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Book a Week 2019 - BW9: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


Robin M
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11 hours ago, Liz CA said:

I need permission to abandon 100 Years of Solitude. (Running to the corner to hide). Such a famous piece of work...and I cannot get into it. I just find it depressing and I do not like depressing reads. I am about 1/4 in. Is it getting any better???

 Permission to throw it against the wall and start reading something else granted.

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13 hours ago, Liz CA said:

I need permission to abandon 100 Years of Solitude. (Running to the corner to hide). Such a famous piece of work...and I cannot get into it. I just find it depressing and I do not like depressing reads. I am about 1/4 in. Is it getting any better???

Oh, oh, I’m qualified: Love in the time of cholera is my favorite book of all time. I have tried 100 years of solitude many times across the years, in a couple of different languages, it’s a no-go.

But I think I’ve mentioned here that the book an author is famous for is not the book I like best from them. Elena Ferrante’s    My Brilliant Friend series is not her best work, Arch of Triumph is better than All Quiet on the Western front, etc etc

Abandon away 🙂

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13 hours ago, Matryoshka said:

 

But no plans for Paradise Lost!  :wink:

Actually I’m loving it. I am very comfortable being devil-and-his-friends translator for DS. Surprised no one has come up with a homeschool curriculum yet “Let Satan and buddies teach your kids rhetoric”. 😂

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8 hours ago, moonflower said:

the readers for whom I am looking are 13 and 10, both reading high school level. (ETA but willing to read all the way down to the first HP or Little House if the books are good, fwiw) 13F and 10M.  I am 34 - we all sort of read the same books, except the 10 year old was not interested in Anne of Green Gables or Anne of Anything Else.  

Some ideas...........for mystery Patricia Wentworth and Anna Katherine Green (the books with Gryce).  We found the Anna Katherine Green’s free on the Kindle.

Fantasy.......Have you read Eregon etc yet?  I haven’t finished the series yet but plan to later this year.  

                    Sea of Trolls.......this one also has sequels which I didn’t read but the kids did.

                    Only read a couple but Diane Wynn’s Jones is an idea.  I liked these and believe the kids read many more.

                     I recently listened to The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner which is compared to The Dark is Rising.       

                   My daughter would recommend Pratchett to anyone who will listen.  These are for a bit later, but you might want to try one.  I am not a fan but have a great chart for reading order which Dd thinks is a must.  If they click there are 40 of these!   I am a fan of the 40........🤣She read them from around 15.

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@tuesdayschild I am glad to know that I can keep my hopes up for Harold. Despite the ending of #3, I plan to continue the series.

I will note the spoiler tag for the future. I knew there was a way to do that, but could not recall the details.

Fwiw, I typed my spolier in black then changed the font color after typing!

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My little boys and I finished listening to the audiobook of Ruby Holler by Sharon Creech today at lunchtime.  It is a kids’ book, but it’s definitely one I enjoyed and would've read on my own. My only criticism is that it has one of the most abrupt endings I’ve ever read.  We literally thought the audiobook we were listening to was faulty.  We read it for a book club and several of our friends in the club thought the same thing!

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17 hours ago, mumto2 said:

Some ideas...........for mystery Patricia Wentworth and Anna Katherine Green (the books with Gryce).  We found the Anna Katherine Green’s free on the Kindle.

Fantasy.......Have you read Eregon etc yet?  I haven’t finished the series yet but plan to later this year.  

                    Sea of Trolls.......this one also has sequels which I didn’t read but the kids did.

                    Only read a couple but Diane Wynn’s Jones is an idea.  I liked these and believe the kids read many more.

                     I recently listened to The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner which is compared to The Dark is Rising.       

                   My daughter would recommend Pratchett to anyone who will listen.  These are for a bit later, but you might want to try one.  I am not a fan but have a great chart for reading order which Dd thinks is a must.  If they click there are 40 of these!   I am a fan of the 40........🤣She read them from around 15.

 

Yes, Eragon!  We read all of Eragon.  

