What Are You Reading the Week of 14 March 2015?

From Wikipedia in its entirety:
"Lois Lowry (born Lois Ann Hammersberg; March 20, 1937) is an American writer credited with more than thirty children's books and an autobiography. She has won two Newbery Medals, for Number the Stars in 1990 and The Giver in 1994. For her contribution as a children's writer, she was a finalist in 2000 (and U.S. nominee again in 2004) for the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award, the highest recognition available to creators of children's books. Her book Gooney Bird Greene won the 2002 Rhode Island Children's Book Award. In 2007 she received the Margaret Edwards Award from the American Library Association for her contribution in writing for teens. In 2011 she gave the May Hill Arbuthnot Lecture; her lecture was titled "UNLEAVING: The Staying Power of Gold ". She was also awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters by Brown University in 2014.

As an author, Lowry is known for writing about difficult subject matters within her works for children. She has explored such complex issues as racism, terminal illness, murder, and the Holocaust among other challenging topics. She has also explored very controversial issues of questioning authority such as in The Giver quartet. Her writing on such matters has brought her both praise and criticism. In particular, her work The Giver, the first novel in The Giver quartet, has been met with a diversity of reactions from schools in America, some of which have adopted it as a part of the mandatory curriculum, while others have prohibited the book's inclusion in classroom studies. The Giver has also been made into a film, also called The Giver, which was released in 2014.

Life and career
Lowry was born on March 20, 1937, in Honolulu, Hawaii, to parents Katherine Gordon (née Landis) and Robert E. Hammersberg. Her father was of Norwegian descent and her mother had German, English, and Scots-Irish ancestry. Initially, Lowry's parents named her "Cena" for her Norwegian grandmother but upon hearing this, her grandmother telegraphed and instructed Lowry's parents that the child should have an American name. Her parents chose the names Lois and Ann, which were the names of her father's sisters.
Lowry was born the middle of three children. She had an older sister, Helen, and a younger brother Jon. Helen, three years older than her, died in 1962 at the age of 28 of cancer. This experience influenced Lowry's first book A Summer to Die which is about a young girl who tragically loses her older sister (which is also a subplot of Number the Stars). Lowry's brother Jon is six years younger and grew up to be a doctor. They continue to enjoy a close relationship.

Lowry's father was a career military officer – an Army dentist – whose work moved the family all over the United States and to many parts of the world. Lowry and her family moved from Hawaii to Brooklyn, New York, in 1939 when Lowry was two years old. She attended kindergarten at the Berkeley Institute and relocated in 1942 to her mother's hometown, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, when Lowry's father was deployed to the Pacific during World War II. Lowry's father served on a hospital ship called the USS Hope and on the island of Tinian during the war.
Following World War II, Lowry and her family moved to Tokyo, Japan, where her father was stationed from 1948–1950. Lowry went through junior high school at the Tokyo American School at Meguro, a special school for the children of military families, and then returned to the United States to attend high school. Lowry and her family briefly lived in Carlisle again in 1950 before moving to Fort Jay at Governors Island, New York, where Lowry attended Curtis High School on Staten Island. In 1952, she entered Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn Heights, New York, where she finished high school. Lowry entered Pembroke College in Brown University in 1954. She attended for two years until her marriage, at age 19, to Donald Grey Lowry, a U.S. Navy officer, in 1956. Together, they had four children: daughters Alix and Kristin, and sons Grey and Benjamin.

The Lowrys moved quite frequently in their early years of marriage due to Donald's military career. They lived in California, Connecticut (where Alix was born), Florida (where Grey was born), South Carolina, and finally Cambridge, Massachusetts (where Kristin and Benjamin were born). The family settled in Cambridge after Donald left military service to attend Harvard Law School. After Donald Lowry finished law school, the family moved to Portland, Maine.

As her children grew up Lowry found time to complete her degree in English literature from the University of Southern Maine in Portland in 1972. After earning her B.A., she pursued graduate studies at her alma mater. It was during this coursework that she was introduced to photography, which became a lifelong passion as well as a profession. Her specialty was child photography, but she also took pictures to accompany the articles she submitted as a freelance journalist. Her freelance work for Redbook magazine generated her first book opportunity. Her story for the magazine was meant for adults but written from a child's perspective. A Houghton Mifflin editor recognized her talent and suggested that she write a children's book. Lowry agreed and wrote A Summer to Die which Houghton Mifflin published in 1977 when she was 40 years old. She and Donald Lowry divorced that same year; as Lowry nurtured her budding career, they found they were no longer compatible. Lowry said about those transitional years of her life, "My children grew up in Maine. So did I. I returned to college at the University of Southern Maine, got my degree, went to graduate school, and finally began to write professionally, the thing I had dreamed of doing since those childhood years when I had endlessly scribbled stories and poems in notebooks."

