Well I've read a few of the books reccommended. One that I loved was "Water for Elephants", with a surprise ending. The next book I will read is "Home to Holly Springs" by Jan Karon. (My favorite author.) I haven't been doing too much reading this Summer, I have enjoyed this season more than I have in years! Just relaxing, sitting in the yard listening to the birds and breezes through the trees has been spiritual for me. I have my Molly,(cat) spoiled rotten and we take 3-4 walks in the yard daily. She wears a harness and follows on a leash. She has become the smartest and most lovable cat, that I have ever known. I am back to working on my book, which I've titled "Whispers in the Night." It has kept me busy doing a lot of historical and ancestry research. Our community has a HUGE 2 day book sale at a local school once a year and you can buy "a yard of books" for $3, boy did I have fun!!! Our craft guild starts up again this week, so I am busy, busy, busy!

Hi, I just discovered this thread! Thanks to Dick for starting it. I'm definitely a reader . Currently, I've started The Cave by Jose Saramago. He's a portuguese pulitzer prize winner and his writing is fabulous, an experience in itself. Beware, he rarely uses punctuation but it's what makes his style what it is. Blindness is the first book I read and highly recommend it, has spiritual underpinings. So far, The Cave has me hooked.

Just finished a good read by Paul Auster - "The Brooklyn Follies" - He's a very facile writer and tells a good story. This is not a particularly deep book but is thoroughly enjoyable. It's about a late middle-aged man, recovering from cancer and divorce at the same time and his experiences and thoughts as his life comes back together.

It's nice to see this thread continue to be somewhat popular and that many cravers are also avid readers. Since spring I have been spending more time tending my garden than reading, but I just had a week cruising the Gulf Islands of British Columbia and had lots of time to read. I finished a very interesting book by Ray Kurzweil called "The Singularity is Near." The "singularity" according to Kurzweil is when human intelligence and artificial intelligence merge and humans begin to transcend their biology. The first part of the book deals a lot with statistics and exponential growth in technology, but if you can wade through that it becomes very intriguing when he talks about nanotechnology and wiping out disease and reversing the aging process. It's worth the read, especially if you enjoy futuristic techno stuff...

wow I love this site, I have gotten the names of a couple of books that I am going to read, has anyone read "house of sand" Loved it

Just finished reading "Homer's Odyssey" by Gwen Cooper. It is a true story about Homer, a blind cat. This book is delightful and full of surprises. If you enjoyed "Dewey", You will LOVE this book!

P.S. Molly, my cat highly recommends it too!

Just came back from a 3 day weekend with my wife. Lots of time to relax and finish reading the biography of Lincoln by Carl Sandburg. It was originally written in several volumes and covered both the prairie years and the war years. My copy is a single volume of 762 pages. It's worth reading if you like biographies, history and politics. There is a huge amount of information in the book. However, Sandburg's expertise I think is in poetry and poets, I think have a different sense of time and sequence than prose writers. Even so, you get a real feeling for the man, Lincoln. Sandburg presents him as quite human - extraordinary, but human. You also get a real sense of the politics of the time which are amazingly similar to the politics of today...

The Mitford series is one of my favorites.

Just finished an interesting novel by Elif Shafak - "The Bastard of Istanbul." It's an intriguing story that contrasts Turkish and Armenian values and cultures through characters who are more or less secular in an environment that is mostly Islamic.

Here's another good culture crashing novel. It's called "The Age of Shiva" by Manil Suri. The story follows the life of a young woman whose Hindu family is forced to migrate from Pakistan to India after the partition in 1949. Her father is not religious and has many friends who are muslim. He is very much a secularist in the vein of Nehru. They move to Delhi where the daughter grows up and marries a Hindu boy whose family is very orthodox. They are polite to their muslim neighbors in public but privately hold much resentment and fear through their prejudices and ignorance. It is very sensitively and colorfully written as a missive from a mother to a son - although the author is male.

A few years back I read the first novel by Canadian poet Anne Michaels. It was called "Fugitive Pieces" and was about a young Jewish boy who escaped from Poland after his family was killed by Nazis. He eventually ended up in Toronto as an adult. The book was captivating. The author's use of language was extraordinary. Her skills as a poet came through loud and clear in her prose. The book was fairly successful even though I felt it had a week ending. She's just published a new novel, "The Winter Vault." It's interesting and creative, but it's wasn't an easy read for me. It's basically a love story that revolves around building dams and locks on the St. Lawrence and Nile rivers. There's a lot of jumping back and forth from river to river and present to past and sometimes I wasn't sure where I was... Her beautiful use of the language is evident in various places but it wasn't enough to hold the book together. It may be that because I was never very good at poetry, either producing it or understanding it, this book was difficult for me. Someone who is keener than I at deciphering poetry may find this book much more enjoyable than I did.

Here are a couple of titles for you guys. I just read The Help by Kathryn Stockett - riveting story. Good book club discussion book. Also, I loved The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. My 6th grade son and I are in a race to read The 39 Clues as soon as each one comes out - fun Da Vinci Code-like adventure and there's a real contest that readers can enter.

Hi folks! I just finished reading Amy Tan's "Saving Fish from Drowning." This is a little different from her previous novels, but her story telling is still superb. This one is about a small group of travelers from the US to Myanmar (Burma) who go missing. The entire story is narrated by the person who arranged the tour - who just happens to have died mysteriously right before the group is to leave the US. The narration is afforded (ostensibly) through the magic of automatic writing. The narrator may be dead, but Amy Tan's humor is alive and well.

I remember that book Dick - thanks for sharing it! It's like a little spoonful that helps me remember the whole dessert!

Just finished a great little quick read. "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian" by Sherman Alexie. The diarist is a 14 year old boy who grows up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. It's at the same time poignant and light-hearted and deals with such heavy subjects as depression, alcoholism, peer pressure and the dreams of a 14 year old. Worth reading!

This forum is certainly a fun treasure! The last book I read was the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrow. It is set in WWII England; very funny, sad,and heartwarming.
Now I will have to visit the library to find some of the books y'all have mentioned. Thanks!

I finished a book a couple of days ago that is a bit different from the books I usually read, but it was captivating and thoroughly enjoyable. The title is "The Shadow of the Wind" by Carlos Ruiz Zafon and takes place in Barcelona. It begins with a young boy whose father (an antiquarian book dealer) takes him to "the cemetery of forgotten books" and is directed to choose one. Once the boy has made his choice and reads the book he is captivated by the obscurity of the author and sets out on an epic quest to find out about the author and why none of his other books seem to exist anywhere. In his quest he uncovers secrets of "murder, madness and doomed love." Zafon is an excellent story teller. If you like the intrigue of a mystery with a bit of light heartedness and romance thrown in you might enjoy this book.

I've enjoyed reading the recommendations of others. Here are a few I've read this year:
The Lacuna, B. Kingsolver - more than excellent
Lost City of Z, David Grann - interesting and I did learn stuff
The Lost books of the Odyssey, Zachery Mason - like the odyssey on drugs (good tho)
Prodigal Summer, B. Kingsolver - she is a wonderful writer
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, B. Kingsolver - highly recommend it for foodies
The Girl who fell from the Sky, Heidi Durrow - amazingly heartbreaking

Ok, that's it for me for now. I write reviews for Amazon, but my name there is not what it is here....