I'm reading The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf, shortly after reading To the Lighthouse, which iamokathy mentions reading in her post. Iamokathy, I'd love to know your opinion of it.

lemonhead, I read Peter Pan in my childhood but know nothing about the Disney version. I enjoyed the book and can't recall being troubled by it. I should try it again as I don't remember it well at all now. I can remember the parts when the kids are at home with their dog but not the parts in Neverland, apparently.

I loved Alice in Wonderland and was never bothered by any of it, but then I also loved the unabridged Grimm's Fairy Tales except for a couple of stories that were a bit too grisly even for me.

I'm enjoying a re-read of A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness in preparation for the second book, Shadow of Night. I can't wait to dive into the new one!

After that, I have Once We Were Brothers by Ronald Balson for my September bookgroup meeting.

I had part of my large family in for a mini family reunion, so I haven't been doing much reading. I have started "Molokai" by Alan Brennert for one of my book groups. And reading the sheriz6 post reminds me that I want to reread "A Discovery of Witches" before reading the next book in the trilogy.

Still suffering from the remnants of Traveler's Fog Brain, so I am taking it easy and re-reading some old Madeleine Brent romantic suspense novels. MB was actually Peter O'Donnell, creator of the character Modesty Blaise. The novels he wrote under this pseudonym are predictable but enjoyable, and feature strong heroines. You would expect that under the circumstances. Anyway, I noticed that the public libraries have been culling these novels as they grew older, so I've slowing been gathering used copies for my future reading pleasure.

Rosefolly

Currently reading Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq by Thomas E. Ricks. I've always preferred history/non-fiction books by journalists. After having gone through Halberstam's and Sheehan's books on Vietnam, as well as Woodward's book on the first Gulf War, I figured it was time to go see what the fourth estate has to say about Iraq.

I'm also going to try to go through the rest of the Nero Wolfe mysteries that I've somehow managed to miss.

I've also just finished Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Lyndsay Faye (another Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper book). Overall, not a bad effort.

On the adventure front, I finally picked up Alistair MacLean's Where Eagles Dare. The book is quite good and it actually stacks up quite well to the movie. The movie has a young Clint Eastwood and a dashing Richard Burton paired up as almost an odd couple-type pairing in the middle of a secret mission. No, it's not a comedy but the odd coupling of the two was actually played up quite a bit in the book.

(And .... I can't remember how to do the italics stuff on this board!)

How to do Italics

Before the text to be italicized:

open angle bracket, then the letter i, then close angle bracket

At the end of the text to be italicized:

open angle bracket, then this slash / , then the letter i, then close angle bracket

You do Bold the same way, except the letter b in both places instead of the letter i.

The open angle bracket is this character And the close angle bracket is this character >

Have fun!

Rosefolly

Thanks! I knew it was something like that -- it's been quite a while since I've been here.

Rosefolly - I loved the Brent novels when I first read them many, many years ago. I recently picked up a copy of "Merlin's Keep," the first one I ever read, at a library sale. I wish I could get some of those books on my Kindle, since, as you know, I don't have much room to store real books.

Still reading Vanity Fair -- it is good but somewhat lengthy. At least now I have the characters all sorted out in my head!

And then, for my NF read and in prep for our trip to Chicago in September, I am reading Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul by Karen Abbott... Another book with a host of different characters, but so far not too confusing. It's about the history of one of the more popular and successful brothels on the South Side of Chicago...

Since the weekend, I have read The Chemistry of Death by Simon Beckett, a mystery featuring a new widower leaving behind his field of forensics to be a village doctor but who naturally gets drafted by the police to help on a case; Murder at the Altar by Veronica Heley, an English cozy recommended on another site and which I enjoyed very much; and the new Charles Todd, An Unmarked Grave, featuring his (their) WWI nursing sister, Bess Crawford.

Well, I sprained my wrist and had to give it a nice long rest. It was so sad. (Insert smiley face.)

I just finished Shadow of the Night, the sequel to A Discovery of Witches and I thought it was fabulous. It got off to a slow start and I was starting to despair that the author had given in to the temptation of stuffing the story (set mainly in 1591) with every historical figure she could find, but after a few chapters the story sorted itself out and started building momentum and I was completely pulled in. It definitely lived up to the first book -- I loved it! I'm feeling such a serious book hangover at the moment I'm not even ready to start wishing for book #3 just yet. Soon, though.

I'm tottering off to read magazines for a few days ...

Dynomutt, good to see you back!

Hi Sheri,

Thanks! Glad to be back.... I kind of forgot the URL for this website and I rediscovered it a few days ago.

