pontalba

Congratulations! That is wonderful news. This is a great idea for a thread too. I've always read. Part of it is escapism I suppose, well, of course it is. But it's more than that, it's the opportunity to live other lives in a real sense. Live them without the real heartache, the real ups and downs. I suppose, it's living vicariously through our favorite characters. I have certain books that I have reread so many times that at one time I probably could have quoted them verbatim. Books become your friends, through thick and thin, and like dogs, don't care if you are not a "beauty queen". Well, that's a bit of a stretch, but you see the drift of what I mean, yes? They're dependable. I was fortunate in being taught to read at a very early age, and haven't stopped since. Reading is one of the most life encompassing, life changing gifts we can give another. Just being in the room with shelves of books can be calming. Good Vibes.

I'd started Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, but was sidetracked by The Many Loves of Charles II by Jean Plaidy. I'm about half way through it now, but life keeps interfering.

Oh Fiddlesticks! They only deliver to the UK. /sigh/ for posting though.

I read that recently, maybe 10[ish] days ago and loved it. One of the things I really liked about it was that I didn't know the end, till the end. I've been waffling about wondering what to read next for the last two days, couldn't make up my mind. Finally, this morning I settled on Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. I've only read the first 34 pages, but I love her storytelling style. And, it's interesting to hear the story from another perspective.

I have the first volume sitting on my shelf, and have access to the other two as well.....I'm certainly tempted to start at least Volume one. Maybe later this month I can start it.

I know Shutter Island is a good one, and have Wolf Hall waiting on my TBR shelf.

Double whammy today. Library sale, and a sale at Borders. At the Library Sale: The Quiet American by Graham Greene Jesus Out to Sea by James Lee Burke Southern Souvenirs [selected stories and essays] of Sarah Haardt, edited by Ann Henley From Borders: The Surrendered by Chang-Rae Lee Delivery from Amazon: Native Speaker by Chang-Rae Lee [second hand]

LOL I do my poor best. I think you'll both enjoy Malevil. Just finished another good one A Gesture Life by Chang-rae Lee. It's the story, told by an unreliable narrator, of a Korean man's life...begins in the "present" in America and slowly folds out backwards, finally to his time in the Imperial Japanese Army. He had been adopted by a Japanese couple and raised in the Japanese way. He tells of his time in the Army, and then of his relationship with his adopted daughter, a difficult one to say the least. Love, redemption, friendship, and how we view ourselves plus what we actually admit to ourselves all come to play in this heart wrenching life story. Highly recommended.

I finished A Gesture of Life by Chang-rae Lee this afternoon. /stunned/ Amazing book, amazing writer. I have another of his on order from Amazon, Native Speaker, should get that by Friday. Not sure what is next. Yet.

I'm with ya there! I have a good excuse to "buy ahead" though, we live just north of New Orleans, so therefore near the Gulf Coast, hurricane country. We have to keep canned goods, non-perishables and oil lamps, batteries etc on hand. Just in case. Not to mention extra books. The hurricane season runs from June 1 - November 30, so we are nearly there again. AIE: Ooshie, since you like post-apocalyptic books, let me recommend one that is my all time favorite. Malevil by Robert Merle, here is a review I wrote here a while back. http://www.bookclubforum.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=1709&highlight=Malevil

Visited our favorite second hand book store... Interred with Their Bones by Jennifer Lee Carrell The Cloud Atlas by Liam Callanan A Gesture Life by Chang-rae Lee * *started this one on the way home....so lyrical, I love it.

As post-apocalyptic novels go, One Second Later is not the best, nor my favorite. It is however realistic without being excruciatingly detailed regarding the horrible things that happen when we lose all of our electric power, all computers of course, and any modern car that has any computer parts to run it. All from what is called an EMP [electromagnetic pulse], basically an atomic bomb that is detonated above the atmosphere. Forstchen specializes in military history and the history of technology and it shows. He is precise and a little cold blooded in his presentation of what would happen if the above happened. Not a place I'd care to be. Recommended.

Last night I finished One Second After by William R. Forstchen. A post-apocalyptic novel that tries really hard, and for the most part succeeds, although it is written in somewhat of a dry tone. I suppose that dryness, or distance is necessary, otherwise it could have become a real tear jerker of a story. No happy endings here. Not sure what I'll pick up next.

