Book, Blog and Subscription Recommendations

Pony, check and see if that is a first edition!

And GG, I completely forgot about Town Called Alice, one of the great romances! Brillant, painful, but brillant.

Just reading Ian McEwan's newest 'Solar'. Very good! Love the writing style. I wouldn't say not that the main character is exactly 'likeable' yet, but he is definitely an interesting sort.

McEwan creates characters that are not always endearing. I was hooked on his writing after reading Enduring Love and Saturday. Actually, I have a crush on him.

I started Atonement a few months back by McEwan and put it down, not sure why. Perhaps I should try something that has not been made into a movie, even though I've not seen the movie. ,

I got Solar for my Kindle but I'm probably not going to finish it. I just don't like being dragged through the head of a person who's that unsympathetic. I thought that the satirical treatment of research establishments and the whole science thing would save it for me, but it didn't. Oh well... I should have known better; I really didn't like On Chesil Beach, either. I found it tiresome, the conceit that a whole marriage could hinge on those misunderstandings. Maybe it could really happen but it just seemed to Victorian for me, somehow.

Do cook books count? I'm not a big cookbook buyer (I have maybe 6?) so to reccommend one..... Do you know Yotam Ottolenghi? His new book Plenty is absolutely gorgeous, vegetarian - although he isn't - and I think I am going to end up cooking everything, start to finish. Wonderful and inspiring, I have just added about a dozen new herbs - like black onion seed! Yum, and how to use them - toasting cumin, coriander, and cardamon before crushing them - heavanly, the house smells fab! A salad of Dates and Turkish ewe's cheese with mixed leaves - mmmmmmmm. Or eggs baked on a bed of rocket with yoghurt and chili. Bliss. This man knows how to make beautiful food that you can almost smell just by reading it.

Did I tell you that I am going to Cappadocia in Turkey in November? Yup, I am going to travel before we get another dog. I used him as an excuse to stay put far toooooooo lonnnnggggg.

Laurie, yes, it appears to be first edition. It's not in the best shape though, so I doubt it's worth anything.

Worth reading, anyway.

Yep- I plan to. I did start it once, but then wound up getting several others that I'd been dying to read, so back on the shelf it went. I had forgotten all about it until Laurie mentioned it. :)

How nice to be reading generationally.

Yes, cookbooks count. I hope my library stocks that one - it sounds interesting!

darn, they don't have it.

Its quite new, Gwen, and this is his second one - they might have that.

they don't have anything by him. :( I'll go in search elsewhere...

Gwen, how about starting here,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/series/thenewvegetarian.

Ottolenghi writes for the saturday Guardian, and this is the link to his recipes from those columns. Happy salivating - I love what he does.

That link didn't work, Laurie!

There was a period at the end of the URL that shouldn't have been there, is all.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/series/thenewvegetarian

Thank you pony. Just looking at the recipe titles makes me hungry - I want some of his food! AND - curses - he was just up the road from me at Sarah Raven's doing a cooking course with lunch after last week AND I DIDN'T KNOW!!!!!!!! B*&&er!

Thanks, Laurie, I'll check that link out. I put in a request to have our library system buy the book. Once they actually bought one of the books I requested, so there's hope.

Great topic - I attend a weekly meeting held in the commons area of Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park, and usually wander around aimlessly afterward. Now I will be equipped with a list! Thanks all.

Last night I was looking for a book to take on a trip and I grabbed a collection of stories by O. Henry. I had forgotten how much he had written in his relatively short life. I also learned that he had served time in prison for embezzlement. I never knew that when I read him in college.

I LOVE Third Place Books!

Not a book, but if you are into movies, go see Babies. It's completely entertaining, even without a story line! Very well done!

Lark & Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips. Well written, intertwines several storylines, set in early 50s. Teenaged Lark and her younger half brother Termite, who is severely handicapped, are raised by their aunt Nonie in a small river town. Lola, the mother, and Nonie's upbringing, and their subsequent life choices. Lola's husband reluctantly serving in the Korean War. Family relationships and secrets. Good read.

My DS came to visit yesterday. She had just returned from her month long visit to Anchorage. My DB thought it would be funny to send me a 2011 Sarah Palin calendar. As if I would want to look at her for a year. UGh. DS did bring some books also. A trilogy by Gregory Maguire, "The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West", "Son of a Witch", and " A Lion among Men". And update on the lives of the other characters and how they became who they were. She also brought " A Reader's Guide to R.A Salvatore's The Legend of Drizzt". I just finished "Finn Mac Cool" by Morgan Llyelyn. Fun.

Having thoroughly enjoyed "Wicked" I just bought "Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister" to take camping - the alternate story of Cinderella. Willow's post reminded me of "Finn" by I forget who, the darker side of Huck's father.