Still reading Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq by Thomas E. Ricks. It's a very interesting if alarming read. According to the book, the whole Iraq mess is a case of "if you fail to prepare, prepare to fail". In case you're interested in what happened behind the scenes in Iraq, this makes for a good companion piece to Bob Woodward's series of books on the Bush administration. Woodward's books (his Bush At War series including State of Denial and The War Within) offer a revealing if not alarming glimpse into the Bush White House.

I'd also highly recommend Woodward's last book, Obama's Wars to contrast what went on in the Obama White House with the Bush White House.

Oh, and while we're on the subject of Presidents .... this year's an election year! A scary book about the 2008 election is Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by political journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. The portrayal of Palin is quite .... well, you have to read it for yourself. A movie was made based on the book and, actually, it was the movie that pushed me to seek out the book!

Sheri, I loved Shadow of Night too. I wasn't so worried by the characters, more by the amount of historical information she put in that first bit. Since I read a lot of historical fiction, none of it was new to me and I wanted to skip over it. I am ready for part three *vbg*. If it comes out at the same time as part three of Hilary Mantel's Cromwell books, I will be a very happy woman.

My latest serious NF read was "The Fabric of America: How Our Borders and Boundaries Shaped the Country and Forged our National Identity" by Andro Linklater. I found this informative and interesting. I am continually amazed at little I actually know re the hidden facts of American and Canadian history. Now, for something lighter....

Carolyn, are you sure you're wrist is all healed? (vbg). I think maybe you should take it easy for a couple more days, get some more reading done and then see how your wrist is!

After spending a good deal of my reading time watching the Olympics I picked up an old favorite and was immediately drawn into the world of Attolia. I have just finished re-reading The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner. This has become one of my all-time favorite books (among a dozen or so others) .

Wrist healed or not, I'm still reading! Actually, it wasn't a sprain. I think I pulled something in it while weeding a very dry flower garden. I felt something like the princess and the pea.

Today I'm reading The First Wave by James R. Benn. It's the second of the Billy Boyle WWII mystery series. I thoroughly enjoyed the first one. Billy is a young Boston Irish cop, from a family of Boston policemen, at the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He has no desire to enlist but soon gets his draft notice, prompting his mother to write a relative, Uncle Ike, who has a posh job at the Pentagon. They think this will keep Billy from being sent overseas to fight with the not-too-well-liked English, but, of course, Uncle Ike is General Eisenhower who is sent to London as the general in charge of U.S. troops. Because of Billy's police knowledge, he gets assigned to murder cases that are not part of the war effort. The books are a little amusing as he tries to keep himself safe, but the stories are quite good. In this one, he is among the first into Algeria.

I usually do not like novels about dysfunctional families. However, I just finished "The Ghost at the Table" by Suzanne Berne and found it well-written and well-paced. Now I am re-reading Ian McEwan's "Saturday."

I got a very excited call from the library today - Daniel Silva's Fallen Angel just arrived, brand new, hot off the press. Can't wait to start it. I read all of his Gabriel Allon books this spring and so I'm ready for this new one. I don't know why I find reading about an Israeli assassin relaxing! Maybe because he has problems I will never have?

Carolyn - Are you sure you don't to rest your wrist some more? You know, you might aggravate it to a dangerous level doing dishes or vaccuming etc... Caution pays. :-)

So - finished up Vanity Fair and had a few thoughts about it...

What a journey this book was. I would liken it to other epic books (length-wise) such as Don Quixote and perhaps The Count of Monte Cristo, except this time with a female anti-hero.

Becky Crawden (nee Sharp) is a stereotypical "bad" Victorian woman: out for money even if it means losing scruples (and other things along the way) although there is a suitable come-uppance at the end (although not full redemption as mentioned later.)

Becky is actually, despite being quite despicable at times, rather to be admired in some ways. She certainly doesn't follow the rules of the time (when it was fatal to your society role if you didn't), she did what she wanted to do and she focused on that. I think in today's society, there were definitely parts of Becky that would be admired: the ambition, the tenacity, the focus... However, I thoroughly doubt that other wives would be as understanding if she swiped their hubbies/partners, even if it is the twenty-first century. (And yes, I recognize that multiple parties are guilty in such an incident and it's not just the femme fatale's fault.)

The character of Becky was supposedly based on Thackeray's maternal grandmother who abandoned her husband and children for an army officer, and who, when he died, went on to marry another army officer. Thackeray lived with her at various points in his life.

