Agree with @bookmama22 - definitely not my favourite Jane Smiley.
Just finished âSchlinderâs List.â It was very engrossing but horrific to read of the brutality and senseless murders. I really believe Mrs Emilie Schindler is not often given all the credit she is due for the many lives she also saved and her forbearance in remaining loyally in a marriage to such a blatant womanizer.
@Himom, how similar/different was it to the movie?
I didnât see the movie. Iâm not sure I could have handled it. The book was challenging enough with the random brutality and senselessness of the cruelty (in addition to the war), in my opinion.
One of my daughters was just telling me how much she enjoyed that book.
Just read The Unwinding of the Miracle. What trials and tribulations she went thru and still lost her battle to colon cancer.Like she said, life is unfair, deal with it. Makes one never complain about any hardship in oneâs life!
I just finishedâThe Darkest Night by Jeremy Finley. Itâs an excellent readâfinished it in two days. Itâs a mix of sci-fi/thriller/politial intrigue. Thanks to the person on here who recommended it.
LinnyLou, i too enjoyed that book.
^I love that book!
@alangreys. I need to READ that book. I tried listening. Could not get past the narratorâs voice & delivery.
Who narrated your version? I find Bill Bryson totally engaging and fun to listen to when he narrates his own books. But thereâre other narrators of his books that Iâve totally given up on.
@gouf78 , @alangreys and friendsâŠ
I should have checked my history books before posting. This is the book I was recalling. (My dad raved about it - so I tried.) The description on library listing mentions the science context. Pardon my confusion. ? Iâll go for the Bill Bryson title.
âA Little History of the Worldâ"
Author - E.H. Gombrich
Narrator - Ralph Cosham
Set against the ever-changing canvas of science, a grand human story emerges in forty concise chapters of war, grand works of art, and the frailty of humanity."
I just finished Alone On the Ice by David Roberts (one of my all time favorite writers about climbing and the outdoors). It is the story of an amazingly ambitious 1907 Australian expedition to explore uncharted parts of Antarctica & collect scientific information. The world was consumed with the race to the South Pole at the time, so this story has been somewhat overshadowed by that. For anyone who liked the Shackleton Endurance story, this is a good read. Roberts does a nice job organizing the tale of a complicated expedition (teams at multiple landing sites and sending out multiple exploration groups from each site).
@ccreader
I was deeply moved by the first half of âthe unwinding of the miracleâ by Julie Yip-Williams. She was such a good writer, and even though I believe all life is precious, you couldnât help but feel a bit more sorrowful when someone who had suffered so much yet still so full of fighting spirits succumbed to the cruel fate of cancer. I liked it better than âwhen breath becomes airâ. However, I think the book suffered from posthumous publication and was having more repetition and less of the emotional connection in the second half of the book.
Finished two books that I really enjoyed.
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Heartland - a memoir of working hard and being broke in the richest country on earth, by Sarah Smarsh. Imho, it is so much better than the âhillbilly elegyâ. Heartland dives deep into Smarshâs family, four-generations of white-working-poors, very well written.
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the great believer, by Rebecca Makkai. A novel about the AIDS epidemic in the 80s-90s of Chicagoâs âboytownâ, heart-wrenchingly beautiful.
@makemesmart
I was a refugee like her and yet, her boat escape makes mine seem like a cruise. Even sharing and understanding the same culture, I gasped at the cruelty of her grandmother. Her determination to live life on her own terms is unparalleled. I like both When Breath Becomes Air and her book, Breath is slightly better edited. She is an amazing writer but I feel like you that they can be repetitive at times. Still, there are chapters and lines so heartbreaking that I found myself put it down just to breathe.
I just finished reading A Well Behaved Woman by Therese Anne Fowler. A fascinating historical fiction book about Alva Vanderbilt. Alva is a remarkable woman who earned a place in, then bucked the conventions of New York high society in the late 1800s.
I just finished The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason. It is an entrancing book. The cultural richness, subtlety, and magic he brings to this story are intensely absorbing. A London piano tuner, a specialist in exquisite Erard instruments, accepts a military mission to travel to an extremely remote site in Burma to tune an Erard for a remarkable man, a soldier/doctor/scientist/diplomat, at whose request the army has previously acquired and shipped the Erard to this outpost. It is set in the late 19th century, during a period when the British Empire was contending with the French and Russians for control in the region.
It is mind-boggling that this was his first novel.
I read the piano tuner ages ago - I would also recommend it
@makemesmart, The Great Believers was a huge hit at my book clubâuniversally loved. I started out worried that the alternating time frames would be a shtick, as it is in some novels, but it really worked.
I donât think anyone has yet recommended Daniel Masonâs The Winter Soldier, a novel set during World War I, but told from an unusual perspective. Very beautifully written and very moving.