What Are You Reading the Week of 24 January 2015?
DiscussionsWhat Are You Reading Now?
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1MDGentleReader
From WIkipedia in its entirety:
"
Jules Ralph Feiffer (born January 26, 1929) is an American syndicated cartoonist, most notable for his long-run comic strip titled Feiffer. He has created more than 35 books, plays and screenplays. In 1986, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his editorial cartooning in The Village Voice. He currently works as an instructor with the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton.
Early life Jules Feiffer was raised in The Bronx, New York City, where he graduated from James Monroe High School in 1947. He won a John Wanamaker Art Contest medal for a crayon drawing of the radio Western hero Tom Mix. Interested in an early age at cartooning, he wrote in 1965 about his childhood:
I came to the field with a more serious intent than my opiate-minded contemporaries. While they, in those pre-super days, were eating up "Cosmo, Master of Disguise"; "Speed Saunders"; and "Bart Regan Spy", I was counting up how many panels there were to a page, how many pages there were to a story – learning how to form, for my own use, phrases like: X#?/; marking for future reference which comic book hero was swiped from which radio hero: Buck Marshall from Tom Mix; the Crimson Avenger from The Green Hornet...
He read comic strips in the New York World-Telegram newspaper that his father brought home, including Our Boarding House, Alley Oop "and my favorite at the time, Wash Tubbs, with the 'soldier of fortune' hero, Captain Easy". When his father switched to the evening edition of the New York Post, Feiffer absorbed other strips, including Dixie Dugan, The Bungle Family, Nancy (then titled Fritzi Ritz), "and that masterpiece of sentimental naturalism, Abbie an' Slats. I studied that strip – its (Preston) Sturges-like characters, its (William) Saroyanesque plots, its uniquely cadenced dialogue. No strip other than Will Eisner's Spirit rivaled its structure. No strip, except (Milton) Caniff's Terry (and the Pirates), rivaled it in atmosphere."
Career Cartooning At age 16, Feiffer began as an assistant to writer-artist Eisner, whose comic strip The Spirit appeared in a seven-page insert in Sunday newspaper comics sections. As Eisner recalled in 1978:
Feiffer walked into my studio after (World War II). I had an office on Wall Street, as I recall. I forget the year it was, but it couldn't have been earlier than '46 or '47. Feiffer walked in and asked me for a job and said he'd work at any price, which immediately attracted me. He began working as just a studio man – he would do erasing, cleanup... Gradually it became very clear that he could write better than he could draw and preferred it, indeed – so he wound up doing balloons (i.e., dialog). First he was doing balloons based on stories that I'd create. I would start a story off and say, 'Now here I want the Spirit to do the following things – you do the balloons, Jules.' Gradually, he would take over and do stories entirely on his own, generally based on ideas we'd talked about. I'd come in generally with the first page, then he would pick it up and carry it from there.
Before this, in 1947, when Feiffer asked for a raise, Eisner instead gave him his own page in The Spirit section, where the 18-year-old Feiffer wrote and drew his first comic strip, Clifford (1949–51), published in six newspapers.
Feiffer's strips ran for 42 years in The Village Voice, first under the title Sick Sick Sick, briefly as Feiffer's Fables and finally as simply Feiffer. Initially influenced by UPA and William Steig, the strip debuted October 24, 1956, and 14 months later, Feiffer had a bestseller when McGraw-Hill collected the Village Voice strips as Sick Sick Sick: A Guide to Non-Confident Living (published January 1, 1958). Beginning April 1959, Feiffer was distributed nationally by the Hall Syndicate, initially in The Boston Globe, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Newark Star-Ledger and Long Island Press.
His strips, cartoons and illustrations have also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, Esquire, Playboy and The Nation. He was commissioned in 1997 by The New York Times to create its first op-ed page comic strip, which ran monthly until 2000. He was married twice and has three children. His daughter Halley Feiffer is an actress and playwright.
Jules Feiffer's Feiffer (1959), reprinted in Explainers (2008).Books Feiffer published the hit Sick, Sick, Sick: A Guide to Non-Confident Living in 1958 (which featured a collection of cartoons from about 1950 to 1956), and followed up with More Sick, Sick, Sick and other strip collections, including The Explainers, Boy Girl, Boy Girl, Hold Me!, Feiffer's Album, The Unexpurgated Memoirs of Bernard Mergendeiler, Feiffer on Nixon, Jules Feiffer's America: From Eisenhower to Reagan, Marriage Is an Invasion of Privacy and Feiffer's Children. Passionella (1957) is a graphic narrative initially anthologized in Passionella and Other Stories, a variation on the story of Cinderella. The protagonist is Ella, a chimney sweep who is transformed into a Hollywood movie star. Passionella was used in a musical, The Apple Tree.
Jules Feiffer's comment on the 2008 election was published in The Village Voice on August 12, 2008. His cartoons, strips and illustrations have been reprinted by Fantagraphics as Feiffer: The Collected Works. Explainers (2008) reprints all of his strips from 1956 to 1966. David Kamp reviewed the book in The New York Times:
His strip, usually six to eight borderless panels, initially appeared under the title Sick Sick Sick, with the subtitle 'A Guide to Non-Confident Living'. As the Lenny Bruce-ish language suggests, the earliest strips are very much of their time, the postwar Age of Anxiety in the big city; you can practically smell the espresso, the unfiltered ciggies, the lanolin whiff of woolly jumpers. In Feiffer's sixth-ever strip, an advertising executive is rallying his creative team to make nuclear fallout sexy, proposing 'a TV spec called I Fell for Fallout and 'a Mr. and Mrs. Mutation contest – designed to change the concept of beauty in the American mind.' The week after that, a macho poet type confides his most shameful secret to his coffeehouse girlfriend: 'I've never been to Europe.' And the week after that, Feiffer literally puts Oedipus on a psychoanalyst's couch: a hipster in a toga and Ray Charles shades, confessing: 'All right... So I marry her. But did I know she was my mother? It's not like I was sick or something.'
