schoolhouse, I was able to [purchase it from the Amazon US site and open it via the Kindle Cloud Reader on my windows 10 computer.

Oh. Kindle Cloud Reader - is that free?

Edit: Funky, are you a Lindsey Davis fan? Have you read all the Falco books? I loved that series and was so sad when it ended. Now his daughter Albia has her own series, at first I wasn't sure about the character but I warmed up to her. I'm buying all the books in hardback, something I was unable to do with the Falco series because I came in late. I borrowed the books from the library and then was able to purchase a couple of the last ones. Still would like to have the Falco series but the early books are out of print. :(

Edit#2: I should have read further, yes it's free.

I have it downloaded. Took some time to figure out where to find the Kindle Cloud reader and my library after I "logged out" of the book tho.

Thanks Funky.

Sorry, I should have given you more instruction but glad you figured it out!

No, I am not a fan but I'm not not a fan either lol! It was cheap enough I thought I'd give it a try. I was mostly curious to see if I was going to have issues with the kindle on my desktop (not that I use it that much for reading-- but I was curious).

I do like mysteries so if I like the short story, I'll check out others. Thanks!

I had a long drive so I got "Still Foolin' 'em" by Billy Crystal as an audio book and I was laughing out loud through all the traffic. Some of the chapters are done as a stand up routine in front of a live audience. Just terrific!

We enjoyed that memoir, too, Annie! Except that his language got a bit blue when he read it live, and he has the occasional political diatribe. But it was so funny!

We listened to Steinbeck's Travels with Charley read by Gary Sinise, it was quite good (although where the Chicago boy got that southern accent from I have no idea). The librarian tells me Sinise's reading Of Mice and Men is also excellent.

These two are on my list. One brand new, one old

The Nix

by Nathan Hill (Goodreads Author)

4.16 · Rating Details · 13,149 Ratings · 2,300 Reviews

It’s 2011, and Samuel Andresen-Anderson—college professor, stalled writer—has a Nix of his own: his mother, Faye. He hasn’t seen her in decades, not since she abandoned the family when he was a boy. Now she’s re-appeared, having committed an absurd crime that electrifies the nightly news, beguiles the internet, and inflames a politically divided country. The media paint Faye as a radical hippie with a sordid past, but as far as Samuel knows, his mother was an ordinary girl who married her high-school sweetheart. Which version of his mother is true? Two facts are certain: she’s facing some serious charges, and she needs Samuel’s help.

The Sheltering Sky

by Paul Bowles

3.92 · Rating Details · 19,074 Ratings · 1,328 Reviews

A story about three American travelers adrift in the cities and deserts of North Africa after World War II, The Sheltering Sky explores the limits of humanity when it touches the unfathomable emptiness and impassive cruelty of the desert.

I think I remember seeing the movie of Sheltering Sky a long time ago.

Ive had the Nix downloaded since it came out-- if I can just get through Moonglow lol. I'll probably read something light and breeze between the two.

Annie, DH said the movie was awful despite great promise. I keep coming across Bowles' name when researching our travel in Morocco, so that is why it made my list.

I just finished The Nix and really enjoyed it. At almost 700 pages, I expected to get bogged down at times but never did. A great read!

Ruby, what's a nix? I have no clue, but the description of the hero having 'a nix of his own' makes it seem as if this is a common or well known term...anyone??

I had never heard the term "nix" in this context. This excerpt from an NPR review of the book describes it well..

"...is a Norwegian house spirit. A ghost that finds a person, comes to them in a moment and follows them for life. It is representative of that one instant when life slips sideways and never recovers. A many-faced ghost, equally comfortable being the damaged friend that young Samuel couldn't save, the girl he loved beyond all reason, the mother who left him, the career that escaped him. It is a perfect organizing motif for a book about the small mistakes that become a life's great tragedies, and secrets held too close and for too long."

Just downloaded The Nix. I think I'll try that next. It sounds very interesting.

I actually had The Nix checked out but didn't get around to reading it before it had to go back. Maybe I"ll re-request it now.

I loved The Nix! Thought the ending was a little bit weak, but lots of fun getting there!

Karen White's Flight Patterns has been a good story, some French history and some info on beekeeping and dinner china. Nice combination, with characters of all ages. Next is the Tana French novel . Irish modern day mystery detective thriller called The Trespasser. I have read her other books and really kept my interest, and appreciated the Irish view.

An aside, having been listening to Billy Crystal's Still Foolin' 'em, I decided to see City Slickers again...DH never saw it. What a terrific movie...humor, adventure, poignancy...the hole 9 yards. Having heard him discuss making the movie, it lent a nice dimension to it as well.

