|
Post by Mini Mia on Jul 19, 2006 15:25:44 GMT -6
Okay . . . I am done with the first trilogy. I am fascinated with those who can create an entire world out of thin air, with different people and languages, etc. I don't see how they do it. I may read The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings trilogy later. I've never read them before.
|
|
Hippy Amazon
Whooshite Apprentice
I'm a Conscientious Objector in the Game of Life...
Posts: 142
|
Post by Hippy Amazon on Sept 9, 2006 2:02:54 GMT -6
I've just bought the book: "if you could see me now" by Cecelia Ahern. I've not started it yet but I have big hopes.
Its about a young boy who lives with his aunt who is struggling with many issues. The boy, being lonely, creates an invisible friend. But the aunt is able to see the invisible friend and thus their worlds change...
Apparently its going to be a motion picture next year with Hugh Jackman!.
Its a different concept to any book I have heard about and very different to what I had been reading (I had been reading american west love story type books) and I think/hope that this book will be a delight. It receives great reviews by people. Has anybody else here heard of it, or any other Cecelia Ahern books?
|
|
|
Post by Mini Mia on Sept 9, 2006 2:11:40 GMT -6
Nopers, I've not heard of this author, nor read any of her books. That does sound like an interesting story though.
|
|
|
Post by leafsoup on Oct 29, 2006 8:00:29 GMT -6
For all you girls who love to write, read "Good Grief" by Lolly Winston. You could actually be in her head and sitting right beside her, thinking her thoughts along with her as she goes through the days since her husband died. I am not a novel reader, since I prefer the visual in the movies, but the moment I picked this book up, I couldn't put it down. Her emotionaly and physical roller coaster moves slowly through each of her days. Great reading about picking up the pieces and putting the puzzle pieces of your life back together again.
|
|
|
Post by Joxcenia on Oct 30, 2006 20:09:44 GMT -6
Okay, Leafsoup, here's your chance to practice passing this thing once again.
|
|
|
Post by Forever Xena on Nov 13, 2006 1:36:55 GMT -6
Im reading Sex Lies and Vampires , entertaining book
|
|
|
Post by liviasboytoytigger on Nov 23, 2006 6:38:23 GMT -6
The Borgia Bride, about the infamous Pope Alexender Borgia and his odd ball children as seen through the eyes of Sancha who married his youngest son and fell in love with Ceaser Borgia who only ended up using her/betraying her. It's a great read and hard to put down.
|
|
|
Post by xenavirgin on Dec 26, 2006 19:37:19 GMT -6
Well, I'm finally getting around to reading Wicked by gregory Maguire. Talk about surreal, even more so than FL Baums original Oz books.
But it had to be done, a dear friend got me hooked on the musical and we went to see it twice while Idina Menzel was still in it here in London. Now the musical I love! Somehow the characters are more rounded in itr than they are in the book.
I'm about 3/4 through and it's starting to drag just a little, but when it does I just pop on the Wicked soundtrack and that puts me back on track.
Anyone else here read the book?
XV
|
|
|
Post by Phalon on Dec 30, 2006 7:33:10 GMT -6
I haven't read Wicked....yet. It's been on my list of books that friends keep wanting to lend me to read, in which my response is always, 'wait 'til my current pile gets a bit smaller'....which it never seems to do.
Last night I finished Translations by Brian Friel. ARGH!!!! I screamed that aloud when I finished and nearly scared the sh!t outta Hubs. Given to me by a friend, it came with pages of typed notes, and handwritten notations in the margins. I was enjoying it immensely; the play, the notes written in the margins, (I decided to save the typed ones for later, because I knew I'd re-read the book), and then it ended. It was a good ending - fitting - but it just ended. Argh again. Nothing finished, nothing resolved, nobody rode off into the sunset to live happily everafter, nor did anyone choose to stay dead in order to save the souls of many in FINnish tradition.
|
|
|
Post by xenavirgin on Dec 30, 2006 11:54:41 GMT -6
I haven't read Wicked....yet. It's been on my list of books that friends keep wanting to lend me to read, in which my response is always, 'wait 'til my current pile gets a bit smaller'....which it never seems to do. Last night I finished Translations by Brian Friel. ARGH!!!! I screamed that aloud when I finished and nearly scared the sh!t outta Hubs. Given to me by a friend, it came with pages of typed notes, and handwritten notations in the margins. I was enjoying it immensely; the play, the notes written in the margins, (I decided to save the typed ones for later, because I knew I'd re-read the book), and then it ended. It was a good ending - fitting - but it just ended. Argh again. Nothing finished, nothing resolved, nobody rode off into the sunset to live happily everafter, nor did anyone choose to stay dead in order to save the souls of many in FINnish tradition. Ah Madam P you sound like my mother there (and that's always a compliment). She had this pile of books and sheets of titles of books that she was going to read when she got the time. Well she's been retired for almost 6 years now and she lives in Spain quite merrily going through the books she always wanted to read. That is as long as I send them to her, there aren't too many English book stores near where she lives. Ah Translations!!! Love that play! I did it for my English Language/Literature A' Level here in England. I took some A' levels as an adult so I could get into university over here. We were really lucky as the play was being performed in Manchester at the time, so our teacher arranged for us to go and see it. I think it works much better when you see it as a play, the cliff-fall ending seems to fit better. Favourite scene: Jimmy Mack quotes Virgil in beautiful Latin verse and the ignorant English Army officer replies, "Sorry my man I don't speak the Irish." Cold!!!!! Love it. Actually I quite like Brian Friel's work in general. XV
|
|
|
Post by Phalon on Dec 31, 2006 18:40:23 GMT -6
Freilings...oh, oh, oh Freilings....