This is rather a dark satire of the grubby materialism that was prominent during the mid-1800's in England (and elsewhere). It's comparable, I think, in some ways to the shallowness of the later Gilded Age in the U.S., when money was everything, the be-all and end-all, especially what it bought you in terms of power and prestige. Quite fascinating if you think about it and compare it to some of the crass reality shows of today where they showcase idle rich people doing idle rich things. (The more things change...) However, I am not one to judge and who is to say that I wouldn't have ended up in the same way if I had been in that family dynamic(although I would hope not)?

So -- the title Vanity Fair is taken from Pilgrim's Progress, a huge long allegorical story written by religious writer John Bunyan (who grew up very close to where l was born and lived in Bedford and was put into jail where he wrote this story). Now, even though I lived a large part of my life in Bedford and walked over the plaque on the pavement which marks the Very Spot where Bunyan's cell was located, I have never quite got around to reading Pilgrim's Progress (mainly because it looks very boring and preachy and bossy.) So -- I don't actually know if this link to PP is actually there as I am not familiar with any of it. (I could show you the cell plaque though if you happen to be in Bedford one...

Lemonhead, thank you so much for the Vanity Fair review -- I've had this doorstop of a book in my TBR pile forever, and could never decide if I wanted to devote the time or the eye-strain (tiny type) necessary to read it. Now that I know more about it, I think I will send it off to the library book sale donation box without a pang of guilt. I have been reading your book blog and really enjoy your reviews -- I'm looking forward to the next one.

I just started a Regency romance by Jude Morgan, An Accomplished Woman, which is OK, but certainly not up to the Georgette Heyer standard, IMO. It's a light, easy read, and though it's rather similar to GH's Bath Tangle.

sheri - I don't blame you for moving on from VF. It's not that fabulous. Good, but not fabulous...

Thanks to recommendations on this month's "what are you reading thread", I put several books on hold at the library. All, I repeat, ALL of them came in within two days of one another. So now I have 6 books to read as well as the three I picked up at a book sale. My only dilemma now is to decide which to read first - Walking the Gobi by Helen Thayer, Murder in the Garden by Veronica Heley, Nowhere Else on Earth by Josephine Humphrey, My Grandmothers and I by Diana Holman-Hunt or Elegy for Eddy by Jacqueline Winspear to name a few of them..

Sheri, I love VF and often reread some of the scenes in it. I will admit there are some chapters that are not very interesting but the writing and ironic wit is a pleasure! My favourite minor character is the Irishwoman, Mrs. O'Dowd, based on a member of Thackeray's family. She is a hoot!
Please get a better print copy with notes, mine is from The Penguin English Library, and give it a try!

Sheri, I love VF and often reread some of the scenes in it. I will admit there are some chapters that are not very interesting but the writing and ironic wit is a pleasure! My favourite minor character is the Irishwoman, Mrs. O'Dowd, based on a member of Thackeray's family. She is a hoot!
Please get a better print copy with notes, mine is from The Penguin English Library, and give it a try!

Sorry about the duplicate post, I had a hiccup with the computer! There isn't a cancellation button on this forum, is there?
I got a lot of Lord Peter Wimsey stories in a library book sale. I read them years ago but have forgotten the plots. So complicated! Also a good picture of London in the twenties and thirties. Dirty clothes from coal fires and fleas, mentioned quite casually, which shocked me rather!

I agree with annpan, and think Vanity Fair is well worth reading. Yes, some of the chapters are padded out and long-winded but Thackeray had to fill his monthly number of words. Becky Sharp could well be a modern girl 'out for what I can get' and 'more-give-me-more' and despite the many knocks she receives she never gives up and almost never 'learns'.
Sheri, do as annpan suggests and try and get hold of a copy with readable print and just read a chapter a day/week/month (as the Victorians did . . . and don't bother with the recent film which set the book in India!

Vee, which film do you mean? The last one I saw, with Reece Witherspoon as Becky Sharp, did have some Indian scenes but was not set in India.
My favourite dramatisation was a BBC one in episodes which gave a good chance to show a lot of the book.

Drood is dragging. I'm running out of other books to escape into, and also out of time before my book club meets. I'm actually may be out of town for my daughter's wedding, but if so, I'll email my review and rating.

I've just requested the audiobook from my library. That is slower, but sometimes it can kickstart a book I'm having trouble diving into. Once I am engaged, I can switch back to the written word if listening is too slow.

Rosefolly

Hello All,

Sorry I have been MIA for a little while. New job... then the roof and heat pump both needed to be replaced simultaneously, school is about to start but it seems that baseball season JUST ended. And my reading? Oh, sorry state indeed... not enough time for reading!

