What BOOK are you reading right now?

POM, I found Updike's characters flawed and occasionally silly and shallow...just like me. Maybe that's why I liked the Rabbit books so much. He made no attempt to paint his characters as larger than life or more dramatic or interesting than your friends and colleagues. They reflected their neighborhoods, their class, and their times so amazingly well. Updike uses dialogue as an art form.

Post Captain, by Patrick O'Brian

Just started reading a newly published book, Angelology by Danielle Trussoni. Praising the book, one author describes it as follows: "Angelology lets loose the ancient fallen angels to the modern world with devastating results. Trussoni has written a holy thriller that will arrest your attention from the opening pages and not let go til its mysteries take wing." Another calls it "diabolically good."

Just couldn't resist it.

Updike certainly never varnished his characters but aren't most characters flawed? How much of a story would there be without flaws?

I can remember some of his descriptions . . . that the girl in Rabbit Redux had small teeth that bent inward and were greyish . . . and that the man in Couples wore an apricot colored windbreaker and that he broke up his marriage having an affair with a woman named Elizabeth Fox who came to a party with milk proud breasts wearing a silver strapless dress. . . that he wrote her name on the frig with magnetic letters his daughters played with . . . all in all, it was the stuff of ordinary lives that real people lived.

AArrgghh! I was reading the word post in the title as a verb. So, it came out a command, as in "Post, captain!" And I wanted to ask, "Post what?" Need coffee.

I just finished the book Colleen McCullough wrote as a sequel to Pride and Prejudice. It deals with Mary, 20 years down the track.

I was warned. I chose to ignore it, thinking it would be interesting.

I want to repeat that warning, in the strongest possible terms.

Warning headed!

I read "Ahab's Wife" and will warn against that one!

I'm still reading the Updike, enjoying it. His dialog is hard to beat. Then there are Rabbit's mental ramblings, so like real life. So: really good, but I'm not whipping through it, like I might with, say, a Henning Mankell.

Right now I'm reading May Bird: Among the Stars by Jodi Lynn Anderson.

In between that I read Harry, A History by Melissa Anelli, and after I'm done with that I plan to read The Blacker the Berry... by Wallace Thurman and The Island at the End of the World by Sam Taylor.

Currently re-reading Love Takes You Home: A novel in thirteen delicious meals, by Julie Capaldo. In a nutshell it could be described as a story of family (close connections, & also disconnected members ), the migration experience (from Italy to Oz) & food. A lot about food .. traditional family recipes for everything from baccala to bread soup. It's a pretty easy read at a time when I need a not-too-demanding reading experience. And also very engaging. I'm really enjoying reading it again. First read it about 20 years ago.

Some of the words of family wisdom about food:

Never drink more wine than you add to the pot ...
Never gossip when making soup ...
Only make fritelle when the moon is full ...
Pride sinks gnocchi ...
Truth and oil always come to the surface ...
Food is like a woman's mind...

`

I may have to put that on my wish list! (ok, I just did..)

You'd enjoy it, osso.

If you'd like, I'd be happy to send you my own (quite yellowed with age, not exactly in "pristine" condition) copy via "surface mail", when I'm finished with it soon.

Tell me if you're interested.

Wow! What would it cost to mail a book from your part of the planet to osso's?

I just finished another in the Horatio Hornblower series. Is Post Captain part of a similar series?

The library only had one Raymond Chandler: The "Little Sister" in BIG PRINT. Pathetic library.

Raymond Chandler. WOW.
Plot weaving is inane but the characters and whiff of 1940's Hollywood is unmatched.

Too much. They're 69 cents used at amazon, with $3.99 shipping.

only ever read Chandler's The Big Sleep, really enjoyed it, also loved Hammett's The Thin Man (both made into very enjoyable films too)

It was ridiculously expensive the last time I sent a book o/s by airmail, POM. As I recall, the postal charge was more than I paid for the book. Rather discouraging if one likes the idea of doing this often.

I got the surface mail idea from another A2Ker, who sent me her copy of The Corrections tapes this way, a few years ago. (She was a firm believer of "once you've read it, pass it on". Or, in this case once she'd listened to it. Great idea, I thought.) It took a couple of months to get here, but it was well worth the wait.

I would never pass on a book I had read to the end. I would pass on a book I had not read to the end though. The books you read to the end should be cherished and carefully looked after on polished shelves.

I got 8 lines into the Da Vinci Code. If postal charges weren't so ridiculous I would have sent it to anyone who asked for it. As it is I put it in the bin.

I read lots of Chandler early and a lot of other boilers of that period, which informs my taste, such as it is.