Okay, fine, I skimmed the last two books, but the kids read the covers off of them.  Sea of Trolls I will look up; we do like Diana Wynn Jones and I completely forgot about her!  I will look up Alan Garner, thanks for all the recs!  I think that will keep us for the next few weeks at least 🙂

I am a sci-fi nerd but have never read Terry Pratchett.  I just always felt like they would be weird and I don't like satire generally.  Maybe I should just get one and try it.  The draw of an author with 40 books is strong!

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2 hours ago, moonflower said:

 

Yes, Eragon!  We read all of Eragon.  

Okay, fine, I skimmed the last two books, but the kids read the covers off of them.  Sea of Trolls I will look up; we do like Diana Wynn Jones and I completely forgot about her!  I will look up Alan Garner, thanks for all the recs!  I think that will keep us for the next few weeks at least 🙂

I am a sci-fi nerd but have never read Terry Pratchett.  I just always felt like they would be weird and I don't like satire generally.  Maybe I should just get one and try it.  The draw of an author with 40 books is strong!

I love, love Terry Pratchett!!  It is hard to know where to begin, though as all the characters come and go in the different books, but there are some tidy collections of titles that deal with the same characters. I suggest looking through this list

The Tiffany Aching books are really popular, but I can't quite comment as I haven't read them all. 

One of my favorite characters is Death WHO TALKS IN CAPITAL LETTERS and has a white horse named Binky. His first book, Mort, isn't my favorite of his.  I love Thief of Time and Reaper Man when Death has to go work as a human. Oh and Hogfather which is the Discworld version of Santa Claus.  I re-read Hogfather every Christmas now, lol!

I also love the Sam Vimes, or City Watch books. They are part mystery. Guards Guards is one of the books I have recommended to people who want an introduction to Discworld.

My hands down favorite, and the other one I give to people as an introduction is Going Postal where a con-man is conned into running the postal service. 

 

Have your kids read the Bartimaeus trilogy by Jonathon Stroud?  There is a magic and an utterly sarcastic wise ass of a genie named Bartimaeus. It was the absolute favorite of my youngest when he was 13, and I enjoyed them too. I listened to them while crocheting the blanket he took to college!

Do your kids like John Scalzi's books? Red Shirts or Old Man's War? Or Fuzzy Nation that has a planet with talking cats? 

And...this isn't fantasy or sci-fi, but the world building is just as brilliant as the best of that genre. The Master and Commander series is utterly brilliant -- yes it is the Royal Navy fighting the French and scurvy during the Napoleonic Wars. Great action, well rounded characters that grow and change throughout the series. 

My youngest also loved non-fiction during his young teen years, especially anything written by Bill Bryson. And he loved and still loves the All Creatures Great and Small series.

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6 hours ago, moonflower said:

 

Yes, Eragon!  We read all of Eragon.  

Okay, fine, I skimmed the last two books, but the kids read the covers off of them.  Sea of Trolls I will look up; we do like Diana Wynn Jones and I completely forgot about her!  I will look up Alan Garner, thanks for all the recs!  I think that will keep us for the next few weeks at least 🙂

I am a sci-fi nerd but have never read Terry Pratchett.  I just always felt like they would be weird and I don't like satire generally.  Maybe I should just get one and try it.  The draw of an author with 40 books is strong!

 

2 hours ago, JennW in SoCal said:

I love, love Terry Pratchett!!  It is hard to know where to begin, though as all the characters come and go in the different books, but there are some tidy collections of titles that deal with the same characters. I suggest looking through this list

The Tiffany Aching books are really popular, but I can't quite comment as I haven't read them all. 

One of my favorite characters is Death WHO TALKS IN CAPITAL LETTERS and has a white horse named Binky. His first book, Mort, isn't my favorite of his.  I love Thief of Time and Reaper Man when Death has to go work as a human. Oh and Hogfather which is the Discworld version of Santa Claus.  I re-read Hogfather every Christmas now, lol!

I also love the Sam Vimes, or City Watch books. They are part mystery. Guards Guards is one of the books I have recommended to people who want an introduction to Discworld.

