Author Topic: Fiction ~ Old ~ New ~ Best Sellers #2 (Read 776390 times)

JoanP · « **Reply #3320 on:** July 01, 2012, 01:33:51 PM »

This is the place to talk about the works of fiction you are reading, whether they are new or old, and share your own opinions and reviews with interested readers.

Every week the new bestseller lists come out brimming with enticing looking books and rave reviews. How to choose?

Discussion Leader: Judy Laird

A quick reminder~

July 1 already! This is the first day of the new discussion of Great Expectations. We hope you are planning to join us at a slow summer pace (about 45-50 pages a week.) We're quite sure we'll come out of it with new apprecation and understanding of what Dickens intended with this novel - more than a boy's coming of age story, though Pip's story is fascinating. You'll be pleasantly surprised. Join us HERE - today!

marjifay · « **Reply #3321 on:** July 01, 2012, 02:38:01 PM »

So far the only book I'm enjoying is Dickens' GREAT EXPECTATIONS.

I usually have about three books going at the same time, but have been disappointed in the other two I started.

PERE GORIOT by Balzac, which I'd planned to read with another group in July has started out very boring! Way too much description. I've dropped it for now. May return later.

SACRED HUNGER by Barry Unsworth, a Booker Prize winner, has also been a very slow start. It has gotten great reviews, tho,' so I'll keep with it. About an English man in the 1700's who has decided to go into the slave trading business, hoping to pay off his indebtedness.

Marj

MaryPage · « **Reply #3322 on:** July 02, 2012, 12:27:07 AM »

I love that pen name thing. I would be Pat Valley Pike.

Steph · « **Reply #3323 on:** July 02, 2012, 08:42:08 AM »

I am reading Molokai.. Interesting, since I knew about the leper colony in Hawaii, but really only through Father Damian. This is much more interesting, although romanticized..Still good book.

salan · « **Reply #3324 on:** July 02, 2012, 11:27:00 AM »

Steph, I am looking for books to recommend for my ftf reading group. August is our planning meeting. All of us are seniors, also (the youngest in their sixties and the oldest is 93). Do you think Molokai would be a good book for this group to discuss?
Sally

bellemere · « **Reply #3325 on:** July 02, 2012, 02:16:14 PM »

I had forgotten mhow many digressions Tolstoy took in Anna Karenina. I just "skimmed through almost 5 chapters devoted to the wonderful day he enjoyed owing hay with the peasants! Very poeticl and lyrical. he should have taken sll these digressions and put them in another book,called "My Thoughts on Almost Everything"
Our "Friends of th Library " group is having their annual meeting and party , and they ask everone to come dressed as their favorite author. I don't usually go to this , but i am curiious to see what people come up with. what would you wear?

rosemarykaye · « **Reply #3326 on:** July 02, 2012, 06:13:56 PM »

I was about to say - one of my dowdiest dresses and a string shopping bag - Mildred in Excellent Women - till I realised that you have to be an author, not a character! That's much more difficult - how do we know what they wore/wear?

Rosemary

Babi · « **Reply #3327 on:** July 02, 2012, 07:38:31 PM »

You could always pick a modern author, ROSEMARY, but it wouldn't be nearly as much fun.

And what if your favorite author is a man?

It wasn't the description that bothered me, MARJ, it was my distress over the way
the daughters treated their father, and my annoyance with him for raising them to be
like that and then letting them get away with it!

JeanneP · « **Reply #3328 on:** July 02, 2012, 08:51:19 PM »

Dressing as a Character from a well known book would be the best I think. Only author I can think of where you could dress like her, was the one who always dressed like a man. My goodness her name just left me.
Watched a movie on her not to long ago.

mabel1015j · « **Reply #3329 on:** July 02, 2012, 09:48:33 PM »

George Sands?

I'd dress as Carolyn Keene, pseudonym of Mildred Wirt and Harriet Adams, authors of Nancy Drew and The Dana Girls. Wirtwas born in 1902, Adams in the 1890s, so i could go in 1930s clothes and hat and gloves, wouldn't that be fun!?! No one would ever guess.

Jean

JoanK · « **Reply #3330 on:** July 03, 2012, 03:00:34 PM »

I'm the nut who's read "Anna Karinina" five times. And the scene with the peasants in the field is my favorite.

my sister thought I was nuts til we read "War and Peace" here in Seniorlearn. Time to do "Anna", I guess.

