What are you reading the week of March 7, 2020?

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What are you reading the week of March 7, 2020?

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1fredbacon
Mar 7, 2020, 6:45 am

I'm in the middle of The Splendid and the Vile which tells the story of Winston Churchill's early years as Prime Minister when England was left alone to stand against Hitler's Germany. This is well covered ground, but Erik Larson manages to find an intriguing story to tell by focusing on the Churchill family.

2Molly3028
Editado: Mar 7, 2020, 10:03 am

Enjoying this OverDrive audiobook ~

Hindsight (Kendra Michaels Book 7) by Iris Johansen

(murder of two academy teachers Kendra knew from her school days/Kendra and Adam ~ a favorite romantic suspense series)

3PaperbackPirate
Mar 7, 2020, 10:00 am

I just finished Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng. I love the dissection of a family, and bonus, lots of fire metaphors and imagery.

Up next is In the Heart of the Canyon by Elisabeth Hyde. My sisters and I are riding mules in Grand Canyon on Tuesday and out on Thursday so I thought a book with a Grand Canyon setting was appropriate.

4rocketjk
Mar 7, 2020, 11:30 am

I'm coming down the home stretch of The Town, the second novel in William Faulkner's "Snopes Family" trilogy. Very enjoyable.

5richardderus
Mar 7, 2020, 11:30 am

I finished my second reading of All Systems Red in preparation for the Murderbot novel's arrival in May.

6ahef1963
Editado: Mar 7, 2020, 11:32 am

>3 PaperbackPirate: That sounds like a great excursion! I hope you enjoy it. I'd never do it - hell, no - but do have fun!

I'm reading two books - Medusa by Torkil Damhaug - a Norwegian crime novel - and The Thing with Feathers by Noah Strycker, a well-respected bird watcher who, in this book, looks at the similarities and differences between human and avian behaviour.

7hemlokgang
Editado: Mar 7, 2020, 1:35 pm

Finished listening to the poignant Run Me To Earth by Paul Yoon.

Next up for listening is What Belongs To You by Garth Greenwell.

8seitherin
Mar 7, 2020, 2:22 pm

9BookConcierge
Mar 7, 2020, 3:57 pm


Would Like To Meet – Rachel Winters
Digital audio performed by Laura Hobson
3***

From the book jacket: Can you fall in love like they do in the movies? It’s Evie Summers’s job to find out. Because if she can’t convince her film agency’s biggest client, Ezra Chester, to write the romantic-comedy screenplay he owes producers, her career will be over. The catch? He thinks rom-coms are unrealistic – and he’ll only put pen to paper if Evie shows him that it’s possible to meet a man in real life the way it happens on the big screen.

My reactions:
As a reader, I’ve been there, done that, and seen the movie multiple times. It’s a cute rom-com of a novel, but totally predictable. I did like the father-daughter team of Ben and Annette, although I’m not sure having Annette be deaf was necessary.

I’m sounding much like a “romance Grinch” here, but that isn’t really what I mean to convey. It’s an enjoyable rom-com, and I liked listening to it. It’s just not anything I’ll remember much more than a day after finishing it.

Now … who will be cast in the movie?

Laura Hobson does a good job performing the audio version. She sets a good pace and kept this listener engaged.

10adasr
Mar 7, 2020, 8:01 pm

Four Below by Peter Helton-the second in the series

11LyndaInOregon
Mar 8, 2020, 12:57 am

Just finished The World According to Fannie Davis, which is this month's discussion book for our F2F group. Interested in hearing what others thought. I found it slow at times, and marred by the author's trying to make it both a biography of her mother and a memoir of her own life.

The most interesting part of the book to me was its exploration of the shadow-economy within the African-American community of the 1950s and 60s, and the prevalence of Jim Crow laws throughout the culture. Those of us who never dealt firsthand with institutionalized racism think of "Whites Only" drinking fountains or back-of-the-bus indignities, and don't realize how much deeper and more malignant the practices were.

Next up is an early review of The Sleeper Lies, which looks like an interesting suspense tale.

12mollygrace
Mar 8, 2020, 4:28 pm

I finished Jenny Offill's Weather -- good book.
Now I'm reading Apeirogon by Colum McCann

13Molly3028
Mar 9, 2020, 8:18 am

Enjoying this OverDrive Kindle eBook Alexa can read to me ~

Broken Bone China (A Tea Shop Mystery) by Laura Childs

(South Carolina/a drone brings down a hot-air balloon)

14BookConcierge
Editado: Mar 14, 2020, 4:19 pm


Lab Girl – Hope Jahren
5*****

Hope Jahren was always most comfortable in a lab; as a child she played in her father’s lab. She chose to research botany, and this is her memoir.

Jahren structures the book with alternating chapters; in one she will give a botany lesson, detailing, for example, the functioning of a leaf; in the next chapter she’ll relate a personal story of her journey from childhood to her position as a research scientist. And I was frequently able to draw a comparison between the science and the memory. I was fascinated by the science lessons but was completely taken in by her personal story.