Writing about both funny things and serious issues has sustained Lois Lowry through her own hard times. Her son Grey was killed in the crash of his fighter plane in 1995. Lowry has acknowledged that this was the most difficult day of her life, but through her steady work as an author, she has persevered. Lowry said, "His death in the cockpit of a warplane tore away a piece of my world. But it left me, too, with a wish to honor him by joining the many others trying to find a way to end conflict on this very fragile earth." Later, Ben and his wife had a baby named Grey Lowry to remember "Zane" Grey for his service to the Air Force, along with another child named Rhys who is younger.

Today, Lois Lowry remains active by not only continuing to write and speaking at appearances, but also enjoying time at her homes in Massachusetts and Maine. She takes pleasure in reading, knitting, gardening, and entertaining her four grandchildren.

Lowry wrote of her hope for the future recently on her blog, "I am a grandmother now. For my own grandchildren – and for all those of their generation – I try, through writing, to convey my passionate awareness that we live intertwined on this planet and that our future depends upon our caring more, and doing more, for one another."
Lowry has suggested that she is religious, but not so religious as "to have a favorite psalm.""

Has anyone seen the movie of The Giver? I saw a mention that Loris Lowry thought the movie improved upon the book. How do you feel that happens for a movie adaptation of a book?

What are you reading this week?

It is rare that I think that a movie version improves on a book. I think that there are some ambitious adaptations out there. Cloud Atlas is one of those. I would never have thought to put that book on screen and when I saw the movie I thought it wasn't bad for a movie adaptation. I am not sure that the novel works as a movie but given the starting point of the novel the movie wasn't bad.

I have been a fan of Lois Lowry's work for many years and I am happy that she is still writing.

Marking my spot and still reading The Holy Thief and Splendors and Glooms.

I read Wildlife by Richard Ford yesterday. Now I am reading Women With Men: Three Stories which are really novellas also by Ford.

I am reading Misadventures of the Family Fletcher by Dana Alison Levy. This is a novel for children, and will start Rebecca for the B.A.C. group read that Paul started. I also am taking Hellhound on His Trail because my real life book discussion group is reading it and will be discussing it for our April meeting. I am not sure that I will have time to read all of these but I hope to get a good start on them.

Am having a cavort through Bill Bryson - just finished re-reading Notes from a Small Island, and am now re-reading In a Sunburned Country.

#5
I just recommended A Walk in the Woods to a library patron who hated Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. I told her that Bill Bryson was funny but he also talked about hiking and about the country he was walking through were Cheryl Strayed only talked about herself. Walk Through the Woods is a much better book was the title that turned me on to Bryson.

This week I am reading The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin by Joe McGinniss and The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg. I would recommend both of them.

I'm reading Samuel Butler's translation of The Iliad, as well as Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn. There's always a weird feeling about reading a "manifesto" type book that has since entered the public consciousness and become less controversial -- Punished by Rewards was published in the early 90s and since then a lot of its points about intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation have become common knowledge. But I'm on a bit of a child development kick right now and I happened to have it lying around (found it in a box of free books by the road once!)

I discovered Lois Lowry this past year and read a few of her books, including The Giver. I also saw the movie and the bonus selections on the dvd where Lowry gave her thoughts, saying seeing it made her wish she could rewrite portions of the book. What a compliment. Having read the book and seen the movie, I could see why and was impressed by how touched she was by the movie.

Halfway through Shopaholic to the Stars, an enjoyable and quick read.

Finished Splendors and Glooms by Laura Amy Schlitz. Had a kind of "meh" reaction to it. Started The Dragon Never Sleeps by Glen Cook.

I'm a little more than two thirds of the way through The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Vol 5 which covers the year 1664. I should finish it up tonight or tomorrow. After that, I'm planning to read Putin's Kleptocracy.

I'm back to reading my Early Reviewer, The Dream Lover: A Novel by Elizabeth Berg. I was sad to put it down so it probably won't be long until I finish it.

