What are we reading in June?

Last mentioned in May, the various miseries limned by Wharton and Donoghue. Maybe someone can start summer on a less dire note?

Last night I started The Country Girls by Edna O'Brien. In audio book, I'm listening to Astrid and Veronica.

For Women in Sci-Fi/Fantasy month I'm reading Frankenstein's Cat Cuddling Up to Biotech's Brave New Beasts by Emily Anthes. It's non fiction but amazing and making me re-examine my ideas on genetic modification.
By the way, there's a topic for Women in Sci-Fi/Fantasy month, and I posted to it, but I can't find it now. Can someone post it here?
Oh, and on the mystery front I'm still listening to Blue Monday which starts out as a child abduction mystery and then gets into the lives of psychoanalysts. I've never read Nicci French before, I think I just picked this up on a whim and am enjoying it very much.

>3 Citizenjoyce:. Is this the one you mean? https://www.librarything.com/topic/174680 I just joined the group to take part in the discussion after sturlington mentioned it.

I'm reading In My Hands : Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer by Irene Gut Opdyke and Jennifer Armstrong. It is the true story of a young girl (Late teens/early twenties) in Poland during WW2 and the terrible things she sees and experiences and how she does her best to help others despite the risks to herself. I'm just over 100 pages in so far. She's a remarkable woman. I think this biography/autobiography may have been written with a younger audience in mind, however, it is still an interesting read.

Nicki, let me know how you like O'Brien. She's on my TBR someday list.

>4 vwinsloe: Thanks, that's the one. Somehow I'd hit the "ignore this topic" button.

I've just started We that were young by Irene Rathbone, a novel about young women in WWI. I believe it is based on her and her friends' experiences.

>6 nohrt4me2: O'Brien's on my TBR too.

I just finished We are completely beside ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler. It was a fantastic story and I loved the narrator. It starts in the middle when she is in her 5th year at UC Davis and hasn't seen her brother since she was 11 and her sister since she was 5. She slowly pieces together her background and how her psychologist father raised her as an experiment.

Highly recommended!

>10 fikustree:: I second your recommendation. We Are Completely Beside Ourselves is an unusually themed family story exploring the limits of memory, about forgiveness and many ethical dilemmas. A great set of characters.

Just finished reading Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father, which is the story of a single out gay father living with his daughter in San Francisco in the 70s/80s. It was superbly written and absolutely captivating. Such an interesting memoir. I had a hard time putting it down. Highly recommended.

lemon, I heard about that book in the NYT or somewhere. It sounded very interesting!

>5 Peace2: I'm reading In My Hands : Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer by Irene Gut Opdyke and Jennifer Armstrong

When that book was first published, it was marketed to the young adult crowd, but you're right, it is a remarkable book about how an ordinary girl rises to extraordinary circumstances.

There's been talk on the may topic about changing this to a continuous rather than monthly thread. If you want to do that, the thread is here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/175474

>11 shearon: I met Karen Joy Fowler at the Montana Festival of the Book last year. She was on a panel called something like 'family relationships in books.' Unfortunately, she was overpolite during the panel and the moderator let several lesser known authors with less interesting things to say do most of the talking.

>16 streamsong: Shoot, how disappointing. I'd love to hear whatever she had to say.

I'll reply on this thread since the discussion started here.

>17 Citizenjoyce: In The Jane Austen Book Club, there is a scene where one of the characters is barely able to avert a rape. After the book came out, Karen Joy Fowler let it be known that this was a scene from her teenage years.

Her own teenage daughter was appalled. But not the 'Mom, that's horrible. I am so proud of you!' type response but rather an adolescent 'Mom, it's bad enough that you wrote that in a book that my friends might read, but then you had to tell everyone it was about you. Ooooh. Ugh. Gross. If you mention it again, I'm disowning you as my mother."

But just when she was getting into the meat of the thing, she was interrupted and with the flow gone, she never returned to the subject.

Wow, a great discussion averted. What a pity.

The Karen Joy Fowler and daughter story is interesting, and I wish it was revealed how she and her daughter dealt with that.

Re mother/daughter relationships, I remember reading Nancy Friday's My Mother, My Self, and felt that that book offered some interesting insights about mother-daughter relationships.

