I’d also like to thank the person who recommended “Out Stealing Horses”. I absolutely loved it and recommend it to everyone I talk to.
I read a lot of mysteries, two I have enjoyed lately are “Sleight of Hand” by Robin Hathaway and "the Sweet Golden Parachute " by David Handler.
One of the best book I have ever read is “The Book Thief” ( sorry, can’t recall author’s name).
regarding The Book Thief:Markus Suzak. Is it “young adult” literature?
Has this one been mentioned before? I’m not sure.
I just finished People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks and I enjoyed it.
mafool - I recommended the Book Thief to my book club and every single person loved it. That never happens!
mafool: yes, The Book Thief is “young adult” literature, and amazing.
I’m currently reading All the Pretty Horses. I’ve been reading a great deal of Cormac McCarthy ever since seeing No Country for Old Men. I am drawn to the incredible beauty of his writing despite story lines that are intellectually and emotionally challenging.
just a mom–not intending any disrespect, just trying to recall what I had heard about it. (says Mafool who read all of Harry Potter and adored much of the kid lit her son read)
mafool, don’t be silly, I never even “heard” disrespect. I was just quoting your quotes. 
Really.
mamom, S and I have been Fatsis fans ever since * Word Freak.* Terrific author. I also second the previous suggestions * People of the Book * and * The Sex Lives of Cannibals.* However, the best book I’ve read in the past six months is * Sarah’s Key, * by Tatiana De Rosnay. Very similar to * Suite Francaise * by Irene Nemirovsky, but more polished, more commercial, more modern and an easier read. Amazingly moving…I finished it a few tearful hours after I started it.
Home by Marilynne Robinson. I didn’t read Gilead…somehow didn’t find the premise of the life of a small town minister and his loved ones compelling but it appears I will go back after Gilead now…
Her prose is amazing and full of light. I just keep looking at the sentences on the page in wonder. Without being a hipster, she is cool and surprising.
She is very very gifted, and I am really impressed with her quiet eloquence. Her humanity and accuracy and kindness…in capturing the interiors of one family in a small town with a father who is a minister…reminds me of what I always loved about Reynolds Price’s best work.
Plum Spooky by Janet Evanovich
Just a mom–
Oh, good! I would never want to dis someone’s taste in reading!!!
Faline2, I loved Home and I loved Gilead, which really wasn’t as much about a minister’s life in a small town as it was about a man deeply in love with life and his young family dealing with his own mortality and morality.
Gilead is not bad as a book title either…I will get to it for sure now.
Mark Strand’s poem collection “Camel and Man”, which includes “Poem After the Seven Last Words”, a poem commissioned by the Bretanno Quartet to be read with Hayden’s Opus 51 “The Seven Last Words of Christ”. I will let you judge yourself the power of the poem with the stanza on-It is finished
"“It is finished,” he said. You could hear him say it,
the words almost a whisper, then not even that,
but an echo so faint it seemed no longer to come
from him, but from elsewhere. This was the moment,
his final moment. “It is finished,” he said into a vastness
that led to an even greater vastness, and yet all of it
within him. He contained it all. That was the miracle,
to be both large and small in the same instant, to be like us,
but more so, then finally to give up the ghost,
which is what happened. And from the storm that swirled
in his wake a formal nakedness took shape, the truth
of disguise and the mask of belief were joined forever.
Just finished “Ancient Shore” by Shirley Hazzard & Francis Steegmuller. Gorgeous essays about Naples. Lovely writing.
HelimomNYC, I just put a hold on Sarah’s Key and there are 97 people waiting ahead of me for 14 copies. Guess that’ll be some summer reading for me.
I also just put a hold on “Sarah’s Key”. I trhink I am number 14 for 4 copies. I just picked up “Those who save us” recommended previously in this thread.
I just read Gilead and will get to Home soon. Whatever4, your description is exactly right. It’s one of those books I can imagine reading again in my twilight years.
I also read Out Stealing Horses (also based on recommendations here), and they are similar in their elegeic tone. I don’t know why I love these kinds of books these days. I’m not THAT old yet!