Finished The Last Child by John Hart tonight. Fan-tastic. A story of a missing child, a father that has disappeared, a mother that is so torn up as to not be functioning anymore, and the child that stubbornly and courageously bucks all odds to find out what happened to his twin. John Hart shows the full circle of life generationally in an amazing way.

I enjoyed reading it mainly because if filled in some of the back story that was missing in the film, no truly big deal, but it definitely filled in some of the holes for me. Haven't read anything else by him yet, but have two more on the shelf waiting.

That's great!

I don't expect my books to look brand new forever, but I do my utmost not to damage them in any way. I don't crack spines, or dog ear, especially hardbacks. I must have dozens of bookmarks, about half of those are from Library Sales, where they hand them out free. For discussions, I do mark up books, pencil only. It's the only way I can keep it straight. I'll write definitions of words I look up, and page references for continuing themes. Only paperbacks though, hardly ever hardbacks. I buy lots, in fact the majority, of my books either from Library Sales, Amazon Marketplace, or second hand book stores. But I shop around for the best condition. I won't buy marked up books, as I don't want to be influenced by what other readers have thought of it. When I buy a hardback second hand, I'm always careful to buy one that has a dust jacket in good condition, that's one of my pet peeves. I don't loan books out. Too often in the past, I've not gotten them back. I'll give a book away, but not loan.

I saw the film first, and bought the book on the way home. Enjoyed both.

Managed about half of The Last Child by John Hart last night, reading till I couldn't prop my eyes open anymore, about 2:30 a.m. Worth it. Well done. And bought another by John Hart, Down River and The Lay of the Land by Richard Ford.

Have you tried Antiquarian book stores? Google for that, you'll get a listing in your area. Also, have you tried ABE books? They have dealers on their site that specialize in same. Perhaps if you click on one of them selling something similar you'd be able to find some help. I would suggest trying to sell it as a collection first, I'd think it would be more valuable to a collector that way. Oh, also what about an antique auction house in your area?

It varies. I used to mostly read here in the study with a cup of something, tea or coffee handy. I have a comfortable office chair in here, and something to prop my feet up, so it was pretty comfy. Now though, since I have my OH, we usually sit together on the sofa and read. This sofa is in close proximity to the kitchen and we are both in and out of there replenishing our tea or coffee, and treats. We both like it to be quiet while reading, and the only sound is the occasional cat mucking about and the turning of pages. I don't really like to eat that much with a book in hand, I'm naturally messy, and hate the idea of getting updoc on the pages.

I loved that film, haven't seen it in many years though. We watched Breakdown the other night with Kurt Russell. Scary stuff. And...we are plowing through Seasons 1 - 5 of Lost again, and have Season 6 on order. It comes out August 24th. We don't have television anymore, but I don't want to miss that.

Finished Tinkers by Paul Harding last night, and will start The Last Child by John Hart today. I read his first 3 chapters of it on his site the other day, and was happy to find it on sale at Barnes & Noble. You can find it here should you wish to read them. http://www.johnhartfiction.com/

For some reason I thouht I'd already started this list here. What a brain. :roll:Anyhow regarding the two on the list I didn't actually finish, 2666 was so depressing and so upsetting to me I couldn't finish, but having read that much of it, I thought it should be listed, for the time put in at any rate. Perhaps I shouldn't have listed Oryx and Crake, but the 100 pages I actally did read were so boring and mind numbing to me, I listed it as a warning to myself. A warning something like.....thar be snakes thar me dearie... I'd heard practically nothing about Shutter Island, and happened to see the movie poster when we were over near the theatre. We decided to go in and see it, and wow! On the way home that night we stopped at Books-A-Million and bought the trade paperback...full price! Started reading it that very night. Good stuff. I've heard varying comments about Little Bee, I read it firstly out of curiosity, then couldn't stop, I had to know what happened to this girl. Some have written that the ending was not a realistic one, and that events were glossed over. I didn't find that to be so, I thought it was realistic. I've read high praise for John Lescroart, so when I spied the book Son of Holmes, I thought, great! A new [for me] good author, and Sherlock, who could ask for anything more? Hah, think again, no Sherlock, darned little Son of Sherlock, and the thinnest of thin plots that I could hardly care a whit about. Bleh. Just last night finished reading Tinkers by Paul Harding. Find it. Read it. The imagination of this new and Pulitzer winning author is amazing and just plain lyrical. His first book! Wow.