Good thing i'm not going to your party, with my Tolstoy beard.

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://faberfinds.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/19w_tolstoy_narrowweb__300x5040.jpg&imgrefurl=http://faberfinds.wordpress.com/2010/11/22/a-n-wilson-on-tolstoy-ft/&h=504&w=300&sz=18&tbnid=LvVNj9NzPuiP4M:&tbnh=88&tbnw=52&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dtolstoy%2Bpictures%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=tolstoy+pictures&usg=__g_uEOXyKz-naoPaTSddpDeNmfdM=&docid=fVu7xtKxhs6T4M&hl=en&sa=X&ei=bUHzT_XfD6Ge2gX-we3mAw&sqi=2&ved=0CGYQ9QEwDA&dur=2064

bellemere · « **Reply #3331 on:** July 03, 2012, 03:04:34 PM »

The lady author in the pantsuit was George Sand. If you went to the party as her, you could be escorted by a thin Polish man with a bad cough a (Chopin)
Most interesting pen name I have collected so far is from my New York Puerto Rican friend: "NoPet Harlem
I would love to dress as Scarlett in the green velvet window curtains, complete with rings and poles, like Carol Burnett.
Anna is suffering from jealousy, Vronsky has money troubles, Levin needs to get married and stop preaching agrarian reform. I may take a short break with something by the dear departed Nora Ephron. Whoelse is a good humor writer?

Babi · « **Reply #3332 on:** July 04, 2012, 08:27:36 AM »

If you like tongue-in-cheek humor, BELLE, I can recommend Terry Pratchett. Wasn't that Carol Burnett spoof of Scarlett O'Hara hilarious? That lady was a comic
genius.

Steph · « **Reply #3333 on:** July 05, 2012, 01:03:13 PM »

Molokai.. would be a good book for reading groups. I Know that a lot of people have heard of it, it is in trade size paperback and the book itself is accessible. He did a lot of research and the story on Leprosy(Hansons disease) is compelling and quite true.They have an invented major character and she is dramatic, but it is fun in a way.. I learned a lot about leprosy, the island and the hawaiian people..

rosemarykaye · « **Reply #3334 on:** July 07, 2012, 02:34:49 AM »

Bellemere - my favourite humorous writers are David Sedaris, Bill Bryson and Alan Bennett. I think Sedaris is little short of a genius. My mother, however, can't bear him. My MIL worships Terry Pratchett, but neither I nor my daughters 'get' him. Horses for courses, as they say!

I'm just back from a week in Aberdeen. My internet is going so slowly that I think I will have to abandon it for today - it drives me nuts when it does this, I don't know why it happens but it is so slow that I can't load emails, do anything on Twitter, or even type properly because the words appear several seconds after I've typed them. Does anyone else have this problem? So much for superfast Broadband.

We have a deluge today and flood warnings everywhere. And husband is determined to go to a golf day in Fife

Frybabe · « **Reply #3335 on:** July 07, 2012, 07:17:14 AM »

Rosemarykaye, my Internet connection does the same thing occasionally. Sometimes, I think it is because there are too many users on, but I also sometimes notice a slow down when my programs automatically update.

RE the flooding in your neck of the woods, I ran across a link to a real-time flood alert map just put up for UK yesterday. I'll have to see if I can find it and post it.

AHA, found it: http://www.shoothill.com/flood/

Steph · « **Reply #3336 on:** July 07, 2012, 08:56:29 AM »

Pratchet is a passion of mine. He has the ability to make me laugh helplessly and I do so love the witches. My kind of ladies.

Babi · « **Reply #3337 on:** July 07, 2012, 09:07:48 AM »

Pratchett is very much tongue-in-cheek, ROSEMARY. Some of his things are a delight, others not so much. The 'slow as molasses' problem occurs on my computer from time to time. Some sites are worse than others, so the problem probably doesn't lie in the computer. Maybe the sites just get overloaded at times and can't handle all the traffic.
Oh, I see FRYBABE agrrees with that.
(I will never understand men and golf!)

