I just finished a long memoir by Joyce Carol Oates: "A Widow's Story." What made it interesting to me were all the literary references and author's remembrances from the 1950's and 60's.

Now, I'm trying to get into a biography of author Lawrence Durrell, with little success....

I went back to work full-time a few months ago and so hardly ever visit this terrific site any more since time has become a precious commodity of which I have very little. :)

Someone here once posted about a book called The Haunting of Maddy Clare by Simone St James; she also wrote An Inquiry into Love and Death. I loved how both these gothic, ghostly stories scared the pants off me in a very genteel and proper manner. I just finished The Asylum by John Harwood and thought I'd share that if you are a St. James fan, you might really like Harwood's book too. Instead of ghosts, Harwood writes more of a psychological thriller, but with the same writing style, tension, and creepiness.

Right now I'm reading A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Mara which follows characters struggling to survive in war-torn Chechnya struggling for independence from Russia. I'm also working on a new non-fiction book about America's most famous feuding families, the Hatfields and the McCoys, by Dean King. It is fascinating but slow-going.

Norar_il, Juliet in August has been on my TBR list. Sounds like I need to get to it soon--thanks!

I've been in reading limbo for a while now, picking up books, reading a few pages here, a chapter there and then setting them aside. I often end up in this condition when I have just finished a really good book and my brain wants more really good books but really it just wants to read the same good book again.

By the way, I'm doing a Brontë challenge. The plan is to read all seven novels by the Brontë sisters, scattering them into my reading regime whenever I feel like reading one. Having only read the two most famous, I thought it would be interesting to read the rest (and reread Jane Eyre and >i>Wuthering Heights). The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was the first and since I couldn't settle on anything else, I am now reading Shirley by Charlotte Brontë.

I'm currently engrossed in a memoir "A Mirror Garden" by Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmanian. It's the true story of an artist, born in 1924, and her memories of life in Iran before it was taken over by fundamentalists Islamists, the Ayatollahs. The author made her way to America in WW II, created an artistic life for herself in New York city, only to return to Iran years later. After the radical takeover in what was Persia, she had to return to the United States. The portrait of an Iran that was gradually becoming Westernized under the former Shah is fascinating.

The book I just finished (August) and one that I had compared to A Fortnight in September was still like that by the time I had finished, but this family was definitely less innocent and had more worldly problems than the Fortnight family. August is still a great read, and I will be ILL-ing the rest of the trilogy. It just wasn't an easy read on some levels - one parent is sniffing glue, no one talks about it, moody kids etc... It's set in a later time period than the other book (and published in 2001), so perhaps it's a more modern look at family issues. It won the Whitbread First Novel Award so well written.

Reading a collection of short stories (Dancing Girls) by Margaret Atwood. Rather an *intellectual* read, shall we say, and some of the stories are just weird, so I shall give them a few more tries and if the writing doesn't even out, I daresay this will end up in the charity shop pile.

My NF read is The Devil's Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea, all about a small group of men from Mexico who undergo the horrendous trial of crossing the border via coyotes. I've read other work by Urrea so know it will be good, if rather harrowing at times.

I just finished The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman. I was very interested and emotionally involved in the first half of this book. I felt full of tension and dread. Then, once the tide turned, so to speak (trying to avoid spoilers), the book turned sour for me - too much drawn-out and contrived drama. So I was a bit let down. Did anyone else feel this way about it?

Lemonhead,
I'm a bit late to this, but I see from your June 7 post that you recently read Ford Maddox Ford's "The Good Soldier," a favorite novel of mine. However, I have formed a view of it with which no one else who has read the novel (that is, in my assorted book groups) agrees. I see the narrator as an unreliable narrator, and some of his assertions about his wife seem exaggerated or unlikely to my ear. Any thoughts about this? Other readers have been very sympathetic to him, and to his marital plight, whereas I find him off-putting and a bit nasty.

In other news, I was notified that my copy of Alice Munro's "Dear Life" is in the library on hold for me. This is my second notification. Someone swiped the first one off the shelf (our library has taken to self-service in a big way) even though my name was on a sheet of paper covering the title and spine! Petty crime in the library.

Kkay, that happened to me once although I think it was taken by mistake! The student on checkout duty also missed a notice on the computer that should have warned him that he was issuing the book to the wrong person. It was very annoying as I made a special trip to the library to pick the book up for my weekend reading enjoyment. I had to wait a few days until I was able to borrow a returned copy.

