Old Books, New Readers discussion

This is a classics group but not all of us read classics all the time. This thread is to talk about whatever it is your reading that is not a classic.

What are you reading now?

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It's a bummer to find out something about a book we wanted to read or are contemplating reading before we get there ourselves. :/

I'm reading The Lost Years by Mary Higgins Clark. I've been a fan of her books since high school. So far, it's pretty good.

Interesting I had not heard of this one, where were you able to to secure a copy of that J.M. Barrie book?

I have so many library books out right now its kind of cuckoo. I am hoping to knock out this month's club reading selection along with Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things which I am reading for another club, I kept putting if off to read other things and now I'm out of renewals so I gotta make it happen. :/

Nice I just found a copy of Ten Days in a Mad-House by Nellie Bly in a link online. I am excited. I tried to get it through an inter-library loan but there was some kind of issue.

I selected this one for the Book Riot challenge I am trying this year. It's old but probably not a classic even though it had a huge positive effect!

I just finished reading Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, by Elena Ferrante (The Neapolitan Novels).

Finishing up City On Fire

Has anyone heard of this book before? I just read it and it was really interesting. I'm finishing up a few other books that are mostly classics and gearing up for Moby Dick!

Luella wrote: "Has anyone heard of this book before? I just read it and it was really interesting. I'm finishing up a few other books that are mostly classics and gear..."

I haven't heard of it. Are you recommending?

John wrote: "Luella wrote: "Has anyone heard of this book before? I just read it and it was really interesting. I'm finishing up a few other books that are mostly cl..."

Hmm well there was a lot a liked about it and some I didn't. It's has strange things like one guy can talk to whales another has garbage follow him around etc.

I think I'd recommend it only if you want to read something a little different. I really liked one story line more than the others but I was sad on how it ended. It's sort of a bit like the movie Amélie which is even mentioned in the book.

If anyone would like to read it, I got it through interlibrary loan. It's cheap used online and I know there is a copy in a bookswapping club I'm in.

Luella, thanks. I'll put it on the maybe pile. I like to try different stuff every other decade. :)

I just finished The Girl on the Train. I guess I'm a little late to the party, but WOW. I don't even like thrillers and I loved this book. I've been in a busy season with work and haven't been able to read as much as I'd like to lately, but I read this one in a day because it was just that good.
It reminded me that sometimes you have to make time for reading!

I am reading Wool Omnibus Edition It's post-apocalyptic, and good through the first 100 pages anyway. Actually, it's really good so far, not just good.

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. I'm making my way through it kind of slowly, partly because I don't have all that much time to sit down with it, but also because I like her language a lot and find it enjoyable to read it very carefully, relishing in how she writes and in the characters she presents.
It's the first book I read by her.

I'm reading Coronado: Stories by Dennis Lehane. While I love Dennis Lehane's work with a passion, I am not in love with this book. Two of the stories--especially Until Gwen, which I first read years ago. BUT some of the other stories just don't hit home with me.

I just started The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, a book I wanted to read last year but never got around to. I also just started another Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None. I saw a dramatization of it on TV when I was in my teens when it was still being published under the name Ten Little Indians. It was a good story as I recall. I don't read a lot of mysteries, but hers are easy reads. I also get a kick out of Poirot and the way he's so sure of his own talent with the "little gray cells."

I read a lot of different books. This month I was in a reading funk, so I started reading the Girl Genius graphic novel online, and it is so much fun! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com

I also recommend Dark Matter, Kindred, Hamilton: The Revolution from my recent reads.

Good morning!

I'm reading Beethoven by Maynard Solomon, supposedly the definitive biography of the composer. Excellent so far.

Jim

Written in 1929, Los siete locos, by Roberto Arlt. It may be considered a classic, however.

I'm currently reading The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. It's a lot of fun.

Junky - William S. Burroughs

Junky

Good evening!

After finishing The Spies of Warsaw by Alan Furst, I am now reading Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith.

Jim

Moonshine wrote: "Junky - William S. Burroughs

Junky

"

I have this one on my shelf at home been thinking about cracking it open.

I need to read SALUMMBO, by Gustave Flaubert. I have it on my Ipad.

Dune, The Prague Cemetery, and Galapagos, for me.

Just finished, Bonheoffer, Creation and Fall/Temptation
Currently reading, W. T. Conner, Christian Doctrine

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

I am splitting my reading time between the 1950 Modern Library; Andrew Lang/Walter Leaf/Ernest Myers 1873 translation of *The Iliad* by Homer; and a lot of short e-books, having just finished On the Equator.by Harry De Windt (1856-1933), which I don't know if it is a classic. He wrote it about a century ago, but its first publication was in 2009.

Now reading Edward MacDowell; A Great American Tone Poet, His Life and Music - Scholar's Choice Edition

Jim

Jim wrote: "I am splitting my reading time between the 1950 Modern Library; Andrew Lang/Walter Leaf/Ernest Myers 1873 translation of *The Iliad* by Homer; and a lot of short e-books, having just finished [book..."

Interesting that you are reading a reproduction of a historical artifact. I do not understand the value of reading a reproduction, since it probably it has missing or blurred pages, etc. Is it the only version that is available?

I am currently reading two books. One is a lo[ng-term read, the other one just an enjoyable one.

The long term book I am reading is [book:The Nine Laws|32472004] - also known as The Nine Laws when the link is working right. I would recommend it to anyone, it is a beautiful piece of wordcraft.

The other one, which I JUST started, is The Mother. I am not far enough into it to have an opinion on it.

