Weekly reading thread - Week of March 1st

I read a novel called "Summer Rental" from Mary Kay Andrews. I've never read this author before and it was basically what you call "chick lit", or a beach read. It was light reading for me, but it was enjoyable. I liked the story. It was about 3 women in their mid 30's who'd known each other since grade school getting together to rent a beach house for a month in Nags Head, North Carolina. That part I really enjoyed because my family did that one year too-rented a beach house in Nags Head, sadly it wasn't for an entire month, but I knew the area vaguely. Anyway, for a light read it's a fairly good book. Not the best I've read but not the worst. I'd say a 3 out of 5 starts.

I really need to get to the library, but in the meantime I pulled one off of my shelves-an oldie but a goodie-Maeve Binchy's "Echo's" I've read it before a couple of times, but it's been awhile so I decided to read it again. It's the story of a poor Irish girl growing up in a village by the sea who's family owns a small grocery shop. She has a horrible sister who torments her constantly and never studies, while Clare realizes that getting good grades is her only chance of success and a future. As usual the novel is filled with wonderful characters from the kind village doctor and his son, to the teacher that believes in her and helps her to the family that doesn't understand her.

If you've never read a book by Maeve Binchy I highly recommend her. She was my absolute favourite author until I read the Outlander series last year by Diana Gabaldon and now she's my second favourite. But I still love her dearly and her books never disappoint. Her style of writing make you feel as though you know the characters and can visually see exactly what everything looks like.

Debbie in MD.

I am still reading Everything I Never Told You. I only get a few minutes to read each day, so I am not getting too far. And I read at bedtime, so sometimes I am half asleep and forget what I read the next night. Trying to get the house organized so I have more time to read!

Has anyone read The Book of Unknown Americans? It is on sale at Target this week, so was thinking about getting it. There are no reviews on Barnes and Noble.

I read The Book of Unknown Americans. This is what I wrote on Goodreads about it:

I would give this 3.5 stars (rounded up; feeling generous). I liked the characters and their points of view. While I've read books about immigrants, they tend to be more historical fiction. This book is contemporary focusing primarily on two immigrant families from Mexico and Panama living in Delaware. While overall I liked the writing and basic elements, I knocked off 1.5 stars because it didn't have the depth I prefer in novels.

I liked Sharp Objects, but it was sure a twisted book!  Definitely not for everyone.  Gillian Flynn seems so normal, but her books are so creepy!

maryland - I read The Book Of Unknown Americans and gave it 4 stars. I actually liked that fact that the book attempted to capture the immigrant experience in a more contemporary setting. THat book had me thinking for a few days after finishing it. I would recommend it.

This week I finished The Three by Sarah Lotz - I was disappointed by this one. THe premise is that 4 airplanes crash simultaneously in various parts of the world and 3 children survive each crash. It was billed as a horror story. It is not. It is written in a documentary style that is interesting and it delves into the conspiracy theory phenomenon. I liked that. What I didn't like was the story kept building to something big, and then just totally fizzled. Ugh.

I finished reading Rosie Perez book Handbook for an unpredictable life  This was an amazing book. I have so much more respect for her now after reading how she spent her childhood in a Catholic Home for Children and was horribly abused by the Nuns. Her mother was schizophrenic and never wanted any of her many children that she had given birth to. I highly recommend this book. 

I am now reading. A House in the Sky by Amanda Lindhout. This book was recommended to me by another pea here on a thread about books that I started this last week. 

paigepea, I didn't care for Dark Places by Gillian Flynn. I wish I had stopped reading the book!

annabella, I like historical fiction set in Europe as well. I'm going to check out those books. I did listen to All the Light We Cannot See on audiobook.

gina, I'm in a book club and the only rule is one person picks a book and no one complains. We didn't love The Best of Me, but I texted my friends and told them let's just see the movie; Scott Eastwood!

pudgygroundhog, it's my goal to read Harry Potter once. My daughter has reread them numerous times.

Has anyone heard of oysterbooks.com? It's $10.00 a month to read unlimited books. I'm tempted to give it a try during a summer month when I know things won't be as busy. Not sure if you have to commit to a subscription.

For peas that liked Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children it's being directed right now by Tim Burton! Samuel L. Jackson will be in it as well. It's going to be released in 2016.

I only read one book this week by Andrew Klavan called The Identity Man. He wrote also wrote True Crime, which was later turned into a movie. I loved that book. This one... not so much. My review on GR is below.

