What BOOK are you reading right now?

I just finished The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo, a Norwegian crime writer. Now there was a book I didn't want to put down - one of those books you don't want to end while still wanting to hurry up and find out what is/was going on.

About Nesbo -

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/jo-nesbo-the-next-stieg-larsson-the-norwegian-author-is-no-fan-of-the-thought/2011/05/03/AFdj3GhF_story.html

Just this very minute I have been handed a paperback copy of Flaubert's L'Education sentimentale. A friend who knows my literary tastes spotted it on a market stall and loves me sufficiently to have paid the 20 pence cost of it. I have missed this book out due to never having seen it for sale in the second-hand stalls I have pored over at some length to relieve the boredom of life. And often been made keenly aware that I should have taken steps to remedy this omission but never got round to doing so.

So the book I am reading right now is Gustave Flaubert's L'Education sentimentale having pushed a few other books to one side for the duration of the journey. Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Anthony Goldsmith.

Sounds divine. That's the sort of book I search for and rarely find (at least with most of the modern authors)

I'm finishing off Margaret Atwood's Year of the Flood. For whatever reasons not pertaining to quality of the book, I tried reading it 3 or 4 times prior to this outing but failed to finish.

It's a great postapocalyptic work of science fiction so far but don't tell the author I called it scifi. She's adamant that none of her books should be classified in that genre.

After this book, I'm diving once again into the Song of Fire and Ice series with book five, A Dance With Dragons.

I just finished Baldacci's the collectors.

two intertwining plots, and one left enterprisingly dangling at the conclusion.

does anyone know what the next book would be?

maybe the camel club. I only read him when I am given a freebie, but I might buy the conclusion, I was enjoying that particular story line...

I wish I didn't get my books at the goodwill - I'd order all of his that are translated so far. I see Redbreast was his first one..

I've just read Baldacci once, might have liked it. You can probably find the list in order at wiki..

P.D. James' Time to Be In Earnest

an interesting approach to a diary/memoir

She's a terrific writer.

She addresses some of the questions brought up in msolga's thread re mystery/detective novels. Her analyis of the history of the genre and her take on the skills of some of the writers is wonderfully sharp.

I read the rape of Tamar the other day.

I swear it was written by spendi.

swirling wordiness...

Postwar by Tony Judt.

Since Easter is next weekend I bought a new book to read to Antonio, it’s called Easter Bunny's Amazing Egg Machine LOL, it’s kind of cute, he's enjoying it, read a little this evening before he fell asleep.

I've read three books I've liked since I last reported and one I'm spitting tacks at but am going to finish since I keep learning a thing or two when I'm almost ready to put it into the send to goodwill box.

The first three -
Walter Mosley's White Butterfly: He writes the Easy Rawlins mysteries. These are set in Los Angeles in the fifties. The locale interests me since I lived there then. I've read a bunch of the Mosley books over the years, always a good read.

Nelson DeMille's The Gold Coast: Having recently finished DeMille's Up Country, set in Vietnam, and finding it terrific, I was ready to like this one. In the beginning chapters I didn't know if I could stand reading about John Sutter for a whole thick book. This one's only 600 something paperback pages whereas the Vietnam book was 800+, but the 600 was seeming like forever. True to DeMille mode, there were reasons for me to get interested as it moved along.
I think I've read one other DeMille book in the past but can't pick it out from the list of titles at the front of this book and haven't checked online re the stories. At this point I'll read anything I run across by him. Roger's the person who told me about him.

Then there is Monica Ali's novel, Brick Lane. Fantastic in the breadth of her understanding of peoples' lives as immigrants to a far away island with very different culture - England. This was her first book, shortlisted for the Booker, not that that will make me like a book, but it shows others' reactions to it. Everything felt real to me, not like a contrived detailing.

