eyeseebooks

Hi chaliepud. I thoroughly enjoyed The Thread too. A long time ago I spent a year at the university in the city where the story is located, so I had the added pleasure of being able to walk the streets along with the characters. Funny how you remember some places in detail, yet others pass you by! I have The Island and am saving it for a wintery 'down in the dumps' day. I'm sure we'll get a few of those! I did read a lovely book of short stories by Victoria Hislop, One Cretan Evening and Other Stories. I think it's out of print as it is only available on Kindle, just 99p at the moment. Good luck with The Sunrise! If you like Greek settings, you might enjoy Father Dancing by Nick Papandreou. It's beautifully written, there's a real sense of place through sensual description of everyday things, it's amusing but with a backdrop of political upheaval. It's partly autobiographical, part fiction. The author is the son of Georges Papandreou, past prime-minister of Greece. He (Nick) says in the dediction: "Certain members of my family thought that this book was about them, but when they read it, barely recalled a thing. Perhaps it's because creative memories have their own stories to tell." I like that! It's one of my go-to books and I've read it several times over the years.

Thank you Anna, I'm looking forward to it!

Hello woolf and kylie. I loved Stoner and re-read it within weeks of the first time. It called me back - I don't know why really, I'm still trying to work that out. On the face-of-it, nothing much happens; it's just a story tracing the career and marriage of a man who works in academia. At first I thought it was going to be a little dull, but I was sucked in quite quickly then couldn't put it down and finished it in a day. If I could pinpoint why I found it so affecting that it lingered in my mind until I read it again, and how the author achieved it, I'd write one too. I guess it's just one of those reads (for me at any rate) that we all hit now and again that affects us on an emotional, sympathetic level. And now that you've both asked my opinion, I think I shall be dipping into it again very soon. I have wondered just how personal the character's feelings are to the author as he, too, was an academic teaching literature, but I haven't tried to explore that avenue yet.

I think you'll enjoy the Hardys, I preferred Return of the Native and Woodlanders to Jude and Far From the Madding Crowd and intend reading more Hardy sometime soon. Seems we approached 11.22.63 with different desires. I was drawn to it because of the era and the politics of the time in America. I did enjoy the time travel aspect and thought it was well done, but expect someone really into sci-fi would find it quite tame. I lost interest quite a lot during the last third of the book and also really disliked the introduction of so much gory violence in that section, which of course I had to endure more than once as the main character had to keep travelling back to get over that particular hurdle to ultimately accomplish his task. What really surprised and impressed me was the very clever way King embedded Lee Harvey Oswald into the novel so successfully as a character.

Now I'm scared....

As I've only just joined, and not wanting this 2015 log to be empty for too long, I decided to start off by listing some books read pre-membership. I read paper books provided they're not too heavy in the hands and the typeface is unfussy, big enough and dark enough, otherwise it's the Kindle so that I can arrange these aspects to my own satisfaction. Lengthy books I always prefer to listen to on ipod. Occasionally I buy both the audio and the kindle versions so that whichever version I have been using, when I turn to the other I'm at the place where I finished reading or listening. I think it's pretty nifty of Amazon to provide this facility in conjunction with their off-shoot Audible (sadly, I don't have shares despite my heavy investment in their success). Increasingly these days though, as you will see below, I use audio. Whichever method I employ, I still think of it as reading. One thing I have noticed with audio is that I have to look up the spellings of places and names if they are unusual, as not knowing for certain niggles away at me and is a distraction. I wonder whether other people who use audio feel the same. a = audio k = kindle p = paper A Short Walk from Harrods - Dirk Bogarde (bio) (a) Stoner - John Williams (a) Breathing Lessons - Anne Tyler (a) The Woodlanders - Thomas Hardy (a) The Return of the Native - Thomas Hardy (a) A Spool of Blue Thread - Anne Tyler (a) The Old Wives' Tale - Arnold Bennett (a) The Accidental Tourist - Anne Tyler (a) Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami (a) 11.22.63 - Stephen King (a) The Thread - Victoria Hislop (a) Winter Journal - Paul Auster (bio) (a) Heloise and Abelard: A Twelfth-Century Love Story - Jim Burge (non-F) (k) Journey of a Thousand Miles - Lang Lang and David Ritz (bio) (k) The L-Shaped Room - Lynn Reid Banks (a) Experience - Martin Amis (bio) (p) A Very Easy Death - Simone de Beauvoir (bio) (p) One Cretan Evening and Other Stories - Victoria Hislop (p) Father Dancing - Nick Papandreou (p) A Postillion Struck by Lightning - Dirk Bogarde (bio) (a)

Thank you for the welcome and cheery wave chesilbeach!

Thank you for the welcome peacefield!

Thank you for the welcome nollaig. I feel as though my mind has been slowly stagnating since retirement and I'm sure being here will liven it up a bit!

Thank you vodkafan. I see you got 15 books for £3 - wow!

Sounds like fun for everone chaliepud!

Thank you chaliepud - I'm working on it! I've had a look at your reading log and love the idea of having a book box/jar. Have you ever felt disappointed with the random selection and sneaked it back in and drawn another?

Thank you both for the welcome!

Hi everyone I've been looking for a friendly, active, online book club for a while and at last I've found you! Having recently moved house, and whittled down my TBR pile in the process, my shelves are now very manageable. Kindle is a completely different matter with hundreds of books jostling for my attention, but as the cover is closed most of the time I very easily forget they're there. I see most people have 2015 threads - would it be appropriate for me to start one too, even though we only have three months left of the year? I have a three month plan!