Yuck.

Normally, I really like Andrew Klavan. But The Identity Man was just weak and far-fetched. In addition, it needed some serious editing. I generally am not too critical of editing issues, especially in fiction, as long as the story flows along fairly well. However, I will make my point through the use of an example:

"The last movie Shannon watched in the white room - the last DVD in the tomato can carton - was kind of stupid but kind of good, too. If anyone had been around while he was watching it, he would have said it was kind of stupid. But since it was just him sitting there, he had to admit, secretly he thought it was pretty good." (p. 79).

Kind of stupid? Kind of good? Pretty good?

SMH. I expect so much more from you, Klavan. So much more. You ARE the same author who wrote True Crime, right? For a while, I seriously wondered. This was such a big-time disappointment that I almost quit reading it. I can summarize my thoughts with the following sentence: It was kind of stupid.

2/5 stars, and that might be generous.

End of review.

I am reading a book with a lot more potential this week. I am also reading the classic Rebecca but going very slowly.

Lisa

Last week I had just started Clara and Mr Tiffany by Susan Vreeland, the story of lead light window maker Louis Comfort Tiffany and Clara one of the women who works for him. There is some speculation now that the idea for the famous Tiffany lamps came from Clara and also she designed most of them. Definitely an interesting insight into some of the processes info making leadlight and also into the Tiffany family (somehow I missed that Louis Tiffany is the son jeweller Charles Tiffany - founder of Tiffany & Co.)
Tiffany had some 'interesting' ideas, although he employed women and thought they had better design and color sense than men, he had a policy of not letting married women work, so he hired young girls, trained them in the art of glass selection & cutting and design...but then made them quit when they got married.
Definitely interesting if you like this sort of detailed historical fiction on a specific subject.


Then I'd downloaded Circle of Influence (Zoe Chambers Mysteries, #1) by Annette Dashofy from the library because it sounded promising.Zoe Chambers is the local paramedic and deputy coroner is a small town, when a local (hated) politician is found dead in another man's car. Basically I wasn't expecting this to be a 'cozy' mystery, which I think it was mainly. Lots of people milling around talking and not much investigation. This didn't really grab me at all.
2 stars from me, but if you enjoy Agatha Christie/cozy type books then you'd probably like this. Apparently this is the first book in what is planned to be an ongoing series.

Currently about half way through Under the Wide and Starry Sky by Nancy Horan which is the true love story of Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne. When they first meet Fanny is married with 3 children and is almost 12 years older than 24yo Robert. This has mixed reviews on Goodreads, but I am really enjoying it. Fascinating historical fiction about two really interesting people. I grew up with a copy of Stevenson's "A Childs Garden of Verses" as one of my favourite books but I've never known much about him.

I'm still reading Kristin Hannah's book The Nightingale. It's about 2 sisters living in France during the German occupation and WWII. They have a German soldier living with them and the younger sister is joining the Resistance. So far so good! I always love her books.

Glad you are enjoying it. There was a small thing that bugged me at the end of the book but I won't tell you what it was so I don't spoil it. Otherwise, I really loved it.

I finished A Tree Grows in Brooklyn last week and really enjoyed it.

I just started In Falling Snow. I feel like it's slow going right now so I hope it picks up.

I read Drive Nacho Drive by Brad and Sheen Van Orden for Book Club. A couple drives through South America in a VW Van,and blogs about it. The book is a self-published collection of the blog posts - not amazing, but not awful either. All misspellings, editing errors, and misuses of words from the blog are naturally included in the novel.

I re-read another childhood favorite, All of a Kind Family Downtown by Sydney Taylor. I only own the first one and this one, but I need to find the others and get them, so fun.

I read that book last month and didn't enjoy it. I finished it only because I felt obligated but kept waiting for it to get good but it never did.

By the way I was thinking with so many of us using a kindle, what if "loaned" our books to each other? Amazon lets you do that from peer to peer. You can set up a profile for yourself at lendle.me where you categorize/list your books and then anyone can just go checkout a book from you and vice versa. 

I read a good non-fiction book called Rising Tide by John M. Barry, about the 1927 Mississippi River flood and what caused it. I enjoyed the read--it is so interesting to see how we think we can control the natural world, and how devastatingly it proves us wrong.

Now I'm reading another book by the same author called The Great Influenza, about the flu pandemic of 1918.