JeanneP · « **Reply #3338 on:** July 07, 2012, 04:02:45 PM »

Some of my family living up in Lancashire, UK. got bad flooding few weeks ago. Part of Roof caved in in childrens bedroom upstairs and still the Builder can't get into fixing it because still more rain and wind storms.
Really glad I decided not to go over in May. Had 5 days summer only so far.

salan · « **Reply #3339 on:** July 07, 2012, 05:54:54 PM »

Steph, What Pratchett book would you recommend that I start with. I've never read any Pratchett books, but you've convinced me to give it a try.
Sally

Steph · « **Reply #3340 on:** July 08, 2012, 09:16:26 AM »

Sally. go for any of the witches stories or there are several where Death is the main character. Pratchett is of course, heavily into satire.. The first book in his long series is The Colour of Magic.. Mort is a good one on Death ( who is a really really funny character) and the Wyrd Sisters is ( I think) the first one on the witches( who are not quite what you expect)

bellemere · « **Reply #3341 on:** July 10, 2012, 08:50:43 PM »

Last thursday my son and his wife and toddler left ffor a long weekend on Cape Cod, with her due date for a second child comfortably a month ahead. On their first ight there she went into labor, and checked into the local hospital. for some reason my son had programmmed the driving directions into his GPS. and one of my daughters had stayed over at their cottage to amuse toddler in the morning and let them sleep late for a change.
First hospital nurse to examine her said, "You're cookin', honey" and the baby was born barely two hours later.
Of course we drove down to see them and rejoice at the healthy little one. AS we expected, this is a Down syndrome baby, with their advance knowledge and by their chioce - to raise him along with his brother and give him the best ilife they can. I am so proud of them. and the baby isw so cute, tiny features, blonde fluffy hair, sweet little mouth. Mother doing well following a fast "cold turkey " delivery. Baby nursing energetically, and they returned home in a car with two ar seats in the back, after departing with one. His name is Patrick , with Dad's nam John and grandpa's name Cornelius as middle names. Pretty long handle, huh, for such a teeny.
and a voice from heaven said,"This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased." Book of Matthew, Cha[ter 3, Verse 17 if I remember correctly.

JeanneP · « **Reply #3342 on:** July 10, 2012, 09:21:23 PM »

Belmere.

Congratulations on the new baby. Arrived in 2 hours. He was ready to start life. It will be a good happy one. They made a choice and are ready. He will bring much pleasure to the family. Has a big brother to help him if needed. Many changes have been made allowing children and older to live good lives with Down Syndrome. I have known how sweet they are.

rosemarykaye · « **Reply #3343 on:** July 11, 2012, 03:42:35 AM »

Bellemere - many congratulations on the new grandson, what wonderful names.

I believe Downs children are very special. I wonder if you have seen this site, which is one of the blogs of an English poet and father of a Downs son:

http://www.andrewpoetry.org/

Have a great time with your family,

Rosemary

Steph · « **Reply #3344 on:** July 11, 2012, 08:49:10 AM »

My niece has worked with Downs syndrome for years and is so enthusiastic about them. I understand that nursing energetically is a really good sign.

bellemere · « **Reply #3345 on:** July 11, 2012, 04:28:13 PM »

thank you all for the congratulations. the little family is back home in Great Barrington, which was voted numger 1 town to live in by a Smithsonian magazine articel recenlty. Loads of community services, art, theater, music and a very active ARC (Associaion for Retarded children) soon to change their name to something less "labeling"
Meanwhile I took a look at David Sedariis and he is indeed hilarious. A nice break fro Anna, where things are not going well .

JeanneP · « **Reply #3346 on:** July 11, 2012, 06:32:34 PM »

Gosh. I thought that the word "Retarded" was not suppose to be used anyplace now. Way back where it was said in one of the shows on TV.

Steph · « **Reply #3347 on:** July 12, 2012, 08:37:47 AM »

Thats interesting. I did not think that retarded was used any more either..

bellemere · « **Reply #3348 on:** July 12, 2012, 12:02:11 PM »

You know, I think you are right regarding the use of the word "retarded" Back when I was working for the state, we had a "Department of Mental Retardation" which is now something else - Department of Developmental Resouresr something like that. Maybe the organization is using a different title.
some of us remember the "residential schools" that the states provided for Down syndrome people ane dother disabilities. When massacusetts closed all those "schools" yhears age, there was a hue and cry about community residences . "not in my back yoard' Or NIMb;y. Now we have homelike residences scattered through all kinds of neighborhoods, but the sponsoing organizations still have to be very discreet about neighnorhodd objections.
rosemarykaye, lovely site for poetry, thanks.