Feiffer has written two novels (1963's Harry the Rat with Women, 1977's Ackroyd) and several children's books, including Henry, The Dog with No Tail, A Room with a Zoo, The Daddy Mountain, and A Barrel of Laughs, a Vale of Tears. He partnered with The Walt Disney Company and writer Andrew Lippa to adapt his book The Man in the Ceiling into a musical. He illustrated the children's books The Phantom Tollbooth and The Odious Ogre. His non-fiction includes the 1965 book The Great Comic Book Heroes.
Feiffer also wrote and drew one of the earliest graphic novels, the hardcover Tantrum (Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), described on its dustjacket as a "novel-in-pictures". Like the trade paperback The Silver Surfer (Simon & Schuster/Fireside Books, August 1978), by Marvel Comics' Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and the hardcover and trade paperback versions of Will Eisner's A Contract with God, and Other Tenement Stories (Baronet Books, October 1978), this was published by a traditional book publisher and distributed through bookstores, whereas other early graphic novels, such as Sabre (Eclipse Books, August 1978), where distributed through some of the first comic-book stores.
His autobiography, Backing into Forward: A Memoir (Doubleday, 2010), received positive reviews from The New York Times and Publishers Weekly, which wrote:
His account of hitchhiking cross-country invades Kerouac territory, while his ink-stained memories of the comics industry rival Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize–winning fictional portrait. Two years in the military gave Feiffer fodder for the trenchant Munro (about a child who is drafted). Such satirical social and political commentary became the turning point in his lust for fame, which finally happened, after many rejections, when acclaim for his anxiety-ridden Village Voice strips served as a springboard into other projects.
He has had retrospectives at the New York Historical Society, the Library of Congress and The School of Visual Arts. His artwork is exhibited at and represented by Chicago, Illinois' Jean Albano Gallery. In 1996, Feiffer donated his papers and several hundred original cartoons and book illustrations to the Library of Congress.
Feiffer's picture book for young readers, Rupert Can Dance, will be published by FSG in 2014.
Theater and films Feiffer's plays include Little Murders (1967), Feiffer's People (1969), Knock Knock (1976), Elliot Loves (1990), The White House Murder Case, and Grown Ups. After Mike Nichols adapted Feiffer's unproduced play Carnal Knowledge as a 1971 film, Feiffer scripted Robert Altman's Popeye, Alain Resnais's I Want to Go Home, and the film adaptation of Little Murders.
The original production of Hold Me! was directed by Caymichael Patten and opened at The American Place Theatre, Subplot Cafe, as part of its American Humorist Series on January 13, 1977. The production ran on the Showtime cable network in 1981.
Teaching Feiffer is an adjunct professor at Stony Brook Southampton. Previously he taught at the Yale School of Drama and Northwestern University. He has been a Senior Fellow at the Columbia University National Arts Journalism Program. He was in residence at the Arizona State University Barrett Honors College from November 27 to December 2, 2006. In June–August 2009, Feiffer was in residence as a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College, where he taught an undergraduate course on graphic humor in the 20th century.
Awards
Jules Feiffer's ad art for the Beat musical The Nervous Set was used on the 1959 cast album (reissued in 2002).In 1961, he was the recipient of a George Polk Awards for his cartoons, and he won a 1961 Academy Award for his animated short Munro. In 1969 and 1970, his plays Little Murders and The White House Murder Case each won Obie and Outer Circle Critics Awards. The Pulitzer Prize for political cartoons went to Feiffer in 1986. He was elected in 1995 to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2004, he was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame and that same year he received the National Cartoonists Society's Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award. He received the Creativity Foundation's Laureate in 2006. He also won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Writers Guild of America."
Are you familiar with Feiffer's work? Are there cartoonists whose work you follow?
What are you reading this week?
"
Jules Ralph Feiffer (born January 26, 1929) is an American syndicated cartoonist, most notable for his long-run comic strip titled Feiffer. He has created more than 35 books, plays and screenplays. In 1986, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his editorial cartooning in The Village Voice. He currently works as an instructor with the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton.Early life Jules Feiffer was raised in The Bronx, New York City, where he graduated from James Monroe High School in 1947. He won a John Wanamaker Art Contest medal for a crayon drawing of the radio Western hero Tom Mix. Interested in an early age at cartooning, he wrote in 1965 about his childhood:
I came to the field with a more serious intent than my opiate-minded contemporaries. While they, in those pre-super days, were eating up "Cosmo, Master of Disguise"; "Speed Saunders"; and "Bart Regan Spy", I was counting up how many panels there were to a page, how many pages there were to a story – learning how to form, for my own use, phrases like: X#?/; marking for future reference which comic book hero was swiped from which radio hero: Buck Marshall from Tom Mix; the Crimson Avenger from The Green Hornet...
He read comic strips in the New York World-Telegram newspaper that his father brought home, including Our Boarding House, Alley Oop "and my favorite at the time, Wash Tubbs, with the 'soldier of fortune' hero, Captain Easy". When his father switched to the evening edition of the New York Post, Feiffer absorbed other strips, including Dixie Dugan, The Bungle Family, Nancy (then titled Fritzi Ritz), "and that masterpiece of sentimental naturalism, Abbie an' Slats. I studied that strip – its (Preston) Sturges-like characters, its (William) Saroyanesque plots, its uniquely cadenced dialogue. No strip other than Will Eisner's Spirit rivaled its structure. No strip, except (Milton) Caniff's Terry (and the Pirates), rivaled it in atmosphere."
Career Cartooning At age 16, Feiffer began as an assistant to writer-artist Eisner, whose comic strip The Spirit appeared in a seven-page insert in Sunday newspaper comics sections. As Eisner recalled in 1978:
Feiffer walked into my studio after (World War II). I had an office on Wall Street, as I recall. I forget the year it was, but it couldn't have been earlier than '46 or '47. Feiffer walked in and asked me for a job and said he'd work at any price, which immediately attracted me. He began working as just a studio man – he would do erasing, cleanup... Gradually it became very clear that he could write better than he could draw and preferred it, indeed – so he wound up doing balloons (i.e., dialog). First he was doing balloons based on stories that I'd create. I would start a story off and say, 'Now here I want the Spirit to do the following things – you do the balloons, Jules.' Gradually, he would take over and do stories entirely on his own, generally based on ideas we'd talked about. I'd come in generally with the first page, then he would pick it up and carry it from there.
