Interesting books!!
alwaysamom–I’ve read Berendt’s first novel, “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” which was fascinating & such an interesting evocation of (a certain type) of southern culture.
alwaysamom,
I love Elizabeth Berg and Jodi P. I have read all of their books. Elizabeth Berg has a new one out and I am on the library waitlist for it when it gets released.
I’ll try the Wayson Choy and Marian Meade…haven’t read them. Thanks!
Jolynne, I also loved Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. My mother knew Jim Williams so it made it even more interesting! 
ebeee, I had a feeling that you might already know Elizabeth Berg. Most women who read a lot have found her. I just read an old one of Jodi P.'s that I hadn’t seen before called Salem Falls. I enjoy how she structures her books stylistically, and I always admire the research that she does. Hope you enjoy the others I mentioned.
The next book I’m going to read is called The Alchemy of Loss by Abigail Carter. She is the widow of a man killed on 9/11 and it’s the story of the transformation of her life since that day. She started writing to record memories for her young children about their father, and eventually it turned into a writing career for her. I’m looking forward to it.
The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian is difficult to describe without giving away critical plot points. It is very psychological, a mystery, a thriller…and includes characters from The Great Gatsby. I’ve recommended this book to many people. A few have hated it, but the response of most upon finishing it is to immediately reread it and to seek out someone else who has read it so they can discuss it.
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa Sww is a lovely novel of two women and their friendship 19th century China. She opens up that time and culture I haven’t read her second novel, Peony in Love, yet but expect it to be just as good.
Currently working my way through Dark Age America by Morris Berman. His argument that the course of decline in the US cannot be reversed might not win any popularity contests, but imagine what Edward Gibbon would have written, had he lived in 3rd century Rome.
I should make a list of books to read someday based on this thread.
‘Snow Flower and the Secret Fan’ That was good.
Now I’m reading ‘The Painted Drum’ by Louise Erdrich (?) and ‘Windy City’ by Scott Simon.
alwaysamom–that’s so interesting that your mom knew Jim Williams! Such fascinating, colorful characters in that book—even moreso because they were real people (at least, based on actual folks).
I liked the character of the piano-playing, illicit, nightclub-running lawyer. I can picture him so clearly!
i loved The Double Bind…i give away almost all of the books i read, but i have kept that one.
I haven’t had nearly enough time to read lately (as I’ve mentioned on another thread, I’ve been tied up with a federal criminal trial since February), but when I have been able to grab a few minutes here and there, here are a couple of short story collections that have given me great pleasure:
–William Maxwell, All the Days and Nights
A longtime fiction editor at The New Yorker, as well as a much esteemed novelist and short story writer in his own right, Maxwell writes about everyday characters in everyday situations in prose that is as graceful as it is haunting. In a blurb on the back cover, Reynolds Price gets it just right: Maxwell’s stories “achieve their greatness invisibly.” I can’t think of anyone whose stories are any quieter, or more powerful, than Maxwell’s. (Today, an off-day from my trial, I took in the big Edward Hopper exhibit that’s been traveling the country - Hopper’s paintings and Maxwell’s stories have more than a little in common.)
[Amazon.com:</a> All The Days And Nights: The Collected Stories of William Maxwell: William Maxwell: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/All-Days-Nights-Collected-Stories/dp/0679438297/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209773162&sr=1-1]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/All-Days-Nights-Collected-Stories/dp/0679438297/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209773162&sr=1-1)
–Richard Ford (ed.), The New Granta Book of the American Short Story
If there’s a collection of short stories that exhibits greater range than this one, I’m not familiar with it. Brilliantly edited by Richard Ford, it takes the reader from Flannery O’Connor to Junot Diaz, from John Cheever to Jhumpa Lahiri - not to mention, oh, Lorrie Moore, Richard Yates, Andre Dubus, Raymond Carver, Stuart Dybek, et al., along the way. Read one of these stories each night before you go to bed: your life won’t get any easier, but it will become richer and more interesting.
[Amazon.com:</a> The New Granta Book of the American Short Story: Richard Ford: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Granta-Book-American-Short-Story/dp/1862078475/ref=ed_oe_h]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Granta-Book-American-Short-Story/dp/1862078475/ref=ed_oe_h)
I haven’t read this whole thread, but I did on search on the word Katherines and got no hits, so - I just finished reading An Abundance of Katherines by John Green. I really enjoyed it. It’s about a 17 year old child prodigy and his friend who go on a road trip, searching for significance. It’s funny, laugh-out-loud, but also very insightful. I wish I’d read it when my kids were younger.
Great thread…
Our Book Club is currently reading “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” by Barbara Kingsolver. The Kingsolver family lives on the land on a farm in Virginia’s Appalachian mountains.