I just started a brand new book entitled City of Women by David R. Gillham. It is set in Berlin during WW2, and Berlin, with most of the men away fighting, has become a city of women. The main character is Sigrid, a married women who lives in a flat with her mother-in-law and whose husband is fighting at the front. She takes a lover who is Jewish, huddles in the subways with her neighbors while the British bomb Berlin, makes the best with her rations, is a model employee. But the book is taking me into the lives of these people, into their thoughts, their dreams, their fears. I am on page 63 so not far enough into it to set firm opinions, but so far, whenever I open the book, I seem to fall right into Berlin. Today is Sunday... to heck with the laundry... I am going to read.

PAM

Hi I am new to this forum; looks very good!
I just finished listening to "Seraphina" by Rachel Hartman, the narrator (dont remember her name) was fantastic. I usually am a mystery/thriller reader, but just loved this book (largely due to the narrator, I think) dont be put off by the dragon aspect!
I am looking forward to reading all of you reviews and opinions on books!

Corrival, Welcome! I read mystery books too and prefer cosies. I have read a lot of Golden Age authors and try to get OOP copies of some of the more obscure and forgotten ones from websites like Abe.
We don't usually write reviews but do give opinions as well as recommendations on our current reading.

So - I didn't realize it until the other day but I had been dragging that Chicago brothel book about with me for ages (akin to the albatross) and then realized that I really wasn't enjoying it, it wasn't school, and so put it into the "Donate" pile. Phew.

Now on to a *much* more interesting book called The Power of Habit, a new NF release by Charles Duhigg. Good so far. I also picked up Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (good so far), and then as a bubblegum read, another Ruth Rendell called The Lake of Darkness. I did have another Rendell going on, but it was an older book and someone at some time had left a burning ciggie on its pages and have created a 3-D sculpture with how many pages it had burned through. So - bit difficult to read as I had to guess which words were there... I wonder if cigarettes are still a wide-spread issue for libraries like they were...

So - good reading all around.

I'm normally not much of a re-reader, but lately I've felt the need to revisit old friends. So, at bedtime I have begun a complete re-read of the Harry Potter books. I'm finding them great fun all over again. I am also re-reading "Discovery of Witches" in anticipation of reading the next book in the trilogy.

For my book groups: #1 - already finished "Molokai" by Alan Brennert, which was an interesting read. I learned some things about leprosy and about that time period in Hawaii's history. #2 - A book called "Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter," a myster by Tom Franklin.

Sarah Canary, Brennert also wrote Honolulu about Korean picture brides brought to the islands for the plantation workers. I liked Molokai better, but this one was good, too. I'm a pushover for anything related to Hawaii.

I haven't been here for a while, either. Molokai has been on my TBR list for eons; I think I need to bump it up. These threads always leave me adding to my list, though.

Interesting comments about Shadow of the Night. While I really enjoyed Discovery of Witches, book #2 just didn't meet my expectations. I thought it went on forever and also jumped over parts of the story which needed to be explained. At the same time, I was finishing up #6 in the young adult series The Alchemyst in which two teens satisfy the ancient prophecy, battle after battle for the missing pages, John Dee, Nicholas Flamel, QEI, etc. so maybe it was too much of the same for me.

Two of my favorite books this past month have been Peter Carey's The Chemistry of Tears and Niceville by Carsten Stroud. Carey's book is about a grieving museum curator restoring an antique robotic duck, complete with old diaries. It is both clever and thoughtful. I could not put down Niceville over the weekend--if Stephen King, Elmore Leonard, and Cormac McCarthy collaborated, this book would be the result.

My Name Is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliveira

A Civil War setting novel that involves the beginning of military medical care, and women's entry into medical care that kept me reading when I had quilting to do! The language and descriptions are way above most currently written novels. This is one of my top ten for this year. I borrowed it from the library and am looking for a half.com copy to purchase for the re-read and notation.

Now I'm re-reading Mary Brown's dragon fantasies. You can see how hard I am working at not reading my book club book. I really don't know why this is. I only have six days left to read it.

Maybe if I promise myself to read 100 pages each night it won't seem so formidable a task.

Rosefolly

I recall enjoying Vanity Fair. Pilgrim's Progres I found surprisingly readable as well.

I just finished The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf. Apparently it's not one of her more admired works, and I can see why. I didn't like it much at all. It seemed carelessly constructed and loaded with entirely too many characters, most of whom seemed more like cardboard figures than real people.

I'm glad I'd already read To the Lighthouse. If I'd started with The Voyage Out, I don't think I'd ever want to read anything else by Virginia Woolf.

I'm currently engrossed in "My Heart's in the Lowlands: Ten Days in Bonnie Scotland" by Liz Curtis Higgs.This is a charming armchair travel book by an author from Kentucky who has written many historical novels set in Scotland. Carolyn, I think you might like this one....

