^ oregon101, The Orchardist was the CC Book club’s choice earlier this year. You might enjoy browsing through the thread: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1461744-orchardist-april-cc-book-club-selection.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1461744-orchardist-april-cc-book-club-selection.html</a>
Just finished Gilbert’s The Signature of All Things and really enjoyed it. A compelling read. Now reading Tartt’s The Goldfinch and enjoying it thus far.
Just finished The Goldfinch, really a wonderful book. I started The Signature of All Things and was really enjoying it but now my library has it on CD so I am saving it for my next trip to Chicago.
I’m reading (listening to) The Goldfinch now and enjoying it.
I have about 100 pages left of The Goldfinch and I can hardly bring myself to read them as I don’t want it to end!
Two medical-themed books:
Heartsounds: The Story of a Love and Loss, by Martha Weinman Lear. The husband, a prominent surgeon, suffers a heart attack. His wife, a journalist, chronicles their 4-year odyssey into the medical system. They are shocked to learn just how awful the experience is from the patient’s point of view – the frustrations, the waiting, the impersonal treatment, the poor communication, the rushed doctors and nurses – even as they deal with their own fears. This book should be required reading for every medical professional (IMO :)).
Demon Under the Microscope: From Battlefield Hospitals to Nazi Labs, One Doctor’s Heroic Search for the World’s First Miracle Drug, by Thomas Hager. I found this to be a real page-turner, a first-class medical suspense story. From the goodreads review:
My book club just read The Winemaker by Noah Gordon. Set in 19th-century Spain, lovely book that everyone enjoyed.
Just finished Five Days at Memorial. It’s a fascinating book, wonderfully well written, but likely to get you very distraught about the lack of adequate disaster preparedness at American hospitals and the dysfunction of state, local and federal government in the face of Hurricane Katrina, while also providing much food for thought on the subject of how we deal with the hopelessly ill and what expectations we should have of our medical care providers. This one will stay with me for a long time.
Just finished The Aftermath. It was very good. It will make a great movie. Also just finished Patty Smith’s book Just Kids.
I’m reading Beautiful Ruins. A friend told me to get it. It’s readable, but not great.
I liked Beautiful Ruins but agree it’s not fantastic writing, a bit of fluffly amusement if you ask me. But I felt it was worth the read, I didn’t think it was bad.
I am currently reading The Other Typist and I really like it. It is reminding me of the Secret Keeper and rivaling it for my favorite book of the year. I am only just under halfway through but so far I highly recommend it. It has me hooked and it promises to have a firecracker ending, I think.
I also just finished Allegiant and was thoroughly unimpressed. I was really disappointed by the Free Four project because Four’s voice was virtually indistinguishable from Tris’, and I felt like we’d been told to get all excited because we were going to get to see Four’s perspective of a pivotal scene, and Four’s perspective was basically Tris’ perspective all over again (and the scene not that pivotal). So naturally the much anticipated final book in the series alternates between the two perspectives each chapter. In scenes with both of them I would frequently forget which one of them I had and have to flip back pages to remind myself-- they were practically the same character. And how disappointing that Tobias had the inner persona of a 15 year old girl! I typically am not a fan of stories that alternate perspective like this anyway, I tend to hyperfocus on one and get irritated by having to break to read the other persons, but in this case I can understand why the author wanted to do it-- I just wish she’d had the skill to pull it off. I can see this will be a series where I reread the first two books and skip the last, not unlike one of my other favorites His Dark Materials. I do think the story itself was good and was mostly satisfied with where it went in the last book.. I just wish it had been executed better. With a different ending! I loved the books because I was invested in Tris and I feel like the author wrote a mini project about Tobias, developed a crush on him, and forgot all about Tris for the final book. Boo hiss. The whole book was really more about Tobias than anybody else. I don’t like the narrator switcheroo.
^ “the Other Typist” was a great read.
Just finished " Reconstructing Amelia" by Kimberly McCraight. I recommend that one too.
Anyone else eagerly awaiting Adriana Trigiani’s new book, The Supreme Macaroni Company?I fell in love with her knack for developing such endearing, yet quirky, female characters. Am counting the days until 11/26 
I’m currently reading Ruth Ozeki’s “A Tale for the Time Being” and absolutely love it. I’m not very far into it and I already don’t want it to end.
I just saw a promo interview for a new book, Jacob’s Oath by veteran NBC reporter Martin Fletcher, a novel about Holocaust refugees and survivors living in 1945 Heidelburg. It’s a follow-up to his earlier novel, The List, about refugees and survivors in 1945 London. According to the reviews, Fletcher has meticulously researched this little-known aspect of Jewish post-war life, and interwoven his well-developed characters to tell the story. I haven’t read either book, but they look interesting.
Finished The Other Typist and was a bit confused by the ending, but I’ve been enjoying reading different theories about how to interpret it. I prefer vague endings where it’s clear one of a few things happened and you can pinpoint each one and wonder which really happened, rather than a “…what?” ending that I may never figure out. I’m not sure which kind of ending this was. I wish I had a book club to talk it out with!
I am reading book 2 of The Agency series now… it takes place in Victorian England and it’s about this young orphan girl who is taken on by a boarding school that teaches young women to be “spies”-- more like detectives. They operate under the premise that women in that time period were not thought to be particularly clever or useful, so spies posing as ladies maids or other servants could easily eavesdrop and solve mysteries. It’s a bit “young” but these are quick fun reads. I liked the first one and am halfway through the second and think it’s pretty good, too.
I have two books left I have to read before I hit my goodreads goal of 20 books for the year. Still deciding what my 20th book will be.
Just finished two audio books that made me want to get back into the car to find out what happens next.
The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult. This is in many ways a typical Picoult novel, complete with plot twist at the end, but Minka’s story is especially compelling. The premise is that there are stories within stories. Sage’s grandmother Minka is a Holocaust survivor, and Sage’s story and her grandmother’s intersect in interesting ways, even though Sage does not define herself as Jewish. Fact and fiction weave together in a DNA like helix that kept me interested to the end.
The other book I just finished is completely different: Dave Eggers The Circle. This one explores the impact of new media by following the developments in a company that is apple/facebook/google with focus on issues of privacy and surveillance This one has made me really reflective about how I use technology and makes me ask difficult questions about the long-term big-picture issues while still remaining interested in the characters in the book. I’ll be assigning this in my college communication ethics class next semester.
Loved The Circle! It’s more a polemic than a novel, in a way, and I don’t think that it’s Eggers’ best writing, technically, but he captured that world really well (know some people who work or worked for Google and it sounds like what they describe.) I think it’s bigger points are really on point. It should be great in that course (I’d love to teach a course in communications ethics!)
Oryx and Crake by Margret Attwood
Since someone brought up Dave Eggers, I’ll mention What is the What, one of my all-time favorites. Eggers is quite the chameleon; each of his books is so different in style and substance that you would think they each have different authors.