Jeffrey Deaver and other favorite authors

[Ansamcw]

I'd love to learn how to get audio books from torrents. I love audio books, but they are just too damned expensive to buy!

If you are familiar with how torrents work...its pretty much like getting any other file...just search for the name of the book or the author. Of course the more popular the book the easier to get. they are usually mp3's

[Bookwhore]

I'm a menace on the road when I try to listen to an audio book! I can.not.do.it. I get all caught up in the story and forget that I'm driving. Before I know it, I'm in the oncoming traffic lane, or the shoulder, or headed for a tree. Even at home I can't listen to them and do housework. I'll plop my fat butt down and just listen.

I can't ice skate and talk at the same time, either.

[Ansamcw]

I'm a menace on the road when I try to listen to an audio book! I can.not.do.it. I get all caught up in the story and forget that I'm driving. Before I know it, I'm in the oncoming traffic lane, or the shoulder, or headed for a tree. Even at home I can't listen to them and do housework. I'll plop my fat butt down and just listen.

I can't ice skate and talk at the same time, either.

I find that the best thing for me to listen to on the treadmill is an audiobook. I totally forget about the minutes I am on and just concentrate on the story.

It used to be so helpful for me when I wait for my girls bus...and when I am cooking. The problem is...when I am working around the kitchen the earphones often get snagged on something and gets off my ipod.

[woo lovereyes]

Just a heads up on the release of Ken Follett's follow up to "Pillars of the Earth". That was one of my all time favorite reads. After 18 long years he is finally releasing the long awaited sequel "World without End" Oct.9. I can't wait!

[Bookwhore]

Now here's a book that was so much fun to read, it was almost like a game...

Ella Minnow Pea: A Progressively Lipogrammatic Epistolary Fable by Mark Dunn. It's a quick read, and was funny, but carries a much deeper message about the dangers of censorship and totalitarianism. Here are a couple of reviews:

Playwright Dunn tries his hand at fiction in this "progressively lipogrammatic epistolary fable," and the result is a novel bursting with creativity, neological mischief and clever manipulation of the English language. The story takes place in the present day on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina, where over a century earlier, the great Nevin Nollop invented a 35-letter panagram (a phrase, sentence or verse containing every letter in the alphabet). As the creator of "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog," Nollop was deified for his achievement. The island's inhabitants live an anachronistic existence, with letter-writing remaining the principal form of communication. Life seems almost utopian in its simplicity until letters of the alphabet start falling from the inscription on the statue erected in Nollop's honor, and the island's governing council decrees that as each letter falls, it must be extirpated from both spoken and written language. Forced to choose from a gradually shrinking pool of words, the novel's protagonists a family of islanders seek ways to communicate without employing the forbidden letters. A band of intrepid islanders forms an underground resistance movement; their goal is to create a shorter panagram than Nollop's original, thereby rescinding the council's draconian diktat. The entire novel consists of their letters to each other, and the messages grow progressively quirkier and more inventive as alternative spellings ("yesters" for "yesterday") and word clusters ("yellow sphere" for "sun") come to dominate the language. Dunn obviously relishes the challenge of telling a story with a contracting alphabet. Though frequently choppy and bizarre, the content of the letters can easily be deciphered, a neat trick that elicits smiles. Wordsmiths of every stripe will appreciate this whimsical fable, in which Dunn brilliantly demonstrates his ability to delight and captivate.

and

With shades of Kurt Vonnegut, George Orwell, and William PŠne du Bois, Ella Minnow Pea is delightfully clever from start to finish. It's set on Nollop, a fictional island off the coast of South Carolina named for its long-dead founder, Nevin Nollop, the "genius" who came up with "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog." A huge cenotaph of Nollop's sentence stands over the town square-and one day, the "z" falls to the ground. Nollop's elected-for-life Council interprets this as a missive from beyond the grave, "that the letter `Z' should be utterly excised-fully extirpated-absolutely heave-ho'ed from our communal vocabulary!" Other letters soon follow, and the novel becomes progressively lipogrammatic (a "lipogram" being writing in which one or more letters are forbidden), told exclusively in the form of letters from one citizen to another as they struggle to adapt (a third offense means banishment). Not even the discovery that the glue holding the letters up is calcifying sways the zealots on the Council (perhaps Nollop intended its deterioration). It's decided that only the construction of another sentence that uses every alphabet letter in only 32 graphemes could discredit Nollop's "divine" word. Dunn plays his setup to the hilt, and the result is perfect for teens fond of wicked wit, wordplay, and stories that use the absurd to get at the serious.

