The Road to Little Dribbling, so far much like previous books, but much less of Bryson's personal life and thoughts are present. It's more about the places and that can get a hair dull.

I'm learning a couple of things while doing the reading challenge. One is how many books I'm selecting from teen/young adult category and how many are nonfiction or bio that I'm still selecting and fitting into the categories.

How in the world did I not know there's a new Bryson book out? I just added it to my Kindle, and I think I'll enjoy reading about the places he visits. That's actually what I loved most about Notes From A Small Island. Glad you mentioned this, Bumblebeez!

Update-put down The Swans of Fifth Avenue pretty quickly. It's my own quirk but as I approach the end of an academic year with NO remaining psychic gas in my motivation/energy/creativity tank....reading about a bunch of fabulously wealthy, utterly indulged and spoiled SAH trophy wives whose tragedy is that a fey little writer reveals all their nasty secrets in a tell all magazine article, um, no thanks not feelin' it ;). Maybe after I retire I'll try this one again LOL.

On the nonfiction front, I just finished The Making of Home by Judith Flanders. It is a historical look at how items came to be associated with the concept of home. The book was heavy and was quite interesting.

Recently finished The Time in Between by Maria Duenas and recommended by Olychick. Thank you Oly, good read.

At Waters Edge by Sara Gruen and recommended byOutsidePlaying. Thank you Outside, I really enjoyed this book.

I also enjoyed The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton, The Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende ( liked this one for the history of an area I have never read about before).

I finally read The Glass Castle by Jennette Walls. It was a book I wasn't sure I would like. As one that comes from a dodgy upbringing I thought it might be depressing but it was not. Ms Wells portrayed it all with a bit of humor that was refreshing...so much so that I also read another of her books, Half Broken Horses, an enjoyable fast read.

A surprisingly good book was The Mists of Avalon by Marion Bradley. This is an adventurous book of Camelots court through the eyes of a women who was of the "old" religion when the newer Christian religion was making its way in. Set in near fantasy it's back story is about how the new religion changes women's lives into a lesser being and how from the get go it influenced politics. Oh yes, I did identify with the goddesses of the old religion lol.

However, glad I did not know of the real life accusations of Marion and her convicted husband before reading this book. I would not have picked it up. She was not convicted but still...

Liane Moriarty fans: her new one is on pre-sale. Comes out in July.

I finished Honolulu last night and I enjoyed it tremendously. Brennert is a fabulous story teller as well as an accomplished historic researcher.

I have a criminal law and literature seminar coming up, and I am doing the reading now. I just read the Oxbow Incident– which was an unsettling account of a mob of cowboys pursuing rustlers. The book has stayed with me and given me food for thought. Next up, I need to reread Defending Jacob.

Holly K – I also enjoyed Honolulu.

I'm a little more that 1/2 way through The Road to Little Dribbling. It is a bit dull. Definitely not one of Bryson's best. A friend said she returned this book to the library unfinished - something she rarely does.

Also about 1/2 way through (I set it aside to read Little Dibbling because that has a long line of people waiting for it at the library) Doris Lessing's autobiography Under My Skin. Quite interesting and I'm looking forward to getting back to it.

Justerrilynn, glad you enjoyed Waters Edge. A bit quirky, but I thought it was fun. I also greatly enjoyed The Time in Between. Couldn't recall who had recommended it here so glad you mentioned it. Thanks Oly!

I'm the middle of The Girl in the Spiders Web.

Hey Outside! I just started The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. Spent a good portion of my morning reading instead of tackling my unfinished painting that is haunting and taunting my mind. Harold Fry is so far really getting me to thinking and as a result my painting is screaming louder and louder. Anyway, I think this is a good book for me to read right now.

Everyone here who has read Harold Fry has loved it I think. Yes, it is timely for you! The painting can wait. In fact, the book might bring you a fresh perspective. I can't say why but maybe.

