. There's an immediacy with language from all the characters in their locations that become photographs in the reader's brain - but not from lengthy description - with complexity of possibilities and nuances of interconnections in the story.. that near make me reel, and I'm only on page 80 of about 450. I'm losing sleep as I don't want to put the book down.
George, I haven't bought the book yet but am interested in reading it (How we Decide) and wonder about your comment re The Outliers, which I read recently.
Mismi, I was highly skeptical of some of Gladwell's conclusions but I thought the reasoning was interesting. Especially the stuff about birthdate and certain sport stars' successes....we just don't think about things like that. Some of it smacks of post-hoc reasoning, but he does point out trenchant thoughts such as the 10,000 hours of practice thing, be it on a computer or a violin.
Osso, I simply loved Lush Life...his style is singular. He captures the patois or argot or whatever term you would use for "capturing the sense" of certain subgroups of people. I listened to the book on audio tape, and the narrator was excellent...I had many a driveway moment, well known to any audiobook lover.
@Swimpy,
No kidding!
I picked up the next two books in the series on Monday. Planned to linger over them for some summer reading. (Very Nice Thing about sozlet's current age/ reading level -- she enjoys hanging out on the back porch and reading with her mom as a recreational activity.) Well, they're both finished already. I didn't mean to!