Before this, in 1947, when Feiffer asked for a raise, Eisner instead gave him his own page in The Spirit section, where the 18-year-old Feiffer wrote and drew his first comic strip, Clifford (1949–51), published in six newspapers.
Feiffer's strips ran for 42 years in The Village Voice, first under the title Sick Sick Sick, briefly as Feiffer's Fables and finally as simply Feiffer. Initially influenced by UPA and William Steig, the strip debuted October 24, 1956, and 14 months later, Feiffer had a bestseller when McGraw-Hill collected the Village Voice strips as Sick Sick Sick: A Guide to Non-Confident Living (published January 1, 1958). Beginning April 1959, Feiffer was distributed nationally by the Hall Syndicate, initially in The Boston Globe, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Newark Star-Ledger and Long Island Press.
His strips, cartoons and illustrations have also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, Esquire, Playboy and The Nation. He was commissioned in 1997 by The New York Times to create its first op-ed page comic strip, which ran monthly until 2000. He was married twice and has three children. His daughter Halley Feiffer is an actress and playwright.
Jules Feiffer's Feiffer (1959), reprinted in Explainers (2008).Books Feiffer published the hit Sick, Sick, Sick: A Guide to Non-Confident Living in 1958 (which featured a collection of cartoons from about 1950 to 1956), and followed up with More Sick, Sick, Sick and other strip collections, including The Explainers, Boy Girl, Boy Girl, Hold Me!, Feiffer's Album, The Unexpurgated Memoirs of Bernard Mergendeiler, Feiffer on Nixon, Jules Feiffer's America: From Eisenhower to Reagan, Marriage Is an Invasion of Privacy and Feiffer's Children. Passionella (1957) is a graphic narrative initially anthologized in Passionella and Other Stories, a variation on the story of Cinderella. The protagonist is Ella, a chimney sweep who is transformed into a Hollywood movie star. Passionella was used in a musical, The Apple Tree.
Jules Feiffer's comment on the 2008 election was published in The Village Voice on August 12, 2008. His cartoons, strips and illustrations have been reprinted by Fantagraphics as Feiffer: The Collected Works. Explainers (2008) reprints all of his strips from 1956 to 1966. David Kamp reviewed the book in The New York Times:
His strip, usually six to eight borderless panels, initially appeared under the title Sick Sick Sick, with the subtitle 'A Guide to Non-Confident Living'. As the Lenny Bruce-ish language suggests, the earliest strips are very much of their time, the postwar Age of Anxiety in the big city; you can practically smell the espresso, the unfiltered ciggies, the lanolin whiff of woolly jumpers. In Feiffer's sixth-ever strip, an advertising executive is rallying his creative team to make nuclear fallout sexy, proposing 'a TV spec called I Fell for Fallout and 'a Mr. and Mrs. Mutation contest – designed to change the concept of beauty in the American mind.' The week after that, a macho poet type confides his most shameful secret to his coffeehouse girlfriend: 'I've never been to Europe.' And the week after that, Feiffer literally puts Oedipus on a psychoanalyst's couch: a hipster in a toga and Ray Charles shades, confessing: 'All right... So I marry her. But did I know she was my mother? It's not like I was sick or something.'
Feiffer has written two novels (1963's Harry the Rat with Women, 1977's Ackroyd) and several children's books, including Henry, The Dog with No Tail, A Room with a Zoo, The Daddy Mountain, and A Barrel of Laughs, a Vale of Tears. He partnered with The Walt Disney Company and writer Andrew Lippa to adapt his book The Man in the Ceiling into a musical. He illustrated the children's books The Phantom Tollbooth and The Odious Ogre. His non-fiction includes the 1965 book The Great Comic Book Heroes.
Feiffer also wrote and drew one of the earliest graphic novels, the hardcover Tantrum (Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), described on its dustjacket as a "novel-in-pictures". Like the trade paperback The Silver Surfer (Simon & Schuster/Fireside Books, August 1978), by Marvel Comics' Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and the hardcover and trade paperback versions of Will Eisner's A Contract with God, and Other Tenement Stories (Baronet Books, October 1978), this was published by a traditional book publisher and distributed through bookstores, whereas other early graphic novels, such as Sabre (Eclipse Books, August 1978), where distributed through some of the first comic-book stores.
His autobiography, Backing into Forward: A Memoir (Doubleday, 2010), received positive reviews from The New York Times and Publishers Weekly, which wrote:
His account of hitchhiking cross-country invades Kerouac territory, while his ink-stained memories of the comics industry rival Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize–winning fictional portrait. Two years in the military gave Feiffer fodder for the trenchant Munro (about a child who is drafted). Such satirical social and political commentary became the turning point in his lust for fame, which finally happened, after many rejections, when acclaim for his anxiety-ridden Village Voice strips served as a springboard into other projects.
He has had retrospectives at the New York Historical Society, the Library of Congress and The School of Visual Arts. His artwork is exhibited at and represented by Chicago, Illinois' Jean Albano Gallery. In 1996, Feiffer donated his papers and several hundred original cartoons and book illustrations to the Library of Congress.
Feiffer's picture book for young readers, Rupert Can Dance, will be published by FSG in 2014.
Theater and films Feiffer's plays include Little Murders (1967), Feiffer's People (1969), Knock Knock (1976), Elliot Loves (1990), The White House Murder Case, and Grown Ups. After Mike Nichols adapted Feiffer's unproduced play Carnal Knowledge as a 1971 film, Feiffer scripted Robert Altman's Popeye, Alain Resnais's I Want to Go Home, and the film adaptation of Little Murders.
The original production of Hold Me! was directed by Caymichael Patten and opened at The American Place Theatre, Subplot Cafe, as part of its American Humorist Series on January 13, 1977. The production ran on the Showtime cable network in 1981.
Teaching Feiffer is an adjunct professor at Stony Brook Southampton. Previously he taught at the Yale School of Drama and Northwestern University. He has been a Senior Fellow at the Columbia University National Arts Journalism Program. He was in residence at the Arizona State University Barrett Honors College from November 27 to December 2, 2006. In June–August 2009, Feiffer was in residence as a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College, where he taught an undergraduate course on graphic humor in the 20th century.
