my read for next week will be Wichita by Thad Ziolkowski.

I heard Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter was pretty good! Hope to see what you think about it.

It's so good I think I'm gonna miss the characters when it's over. I am crazy about the southern fiction genre. Love Joshilyn Jackson and Margaret Maron too. I'm reading it sloooooow. Welcome to our little group!!!

She was worried about you too. She's off on a visit with her daughter...


The place ain't the same without you....

I was under the weather and never even came back here to check in on the net. I'm getting forgetful!

I'm almost done (about 30 pages left) with Grisham's The Chamber. The death penalty is one of my big subjects and this book does a good job debating that issue. This book is right up there among my favorites of John Grisham.

Next up will be The City and the Stars, one of Clarke's earliest novels. According to Wiki it was originally called Against the Fall of Night. I lucked out and found a first printing (1957) paperback of it in a used bookstore for a buck 99. Original cover price was $1.25! Can you imagine? Clarke was one of my favorite SF writers so I am thrilled to get a chance to read this.

Very good. He is one of my favorites

by Leonard Shlain

really fascinating stuff

"Making remarkable connections across brain function, myth, and anthropology, Dr. Shlain shows why pre-literate cultures were principally informed by holistic, right-brain modes that venerated the Goddess, images, and feminine values. Writing drove cultures toward linear left-brain thinking and this shift upset the balance between men and women, initiating the decline of the feminine and ushering in patriarchal rule."
says Amazon.
thanks for the tip, just put it on my wishlist.

And tracking down some of his books on archive.org.

Glad you mentioned him.
How do you like Parade's End?

A bit of a tough read as this isn't my usual genre. Most of the story takes place inside the characters' heads which can make things a bit disjointed. FMF does a good job of conveying how claustrophobic society must have been at that time, especially for the upper classes who had to preserve image above all else. The suffragettes were considered a dangerous criminal element, possibly insane, but I can totally sympathize with their desire to break out of that oppressive world.

Damn, got out of order in the series. Amazingly complex plot for the thirties, and plenty of scooting around Europe and Africa.

Some of the slang is hard to understand--don't need to get every word, tho. Fun read.

.

an excellent blend of fact and mythology. I just finished this morning and I can't wait for the sequel.
I got a pre-copy in exchange for a review, but I would pay money for this one (<-- my highest compliment)

http://www.amazon.com/Mer-Si-Raen-Ambush-ebook/dp/B007TRJ3XC

By James Patterson and David Ellis

Fun summer read. Four wealthy women leave behind husbands on a girls' weekend in Monte Carlo. Booze, infidelity, a gun - what could go wrong?

Thora, the continuing main character from the series, is part of a legal team hired by a bank to investigate the operations of an Icelandic mining company in Greenland. The employees have left and are refusing to go back after three of their number simply vanished. The local Inuit are hostile to the mining operation and won't even speak to the investigators. The only clue is a video tape that suggests something terrible happened at the mining camp.

He is from a teeny town about 40 miles west of us, here in SW Ala.
his "Hell at the Breech" was marvelous, also. He does tend be rather dark, tho.
Franklin has a very lyrical style, much like Rick Bragg ( also from Alabama).
Both of their books I read twice, once for the story and once for the beauty of their phrasing and voice.

Last edited Thu Aug 9, 2012, 07:28 PM - Edit history (1)

2nd in the Jimm Juree series - takes place in Thailand. She's a crime reporter that studied English as an elective in high school/college and her learning came from movies, books, music - lots of American stuff. She mixes her American thoughts/vocabulary with Thai culture and the results are amusing. Written in first person female by the incomparable Colin Cotterill.

Give it a try...

http://www.stopyourekillingme.com/C_Authors/Cotterill_Colin.html

Book 66 of 2012

On of his Harry (Hieronymus) Bosch series. Connelly makes LA real for this reader who has never been to California. And his books seem to just grab me. This is the 4th of his I've read. The first I found outside the library (it was closed) when waiting on my ride.It was "Blood Work."

Harry and the other denizens of Connelly's LA can be pretty addictive.

Interestingly enough, Robert Crais and Connelly share an LA--Harry Bosch makes an anonymous appearance in one of the Elvis Cole/Joe Pike mysteries, and Elvis shows up in one of Harry's. Of course the authors are buddies makes it easier, but still fun to stumble across.

Excellent travel book about Greece.

12th in the series - takes place in England.

http://www.stopyourekillingme.com/B_Authors/Beaton_M-C.html

My book 67 of 2012

(John is a new male friend of Agatha's (who is 50+) and she didn't want him to tell the police that someone tried to kill her so she quickly kisses him to keep him quiet).

"Agatha threw herself into his arms and kissed him on the mouth. 'Don't tell them,' she mumbled against his lips, and then drew away saying, 'Oh, darling. I am so frightened'

"John looked at Agatha impassively"

While John talked, Agatha nervously fingered her lips. She found that one sturdy hair was growing just above her upper lip and blushed red with mortification. Had he felt it? Should she excuse herself and run up to the bathroom and yank it out? But if she left the room, and without her controlling presence, John might let slip about the attempt on her life.

Such was her worry about that hair that she could hardly feel all the fear she should have been feeling about what had been another attempt on her life.

About a third of the way through The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke and have been utterly absorbed from page one. The guy was amazing, everything I've read by him is superb. My only complaint...this is an old paperback I'm reading. The tiny type! Yow, the eyestrain! Did readers have better eyesight fifty years ago??

About to start the latest (well, late for me anyway) Discworld adventure, Mort. I'm reading the series in order. This is the fourth, I believe. My favorite so far would be Equal Rites, probably because it didn't feature Rincewind, whom I'm not that enamored with.

After cataract surgery, I could see far real good, but close, not good at all. My eye doctor told me to go to the Dollare Store and buy some of the $1.00 glasses, so I did. They break easily, but for a buck, who cares. I have maybe 10 pairs of glasses - ranging from 2 to 3.50 - and keep them everywhere - near the phone for caller ID, in the kitchen for recipes, etc.

Try them. You might have to try on 10 pairs or more to find the pair that fit your face, nose, etc.

My problem is keeping a paperback open. My hand starts to cramp - so I try to get only hardbacks that take a minimum of grasping..

with a couple of surgeries. It was really cutting into her reading, both from holding the book open to holding it at the right angle.

So I got her a nook. I had one of the heavier early ones--although I still mostly read books 1.0--and found it particularly useful for travel. But the new touch ones are incredibly light and easy to handle, that she was able to read extensively again. Much happier wife, now...

Our library has good selection on Overdrive and I showed her how to download directly from Project Gutenberg. Still, she does mostly purchase the books she reads. She has one more round of surgery to go and she should have most of her mobility back, but I suspect she'll still use the nook a lot even after. I may have made a (reading) monster.

Based on a discussion about it in last week's reading thread. I didn't like it the first time I read it, but am reconsidering it given the comments here.

will working on a cruise ship in Alaska.
Had to special order it from a bookstore in Sitka.
I was SO relieved to finish it as I was getting NO SLEEP!
(working 14 hours a day then reading 6, man, I was a zombie)
God, what a great book.
Steve can write a line.

Hope you are liking it better this time.
Altho it isnt really that much different then the
original, just more character fleshing out.
Man that trashy, what a psychopath

An amazing book, in many ways resembling "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" as it takes place inside an asylum, which resembles the actual asylum the author spent so many years within as a patient.

Matto being the Italian word for lunatic, of course.

Hoping to manage to read the last two books in the right order.

The best thing I've read lately is Mary Doria Russell's book, Doc about Doc Holliday.