[pants]

I finally got started on The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver and I am totally in love with it thus far. It is worth lugging around in my bag and then some

[pants]

Nickclick: Not yet, it's hardcover and massive and I had to pick some stuff up from the post office today so it wouldn't all fit in my bag, I'm hoping tonight or tomorrow to get started

[nickclick]

I'm about to start Barbara Kingsolver's new book and am really looking forward to it. I know she was berated for awhile after having been chosen as an Oprah book club author but I really enjoy her writing and the stories she tells.

I've got The Lacuna on hold. Frida Kahlo is a character! pants, did you start it?

[kari]

I just finished The Help. Reallllllly enjoyed it.

[sassygrrl]

Library grrls indeed (yeah trying to become one in a few years!)
There's also a series of Charlaine Harris about a librarian. It's before she wrote the True Blood series. It's called the Aurora Teagarden series. I haven't read them but it's a collection of 8 books so far. I'll have to read some of these listed.

I joined a local bookclub on fantasy/graphic novels!

[girl_logic]

library grrrls unite! (well as grrrlish as i can be in my 30's)
i kept getting warned off the Time Traveller's Wife movie, so no.

[pants]

Va Bene, Girllogic. I should point out that I used to work in a library as well which is why I was able to rattle those off so quickly, I don't know if I could do the same for other professions as well.


I'm about to start Barbara Kingsolver's new book and am really looking forward to it. I know she was berated for awhile after having been chosen as an Oprah book club author but I really enjoy her writing and the stories she tells.

Also read Audrey Niffenegger's newest recently, it was okay, but sort of uneven. Not as lush and fully realised as Time Traveller's Wife which I enjoyed in all it's soppy glory. Did anybody see the film? Was it worth it?

[girl_logic]

....Oh and In Too Deep by Portia da Costa is total smut with a librarian in the lead role from the Black Lace series which is a pretty raunchy set of books, but in a good raunchy smutty way...

Yes please! Grazie :-)

I read Push.
It stirs such deep and weird emotions, you'll have to remind yourself to breathe at times. When she talks about her feelings for her father, it's so hard to read, let's just say, you conceive the inconceivable.

361 holds on it at the library.

[pants]

Well Ms G Logic. Nora Roberts Key series features a character named Dana who starts out as a librarian and becomes a book store owner. She also has a book store owner in the Dance on Air series, and a researcher / archivist type in the Blood Brothers series

Cathie Linz wrote a book called Good Girls Do where the amin character i s a librarian as well (it's not one of my favorites but it's okay) That character pops up again later in the otehr books in that series, and actually I found Good Girls Do to be the best of the series

Oh and In Too Deep by Portia da Costa is total smut with a librarian in the lead role from the Black Lace series which is a pretty raunchy set of books, but in a good raunchy smutty way. Some of them lean heavily into the realm of BDSM so check reviews if you're not into that sort of thing

I can't think of any others off the top of my head but if I do I will let you know

[sevenseconds]

I read Push.
It stirs such deep and weird emotions, you'll have to remind yourself to breathe at times. When she talks about her feelings for her father, it's so hard to read, let's just say, you conceive the inconceivable.

[girl_logic]

girl logic, I did mean Octavia Butler's book.

I found that book incredibly haunting (particularly since I am in an inter-racial relationship). I liked Wildseed too but I didn't find it as powerful.

I read Morrison's Paradise earlier in the year and got a similar feeling of dread after the first line

Butler: I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm

Morrison: They shot the white girl first.

But I trust both of those writers to take me somewhere that's worth it.

I actually liked Lovely Bones. I lost my sister in a violent and sudden way so it was cathartic to read in some ways. I think the movie version of it would just be unbearably sad.

I just got The Road audio book out of laziness, so I might never know what page the mind-fuck starts, god bless me.

Speaking of depressing, has anyone read Push? I'm hoping to before seeing the movie Precious.