So what did you do with the Sarah Palin calendar? Someone gave one of my friends in France a Bush t-shirt from the inauguration; the giver was an ardent Bush fan and knew that the recipient was not, so I'm not sure what the point was!

I think, they think it is funny. My DH thinks she is a good looking woman, so I said he could have it for his desk. Saw in the tabloids today she had a boob job. No comment on that from me. HA

I thought that was supposed to be naught but a vicious rumor....?

Re already read books: I keep a small bookshelf on my back covered porch and put books I have read but don't want to keep there, with my initials and sometimes a short comment on the inside front cover. It's rather like a lending library only I don't expect (or want) them back. Friends bring me books, and take what they want. When I go to visit a fellow reader, I will often pack up a grocery bag of books to drop off. Keeps things circulating a bit. I try to put books I didn't like or finish in a separate pile and drop those off at either the library or the grocery store when they have a book drive.

Bonehead, if you don't want them back, why do you put your initials in them? Is it just a way of giving the book a history?

My problem is that I usually like to reread books, so it's hard for me to know which ones I can part with! I'm due for a purging around now, though.

The initials are so I don't get them back in a shopping bag. And, I do try to give books a one-word review (creepy, intriguing, weird). And, sometimes I forget if I've read a book or not, so I can quickly peek to see if I did or not. This is especially true of the authors who crank books out willy-nilly (Koontz, King, etc.) and even reading the summary sometimes doesn't jog my memory.

I don't often re-read books (except inadvertently when I realize a quarter the way into it that this is a repeat but then I'm hook again), although I do keep ones I think are especially good. My kids know to borrow from the top shelf of my den bookshelf, which is where I keep books I plan to hold onto. The others are all pass-arounds and I'd rather not see them again.

Just finished The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. I really did not like it at all. Overly long, nothing good ever happens, no characters you care about, etc. There seem to be a few of these types of books around these days. I'm going to have to go back to my silly little romance books I think. I can't seem to find anything good to read!

I just finished "Renoir, My Father" by Jean Renoir. We had gone to the Late Renoir exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and I picked the book up there. Although it's slightly uneven and could have used better editing, it's a wonderful story about a painter and also about Paris and France in general at the turn of the last century. He talks about his father's going hunting with a neighbor in a field where the Gare St. Lazare now stands, and about Montmartre before there were steps to ascend the hill. I really enjoyed it.

I imagine you did enjoy that GG. I must tell you that mom's aide one day saw the advertisement for the exhibition and it said

Late Renoir
the years he lived

The aide said " I didn't know Renoir's first name was Late." I had no clue what she was talking about until I saw the commercial later and then I had to chuckle.

Jan, how funny! I did think it was kind of an awkward name for an exhibit, though. I'm not a huge fan of Renoir, but it was still nice to see the show.

I just read The Physick if Deliverance Dane. It was pretty good, about a young woman tracing her roots to the Salem witch trials.

Finished the three 'Wicked' books. They were sort of good but didn't really get anywhere. Maybe there is another one. Now I reading
'The Touch' by Colleen McCullough. She wrote 'The Thornbirds' and this one is also in Australia.

Not a book, although there is a catalogue - went to a wonderful exhibition yesterday (I know it was a gardening day, but I JUST HAD to have a break from the weeds - they were beginning to steal my will to live) - actually went into London on a Saturday, and what a saturday to choose - if you think San Francisco does gay pride, you really must see London's, the Anglophile world coupled with the former colonies coupled with the continent - it is global gay pride, goodness!! What fun, what noise! But I digress - my review of this exhibition - well, FAB is all I can say.

http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/architecture/smallspaces/index.html

The V&A has always been a great museum, but after the refit and additions it has surpassed itself (even good food now) - and tucked throughout and amongst its wonders they have installed 8 small houses - my favourites: the japanese teahouse on stilts in the Medieval and Renaissance gallery, the Mumbai house in the plaster gallery (moved to tears by this house) and the 'tree'house in the Pirelli courtyard - these aren't models, they are actually houses, small houses, that you take your shoes off and go climb into (the teahouse) wander through (Mumbai house) walk amongst (Tree house). Brillant, imaginative, which just evoked my acquisitiveness in the desire to want these pieces - please, I have the space, they would love to live in my woodland, GIVE THEM TO ME!! (that is in the voice of my terrier and his conviction that what ever you have actually belongs to him, rightfully.) The only thing I could have asked would be to have one of Rachel's father's lovely structures. I would be content girl. Forever.

If you are coming to London - put this on your visit list. If you aren't live in regret. These are wonderful wonderful gardener's houses. I just loved this exhibition. Inspiration. Imagination. Satisfaction. Ahhhh, contentment.

Laurie, those sound so wonderful! What an inspiration. I'll bet it will affect your gardening even unconsciously...