SeniorLearn BookBytes Newsletter: Mid May 2009

Night Villa by Carol Goodman
Ms Goodman checked in the other day and will be there when we start June 1st. Take time off and come dig with us. Don't miss this chance to be in on a really interesting story. Take Your Book Group to Guernsey this fall!
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If you participated in the recent Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society discussion, you are eligible for an all expense paid trip to Guernsey along with five other SeniorLearners! What fun! You can enter once a day. Please do! Register here -
Win a Bookclub trip for SIX to Guernsey this fall.
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PBS Masterpiece Mystery! Detective Wallender series
Join us this month in a discussion of the PBS adaptation of Henrick Mankell's Wallander novels. Episode 2 begins on Sunday, May 17. See local listings. Masterpiece has made available a limited number of the novels as long as supplies last - for the price of postage.
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The votes are in! By just one vote, Dickens' Mystery of Edwin Drood and Matthew Pearl's The Last Dickens nosed out Geraldine Brooks' People of the Book. Do come into the Book Club Online Suggestion Box for more information regarding the scheduling of these discussions. We'd love to hear from you. Your input is important.
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Just to add to the fiction list- anything by Sigrid Nunez my favorites, The Last of Her Kind and For Rouenna (not sure if I have that spelling correct) after reading these I got as many Nunez works as possible from library and found all satisfying and enjoyed reading an author grow. ~ Pei Li

I just ordered two of the Nunez books. Your recommendations convinced me that I will like her. ~ serenesheila
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Did I read about Monte Walsh, by Jack Shaefer, here? This book has kept me reading for the last three days. The old west as it really was, or as it seems logically to have been. Monte's tale starts when he is 14, leaving home and an abusive step-father for the life of a cowboy during the peak of the cattle drive era. Drifting from job to job he quickly finds his place due to his extraordinary talent with horses. Year by year vignettes tell his life and the lives of the men who fought Nature and villainy for $40/mo and keep. Romantic, yes, but gritty. The heat of the summer sun, the sting of the winter blizzard, the smell of horses' and men's sweat are almost palpable. Monte is one of those characters which will stick long after most of the rest. ~ mrssherlock/Jackie
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I'm starting to read The Alienist by Caleb Carr and The Beans of Egypt, Maine. The Alienist looks like it's a murder mystery set in NYC in 1896 when Theodore Roosevelt first became the police commissioner. The Beans of Egypt, Maine is an old book about grinding poverty. It's my f2f book group's choice for May. Both should be interesting. Aberlaine/Nancy Aberlaine,, I have read and loved both books. Carolyn Chute of the Beans books wrote another book last year, but it is not nearly as good as the Beans. ~ Steph
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I just finished "Dead Girls Don't Wear Diamonds" by Nancy Martin. Easy, fun reading and since I live in South Jersey and know the PHila area, it adds to the fun...............jean/mabel1015 I am now reading "The Princeton Murders" by Ann Waldron, I highly recommend it and the author. I see by the front of the book that she had written others with Princeton in the title. I will certainly check them out at Amazon. ~ GoldenStatePoppy
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Harris makes it easy for us. All the Harper Connelly stories have the word "Grave" in the title. There have been four so far. http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/h/charlaine-harris/ ~ jackie/mrssherlock

I read the first three of the Charlaine Harris series with Harper Connelly, and I look forward to the fourth. Because there were no more in that series, I checked out A Fool and His Honey, one of the Autora Teagarden books by Harris. That was not what I expected, much more serious than I thought it would be. Our library only has one more in that series, so I will read that to see if I want to order any of the others. ~ nlhome
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I have read many of Elizabeth George's books and just finished Careless in Red. I think I am one of the few of her fans who liked her last book, although it was a break from her usual subject. I did find it very heavy reading and quite depressing. I am now reading Alexander McCall Smith's Friends, Lovers, Chocolate. His books are a nice break from longer, more intense mystery. I enjoyed his #1 Ladies Detective Agency Series. ~ Rainbow
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pat westerdale, Books@SeniorLearn.org