Lately I grew weary of "stories". Even if there are a lot of novels I'd like to read, and I keep on adding titles to my various bookshop-online's wish-list, I'm never in the mood to buy and to read them. So I discovered a new (for me) genre: memoirs. I started with "Don't Let's go to the Dogs Tonight: an African Childhood" by Alexandra Fuller, I continued with "Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an african Soldier" also by Alexandra Fuller. Then I read "Mountains Beyond Mountains" by Tracy Kidder, about the life of Paul farmer, a doctor who's dedicating his life to the cure of infectuos diseases and other stuff, in Haiti.
Now I'm reading Foreign Correspondences by Geraldine Brooks, concerning her childhood in Australia and how she discovered the world through correspondence with pen-pals
Next one will be The Translator A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur by Hari Daoud
I am the translator who has taken journalists into dangerous Darfur. It is my intention now to take you there in this book, if you have the courage to come with me"

He's a Zaghawa tribesman, growing up in a village in the Darfur. In 2003 his way of life was shattered , when the violence started. His village was destoyed, his family and friends murdered, he managed to escape and started to help other people to survive. Later on , thanks to his knowledge of languages, he offered his services to foreigner journalists, whom in turn were outlawed by the government of the Sudan.

grelobe

grelobe, I am a lover of memoirs, too! The ones you mention sound very interesting.

I have started reading "The Little House on the Prairie" series as I have not read them before. They are very simply written (of course as they are kids' books) but the author does a good job of making their life seem very real. Did she actually live like this in her life?

Anyway, am learning a lot about life on the prairie - how to use a spideriron, how to iron clothes on the trail, and how to make various kitchen dishes. Plus I now know how to clean and stuff a rifle ready to get marauding bears.

I have a little god-daughter who would be the perfect age (I think) to read this. She is five, nearly six and has a birthday coming up. Do you think she is old enough for these books to be read to her? They don't seem very scary.

She did indeed. FWIW, I was about that age when I started to read them. I like to think that little girls (big girls too) are still enjoying those wonderful stories.

I WAS planning on going to the library this weekend, but I am not so sure I can now. We just got dumped with 18 inches of snow and are likely to get even more before the day is out. The city is practically paralized. If I can't get to the library I may take a stab at The Story of Edgar Sawtelle next. That should keep me occupied for many weeks.
This makes me glad I have a few stacks of TBR books on my selves. It is always good to be prepared!
CMK

Lemonhead, I recently bought the Little House on the Prairie box set / collector's edition, when I saw it on sale, hoping my girls will want to read them eventually. My oldest is around the right age for them.

They do have younger versions of LH for the 4-8 year old range. My little one has "A Little Prairie House" (see link below), and I think some of these editions are part of what they call "My First Little House" series, usually about 30 pages in length.

I just finished reading "The Enchanted April" by Elizabeth Von Arnim. Enjoyed it, but now I want an Italian holiday!

Here is a link that might be useful: Little Prairie House

grelobe, have you read Beryl Markam's West With the Night? She was an Englishwoman who grew up in East Africa, became a bush pilot, was the first woman to fly the Atlantic east to west and was so much more than those phrases suggest.

thanks chris, I made a note of it

grelobe

Thanks, Georgia. I have bookmarked this for my little friend's birthday. Do you think she is too young for a chapter book right now? I don't know as I don't have kids.

liz

She's probably not too young for the chapter books. In my case, I have a very squirmy five year old who can't sit still. I usually read to her at bedtime and I'm usually too tired to read for more than 15 minutes, so the shorter books work for us.

Very good point about the parent being too tired to read a long chapter -- hadn't considered that aspect. Maybe the ones you suggested (the Little Prairie ones) would be best. Thanks.

Just stopped at the library on the way home from school, and picked up Shakespeare's Wife, Some Danger Involved, and The Serpents of Hobledown. Such riches-now if only I had time to curl up. We have had torrential rain all day-I am afraid to go down to the basement and check on the pump.

Lemonhead,
Glad to know I'm not the only adult out there reading Little House right now. I'm currently on By the Shores of Silver Lake. I've been laughing and weeping. I remember reading some of the series as a child but not each book.

The other day at the library a mystery book called Blood Orange Brewing came across the desk. I don't usually read mysteries but as the plot involves a teashop I could not resist. A murder took place within the first chapter and I was a little grossed out.

Grelobe, I'm also a fan of memoirs. Foreign Correspondence, is one of my favorites. Brooks' husband, Tony Horwitz, also writes in that genre, though he is more of an "I was interested in this subject and traveled there and here is what I found" kind of writer vs. a "this is the life I lived" kind of writer. I hope that makes sense! I've enjoyed all his books.

