Has anyone read Florence Gordon? It looks like it got mixed reviews but I found it interesting and different. It’s a quick read.
@doschicos, I read Florence Gordon and it was pretty good. I also thought it was interesting.
I agree with the Florence Gordon comments! I thought it was well written, and I liked all the relationships, particularly that of the young woman and her grandmother.
@romanigypsyeyes, A Midwife’s Tale is a great book. Just fascinating. I also heartily recommend it.
Harry Potter haha. On a more sophisticated note, Song of Solomon.
Starting the third book in the Ferrante quartet tonight. Enjoying these books.
I finished the latest Vorkosigan Bujold book – a little light on plot, not my favorite in the series.
^Mine arrived in NY today. Unfortunately I’m in NH.
Well, I did enjoy it – a lot of laugh out loud moments, and backstory/future story that is interesting. And I swear there is one paragraph in the book that she put in because of a question I asked her at an author reading a couple of years ago. 
But it is a more subtle book than most of them, I guess.
@cartera45 --I just finished the second one, but I’m taking a break before the next. They read slower for me than I had expected, and I don’t want to get into another (for me) long read.
For some reason I had a lot of trouble getting into the second one. The long sections of who was working at which store, who was paired up with who, each year of high school, seemed to drag for me, but the second half hooked me back in.
I read “Florence Gordon” and agree that it is a quick read. I felt is was a bit underwritten.. that is not enough information is given about the characters except for Florence to really get to know and understand them. Agree that the relationship with the daughter is nice.
OK … so after a few visits to the library and local bookstores, here are some of the books I’m taking on my trip:
A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
Nectar in A Sieve - Kamal Markandaya
Wolf at the Table - Augusten Burroughs
The Places In Between - Rory Stewart
The Signature of All Things - Elizabeth Gilbert
The Boston Girl - Anita Diamant
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
Your Brain on Music - Oliver Sacks
Ok, I also got biographies of Rod Stewart and Ringo Starr because I needed something light too and I like any kind of music documentary
You all are SO helpful! I had my phone browser open to this thread while I was browsing in the stacks!
I feel like if I go to a bookstore, I can quickly find what I like because things are grouped by interest areas - whether fiction or non-fiction. In the library, I get frustrated because in the fiction aisle, books that are deep and substantive are shelved right next to fiction books that are light beach reads (not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I feel I don’t know what authors to look for if I want substance). But, I can’t afford to buy every book I want!
I also decided / realized I like short stories, so I picked up a few volumes of short stories, but don’t have them in front of me to note them down. And I realized I don’t particularly like mysteries / thrillers (I get that the Lovely Bones has aspects of a thriller, but I don’t care for Ludlum or Clancy or the DaVinci Code, which I did not like at all).
So this is super helpful for me to figure out my own tastes after not having had the luxury to read, read, read!
The librarians at my local library do lots of theme tables. My favorite collection is the Serendipity Collection. It consists of new and newish books, both fiction and nonfiction, that are notable or best sellers and that are kept separate from the books used to fill holds. So, depending on my luck (serendipity!), I might be able to walk out of the library with a new book that I’d have to wait weeks or months for if I put it on hold.
The librarians at my library exemplify every negative stereotype, unfortunately.
I highly recommend the Goodreads website for help with this. Once you set up your profile, entering I think 25 books that you have read in the past, it will recommend books to you based on your past history and how you rated them. Also, you can ‘Friend’ your friends IRL who are on Goodreads and see what they’re reading and how they’re rating them. Every so often I’ll get a notice of what my ‘Friends’ are currently reading, their progress, and how they rate them when they’re done. If I see a book they’re reading that pique my interests, then I might even message them and basically say ‘hey, I see you’re reading such-and-such book; what do you think so far?’.
Almost always, I won’t read a book unless it has a rating of really close to 4, or 4 and higher on Goodreads. I’m probably missing some good ones out there by limiting it this way, but I’m not a prolific reader, so I insist that the books I read are almost universally liked. I do read the reviews on Goodreads, too.
I’d say in the last year or so, I’ve read almost all non-fiction and find it really holds my interest more than fiction. There’s just so much good stuff out there in non-fiction, and honestly, I’m using it as a way to learn about a lot of events that happened during the 20-30 years that I’ve been raising a family and had no time to keep up-to-date on world events. Some of it is depressing, but many of the books have stories of survivors, which can be uplifting.
That’s helpful; I actually have an account but have done zilch with it. Going on the to-do list!
@garland The third book started out slowly for me and has picked up. I think each started out slowly for me now that I think about it. I am listening so that holds my interest more. I am much less likely to put down something I’m listening to I have found.
I’m reading A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson. He is an author whose name I hear often but until this book, I had never read one of his. I am enjoying it very much. It is such an interesting combination of humor, history, geography and geology, I am learning a lot! The thought of hiking the Appalachian Trail is daunting to me but it sure is fun to read about it.
@Pizzagirl, if you like short stories I recommend Ernie’s Ark, by Monica Wood, and any collection by Alice Munro. Also Redeployment by Phil Klay, which I mentioned above.
I’m not fond of the form, but even I loved these.
I despise short stories, but I loved the discussion we had in CC bookclub about the collection of Munro short stories we read. I also really enjoyed reading all the short stories that were mentioned in *The Storied Life of A. J. Fricky *which we also read in the bookclub. (It was an interesting collection - Twain, F Scott Fitzgerald, Flannery O’Connor, Roald Dahl. Some of those stories are still haunting me.)