I've been AWOL on this thread for awhile, not because I haven't been reading, but because I have been totally engrossed in the children's series called Warriors, a rollicking adventure-laden, mythological tale of a tribe of cats. I've read 19 of them. Yes, 19. Not done yet. Enjoyed every minute. There is also a series about bears and one about either wolves or dogs. I think the cats will keep me occupied for awhile.

I am going to take a break right now and read a couple of adult novels - The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel by Deborah Moggach (now a film) and more Proust.

I've been MIA too recently. All those library books that showed up at the same time are still sitting on the table waiting to be read. Instead, I have been re-reading the Thief/Attolia series by Megan Whalen Turner. I went out of town this past weekend and took the audio book The King of Attolia to listen to for the trip so I had to finish the other two before I could start TKoA. Now that I have finished TKoA, I am finally ready to look at the stack of TBR's awaiting my attention.

Mary, I have a couple of books by Liz Curtiss Higgs, one that is very funny and one that is religious; but I haven't read any of the Scotland ones. I'll check the library.

She is from Louisville, and I have heard her speak a couple of times. She is hysterically funny.

I am a third of the way through The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel by Deborah Moggach and enjoying it tremendously. I like the film, but the book is very different and very good. In fact at this point I would say the film is only loosely based on the book. Much better character development and frankly just much better characters.

A re-read of a book first enjoyed probably 30 years ago Bring on the Empty Horses by English film actor and wonderful story-teller/raconteur David Niven. Not quite as good as his first book The Moon's a Balloon which dealt with his early life. This one is more a collection of stories of the people he met and worked with in Hollywood from producers of the big studios to the Stars of the 30 - 50's. He seems to have got on with everyone with his easy charm and lack of 'side'.

Here is a link that might be useful: Niven on TV

Siobhan - If you haven't read Moggach's other works, then you are in a for a true treat. She is an excellent writer, all her books are unpredictable (important for me), and just good reads. Plus there are quite a few of them... I haven't read a bad one yet.

I have just finished up Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy which I enjoyed. I do think I had had been asked to read this during school days, but tbh, I remembered nothing about it except countryside descriptions. Was good though.

And then, for my NF read, I whizzed through a new release called The Power of Habit by NYT writer Charles Duhigg. An interesting science-based book about why we have the habits we have, what they look like from micro- to macro-scale (organizational habits etc.) and then how to break them. Not a self-help book, but more along the lines of a Malcom Gladwell type. Good and fast read for me.

And then, I am reading an African feminist coming-of-age book which has been recommended by a friend who works in an NGO in Ghana. It's called Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga and a first-person narrative of growing up African in 1960's Rhodesia. Fascinating and the author has an extremely wicked sense of humor. :-)

Finally got into Dan Simmons's Drood, and when I did I could not put it down. I highly recommend it to those who enjoy the gothic, the suspenseful, the convoluted, and the surprising. It is a highly fictional account of the last few years of Dickens and his friend Wilkie Collins. Layered in with the invented story are enough facts to make it feel true. This author did his homework.

Rosefolly

I finished Daniel Silva's latest, The Fallen Angel, and enjoyed it as always. I just love all the characters in these books.
I am now about a third of the way into Gone Girl, a crime novel by Gillian Flynn, and I am not enjoying it at all. I have to finish it, to see whodunnit, and how the book pans out, but the two main characters are both immensely dislikable and I feel like I am being manipulated by the author. I don't mind a tricky clue or two (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd anyone?) but here it feels like the red herrings are being laid on a bit too thickly.
Has anyone else read it? I'll let you know if it is redeemed by the ending.

Kath, I haven't read that book but have you read "The Herring Seller's Apprentice" by L.C. Tyler? That has some tricky clues. Even the author's name is significant!

Ann, I haven't heard of that one, I'll have to check it out.

Tonight I stayed up into the wee hours to finish Peter Straub's Lost Boy Lost Girl. Parts of book were extremely creepy, and there were a few good scares as well. It is not the kind of book I normally read, since it deals with serial killers, a topic I find distasteful and depressing. Of course the book could not hold a candle to my favorite Straub novel, Ghost Story, which I read last year and found to be terrifying.

My interest Straub came about indirectly, mostly through my interest in the music of Stephin Merritt, a longtime friend of Straub and his family. (Straub's daughter, Emma Straub, and her husband, Michael Fusco, design and sell the merchandise at concerts of Merritt's famous group "The Magnetic Fields".) Lost Boy Lost Girl Girl contained several references to this band, which I found to be an amusing, if slightly gimmicky touch.