This one was spoken by Maire, talking about potato blight....but so much, much more, I think.
"Sweet smell! Sweet smell! Every year at this time somebody comes back with stories of the sweet smell. Sweet God, did the potatoes ever fail in Baile Beag? Well, did they ever - ever? Never! There was never blight here. Never. Never. But we're always sniffing about for it, aren't we? - looking for disaster. The rents are going to go up again - the harvest's going to be lost - the herring have gone away for ever - there's going to be evictions. Honest to God, some of you people aren't happy unless you're miserable and you'll not be content until you're dead!"
It's hard not to find disaster, if you go sniffing for it.
|
|
|
Post by Phalon on Jan 2, 2007 8:40:10 GMT -6
Not a problem, Maeve.
Translation from Friel into Maeveian, with a side-trip through Phalonese:
This was my side-trip back to the seventies. Remember that song "Feelings" - hhmmm...who sang that? I wanna say Mannilow, but I know that's not right. But it starts out, "Feelings, nothing more than feelings....Feelings, wo-oh-oh -
Feelings"....and they sometimes get the best of people.
Bridget instantly jumps to conclusions - the smell spells disaster; the blight is upon them.
It's like that cliche, "If you go looking for trouble, you're going to find it". Or maybe I just made that up; I'm always mixing cliches. But pessimists drink out of half-empty glasses, hypochondriacs with hangnails lay on deathbeds, my Neighbor the Critic always finds something about which to complain, and my Melodramatic Preteen claims the world as we all know it is going to end because her best friends are arguing over who is the better saxophone player because Best Friend A was chosen to play baritone when Best Friend B really wanted it, and when they go ice-skating tomorrow afternoon it'll be a complete disaster unless she calls them right this moment, (which was 10pm while I was reading the book), to smooth things out between Friend A and B.
"Dear, don't anticipate the worst. Don't go sniffing for disaster."
|
|
|
Post by Phalon on Jan 13, 2007 21:27:01 GMT -6
I want it NOW!
<and psst, Maeve, you've got pie remains splattered on your back. You didn't duck fast enough.>
I finished a few days ago, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. I read it as part of our town's "One Book, One Community" project, an event aimed to bring the community together by reading the same book during a month period, with events scheduled centered around the book.
I missed the opening event: a reading around a bonfire, and symbolic book burning. Too cold outside that night, the cold in my head no better, and I couldn't muster enough enthusiasm to bring myself to walk out the door. I hope to catch a few of the upcoming discussions though, and the showing of the movie later in month.
And while there was not total resolution in this book, there was some....or at least, the reader was left with enough to imagine an outcome; a future - a resolution - which ever way he chooses. Translations...nothing, (though, really, I liked it).
And....there was a chase scene, fast cars, an explosion, fires - everything that makes a good book.....
....according to Hubs, who once said after he'd read something I wrote, "Nice dear....but nothing blows up. Maybe add just a little explosion?"
It was about gardening. To each his own resolution.
|
|
|
Post by Gabbin on Feb 17, 2007 23:17:53 GMT -6
I am reading Digital Fortress by Dan Brown. A thriller. It is good.
May I add, that Mr. Brown is great at thrillers but terrible at romance. Perhaps I shall post a quote of his version of romance sometime. It is a hoot.
|
|
|
Post by Phalon on Feb 26, 2007 8:03:04 GMT -6
The last two books I read I finished a few weeks ago. Both Best Sellers, and given to me for Christmas; I don't think I would have picked them for myself.
But I enjoyed them and gave them to a friend to read.
The first, titled "Best Friends" was written by first-time novelist Martha Moody. It follows the lives of two friends who met in college through to middle age, (who, btw Gabbin, are terrible at romance). My friend said it was sad and depressing. Dang, I thought it was funny; a comedy of errors their lives are, in a sarcastic sort of way. But then again, I think "Pulp Fiction" is a great comedy.
