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Book a Week in 2011 - week three


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I've finished The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. I should have known better than to read a story about an old dog. Sniff....sniff...

 

I also finished Seeing Voices: A Journey into Deaf Culture by Oliver Sacks. This was really fascinating!

 

I also read Unwind by Neal Shusterman. It was good, but I'm not going to get it out of my mind for a long time.

 

Now I'm reading Parenting with Love and Logic by Cline and Fay.

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I'm still moving slowly through Caribbean. Isn't that a pleasant image?

In order to complete something for the week I picked up an old favorite, Anton Checkov Selected Stories. I read several that drew me right in & before you know it they are over. I love what he packs into a short story. You can read many here

but this 1.5 page beauty is missing & has a terrible color scheme over here.

Edited by slug hollow
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I am reading the Harry Potter books. I've been waiting for my boy to want to read them. I've read 3 this week. Don't ask about my laundry.

Absolutely LOVE these. Just love HP. :D

I can totally relate to not doing laundry ... ;)

 

I love The Scarlet Pimpernel. DS15 is reading it right now, and we watched the movie together.

I absolutely love these books. I've read a few by her. Did you see the BBC/A&E version of the movie. Absolutely the best! It comes in a lovely boxed set - the Romance Collection. Costco might have it for cheaper, if anyone is interested. We love this collection. They're all done so well.

51oDyj6vTCL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

 

I also just finished The Secret Life of Bees which I LOVED such an interesting story.

:iagree:

 

Yesterday, I bought and read A Lucky Child.

Added this to my wish list. :)

 

I'm still moving slowly through Caribbean. Isn't that a pleasant image?

I liked this a lot. Obviously. Since I live here ... ;)

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A friend of mine recommended The Dresden Files series and handed me a bag full of them last week. I spent a day in the ER and read all day and have been plowing through them at night. I plan to read more of them this week.

 

The Dresden Files, Book 1, Storm Front

 

The Dresden Files, Book 2, Fool Moon

 

The Dresden Files Book 3, Grave Peril

 

The Dresden Files, Book 4, Summer Knight

 

I am hooked on these. Harry Dresden is one of my new very favorite characters of all time. Mixing the Nevernever, paranormal, present day, action, adventure and humor I am plowing through these with abandon. Harry is one of a kind with his haunted past, his sense of humor and his oddball bunch of friends. These include Mister, his Garfield-sized cat, Bob, his research helper spirit who lives in a human skull, Murphy the adorable (but don't tell her) hard-bitten Special Investigations officer, and Susan, sexy, loyal companion and syndicated writer for the Arcane. Vampires, werewolves, ghosts, gangs, and writing reminiscent of my favorite sleuth's creator, Robert Parker make these a hit with me.

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Well, last week I read the Trylle trilogy by Amanda Hocking as someone here had suggested. This isn't a genre I normally read, but I thoroughly enjoyed it!! I also read her book Hollowland, which I enjoyed until I got to the end. Terrible ending in my opinion. So, this week I really am going to finish The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold. I have had it on my to read list for three week now, but keep getting caught up in other books. I am also reading The Lightening Thief to the kids. We should finish this week and then have a movie night this weekend to see how it compares:)

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I read Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood last year. I really enjoyed them - so much so that as soon as I finished Oryx and Crake I couldn't wait to go out and buy the sequel that I downloaded it on my Kindle app and began reading right away.

 

They were my favourite Margaret Atwood books since The Handmaid's Tale.

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Thanks ladies. I'm finding lots of things to add to my reading list. My library has Agnes Grey and A Lucky Child on the shelf, so I may try to pick those up tomorrow. I'm 9th on the hold list for Left Neglected. I loved Still Alice so I put a hold on it without even knowing what it is about. Then found the Amazon write-up--looks good! That will probably come my way in March (only 1 copy).

 

And I hope to read the Anne books with my dds if we can ever get caught up on history reading!

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I read Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood last year. I really enjoyed them - so much so that as soon as I finished Oryx and Crake I couldn't wait to go out and buy the sequel that I downloaded it on my Kindle app and began reading right away.

 

They were my favourite Margaret Atwood books since The Handmaid's Tale.