Just finished Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's Heat and Dust, the winner of the Booker Prize from 1975. An enigmatic and unusual book. Very short, 181 pages. A woman of the present day goes to India to learn about her grandfather's first wife, a colonial who ran off with a local prince. She herself undergoes a radical change as she learns more of the mysterious woman who played a role in her own distant past.

I very seldom read more than one book at a time, but I'm now reading three--The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope, Paris by Edward Rutherfurd, and Dead, White, and Blue by Carolyn Hart. Ms. Hart's Death on Demand series is running out of steam (if it ever had any), and I keep thinking I'll give it up but haven't yet.

Carolyn, it is hard to give up on a series that is fading fast, isn't it?
I stopped reading one series because I couldn't stand the fictional husband! He was so miserable and unsupportive that I wondered if the author was channelling her own real-life one!

I'm on hold for 4 books at my library system. Two of them I've had on hold for a few months. Unfortunately, all 4 books are considered "new" so the owning libraries won't lend them to another library even though they've been sitting on the shelf for weeks. It looks like I'm going to have to do some driving if I want to read any of them. And none of them are owned by the same library so I will have to drive in opposite directions to take them out....!

One of them is The Typewriter Girl that Carolyn recommended, that's been on hold the longest.

Rouan..You are very patient, also active, driving to pick ups!
I usually actually buy a book that is likely to have a long waiting list! I then pass it on to my daughter who doesn't like borrowing books from a library because of reading time restrictions.
My gripe is with trying to read a whole series when the library only buys some.

My latest is a reread of the wonderful "Love In The Time Of Cholera"

Annpan, lack of patience is what is compelling me to consider driving to get them! LOL

Rouan, I didn't actually mean to recommend The Typewriter Girl. I just told you all that the author is the niece of one of my good friends. It's her first novel and I think that shows, so don't waste a lot of gas on it. I enjoyed it, but that may be because I know the author. It is set in the 19th century, and I was surprised at both the language and the behaviour. I know she did a lot of research--but I was still surprised.

Carolyn, I remember that you told us about the author; I was interested enough to go online and read the blurb about it which is when I decided to place a hold on it. Don't worry, if I can't finish it or don't like it, I won't hold you accountable for telling us about it! LOL

Carolyn,

It got good reader reviews on Amazon.
Actually it sounds interesting...I may read it !

junek - I'd be interested to hear what makes Love in the Time of Cholera wonderful. I don't know anything about it except that a friend once referred to it as her "favorite book ever." I've never given it a try because I so disliked One Hundred Years of Solitude by the same author.

I've just finished a little gem of a book: "The Wandering Falcon" by Jamil Ahmad. It's a fascinating memoir of a man who had lived in the tribal regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. It's written in a lyrical style and makes the harsh lives of the wandering nomadic "tent people" come to life. I recommend this to anyone with a deep interest in the Middle East and its history.

Last night I finished Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee. Not much I can say about this novel that hasn't been said! Wonderful, bittersweet. Were people so very different just a few decades ago? Although Lee's memoir is obviously partially fiction - the memories from early childhood mixed with the desire to tell a good story - those times seem so remote and almost fantastical.

As I have already read the second in Lee's trilogy first, I will now have to hunt out the third. But I have another book to read first.

I am reading the first Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet. I am ashamed to admit that I have never made time for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's books before now, and am really enjoying it. Isn't it strange how we sometimes put off reading something incredibly famous for years and years with really no good reason? A Study in Scarlet starts in London in the 1880s, but shifts (very unexpectedly) to Mormon Utah in the 1840s. Can't wait to find out how it all ties together.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's books always makes aseenseas well as this one thanks!

Here is a link that might be useful: Best Romantic Novels

Timallen - No shame for us readers. You read what you read when you read it. (Profound, I know.) :-)

I read all the Sherlock Holmes earlier this year and most of last year and really enjoyed them. Then I watched the movies (Robert Downey) and then we moved onto the BBC series (which was super-good). All recommended so long as you're not a purist. :-)

Doyle is also interesting in and of his own right, btw. Led a full life with some curious ideas... I suppose we all do, really!

While still reading Paris, I have finished the latest C. S. Harris book, What Darkness Brings. I really like this series.

I have never read any of Ruth Rendell's murder mysteries as I understood that they weren't "cosies". However I have been watching the TV series adapted from some of her short stories. These were made some time ago but I stay at home these chilly Winter days and like to watch a program while I have lunch! I borrowed the collection of short stories to check on a puzzling point in one of the episodes and finished up reading the whole book.
Some of the stories are a bit dark but I enjoyed the straight mysteries.