Waiting to see her reaction to the other, "The Lovely Bones", a story of a fourteen year old girl who was brutally murdered, and views from heaven the lives of those she left behind. Not funny, but it did make me smile.
|
|
Short Stack
Whooshite Candidate
5'1" and proud
Posts: 20
|
Post by Short Stack on May 17, 2007 15:33:49 GMT -6
Oh, my friend chose The Lovely Bones for an independent reading English project last year and he absolutely adored it. I've been meaning to read it. I loved the excerpts he gave as an example. And, from your earlier post, Bradbury is one of my all time favorite authors. I have 3 collections of short stories by him and several of his novels. Right now I'm reading Gifts by Ursula K. Le Guin. I've actually read it before (for that same English project, actually, haha), but I'd only rented it from the school library and just bought it and its companion novel recently, and reread the first page...and it was so good I sort of ended up reading the whole thing again, haha. She really has such a great style of writing. She can say in one sentence what would take some other authors pages to write about, and you get that sort of drop in your stomach and that chill down your spine when you've just read something meaningful and beautifully written. Anyway, it's about a semi-magical world, divided into two parts: the Lowlands and the Uplands. Gifts focuses on the Uplands, where people with strange, magical gifts live. Each family has its own gift passed father-to-son and mother-to-daughter; the family of Rodd, for instance, has the ability to call animals to them and talk to them. The main character, Orrec, is a young man of the family Caspro whose gift is the "unmaking" - destroying things, tearing them apart. If a Caspro "unmakes" an animal, it basically loses all its bones and structure; a knot, it just unties. And so on. Orrec thinks he is like an ancestor named Caddard - his gift of "unmaking" is so wild and uncontrollable he could unintentionally harm anyone by looking at them (as all gifts work through eye-sight). So he blinds himself with a blindfold, and unintentionally ends up tipping the careful balance of power between each of the gifted families completely out of equilibrium... There are plenty plot turns, lots of character development of Orrec and his best friend Gry (a Rodd), and emotional roller coasters. It's really a good book for teenagers like me, I think , because, in the end, it's really about growing up....with a lot of abnormality thrown in, haha.
|
|
|
Post by Mini Mia on Jun 11, 2007 19:46:31 GMT -6
|
|
|
Post by Mini Mia on Jun 12, 2007 17:41:29 GMT -6
|
|
|
Post by Mini Mia on Jun 14, 2007 17:44:57 GMT -6
|
|
|
Post by Mini Mia on Jun 15, 2007 21:20:20 GMT -6
|
|
|
Post by Mini Mia on Jun 19, 2007 19:36:40 GMT -6
|
|
|
Post by Mini Mia on Jun 21, 2007 20:06:45 GMT -6
I finished Cabal and the four short stories that were also included at the end of the book: The Life of Death, How Spoilers Bleed, Twilight at the Towers & The Last Illusion. I enjoyed Cabal, but didn't much care for the short stories.
Next up to read is: Sabriel by Garth Nix. My nephew brought over the trilogy and told me to read them. Then he took my Lord of the Rings Trilogy, which I haven't read yet He was right about The Da Vinci Code being good, so maybe I'll enjoy this trilogy as well.
|
|
|
Post by Mini Mia on Jun 25, 2007 16:44:55 GMT -6
I read The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes by Anne Stuart; Jennifer Crusie; Eileen Dreyer over the weekend. The book came in the mail Friday and I hadn't started the above book yet, so I bumped it down one. Unless something comes up the above book should be my next read.
The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes: Chapter One Excerpt
|
|
|
Post by Mini Mia on Jun 28, 2007 16:59:43 GMT -6
|
|
|
Post by Mini Mia on Jul 7, 2007 1:29:55 GMT -6
|
|
|
Post by Scrappy Amazon on Jul 22, 2007 14:05:26 GMT -6
OMG... OMG...OMG...OMG...OMG...OMG...Guess what arrived in the mail yesterday!!!!!!!!!!
|
|
|
Post by Phalon on Jul 23, 2007 5:46:37 GMT -6
Can you believe, <gasp>, that I've never opened a Harry Potter book, or watched any of the movies all the way through?
|
|
|
Post by Mini Mia on Jul 23, 2007 14:35:28 GMT -6
Don't worry, Phalon, you're not alone. I've never been near a Harry Potter book, and I've only stopped long enough on any Harry Potter movie just to pass the time between commercials of something else I was watching.
|
|
|
Post by moonglum on Aug 2, 2007 13:45:28 GMT -6
Can you believe, <gasp>, that I've never opened a Harry Potter book, or watched any of the movies all the way through? That makes three of us, although my daughter and grand-daughter are totally hooked. I've just finished reading Micheal Caine's biography 'Seventy and not out'. MG
|
|
|
Post by Mini Mia on Aug 2, 2007 18:04:37 GMT -6
|
|