 

Hmmm... I have Oryx and Crake on my bookcase. I tried once or twice to start reading it and had a hard time getting into it in the beginning, so I just put it aside and read something else instead.

 

Maybe I should give it another try!

 

I, too, loved The Handmaid's Tale, and right now I'm reading "The Year of the Flood" and enjoying that... so maybe I should try "Oryx and Crake" again.

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I finished Amarcord by Marcella Hazan. I loved it. All the stories of food and of Italy were wonderful to read about. As I said on my blog, I grew hungry with every page I turned.

 

I'm still listening to Benjamin Franklin: An American Life.

 

This week I am starting American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham. I also think I will listen to an Anne Bronte book on librivox.org.

 

My daughter finished Abigail Adams by Jean Wagoner and Left Behind The Kids Vol. 1.

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The series continues with her children.

 

We read all of these. Well, I skipped parts of some. I find that after the first 3, the best books are the ones that included young children (that includes the very last two, for eg, especially the one(s) during WWI).

 

Another couple of good reads from that general era are Daddy Long Legs (far different than the movie) and Dear Enemy by Jean Webster, to be rad in that order. My dd's enjoyed them as did I. We learned about those while my dd's were reading through the contemporary series that includes Dear Pen Pal and Pies and Prejudice last year.

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Aaaahhh! I have already fallen behind! I didn't have much time to read last week and this week isn't looking much better. However, I will try to finish The Home by Bill Bryson. I am also interested in the Anne Bronte mini-challenge, so one of her books will be next on my list.

 

On the other hand, my 7 yr old daughter is doing great with her reading. She finished her official book of the week, which was The Little Princess. She also read 2 Flat Stanley books and 2 Ivy and Bean books, which we don't really count since they are very quick reads. She has chosen Henry Huggins by Beverly Cleary for this week's book.

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I haven't finished any book but I have several going.

 

In the A.M. the kids and I are reading through Meet the Bible, which is a devotional that is a year-long tour through the Bible from beginning to end.

 

During dinner, we are reading through Voices of the Faithful[/url], which is a devotional made up of stories from missionaries. It is also a year long study.

 

During dinner, we are also reading The How Rude! Handbook of Family Manners for Teens. We've been having a lot of fun with this one and everyone looks forward to it.

 

When I need a break, I head to my bathroom and lock the door and read a few pages of the Grapes of Wrath. I've never read this book before and it's been slow going.

 

A friend gave me Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism. I'm reading through this when I get a chance. I'm finding it quite interesting.

 

I'm also working through Quirky, Yes--Hopeless, No : Practical Tips to Help Your Child with Asperger's Syndrome be More Socially Accepted. This book is awesome! The more I read, the more I think my son has AS, even if mild. This book has 80+ issues AS kids often have difficulty with and how to address them. I'm definitely buying this one for long term reference.

 

I'm also working through The Best Kind of Different: Our Family's Journey with Asperger's Syndrome. This is a personal story; interesting so far.

 

I don't normally read this many books at once but the library delivered all of my holds at once. I need to learn how to manage them better, especially since I have a couple of more library books sitting on my shelf to read before they are due.

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This past week I read:

The Dowry of Miss Lydia Clark (by Lawana Blackwell)

Pride & Prejudice (graphic novel)

Cotillion (by Georgette Heyer)

 

I also started Footsteps in the Dark (Heyer) but didn't finish it until Sunday.

 

Last week I tried to make plans for what I was going to read next, but my plans for reading have been chopping and changing too much for me to do that again. This week I will finish Miss Pym Disposes (Josephine Tey) and go from there.

 

Ds had a very slow reading week. He finished The Hardy Boys #5 and is a little more than half way through #6. He was more interested in building lego than reading!

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I read Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood last year. I really enjoyed them - so much so that as soon as I finished Oryx and Crake I couldn't wait to go out and buy the sequel that I downloaded it on my Kindle app and began reading right away.

 

They were my favourite Margaret Atwood books since The Handmaid's Tale.

 

I love The Handmaid's Tale so maybe I should check out her other books.

 

 

 

 

Just feed the addict why don't you!

