<p>ellemenope, get hold of The Likeness to have ready when you finish Into the Woods!</p>
<p>Love Tana Woods too. Try Ruth Rendell if you like her and Deborah Crombie if mysteries are your cup of tea.</p>
<p>Don’t forget to tell us all about the hike as soon as you can!!!</p>
<p>Today I bought:</p>
<p>Loving Frank
Middlesex
Time Traveler’s Wife
Lincoln (can’t go on trip-huge hardback)
High Fidelity</p>
<p>I took the list to Half Price Books and this is what they had. $31 (list price of over $70.) This should last me into the summer, then I’ll refresh the thread and work my way through the rest. I’m definitely bringing Loving Frank on the trip-have to decide on one more.</p>
<p>Thanks so much to all you bright reading people!</p>
<p>And yes, if I live to tell the story, I’ll report on the hike!</p>
<p>The biography of Madame Currie. </p>
<p>Lovely Bones.</p>
<p>Blindness.</p>
<p>If you want to laugh, anything Sedaris or Nick Hornsby.</p>
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<p>will do, HMW! Comes out in paperback May 26th…</p>
<p>Time Traveler’s Wife…hands down the best!</p>
<p>A Breath of Snow and Ashes–Diana Gabaldon. Excellent! Don’t let the fact that it’s a “historical romance” put you off. The Outlander Series is extremely well written and will keep you on the edge of your chair. I highly recommend the Audio version of this particular book. The reader does an incredible job! This audio book is excellent good for a long car ride, especially if you’re the driver. It will keep you awake and engaged.</p>
<p>For Pure light entertainment value, Maeve Binchey is a good bet everytime. Tara Road. Evening Class. Night of Rain and Stars. White Thorn Woods, and Scarlet Feather are fun reads. She has a penchant for dialog and story telling, and has you rooting for the main characters the whole way.</p>
<p>Drop City, and Riven Rock, by T.C. Boyle. The man is truly gifted with the language. His quirky and terribly flawed characters are also fascinating.</p>
<p>The Crimson Petal and The White. Riveting, though the ending is somewhat of a head-scratcher.</p>
<p>Anything by Barbara Kingsolver, especially The Poisonwood Bible. My God, what a page-turner!</p>
<p>Inez of My Soul and Daughter of Fortune, both by Isabel Allende. </p>
<p>The Master Butcher’s Singing Club by Louise Erdrich</p>
<p>Horse Heaven, by Jane Smiley. I love the way the narrative written from the point of view of a couple of her horses (not merely limited to that of the human characters) was so credible, and the book really was an entertaining education on the whole horse racing industry.</p>
<p>Empire Falls<a href=“Richard%20Russo”>/u</a> was great. Bridge of Sighs, merely good.</p>
<p>Digging to China, and virtually any other book by Ann Tyler.</p>
<p>Virtually anything by Gail Godwin. I especially loved Father Melancholy’s Daughter</p>
<p>And a brand new novel, The Help by Kathyrn Stockett is a wonderful debut work. Looking forward to more from her in the future!</p>
<p>Adding to your summer list: pretty much anything by Bill Bryson, but especially A
Walk in the Woods.</p>
<p>^^^ Thunderbolt Kid- Bill Bryson</p>
<p>I finished Loving Frank. Knowing a bit of the story already I kept thinking, “Don’t go to Wisconsin. Stay in Berlin. Stay in Italy!” Interesting to think that there was an era not all that long ago where an extra marital affair was front page news. But I still don’t know how much I like Mameh. I think the author went easy on Frank - I always thought he was much more of a jerk. But Mameh - to truly give up your kids for a guy…interesting to ponder, even in 2009.</p>
<p>Has anyone read TC Boyle’s book about Frank Lloyd Wright? I have it in my library request list.
All the book threads have been great in giving me ideas of books to request from the library. I am just finishing American Wife.</p>
<p>I missed this thread the first time around because I was on vacation. I read “White Oleander,” “Fortune’s Rocks,” by Anita Shreve and “The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries” by Marilyn Johnson – all three great vacation reads.</p>
<p>My list of books to buy has just expanded. thanks, CC!</p>
<p>I, too, adored “Time Traveler’s Wife” (which is coming out as a movie this summer). But I hated Poisonwood Bible, even though I loved other Barbara Kingsolver books. I think people either love that book or despise it.</p>
<p>I’ll second the recommendation of “The Shadow of the Wind,” by Carlos Ruiz Zafon – I read it a few summers back, and could not put it down. I almost pulled an all-nighter to finish it. Same with “Bark of the Dogwood: A Tour of Southern Homes and Gardens,” by Jackson Tippet McCrae.</p>
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<p>All right, ladies, I just finished this book. FABULOUS read!! </p>
<p>–Don’t read on, those of you who haven’t read the book, but plan to someday–</p>
<p>I admit to missing all the clues that Rosalind, the oldest sister, was the Iago figure to her boyfriend Damien’s Othello. I was disappointed that the partnership of the lead detectives went so awry. And I really, really wanted the original mystery of the two missing kids to be solved. From the clues in the book, am I to assume that some giant bird of prey took the kids???</p>
<p>A million little pieces.</p>
<p>Going to buy The Madonnas of Leningrad and Time Traveler’s Wife; thanks for the recommendations. </p>
<p>Bill Bryson, absolutely. Start with A Walk in the Woods and go on from there.</p>
<p>If the OP hasn’t already read it, one of my all-time favorite books (historically relevant too) is The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck. I reread it every few years.</p>
<p>The Unbearable Lightness Of Being</p>
<p>Another vote for “Outliers”.</p>
<p>I finished *Middlesex *this morning. Great, interesting book. It took me a while to get into it because I started it immediately after Time Traveler’s Wife…I thought, great, another book about an abnormal guy. But obvously very different stories.</p>
<p>Glad you enjoyed them - I LOVED Time Traveler’s Wife and really enjoyed Middlesex as well, both quirky, but I though TTW was more compelling. </p>
<p>What’s next on your reading list? Maybe it’s time to start a summer list around here!</p>