Another memoir I liked (recommended here by Frieda, if I recall correctly) was Chris Stewart's Driving Over Lemons about a British man buying and renovating a house in Spain.

I haven't had much time to read lately, but I just picked up Dewey: The Small Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron from the library. I'm hoping to get started on it sometime today -- we've had over a foot of snow with more on the way, so this might be a good day for reading if I can get my Christmas preparations finished.

books4joy-that book is one of a series about the tea shop. They are light and fun, but it does make me wonder about the tea-drinking crowd in Charleston-they seem to bump each other off with alarming regularity! ;-)
She writes a scrapbooking series set in New Orleans, and has just begun a third series set in a restaurant in Oklahoma, I believe. I don't love the scrapbooking series, and haven't read any of the third series-but I do watch for the new tea shop ones-I am a fervent tea drinker and I like the tea lore as well as the mystery.

While baking cakes, cookies for humans, and cookies for dogs I've been listening to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, translated from the original Swedish. I would say I can't put it down except that I'm listening, not reading. It is encouraging me to keep baking, however, so I can listen. I don't remember seeing this book mentioned on RP; has anyone read it? I decided on it because I saw a comparison to Michael Connelly's books. It is the first of a trilogy but the only one translated so far. The author is no longer living. When I have some time I will do a little research on him because the book is so good that I want to know more about the author.

Finished Cahill's "Desire of the Everlasting Hills" and moved on to a quite different work: "The Letters" by Luanne Rice and Joseph Monninger. I read this almost at one sitting. The plot and the settings really grabbed me and pulled me in (Monhegan Island, Maine, and the Alaskan wilderness). This is an extraordinary novel which is fiction but seemed so real to me it was like reading a family memoir. Not for everyone, but recommended for some. I can't think of any other work to compare it to and don't want to write any more as I don't wish to spoil it for anyone else....

Last night, I finished The Road to Wellville by TC Boyle. Very entertaining, and the funniest book I've read in a long time. It's fiction, but (loosely) based on John Harvey Kellogg's Sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan. Kellogg used some unorthodox (to say the least!) methods in his Sanitarium, and the book takes them to the extreme, making a satire out of it. Interesting stuff. I rated it a 8/10.

Next up is A Heartbreaking Work of a Staggering Genius, but Dave Eggers. I really don't know much about it, but I loved What is the What by the same author, so snatched this one up when I spotted it at the library yesterday.

Francesmd, what is The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo about? One of the on-line book groups I sometimes partcipate in is reading it soon. I wasn't sure if I wanted to read it with them or not. I was under the impression it was a mystery/thriller, which normally doesn't float my boat. Maybe I'll have to consider reading anyway it though if it's good.

Kren, if you're interested, there was a movie made of The Road to Wellville back in the 90's featuring Matthew Broderick, Bridget Fonda, Anthony Hopkins, John Cusack and Dana Carvey. I remember it being very funny.

I started Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat That Touched the World and it's cute and sweet, nothing at all taxing.

Frances, I've also been intrigued by The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (just the title is a grabber), and like kren, thrillers aren't really my cuppa tea -- Can you tell us a bit more?

Kren and Sheri, I suppose The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo falls into the mystery/thriller category. I love thrillers; mysteries not so much. It is the story of a journalist who is falsely convicted of libel and comes to the attention of a retired businessman who hires the journalist to investigate the death of a family member many years earlier with the promise that at the end of a year he will provide information that will help the journalist clear his name. The girl with the tattoo works for a security company and she does investigations of people. The businessman hired her to do an investigation of the journalist and then called it off. She has had a bad life and bad things are happening to her still. I'm a little afraid of where this is going because sadistic violence has entered the picture.

Other than saying this is a book I'm enjoying listening to because it is so well done I don't want to make recommendations at this point because I remember how much I liked Edgar Sawtelle and how it ended.

Sheri - I am also reading "Dewey" and enjoying it, although you are right when you say it is nothing too heavy. i wish the photos in the book were better though. It's hard to see what he's doing sometimes.

Also keeping up with the "Little House" series, although I am behind Books4Joy - I am just about to start #4 - something about Plum Creek. I am so enjoying the series, although it's not exactly helping my TBR pile go down at all.

After today at the office, I have two weeks off from work, and I am going to read until my eyes fall out. Can't wait.

Izzy and Lenore by Jon Katz and Miss Read's Village Christmas are on their way back to the library as soon as I bundle myself up in many layers of clothing and pull on my heavy boots. This California girl is determined not to whine about the weather, and dressing properly is a big part of it! As for the books, I thoroughly enjoyed both. I think Katz's latest is his best. Miss Read is, of course, inimitable and wonderful.