Thank you, Norar, for the recommendation of The Whistling Season. I just finished it and thoroughly enjoyed it. I will be looking for more of Doig's books after this. The characters were so charming, especially Paul and Morrie. Rose is a hoot , too. It reminded me in some ways of My Antonia, with families making their way in settling the West. What I loved most was the ending. So many books I read disappoint me in the way they kind of trail away at the end and don't have a strong conclusion.

I also have Juliet in August coming up next and I am looking forward to it. Before Whistling I read The Care and Feeding of Roses with Thorns and that was a pleasure, too. I'm on a roll!

Annpan - I really enjoy Rendell's mysteries for when I am in the Mystery Mood, and haven't read a bad one yet. However, I am not an expert in her books or anything...!

As for me, just finished up an enjoyable read of Agatha Christie's "At Bertram's Hotel". Christie is so good at developing her plots and I'm happy that she has so many titles out there for me to read in the future.

On a different note, I finished up a rather harrowing read called "On the Devil's Highway" by Luis Alberto Urrea, a creative non-fiction focused on a fatal journey by 26 Mexican nationals who had paid a young coyote guide to take them safely across the huge inhospitable desert in Southern Arizona. This was a well balanced and extremely well written discussion of the border immigration issue. Only twelve men survived the journey, and although I had entered the read expecting Urrea to have one perspective, he ends up writing an objective book. It's hard not to feel empathy for those who are involved in this whole situation (although I have less empathy for the heads of the drug cartels!)

Still, good read. To lighten the mood somewhat, I'm in the middle of a fun graphic novel re-imagining of the fairy tale of Rapunzel and her long hair. This Rapunzel is brave, physically and mentally strong and takes charge. I'm enjoying this read and will probably recommend it on my book review column when it's next published. Title: Rapunzel's Revenge by two people with last name Hale.

Just finished An Episode of Sparrows by Rumer Godden as the first of my contribution to Liz's 'Century of Books' thread. Although I had read it very many years ago c.1957(!) and could remember the outline of the story I was too young to appreciate the subtlety underlying the plot and 'time-wise' I actually read it more or less in the era in which it had been set. So London bomb-sites, street markets, dozens of kids playing in the gutters were quite unremarkable to me back then.
RG while obviously coming from the 'upper class' who dwell in 'The Square' manages to get into the heads of the local children (the sparrows of the title) who's lives are lived in the mean streets below, where the story is set.
I would recommend this to anyone looking for a beautifully written realistic depiction of Post War London life devoid of sentimentality but with an honest and gritty edge.
I don't think the book is still in print, but Amazon has several sites where it can be bought for a penny plus postage.

I finished Paris last night. I think Rutherfurd is making his families easier to follow in his more recent books, and it is easy to see that he really loves Paris. The book skips back and forth from the late 1500s to 1968 with the intertwining of four or five families down through the centuries and, of course, lots of history included. He has quite a bit of World War II at the end, with France shown more favorably that it sometimes is.

I am enjoying a very special reread of "The Captains and the Kings" by Irish writer Jennifer Johnston.

I am in the middle of Shirley by Charlotte Brontë and because I took care not to read anything about it before I began, I don't know if I'm reading a romance or social novel or something else altogether.

My next read will be A Passage to India, as part of the 20th century challenge.

As a long-term project I began reading Joyce's Ulysses on Bloomsday (June 16), but it remains to be seen if I persevere or not. I would like to have finished it by next Bloomsday. The annotations (a separate book, larger than the novel itself) are much too inclusive for my taste, explaining stuff I wouldn't have thought needed explaining, so I have decided to use them mostly for looking up names and words and sentences in foreign languages, and then to just scan over the rest after finishing each chapter.

Just posted a few reviews on the new thread about our reading project, I won't repeat them here.

Oh dear, I am afraid I am twee. I wonder how badly it shows? I have some plush animals about and quite a few knick-knacks. Sometimes a plush animal makes the trip to work with me. In my defense, I work a very lonely 12-hour night shift, a very stressful one in a hospital. I am the only one in my department and spend hours in an empty office doing admin work, periodically emerging to perform therapeutic or diagnostic treatments on patients in any and all parts of the hospital. I do not, of course, take the plush animal with me when I do. But often Mr. Teddy is the only friendly face I see all night. Also in my defense, I don't wear hospital clothing with pictures of twee things, which many people do. Not that there is anything wrong with that. But I stick to solid colors.