 

You're welcome. :D

 

 

I think I'd like to do the Ann Bronte mini challenge.

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Finished:

 

5. Graham Greene, A Burnt-Out Case

 

Meh. Nowhere near so good as The Power and the Glory or The Heart of the Matter. Greene makes his point, then makes it again, then has his protagonist make the point explicitly and at length to another character. Still, much better than the majority of what makes it onto the bestseller lists. Three stars on the Graham Greene scale.

 

Vocabulary I had to look up: cafard, pirogue

 

4. Aeschylus, The Oresteia (Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides); Robert Fagles, Tr.

3. Camara Laye, The Radiance of the King

2. St. Augustine, Sermons for Christmas and Epiphany

1. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

0. Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars*

Edited by Sharon in Austin
adding admission of ignorance
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I am simply bumping up this thread because I accidentally bumped up the week 2 thread by responding to someone on it, and I think this one should be in front of the other so more posters don't get confused. I have probably violated all sorts of rules for board etiquette, but my intention is to put things right again with this post.

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Still trying to read Sleepless in America but I'm so sleep deprived I can't get through it. :tongue_smilie:

 

I've started a few non-fiction books but nothing to "count" for the challenge. I'll figure it out today or tomorrow - if I get some sleep.

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I am simply bumping up this thread because I accidentally bumped up the week 2 thread by responding to someone on it, and I think this one should be in front of the other so more posters don't get confused. I have probably violated all sorts of rules for board etiquette, but my intention is to put things right again with this post.
I'll follow your lead by responding here. :)

 

You asked--

"How do you decide what you'll read?"

 

Like most everyone else here, I have a big (mostly mental) stack of "to read" books. I try to alternate the fiction (novels/short stories) with other genres: drama, poetry, non-fiction. My dh reads a lot of modern fiction, and knows my tastes; I don't share his liking for Nabokov or DeLillo, but I do try to add to the stack some of the novels he recommends.

 

Unfortunately my "to read" stack was just greatly increased by a huge sale at our local Half Price books. Somebody sold them hundreds of good-condition Penguin Classics all at once, many of them now out of print and hard to find, and they put them all on a big clearance cart. It was a feeding frenzy. Shoving aside the little old ladies and college students, I got away with:

 

Perez Galdos, Fortunata and Jacinta

Balzac, The Chouans

La Bruyere, Characters

Appolonius of Rhodes, The Voyage of Argo

Rojas, The Spanish Bawd

Kleist, The Marquise of O & Other Stories

Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

Cicero, Murder Trials

Olive Schreiner, The Story of an African Farm

Arrian, The Campaigns of Alexander

 

So you see that what I read next is also often just the operation of chance; if something interesting throws itself into my path, I go for it.

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I'll follow your lead by responding here. :)

 

You asked--

"How do you decide what you'll read?"

 

Like most everyone else here, I have a big (mostly mental) stack of "to read" books. I try to alternate the fiction (novels/short stories) with other genres: drama, poetry, non-fiction. My dh reads a lot of modern fiction, and knows my tastes; I don't share his liking for Nabokov or DeLillo, but I do try to add to the stack some of the novels he recommends.

 

Unfortunately my "to read" stack was just greatly increased by a huge sale at our local Half Price books. Somebody sold them hundreds of good-condition Penguin Classics all at once, many of them now out of print and hard to find, and they put them all on a big clearance cart. It was a feeding frenzy. Shoving aside the little old ladies and college students, I got away with:

 

Perez Galdos, Fortunata and Jacinta

Balzac, The Chouans

La Bruyere, Characters

Appolonius of Rhodes, The Voyage of Argo

Rojas, The Spanish Bawd

Kleist, The Marquise of O & Other Stories

Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

Cicero, Murder Trials

Olive Schreiner, The Story of an African Farm

Arrian, The Campaigns of Alexander

 

So you see that what I read next is also often just the operation of chance; if something interesting throws itself into my path, I go for it.

