I enjoyed Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, and the sequel Bring Up the Bodies. There is to be a third in this series about the career of Thomas Cromwell. Both won the Man Booker Prize. If you can get past some of her stylistic quirks, it is very engaging reading. I also recently liked Caleb’s Crossing, by Geraldine Brooks, historical fiction about the first Native American to graduate from Harvard, and The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides.
mommusic and crizello: Thought you might be interested in the CC Book Club discussions of the books you mentioned.
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1354603-wide-sargasso-sea-jane-eyre-august-cc-book-club-selection.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1354603-wide-sargasso-sea-jane-eyre-august-cc-book-club-selection.html</a>
<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>
Starting “Rules of Civility” tonight - really looking forward to it.
Quilll, I am just working my way through Wolf Hall and enjoying it. I know, everyone else out here read it ages ago… what can I say? So many books, so little time! I will definitely read the sequel.
SouthJerseyChessMom posted Elaine Newton’s Critic’s Choice Summer Reading List a couple years ago. I thought I’d post the 2013 list. I see a couple books I’ve read (and liked)
*Art Forger
Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore *
and
a few more the CC Book Club considered and more than a few I want to read.
<a href=“https://www.thephil.org/education/documents/13-CCSummerReadingList.pdf[/url]”>https://www.thephil.org/education/documents/13-CCSummerReadingList.pdf</a>
I’ve read Telegraph Avenue, Hologram for the king, and Flight Behavior. I have Mr. Penumbra’s Bookstore from the Library right now.
Oddly, I’m in the middle of Jill McCorkle’s new novel (she’s one of my total favorites), Life after Life, which is totally different from the book by the same name on the list. Too bad they both came out the same year!
I recently finished the “Life After Life” on the list and can recommend it.
I am also really enjoying “Rules of Civility.” I can tell that I am not going to want it to end.
^^^
Rules of Civility was on Elaine Newton’s summer 2012 list.
I just finished McCorkle’s “Life after Life” and enjoyed it. I think I meant to check out the other one, but since I only knew the title, not the author, I took this one out of the library by mistake.
It’s almost Throwback Thursday, so let me throw out an oldie but a goodie: a kids’ book that’s even better read by older folks. “The Phantom Tollbooth” by Norton Juster. Just a total classic that can make you think at any age.
I really enjoyed “There Was an Old Woman” by Hallie Ephron.
This may well have been mentioned somewhere in the previous 128 pages, but after a trip to Dallas a couple weeks ago which included a trip to the 6th Floor Museum, I came home and read “11/22/63”. Time travel tale about a guy who time travels back to prevent the assassination of JFK. I haven’t read anything by Stephen King in decades, but found this really interesting. He did a ton of research and the 800-plus pages flew by. Prompted me to download his “Under the Dome”, which is being made into a TV series to start in late June. Not sure whether I will read this next or a different author in between!
^I was away from Stephen King for years but did enjoy 11/22/63 and Under the Dome. He has a new book coming out June 4 which sounds like a return to the old SK…it’s already #31 at Amazon, out in Paperback.
Two of his sons are also writing books; the latest horror story by Joe Hill has gotten good reviews.
^^^ musmom2 and smdur1970:
I like promoting the CC Book Club so
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1258379-11-22-63-february-cc-book-club-selection.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1258379-11-22-63-february-cc-book-club-selection.html</a>
Ignatius you do such a good job promoting the book discussion! thanks for posting link to Elaine Newton’s list-I hadn’t seen this year’s. Do I see a new Colum McCann book coming out in August- Transatlantic 
I know how you felt about LTGWS.Hope the wedding was wonderful.
cartera, that’s how I felt, as I mentioned earlier in the thread. The final 50 pages, or so, I truly savored each one because I hated that the end was so near.
lafalum, one of my favorite books of all time! I really need to read it again.
Can’t wait for Transatlantic to come out! I can’t imagine enjoying it more than Let the Great World Spin but I’m excited to read another by McCann.
I just finished Rose Tremain’s new book, Merivel, her sequel (more than 20 years later) to Restoration. Excellent, and quite enjoyable, but at the same time, despite its picaresque nature, I found to be (in parts) one of the more depressing – or melancholy, as Merivel himself would have put it! – books I’ve read in a while.
alwaysamom - I listened to the audiobook and really liked the narrator. I found myself looking for other books that she narrated. When I listen to a book, I am sometimes surprised when it comes to an end. I was sad when the narrator said the words “Epilogue.” I wanted more details about the years between 1938 and the end of the book. I’m pretty sure I will listen it to again within the year now that I know how it wrapped up.
It is being made into a movie so I’m thinking about roles.
Read it years ago, but too many people have read Dan Brown and skipped over my favorite book “Digital Fortress.” Great book that revolves around the NSA and the threat of an unbreakable algorithm used to encrypt emails. It isn’t in the same mold of the Da Vinci Code or his other religious based mysteries.
I listened to Peter Schiff’s audio book, “Why an economy grows and why it crashes.” It was 3.5 hours long and is told like a children’s story. It was very easy to understand for a laymen like myself, and gave a good introduction to Austrian Economics. It was fun.
I read Ron Paul’s, “The Revolution-A Manifesto.” Very interesting because he tackles issues that most politicians on either side of the isle won’t, and also has ideas on some subjects that you won’t get from either side of the isle as well. Helped me to understand the libertarian non aggression principle, and challenged the way I view government and it’s role.
I feel like a wannabe cool kid mentioning this, but I happened upon Neal Stephenson’s “Snow Crash” through a circuitous route (that started in this thread), and it was a simply amazing book. I could not believe how it grabbed me and how much I enjoyed it. I know nothing about computer hacking, skateboarding, Sumerian mythology, online gaming, or most of the other factors he manages so deftly in the book.
It’s a dystopian novel about a future America, almost completely privatized, in which we lead the world in four areas - music, movies, writing software, and pizza delivery. There’s a wonderful, unique leading female character. It’s hysterically funny and a total page turner. I’m reading his “Reamde” now - less frenetic, still masterful and completely absorbing.