Siobhan, I understand perfectly about the friendly face as this is the reason I have a host of animals perched on my sofa! It seems to be part of human conditioning to want company, even if that company is a furry friend of some kind!

Maybe that explains why I'm happy being surrounded by books.

I'm now reading Trickster's Point by William Kent Krueger. I have read a few of this series and like them. The setting is northern Minnesota, and the main character is one-fourth Indian--not my usual fare but the characterization is excellent and the stories good.

Hi.
Nothing. That is what I have to report at the moment. Nothing. I read a bit, decide the book is not worth my time and then it takes days to find the next one.

Tonight I will start The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft by George Gissing for the Century Challenge.

The Bronte challenge sounds fun, too. One of my favorite Bronte title is Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte. A little gem of a book.

PAM

Having wandered down the never-ending rabbit hole of clothing design, I'm having fun discovering new-to-me coffee table books (and other kinds) all about fashion history. One of the librarians downtown found a title for me the other day (very kind of her) called 100 Dresses and is a small collection of very good photos of some of the clothing in their Costume Institute at MOMA in NY.

Fascinating to see how fashion has evolved - the bustle used to be huge (in every sense) during the Victorian times - now I can't imagine that women would choose to make their butts bigger on purpose nowadays. (Or men, for that matter. It's just this was a female fashion at that time.) Or what about the female fashion during the 18th C of panniers? This was when women would wear dresses extremely wide at the waist and hips, so wide that it would be difficult to enter a room through a traditional doorway unless you turned yourself sideways. From the front, you could be up to six feet wide; from the side view, you could look like a normally proportioned figure.

The design was gorgeous, but what really sucked me in was the clean photographs - such a lovely book to look at. Not very wearable fashions to say the least, but iconic for sure.

Then found one by Elizabeth Jenkins (1963) called Brightness which was fab. A domestic drama (sort of a kitchen sink drama in a way), but with a sharp and pointy edge to it. Two female neighbors in a small town, each with one son who has grown up with the other one to be friends over the years, although they are very different. A tragedy affects both families -- how do the women (and mothers) react?

If you liked Judith Hearne or some of Muriel Sparks' works, you'll like this one. It's similar to the work of Drabble and Atwood in that the characters aren't particularly likeable, but the story is so good that I had difficulty putting this down. Jenkins was a writer of both fiction and non-fiction - Virago or Persephone have published one of her books called The Tortoise and the Hare which I read, but wasn't that impressed with. Now that I am more familiar with this type of edgy domestic drama, I would probably like it if I reread it.

And now back in the comfortable tea-time world of Angela Thirkell (# 9 - Cheerfulness Breaks In)... Aaah. Lovely.

I've just finished a fascinating NF work by Colin Woodard: "American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America." It explains how the Red and the Blue political parties evolved, as well as regional differences in accents, speech, mores, etc. it even covers part of Canada and Mexico, with interesting predictions for the future of our part of the world. it reminded me a bit of David Hackett Fischer's "Albion's Seed", but covers more territory, and is more accurate, IMHO.

Now, in a quite different vein, I've just begun my first Sharon McCrumb novel: "The Ballad of Tom Dooley", set in Appalacia, in the 1800's, based on an actual murder case.

Woody, I enjoy Sharon McCrumb's books very much. She has a wonderful feel for the spiritual ambiance of the country.

I have been busy rereading Derek Tangye's Minack Chronicles. I don't even know how many books there are! I have most of them in one form or another. Tangye and his wife gave up a rather glamorous life in London to become flower and veg gardeners on a Cornish farm, growing daffodils and potatoes on cliff meadows. I like these books for so many reasons. The major reason I am rereading them now is because I realized that my own life changes of the past few years have paralleled the Tangyes. And I enjoy so much reading about the animals that were part of their lives for so many years. In many ways they were very forward-thinking, disliking the use of pesticides, promoting small, family-owned sustainable farming, not letting their pet animals kill birds.

Carolyn, I often take favorite books to work also, not to read but just to have with me! I guess I can admit here that I really feel the need to have some sort of comforting possession with me during these long night shifts, whether a book, a favorite tea mug, a plush animal. Also I can't leave anything there as I don't have my own desk or cubicle - my computer and desk are used by others during the day. So it is stark and cold without my portable "friends."

