Whatcha Readin'? A Book Thread

After We Fall by Emma Kavanagh. A thriller. Good so far. Interesting characters.
 

Just started "Furiously Happy" by Jenny Lawson...what a great book. I mean if you can't laugh about being bi-polar, you cry. Very well written, very funny in a twisted way of course.
 
fureverywhere said:
Just started "Furiously Happy" by Jenny Lawson...what a great book. I mean if you can't laugh about being bi-polar, you cry. Very well written, very funny in a twisted way of course.
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Thanks for recommending this book, fureverywhere! I'm in the mood for twisted humor - got it loaded in my minipad from Amazon. This month, I've read As a Driven Leaf by Milton Stein: A historical novel about Jewish history during a period of Rome's occupation. The Martian by Andy Weir: A SciFi about an astronaut who was presumed to be dead and left on Mars. He had to find a way to survive and eventually return to Earth. Killing Floor: a Lee Child mystery. I am currently reading Save The Last Bullet For God: I think it is some kind of SciFi ... not sure.
 
fureverywhere said:
I'll have to look for those for my son, real big on SciFi. The Milton Stein one sounds interesting for me.
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I liked Stein's writing style. I found his book an enjoyable read like being in a Buick upon a straight freeway – as apposed to a ride in a Jeep along a dirt road. I have always thought of a rabbi as being the same as a Christian priest, but in those days, a rabbi was more like a lawyer or a judge. I found a number of insights that I value, in that book.
Historical novels are my favorite genre, but I have been jumping around quite a bit, lately.
 
Linda, The Casual Vacancy is good.

For this holiday and the plane trip I got a lot of free or cheap books on my Kindle. Going through a mystery/thriller phase. Some have been good, some I gave up by chapter 2. I've just started one called Cauldstane by Linda Gillard. I must have got it because it takes place in Scotland. Not sure if I'll finish it as I suspect it will be predictable. I read reviews before I get any book and this one was mixed.
 
I have always enjoyed reading, my mother had to force me to go out to play as a child; I preferred reading a book! Mind you, I doubt she would have been quite so keen to send me out to play if she realised all the life threatening situations I got myself into when left to my own devices!

I am fond of my Kindle and have hundreds of books on it. My BIG problem is that I took a speed reading course as a teenager, so I read very quickly indeed. I get through lots of books each month, about £60 worth, but it is worth it.
 
I use a e-reader and borrow digital editions from the public library. Don't spend a penny on books anymore!

Right now its Mavis Gallant (re-reading some of my favorites) as well as Alice Munro re-reads.
 
A serious subject but very well presented from both a clinical and emotional standpoint. "How We Die" by Sherwin B. Nuland.

A review written shortly after his death...an extraordinary man indeed.
I attended the Yale School of Medicine when Shep Nuland taught there, and despite our both being surgeons, I know him best in my capacity as a reader. I don’t recall when I first read How We Die—I was just finishing high school when it came out—but I do know that few books I had read so directly and wholly addressed that fundamental fact of existence: all organisms, whether goldfish or grandchild, die. His description of his grandmother’s illness showed me how the personal, medical, and spiritual all intermingled. As a child, Nuland would play a game in which he indented her skin to see how long it took to resume its shape—a part of the aging process that, along with her newfound shortness of breath, showed her “gradual slide into congestive heart failure … the significant decline in the amount of oxygen that aged blood is capable of taking up from the aged tissues of the aged lung.”

But “what was most evident,” he continued, “was the slow drawing away from life… By the time Bubbeh stopped praying, she had stopped virtually everything else as well.” With her fatal stroke, Shep Nuland remembers Browne’s Religio Medici: “With what strife and pains we come into the world we know not, but ’tis commonly no easy matter to get out of it.”
I studied literature at Stanford, and later history of medicine at Cambridge, to better understand the particularities of death, which still seemed unknowable to me—and yet vivid descriptions like Nuland’s convinced me that such things can only be known face to face. How We Die brought me into medicine to bear witness, as Shep Nuland had done, to the twinned mysteries of death, its experiential and biological manifestations: at once deeply personal and utterly impersonal.