Awards
Jules Feiffer's ad art for the Beat musical The Nervous Set was used on the 1959 cast album (reissued in 2002).In 1961, he was the recipient of a George Polk Awards for his cartoons, and he won a 1961 Academy Award for his animated short Munro. In 1969 and 1970, his plays Little Murders and The White House Murder Case each won Obie and Outer Circle Critics Awards. The Pulitzer Prize for political cartoons went to Feiffer in 1986. He was elected in 1995 to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2004, he was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame and that same year he received the National Cartoonists Society's Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award. He received the Creativity Foundation's Laureate in 2006. He also won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Writers Guild of America."
Are you familiar with Feiffer's work? Are there cartoonists whose work you follow?
What are you reading this week?
2nrmay
Another of his picture books, Bark, George, won several awards.
3enaid
I always enjoy Jules Feiffer; especially The Phantom Tollbooth illustrations and I liked Bark, George a lot. I always loved Edward Gorey and Charles Addams a lot. I have kind of dark tastes. I love Garry Trudeau and what he does with Doonesbury.
I've been making progress of the fascinating Plantagenets by Dan Jones. I'm not sure how he does it but Dan Jones has a real gift for making history come alive and read like a novel.
I've been making progress of the fascinating Plantagenets by Dan Jones. I'm not sure how he does it but Dan Jones has a real gift for making history come alive and read like a novel.
4Jim53
I've been reading Michelle Alexander's challenging The New Jim Crow. It's quite scary to see what we've done systematically.
5rocketjk
Feiffer, yea!!! My favorites are the cartoons that begin, "A Dance to Spring."
I am 187 pages into We, the Drowned. 187 out of 790. Not bad! I'm enjoying it immensely. It's a grand picaresque novel, sort of like Little Big Man at sea. But Danish.
I am 187 pages into We, the Drowned. 187 out of 790. Not bad! I'm enjoying it immensely. It's a grand picaresque novel, sort of like Little Big Man at sea. But Danish.
6Tara1Reads
I am finishing The Queen of the Big Time.
7Coffeehag
I finished reading Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck at 3:30 this morning - a very fun read. Not sure what I'm going to read next. A colleague gave me Bilder deiner grossen Liebe by Wolfgang Herrndorf as a New Year's gift, but I'm not sure I feel like reading something German.
I wonder how others in this group choose what they're going to read next. I don't have a particular list to get through; my reading tastes prove as fickle as the weather. I'll have something all picked out that I want to read next, say, a 20th sci-fi work, and then end up reading something entirely different... Perhaps a 19th century classic that never appealed to me before. Decisions, decisions...
I wonder how others in this group choose what they're going to read next. I don't have a particular list to get through; my reading tastes prove as fickle as the weather. I'll have something all picked out that I want to read next, say, a 20th sci-fi work, and then end up reading something entirely different... Perhaps a 19th century classic that never appealed to me before. Decisions, decisions...
8CarolynSchroeder
Deeply into Ghettoside and all I can say is wow. Just amazingly well-written, researched and relayed/portrayed. In less able hands, this could have been sensational and skewed. Very important book. I would love to see it win the Pulitzer for NF. Although it focuses on the Southeast/Watts/South in L.A., it mirrors what is happening in many neighborhoods of my beloved Chicago and other cities.
9ahef1963
Finished Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford yesterday; it was excellent. So witty, such tenderly-painted portraits of maiden ladies in a small village in the 1850s. This is the second book I've read by Gaskell (I read North and South last year), and I will be reading more of her works in future.
I've picked up some sort of virus, and with a fever on and off am not reading more than the Lands End catalogue, and a cruise brochure. I do have The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells on the nightstand, but I'm only about three pages in.
I've picked up some sort of virus, and with a fever on and off am not reading more than the Lands End catalogue, and a cruise brochure. I do have The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells on the nightstand, but I'm only about three pages in.
10Meredy
>8 CarolynSchroeder: Is that touchstone right? It goes here:
http://www.librarything.com/work/15245981
The author's name is Jill Leovy. Who's NF?
http://www.librarything.com/work/15245981
The author's name is Jill Leovy. Who's NF?
11MDGentleReader
>10 Meredy: My guess is that NF is non-fiction?
12Peace2
>10 Meredy: Is NF non-fiction?
13Peace2
Thanks for the intro bio this week.
I'm hopefully finishing up Shopaholic and Sister this evening despite not overly enjoying it. I'm also listening to The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks which hasn't fully hooked me in yet. I'm also partway through Lion's Head, Four Happiness by Xiaomei Martell, the story of a girl growing up during the Cultural Revolution in Inner Mongolia, China which is okay and The Abortionist's Daughter which I'm also not particularly enjoying. Maybe I should allow myself to give up on more of them without torturing myself through to the end. I just hate the sense of defeat when I get rid of a book without finishing in case it turned good on the page after I stopped or because I've wasted time on it so far and then I don't even get to count it towards my finished books for the month or something other random reason.
Anyone know anything about The Devil's Paintbrush? That's next on my audiobook pile - hopefully I'm going to enjoy it more.
Picked up Divine by Mistake which was a book I put down partway through last year as I really wasn't enjoying it. So part of the evening given over to it again was enough to convince me that my first impression was right and that this is really not my thing and really (for me) is a waste of time, so it and its two sequels are going straight into the 'to go' box.
I'm hopefully finishing up Shopaholic and Sister this evening despite not overly enjoying it. I'm also listening to The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks which hasn't fully hooked me in yet. I'm also partway through Lion's Head, Four Happiness by Xiaomei Martell, the story of a girl growing up during the Cultural Revolution in Inner Mongolia, China which is okay and The Abortionist's Daughter which I'm also not particularly enjoying. Maybe I should allow myself to give up on more of them without torturing myself through to the end. I just hate the sense of defeat when I get rid of a book without finishing in case it turned good on the page after I stopped or because I've wasted time on it so far and then I don't even get to count it towards my finished books for the month or something other random reason.
Anyone know anything about The Devil's Paintbrush? That's next on my audiobook pile - hopefully I'm going to enjoy it more.
Picked up Divine by Mistake which was a book I put down partway through last year as I really wasn't enjoying it. So part of the evening given over to it again was enough to convince me that my first impression was right and that this is really not my thing and really (for me) is a waste of time, so it and its two sequels are going straight into the 'to go' box.
