What BOOK are you reading right now?

YAY! I just got the latest Harry Dresden in the mail today!

I finished rereading Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood yesterday. Today, I started reading The Year of the Flood, the quasi sequel to Oryx and Crake.

The Sweet Dove Died, Barbara Pym

My kids have summer reading requirements for school.

I just read Lost on a Mountain in Maine - read it in one night.
I am half way through Old Yeller
And hope to read Johnny Tremain after that.

I've read Old Yeller and Johnny Tremain, but it was like 30 years ago. Amazing though how much I remember of Old Yeller.

My younger daughter - I read her requirements 4 years ago when my older had to read them.

Well, I'm reading 3 books right now. I'm trying to catch up on my summer reading list.

The first book is Ellen Foster by Kay Gibbons and that book's for school

My second book is Passion by Lauren Kate. I'm almost done and I LOVE it! Its not for school, I'm reading it for fun

My third book is A Death In The Family by James Agee and I'm almost done! It took me awhile to read it for some reason but its really good. I'm reading it for school too.

I'm reading the latest one (Ghost Story) now. Love that series.

JB posted on his Twitter account back in April that book 14, Cold Days, will be released by the end of this year. Might just be wishful thinking on his part, though.

I hope so. I need to go back and start the series over again to remember all of the different ways Dresden's been beaten up.

Oryx & Crake was unforgettable.

Just finished reading Zorro by Isabel Allende. Great Fun!

I'm here on a break from reading a book Pemerson has read, Sarah's Key, by Tatiana de Rosnay. I'm enjoying the book, but like many books dealing with real events with fictional characters set in the era of the rounding up of Jews in France, or other books re similar circumstances in other such places, enjoying is somewhat the wrong word. So let's say I'm engaged in it. I'm approaching half way through.

I read "Sarah's Key". I started it on vacation in April and didn't pick it up again until this summer to finish it off. It's not the best book, but far from the worst, possibly due to the disconnect.

The best novel, by far, I've read this year is "Cutting for Stone" by Abraham Verghese. The description below was enough to persuade me to buy the book, but it doesn't do it justice, in in my opinon.

"A sweeping, emotionally riveting first novel — an enthralling family saga of Africa and America, doctors and patients, exile and home.

Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Yet it will be love, not politics — their passion for the same woman — that will tear them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland. He makes his way to America, finding refuge in his work as an intern at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the past catches up to him — nearly destroying him — Marion must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him.

An unforgettable journey into one man’s remarkable life, and an epic story about the power, intimacy, and curious beauty of the work of healing others."

I'm reading that right now! great book with lots of humor and medical insight!

Abraham Verghese seems to be quite an interesting man himself. I haven't read anything by him, just about him.

I've made a full turn about the Sarah's Key book and am still figuring out my reactions. At this point it is the only book/article/documentary/document about the holocaust that I've read that strikes me wrong, as off, and I've read a lot. Today's view by me is that it is contrived melodrama about what is dramatic by nature - I was feeling 'tooled' - not to mention yet various writing annoyances. The author assumes her readers know nothing. We'll see - maybe I am just pissed about being sucked in. I may mellow on this.
Better that people should read Primo Levi. I only read one of his, The Reawakening. He knew how to write. Would read the rest if they were at hand.

Meantime, I'm reading Garth Stein's The Art of Racing in the Rain, and I love it.
And yet.. it too is contrived - that is the nature of fiction. What is the difference?

I am thinking that the Sarah's Key book is fiction based on real events portrayed strangely (why didn't she follow the character of interest? because then the main character was about herself fictionalized - to me, and there, contrivance spirals), and that The Art of Racing is fiction starting out strange but resounding as real, whatever the contrivance.

I'm not finished with the Art of Racing yet. Recommend it already for the experience.

Still reading Karen Armstrong's History Of God. It's a long read because of all the information. It's not that difficult a read because she's such a good author but there's a lot TO read. It's fascinating.

Re Primo Levi and the Reawakening -

http://www.amazon.com/Reawakening-Primo-Levi/dp/0684826356/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1314842307&sr=1-1

Read the first two summaries..


on the second, I had a friend who had a relative in Turin, from those times, who committed suicide in such a way.

This isn't my family, but in a way it is my family. Far, but connected.



So, what am I saying, when I read the Sarah/key, book I started thinking this was all being used for melodrama.

I've just finished Zoo City by Lauren Beurke. It got better towards the end but not by much. I can't believe it's up for an award.

Eyeless in Gaza by Aldous Huxley. I've got two books on order, but it looks like neither is coming soon. This is a book I bought for 50p years ago, meaning to read someday. Looks like it's today.