 

Thanks, Sharon. I recognized one, just one!, of the books (North and South) on your list of finds, and I do read and I do like the classics. I'm looking forward to seeing all your reviews.:)

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I finished The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. It was a very good book. For some reason I had a hard time getting past the first 50-75 pages. Not sure why! It was fast after that. I find that time period very interesting and mentioned several times to dh how odd it is that the Japanese internment is not something they ever taught when I was in school! Almost like it's our shameful past as a country and not worth teaching to the newer generations.

 

I am having problems finding time to read amongst everything else I have to do during the day!

 

Up for this week are 3 from the library:

 

The Art of Eating In by Cathy Erway

The White Queen by Phillipa Gregory

Shangai Girls by Lisa See

 

Not sure how far I will get. Done for the year:

 

1. My Name is Mary Sutter

2. The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

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Just finished:

 

5. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (the book that goes along with the recent article about the superiority of Chinese mothers.)

 

(previously finished)

 

4. The Sunne in Splendor

3. The Bridge at Valentine

2. A Christmas Carol:

1. Help For The Harried Homeschooler

Edited by Caraway
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Hmmm... I have Oryx and Crake on my bookcase. I tried once or twice to start reading it and had a hard time getting into it in the beginning, so I just put it aside and read something else instead.

 

Maybe I should give it another try!

 

I, too, loved The Handmaid's Tale, and right now I'm reading "The Year of the Flood" and enjoying that... so maybe I should try "Oryx and Crake" again.

 

Definitely try it again. You'll get a lot of insight into how things got to be the way they are in The Year of the Flood through reading Oryx and Crake - it's really half the story.

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For the mini-challenge this week, I had to go with a biography on the Brontes. I can't believe my library doesn't have any Anne's books! But, I also found a memoir of Isabel Allende and 1776 on playaway to listen to, so I think I have plenty to keep me busy.

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Trying to expand a bit on this end. I am almost finished reading a Sci-fi novel that my son put into my hands, Night Train to Rigel by Timothy Zahn. Not my speed at all so I alternate chapters with Miss Read. :D I have been rereading her Thrush Green novels and completed Friends at Thrush Green.

 

Onward to another book out of my comfort zone, the post-apocalyptic novel Far North by Marcel Theroux which I will read with the next in the Thrush Green series. Snort! I will alternate the vision of a world unraveling with that of a world where all problems are solved with a cup of tea.

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I'm a little late posting - I forgot to look for the thread on Sunday. :)

 

I finished "Shanghai Girls" by Lisa See last week. So, this week I will get back to the Ted Bell book I actually started at the beginning of the year. It's just not as good as his other books. I'm still on track, 2 books down for the year, 50 more to go! ;)

 

Shanghai Girls was pretty good. It's about 2 sisters from China who immigrate to America and their lives during the 40s and 50s. There are some heart-breaking scenes in it and many instances of bigatry and racism they have to endure. I don't normally read books like this, but it was for a discussion group I belong to (It's nice that they always pick out books that I never would read on my own. Expands my horizons, so to speak.)

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Definitely try it again. You'll get a lot of insight into how things got to be the way they are in The Year of the Flood through reading Oryx and Crake - it's really half the story.

 

Oh, I didn't realize that!! So what did I do, start with book 2 of a series? Blah! :P Okay, I'll give Oryx and Crake another try in the near future then!

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I'm still reading Jane Eyre and The God Delusion at the same time. Hopefully, if dd finally gets healthy (she's been sick with a fever the last 5 days), I'll actually find the time to complete one or both of these since I was reading them last week too...sigh.

 

 

I'm reading Religion Explained which was referenced in The God Delusion and it is so interesting. Not a quick read to be sure, but I'm learning a lot about how the mind works.

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I love The Handmaid's Tale so maybe I should check out her other books.

 

I think I'd like to do the Ann Bronte mini challenge.

 

The Handmaid's Tale is the only one of her books I ever liked. I have read several, including some of her poetry. Usually because I had to, but once because someone gave me one of her novels. I cannot abide her writing normally.

 

I did read the Ann Bronte books, and liked those better. Since her writing improved, I'd read them in the order she wrote them. The second one is not only better, but the original stirred up a great deal of controversey; it's important to get a copy that has the original version. After Ann died, one of her sisters (was it Charlotte?) removed the offending passages. It's not shocking by today's standards, of course.

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