What are you reading this week?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
One reader's thoughts as she steps from book to book.
Books I've Finished
- "A Christmas Memory"
- by Truman Capote 12/8/12
- "Child's Christmas in Wales"
- by Dylan Thomas 12/7/12
- "One Christmas"
- by Truman Capote 11/29/12
- "The Thanksgiving Visitor"
- by Truman Capote 11/29/12
- Inside Mrs. B's Classroom
- by Leslie Baldacci 11/28/12
- The Bee Eater
- by Richard Whitmire 11/15/12
- There Are No Shortcuts
- by Rafe Esquith 10/28/12
- I'd Like to Apologize to
- Every Teacher I Ever Had
- by Tony Danza 10/21/12
- Corked
- by Kathryn Borel 10/15/12
- Year of Learning Dangerously
- by Quinn Cummings 9/30/12
- A Hologram for the King
- by Dave Eggers 8/23/12
- To Kill a Mockingbird
- by Harper Lee 7/18/12
About Me
- Christine
- I often have a few books with bookmarks in them at once. I enjoy classics more than contemporary works of fiction, often read historical fiction, and love to get glimpses into other people's lives by reading memoirs and biographies.
10 comments:
I'm still working on Elizabeth's II biography (which I'm loving!). But more importantly, Christine, what is the picture today? It's not posting & I'm dying of curiosity.
(Same post, misspellings corrected.)
Hi Mary, I looked at the Eliz bio tonight at work and thought of you.
It's a picture of squashed sleepy birds on a branch. Mine loads. I wonder if anyone else can see it? Google images for 'sleepy birds' and I'll bet you can guess which one I used.
How's Jamrach going?
I can't see the picture either. Weird. I'll google "sleepy birds" though. :)
I have no news; I'm still reading Hedy's Folly. C'mon and post, other people.
Yes, Lisa and Mary can't hold this whole thing together!
I just finished Elizabeth the Queen (Smith). I was a lovely--and lengthy--book. The author covered Elizabeth’s life from childhood through the present, paying great attention to her relationships with other royals, her prime ministers, horse people, the press and common folk. I recognized many, many of the stories and situations presented; Smith almost seemed to have pulled out the major headlines of the last 85+ years and then written the biography around them. This could have been a boring read, except for Smith’s additions of insider information cleverly sprinkled throughout the book. Although I have been a follower of the Queen for as long as I can remember, there were lots of tidbits I never knew: Elizabeth worked as an auto mechanic during WWII; she neither holds a passport nor a driver’s license; she can’t vote or appear as a witness in court. The result was a book which was both familiar and novel.
The author used a number of words with which I was unfamiliar, such as catafalque and opsimath. I had to go on-line for British terms such as secondment and naffness.
One down side was that on the Nook, the captions are not always on the same page as the illustrations. Sometimes, they’re even split on different pages. There were numerous pictures at the end of the book, and the Nook idiosyncrasies made them less enjoyable than they should have been.
The book is unabashedly pro-Queen, and pro-royalty in general. It is, in some places, anti-Diana. The author tries very hard to present the Queen as a complete person, human, yes, but clearly a much, much better human than the rest of us.
Now I see your lovely flower picture in place of the birds.
I finally finished Hedy's Folly, and I'm a little disappointed, but I don't think it's totally the author's fault. I think the U.S. Navy took her and George Antheil's invention, which was meant to help the U.S. in World War II by making it easier for our torpedoes to reach their targets by preventing frequency "jamming" using something called spread spectrum technology, and sat on it for a while but made it confidential for national security's sake. Since it was classified for many years, it's hard to dig up a lot of history on it. But apparently the patent Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil acquired for this technology has led to many technological advances that we use even today, like cell phones.
I'm a little bitter on behalf of Hedy Lamarr, especially as a woman, that her name has gone down in relative obscurity, although she was recently given an award at the ripe age of 80-something (no money though).
The book's a bit uneven overall...I suspect that since there was a lack of use of the invention during Hedy's heyday, especially during World War II which is what both Hedy and George had hoped for, the author felt compelled to focus on other stuff, like George Antheil's life as a musician living in New York and Europe through the generosity of a long-suffering benefactor, before he even met Hedy and collaborated with her on their invention. Aside from his invention of the player-piano, there's not much in these chapters that connects them to Hedy's life and to their collaboration in any way, although it's somewhat fun reading.
I'm sad to say that the passages focusing on how their invention actually works went a bit over my head.
I've been doing lots and lots of reading lately. After finishing my 5-volume Thomas Hardy book, I read a couple of Terry Pratchetts--Thud! and The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (which could be subtitled The Pied Piper Meets the Rats of NIMH). Then I polished off my Complete Bone collection (a reread, but still awesome). After that, I read Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter (a disappointment), and Elvis, Jesus, and Coca-Cola, by Kinky Friedman, which was very entertaining. I'm now on to a reread of Lawrence Durrel's Clea, which is absolutely lovely to read on a lazy sunny morning.
Jamrach’s Menagerie.
If I had to sum up this book in one word, it would be WOW!
I had a feeling from Christine's description that I'd like it, but I hated the cover (and I do judge books by their covers, bad habit, I know). I liked the cover of Howard's End, and the description, but I hated the execution, so you never know.
It really was a mix of Dickens (the land part) and Owen Chase (the sea part)! It also reminded me of Life of Pi a bit with the similarities of the tiger/the British culture/the crumbling of civilization as the ordeal continued relentlessly.
I finished it the first time in a day, with burning eyes and bologna sandwiches for dinner, and nightmares for dessert. Then I re-read it, slowly over the next few days. Then I re-re-read it even more slowly, and now it's due back at the library, so I need to decide if I'm going NOOK or audio for the next go.
It's the kind of book I'd love to see made into a movie just so I could say that I'd never see it because the film could never do justice to the written word.
What a great recommendation!
Mary! I'm so glad you had such a strong reaction to this book, too! I had moments from the last part of it that kept coming back to me for many days. The desperation of the men adrift is palpable. I would sometimes put the book down just because I could. I wanted them out of those damn whale boats so badly. I've checked out Owen Chase's narrative again (having checked it out before and not read it), and I also have the juvenile edition of In the Heart of the Sea, called Revenge of the Whale. Thought it'd be a quick brush-up. I'm obsessed with all things Melville and Moby-Dick, as you know. Mary, you might also like Why Read Moby-Dick by Philbrick. And, then, of course, I think you should read the Big Boy itself. Maybe I'll succeed in getting Don to read it one day.
Post a Comment