I wonder if it would still hold up after all these years.

My daughter can't figure out why I'm so political or why I want to talk everything to death, and I can't figure out why she doesn't.

OtherJoyce - That's interesting. My 17yr old daughter is quite political and is one of those kids who sometimes tells me too much information. My 14 year old is the quite one. We are getting ready to send the elder one off to university. Next year will be different. I'm not sure I'll be able to keep up with culture that I'm otherwise not interested in . . . things like "dubstep" and probably even "twerking" would not be on my radar without a vocal teen in the house.

I have a puzzling relationship with my now deceased mother. I think I might want to hunt down My Mother My Self.

Oh yes, Other Joyce, thank the great whatever for kids, I'd never have an iPhone or an iPad or be on Facebook without my kids. Twerking I would have known about from Ray Donovan but never would have known it was such a big deal until Miley Cyrus. I always figure if I've heard about something, it's probably just about over. I'm also thinking My Mother My Self sounds interesting.
ETA I just read some of the reviews which don't make it sound quite so good.

>20 nohrt4me2:, >22 Nickelini:, >23 Citizenjoyce:. I loved My Mother My Self as did my mother. Perhaps it is dated now, but I found so many revelations in that book when I read it just after it came out.

>20 nohrt4me2: we'll just have to make a pact. If she gives a talk anywhere, we'll just have to corner her and ask how they worked it out. Stalkers, unite! :-)

I haven't read My Mother, My Self either, although it has been on my radar. I wouldn't mind a group read, or perhaps, a thread or two that could be added to as people read various books.

I am currently reading The Golem and the Jinni for book club. The writing is fine but the book is feeling overlong to me, excessively padded. I've been noticing this more with newer books. Like movies, they seem to have gotten longer for no good reason. Anyone else noticing this or is it just me?

The funny thing is, I usually like longer books but I have to feel completely immersed in the world to do so. Otherwise, I get restless and want to move on.

> 26 Yes, I've definitely read books that felt overly long just to be long. I don't mind lengthy books when they're good; but when it's just extra filling, it makes the book so awful to slog through.

Joyce: I'm sure the book is dated in many ways, but I had/have a difficult mother whom I did not want to be like. I feared my genetic cocktail. After reading Friday's book, I made more of a conscious effort to look more dispassionately and analytically at my mother. It was a useful book for me at the time.

>25 streamsong: Streamsong I'll be happy to make that pact. I don't have daughters, but I'm always interested in how these things play out. I think it might be easier to see oneself in a daughter. Even though my son and I share a good many traits and interests (and I know I shaped many of them), I still tend to see my father or brother in him rather than myself.

>25 streamsong: I'm trying to find a way to fit some Andre Norton into my month for the women in science fiction read, but I think it would be very interesting to try for a group read of My Mother My Self next month. I know my library system has a copy. Anyone want to join?
>26 sturlington: I'm currently reading, almost finished with, a guy book Winter's Tale for a "sense of place" challenge. Well, the book fits the sense of place to a t, obviously Halpern really loves New York, but he does go on rather much when there's an interesting plot I'm wanting to follow.

>29 Citizenjoyce: If I can get the book on ILL, I'd try to participate. I'd be interested to see how the book holds up after 40+ years.

I looked up some bio info on Friday; she's almost exactly my mother's age. Funny. I thought she was closer to mine.

I'm reading The Silent Wife. I'm in the mood for something light, entertaining and hopefully a bit vicious. The Gone Girl comparisons give me hope that this might fit the bill.

I just finished listening to the first Harry Potter book. So, so, so good. I especially liked seeing her masterful work in setting up the series after having read them all. She did it so gracefully, invisibly and without sacrificing any part of the story being told.

I also just finished The Janus Stone. It is the second in a mystery series featuring an archeologist called Ruth Galloway. I like her a bunch. She's curmudgeonly, funny, resourceful and smart. I was afraid in the first book that her self-hatred about being fat might be too much for me, but while it isn't my favorite part of the book, body issues are certainly a part of women's lives so in some ways it is refreshing to see them in a mystery.

>31 nancyewhite: I can see why someone would compare it to Gone Girl, but it's far out of that league, as is almost everything else I've read. Not that it's worse, just that it isn't completely misanthropic. I liked it.