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Post by bjd on Aug 11, 2010 11:16:50 GMT
After Jazz posted the note about The Horizontal Woman I started googling and did come to the conclusion that the author must be Bazfaz. Glad to hear the book is good!
Casi, have you read Roald Dahl's short story about a beekeeper and and his wife? They have a baby who is very sickly and he decides to give the baby royal jelly. Well, the child begins to grow and develop and they are very pleased with the child's health.
And then the little girl starts to develop yellow fuzz all over her body.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 12, 2010 10:23:37 GMT
No,I don't know that story BJD! It sounds enchanting !!(I think...). Is it part of a collection of his stories? Thanks!
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Post by bjd on Aug 12, 2010 12:34:42 GMT
Yes, it was in a collection, but I don't remember the title. I just remembered it with your comments about beekeeping.
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Post by mickthecactus on Aug 17, 2010 20:53:45 GMT
Address Unknown by Kresswell Taylor. A little powerful book written in 1933 but reprinted many times...
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Post by patricklondon on Aug 17, 2010 21:27:04 GMT
I just picked up a compendium of some of EF Benson's Mapp and Lucia novels - oh-so-polite backbiting and oneup(wo)manship among the genteel classes striving for social leadership in a small town in 1920s England. A little goes a long way, though.
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Post by mickthecactus on Aug 18, 2010 12:41:06 GMT
I just picked up a compendium of some of EF Benson's Mapp and Lucia novels - oh-so-polite backbiting and oneup(wo)manship among the genteel classes striving for social leadership in a small town in 1920s England. A little goes a long way, though. That was a TV series many years ago.........
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Post by lola on Aug 31, 2010 16:39:15 GMT
I love Mapp and Lucia. Never tarsome, in my opinion. Is anyone writing that sort of thing nowadays?
I have a stack pending, but because it's an interlibrary loan, non renewable, The Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams Vol I is on top. He was a charming correspondent, and the eds. provide explanatory notes, sometimes contradicting his assertions, at the end of each.
I get a special kick out of the first sections dealing with his childhood and college years, because I know many of the places he writes about. His affection for his sister Rose (and his interest in her wardrobe) is touching. When he's about to go off to college at the U of MO in Columbia, he writes his grandfather: "If you happen to have any particularly kind thoughts of me this winter, say it with a shirt or a neck-tie. You know college boys are generally pretty clothes-conscious and I haven't any too many to be conscious of."
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Post by bjd on Aug 31, 2010 17:00:51 GMT
I am reading several books at the same time, as I have started to do lately. Just finished vol 2 of Stieg Larsson's Millenium books, although I admit I skipped a big hunk in the middle and read the end.
I also started a travel book by Nick Danziger called Danziger's Travels, about a trip he made to Central Asia/Afghanistan in the mid-80s. Won't skip any of that. In between, I read a re-translation and re-issue of Sax Rohmer's books about Fu Manchu, from the early 20thc. Fun. Written in such a classical way -- London being the centre of civilization and the Yellow Peril threatening civilization as we know it.
The other book I had taken from the library was one of Alexander McCall's Ladies Detective Agency books, but gave up after 2 chapters. Am I the only one who finds them insufferably twee? So I just took it back and got a book by Ian Rankin that I haven't read before.
In my pile, I still have a book by Josef Skvorecky, The Engineer of Human Souls and a book in Spanish about Latin America Las Veinas Abiertas de America Latina.
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Post by lola on Aug 31, 2010 21:07:02 GMT
I tend to steer clear of titles built along the lines of The Someone's Something. Well, I am pretty fond of The Magician's Nephew.
