What BOOK are you reading right now?

Thanks firefly, aidan and edgar. Reading is such a personal endeavour but there's one thing that all readers share: the moment when reading becomes a life-long passion.

But they were mostly about movies. I wonder if the teachers would see the difference.

I know I liked to read before I ran into the series books, but I've memories of great enthusiasm for the Walter Farley Black Stallion series. And then there was the smashing sorrow with what happened in the book, Black Beauty. My parents liked magazines, and I remember going through them to see the pictures and cartoons and sometimes (when did that start? maybe when I was eight) reading the articles - Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, Life, Look, New Yorker (I remember not understanding the NY'er cartoons, or, as they used to call them, drawings). I still like magazines.

Sometimes a book review can outshine the subject.

If I may have your attention for a moment:
Sarah Palin's new book



Why waste time reading the hackneyed holiday musings of Charles Dickens, Clement Clarke Moore or Robert Frost? They’ve all been surpassed by the brightest star atop the literary Christmas tree, Sarah Louise Palin. Please do your patriotic duty this Christmas and buy her incredible Christmas book.


Here is a short passage from her book that I pray you will appreciate as much as I did:


To answer your question. No, I haven't read the book.

She hired a ghost writer, but she still couldn't find one who could construct a sentence.

Paul Theroux's Half Moon Street. Terrific. Just finished part one, "Dr. Slaughter." Now I'm reading part two, "Dr. De Marr." What I really appreciate about Theraux is that he never insults the reader's intelligence by patiently explaining plot details which need no explanation if you're paying attention. It's a rare gift (not to mention that the writing is top-notch, character development nearly flawless and descriptions verging on the poetic).

That quote isn't real is it Panz? Sounds like Colbert on meth.

Dude, I'm not gonna spend the money to find out!

Sorry L.A. I had to finish with Sarah.
I'd never heard of Theroux...what else has he written?

Theroux has not been all that prolific, but much of his output has made the NYTimes best-seller list. I think he first came to public notice with a non-fiction travel book The Great Railway Bazaar. I've only read one other of his fiction works, The London Embassy, which is really a collection of short stories, but they're connected by all being set in the U.S. Embassy in London.

Here's more

I don't believe you, brat.

I like and don't like Theroux and his brothers.

I'm not good re xes in verbs.

I did the Amazon 'look inside' - it may not be a quote but it isn't far off the mark.

I'm slow, what book are we talking about. I need interpolation.

Oh, on x's as verbs, I was kidding.

I'm surprised you never heard of Theroux. He's written some terrific travel books as well as some interesting character studies. The Great Railway Bizarre and The Mosquito Coast are perhaps his best known books. The Mosquito Coast was special to me because even my ex-husband could see that the principal character, a man, seemed composed of my personality and that of one of my ex's friends who I could not stand. Interestingly, when it was made into a movie, it starred Harrison Ford. Helen Mirren played his wife. At the time, I remember the movie critic for the Boston Globe writing about casting Mirren in such a small role, noting that Mirren is a woman and not a girl and it would take a woman to bring her children safely out of the jungles of Central America.

Now that you mention it : The Mosquito Coast rings a bell.
But then...that's why we come to this thread, to learn about authors we don't know.

Although i follow this thread, i don't usually post here. However, i am now most of the way through a novel that i think others would enjoy. It is Death Comes to Pemberley, by P. D. James. For those who don't recognize the name in the title, Pemberley is the name of the estate of Fitzwilliam Darcy, whose Pride lead him to initially to respond to Elizabeth Bennet coldly, leading to her Prejudice against him. James has written yet another fascinating mystery novel, but this one is set in the world of Jane Austen. The novel Pride and Prejudice culminates in the marriage of Darcy and Bennet. James' novel opens six years later, and soon entails a murder. I highly recommend it.

My better half has not long finished it, and has raved about it ever since.

We have it on TV over Christmas, with a brand new MrDarcy to get the hearts a'fluttering.

Snippet from a review.......

"Author P.D. James was almost 90 when she came up with the idea of writing a kind of sequel to Jane Austen’s Pride And Prejudice.
The result, Death Comes To Pemberley, was a number one bestseller in 2011 and, she says, a complete thrill to write — or to be precise, dictated to her secretary. ‘We just rattled through it,’ she says. ‘I am just so pleased that people liked it.’ Her sequel is a clever pastiche of Austen’s style, combined with a bloodthirsty murder mystery.
It also satisfies curiosity about what happened to Elizabeth and Darcy after they married; did they live happily ever after? Did they have children? Now millions of viewers will find out. The clock turns back, the muslin frocks and bonnets abound as P.D. James’s perfectly imagined imaginary tale comes to the small screen. Hopes are high — I expect it to be nothing short of a sensation....."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/reviews/article-2515325/Your-Xmas-TV-starts-The-best-shows-Christmas.html

Apology to Panz, I do believe you, but didn't back then, that minute. I've read a bunch of Therouxs, mostly Paul, and of his, mostly his travel stuff, though I've read at least two non-travel.

Me, I liked the travel - Riding the Iron Rooster, Great Railway Bazaar, The Old Patagonian Express, Kingdom by the Sea. Not all of all of those, by far.