Just finished Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 which was a long time ago recommendation. I'm still reading Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko and listening to Wait for Me! by Deborah Mitford Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire which I'm actually really enjoying so far as a look into a life that is so unlike my own. I've also been distracted by a new acquisition (this was on my Amazon Wishlist for a while with a thought that I might like to read it, so when I saw it for 50p today I couldn't resist getting it and then I've been sucked straight into dipping into reading Bedsit Disco Queen by Tracey Thorn another biography/memoir, so far it's interesting with a touch of humour as she recounts some of her teenage experiences. I hope it continues as well, as there seems to be a healthy dose at this point of realism - not 'what a wonderful person I am'.

I'm come around the far turn and into the home stretch (the final 100 pages) of The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light, Carlos Santana's recent biography. I'm enjoying it very much. Just finding reading time tough to come by. Plus, it's a long (520 pages) book.

I finished The Spinning Heart, a portrait of an Irish town in the aftermath of the recession presented in 21 short vignettes told by 21 different people. It suggests the influence of family but also economy on people, the difficulty people have acting as they think they want to, and the rampant miscommunication. I had difficulty with some of the dialect and catching the interconnectedness of the various people.

Next up on the recommendation of Brenzi H is for Hawk. Looking forward to it.

>16 snash: Oh I really hope you enjoy it as much as I did snash:-)

I'm reading One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes.

I am listening to Good Lord Bird and will be starting A Little Life in the next few days.

I'm reading book 2 of Der rote Ritter by Adolf Muschg. I also started re-reading The Box of Delights by John Masefield, which has turned out to be one of my favorite books. It's only been a few years since I read it, but I'm finding many of the details unfamiliar, and it's fun to read it again.

>18 Iudita: How are you liking Good Lord Bird? I read The Color of Water recently, and it made me interested in reading more of his work.

Just finished listening to another excellent novel by Greg Iles, The Quiet Game.

Next up for listening is the new Flavia de Luce installment, As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust by Alan Bradley.

#18 & 20> Yes, I'd like to know, too. The Color of Water is my favorite memoir, I think, but I've never read any of McBride's fiction.

#11
Splendors and Glooms has been a book that has raised hackles and caused comment. One of the students working in my library recently read it and at first she had big questions about its suitability for the age group for which it was intended. She thought it was very violent and full of adult concepts. However, in the end she liked it. I haven't gotten around to reading it yet, but plan to do so this spring. If possible.

I've finished The Bellwether Revivals--a mixed review, but positive overall--and have just begun Without You There Is No Us, my fourth or fifth book on North Korea, which I regard as the scariest place on earth.

I was thrilled to narrate Lois Lowry's the Gooney Bird Greene stories for the Library of Congress. What a marvelous writer she is.

Finished Good Evening Mrs. Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes. I had never even heard of this writer who was a regular contributor to The New Yorker for almost 50 years! I have her novel, One Fine Day on my TBR list. However, I've about overdosed on British ladies on the homefront during WWII (Henrietta's War, Human Voices, and even a bit of Moon Tiger, all beautifully written books), but I'm moving on a few years and (mostly) post-war to Ben MacIntyre's A Spy Among Friends about Kim Philby, the British born and bred Russian spy.

Must get back to the Americans soon. Of course, Gooney Bird is American.....

>25 NarratorLady: Well NarratorLady, I just finished One Fine Day which was delightful and immediately ordered Good Evening Mrs. Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes.

Up next: A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

Spent a chunk of the day at the computer to deal with the backlog of reviews: Alan Turing: The Enigma, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Food, Inc.: Mendel to Monsanto. Set aside Blood of the Tiger, which is actually quite compelling (and disturbing), because I need to finish the also engaging but nearly-500 page The Signature of All Things before the book group meets on Saturday.

>26 brenzi: You'll love the stories brenzi. Of course I heard about Mollie Panter-Downes from LT and she's quite a find. Is it you I should thank?

Continuing my year of British reading with The prime of Miss Jean Brodie, A room of one's own by Virginia Woolf and Adam Hochschild's To end all wars, which deals with opposition to WWI in Great Britain. Just finished Vera Brittain's Testament of friendship, her biography of Winifred Holtby, which I found rather dense and slow-going.