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Post by tillystar on Sept 3, 2010 14:12:19 GMT
His short stores were a series here in the early 80s called Tales of the Unexpected. I was never allowed to stay up that late but somehow I did one night and watchined that one about the Royal Jelly, it is the first time I can remember being scared by something on TV/film. It was so incredibly eery, I can still vividly remember some of the images.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 4, 2010 2:38:14 GMT
His short stores were a series here in the early 80s called Tales of the Unexpected. I was never allowed to stay up that late but somehow I did one night and watchined that one about the Royal Jelly, it is the first time I can remember being scared by something on TV/film. It was so incredibly eery, I can still vividly remember some of the images. Oh!! I have to look for these...maybe,I can find it in NYC at Strand's Book Store,(18 miles of books they have!!!),on my annual pilgrimage there... The movie sounds cool too!! I am about to begin Lit by Mary Karr , a writer I am familiar with,but,mainly through her poetry. She has a very searing wit about her. This comes recommended by two dear friends,and was actually given to me tonight to take with me on my trip.
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Post by bixaorellana on Sept 4, 2010 4:18:24 GMT
This afternoon I finished a remarkable book -- After Long Silence by Helen Fremont. I would have finished it sooner, except that at times it's so excruciatingly moving that it had to be set aside. That's despite the fact that the the author manages to tell this cinematic true story without resorting to excess, undue sentimentality, nor exploitation of the unimaginable horror of the Holocaust and the gulags. The author and her sister were born in the 1950s and raised in the Midwest believing that they came from a family of Polish Catholics. As they got older, things that didn't add up set them on the trail of their real history even in the face of their parents' disapproval. Fremont has a good narrative voice that gets the book moving immediately and keeps the reader's interest. She also has a perfect sense of what to use and what to let the reader fill in. This is important, as at times the immeasurably sadness of the story has to be taken in sips. Even so, the history and the family's tale is as absorbing as any novel. I highly recommend this book. www.enotes.com/after-long-silence-salem/after-long-silence
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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2010 21:10:57 GMT
I checked The Bolter by Frances Osborne out of the library today,mentioned way back in here somewhere. It is about one of the Sackville's adventures in Africa back in the 30's I believe. Racy,and oh, so decadent a group of people,thoroughly hedonistic and self absorbed.I have been wanting to read it for sometime now. Ms. Osborne gave a reading from it here, sometime this past somewhere,and I was told she was quite something.
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Post by joanne28 on Sept 16, 2010 14:16:27 GMT
I am just alternating two novellas by John Buchan "The Thirty-Nine Steps & The Power-House" and a short story collection by Robert Louis Stevenson "Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde and Other Strange Tales". I bought 3 for $10 at a local book store - I also got "The Moonstone" by Wilkie Collins which I had never read.
I'm in a "read the classics I've never read" mode, which means I might actually get to "Ulysses" one day. I originally had said I would read it before the 21st century but things got away from me.
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Post by lola on Sept 16, 2010 14:40:14 GMT
I have given myself lifetime permission not to attempt Ulysses, so if I ever do it I'll surprise and impress myself no end. (I've seen Hitchcock's 39 Steps, read the book, and watched the play; it's really fun what the others were able to make of the original.)
I'm just getting into Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson as recommended by the indispensable Bixa, and love the narrator's voice. My favorite lines so far: "This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it." Characters both in this book and Housekeeping remind me of my own family members, crazy or righteous, some long gone and some still romping and stomping. I'd never run across an author whose work struck me like that. Both books have family themes.
I don't know whether any of you have wanted to write about your own family's history. Robinson makes me want to write in such a way that it illuminates interior lives as well as the wacky things we've done. (note to self: buzz up to Iowa City and muscle into her workshop) (Further note: I see she was born in 1943, so I'd better make it snappy before she decides to rest on her laurels.)
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Post by Kimby on Sept 16, 2010 22:05:07 GMT
On impulse I picked up the first two books in the "Girl Who..." series by Stieg Larsson when shopping at the Super Walmart today. A friend had raved about them yesterday, and the movies are on Mr. Kimby's list of DVDs to rent, so I must read them before we watch the movies.
I'm sure someone has already written about them on here. Perhaps bixa will even come up with a link?
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Post by Deleted on Sept 17, 2010 7:09:37 GMT
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Post by Kimby on Sept 17, 2010 14:37:55 GMT
Thanks, K2. Sounds like I haven't wasted my money. I was desperate for some new reading material, and these books fell right into my shopping cart, placed as they were in the "impulse purchase zone" of the line at the checkouts.