Currently reading The Dry by Jane Harper. I am about halfway through and so far it is a well written page turner. It's a murder mystery set in Australia without gore or torture which I appreciate.

The Dry

d_gw, I've got The Dry on my bedside table and will start it tonight, partly based on your recommendation. I badly need a good book right now.

All weekend I've been trying, hard, to enjoy reading The Girls of Atomic City but don't care for it at all and don't think I"ll finish it. It's a book club pick and I assumed I'd like it because hey history, women doing great things, the greatest generation etc. But I'm finding it extremely irritating and just unpleasant to read. To start with I don't appreciate the authorial voice; she uses arch and cutesy descriptions like calling a mix of cement and asbestos used to throw together housing 'prefabulousness'. Yuck. I also intensely dislike that she made up silly names for the key aspects of what was happening in WWII related to the atomic bomb. Uranium is called Tubealloy (are you kidding me), plutonium is for some bizarre reason referred to as 49 and the atomic bomb is referred to as The Gadget. Gak, so stupid.

Worst of all is that she has attempted to create a fake historical fiction type book in which she puts in characters' thoughts, conversations and activities purportedly as what those real life women were thinking, saying and doing. It's the same thing I dislike intensely on tv with those historical re-enactments; it's just cheesy. The only parts of the book that are remotely interesting are the alternating chapters about the actual science of developing nuclear fission, and I have the severe problem that I'm not a science nerd, don't understand physics and don't have a lot of interest in arcane explanations.

So that book isn't working out too well for me LOL! Did anyone love it? I guess a lot of people did, it was a big hit evidently.

Running, the weird names (tubealloy, The Gadget, site names, and others) were all code names or covers for the real names, including names of some of the real people. Remember, the entire Oak Ridge facility was very secret back in those days. I agree with some of your observations, but she did apparently interview some of the survivors, so I'm assuming their observations were used to describe the 'way it was' in terms of what the women were thinking and doing. Some incidents may have been assumed but there was a discussion at the end about the surviving women. The living conditions were abhorrent, so yes, it was unpleasant to read.

I didn't love the book, but I did enjoy it. It did jump around a bit and I can see that if you aren't into science some of the scientific portions could have been boring. I found them fascinating, especially the early history.

I wrote in last month's "what are you reading" about how much I disliked The Girls of Atomic City. I, too, had high hopes because of the components you stated: women doing something few of us knew about, greatest generation, historical interest, etc. I thought the writing was atrocious, with a need for a talented editor to try to make it readable. Short of learning about the actual existence of Oak Ridge and the origins of Hanford (in my state) and the whole secretive culture around development of the bomb, I thought it was a waste of my time.

I think she would have been much better off using all the interviews and facts she gathered and written an interesting historical novel, where she could have developed the characters in a more interesting way and made it much more readable.

Outside, thanks for the clarification--however I still found the cutesy names annoying because I already KNOW that they were working with uranium to build an atomic bomb; to plow through 300 pages of tubealloy and The Gadget is just annoying to me as a reader And Oly, yesyesyes, the author with her bent for cutesy folksiness would have done far better to have just written it as a novelized version.

Meanwhile I started The Dry and wow, loving it so far! Talk about atmospheric; it's set in a drought-parched area of Australia and after a few chapters I almost felt sunburned and in need of a gallon jug of water to quaff :).

I have heard raves about the Nix on some other forums I participate in. ( I still know nothing about it but just know the name). I just finished Gift From the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh- inspired by my reading the Aviator's Wife. It was a little book but full of lots of philosophical thoughts she put onto paper when she spent some time in Florida all alone. It was interesting and I am glad I read it, but I did have to push myself to complete it. Not sure what I will read next....

I took advantage of knowing my kids had a snow day today to stay up late last night to finish Turn Right at Machu Picchu. I really enjoyed it but being a visual person and wanting to follow along with their journey, I wish the book had better maps! Do built me a nice fire this morning and I'm now about to start A Dark-Adapted Eye by Barbara Vine. My mother loves this British mystery writer aka Ruth Rendell; this novel was her favorite by the author. She recommended it awhile ago but I'm just now getting it-so old that only one copy could be found in my state's collection so I had to borrow through the inter library loan system.

4kids reading your comment about maps made me laugh. I am extremely non-visual and here's a short list of what I always skip in books:
-Maps
-Family trees
-Long descriptions of dreams a character had (I hate listening to my friends tell me about dreams let alone a fictional character)*
-Long Poems/songs
-Long battle scenes

* Exception The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro which I think was a 500-page fever dream

Currently reading The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter. Interesting account of the resurgence, particularly among young people, of non-digital goods and services (board games, independent bookstores, mechanical wristwatches, Moleskine notebooks, etc.).

The Dry sounds intriguing. Thanks for the suggestion!

