OCTOBER READS

[rapa]

"HELLO OCTOBER!"

Did you remember to RABBIT RABBIT RABBIT?

There are some good reads out there. Have you found any that really grab you? I'm still enthralled with Thomas Christopher Greene's riveting psychological novel THE HEADMASTER'S WIFE. Next up is Sandra Brown's MEAN STREAK.

Happy reading to all!

[Jick]

Actually this has been my August, September, and first part of October read.  It's Books 1, 2, and 3 of "MY STRUGGLE" by  Karl Ove Knausgaard.  It's a 6 book autobiographical fiction that's a sensation in his home country of Norway and most of Europe.  The third book was translated into English this summer. I read about it and thought I'd give it a try, starting with Book 1.  It is so addictive. I thought I'd wait a while to read the next two books but couldn't wait a day without getting back into his story.  Each book is about 500 pages and full of details and such vivid memories it makes you relive your own life too, little by little.  If it's true that an unexamined life is a life not worth living, Karl Ove's live is well worth living. Highly recommend it, even if it isn't an easy read.  Read there's an outside chance he might win the Nobel prize for literature tomorrow, and it he does I'll be too smug to be around.    Have just started reading Fall of Giants, book 1 of Ken Follett's The Century Trilogy.  The 3rd was just published.    Finding it hard to get into but will plug along for a while.

[Countryphyl]

Our bookclub selection this month is Sarah's Key by Tatiana De Rosnay. Good book even though parts are difficult to read. Part of it takes place in Paris in July, 1942 when thousands of Jews were rounded up in Paris to be sent to concentration camps and the other part of the book takes place in modern day Paris. Check it out.

[Mandy Muffin]

This was a good Holocaust novel that I remember reading a couple of years back.  I would also recommend, "The Book Thief" and "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" as reads in this category.  

[Slopok]

I read that.....Good book.

[Carolyn Tewell]

Quick fly by...since I was absent from Jan until recently...mostly because I had so few great news to share about any books.

One I liked..."Mr. Mercedess" ~by Stephen King. Action Man (my DH) wasn't that impressed. Now I stopped reading King at Pet Cemetary...but couldn't resist a shot....had a lot of fun with it.

Back after dinner.

[rapa]

Good to be back on the road with Jack Reacher! Lee Child's new PERSONAL got me from the get-go. Anyone else reading this?

[Carolyn Tewell]

GLENDA...I love Virgil Flowers as well. I know some women might be...um, ER, uh ...not wanting to get involved with the very masculine actions that he has to handle...but somehow he manages to be this humble, articulate and caring person. Just love the hero.

Pelecanos...The Night Gardener...okay, I'm struggling thru it. The reader did Stephen Kings 11/23/63 Kennedy Assination and HE is just so dang good that im not going to give up...just yet. I'm so used to mysteries and this story is like a day to day life of cops and Military in 1940's in LA with all the Celebs of that time...just as WWII is about to happen. Very harsh, racist, or ...well, I need to read on.

[Carolyn Tewell]

Error Correction...PERFIDIA by James Ellroy is the book I meant not Pellacanos.

[Mandy Muffin]

After my love affair with "The Goldfinch" last year -- I even purchased and  framed a repro of the famous painting -- I just started "The Secret History" by the same author, Donna Tartt.  It is set in secluded small college in Vermont and is consumed with a young man and his esoteric friends at the college.  It looks like another mind twister and has been tagged as a modern day classic. All I can say after reading the first several pages is where is this author taking me?  Like "The Goldfinch," it looks like one hell of a ride. 

[Mandy Muffin]

Unlike "The Goldfinch," "The Secret History" proved too esoteric for my tastes.  It took Donna Tartt nearly 600 pages to unfold this story about a bunch of college intellectuals who are so dysfunctional that they only study under one professor of Greek and spend their days mimicking ancient tragedies, mostly in a alcoholic or drug induced stupor.  Every thing goes, including incest, homosexuality and murder. Why not?  So I put the book down after 100 pages and read the Cliff Notes.  Some Greek tragedies are better read in the original.  Now to find a good, old fashioned, American detective story or some such simplistic reading that I can actually relate to. 

[Mandy Muffin]

I actually found an Scottish detective novel called "The Complaints" by Ian Rankin.  Look promising, as it deals with the Scottish version of "Internal Affairs" in the police department.  This is a hardcover book I picked up at the local book exchange and have had in the "to read" pile for some time.  http://www.ianrankin.net/pages/content/index.asp?PageID=169

[Eaglewoman]

Sat went to a lecture at the library in the next town over on Historic Denver neighborhoods. They were promoting "blood memory" by local author Margret Coel. It was a good mystery set in Denver. Kept me guessing right to the end who the culprit was.