I finished listening to Passion of the Purple Plumeria on the road yesterday and started the Mark of the Midnight Manzinallia. This series The Secret History of the Pink Carnation continues to delight. These are excellent road books for those of us who are steeped in Regency Romances.

>29 Bjace: I was just quoting from the movie of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and telling my husband about it earlier. I really want to read that book. :)

>28 NarratorLady: No I'm afraid I can't take credit for it. One Fine Day was my first Panter-Downes.

Finished wonderfully absurd and fascinating collection of....not exactly short stories as we commonly think of them....I will call them vignettes, Two or Three Years Later: Forty-nine Digressions.

Next up to read is Telex From Cuba by Rachel Kushner. She is coming to Rochester as a Arts & Lecture Series author in the near future.

I'm now about three-fifths of the way into The Narrow Road to the Deep North. It's a good book, but there's just so much of it. It's a library book, however, so I must crack on, in case someone else wants it.

Am also reading Coronel and the Falklands by Geoffrey Bennett.

I have just finished the most excellent Fire in the Unnameable Country by Ghalib Islam, a wondrous work of magic realism and genius, and can now delve back into the nonfiction delight (both of these I had the local library order in), Robert Gordon's Respect yourself : Stax Records and the soul explosion, which UK's Uncut magazine called the best music-related book of 2014. It's superb, with a foreword by Booker T. Jones.

The 5 Wave-Young adult novel but I am enjoying it.. enough to think about picking up the second book of the series The Infinite Sea. Happy reading all!

The Care and Management of Lies, a Novel of the Great War, by Jacqueline Winspear of Maisie Dobbs fame. Just excellent.

I have finally finished The Plantagenets by Dan Jones. It was a great and energetic read but I'm now sick of reading about that family. By the time Richard II almost completely destroyed the country, I wondered how anyone survived.

I am going to try to find something on my own shelves to read next.

Dog On It, fun detective story told from the perspective of the detective's dog (Chet). Not a cozy IMO, plenty of humor. Quick read. First of a series, I'll keep the series in mind when I am looking for a light, fun. fast read.

Dog On It, fun detective story told from perspective of detective's dog. Not a cozy IMO, plenty of humor. Quick read. First of a series, I'll keep the series in mind when I am looking for a light, fun. fast read.

>37 marell: I have The Care and Management of Lies on my wish-list. I would like also like to read the Maise Dobbs series.

I finished Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny. In addition to the Three Pines Village, much of the mystery is set in old Quebec City. I enjoyed it so much. I finished Trigger Warning by Neil Gaiman and The Silent Sister by Diane Chamberain. I have started Home by Marilynne Robinson. I haven't gotten to the meat of the book, but so far it is dull. Crossing fingers it gets better.

I finally finished The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light Carlos Santana's recent autobiography. It was long, and could have used some editing, but overall I enjoyed it. Santana's had an interesting life, all right, and tells about it well. I could have used a little less information about his spiritual endeavors and philosophy, but, hey, the guy's telling his life story and that's all important to who his is, so I mostly gave him a pass on it. You can find my more in-depth review on the book's work page and on my 50-Book Challenge thread.

For something a bit lighter, I've started, and am racing through, Sentinel, the second in Matthew Dunn's "Spycatcher" series.

#20 & 22 - Re: The Good Lord Bird - I can't say I'm loving it but I'm not even at the half way point yet so it is a bit early to judge. The plot seems very episodic, with the characters stumbling into one situation after another which is fine but I feel a bit frustrated that the story line doesn't seem to be going anywhere. I will say that the characters are real characters (so to speak) and the audio performance is really bringing that out so it is entertaining. It is certainly good enough to continue but I'm feeling a bit lukewarm about it.

>43 Iudita: That's disappointing. Let us know if it improves.

I am reading PRAYERS THAT BRING CHANGE by kimberly daniels

Half way through my 700+ pp LTER selection, The Selected Letters of Norman Mailer. Many feel he was not a "nice man" in real life. Well, he can be a real pr*ck in his letters, too, but quite often he crushes or rants with wicked humor. OTOH, his letters acquit him more favorably, I think, than the facts of his life and the exhibitions of his personality, especially those times he was under the influence.

Escaping Mailer's often overpowering opinions with forays into Mr. Midshipman Easy, a wildly funny Victorian novel about the escapades of a philosophical naif who unwittingly launches a personal assault on the British Navy. Keeps me constantly giggling. These alternate with forays into David McCullough's bio of Truman. Truman's not coming off as particularly likable. P'raps he's just a personality I'm not susceptible to. That said, there's no doubt he was personally and morally courageous, and that is highly admirable. Both these books are read-alouds with Lime Spouse.