We had our book discussion group last night on Turn Right at Machu Picchu, and there wasn't as much to discuss as hoped for. Everyone agreed that they were interested in the place, we all liked learning more about the place and the history, but we all felt the narrative could've been more exciting, a lot of the places and such were very confusing and the maps were not the least bit helpful. I was surprised that this guy is an editor as you'd think he'd have done a better editing job.

Next up is the Nightingale by Hannah.

Annie, that is pretty much the way I felt about Machu Picchu - glad to see I'm not the only one who thought the maps did not help at all!

Robo, OMG, I LOVE looking at maps. I've always had a strong sense of direction, but whenever we are traveling, I love looking at maps to get a sense of where we are and what is around us. When I'm reading books, especially books that have a lot of content about places with which I'm unfamiliar, I will almost always look at a map (I'll google if there isn't one in the book). I read a book last year that was set in Chechnya, but there was a lot of traveling around, so I was researching the setting as I was reading the book. Weird that way. And family trees? A MUST if there are a lot of related characters so that I can keep them all straight! How do you manage without one? ;)

I'm nearing the halfway mark of A Dark Adapted Eye. It's a nice change of pace from what I've been reading lately - a mystery set in the early 1900s that was published 30 years ago. First book I've read by this author and so far, I like her style of writing.

I just finished a wonderful book-News of the World by Paulette Jiles. One of the most moving and touching stories I've read in years, maybe ever. Guess lots of folks agree; it's got a 4.6 rating on Amazon and it's a well deserved one :).

I just finished Paul Bowles The Sheltering Sky (see info above). I liked it a lot. Totally unpredictable, very unusual and interesting setting, pretty deep.

Just started the Nix.

Am now reading and enjoying Tomorrow To Be Brave, which was recommended either on this or the previous thread. I have my own TBR pile but books suggested here keep interfering! Anyway, Tomorrow is the autobiography of Susan Travers, who served as a driver in the French Foreign Legion during WW2 and also in Vietnam. She ultimately became the only woman to ever join the Legion. She was a true adventuress, preferring to drive officers and doctors into battle rather than to stay behind the lines as a nurse. Her story is spiced with tales of her affairs, especially of the general with whom she ultimately fell in love. Her descriptions of landscapes and cities and people are also wonderful.

4kids4us - This book will keep any map lover busy - I am constantly going to Google to see where we are in the story!

I am currently reading Be Frank with Me by Julia Claiborne Johnson. I needed something different and this is definitely that.. on one level it is light and delightful and on another, it is a serious study of love and the dynamics of living with an eccentric child with exceptional intelligence.. and who is on the autism spectrum. It was compared to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time and Where'd you go Bernadette. I haven't read either (though I own both!) so I can't speak to that. The closest comparison I can make is to a movie rather than a book: Edward Scissorhands without the fantastical or absurd elements.

I plan to read The Nix next.. though Sara Baume, the author of Spill Simmer Falter Wither, has a new book coming out in April (A Line Made by Walking) that I am eager to read so I may move onto that one next.

ETA - The Sheltering Sky is 1.99 in Amazon's Kindle Store right now.

I listen to audio books I download from the library on Overdrive and generally listen to 4-6 books a month. I hike about five days a week and the books keep me from getting bored. I also listen while getting ready, while driving, during my lunch break at work, while doing yard work or house work, etc. LOVE it! Today I finished These Few Precious Days about John and Jackie Kennedy, which kept me entertained while I painted a bathroom. I found it interesting, but I enjoy history and the presidents. I finished Hillbilly Elegy last week and really enjoyed it. Also this month I listened to The 19th Wife (about Brigham Young's 19th wife), and The Most Dangerous Man in America: Scenes from the Life of Benjamin Franklin. I also recently finished One Thousand White Women and The Secrets of Mary Bowser, both historical fiction. I just now signed up for Billy Crystal's Still Foolin' Em based on the recommendations here. Sounds like a good one.

I am almost finished with Into the Beautiful North. It is a wonderful book, not terribly long and I am quite grateful that it was mentioned here or I would likely never have discovered it.

I have started The Dry, and so far it's ok. I was drawn in pretty quickly, but I have a feeling it's going to get fairly predictable.

I read My (not so) Perfect Life recently, Sophia Kinsella's latest. I was just ready for something light and it delivered.

I started The Nix and will keep going for another chapter or two--does it get better or is it an entire book about sad sack males? If it is, I'm out ;).

Sometimes I come across a book written quite skillfully about people that are so unlikeable or icky that I just don't want to spend any more time with them and I'm afraid the Nix is one of those.