Pants, I work at a public library and started reading harlequins while shelving them one day - holy soft porn, I just had no idea. They're great! Not to make you my smut-pusher, but do you happen to know of one involving a librarian (male or female)?

[sassygrrl]

people seem to like to read really bleak things, at least all the people i know because i keep getting rave reviews of The Road. that and The Lovely Bones which i really can't seem to get into.

I just finished The Lovely Bones. It was okay. People were raving about it, and I just thought it was meh. It should be a decent movie. I haven't gotten into The Road b/c it seems too damn depressing. My next couple of books are going to be romance/chick lit I think. I've been super stressed out lately, and I think that's all I can handle.

[annabananahannah...]

people seem to like to read really bleak things, at least all the people i know because i keep getting rave reviews of The Road. that and The Lovely Bones which i really can't seem to get into.

[auralpoison]

My god. The Road was hands down the most bleak fucking thing I ever read. Seriously. After I finished it, I immediately gave it somebody else to read just to get it out of my house. There was a specific part that REALLY did a headfuck on me; it freaked me out so bad that I still remember what page it started on five or however many years later.

I started the latest Ellroy, Blood's A Rover, but feel like I need to reread American Tabloid & the Cold Six Thousand again to be in the right frame of paranoid, bloody mind.

[pants]

girl_logic, no worries, i keep meaning to to read The Road too so that actually made sense to me even though I couldn't remember mentioning it.

i'm actually reading a lot of romance novels right now for 2 reasons: 1 i'm working on a blog (created by me and thus far just read by me it seems) about them and 2 Because they are good stress relief when I am feeling spastic

And I'm actually finding depressing books to be something of a relief as a result, although sometimes i have to remind myself not to expect sex scenes.

[anna k]

girl logic, I did mean Octavia Butler's book.

[koffeewitch]

Re-reading the Collected Short Stories of Paul Bowles. King of biting urbane witticisms and razor-sharp dark humor. The kind of thing that does't tickle your funny bone so much as it burns. A modern Oscar Wilde with a sinister streak. Not for the faint-hearted, but I love the guy.

[girl_logic]

Pants and Rogue, my fella has been trying to get me to read The Road, even with the caveat that it's the most depressing novel he's ever read. He keeps going back to it - 4 times now. It's obviously some kind of masterpiece, but it also seems like a scab of a book that he keeps picking. Like, painful but intriguing in some way.

Annak, are you talking about Octavia Butler Kindred?


ETA: doh, pants, I see you said On The Road. I'm getting old in the eyes.

[epinephrine]

Ohmygodohmygodohmygodmyfavouriteauthorisgivingatalkatmyuniversity!!! AAAAAAHHH!!! I'M GOING TO SEE EDEN ROBINSON!!!!!

[anna k]

I read part of Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen, and I wanted to like it, about a man who believes his wife was replaced with a double, but I found it really boring. The main character was just really dull, it moved slowly, and I couldn't stay into it. The premise was really interesting, but the execution made it feel tedious, like I was just waiting for more to happen. I really wanted to like it because it was named as one of the best books of 2008 by the New York Times and I liked the story idea, but felt disappointed.

I'm reading some short stories by Haruki Murakami, a Vintage collection. I don't know what it is about him, but he has this clear, precise way of storytelling to describe character's lives, give them intellect and ambiguity, and just wrap the reader right in. It's remarkable and just beautiful writing.

Kindred was a stunning book, I finished it in a few days, and felt shook up by her depictions of slavery and the breaking down of one's humanity, as well as the ending.

Into the Wild was a great book, it presents two different takes on Chris McCandless' journey, the ones who thought he was wild and sacrificed himself and lived the American dream, and the others who felt he was careless and ill-prepared and full of fanciful illusions.

I liked The Catcher in the Rye when I was younger, more for the 1950s setting and Phoebe, but got irritated with Holden saying "goddamn phonies" every few pages.