Slowly savoring The Gardens of Kyoto, a complex and elegiac novel of love, loss, secrets, and grieving in the post-WWII era. Lots of thematic material to digest, along with every literary technique in the writer's toolkit that Kate Walbert pulls off with aplomb and grace.

>41 MsMaryAnn: mmedeiros: I have read all of the books in the Maisie Dobbs series and they are really good. The period details are spot on, always important, I think. I just finished The Care and Management of Lies and it didn't disappoint. It was really special. I hope you find it so too.

I have read all the books to date in the Louise Penny series as well. I think to get the full impact of characters and events, the series should be read in order, if possible. My favorite is The Beautiful Mystery.

>25 NarratorLady: What a cool job you have! I've only read Gooney Bird and the Room Mother of the Gooney Birds. Yes, she is a marvelous writer.

Re-read An Uncommon Reader in anticipation of loaning it to a friend. Lovely book.

I've started the next-to-last volume in the Brother Cadfael series, The Holy Thief. I hate to see the series coming so near the end, but I needed a comfort read.

On deck is my last of the four existing Emily St. John Mandel novels, The Lola Quartet. Even though I expect it to be good, I don't expect it to be comforting.

>49 Meredy: I'm about half done with The Holy Thief but I've still got two books left to go. I'm reading them in the order that amazon.com numbered them.

>30 benitastrnad: The Secret History of the Pink Carnartion is a fun series. I have not read The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla yet. Sometimes the contemporary bits annoy me, but less so in later books. I don't know if the books have changed or I've just gotten used to it :-). I think I am missing a couple of others in the middle somewhere, too.

>49 Meredy: As soon as I'm done with Home (yawn) I will be reading Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel. After reading her book Station Eleven, I added her books to my wish-list. I definitely think she is an author to follow.

>50 seitherin: Ah. A Rare Benedictine is backstory: it tells how Cadfael came to renounce his wordly pursuits and join the monastery. I read it when I was about halfway through the series; if I'd come to it earlier, I don't think I'd have got as much out of it. Book 20 is the last of the series.

>53 Meredy: Is that what amazon.com did? I can live with it. I don't remember if I've ever read that one.

>54 seitherin: The numbered list here on LT is a better guide.

>52 MsMaryAnn: And if you do The Singer's Gun after that, you'll be taking them all in the same order I did.

Not much time for reading with houseguests, but I'll get back to Memoir of Jane Austen which isn't grabbing me as much as I'd wished in the first few chapters.

I finished Erik Larson's Dead Wake and it was wonderful. I didn't want it to end. If you think you don't like non-fiction, give it a try. It reads like a thriller.

I also finished the audio version of Amy Poehler's Yes Please. She reads it herself, with some guests, and it's entertaining.

>57 Copperskye: Book bullet: you got me dead on with Dead Wake. Might have anyway, but all the more so because Walter Lord's 1955 A Night to Remember is still pretty fresh in my memory. I'm now number 32 on the request list.

I finished The Gallery by John Horne Burns, as well as David Margolick's biography of the author, Dreadful: The Short Life and Gay Times of John Horne Burns.

Now I'm reading A. S. Byatt's The Matisse Stories and rereading Penelope Fitzgerald's Offshore. I've also been reading a story per day from William Maxwell's The Old Man at the Railroad Crossing and Other Tales.

Just started The Night Watch by Sarah Waters last night, and am enjoying it so far.

My husband and I finished our latest read-aloud, another wrist-twister by Stephen King: Doctor Sleep. It was entertaining enough in its Kinginess, but it left us hungry for something a bit more literary. So we moved on to The Understory, by Pamela Erens, book-bulleted on LT by people who loved Stoner.

Not much time for reading this week.
Finished She Had Some Horses by Joy Harjo (poems) and Wildlife in America Revised, Updated Edition by Peter Matthiessen and listening to Holidays on Ice by Davis Sedaris and Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan.
Reading One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and listening to Big Miracle by Tom Rose.

fyrflly ~ how did you like She Had Some Horses? It looks really good.

Finishing Half the World by Joe Abercombie
It follows up from Half a King.

61> I love that you and your husband have read-aloud books.