We opened our Christmas gifts yesterday, as family pressures and work made Sunday the last time we would all be together. I got five books!

Those of you reading the Little House Books - about 20 years ago we visited some of the places in those books, including a museum - small and somewhat disappointing - featuring Laura Ingalls and items relevant to the book. It meant a lot to my daughter and youngest son who had both enjoyed the series.

I just started the new book by Lorna Landvik - appropriately entitled 'Tis The Season.

Pat

I read the first few pages of A Heartbreaking Work of a Staggering Genius, and set it aside. I may pick it up again someday, but I just wasn't in the mood for it right now.

I picked up instead Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya. It's set in India, and it's about a poor, rural family trying to get by. I finished it in one day, and thought it was excellent. I'm going to have to check and see if the author wrote any more books!

Next up (I think!) is The World Is Not Enough by Zoe Oldenbourg. Has anyone read anything written by her? I think she used to be a fairly popular historical fiction author years ago, maybe?

I tried the first few pages of Edgar Sawtelle but couldn't get into it. I will set it aside and wait to be in the right mood for it.

I just started 'The Prosperous Thief' by Andrea Goldsmith. So far so good.
CMK

I just finished "Main Street". Thanks PAM as your post prompted me to pick it up. It made it easy to imagine the town I live in now 90 or so years ago, and to recognize some of the same attitudes today. I'm glad I read this, but I'd definitely prefer to live in Helen Hooven Santmyer's town! It makes me grateful that in the internet age, we can connect with likeminded people wherever we live!

I'm re-reading "Eragon" and then will re-read "Eldest" in preparation for reading "Brisingr." I enjoy these fantasy books by the young author Christopher Paolini.

Eventually I'll have to start reading the book I got from my book club exchange: "Extremely Loud and Exceedingly Close."

To those interested in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo I can say that I enjoyed it very much, although I am a mystery/thriller/police procedural reader. I found the writing very good, the story interesting and the mystery satisfying (the last being very important to me, I hate a poor ending). The sequel, called The Girl Who Played With Fire was released here in Australia last week. I haven't yet had the chance to get to it, but it is definitely high on my list.

CeCe,
Thanks for the tea mystery info. I find the tea elements comforting and the pages just fly by. I will look for her other books.

I'm on the wait list for Dewey and am down to number 41. I was at a Borders the other weekend and picked up the book and started to make cooing noises over the photos. A couple who were sitting nearby got up from their chairs in a hurry.
~Vanessa

I just finished the Guernsey Literary and PPP Society. Thaks to those who recommended it. It is a wonderful book. Very fortunate it was available when I went to the library yesterday. It was both realistic and optimistic and definitely a story I will want to read again. Like you Lemonhead, I am off school for 2 weeks and want to read until my eyeballs fall out. It's wonderful.

I've just finished "The Four Seasons" by Laurel Corona. This is a novel set in the time of composer Vivaldi's 18th century Venice. It was so skillfully written and so well researched that I feel as if I have emerged from a Time Travel experience. I recommend this for anyone with an interest in classical music or in the enchanting city of Venice. Very impressive for a first novel, IMHO!

Oh my! I am halfway through The Guernsey Literary and PPP Society.. I haven't enjoyed a book this much in several months. I am savoring it, trying not to just sit down and read until it is finished. I am planning to buy copies for several friends/family members...because I will probably re-read this as soon as I am finished. Something I have never done before...I have to go through and mark a couple of thing. Like the comment on Seneca's writing, about learning, reading and laughing.

I finished the Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, another recommendation I got here. It was excellent. I liked the parallel story lines with Kivrin, the time traveler in the 1300's dealing with the black death, vs. her university in 2057 dealing with an epidemic and struggling to get her back. Really shows that the human condition does not change. I read it so fast, I really do feel like my eyes could fall out!

I picked up Around the World in Eighty Dinners by Cheryl Alters Jamison (and her spouse, who's name isn't in the card catalog and I'm too lazy to go upstairs and find it). It looked interesting, but hasn't really caught my attention fully yet. The authors are a husband and wife team who have written several cookbooks. This is supposed to be a tour to places based on the cuisine. I've only gotten as far as the idea and planning of the trip. Maybe I'll find it more intriguing once they are actually on their way.

started Some Danger Involved by Will Thomas last night and will be checking on line at the library for the other books in the series today.
Shakespeare's Wife and The Price of Butcher's Meat still on the tbr pile: more plumbing disasters (starting on Christmas Eve as we were dressing for evening church), writing deadlines and multiple family holiday events involving both fun and major aggravation have made my concentration levels sink to new lows. So I continue to read mysteries-at least trying to figure them out exercises my brain.

cc; Thanks for the pointer to Elizabeth Ferrars. I am amazed that I have not come across her before. Such a prolific mystery writer and I have managed to get quite a few books in large print from her early titles. I can read normal print but the large print is good for bedtime!
Veer; I read "Miss Pettigrew..." and borrowed the DVD which is somewhat different but her son said she would approve the changes. I think some of the best scenes were deleted but the good thing about the DVD is that you can see them after all! My copy of the book had line drawings. Have you read any of Margery Sharp's books? 'The eye of love' aka 'Martha and the eye of love' is in similar style. The poverty in that time was dreadful and it was so frightening to be out of work. Now there is the same problem and the same fear. I feel so sad.