14benitastrnad
I finished listening to the recorded version of Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It by Tilar J. Mazzeo. I found the book by accident several years ago on the shelves of Barnes & Noble, and used it as the basis for several door prize/gifts for a charity to which I belong. I put the book and a bottle of Champagne in a box as a door prize. A few months ago, I found that the recorded version of this book was on sale from the publisher for $4.99, so I purchased it. My real life book discussion group does a biography book talk each January, and this was a biography so I plunked it into the CD player in the car and started listening. The author spends a great deal of time throughout the book lamenting the fact that there is so little information about the Widow Clicquot that it gets tiresome. Even so, she managed to write a 250 page book with another 50 pages, or so, of end notes and index. Not bad for no information on a person. That said, the book may be thin on personal biographical information about this powerful woman entrepreneur but it more than makes up for this lack with information about the company that the Widow Clicquot ran for 45 years. The book is chock full of information about wine making and the wine industry. In my opinion, the author is much too apologetic about this book. I wanted to shout - "Have some confidence in your book and your subject." Other than that it was a good biography.
15mccin68
I'm listening to mockingjay by Suzanne Collins and reading the terror by dan simmons, loving both so far!
16CarolynSchroeder
Meredy ~ Sorry, I'm not really that good at techno stuff here. I thought the book came up the same both ways, so I'm not sure what is going on(?). In any event, I'm glad you fixed it! Thank you! It is an ARC, comes out this week, so maybe there are different listings or something. I have to review it, so glad I know the right area to do that. Yes, NF, I mean non fiction. It is a non fiction book. Yes, Jill Leovy is the author. She is a reporter and editor for the L.A. Times as well.
17seitherin
Still working on Abaddon's Gate and An Excellent Mystery.
18browner56
I'm finishing up Thomas E. Kennedy's Kerrigan in Copenhagen, the third volume of the author's Copenhagen Quartet. The first book in the series (In the Company of Angels) was sublime, the second (Falling Sideways) was horrible, and this one seems to be somewhere in the middle.
19slynch
I was able to get an pre-publish copy of Wicked Stitch by Amanda Lee. An Embroidery Mystery. Have enjoyed all the books in the series and the main character is Marcy Singer and her Irish Wolfhound, Angus. So far very entertaining.
20PaperbackPirate
I'm still reading and loving Doctor Sleep by Stephen King, but I think I'll have to put it down soon so I can get my book club book read in time.
21jnwelch
Thanks, MDG. I finished The Night Circus, which was quite charming, and I'm about to start The Rosie Effect. I'm also reading Coventry by Helen Humphreys.
22pollux
I am 130 pages into You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz.
The plot is starting to be revealed.
The plot is starting to be revealed.
23Travis1259
Just ready to start The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. Still reading Surface Tension by Christine Kling.
24corgiiman
I finished The Farm by Tom Rob Smith. A real page turner. Next up from my Kindle I think will be The Yellow House.
25ahef1963
....still working on The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. It's slow-going, and not very exciting, but I'm plodding onwards.
26fredbacon
I read The Goebbels Diaries 1942-1943 this week which blew me away. Published in the late 40s, it's an incomplete set of daily dictations made by Joseph Goebbels on Germany and the state of the war during the years 1942 and 1943. The original typed files were discarded and partially burned at the end of the war before someone recognized what they were and salvaged them. Since then microfilm copies of the complete diaries have been located in the Soviet Archives, where they sat unnoticed until 1992. Unfortunately, the complete diaries have not been translated into English. All I can say is the man was an angry, poisonous snake with grand delusions.
I'm now rereading The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Vol 3 which covers the year 1662.
Later this week I'll be starting The Ciano Diaries 1939-1943. Count Ciano was the son-in-law of Mussolini and served as his Foreign Minister during much of the war.
I have a lot of diaries in my library which I've collected over the years, and I've decided to devote this year to reading them. It will probably carry me through summer.
I'm now rereading The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Vol 3 which covers the year 1662.
Later this week I'll be starting The Ciano Diaries 1939-1943. Count Ciano was the son-in-law of Mussolini and served as his Foreign Minister during much of the war.
I have a lot of diaries in my library which I've collected over the years, and I've decided to devote this year to reading them. It will probably carry me through summer.
27alphaorder
I am reading and thoroughly enjoying Crow Planet, which was recommended to me by a co-worker at the nature center. Off to work our Winter Carnival soon, so I won't get much reading done today.
28benitastrnad
I started reading Cold Dish the first in the Longmire mystery series by Craig Johnson and find that it is hard to put down. I am reading this for a group read here in LT. I will be reading it far into the night. It is so much easier to get lost in than is On the Reproduction of Capitalism which I am also reading for a college course I am taking.
29qebo
Finished The Bird Market of Paris. Finished Alan Turing: The Enigma. Haven’t yet reviewed either. Started Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, another chunkster that I’ve been avoiding as too daunting, but I figured it would be less demanding than Alan Turing.
30jnwelch
Finished Coventry, which was very good, and carrying on with The Rosie Effect.
32PoetVictoria
Interesting bio on Feiffer. I love those cartoons. Thanks.
I am reading Dissident Gardens by Jonathan Lethem and really enjoying it. The language is so witty and poetic. And, since I am reading the e-book version, I just click on the numerous name-droppings for a quick wikipedia refresher synopsis on who these luminaries were. I love it.
I am reading Dissident Gardens by Jonathan Lethem and really enjoying it. The language is so witty and poetic. And, since I am reading the e-book version, I just click on the numerous name-droppings for a quick wikipedia refresher synopsis on who these luminaries were. I love it.
33MDGentleReader
Read Mermaid House, a children's adventure story, I really wasn't quite in the right mood for it. I'll re-read it again some time. I liked reading about the characters and I think it can interesting to re-read a story that has a mystery element to it when you already know the solution to see how the behavior of the characters fits in with what was actually going on versus what the characters thought was going on at the time.
Re-read a favorite of mine - the most expensive book I own, My Friends George and Tom. There is an awful lot in it about kindness and lives well lived.
Re-read a favorite of mine - the most expensive book I own, My Friends George and Tom. There is an awful lot in it about kindness and lives well lived.