Meant to ask you guys this:

In the 100 Dresses fashion photog book, they mentioned Christian Dior and the accompanying "Dior Slouch" which was fashionable at the time, namely "hips forward, stomach in, shoulders down, back curved". It was this posture, apparently, that Dior designed his clothes around.

True? It sounds rather strange to me. When we were serious athletes on the swim team, we'd get scolded at school for our shoulders slouching, but that was because we just been in the pool for two hours and were tired!

:-)

Meant to ask you guys this:

In the 100 Dresses fashion photog book, they mentioned Christian Dior and the accompanying "Dior Slouch" which was fashionable at the time, namely "hips forward, stomach in, shoulders down, back curved". It was this posture, apparently, that Dior designed his clothes around.

True? It sounds rather strange to me. When we were serious athletes on the swim team, we'd get scolded at school for our shoulders slouching, but that was because we had just been in the pool for two hours and were tired!

:-)

Meant to ask you guys this:

In the 100 Dresses fashion photog book, they mentioned Christian Dior and the accompanying "Dior Slouch" which was fashionable at the time, namely "hips forward, stomach in, shoulders down, back curved". It was this posture, apparently, that Dior designed his clothes around.

True? It sounds rather strange to me. When we were serious athletes on the swim team, we'd get scolded at school for our shoulders slouching, but that was because we had just been in the pool for two hours and were tired!

:-)

Lemon, did the book show a pix of the Dior model? I think that the back was curved backwards, not forward, perhaps in a reclining posture? This would put the hips forward and the stomach in, at that angle.

I think annpan is right. The stomach looked concave (unlike mine--gravity is winning).

Mary, my favorite Sharyn McCrumb is If Ever I Should Leave You, Pretty Peggy-O. I like the books that feature Sheriff Arrowwood and/or Norah Bonesteel who has second sight.

Annpan and Carolyn - I think you're right. Did people actually do this in real life though? (Not saying that you are old enough to experience this, but you might have heard tell of similar from older relatives...)

I suppose this fashion is as ridiculous as the "draggy trousers" look for some young guys now... I asked a young man how he kept his pants up the other day - "They just stay up" was his answer. Maybe the hands in their pockets keeps them up?

Can't knock the fashion too badly. When police are on patrol in the streets and have stopped a kid (for whatever reasons), if the kid hikes his pants up, that's a big clue that he's probably going to start running. (Can't take big strides if your pants are sagging.) Just FYI.

Lemon, sorry, I don't recall anything about the slouch but I do remember the excitement about the Dior "New Look". I was about nine but I saw pictures in the newspaper and heard my mother discussing it with her friends.
It wasn't meant for the average woman on a small income and clothing coupons who bought "Utility clothes". It was something to admire as couture worn by elegant models and "glamour girls".
I got some images when I Googled for the date of the New Look and one showed a model leaning backwards slightly. I don't know if that was just a pose. It would be difficult to walk like that for any distance!

Lemon, one of the funnier sights I've seen was a teenage couple walking in a mall with their arms around each other. A couple of fingers on the girl's hand were hooked through the boy's belt loop holding up his jeans.

We lived in rural Kentucky, and when the New Look came in my mother wrote to her sister in Springfield, Illinois, to send her a couple of the new length dresses. I was nine when WWII was over, and skirts had been knee length during the War to save on material. One of the dresses was yellow, I remember, which has always been my favorite color but which would have looked better on my red-haired aunt than on my darker complexioned mother.

Finished William Cooper's Scenes from Provincial Life last night. In spite of being an "angry young man" novel, I found it to be a rather charming and bittersweet story about young people in a middling English town in the last few months before the outbreak of World War II. It seems the World Wars (I & II, not Z) are a recurring theme in my reading this year.

I am following the discussion of young people and fashion with amusement. Perhaps it is a sign of age but I can not abide young women wearing bare flimsy mid-drift tops. I don't care whether she is a fashion model or not, but these tops are extremely unflattering to most bodies.

Fortunately the sagging pant look for young men never really caught on where I live. It seems to me to be a more urban phenomenon.

Don't get me started on tattoos! I am old enough to remember when they were very counter-culture and very working class. Now every privileged, entitled young person has at least one tattoo, in spite of the health risks. A tattoo parlor in my area was shut down a few years ago because the operator was reusing needles. Is it really worth contracting hepatitis just to get something you will be sick of in a few years time?

Sorry, I have now posted twice on the Century of Reading comments thread about my current reads rather than on this one.