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07-04-2008, 07:47 AM
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#391 | | Member
Join Date: Dec 2006
Posts: 506
| Anyone else read Dennis McFarland? I recently discovered this author and have enjoyed two of his novels -- Singing Boy and School for the Blind. Looking forward to reading the others, including the better known Music Room and Prince Edward. His characters are complex and lovable, and he is able to examine -- not sure how I want to say this -- an ethical or moral dimension to our modern existence as well as the emotional and social ones -- that is, while his characters' emotional states are very finely drawn, they also muse about their choices in the larger scheme of things. Very good writing. | 
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07-04-2008, 08:01 AM
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#392 | | Junior Member
Join Date: Mar 2005
Posts: 182
| I've read two of McFarland's novels: School for the Blind and The Music Room. Both were terrific: vivid, intimate, moving, memorable, lyrical. ||| Dennis McFarland - Home ||| | |
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07-04-2008, 09:33 AM
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#393 | | Member
Join Date: Apr 2005
Posts: 874
| I'm reading "Eat, Pray Love" right now (I know it's been popular for a while) & enjoying it. | |
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07-04-2008, 03:22 PM
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#394 | | Member
Join Date: Aug 2004
Posts: 997
| I just started on Marley & Me. Good so far. | |
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07-11-2008, 11:55 PM
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#395 | | Junior Member
Join Date: Mar 2005
Posts: 182
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07-23-2008, 02:20 PM
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#396 | | Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: the great state of Washington
Posts: 1,605
| I just finished David Eggers "What is the what?"--the novelized autobiography of one Sudanese "lost boy." I couldn't put it down. Read it straight through. Incredible story, beautifully written. | |
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07-23-2008, 02:30 PM
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#397 | | Member
Join Date: Aug 2004
Posts: 485
| I just finished reading "The Tender Bar" by JR Moehringer, thanks to a member of my book club. I enjoyed it more than most I've read in the past year. What a wonderful writer he is. The book, and the author, have won awards including"Best Book of the Year by NYTimes, Pulitzer Prize, etc.
Here's a summary I stole from a Borders website:
"JR Moehringer grew up listening for a voice, the voice of his missing father, a disc jockey who disappeared before JR spoke his first words. As a boy, JR would press his ear to a battered clock radio, straining to hear in that resonant voice the secrets of identity and masculinity. When the voice disappeared, JR found new voices in the bar on the corner. A grand old New York saloon, the bar was a sanctuary for all sorts of men -- cops and poets, actors and lawyers, gamblers and stumblebums. The flamboyant characters along the bar taught JR, tended him, and provided a kind of fatherhood by committee.... In the rich tradition of bestselling memoirs about self-invention, THE TENDER BAR is by turns riveting, moving, and achingly funny. An evocative portrait of one boy's struggle to become a man, it's also a touching depiction of how some men remain lost boys." | |
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07-23-2008, 02:32 PM
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#398 | | Super Moderator
Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: New Jersey
Posts: 3,598
| DMD--I absolutely loved What is the What (may have mentioned it much earlier on this thread.) I like pretty much everything Eggers does, but he went outside himself for this in a pretty impressive way. | |
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07-23-2008, 02:33 PM
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#399 | | Super Moderator
Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: New Jersey
Posts: 3,598
| Anyone read Pynchon's Against the Day? I was determined to this summer, but after a month and four hundred pages ( 600 to go) I am flagging. When I can keep up with it, it's often entertaining, and has many sentences of haunting beauty, and many others that are hilarious. Yet overall, it is a whole lotta work. | |
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07-23-2008, 03:00 PM
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#400 | | Member
Join Date: Feb 2008
Posts: 749
| "The Kite Runner."
I've also reread all the Harry Potter books recently. I've started rereading "The Chronicles of Narnia" because my husband is reading them (for the first time!), inspired by our viewing of the movie Prince Caspian. He didn't know we had a set of these books in the house, and I couldn't believe he had never read them, so found the set and plopped them down on his office chair.
I'm waiting to read "The Life of Pi," which I sent off to CTY first session with the kid, hoping he'd read it there, but did he? Noooo! So it got packed up for the second session, and here I am, waiting waiting waiting for it.... | |
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07-23-2008, 03:09 PM
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#401 | | Member
Join Date: Oct 2007
Posts: 314
| I doubt anyone has mentioned this one but only read the last page. "Panjamon" by: Jean Yves Domalain an adventure story of the highest degree. One of my all time favorite books. | |
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07-23-2008, 04:02 PM
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#402 | | Junior Member
Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 252
| owlice,
I have read and listened to all of the Harry Potter stories over these past many years....each book that came out, I would buy 3 copies (no sharing in my house!) and 1 set of CD's.....I just love listening to Jim Dale read those books...... I recently got the first 3 books onto my iPod and I am listening to them as I walk..... (see the exercise thread, ha ha).....it is amazing to me how intricate a world JK Rowling built....and how some of it makes me laugh out loud as I walk....
just last nite I heard Harry tell Snape to "shutup" in Book 3....and it took my breathe away, I was so surprised to hear the animosity and anger so early in the series.....
Anne of Green Gables is another fun listen...... sooo positive and lively about every day realities..... Anne was especially appreciative of kindnesses shown to her..... Mark Twain thought it was the best book ever on childhood.... and I do love to periodically go back and have a shot of Anne and Maritha, the reluctant mom.....Matthew was so steadfast in his commitment to Anne. Just a wonderful story...... | |
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07-23-2008, 04:16 PM
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#403 | | Senior Member
Join Date: Feb 2006
Posts: 1,419
| Recently finished "Suite Francaise" by Irene Nemirovsky...a touching fictional account of the lives of several French families during the occupation of Paris during WWII. | |
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07-23-2008, 05:34 PM
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#404 | | Junior Member
Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: CT
Posts: 203
| owl & maine -- I just finished reading the entire Harry Potter series straight through. Some of the books I had read when they came out, and some I hadn't. It was GREAT reading it all at once, and seeing how Harry developed/matured/changed. There were a few places where things happened just a little too conveniently, but all in all it was a wonderful read. I find myself still thinking about HP, and am a little sad I'm not still reading it!
Suite Francaise is excellent -- the writing is so well done. | |
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07-23-2008, 10:47 PM
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#405 | | Senior Member
Join Date: Feb 2006
Posts: 1,419
| CBBBlinker...Glad to hear someone else really liked Suite Francaise. My sister sent it to me but I couldn't get any of my friends interested in reading it when I was finished (despite my good reviews,lol). The story of the author's
life was so sad and could have been a novel unto itself. | |
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