JANUARY The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest by Stieg Larsson 5/5 The Night Listener by Armistead Maupin 4/5 How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed by Slavenka Drakulic 3/5 2666 by Roberto Bolano...started, finished half, to page 453 - don't know if I'll finish or not. FEBRUARY The Coroner's Lunch by Colin Cotterill 2/5 Company of Liars by Karen Maitland 3.5/5 Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood started, only read about a quarter, to page 101, boring and mean. doubt I'll finish. Edit MARCH Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane 5/5 The Language of Bees by Laurie R. King [library book] 4/5 Little Bee by Chris Cleave [library book] 5/5 APRIL The Tamarind Seed by Evelyn Anthony 4/5 Elizabeth Costello by J. M. Coetzee 3/5 Last Night by James Salter 3/5 Son of Holmes by John Lescroart 2/5 The End of the Affair by Graham Greene 4/5 MAY Tinkers by Paul Harding 5/5 The Last Child by John Hart 5/5++ One Second Later by William R. Forstchen 4/5 A Gesture Life by Chang-rae Lee 5/5++ The Loves of Charles II by Jean Plaidy 4/5 The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster 4/5 JUNE Bitter Steel by Charles Allen Gramlich 4/5 A Pale Horse by Charles Todd 3/5 The God of the Hive by Laurie R. King [library book] 4/5 Invisible by Paul Auster 5/5 Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg 4/5 JULY The Blue Afternoon by William Boyd 5+/5 The Last Thing I Remember by Andrew Klavan 3/5 Restless by William Boyd 5/5 Close to Shore by Michael Capuzzo 5/5 Nemesis by Jo Nesbo 4/5 The City & The City by China Mieville 4/5 Elegy For April by Benjamin Black 5/5 Ice Station Zebra by Alistair MacLean 5/5 AUGUST A Widow for One Year by John Irving 5+/5 Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts 4/5 Caught by Harlan Coben 5/5 In A Dry Season by Peter Robinson 5/5 Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay 3/5 Maigret and the Burglar's Wife by Georges Simenon 2.5/5 Watchman by Ian Rankin 3.5/5 Flood by Stephen Baxter 3.5/5 [# 43] SEPTEMBER The Secret Pilgrim by John LeCarré 5/5 The Thousand by Kevin Guilfoile 3/5 Comedy in a Minor Key by Hans Keilson 4/5 Death of the Adversary by Hans Keilson 4/5 We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson 4/5 A Murder of Quality by John Le Carré 4/5 The Snowman by Jo Nesbo 5/5 !! The Fourth Man by K.O. Dahl 4/5 Dissolution by C.J. Sansom 3.5/5 OCTOBER Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger 3/5 Dark Fire by C.J. Sansom 4/5 Night Train by Martin Amis 0.1/5 The Chrysalids by John Wyndham 4.5/5 The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester 3/5 The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje 4.5/5 Sovereign by C. J. Sansom 5/5 NOVEMBER The Deep Blue Good-By by John D. Mac Donald 4/5 Tripwire by Lee Child 4/5 The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep by Lawrence Block 2.5/5 The Painted Kiss by Elizabeth Hickey 2/5 World Made by Hand by James Howard Kunstler 3.5/5 The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley 4/5 Regeneration by Pat Barker 5/5 The Eye in the Door by Pat Barker 5/5 DECEMBER The Ghost Road by Pat Barker 5/5 Cat Coming Home by Shirley Rousseau Murphy 4/5 The Passage by Justin Cronin 5/5 Blackout by Connie Willis 4/5 All Clear by Connie Willis 4/5 Cleopatra, A Life by Stacy Schiff 4/5 Cleopatra's Daughter by Michelle Moran 3/5 True Grit by Charles Portis 3.5/5