Steph · « **Reply #3349 on:** July 13, 2012, 08:37:32 AM »

Oh my yes. Everyone agrees that residences are the way to go, but noone wants them close. Since many do not have drivers licenses, the very best places for group homes are close to public transportation and grocery shops, etc.

Octavia · « **Reply #3350 on:** July 14, 2012, 01:19:52 AM »

Bellemere, I'll add my congratulations.
I immediately thought of at least 2 Downs Syndrome children(now grown up, I imagine) that acted in mainstream TV and movies here. They were brought up to live as normally as possible.

Steph · « **Reply #3351 on:** July 14, 2012, 08:33:33 AM »

The thng to remember with Downs is that they vary enormously in what they can do and what is beyond them. They are truly good at repetitive work.. Some have heart problems as well and some dental problems.. I have known some that exist in the adult world and live in their own apartments, etc and others who could never function in any thing but a sheltered workshop.

bellemere · « **Reply #3352 on:** July 15, 2012, 07:56:39 PM »

I am a little more than halfway through Anna Karenina and something has just struck me about the structure of the novel. It is ijn set scenes and as I pick it up each day at a new scene, it is like watching another episode of Masterpiece Theater or even a television soap opera. Of course, no soap opera ever achieved the artistry of Tolstoy in describing the emotions of men and women. And the same philospphical question comes through , both in the story of Anna and Vronsky and the story of Levin and Kitty: does happines really consist of the fulfillment of our desires? Or does happiness lie in ridding ourselves of all desires? (Like Buddhists tell us) So much to think about in this book.

Steph · « **Reply #3353 on:** July 16, 2012, 08:26:16 AM »

Does anyone remember Foxfire..The books and the man who did all this. I tried to visit his museum in Rabun Gap,Ga yesterday, but it is closed on Sunday. I would love to say I will go back, the road going to the museum is terrifying.. Narrow, paving deteriorated to gravel, winding, no guard rails. No idea why, but wont try it twice. I was truly scared.

Frybabe · « **Reply #3354 on:** July 16, 2012, 08:28:23 AM »

I used to have at the first six or seven of his volumes. My X got them; I kept the Euell Gibbons books.

Babi · « **Reply #3355 on:** July 16, 2012, 08:52:17 AM »

That's interesting, BELLE. Back when I read the book, I wasn't mature
enough to see much more that the story itself. There are advantages
to growing older ..and wiser.

mabel1015j · « **Reply #3356 on:** July 16, 2012, 02:04:11 PM »

I had overdone mysteries, so as i walked by the "F" shelf of the library i stopped to take a look at Thomas Fleming's fiction section. He's an historian who writes great historical fiction, as well as non- fiction. I like him for several reasons: he often writes about NJ/NY history; he writes very strong woman characters, and he knows women's history; i know his historical facts are accurate; and he uses those vocabulary words we had in high school or college vocabulary tests. He uses words that i recognize but generally have not often seen in novels, stretching my vocabulary.

I think the first fiction book i read of his was "Officer's Wives" which is a contemporary book. I laughed out loud at his accurate depiction of an arrogant, dictatorial General. I was working for the Dept of Defense at the time and recognized the caricature. This book is "Wages of Fame", the second in a series of the Stapleton family. It's set in the first half of the 19th century and he's including a lot of history and historical figures.

He also writes "history" stories for juveniles and teens.

marjifay · « **Reply #3357 on:** July 16, 2012, 03:59:41 PM »

Interesting, Jean, about Thomas Fleming. I've not read anything by him, so I looked him up at Amazon. Lots of interesting books. Prolific writer. I think I'll read his Washington's Secret War; the Hidden History of Valley Forge. Have been reading Ron Chernow's interesting book on Washington. Thanks.

Marj

Frybabe · « **Reply #3358 on:** July 17, 2012, 07:25:01 AM »

Marj, I really enjoyed reading Hoving's book about hunting and finding the Bury St. Edmund's Cross. I think it was called King of the Confessors or something close to it.

Steph · « **Reply #3359 on:** July 17, 2012, 07:50:44 AM »

I like Fleming and have read several of his books. Nice flow to his stories. Did not really think of how much history was there.

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Author Topic: Fiction ~ Old ~ New ~ Best Sellers #2 (Read 776390 times)