Jahren writes with humor and strength as she reveals her personal struggles with bi-polar disorder, with learning to show love having grown up in a reserved Scandinavian culture, and with being a woman in a decidedly male-dominated field. I particularly loved the stories she told of her adventures with her student and eventual lab partner, Bill. This is the kind of guy who will drive you to distraction, but whom you want along on a deserted island. Resourceful is his middle name!

I highly recommend this to all readers – male or female, science geek or amateur gardener. I think just about everyone will find something delightful and relatable in this memoir.

15LisaMorr
Mar 10, 2020, 10:39 am

Finished Dimple Hill, the 12th novel in Pilgrimage and the 4th novel in Pilgrimage 4 - almost done!

And alternating with Winter's Heart.

16rocketjk
Mar 10, 2020, 4:00 pm

I finished The Town by William Faulkner. This is the second novel in Faulkner's "Snopes Family" trilogy. The action has moved from the hamlet of Frenchman's Bend to the town of Jefferson, still, of course, in Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi. In the first novel in the trilogy, The Hamlet, Frenchman's Bend and to a lesser extent Jefferson have become overrun with Snopes sibling and cousins following the beachhead established by Flem Snopes. The Snopes slowly begin usurping the money and, especially, the power in the community from Varners, the longtime ruling family of the area. The word Faulkner uses for this new clan, over and over, in both novels, is "rapacious."

In The Town, Flem has begun to acquire more power, and to aspire to actual respectability. While The Hamlet features several interlocking narratives, a series of stories that together paint the picture of the area and its inhabitants (and their varying reactions to the Snopes invasion), the narrative in The Town coalesces around Flem Snopes and his drive for money and influence in the town, as complicated by the open secret of his wife's 16-year infidelity with another important town citizen. Faulkner's breathtaking ability to peel back human motivations, for good or evil, make these novels extremely rewarding reading experiences.

Next up will be a round of "between books," as usual, and then on to a volume of medieval history, Soldiers of the Faith: Crusaders and Moslems at War by Ronald C. Finucane.

17ahef1963
Mar 10, 2020, 4:23 pm

I've tried to read/finish Medusa by Torkil Damhaug, but I can't manage it. The story just didn't grab me.

Have picked up, instead, Buried in the Sky, which is about the 2008 K2 tragedy in which eleven climbers died on the mountain. I loved reading Into Thin Air, so I'm hoping I'll like this as well.

18snash
Mar 11, 2020, 7:36 am

I finished Dark Age Ahead. The book suggests 5 ways in which our (North American) culture is failing, hurling us toward a Dark Age. It was written 15 years ago and it's clear that these parameters have gotten significantly worse rather than better in that time. None of her suggestions as to how the downward spiral could be arrested have been adopted. As such it's a rather depressing book.

19Molly3028
Editado: Mar 11, 2020, 12:28 pm

Enjoying this OverDrive audiobook ~

Chasing Cassandra: The Ravenels by Lisa Kleypas

(book 6/England, 1876/a very wealthy man with a frozen heart would like Cassandra Ravenel for a wife)

20rocketjk
Editado: Mar 13, 2020, 1:38 am

Having finished The Town by William Faulkner, I then spent some time with my "between books" . . .

* “from ‘Women on Top: Ten Post-Lib Role Models for the Eighties’ a book proposal” from Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung by Lester Bangs
* Excerpt from Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody from The Norton Book of Women's Lives edited by Phyllis Rose
* “Historical Drama” from Laugh with Leacock by Stephen Leacock
* "Lynne Chaney" from American Heroines: The Spirited Women who Shaped Our Country by Kay Bailey Hutchison
* “Tiger Bites” from A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
* “In the Museum of the Americas” from Living in the Weather of the World by Richard Bausch
* “West Indian ‘Emperor Jones’” by Sherril Schell from The Mentor, November, 1924 edited by W. D. Moffat

Last night I started Soldiers of the Faith: Crusaders and Moslems at War by Ronald C. Finucane

21hemlokgang
Editado: Mar 12, 2020, 12:25 pm

Finished listening to What Belongs To You, an poignant story of two men.

Next up for listening is Stay by Catharine Ryan Hyde.

22princessgarnet
Mar 12, 2020, 3:20 pm

Finished Havenfall by Sara Holland
A YA fantasy with a contemporary setting.

23richardderus
Mar 12, 2020, 9:21 pm

I really didn't like Naked in Death because there were topics I just can not tolerate in my entertainment incest, pedophilia, multiple rapes at all.

24LyndaInOregon
Editado: Mar 13, 2020, 9:57 pm

Almost finished with Breakfast with Buddha. I'm finding it enjoyable, even if I'm not ready to swap my Tai Chi for yoga!

Finished it up late last night & have started an early Robin Cook. Must be hard to write a book while standing on your soapbox..........

25fredbacon
Mar 14, 2020, 8:25 am

The new thread is up over here.

26PaperbackPirate
Mar 14, 2020, 12:30 pm

>6 ahef1963: Thank you! It was awesome and I will always remember that ride!
It was lovely not having cell service for 3 days but overwhelming coming out on top surrounded by hundreds of people from around the world and finding out how much Coronavirus has progressed.