Summer 2007 Reading List

[GoodWitch58]

Just finished Exile by Richard North Patterson..I found it riveting ; it has to do with the Israel - Palestine issue. Well written and made me think about a lot of things.

 

[beachmouse]

I'm about halfway through Red Thunder by John Varley. A disgraced former astronaut, a semi-autistic Cajun genius, and four Cocoa Beach college kids end up building their own spaceship in a New Smyrna Beach warehouse in order to try to rescue a group of American astronauts and beat the Chinese to Mars.

It's a Robert Heinlein juveniles meets Carl Hiaasen kind of story, with some pretty obvious nods to both (characters named Jubal and Manny among other Heinlein references, and there's a cleaning and landscaping company called Hiaasen's that shows up at the astronaut's home at one point) and really is a fun read if you love old Florida, the space program, and all that, even though the science really isn't plausable.

Some (so far) non-explicit adult content involving what you'd expect a group of twenty year old college students to do when no one was looking, so call it appropriate for about age 15 and up.

 

[rapunzel]

I am reading a riveting book called The Big Eddy Club, by David Rose. It's a work of non-fiction based on the Stocking Stranglings that took place in Columbus, Georgia, in 1977. Well, that's what the first half of the book is about...the second half deals with the rather bizarre trial of the man who was eventually arrested for the crime. It sort of goes into how insular Columbus is, and describes why it may have been in the best interests of the 'establishment' to charge someone and make those charges stick.

I think part of the reason I find the book so fascinating is that my grandparents lived in Wynnton (the neighborhood where all but one of the murders occured) and I was about five at the time. I remember being in bed at their house when I was visiting and lying awake watching out the the window for the strangler ans I remember staring at a perfectly lit crepe myrtle because every light in the neighborhood was left on. I also remember my grandparents discussing how their friend who survived the strangler attack said the man wasn't black, and they speculated it was the son of a very prominent family. The stranglings stopped when his family sent him to be committed up north somewhere. I wish I'd understood more at the time.

The book is a very interesting history lesson, and anyone who grew up in the South will find much of the story could be set in their hometown. Anyway, I highly recommend The Big Eddy Club.

 

[peapod1980]

I have been in SoWal since Saturday and am on a reading marathon...part of what I love about being on vacation...I finally have dedicated time to read.

I love the James Patterson books...just finished "Honeymoon" and am just about finished with "Lifeguard"

Then I am moving onto "Body Surfing by Anita Shreve. I have read several by this author...really like them.

[/b]

Please post a review of this one!

I am reading this right now. So far I am underwhelmed. I finished Easter Everywhere by Darcey Steinke the other day and liked that. I have Yes, Your Teen Is Crazy! Loving Your Kid Without Losing Your Mind on its way from half.com. Just won French By Heart from eBay. Mississippi Sissy by Kevin Sessums (always have enjoyed his magazine writing) is in a stack with The Piano Tuner on my bedroom floor.

 

[Allifunn]

I have "The Secret" and "A Year In The World" on my reading list, and a few nonsensical books "Savannah's Garden" and "A Salty Piece Of Land"

 

[DBOldford]

At opposite ends of the spectrum, my summer reading...

"Heart Shaped Box" written by Joe Hill, who is Stephen King's son. It is a horror story about a washed up rock star who buys a ghost on an EBay-esque Web site. The ghost is set up avenging the suicide of his stepdaughter, who once lived with the rock star. Very, very scary book and a real page-turner.

"A Thousand Splendid Suns," written by Khaled Hosseini, author of the incomparable "The Kite Runner." This one is also set in post-Taliban (as if) Afghanistan and is told from the women's point of view. Wonderfully literate book.

"Washed Up: The Curious Journeys of Flotsam and Jetsam," a book about beachcombing, written by a woman who lives on the Oregon coast.

I love summer reading!!!

 

[audie]

I just hope to get through some of the ones in the "to read" piles around my house. I get bored easily and it takes forever to read a book because I read about twenty at a time. I wish for once that I could read one book completely, before moving to the next.

you read exactly like mr audie....very rarely does he finish an entire book unless we're on vaca...

I have "The Secret" and "A Year In The World" on my reading list, and a few nonsensical books "Savannah's Garden" and "A Salty Piece Of Land"[/quote]

i really enjoyed this book alli !

 

[audie]

i am still trying to get thru my pile of harlequin blaze books, plus have been reading ghost stories on the side....

 

[Mango]

I have to catch up on my reading, but a friend gave me book that he said was fascinating, so that's my next book to read.
It's called "Dark Back of Time" by Javier Marias. (2004)

Called by its author a "false novel," Dark Back of Time begins with the tale of the odd effects of publishing All Souls, his witty and sardonic 1989 Oxford novel. All Souls is a book Marias swears to be fiction, but which its "characters"--the real-life dons and professors and bookshop owners who have "recognized themselves"--fiercely maintain to be a roman a clef. With the sleepy world of Oxford set into fretful motion by a world that never "existed," Dark Back of Time begins an odyssey into the nature of identity ("we do not know anyone entirely, not even ourselves") and of time. Marias weaves together autobiography (the brother who died as a child; the loss of his mother), a legendary kingdom, strange ghostly literary figures, halls of mirrors, a one-eyed pilot, a curse in Havana, and a bullet lost in Mexico. Dark Back of Time has been acclaimed here as "superb" (Review of Contemporary Fiction), "fantastically original" (Talk), "brilliant" (Virginia Quarterly Review), and "a rare gift" (The New York Times Book Review). "In the best manner of Borges," The Hudson Review commented that this hybrid is "lush and mysterious."

 

[Allifunn]

:scratch: MMMM...interesting Mango...let me know.

I also have Stone 588 by Gerald Browne which my mom gave me to read and The Pact by Jodi Picoult from my sister. Each say the book they have given me is "interesting". I think they are both rather dark...but thought prevoking.