I am in the middle of The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver. I'd never read it when it first came out and someone recommended it to me recently. I adore her writing usually so was surprised it slipped by me. It is wonderful!!! I can't wait to get back to it each day. It's historical fiction (beautifully written) about Diego Rivera and Frido Kahlo along with Trotsky when he was in exile in Mexico. They aren't exactly the main characters but appear in a good part of the book. Politically, it's very timely reading about Lenin and Stalin and Trotsky and the power struggles in Russia and for workers around the globe. Historically, it's very interesting to me because I really knew none of the story, but the main character is fictional and it's mostly his life story. I couldn't recommend it more.

TishTosh, I don't know if it was my recommendation of Into the Beautiful North last month that you're referring to, or if someone else here wrote about it earlier (maybe how I found it, too), but I'm so glad you're enjoying it! I really did, too.

OLy, thanks ...Lacuna sounds like a book I would really enjoy

Oly, it was definitely a delightful book. Dh may read it and I may also have my older (mature) teens read it. I have not actually read any of Kingsolver's fiction but Lacuna sounds right up my alley, so will definitely look into it. Thanks.

I just finished Running the Rift by Naomi Benaron. It's about a Rwandan boy on the path to becoming an Olympic runner in the years leading up to the Rwandan genocide. Speaking of Barbara Kingsolver, a book award she started, the PEN/Bellweather Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, was awarded to Benaron for Running the Rift. I don't recall where I heard of the novel, but It was good. I am about to start Girl at War by Sara Nović. This novel is actually set during the same time frame but is about a young girl in another country that ends up in a civil war, Yugoslavia. Can you tell I like reading about other countries and cultures?

Sable, Girl at War has maps! ;) I actually had planned to read Tomorrow to be Brave when I finish Girl at War. It's on my nightstand.

Sable - I mentioned Tomorrow to be Brave. So glad you like it.

4kids - I hope you like it too. I also enjoy reading about other cultures and am going to look up the books you've mentioned. TY

I finished It Can't Happen Here. It was a bit uncomfortable to read given the current political climate but worth it.

I'm now about 2/3 of the way through The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. I was late to the Stieg Larsson series. Read the first (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) in the Millennium trilogy a few years ago, then read the second one earlier this year. I was really looking forward to this last one and I'm not disappointed.

4kids4us - I hope that you enjoy Tomorrow. I'd like to hear your opinion. Travers's life was, to put it mildly, controversial. And your mention of Girl at War reminds me that sitting and mocking me on a bookshelf is Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, Rebecca West's tour de force ( 1158 pgs.) of her journey through the Balkans prior to WW2. This book is considered a 20th century masterpiece. I want so much to read it, but its length is daunting - and it has no maps!

Here's another one for you: Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, by Georgina Howell. Bell was born a Victorian Englishwoman, expected to be dainty and calm and eventually someone's wife. Instead she first became a master mountain-climber, nearly freezing in the Alps, and then she went on to her main calling - exploring the Levant and Arabia and Mesopotamia by camel caravans that she organized herself, schlepping her frocks and laces and china in trunks from Beirut to Jerusalem to the depths of Arabia and on to Baghdad, entertaining sheikhs and politicians along the way, mystifying and amazing some very tough men. Eventually she became part of the British and French team that divided up the Levant after WW1. It's a very good read!

Just finished The Nightingale by Hannah. Really good book. It was compelling and moving.

Glad you liked it Annie. I did too but a number of people here didn't.

I finished Be Frank with Me.. I enjoyed it but I was ready for it to end and started kind of skimming some paragraphs in the last few chapters. I did enjoy the end though.

I was planning to read the Nix next.. has it picked up for you, Running?

I am hanging in there with The Nix, Funky. I do like the writer's voice and a few pages have actually made me LOL so I'll stick it out I think ;)

I'm still on my James Michener kick. Right now I'm reading Chesapeake and enjoying the history of the east coast. Not sure which of his books to read for my next history reminder. Maybe Alaska or Texas...not sure.

Nix is slow going for me too. I agree the writing is pretty good and the voice is fresh. I did LOL about the whole thing with the prof and the girl who cheated (SPOILER ALERT I am not giving up anything big mentioning that).

I am not really into it, and I need to finish by next Thurs.!

Rosestink, if you considered reading Girl at War, don't bother. It was terrible. I can't believe it was nominated for a few awards, not prestigious ones, but still. It was so poorly written that it sounded like a teenager wrote it. I was not surprised to see the author was only about 25-26 when it was published. If you are at all interested in this area of eastern Europe, I highly recommend The Cellist of Sarajevo.

Thanks, 4kids. I'm interested in most areas. There is always something to learn.

Finished The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. Thoroughly enjoyed it (even though a few times I thought "That doesn't make sense."). Very interesting to read about the legal process in Sweden. I will miss Lisbeth Salander.