34Bjace
Am reading Three men on the bummel, Peter Duck by Arthur Ransome (which is the 3rd book in the Swallows and Amazons series) and God in the dock by C. S. Lewis.
35ahef1963
Finished H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, which I didn't like at all.
I think my difficulty with Wells' works (I have read other of his books), is his device of the uninvolved narrator. Much of this novel was told through the eyes of the writer's brother, and I find that this plot device irritates me no end.
Oddly, though, I finished the novel yesterday, and I decided to try out the 10th Doctor on Doctor Who last night. I've never seen Doctor Who before, but I have rather a crush on David Tennant, so thought I'd give it a go. The first episode was about the invasion of the Sycorax from Mars, which in no way resembled Wells' Martians, but I thought the coincidence of two Martian invasions on the same day was amusing. I loved the show, and will be watching much more.
I have just picked up Claire North's The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, and at 20 pages in can say that I'm finding it original and enjoyable.
Is there a group where, without driving anyone completely mad, I can babble on about H.G. Wells' world view, and have a natter about the historical perspective on his opinions on animals and on the inhabitants of Tasmania?
I think my difficulty with Wells' works (I have read other of his books), is his device of the uninvolved narrator. Much of this novel was told through the eyes of the writer's brother, and I find that this plot device irritates me no end.
Oddly, though, I finished the novel yesterday, and I decided to try out the 10th Doctor on Doctor Who last night. I've never seen Doctor Who before, but I have rather a crush on David Tennant, so thought I'd give it a go. The first episode was about the invasion of the Sycorax from Mars, which in no way resembled Wells' Martians, but I thought the coincidence of two Martian invasions on the same day was amusing. I loved the show, and will be watching much more.
I have just picked up Claire North's The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, and at 20 pages in can say that I'm finding it original and enjoyable.
Is there a group where, without driving anyone completely mad, I can babble on about H.G. Wells' world view, and have a natter about the historical perspective on his opinions on animals and on the inhabitants of Tasmania?
36MsMaryAnn
Hi everyone. I am back after a month long hiatus. I will be reading Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel and Faithful Place by Tana French. I'm caught up on the threads and of course, I added more books to my wish list (hums Wishin' and Hopin').
37MDGentleReader
>35 ahef1963: Trying to think which group would be best. You could try starting a thread in The Green Dragon.
Group Description:
Tolkien, Fantasy, SciFi, mythology - any and all books of wonder! Virtual ale & warm lively chat - join us in LibraryThing's best pub! This group is known as one of the busiest and most welcoming on LibraryThing, so come in, sit down, and enjoy the banter in our virtual home, where we celebrate fine books and USED CHEESE! :oP~~
No politics or religion to be discussed on the premises.
Group Description:
Tolkien, Fantasy, SciFi, mythology - any and all books of wonder! Virtual ale & warm lively chat - join us in LibraryThing's best pub! This group is known as one of the busiest and most welcoming on LibraryThing, so come in, sit down, and enjoy the banter in our virtual home, where we celebrate fine books and USED CHEESE! :oP~~
No politics or religion to be discussed on the premises.
38Citizenjoyce
>1 MDGentleReader: Thanks for the bio. He looks so sweet and innocent, doesn't he?
>13 Peace2: So many books, so little time. Give yourself a brake. There are books out there you would love instead of wasting your time with those you don't.
>26 fredbacon: Wow. I'm glad he comes of as a nasty megalomaniac. I uaually hate books that make despicable characters seem well intentioned.
I finished Gay Pride and Prejudice and find myself missing these characters who have become surprisingly familiar to me. I've read Pride and Prejudice twice, once on my own and once in a tutored read. I saw the Colin Firth PBS series twice and the Keira Knightley movie once, read the related novel about the servants, Longbourn, then read a spin off, Death Comes to Pemberly and recently saw the movie made of it. I can't believe this novel just keeps going and going, and I keep going along for the ride.
I also finished Dear Committee Members about the sort of self absorbed, womanizing, academic misanthrope most of us have known and hopefully few of us have become entangled with. He's fun to read about, as long as you're not asking him for a letter of recommendation, but not so fun to let into your life.
Then I finished the surprising The Winter People and recommended it to my daughter. She likes horror novels, I don't, but since it was on a best of 2014 list I fortunately gave it a try. It's very well written and not at all what I thought it was going to be from the tags.
Lastly I finished Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant, also on several best of 2014 lists. This graphic memoir chronicles the last years of Roz Chast's parents, her anxious father and her overbearing mother. I can't imagine being truthful enough to write the way she does about her mother. Alison Bechdel has a blurb on the cover in which she mentions repeatedly how hilarious the book is. Wow. You need to be pretty thick skinned to find much of these memories hilarious, but having read Bechdel's memoirs, she has the skin for it. I almost didn't and found it made me quite uncomfortable. Discomfort is not a disqualifier, in fact, I wouldn't have even said it was a drawback had I been expecting something other than a humorous book about aging. So be warned, then you'll enjoy the book.
Next up on iPad is The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham which I find is due back at the e-library in 30 hours. I'd best get cracking.
On paper I think I'll start Hand to mouth : living in bootstrap America by Linda Tirado
and on audio I'm almost finished with Elizabeth is Missing which just gets better and better as my heart goes further and further out to Maud and her daughter.
>13 Peace2: So many books, so little time. Give yourself a brake. There are books out there you would love instead of wasting your time with those you don't.
>26 fredbacon: Wow. I'm glad he comes of as a nasty megalomaniac. I uaually hate books that make despicable characters seem well intentioned.
I finished Gay Pride and Prejudice and find myself missing these characters who have become surprisingly familiar to me. I've read Pride and Prejudice twice, once on my own and once in a tutored read. I saw the Colin Firth PBS series twice and the Keira Knightley movie once, read the related novel about the servants, Longbourn, then read a spin off, Death Comes to Pemberly and recently saw the movie made of it. I can't believe this novel just keeps going and going, and I keep going along for the ride.
I also finished Dear Committee Members about the sort of self absorbed, womanizing, academic misanthrope most of us have known and hopefully few of us have become entangled with. He's fun to read about, as long as you're not asking him for a letter of recommendation, but not so fun to let into your life.
