The Wilde Women took me a very long time to read and I have no idea why. It was one of the best books I’ve read all year. It’s definitely chick lit but it’s really well written chick lit. Strong writing, strong characters.
Have I read The Rock Orchard? Have you? Will I be disappointed if I read it? I don’t want anything to taint The Wilde Women for me.
Heh. TW reserved The Good Fairies of New York when she heard one of the characters in it has Crohn’s. TW read it and was amused. I read it and was also amused. I love the alternative “teen” type fairies with colored hair and ripped kilts trying to corrupt the young fairies of Scotland. Awesome. The fairy war was a little much and the darn “poppy” chase was a lot much. Other than that, awesome. And like Neil Gaimon, I have no idea why this hasn’t been made into a play or a movie.
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I love Rickey and G-man! When I reserved D*U*C*K I didn’t realize it was about the great chefs of New Orleans, I just knew it was the first book Poppy Z Brite had written post Katrina. What a pleasant surprise. This one was shorter, not as fleshed out and full as the others (The Value of X, Soul Kitchen, Liquor, Prime), but very good and lots of fun. I am looking forward to Dead Shrimp Blues.
The Camel Bookmobile finally made it to the top of my TBR list. I’ve been looking forward to reading it for ages… even though I remember TW almost throwing it across the room after reading the last few pages.
Well. Great book. ‘Til you get to the last few pages. I don’t need a happy ending but damn did we have to have THAT ending? I mean really, was that necessary?
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The Rossetti Letter was a pretty good bit of fiction about the Spanish Conspiracy. And courtesans! And historians. And parenting teens! And Venice. (exclamations behind those of most interest to me)
Fun easy and interesting.
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Yesterday I blogged World Wide Knit in Public Day and today I’m back to review another knitting book. I’m still NOT a knitter.
The Knitting Circle is the best “knitting book” I’ve ever read. Loved every character and every word and I did not want the book to end.
Men and women dealing with grief and loss and fear through knitting and through relationships created and strengthened through the knitting circle. There are some happy endings. Some not so happy endings. Some endings that are both happy and not.
Loved it. Read it. (Thanks for recommending it, mom!)
Again with the knitting Read More »
I just want to remind you of that. I don’t. I’m not going to knit. I do go to yarn stores and look at yarn websites. And I have attended a few of the local knitting groups and I think I’ll be at the knitting in public even this weekend. I also read knitting books. Well before this one, I had read one knitting book, the one that came before Back on Blossom Street.
Back on Blossom Street was a lot like the first one. So much like the first one that I’m not sure I really want to read the third one, which is on the shelf looking at me right now. A lot of feel good, cancer survivor stuff with a bit of cancer is bad tossed in for good measure. A lot of women bonding, which I generally like, but in this case it feels a little contrived.
We picked up with a few of the members of the first book and added a couple more for good measure. Bad things happened, there were misunderstandings (usually involving men but also mothers). Everyone lived happily ever after. Except the bad guy and the perfect grandmother (oops, spoiler!)
It was an ok book. Not great.
Guess what! I’m about to read yet another book. I’m going to start it right now! But I don’t knit.
How in the heck did Dancing to Almendra make its way to our library list? Weird! It was amusing in places and interesting in others. Cuba. Crime lords. Gambling. American movie stars. One armed circus women. Lion feeders. Odd stuff. Did someone recommend this? Katie, did you blog it on your library blog? How did we end up with this? Weird.
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We have a bunch of Lisa Alther books sitting on the TBR pile from the library. TW read them all last month or the month before that. When she started reading the first one, I knew right away how it appeared on our shelf – Chalice Chick was so excited about Alther’s newest book, and some of her old ones, that I headed to the library website and reserved all they had.
So, I read Kinflicks and found it as CC described – Rita Mae without the hokey (and the damn cats). I’m looking forward to reading the two that CC says are the best (though my library has neither so I’m waiting for them to appear via ILL for now).
Loved the snake handling. Loved the moving from relationship to relationship and adapting a new personality each time. The only thing that I didn’t love were the super long chapters. I prefer to break at a chapter and Alther made it difficult to do that, lol.
Technorati Tags: fiction, women, lesbian, feminism, vietnam, 60s, religion, family, lisaalther, kinflicks
Heart Shaped Box is what you get when you cross Stephen King with Tabitha King – a really excellent piece of horror writing. Joe Hill has a lot of his dad in him and a good bit of his mom. And, I do believe, this little book of his might just be better than the majority of what his father has written. Really, really, really nice book. Loved the metal references. Angus and Bon hahaha, loved the seeing dead rockstars in the hospital. Oh, and this would also make a fabulous movie – especially if all of those rockstars (the live ones obviously, though the dead ones would be cool too) made appearances. Awesome!
The only problem I had with the book was that listening to it on audio made me want to flip off the book and plop in some AC/DC or something. Weird because I really don’t ever get that type of urge.
Technorati Tags: fiction, joehill, heartshapedbox, heavymetal, horror