My hands down favorite, and the other one I give to people as an introduction is Going Postal where a con-man is conned into running the postal service. 

 

Have your kids read the Bartimaeus trilogy by Jonathon Stroud?  There is a magic and an utterly sarcastic wise ass of a genie named Bartimaeus. It was the absolute favorite of my youngest when he was 13, and I enjoyed them too. I listened to them while crocheting the blanket he took to college!

Do your kids like John Scalzi's books? Red Shirts or Old Man's War? Or Fuzzy Nation that has a planet with talking cats? 

And...this isn't fantasy or sci-fi, but the world building is just as brilliant as the best of that genre. The Master and Commander series is utterly brilliant -- yes it is the Royal Navy fighting the French and scurvy during the Napoleonic Wars. Great action, well rounded characters that grow and change throughout the series. 

My youngest also loved non-fiction during his young teen years, especially anything written by Bill Bryson. And he loved and still loves the All Creatures Great and Small series.

I went and found the chart that Dd liked to use https://io9.gizmodo.com/how-to-read-terry-pratchetts-discworld-series-in-one-h-1567312812. I think it is really is basically the same as @JennW in SoCal list but artsy.  Dd loved following the rabbit trail lines between the main arcs.  She recommends Mort as a first book to all because he is her favorite.  I have tried Prachett a few times and can’t seem to get hooked but I use it for BaW challenges and have never read Mort.  Jenn, do you have the Hogfather movie?  Dd watches it every year!

Stroud was read here too.  Dd liked Red Shirts but not sure if she has read Fuzzy Nation.    I need to start a book shelf on Goodreads for Dd I think since she no longer seems to have the energy to find her own books.........she is a graduate student who has little time and shows up at the end of my bed with nothing to read!   I keep books for her all mixed up with books for me on my lists these days.

 Another series that never made the big time in my house but my best friend LOVED as a teen so the kids read them is the Belgariad by Eddings https://www.goodreads.com/series/40739-the-belgariad.  They are also on my list of future reads.

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21 hours ago, hopeistheword said:

I love Wendell Berry! Does anyone else see the irony in reading him on an e-reader? 😂

I haven't yet read anything by him, but I've added him to my to-read list. Please, please tell if I shouldn't read him on my Kindle! I need to know, since I live outside the U.S. and would be fine with ordering hard copies. There are some books that truly are not good on the Kindle. 

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1 hour ago, Negin said:

I haven't yet read anything by him, but I've added him to my to-read list. Please, please tell if I shouldn't read him on my Kindle! I need to know, since I live outside the U.S. and would be fine with ordering hard copies. There are some books that truly are not good on the Kindle. 

I think it’s fine format-wise, etc., to read on the Kindle. He eschews modern technology to a degree, which is what my comment refers to. 😝

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I am rereading some of the Ender's Game series, cautiously because it is pretty pretty traumatic, while I wait for the last book of the First Formic Wars part to become available at the library. I was given one of this series to read by one of my (now adult) children, who hadn't realized that I hadn't read Ender's Game when they all did, and who thought that I would like this particular book because it gave the parents' perspective. He was old enough to be figuring out that parents don't always confront their children with everything they know about those children's thoughts, secrets, and activities, and that as a parent, one must make heartbreaking decisions for the good of the child and feel one's way along a very narrow path balanced between making things so easy for the child that it hampers growth and making things too hard.

I am also doing Pimsleur German and relistening to A Short History of Nearly Everything while I go to sleep. 

Nan

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Waving hi to @Nan in Mass   Good to see you! 

 

On 2/27/2019 at 4:47 AM, Penguin said:

@Robin M Thanks for the Nora Roberts link. I am a bit lost, as the blog assumes one knows what happened. But I am very interested in the story. Nora Roberts sounds like a force to be reckoned with. It also seems like she is willing to stand up for victimized writers who don’t have her financial resources. I have yet to read any of her books or visit her bookstore yet, and I feel remiss about that.