Then I finished the surprising The Winter People and recommended it to my daughter. She likes horror novels, I don't, but since it was on a best of 2014 list I fortunately gave it a try. It's very well written and not at all what I thought it was going to be from the tags.
Lastly I finished Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant, also on several best of 2014 lists. This graphic memoir chronicles the last years of Roz Chast's parents, her anxious father and her overbearing mother. I can't imagine being truthful enough to write the way she does about her mother. Alison Bechdel has a blurb on the cover in which she mentions repeatedly how hilarious the book is. Wow. You need to be pretty thick skinned to find much of these memories hilarious, but having read Bechdel's memoirs, she has the skin for it. I almost didn't and found it made me quite uncomfortable. Discomfort is not a disqualifier, in fact, I wouldn't have even said it was a drawback had I been expecting something other than a humorous book about aging. So be warned, then you'll enjoy the book.
Next up on iPad is The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham which I find is due back at the e-library in 30 hours. I'd best get cracking.
On paper I think I'll start Hand to mouth : living in bootstrap America by Linda Tirado
and on audio I'm almost finished with Elizabeth is Missing which just gets better and better as my heart goes further and further out to Maud and her daughter.
39MDGentleReader
>38 Citizenjoyce: I have to admit that I looked around for a picture when he was older, I know I have seen at least one, because I pictured him with grey hair. It can be very difficult to find non-copyrighted pictures, though, so in the end I gave up.
>13 Peace2: Feel free to use the Pearl rule. Don't know of it? Read about it and get support for abandoning books here: Friends of Nancy P.
>13 Peace2: Feel free to use the Pearl rule. Don't know of it? Read about it and get support for abandoning books here: Friends of Nancy P.
40Peace2
>38 Citizenjoyce: and >39 MDGentleReader: I've abandoned my second book of the year now The Devil's Paintbrush wasn't working for me at this time so after listening to the first disc, I've decided to put it in the bag to return to the library on my next visit. I'm okay with this - after all, if I change my mind I can always borrow it again later.
41Citizenjoyce
>40 Peace2: after all, if I change my mind I can always borrow it again later.
Excellent reasoning.
Excellent reasoning.
42NarratorLady
A blizzard is a comin' and lucky me, I've got a pile of books to keep me company as long as my flashlight batteries hold out: Jacqueline Woodson's Brown Girl Dreaming, Penelope Fitzgerald's Human Voices and Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger.
43fyrfly
Finished reading And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini and listening to Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, Essays, etc. by David Sedaris and The Jihad Next Door: Rough Justice in the Age of Terror by Dina Temple-Raston.
There isn't a lot left to read in Why We Run: A Natural History by Bernd Heinrich, which I'm going back to now.
The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West by Edward Abbey is my current book of short pieces. I'll probably read more of it before starting another book, or maybe not.
There isn't a lot left to read in Why We Run: A Natural History by Bernd Heinrich, which I'm going back to now.
The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West by Edward Abbey is my current book of short pieces. I'll probably read more of it before starting another book, or maybe not.
44brenzi
I finished and loved Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth. It was my 4th Wharton and they just get better and better for me. Now I'm reading The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins.
45Iudita
I'm listening to The Scarlet Letter which I am appreciating far more than I did in Gr. 12 (a long time ago). I am also re-reading Burial Rites for book club and enjoying it so much. It's a really good story.
46Citizenjoyce
I started The Snow Queen and can't specifically say I Pearl Ruled it because I was listening and don't know how many, or how few, pages I went through but enough to say, "no thanks." Instead I started Middlemarch through openculture.com - my, she's quite the ascetic, isn't she? On iPad I'm about to start The Art of Asking: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help by Amanda Palmer.
47framboise
In the past two days I finished Intern: A Doctor's Initiation and Don't Give Up, Don't Give In, both memoirs, the latter by the amazing Louis Zamperini. Today I will start the third in Lois Lowry's The Giver series Messenger. I am really looking forward to reading Travelling to Infinity, the memoir by Jane Hawking about her life with Stephen Hawking, but as it is waiting for me at the library and it is a major snow day today, I will have to wait.
49TooBusyReading
I'm reading Far as the Eye Can See, not my usual type of story but I'm liking it so far. I'm trying to decide whether I should get the Audible unabridged version of A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson or the Kindle version. I thought I wanted the audio, but when I looked inside the Kindle version, I saw illustrations and photos I don't think I want to miss.
50jnwelch
Had a great time with The Rosie Effect. Go Don! Now I'm reading The Lost Garden by Helen Humphreys, after liking two others of hers very much.
51snash
I am slow to consider best sellers, assuming them to be shallow or sensationalist in nature. Lila proved that concept to be totally wrong. I found it superb, engrossing, and thought provoking.
52Zumbanista
I finished the challenging (for me) The Grandissimes by George Washington Cable and am percolating before I write my review.
Also roughly a third of the way into Margaret George's Elizabeth I: A Novel which isn't as interesting as I'd hoped.
So now for a bit of fun I'm looking forward to Symphony of Echoes the 2nd in a series of time travel romps by Jodi Taylor.
Also roughly a third of the way into Margaret George's Elizabeth I: A Novel which isn't as interesting as I'd hoped.
So now for a bit of fun I'm looking forward to Symphony of Echoes the 2nd in a series of time travel romps by Jodi Taylor.
53benitastrnad
I finished reading The Cold Dish by Craig Johnson. This is the first in the Longmire series and it was very well done. It had good plot, writing, and characters that I cared about. I have had this one for a long time and finally pulled it off the shelves because there is a group here on LT doing a compare and contrast reading of the Longmire and Joe Leaphorn/Jimmy Chee books by Tony Hillerman. So far I am liking both of these books and will be reading more of them.
I think that Johnson nailed the region (setting) and the people who live there.
I think that Johnson nailed the region (setting) and the people who live there.
54hazel1123
Lila was in my top 5 of books read in 2014. I am looking forward to beginning Home tonight. Gilead has been recommended to me but I have said I will not buy more books until I read a few of the ones I have already purchased. Then again if I enjoy Home as much as Lila I'm not sure about that silly promise.