For anyone who enjoyed Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, you might also want to check out Helen Simonson's new book, The Summer Before the War. It's definitely on my must-read-soon list.

http://www.amazon.com/Summer-Before-War-Novel/dp/0812993101/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1460126381&sr=8-3&keywords=pettigrew

I'm surprised that some folks don't like The Road to Little Dribbling. I've read all of Bryson's book - some repeatedly - and I think this one is very much in the same vein as Notes From a Small Island. Still contains that ascerbic Bryson wit!

I just finished the Unlikley Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and highly recommend. Be prepared for a bit of boo hooing.

Now I feel like reading something very different. Don't like murder or suspense. Maybe something supernatural or with Aliens. Any ideas?

Just a friendly reminder to all who loved Harold Fry- trust me- The Lovesong of Miss Queenie Hennessy is waiting for you.

I am almost done with THe Children's Blizzard. Very well written and researched (but superficial moi tends to skim over the scientific) with a very interesting (and true) story.

Jen - I like Bryson's work. I am now about seventy pages from the end of Little Dribbling and the book has gotten better (which the friend I mentioned said it did but she was too annoyed by the book at that point to continue). There was something about pages 50 through 170 (approximately. lol) that neither of us liked. For me part of it was the Bryson Line. I liked the idea he presented of doing a beeline (or as close as possible) through the middle of the country. Instead we're wandering all over the southern coast to a series of charming or depressing little towns. Just didn't feel right.

Interesting to see glowing reports here about Harold Fry. Another friend (who I would have thought would like it) thought it was awful. So many different tastes in reading material. Not a bad thing.

I'm about 20 pages from the end of Dead Wake, the story of the bombing/sinking of the Lusitania. I had to take a break after getting emotional reading about the people of an Irish town having a funeral procession for the hundreds of unidentified bodies being buried in their town. What an unfathomable tragedy.

Justerrilynn, maybe try The Ocean at the End of the Lane. It's one of my favorites with just a bit of supernatural and beautifully written.

Terrilynn, if you read The Ocean at the End of the Lane please come back and tell us what you thought. I'm not sure that I can get into a fairy tale type story but it got great reviews.

ETA: I am reading The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. I was searching on Amazon for The Bottoms but this caught my eye and bought it instead. For one thing it was half the price and it just sounded quirky enough to be a fun read. So far not liking it much but enough to continue reading it.

I didn't care for Harold Fry and quit reading after a couple of chapters. Just didn't grab me, didn't particularly care for the depiction of the characters and the plot seemed thin.

Holly-Kay, I loved The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and it's the first in a series of novels about Flavia the child detective. I find them charming because the author came up with such a quirky character in such an unexpected setting and did such a great job fleshing out that world.

I'm just finishing up this month's book club selection which turned out to be unexpectedly delightful. Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time is in the Bryson tradition, a nonfiction account by a travel writer who wasn't any kind of adventurer but who decided to retrace the path of a turn of the century explorer who 'discovered' Machu Picchu in 1911. I thought it was the best kind of travel writing, a very funny blend of adventure, history and human observation that pulled me right in.

Thanks Oly! I need to decide from my little list...Nomad by Mattew Mathen (author of wildly popular Cyber Storm). Or, The Girl With all the Gifts by M R Carey. Or, Ocean at the End of the Lane.

I think I need to start going to the library like you Holly. My monthly kindle bill is close to a car payment.

Edited: The Girl with the Gifts is coming off. After reading a few reviews that mentioned zombies, this is not for me at all. I"ll start with Ocean and move on to Nomad.

Sheila, I've read the Children's Blizzard a couple of times. My Fargo mom recalls relatives talking about it. After reading it, I reread Laura Ingalls Wilder's The Long Winter again, with a very different appreciation.

