<p>Oh my goodness! What an erudite bunch. I knew there was a reason I love college confidential!</p>
<p>Harry Potter friends – we actually have to buy two copies, one for D, one for S. Each wants own copies of hard cover editions, and neither can wait to read. I have to wait for one to finish, usually D finishes first.</p>
<p>I think Harry (sob!) and Snape will die along with Voldemort. Hermione and Ron will have son named Harry.</p>
<p>Just finished Evening by Susan Minot and The Spirit Catches Me and I Fall Down by Anne Fadiman about health care for the Hmong people in Merced, CA. Sad, fascinating book about cultural obtuseness, colonialism and the health problems of one very sick little Hmong girl.</p>
<p>I feel bathed in permission to indulge my trashy side and read Claire Bloom’s book as I’ve been dying to do. I have been reading Roth’s American Pastoral for quite a long time. He prose slays me with its beauty, but his politics mightily irritate me.</p>
<p>I am gearing up to read new Pynchon, Against the Day, while it’s still summer. Right now I’m reading an old Robertson Davies that a friend bought for a quarter and passed on.</p>
<p>Side note: My dear, dear mentor Rose Zimbardo was married to Phil Zimbardo in the dark ages, and I actually met him once, 'tho can’t remember why since they were already divorced. Typical falling in love with his grad student. So his work, while brilliant, is always tinged with his own moral issues for me.</p>
<p>Thanks everone for stellar list.</p>
<p>Am I the only one who did not like narrative tone of Middlesex?</p>
<p>I’m so happy to see so many postings from Harry Potter fans! My reading list this month has included “The Reluctant Fundamentalist”, “A Thousand Splendid Suns” (loved it!), “The Gatekeepers” (another college admission book – although I should just give it up now, as S1 is a Freshman this fall at his first-choice school, and S2 has two more years before we start the crazy process again.) Also read “Better” (Non-fiction about surgeons/docs). Loved “The Thirteenth Tale”, too. In the past two weeks, I have been on a SF/Fantasy bend – read all six Potter books again, plus read Half-Blood Prince again after finishing all six. (Looking for clues, you know!). Just finished a couple of SF books, including “Bright the Sky” by Kay Kenyon, and “Quantico” by Greg Bear. (really more of a thriller about terrorism with a slight SF twist) Also just finished “Blaze” by Bachman/King.</p>
<p>I’m very anxious to read Potter 7, but sad that the series is ending. I feel like my two DSs grew up with it. I have no real theories about the last book, except that I don’t think Harry will die.</p>
<p>Another Potter tidbit – we have so many Potter readers in the house, we also have to buy two copies of every book – but we buy the second copy in the original British version. We love reading both books to compare, and it is fun to discover all the different places where words have been changed so American’s can understand the terms. (Jumper and sweater, for example – but there are quite a few more)</p>
<p>Unfortunately, I still have a huge pile of unread books on my nightstand – I can’t decide what to read next – suggestions?</p>
<p>Oh, and Mythmom, you are not the only one who did not like narrative tone of Middlesex – I really struggled to get through that one – didn’t like it at all.</p>
<p>mythmom: Bringing up profs going for their students, I know a prof who had this academic idol his entire life, even when my friend was a teenager. Then, when he started teaching down the hall from the guy, he realized his idol (up till then) played a few of his students each semester. My friend could never stand to use any of this guy’s books in class anymore, etc.</p>
<p>Loved “The Chosen” AND “Year of Wonders”! My guilty pleasure is “Mists of Avalon” which I’ve read and re-read over the years. (There. I’ve admitted it. lol!) </p>
<p>The narrative thing was one of things I really liked about Middlesex. It seemed just when the storyline was getting a little heavy…the author would pop in with something kooky and humorous. Perfect pingpong…like Angela’s Ashes.</p>
<ol>
<li>Just finished: *Pompeii *by Robert Harris. They’re going to make a movie out of this (directed by Roman Polanski, of all people), and since it’s a historical event that fascinates me, I wanted to read the book.</li>
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<p>The movie version of this could be the next Titanic. The only difference is that the fictional plot that gives you something to pay attention to until the disaster starts is not embarrassingly childish. It’s actually an adequate thriller on its own terms, having to do with a failure of the water supply, and it helps you learn about aspects of Roman life (such as the critical importance of the aqueducts) that you may not have appreciated before. There’s not a lot of character development, though, but that may not matter in the movie once the volcano starts to do its thing.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Reading now: Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. A fascinating look at circus life in the 1930s, narrated by a former circus veterinarian now in his nineties who lives in a nursing home. The circus parts are riveting and obviously very well researched. The nursing home parts are absurd. They depend for their suspense on the ridiculous concept that the protagonist – who has full use of his arms, who can transfer from bed to chair unassisted, and who can walk short distances with a walker – is unable to propel his own wheelchair. I once used a wheelchair for several months after an injury, and I have been a patient in the short-term rehab ward of a nursing home, which is how I know that the situation assumed by the author is unrealistic. The author’s lack of research about nursing home life and wheelchair use really interfered with my enjoyment of the book.</p></li>
<li><p>Up next: The Last Days of Dogtown by Anita Diamant. I hear that it’s kind of depressing, but anything written by the author of The Red Tent can’t be all bad.</p></li>
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