I really recommend it.

[luckiest1]

I'm a menace on the road when I try to listen to an audio book! I can.not.do.it. I get all caught up in the story and forget that I'm driving. Before I know it, I'm in the oncoming traffic lane, or the shoulder, or headed for a tree. Even at home I can't listen to them and do housework. I'll plop my fat butt down and just listen.

I can't ice skate and talk at the same time, either.

Hee. I loaded the audio book from HP7 onto my iPod and listened to it on the weekend, all the way up north to my mom's place for Thanksgiving. It is about a 3.5 hour drive. My son loved it. I am so glad I thought to play it for him. He has attentional deficit problems and as much as he likes to read, he just can't get through such a long book. He has no problem with thin novels. Anyways, when we arrived, he asked to borrow my iPod and listened to it for a few more hours off and on throughout the weekend. I am hoping he'll continue and listen to the rest of the book at home, too. Could be a really good solution to his problem.

I put the headphones back on yesterday and listened to a few chapters while I was doing the dishes and tidying up the kitchen. I think I'm gonna like this!

I also finished the Dark Tower VII and started on A Thousand Splendid Suns. I was a bit surprised by some of SK's comments at the end of the DT7. I usually really enjoy his "constant reader" narratives, but this one had a bit of an irritated tone to it, to me. Like maybe he'd taken some criticism already and was responding to it. It seemed quite defensive. Maybe he was just anticipating the angst of his more avid fans? LOL, it's not just Clay's fans who angst, apparently. Personally, I loved the book and loved the ending.

As for ATSS, I am really enjoying it so far. I like his style of writing.

[luckiest1]

So, did anyone get any good books for Christmas?

I got Cold Moon by Jeffery Deaver, and Blaze by Richard Bachman aka Stephen King. Whenever I get a new SK book, it's just so cool to curl up and read it. This one has the funniest "constant reader" intro to date, with a ton of footnotes. I'm already halfway through the book. I still haven't finished A Thousand Splendid Suns yet, though. Got sidetracked with the CITH and never got back to it. I will soon.

[jamar1700]

So, did anyone get any good books for Christmas?

This year the kids decided to do a family book club for Christmas. Everyone bought copies of one of their favorite books for everyone else.

So I'll be reading...

The Life of Pi ... by Yann Martel

I am America ... by Stephen Colbert

and

Angels and Demons ... by Dan Brown

They will also be reading ...

A Dog Year ... by Jon Katz.

[fangirlygush] soon to be a major motion picture!!!![/fangirlygush]

I'm halfway through the Life of Pi right now. It isn't anything I would ever have picked up but I am liking it and I think that was the point of the whole thing. Yes I do. *g*

---

Before Christmas I finished one of those books that's destined to be an all time favorite

Neverwhere by Neil Gamain.

I picked it up because I had enjoyed Stardust. I really wasn't sure about it because it seemed so dark. But I feel right into that other world. Great read.

Other recent reads that I would recommend

Under the banner of heaven ... by Jon Krakauer.

Best non-fiction book I've read in a long time.

Ella Minnow Pea... by Mark Dunn.

I know that Bookwhore and duckyvee read this too. Sort of a modern fable. With a message.

Also raced through the His Dark Materials Trilogy (Golden Compass, Subtle Knife, Amber Spyglass.) ... by Phillip Pullman. I really enjoyed them. Wanted to read them before I saw the movie and I'm glad I did.

Why yes, I do have rather eclectic taste in reading material. I rarely get stuck on one author, in fact often find the books I like are first books and then I don't like subsequent works. Wicked by Gregory Maguire is a prime example. Loved it. Really don't care (that's being kind) for anything else I've read of his.

[Bookwhore]

Another book I just loved is Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff. It's another serious/funny book. The author, Christopher Moore, has written some other funny stuff, but his books are not always equally good. All of the above are fiction. Sorry, too tired to go pull up blurbs, although I love it when people do that.

I just picked this up yesterday. There's a new 'gift' edition out that looks like a typical Bible...black leatherette, gold embossing, gilt edged pages. I started reading it last night and it's so funny! Pretty irreverent, frat-boy one liners, but sometimes I just need to giggle, so I'm enjoying it.