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Post by bixaorellana on Sept 18, 2010 4:57:57 GMT
Well, Kimby will be lost to us for at least two or three days!
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Post by lola on Sept 18, 2010 15:55:47 GMT
I'm about zillionth in line for The Girl Who. at the library. In the process of trying to clear out tons of accumulated books, I'm unwilling to invest in many more.
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Post by bixaorellana on Sept 18, 2010 17:34:24 GMT
I finished an interesting book last night. It's was one I snatched up at the library the moment I saw the author's name, as I'm a fan of Mark Salzman. The book, Lying Awake, was a big surprise. His writing is different in this one -- deceptively simple, almost simplistic -- and the subject matter was most unexpected. It's a story of a visionary cloistered Carmelite nun set in Los Angeles in 1997. That's all I want to say about it, as once again I was disappointed that the reviews give away so much of the plot. Perhaps people who completely reject any idea of faith or spirituality might not like it, although I think anyone would be drawn to the main character, the excellent writing, the look at such an alien kind of life, and mostly, what the protagonist must face and how she does it. I couldn't help but be reminded of another book on the same theme of religious exaltation by Ron Hansen (#38) -- Mariette in Ecstasy.
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Post by Kimby on Sept 19, 2010 19:57:13 GMT
Well, Kimby will be lost to us for at least two or three days! I won't start these books till I have some uninterrupted time to look forward to.
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Post by lola on Sept 23, 2010 1:01:30 GMT
I've finished Gilead, by Marilynn Robinson. A beautiful and remarkable book. I love the forgiveness angle, and his working out his prejudices and failures to love, and found the blessing scene moving and right. I'm grateful to Bixa for introducing me to Robinson's work.
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Post by bixaorellana on Sept 23, 2010 1:57:55 GMT
Aaaaahhhh, thank you, Lola! It comes as no surprise to me that you would like the depth and beauty of her writing.
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Post by bjd on Oct 4, 2010 15:52:53 GMT
I found that books in Canada had become much more expensive than they used to be, so I only bought a few that I found at reduced price. I read Bill Bryson's memoir The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, good and funny for those around his age. And I'm now reading Infidel, my life by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Interesting account of her childhood and young adulthood. I think it ends when she is still living in the Netherlands but I'm not there yet.
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Post by bixaorellana on Oct 4, 2010 18:02:28 GMT
Some Canadian friends of mine have commented that the pricing on books sold both in the US and Canada did not keep pace with the strength of the Canadian dollar vs. the US dollar. They further pointed out that since those prices are printed right on the book, there's no way they could continue to reflect an accurate difference anyway. I didn't know Bill Bryson had written a memoir. I must read it! Bjd, have you seen the discussion here on Ayaan Hirsi Ali? anyportinastorm.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=debate&action=display&thread=4007
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Post by bjd on Oct 4, 2010 18:30:13 GMT
I had forgotten that thread. In the book, she doesn't come across as ranting. On the contrary. Maybe she got more rabid after going to the Enterprise Institute.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 4, 2010 21:53:58 GMT
I am rereading Kate Chopin's, The Awakening. I have read this at least twice before,and would easily have put it on my top ten books had I remembered at the time.
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Post by lola on Oct 12, 2010 0:49:42 GMT
I came home from work last night at midnight, read the last chapter of Lee Child's 61 Hours. Then I sat there for another 45 min trying to decide what had happened. Like, okay, was Reacher vaporized, or not? Was this a deliberate Reichenbach Falls ending, where Watson peers over the sheer cliff face and concludes that Holmes was definitely a goner, and then he gets resurrected? Next book he walks in, brushing the dust off, with a scratch or two on his manly face? I see that Child has another book out in UK already, due out here any day.
My guess is Susan walks out into the parking lot and there he is, having been wafted by the jet fuel explosion into the next county and nursed back to health by a convent full of nuns.
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Post by bixaorellana on Oct 12, 2010 1:54:30 GMT
Oh joy ~~ a Lee Child I have not yet read! Thanks for putting whatever it is in a spoiler. Can't wait to get my hands on the book. Will get back to you!
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