I was hesitant to read it as I couldn’t imagine reading a book about food but I was wrong - it is very well written and it will change my buying habits. The author can be a little preachy at times but it’s a fascinating look at organic farming and how corporations have changed the way we eat. Most of our food travels 1,000 miles before it arrives on our table. You will never look at your food the same way again!
I purchased this book at a bookstore in northern Wisconsin based on their recommendations and loved it. As far as I know it is only available from the site below or used at Amazon. (or travel to Red Berry books in Northern Wisconsin!)
[Five</a> Friends Books - Fall to Grace](<a href=“http://www.fivefriendsbooks.com/FallToGrace/index.aspx]Five”>http://www.fivefriendsbooks.com/FallToGrace/index.aspx)
It is definitely on my list of all time favorite books I’ve read.
Two young boys from very different backgrounds meet and become friends because of tragedies in each of their lives. Much of it takes place in northern Minnesota. I read it last summer and can still remember all the characters. I hope there is a sequel. (edit - the author is Kerry Casey not Case - can’t edit the title)
One of the most chilling books I have read in the past six months is Jules Verne’s “lost” novel, Paris in the Twentieth Century.
According to a number of credible sources, Verne wrote this futuristic novel in 1863. Verne’s publisher, Pierre-Jules Hetzel, considered the novel’s theme to be too pessimistic (and potentially damaging to Verne’s rising literary career) to be published at that time. Verne followed Hetzel’s advice, and shelved the manuscript indefinitely. The manuscript was subsequently discovered by Verne’s great-grandson in 1989, and the novel was finally published (in French) in 1994. An English translation was published three years later.
Paris in the Twentieth Century, the story of a young man who is cold-bloodedly “weeded-out” by a society where intellectualism and creativity have become thoroughly corporatized, shook me to my core. The parallels between Verne’s futuristic 20th Century Paris (in which the sole purpose of privately-funded and corporate-controlled “public” education is to produce future cogs for the internationally “borderless” corporate wheel) and today’s creeping privatization, corporatization, and globalization of public elementary/secondary schools and public colleges/universities, are shocking.
If you are the parent of a son or daughter currently attending (or planning to attend) a public educational institution, I recommend that you read this novel. It will open your eyes, and if you are a public education advocate, I guarantee that you will be appalled by what you see.
epistrophy, thank you for those recommendations for short story collections. I have a friend who is a writer and I’m going to buy those for her, as short stories are her favorites. She has always told me that a good short story is the most difficult type of writing to produce.
glacier, thank you for mentioning the Kerry Casey book. An acquaintance told me about it recently, too, and I meant to order it but it had slipped my mind. Today will be the day to do that, and I’ll look forward to reading it in a few weeks when my H and I are going to take a vacation at Cape Cod.
Not a new book, but one I never read before: White Noise, by Don DeLillo. Story gets pretty out there, though interesting. The writing itself is fantastic. I wanted to steal every other line.
Just had to comment on John Green. I love him and Abundence of Katherines and Looking for Alaska. LFA is actually being made into a movie.
Just had to throw in a suggestion:
Certain Girls by Jennifer Weiner:
A really feel good book about the relationship between a mother and her daughter, trying to plan the daughters Bat Mitzvah. It is the sequel to her first book Good in Bed.
Another collection of short stories that’s been getting under my skin lately is * Jesus’ Son* by Denis Johnson’s (winner of this years’s National Book Award for his novel Tree of Smoke).
What are these interconnected stories “about”? Well, let’s see: they’re “about” voice - the voice of a first-person narrator who’s sometimes sentimental, sometimes bitter, often funny, as he recounts his misadventures in and out of love, in and out of bars, with and without drugs.
I recently read one of these stories, “Work,” in the anthology I mentioned in my last post, edited by Richard Ford, then wanted to hear more of that voice. Here’s the first paragraph of that story:
(Johnson’s kinetic, driven, I-did-this-I-did-that prose sometimes reminds me a bit of Kerouac.)
[Amazon.com:</a> Jesus’ Son: Stories by: Denis Johnson: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Son-Stories-Denis-Johnson/dp/0060975776/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210464313&sr=8-1]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Son-Stories-Denis-Johnson/dp/0060975776/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210464313&sr=8-1)
[Amazon.com:</a> The Nature of Paleolithic Art: R. Dale Guthrie: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Nature-Paleolithic-Art-Dale-Guthrie/dp/0226311260/]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Nature-Paleolithic-Art-Dale-Guthrie/dp/0226311260/)
An AMAZING book. It’s about much more than what the title says it’s about.
i just got a sony portable reader for mother’s day. no more lugging books through airports! i’ve downloaded the new books by leif enger and chris bohjalian…can’t wait to try it out
It’s an old one, but I just read “The Joy Luck Club” (for book club) & really liked it a lot!
wbow–is Chris Bohjalian the author of “The Midwife?” That was an interesting one.