Last month I read Stormy Weather by Paulette Jiles. She also wrote Enemy Women, if you're familiar with that. It's set in Texas during the Dust Bowl, and is about three sisters and their mother trying to make ends meet after the father is killed.

Also, I recommend The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls. It's a memoir of her neglectful, bordering on abusive, upbringing by her wacko parents. It was utterly fascinating to me. What a resilient spirit!

Right now I"m also reading Standing in the Rainbow by Fannie Flagg. It's just too sweet. Not holding my attention at all. I simply don't care about the characters because they all seem like Ward and June Cleaver to me. Has anyone read this? Does it get better? Does anything actually happen?

I'm also reading Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth, which is fantastic, but it's 1000 pages long. Oh Lordy, I just realized I'm currently reading three books at once! No wonder I can't finish anything.

Another great read is Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Burns. It's an older book, but I've never met anyone who read it that didn't like it.

Cold Sassy Tree, a novel full of warm humor and honesty, is told by Willy Tweedy, a fourteen-year-old boy living in a small, turn-of-the-century Georgia town. Will's hero is his Grandpa Rucker, who runs the town's general store, carrying all the power and privilege thereof. When Grandpa Rucker suddenly marries his store's young milliner barely three weeks after his wife's death, the town is set on its ear.

Books recommended to me that are now on my stack of 'things to read before I die" are Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Wild Swans ( non-fiction), Atonement, and Rhett Butler's People.

[luckiest1]

Oh Lordy, I just realized I'm currently reading three books at once! No wonder I can't finish anything.

Hee, I know how that feels. Right now I am reading The Cold Moon by Jeffery Deaver. I just finished Blaze by Stephen King but I am partway through the preview of his new book, which is going to be out soon, and is included at the end of Blaze. I am partway through A Thousand Different Splendid Suns (heh) and also I'm in the middle of LTS again for our reading party. Sometimes I feel like a certain type of book, which is why I like to keep a few things on the go at once. But if I let it get too long between readings (like with ATSS) I feel the need to start from the beginning again!

[gbmifan]

I use to read a lot before someone came into my life. When my children were young I would get them to bed and read for a couple of hours. I averaged about 1-2 books a week. Now I am lucky if I get one read a month. I started before Christmas The Burnt House by Faye Kellerman. Her and her husband are one of my favorite authors. I only got half way through and It was due at the library and could not be renewed. So now I got to reorder it so I can finish it. I also like medical novels. I like Robin Cook and Michael Palmer. Have read most of Jeffrey Deavers books. Use to like Stephen King but lost interest in him when his stories really got weird. I am on my way tonight to a book club that I have never been to before. I hope this will renew some interest in new authors for me.

[Bookwhore]

gbmifan I hope the book club turns out well. I'd be interested in hearing about the club, what they're reading, how the discussion went, etc. I'm always looking for suggestions for my book club.

[gbmifan]

Tonight they discussed the Hot Flash Club. I found the discussion interesting, kind of got the jest because I did not read it. I probably will pick it up and read it. I think they said there is 4 in the series. Next month is their Classic month, so they are reading The Grapes of Wrath, then in March will be Eat, Pray, and Love. I cannot remember the author.

[luckiest1]

I finished Cold Moon by Jeffery Deaver last night (during the Superbowl, heh). It had a weird ending...unusual, no real resolution. Now I need to go and buy the next one (there was a preview at the end, so I know I haven't read it yet). Hee, I really should read books in order, but sometimes that's not the way it happens.

I'm dying to go out and by Duma Key by Stephen King, but my birthday's coming up, and someone may have already bought it for me, so I guess I should wait. I still haven't finished A Thousand Splendid Suns, so perhaps I will give that one another go in the next couple of weeks......

[annabear]

I picked up Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky this weekend. Just about 50 pages in, I'm really enjoying her descriptive development of the people and places.

[Bookwhore]

I picked up a book yesterday simply because I liked the cover. It's called The Thirteenth Tale, and so far I'm totally hooked on it! I had read that it was written in the style of the Bronte's, which is, to me, unattainable praise. But darned if the first three chapters don't call to mind the opening chapters of Wuthering Heights, or DuMaurier's Rebecca. Beautiful! I'll let you know how it comes out.