I like to think of Nuland, in the opening chapters of How We Die, as a young medical student, alone with a patient whose heart had stopped. In an act of desperation, he cut open the patient’s chest and tried to pump the patient’s heart manually, to literally squeeze the life back into him. The patient died, and Shep was found by the intern, his supervisor, covered in blood and failure.Medical school has changed since Shep’s time, and such a scene is unthinkable now: medical students are barely allowed to touch patients. What has not changed, though, I hope, is the heroic spirit of responsibility amid blood and failure. This is the true image of a doctor. It is not the idealized happy profession in which we always cure diseases and ease suffering, our patients invariably leaving us better than we found them. It is also doctors facing the enormity of patient problems, seeing the crudeness of our tools, and, inevitably, watching our patients die, usually either in agony or under sedation.
 
Nobody reading any good books?

I gave 'Follow you Home' by Mark Edwards 5 stars on Goodreads. Suspense!

Just finished 'The Girl you Lost' by Kathryn Croft. Another thriller. Finished it in 2 days. Shocking ending.

Anybody have any recommendations on thrillers/suspense books? I enjoyed Gone Girl and Girl on the Train, so anything along those lines is good.
 
Annie, I pick up books from the library every week, so far, I've not found anything that has held my attention past the first chapter, I'm in a slump till I find a good read, but, I've not given up, I always have a book on hand, I will be checking into Amazon, good reads and other sites this week before I head back over to the library either Friday or Sat morning to see if I can find something to hold my attention.
 
AprilT said:
Annie, I pick up books from the library every week, so far, I've not found anything that has held my attention past the first chapter, I'm in a slump till I find a good read, but, I've not given up, I always have a book on hand, I will be checking into Amazon, good reads and other sites this week before I head back over to the library either Friday or Sat morning to see if I can find something to hold my attention.
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i went through that phase recently and it really bothered me. It passed and I'm back to being an avid reader.
 
debbie in seattle said:
i went through that phase recently and it really bothered me. It passed and I'm back to being an avid reader.
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Yes, it happens, I used to panic, but, I know, I'll hit the jackpot again, I just have to keep looking till I come across those gems and I know I will. Nothing worse though than feeling you've reached a peak, but, I know better, plus I could always reread something from an old collection if I get desperate. :D
 
Ameriscot said:
Nobody reading any good books?

I gave 'Follow you Home' by Mark Edwards 5 stars on Goodreads. Suspense!

Just finished 'The Girl you Lost' by Kathryn Croft. Another thriller. Finished it in 2 days. Shocking ending.

Anybody have any recommendations on thrillers/suspense books? I enjoyed Gone Girl and Girl on the Train, so anything along those lines is good.
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It's posts like these I get my credit card out and go on abe books (do you know this site?)

I'm reading : Leo Africanus-Amin Maalouf
 
A book I wish had been written when I was a kid "Wonder". My daughter's friend rides home with us every day. He's higher functioning, personable kid. He knows how much I read so he handed me his copy and said I would like it. I admire the teacher breaking it down for the class. It's basically a child with a face disfigured from birth. The book is in journal form, his perceptions as he starts public school. He's been home schooled to that point and accepts his appearance. The challenge of course is other kids reactions...I read it half through in one sitting. It's a preteen novel so light reading but very good.
 
I just can't find the one lately, go to the library frequently, but, am just having a time, it's partly me because I know a different time a different mood I would have have lapped up a few the selections I brought home but this time they just get to draining, anyway, I'm going to head back over there soon and try to find some reading materials that will keep my mind engaged. I don't don't do romanc, too far fetched fiction or anything along those line when it comes to books for the most part.
 
It's okay April, I get like that too. A book in every room plus the car all with markers in them. And still I'll joke to my son " I need something to read". We get scattered sometimes.
 
"Whenever you read a good book,somewhere in the world a door opens to allow in more light."


I have been talking to a young man from Yemen.He has introduced me to Amin Maalouf.

Every suggestion is allowing you to see the other person a little bit deeper.
 
....another True Crime, can't remember the title, they're all beginning to read the same, especially the court trials..lol, so, I'm with you, April, I read mostly non-fiction, I'm beginning to think I've read all the good ones already.
 

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