I am really enjoying Magpie Murders. It is a mystery within a mystery.

Luella wrote: "Nice I just found a copy of Ten Days in a Mad-House by Nellie Bly in a link online. I am excited. I tried to get it through an inter-library loan but there was some kind of issue.

I..."
I got this as an eBook free from Early Bird Books and it's on the TBR. I will most likely write a full review when I read it. Maybe 2018?

Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett. I have four more books left of Discworld! It is good to read something lighter to break up War and Peace.

I just finished the biography of George Eliot by Kathryn Hughes, very good. And 1858, by Rosemary Ashton, a close history of that one year in Britain.

I've been reading Train to Pakistan and highly recommend it. I was largely unfamiliar with this history and this is a very well written historical account on India's most recent internal restructuring. Very, very good read. Easy to get into the characters, the plot, etc.

I started A Widow for One Year by John Irving a couple days ago. He's one of my favorite authors, with A Prayer for Owen Meany being one of my favorite-ever novels.

Awww. I love Irving as well.

I finished my slate of 10 old classics books to read this year, and of those, I thought three were outstanding (5 out of 5 stars). They were A Clockwork Orange, The Yellow Wall-Paper, and The Turn of the Screw.
Now I am returning to my "started but temporarily shelved" books, including The Prague Cemetery.

The New Testament in Modern English, J. B. Phillips, translator

I felt the need to post this elsewhere (I previously posted this in another group) wondering if anyone out there felt the same way I did about it.

I am currently reading this and it is driving me cuckoo but I really want to get to the part about her baby so I am pushing through.

Here's what I think happened: Padma was writing a number of stories all at once. But her deadline got away from her. Trying to play it cool she strolls in her publisher's office with a stack of papers from her desk which are all stuffed together in one haphazard stack.

She charms the pants off her agent who tells her no sweat Padma we got you covered. The agent passes this stack of paper to the editor who is severely pressed for time. The editor takes a quick look at the manuscript and exclaims "You have got to be f***ing kidding me."

The editor is now looking at the mess thinking of Rachel in one of her favorite episodes of Friends "It's a trifle. It's got all of these layers. First there's a layer of ladyfingers, then a layer of jam, then custard, which, I made from scratch, then raspberries, more ladyfingers, then beef sauteed with peas and onions, then a little bit more custard, and then bananas, and then I just put some whipped cream on top!"

The editor asks the agent if it is possible that he made a mistake when he sent the manuscript or if Padma had accidentally included in pages from another manuscript. The agent tells the editor that everything is fine and to just touch it up a bit. The editor tells the agent that she will need more time and the work to fix this will be extensive. The agent says that any other person would be happy to work on this book. The editor is relieved and uses this proclamation to get out of the project. The agent now desperate to get the book out forgoes editing all together.

The book is published as if and now that is what we are left with. A rough unfinished first draft of a number of stories that were accidentally glued together with readers exclaiming as they bite into Padma's trifle mishap of a book, just as Ross did in Friends, "It tastes like feet!"

So far Padma had three great stories in there. She knew she was a weak writer. She should have had some more input on this.

After I finish . I plan on starting
Playing with Fire by Tess Gerritsen

I'm currently reading what I consider a modern classic, Catch-22, 50th anniversary edition. It has some great information on Joseph Heller, the background for the book and other tidbits that help with understanding the book better.

Two classics I am re-reading this month are: "The Last Puritan" by Harvard philosopher George Santayana (Charles Scribners Sons, 1936); and "The Movie Goer" by Walker Percy (National Book Award, 1961). The first, set in Boston is filled with suspense and mystery—certainly not a novel of manners—; the second, set in New Orleans, unites author, reader and character in a tale of human wandering and redemption in love.
—David Taylor Johannesen, Goodreads author.

I'm reading Northern Lights (The Golden Compass). When I bought it I wasn't acquainted with the fact that it was a children's book but I'm finding it quite fascinating.

Re-reading Isabel Allende, my favorite female author: “The Japanese Lover” (2015, Atria) a taut, generation-spanning epic.

David wrote: "Re-reading Isabel Allende, my favorite female author: “The Japanese Lover” (2015, Atria) a taut, generation-spanning epic."

A friend recommended this book to me a while back. Not sure if it's on my TBR, but if it isn't, I need to add it. I read the blurb and it sounds really good.

Other books by Isabel Allende I've liked are "Ripper" thriller set in San Francisco;











Other books I love by Isabelle Allende are "Ripper:" a thriller set in SanFrancisco; "Maya's Notebook" whose heroine is clutched in the paws of Interpol and the CIA after the fascist takeover of Chile by Pinochet; Then we travel to "Daughter of Fortune" —whose wide embrace of Chileans who find their opportunity redeemed by a new
California is a reclamation of abidance and redemption, Isavelle=========


Isabelle Allende offers us books of salvation: from the SanFrancisco thriller "Ripper" to such deeply explorative books as "Maya's Note Books" to "Daughter of Fortune." Yet we still withdraw our apt and prudent her works until a magistrate of fiction at Oxf0rd

"Hot off the Press" is stamped on my one week library copy of Isabel Allende's "In the Midst of Winter." 100 pages in I am spellbound by the interwoven lives of a stodgy NYU professor, his teaching assistant (an emigre from Chile) and a young undocumented immigrant girl who is the unwitting glue to this triangle which takes us into a murder mystery an the frozen winter of upstate New York.

Asleep by Banana Yoshimoto

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Bananas!: How The United Fruit Company Shaped the World