Book Club Recommendations

Jim - yes they are good (the ancient Rome books)

Sozobe if you want some really really good literature to totally absorb you and keept the brain cells active then Dorothy Dunnet. Her books are superb, There is a series of 6 about Lymond, set in the time when Elizabeth 1 and Mary Queen of Scots were children and is full of political intrigue, incredibly accurate historical research, combined with action, adventure etc that travels, through 6 thick books, from Scotland to England, to Ireland, to France, through the eastern countries of the Mediterranean to Russia - and you get this incredible picture of life high and low in each --- they are utterly brilliant. The first in the series is called The Game of Kings.

Sozobe, I have not finished Pi but I am enjoying it. It is quirky and the sweet humor of having a child who wants to be a Muslim and a Christian while staying a Hindu is likeable. Of course, as a Hindu, it is more OK to add Gods, so he comes about it the right way.

I adore zebra and don't like bloodshed but so far the animal interactions are very interesting and his discussion of them was very surprising to me. A lot of new/different ways of looking at things from the Indian perspective.

The plagiarism accusation comes from another story about a teenage boy, a great cat and a boat. There it apparently ends, though I haven't read the Brazilian book, that's what people seem to say and his Booker Prize wasn't taken away. In a way the situation is like the Writing Fiction topics that Jespah has been moderating. Take an idea and run with it.

In other words, yes. I'd recommend it, with the caveat that I may become disappointed later, when I'm finished.

Book Club recommendations
If you're looking for something light, maybe The Diary of Bridget Jones" would do, but "The Nanny Diaries", although witty and funny and hysterical, isn't altogether happy. In fact the end is very sad (I'm not giving anything away, you can see the ending a million miles away).

The Life of Pi is a really good possbility.

Hey, I've never read Bridget! That's a good idea. Already decided on this one, though ("Secret Life of Bees").

Piffka, thanks for your take on Life of Pi. Let me know what you think when you're done.

Jim, I have read several of the Lindsey Davis books on Falco in old Rome and enjoyed them, but I like detective type fiction and Rome both, so I may be biased in their favor.

Vivien, thanks for the tip, that series you suggest is the kind of thing I enjoy reading.

Hmmm, those Dunnet books do sound good and Osso's recommendations are also good, judging from the book of hers I've finished but not yet returned. (I will, I will.) I am now on the lookout for another book.

Sozobe -- I've just finished Pi and will tell you that the last two chapters make the book. I laughed through chapter 99 while 100 caught my breath. Very satisfying, interesting and thoroughly readable, the book chugs along, but without reading the entire thing, I doubt you'd enjoy the last two chapters. Some of the descriptions on the life raft are horrifying. I would consider slipping over those lightly, especially if I were reading to an impressionable teenager or child, though maybe they'd be more interested in that gore, that yuck, than I was. It is the story about a child, after all.

"The Life of Pi" that everyone is talking about sounds fun...I'm going to look for it next time I go to the library. and I didn't know Zadie Smith had another book besides "White Teeth". I'll look for that, too. I have the "SEcret Life of Bees" on hold at the library now

Try "Bel Canto" by Ann Patchett. It's a beautiful, heartbreaking book and will generate a lot of discussion.

The Dunnet series sounds wonderful. I wonder if they have them in large type? I like to read in bed and it's so uncomfortable to have reading glasses on under the blankets.

Hmm, I almost bought Bel Canto this week,

and sorry if I am posting this twice...I thought I posted it...waiting....waiting...

Life of Pi... fun??? Errr...interesting and with unique descriptions, some of which were truly amusing. Very new, vivid ideas. But fun? I didn't laugh out loud until chapter 99. You read it, then tell me!

The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith left me feeling unsatisfied. The book started promisingly enuff, but seemed to have lost the plot somewhere in between, so much so that it became a struggle for me to finish the book.

Have just started the Life of Pi. Yet to form an opinion, though it does have some interesting philosophies in the first few chapters.....

I'll say. I'll also say that it didn't make me believe in god at the end, either.

Book Club
But Piffka - does "fun" always have to mean "laugh"? I have lots of fun doing things that aren't funny! "Life of Pi" was great fun, cleverly written, intricately worked out, completely enjoyable. But I don't think that the author really expected readers to get a good belly laugh out of it.

Re: Book Club


Well, I agree with most of what you said, Tomkitten, but we have slightly different views of fun, I think. When I read it, I empathized with the character and doing what he did was not fun, definitely not fun.

I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Hmmm.....I don't read much fluff....I was going to suggest Jonathan Levi's 'A Guide For the Perplexed', which I enjoyed immensely. Even if it is not right for the book club, Soz might enjoy it.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0679408932//qid=1035835341/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-2033601-6235826?v=glance&s=books&vi=reviews

Ooh, looks good, Cav!

Interestingly, "The Secret Life of Bees" keeps coming up lately, lots of raves. My dad's wife thought I'd given it to her for Christmas, and thanked me effusively (I give her a book every year but didn't last year -- someone else got that for her.)

Life of Pi looks interesting. I get how something can be fun to read without having a fun subject matter. "Midnight's Children", for example, was pretty damn dark, but it was a blast to read. I'd definitely call that fun. Or "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius." There's a level at which you are thinking, "this is amazing, he can't keep this up, can he...? WOW! That was incredible! What a sentence! Hey, it's still going!" I'd liken it to listening to an inspired jazz musician, even if the music itself is blue, or an eye-popping athletic feat.

Another one I liked, and it's pretty engrossing, and not too long was Alan Lightman's 'Einstein's Dreams.'

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0446670111/103-2033601-6235826?vi=glance

This one is browseable on Amazon.

Read that one! Liked it.

Now, I'd call that one fun. Read it at Christmas.

Book Club
Well, Piffka, I didn't mean that what happened in the book was fun. I meant that it was a fun read. But that's not the same as funny as in causing laughter.