A quick side note: My aunt just returned the Guernsey Literary and PPP Society to me with a note inside the front cover:
"PAM -
EXCELLENT!
A letter will follow shortly with what I can recall of growing up during WW II."

To me, this is a lovely tribute to this book. Thanks to sharing this book with her, she will share her WW II memories with me, in writing, so I may keep them forever. Just needed to share this with all of you. It seems to be a demonstration of the power of a book.

PAM

I am newbie and love to read. Just reading Ronald Wright's book on What is America - excellent writer and makes you think. Look forward to the comments and finding out about new books. I am 97 years old and a Canadian.

Welcome, Hendrika.

Welcome Hendrika,

I, for one, would love to know the names and titles of some of your all time favorites. Glad to have you with us.

PAM

Welcome Hendrika! What part of Canada are you from?

Last week, I spotted The Guernsey Literary and PPP Society at the library, and based on such stellar reviews I snatched it up. I read it in a day, and really enjoyed it. PAM--how neat that your aunt will be sending you her recollections of WW II! I should ask my Grandma more about it--I know she was in college when Pearl Harbor was bombed, but don't know much more than that.

I'm currently reading Dune by Frank Herbert. Normally I don't read Sci-fi, but since this one is regarded as a classic in the Sci-Fi genre I thought I'd give it a go. So far I like it.

Kelly

I withdraw what I said earlier about James lee Burke's Swan Peak being disappointing. I finished listening to it yesterday as I spent 10 hours driving from Tennessee to Baltimore (an hour or so in dense fog at both ends.) SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!The character introduced as a depraved bully and for whom I could see no redemption, became the man on whom I pinned hopes at the end. At some point I realized he was our hero David Robicheaux with a slightly different childhood. His violence was not different from Robicheaux's, but his primary victims were. The novel made me question my previous acceptance of Robicheaux's violence as nasty but necessary. The novel does strike me as the final David Robicheaux installment. Carolyn, I know you read it. What did you think? SPOILER OVER

I also finished Wodehouse's The Code of the Woosters which had me laughing aloud.

annpan-you're welcome!

Hi, Hendrika! You would have had 25 years more reading than I and you are probably our most senior reader.
What books do you prefer to read? I am into light 'cosy' mysteries and amusing novels. Occasionally I will read a more serious recommendation from the forum friends here.
I don't like anything to do with WW2 as I lived through that war in London and so avoid that time and its unhappy memories. So I'm not following the advice to read the book about Guernsey. My grandmother went there with the family she was in service to in the early 1900's and had some amusing stories to tell about her stay. I'll keep those memories to smile at.

I was pleased to figure out whodunit in the mystery book Blood Orange Brewing . I am still reading the Little House books and picked up one from my dh's collection titled Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. The language I find very poetic and a fitting form to tackle the ugly subjects of prejudice and social dysfunction.

Still reading my way through the Little House books - nearly finished this marathon pioneer-related read and will be ready to move on to something completely different when I am done. They are well written though, and I have enjoyed doing this.

Also reading "My Life on the Run" by Bart Yasso, a long-time runner and member of the editorial team of the magazine "Runner's World". It's a fascinating trip through the world and his life as he runs in different races in different countries and experiences life. As a former runner, I am finding it very interesting - just wish I could run now. :-( Siobhan - you might find this interesting.

Thanks, I have requested that from the library. I surely wish I could run again, but it seems unlikely :)

Have been staying at a friend's house and found a great "escapist" novel: Douglas Kennedy's "The Woman in the Fifth". (Fifth refers to the Arondissement, as the novel is set in modern-day Paris.) As the blurb says, "it's a romance for those who dislike romances and a mystery for those who are not wild about mysteries." I am really enjoying the suspense and bizarre plot. I think this author is better known in the UK than in the US?

Having finished listening to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo while traveling, I agree with astrokath's assessment and can't wait for the sequel, but it won't be available in the US until July.

My latest audio book is Show No Fear by Perri O-Shaughnessy, the latest in the Nina Reilly series. This series has continued to be really good and I look forward to and enjoy each new book.