The story started with Courtney Milan who discovered not only her books had been plagiarized but multiple others by  Cristiana Serruya.  You'll find the history of the whole thing on Courtney's blog. 

On 2/28/2019 at 8:27 AM, Liz CA said:

I need permission to abandon 100 Years of Solitude. (Running to the corner to hide). Such a famous piece of work...and I cannot get into it. I just find it depressing and I do not like depressing reads. I am about 1/4 in. Is it getting any better???

Raising my hand as well with permission to toss it.  I had to read it for a lit class, then ended up facilitating an online class for the book as well.  It's depressing through and through and doesn't get any better. Lots of symbolism and metaphors and lots of characters with the same names with makes it confusing, plus characters horrible decision making.  

I raced through Circle of the Moon because I just had to know what happening and now that the pressure is off, am reading it much more slowly, enjoying just as much. 

Would appreciate some prayers for my dad. He had cataract surgery and everything that could possibly go wrong, did.  They didn't bother to check his eyeball pressure evidently so the cataract shattered and damaged either his cornea or the retina. He wasn't too clear on which it was. The idiots went ahead and detached his lens to put on a new one, then it wouldn't take. So he's basically blind in that eye until they can do something about all the floating pieces of cataract in his eye.  Once they get his eyeball pressure back to normal, they are going to try and attach a new lens.  He's not a happy camper right now. 

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6 minutes ago, Robin M said:

Waving hi to @Nan in Mass   Good to see you! 

 

The story started with Courtney Milan who discovered not only her books had been plagiarized but multiple others by  Cristiana Serruya.  You'll find the history of the whole thing on Courtney's blog. 

Raising my hand as well with permission to toss it.  I had to read it for a lit class, then ended up facilitating an online class for the book as well.  It's depressing through and through and doesn't get any better. Lots of symbolism and metaphors and lots of characters with the same names with makes it confusing, plus characters horrible decision making.  

I raced through Circle of the Moon because I just had to know what happening and now that the pressure is off, am reading it much more slowly, enjoying just as much. 

Would appreciate some prayers for my dad. He had cataract surgery and everything that could possibly go wrong, did.  They didn't bother to check his eyeball pressure evidently so the cataract shattered and damaged either his cornea or the retina. He wasn't too clear on which it was. The idiots went ahead and detached his lens to put on a new one, then it wouldn't take. So he's basically blind in that eye until they can do something about all the floating pieces of cataract in his eye.  Once they get his eyeball pressure back to normal, they are going to try and attach a new lens.  He's not a happy camper right now. 

That’s terrible, Robin!  Prayers for your dad’s recovery!

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Waving to @Nan in Mass 

Hugs and prayers Robin’s Dad.  I know this is no real comfort but my brother moved (yes, moved) during his cataract surgery and had a similar result to your dad’s.  He had to wait about a month and everything worked out.  Now you can tell your dad a story with a happy ending which might help in the waiting.

I am loving The Ruin https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36588482-the-ruin

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Blowing through The Others series this week, currently on #4 "Marked in Flesh".

It's funny that I am enjoying them so much because every time the first book, Written in Red,  came up on my radar the last few years, I would read the blurb and think "meh"   It was only when the series was talked up here recently that I finally decided to give it a try anyway 👍  So thanks to BAW  for once again giving me more enjoyable books to read 😄 

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5 minutes ago, LaughingCat said:

Blowing through The Others series this week, currently on #4 "Marked in Flesh".

So glad to hear you're enjoying the series, LaughingCat. You are in the happy position of being able to read the first series of five books rather than having to wait a year or so between books.  Then you get to move on to Lake Silence (new setting and characters) and Wild Country (out on Tuesday). [Then you can wait along with the rest of us for whatever comes next....]

Regards,

Kareni

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23 hours ago, hopeistheword said:

I think it’s fine format-wise, etc., to read on the Kindle. He eschews modern technology to a degree, which is what my comment refers to. 😝

Thank you! I was hoping you'd say that. The Kindle format is obviously more convenient for me. I love hard copies, but most of my books are on the Kindle now. 

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