55grkmwk
I'm reading The Name of the Wind (fiction, Unruly Places (nonfiction), Binocular Vision (short story collection), A Little Salty to Cut the Sweet (faith/spiritual), and Blue Horses (poetry). All are quite good, albeit in different ways. I'm not giving equal attention to all, as The Name of the Wind is engaging and hard to put down... :)
57hemlokgang
Just finished the marvelous The Boys in the Boat. Great read!
Next up is a RL book club selection, Indiana by George Sand.
Next up is a RL book club selection, Indiana by George Sand.
58mollygrace
I finished Kay Ryan's The Best of It: New and Selected Poems. I will return to these poems again and again -- Kay Ryan's a marvel. Last week I came across a book I had begun reading two years ago and never finished, so I completed that book as well: The Best Spiritual Writing 2011. I have read several books in this series and found much to appreciate in each of them. In this book I especially admired essays by Rick Bass, Terry Teachout (writing about Flannery O'Connor), and Alice Lok Cahana, as well as poems by C.K. Williams, Philip Levine, and Robert Cording.
I hope to finishThe Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell today or tomorrow.
I hope to finishThe Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell today or tomorrow.
59jnwelch
>58 mollygrace: Oh, I just got that Kay Ryan collection, mollygrace. I'm glad you liked it so much.
60mollygrace
>59 jnwelch: : Kay Ryan manages to say so much in so few words, doesn't she? And they continue to work on you long after you've closed the book.
61jnwelch
>60 mollygrace: Yes, she sure does. I was lucky to see her live, and she chose her words carefully and was very funny (as some of her poems are) in person, too.
62fyrfly
Finished Why We Run: A Natural History by Bernd Heinrich and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.
Started listening to How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival by David Kaiser. One of the discs won't play and the next was hard to understand. I'm getting it now, though.
Started reading East of the Mountains by David Guterson. This was enjoyable so far, 60 pages in and wondering what will happen next. I returned to Life in the Cold: An Introduction to Winter Ecology by Peter J. Marchand and a couple of pieces in The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West by Edward Abbey. I like both of these for what they are.
Started listening to How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival by David Kaiser. One of the discs won't play and the next was hard to understand. I'm getting it now, though.
Started reading East of the Mountains by David Guterson. This was enjoyable so far, 60 pages in and wondering what will happen next. I returned to Life in the Cold: An Introduction to Winter Ecology by Peter J. Marchand and a couple of pieces in The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West by Edward Abbey. I like both of these for what they are.
63MsMaryAnn
My plan this week was to read Station Eleven and Faithful Place. After being away from LT for a month, instead of reading, I've spent much of my spare time reading posts, reviews, and in general, on the hunt for interesting books (no shortage here!) Looking, listing and lusting after books are all part of the fun! Maybe tomorrow I'll settle down and read an actual book.
64CarolynSchroeder
I am almost done with ER book Ghettoside and it will easily be one of my top reads of the year. So this reading year is off to a spectacular start!
65benitastrnad
I finished reading a new children's book My Friend the Enemy and enjoyed it. It had a very simple plot but it was still readable. This is the authors first novel and I expect that he will improve with time.
I am now going to start on Night Watch by Sarah Waters for the British Author Challenge started by Paul. This will be my first book by Waters so I am looking forward to seeing what kind of author she is.
I am now going to start on Night Watch by Sarah Waters for the British Author Challenge started by Paul. This will be my first book by Waters so I am looking forward to seeing what kind of author she is.
66jnwelch
First Frost was an excellent follow-up to Garden Spells. Wonderful to be back in Bascom with the Waverly sisters and their families.
Now I'm focusing on The Lost Garden.
Now I'm focusing on The Lost Garden.
67NarratorLady
Finished the excellent Brown Girl Dreaming which I'll be recommending to everyone I know.
>65 benitastrnad: I'll be interested in hearing what you think of Night Watch. I couldn't get into it but it's one of those books that I plan to try again since I suspect I might not have been in the mood.
I absolutely loved Fingersmith; Waters is a great writer.
>65 benitastrnad: I'll be interested in hearing what you think of Night Watch. I couldn't get into it but it's one of those books that I plan to try again since I suspect I might not have been in the mood.
I absolutely loved Fingersmith; Waters is a great writer.
69corgiiman
Finished The Yellow House by Patricia Falvey. I really enjoy Irish fiction although sometimes can be a downer. Not sure my next Kindle book. I saw where someone(??) recommended Closet by R.D. Zimmerman. I may try that one. I havent read a mystery in a while.
71moonshineandrosefire
Hello there,
Due to one thing and another (health issues, computer issues, etc...) I've not been part of this group for several weeks. I've kept up with my reading, but haven't checked in for quite a while.
Anyway, I just wanted to mention that after starting to read The Sixth Commandment by Lawrence Sanders on Thursday, January 22nd, I finished reading this book two days later on Saturday, January 24th! It was another great book by one of my many favorite authors.
Up next for me was The Ice Princess by Camilla Lackberg which my daughter had reviewed about four years ago. She had recommended that it was well worth a read, and she was right. This is actually the first international mystery (apart from mysteries that take place in Ireland, England or Scotland) that I've ever read, and I really enjoyed it. I started reading the book on Monday, January 26th, and I finished it two days later on Wednesday, January 28th! ;)
So, as of Friday, January 30th I started reading Kramer Versus Kramer by Avery Corman, which despite having seen the movie at least twice - the last time about five years ago, I'd never actually read.
Due to one thing and another (health issues, computer issues, etc...) I've not been part of this group for several weeks. I've kept up with my reading, but haven't checked in for quite a while.
Anyway, I just wanted to mention that after starting to read The Sixth Commandment by Lawrence Sanders on Thursday, January 22nd, I finished reading this book two days later on Saturday, January 24th! It was another great book by one of my many favorite authors.
Up next for me was The Ice Princess by Camilla Lackberg which my daughter had reviewed about four years ago. She had recommended that it was well worth a read, and she was right. This is actually the first international mystery (apart from mysteries that take place in Ireland, England or Scotland) that I've ever read, and I really enjoyed it. I started reading the book on Monday, January 26th, and I finished it two days later on Wednesday, January 28th! ;)
So, as of Friday, January 30th I started reading Kramer Versus Kramer by Avery Corman, which despite having seen the movie at least twice - the last time about five years ago, I'd never actually read.