DS was in New York to see Hamilton and also took in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, amazing staging, so now I've just started that. But my other DS just stated on MacBeth for school, and I've always wanted to read it (and I'm trying a new method for helping him with coursework) so that is also on the stack. hmm, maybe I'll do cliff notes for MacBeth)

Just finished Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean. A really good book...nonfiction...interesting look into the world of orchid lovers and Florida...which I especially enjoyed having been to a number of the places mentioned in the book...Flagler mansion, Loxahatchee, Orchid Jungle...

One category of book I need to fill for the reading challenge is a love triangle. I never read romance novels...I was thinking of the Bridges of Madison County, but I'm not sure. I see some classify Hunger Games as a love triangle. I suppose I could put it in that category as I originally selected it for a trilogy, but I'm not that interested in reading the next 2. I'm thinking of going with Willa Cather's pioneer trilogy instead.

Any suggestions for a good book about a love triangle?

Annie, I don't read "romance" either. For that category, I read Euphoria by Lily King. It's more historical fiction but there is a love triangle at the root of the story. It's about anthropologists back in the 1920s if I remember correctly and based on real people tho I'm blanking on who at the moment. Read some plot summaries and see if perhaps it interests you. I would not at all categorize it as a romance novel.

edited to add: NY Times Review of Euphoria

Years ago, I read Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri and enjoyed it very much, so I've meant to read some of her other things, but finally just got around to reading The Namesake. It's a wonderful book; I feel like I've learned a great deal about the (at least one family's) experience of leaving all you know and love to move to the U.S. and then the experience of being a generation born here of immigrant parents. Highly recommend it if you've never read it.

Oly, have you read Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies? She won the Pulitzer for that. I had never read any of her books, but caught a bit of The Namesake (movie) several years ago tho at the time, did not realize it was based on a book. I didn't even remember the movie until I read Interpreter of Maladies last year, loved it and decided to see what else she had written. Since I hadn't seen the whole movie, I decided to read The Namesake a few months after Interpreter of Maladies, which is actually a collection of short stories. I have Unaccustomed Earth on TBR list for this year.

4kids, yes, Interpreter of Maladies was my book club pick this month and my copy from the library included The Namesake in the same cover. After our book club discussion of Interpreter, I decided to read The Namesake before returning the book to the library. I'm so glad I did; I'm enjoying it even more than Interpreter! She's an amazing writer. I can't remember much about Unaccustomed Earth except how much I loved it!

Y I have read interpreter of maladies...but I struggle with short stories that are a "day in the life" kind as opposed to those with a bang or a twist...used to love saki or I have a book of short stories called "touch of nutmeg" in which all the stories have a twist, like reading a Twilight Zone. But otherwise, not so much.

I just started Art of Hearing Heartbeats this afternoon and I'm consuming it. It's sooo good! Thanks sheilaaus!

ETA: Finished Art of Hearing Heartbeats. What a wonderful and delicious love story. So enjoyed it.

Justerrilynn, I was able to put a hold on The Ocean at the End of the Lane. It was available in ebook format which is how I like to read my books. It was $10.99 on Amazon for the Kindle so it was a nice savings.

Not sure if anyone's reading challenge involves a true crime book, but I'm about 200 pages into And the Sea Will Tell and it is a compelling read. I know someone recommended it to me, not sure if that was on a past reading thread or elsewhere that I heard about it.

Beagles, I read that years ago, and agree--very compelling. Terribly sad, of course. I saw the movie, too.

I didn't read any reviews and I knew nothing about it before I started reading so I don't know who was killed or who the suspected killer was (yet).

I just read True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa by Michael Finkel, disgraced New York Times writer, and it was excellent. It is the story of Christian Longo, who allegedly murdered his wife and three children. The author forms a friendship with accused murderer Longo; and the book examines his relationship with Longo, Longo's account of what happened, the trial, and the author's own story.

I'm 40 books done on the 52 book reading challenge for 2015 (I started late) and I've really enjoyed the whole process...the incentive it's given me to read more, the variety of books I've been reading, the fun of exploring and slotting which books in which categories. But I've been looking at the list for 2016, and it's nowhere near as interesting or exciting. It's also quite a bit shorter. So I think, for fun, I'll be making my own 2016 reading challenge, using the existing one as a base.