And now to what I'm presently reading, Frances Mayes' A Year in the World, Journeys of a Passionate Traveller. She wrote Under the Tuscan Sun, which I remember liking for the food descriptions and recipes, not so much for the rest of it about fixing up a house there. I'm a little jaded about fixer upper books in that setting. Anyway, this book I'm reading now is an account of her and her husband's travels off and on over five years, the whole time spent then being approximately a year. It's replete with description, often rather poetic, so replete that I keep falling asleep. There are wave after wave after wave of descriptions. I'm even tired of the food descriptions, which is saying something. Once in a while I spark up, as in a few pages ago she gets into some designed gardens in the Cotswalds, but even those I'm just using as a reason to look up the one(s) I haven't heard of before online. Um, I also was interested in the medina of the Fez in Morocco. Well, this will all be over soon, only five more locals to explore.

read Ann Rice The Wolf Gift. Its sorta ike the writing of ELmore Leonard where he gets done witha book too early and then just meanders about. This one is < I beieve , gonna be the setup volume of a whole series that are focused on werewolf culture.
A good principled bunch of werewolves who only attack killers, sorta like DEXTER but without boats.

Dont tell me how it ends, I wanna read it.

For the past few days I've been reading Censoring an Iranian Love story, written by an Iranian writer, Shahriar Mandanipour, living in the US at the time of writing this novel. I assume he's still there.

An absolutely fascinating insight into life in Iran, seen through the eyes of an author attempting to write a love story ... which must meet the edicts of the censors! Not at all any easy task.We learn a lot more about oppression of creativity & love & beauty & freedom of expression at the hands of those whose job it is to protect Iranians from untoward, corrupting influences, than the actual love story. Writers & artists of any sort are to be closely monitored. A danger to society.

The story of two young people, Dara & Sara, & their attempts at a romantic relationship is sad & at times very funny, in a very dark sort of way. Or more to the point, the author's attempts at writing this story is fraught with peril! Every word he writes will be scrutinized. How to tell this simple story without the censors going ape ****? There are lots of crossings out (which can be read) with replacement text which would be hilarious, if not so ridiculous, so sad.
No, there cannot be any mention of beauty, longing, sexual dreamings, touching, political dissent ..... nothing like that ... or the book will be banned to protect people from its corrupting influence.

A wonderful, engaging read so far. And still half the book to go.

Love, Iranian Style:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/06/29/090629crbo_books_wood

I read The Hare With the Amber Eyes last.

Gosh, what a masterpiece that is, such scope, breadth, insight. Not an "easy" book, but compulsive.

Now I'm reading Michael Connelly Harry Bosch crime tec novel, a double actually. The first one is The Black Echo, and I've finished that.
Good writer, tho' the jargon is hard for a Brit to decipher sometimes; I have to re-read some sentences to get the drift. He has sparing use of language, which is good.

a bit too involving to be good streetcar reading

what I particularly enjoy is the very very dense footnoting - especially around his musings about the development of ecosystems on volcanic islands

264 wood and ivory carvings, none of them larger than a matchbox: potter Edmund de Waal was entranced when he first encountered the collection in the Tokyo apartment of his great uncle Iggie. Later, when Edmund inherited the 'netsuke', they unlocked a story far larger than he could ever have imagined. The Ephrussis came from Odessa, and at one time were the largest grain exporters in the world; in the 1870s, Charles Ephrussi was part of a wealthy new generation settling in Paris. Charles's passion was collecting; the netsuke, bought when Japanese objects were all the rage in the salons, were sent as a wedding present to his banker cousin in Vienna. Later, three children - including a young Ignace - would play with the netsuke as history reverberated around them. The Anschluss and Second World War swept the Ephrussis to the brink of oblivion. Almost all that remained of their vast empire was the netsuke collection, dramatically saved by a loyal maid when their huge Viennese palace was occupied. In this stunningly original memoir, Edmund de Waal travels the world to stand in the great buildings his forebears once inhabited. He traces the network of a remarkable family against the backdrop of a tumultuous century and tells the story of a unique collection.

Oh, the horror...

it's been about 30 years since i last read that, perhaps a re-read is in order