So glad you liked The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, Annie. I too just took the leap of faith and went along for the ride so to speak.

I did finish the Children's Blizzard, which I did think was very worthwhile.

I am about to start Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow - had to have the library borrow from another state (!). This was recommended on Reader's Paradise. It is translated from Danish so we will see. It has mostly great reviews on goodreads so I will give it a try. It's really interesting to me that many of the peeps on Reader's Paradise seem to be from the U. K. and their books are quite different from ours.

I just got notice that the Rent Collector is in at the library so if Miss Smilla does not captivate me, I know that one will.

Finished Miss Smilla's feeling for Snow, which at first was very intriguing but I forced myself as a matter of principle to complete it. Would not recommend it, but I hear it was a movie so I might be interested to watch that. It was a real mystery with tons of weird knowledge and foreign language thrown in .

I just started The Rent Collector, and it seems like a very sweet (but sad so far) book.

(I realize it's been over 2 weeks with no one else commenting)

For my reading challenge I'm reading the Willa Cather Pioneer trilogy. I read Oh Pioneers! which was good and am now reading Song of the Lark. Have My Antonia to do yet. Overall, I've got only 10 more books to finish the challenge....42 done. In the meantime, I joined the library book club and read Mary Coin for the first session which was good...fictional account of the lives of the woman in the famous depression era photo and the photographer.

For anyone who may be confused, this seems to be the reissue of the original novel which was titled Smilla's Sense of Snow (not Miss Smilla's feeling for Snow). I LOVED this book, not a light or cheerful read but incredibly atmospheric and the heroine was rather a forerunner of Lisbeth Salander.

I just read The Girl on the Train as a book club selection, really liked it more than I thought I would. It probably helped that I had a day off from work and spent most of the day just inhaling the book :). The plot was twisty enough that I am glad I had time to stay absorbed in reading on and on and on.

While I'm here, one of the nonfiction books I recently enjoyed tremendously just won the Pulitzer! Barbarian Days is nominally about surfing but it is so beautifully written, and the arc of the author's life from childhood through young manhood to becoming a husband, father and noted New Yorker writer was quite fascinating.

Sheila, The Rent Collector was fabulous. It was so well written and I fell in love with the characters and the storyline.

I see some of the Kate Mortin books recommended. My blind mother just got me started on those. The state library sent her The House at Riverton on tape as part of their services to the blind and she recommended it to me. I just downloaded the audio version of The Forgotton Garden onto Mom's kindle and plan on getting the print version for me tonight.

I just finished Fates and Furies that some here recommended and I absolutely loved it. The story was so good and the author's use of imagery and simile was just stunning. I liked the unusual sentence structure she used sometimes, too. I see a few people didn't care for it, but I'm so glad I read it. What a story!

I loved Smilla's Sense of Snow, didn't like the movie very much. Just bought Don DeLillo's new one, Zero K.

I guess that's what makes the world go round. I started out really liking Smilla's Sense of Snow (or feeling) and then it just kind of dragged on. People seem to have either loved it or hated it. I do think when I take breaks from reading a book like that, that it negatively affects my ability to enjoy.:) so to speak.

Anyone read any of the books in The Austen Project?

I just downloaded Curtis Sittenfeld's Eligible and am looking forward to reading it when I finish my current book.

Beagles, did you finish And the Sea Will Tell? Is that the one by Vincent Bugliosi? I've read it twice, and I've been thinking about reading it again.
Donna

Yes, msmeow

I really loved the first half of the book, it was super compelling esp. b/c I knew nothing about the story and didn't even know who had been murdered.

However, the second half I thought was eh. Bugliosi spent a whole lot of time talking about how great of a lawyer he was and I thought the trial action dragged. A lot. I did finish it, but the last 400 or so pages could probably have been cut down to 100 pages and the book would have significantly improved!