[luckiest1]

Well, I'm back into A Thousand Splendid Suns, and loving it. I can't imagine living under those conditions.....I realize it's fiction, but I am learning a lot about Afghanistan and it's history through these books. What the women in this story are going through is unbelievable.

[Bookwhore]

Luckiest, my book discussion group will be reading A Thousand Splendid Suns in a couple of months and I can't wait! I'm glad you're enjoying it. Even a fiction book can be a learning experience if it's well researched and well written.

I finished TheThirteenth Tale and I heartily recommend it! It's the 'curl up on the couch with a cup of tea and a blanket' kind of book. Settle in for a good story and prepare to be swept away. What I loved about it was that it was an engrossing, entertaining read and there was not one four-letter word, no gratuitous sex, no gratuitous violence. Not too many books out there like that these days. There are a couple of, um....unseemly parts, so I wouldn't give this to a young person (hints of incest, but never confirmed).

Is a slut worse than a whore? I may need to change my name. Today was payday and I went directly from the bank to Barnes & Noble, then straight to Borders. It was like an orgy. I needed a cigarette afterwards.

But I picked up a really nice leather-bound compilation of Jane Austen's works, and two Agatha Christie books. I can't believe I've never read any Agatha Christie, so I picked up And Then There Were None and Murder on the Orient Express. Then I got a copy of Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time, The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai (a Pulitzer Prize winner) and The Princess Bride. I've never read that either, but have heard it was good (I think that was JaMar that recommended it, don't remember for sure).

I'm starting up a new book discussion club called "Just Desserts" - it's a mystery lovers club. Hence, the mystery novels. Our first selection is The Virgin of Small Plains by Nancy Pickard. It's set in Kansas and revolves around how the lives & relationships of the townspeople change after a young girl is found murdered and frozen in a pasture during a blizzard. I'm about a third of the way into it and am enjoying it quite a bit. Mystery isn't my favorite genre, so this will be a new challenge for me.

[jamar1700]

The Princess Bride. I've never read that either, but have heard it was good (I think that was JaMar that recommended it, don't remember for sure)

Great book. Way better than the movie.

I'm in the middle of Rhett Butler's People and loving it.

Just finished ... Pretty Little Mistakes....a do over novel. It's a plot-your-own story for adults. It's really fun...but you need at least 4 bookmarks. Hee.

[luckiest1]

I finished ATSS yesterday.........towards the end, I couldn't put it down....I even took it to work!

My son insisted on coming to Chapters with me to pay for as much of Duma Key as he could afford. Hee. It was 40% off so it wasn't too bad. It's a thick book, wheeeeeeeee!

[jamar1700]

Just finished The Road...by Cormac McCarthy. It was excellent.

Be forewarned it is set in a post-apocalyptic America and was an Oprah selection....in case either of those things is a turn-off. *g*

I'm just getting into another post-apocalyptic novel...Triumph by Phillip Wylie. It was written in 1963 and it will be interesting to see how they differ.

Looking for something a bit more upbeat for my next read.

[Couch Tomato]

Just finished The Road...by Cormac McCarthy. It was excellent.

Be forewarned it is set in a post-apocalyptic America and was an Oprah selection....in case either of those things is a turn-off. *g*

I'm just getting into another post-apocalyptic novel...Triumph by Phillip Wylie. It was written in 1963 and it will be interesting to see how they differ.

Looking for something a bit more upbeat for my next read.

heee I love Oprah but find we don't have similar tastes. I keep trying to describe her tastes but the best I can come up with is maudlin. Hmmm I need to start reading... I used to really love that so. How do you find the time Jamar?

[jamar1700]

Hmmm I need to start reading... I used to really love that so. How do you find the time Jamar?

It's called "the bus" ...

Just to clarify...I don't think this is a typical Oprah book. There aren't even any female characters. I was surprised to see that sticker on the cover...I read it anyway. *g*

[luckiest1]

So, anyone read any good books lately......

I just finished The Sleeping Doll by Jeffrey Deaver (and had a nice conversation in PM about it with spikesmom). I also read Stephen King`s latest, Duma Key, which was really good and surprisingly for me quite original. Most of his recent books seem to be retreads of old stories, to me, but not this one. I highly recommend it.

Right now I am reading the latest Tami Hoag to come out in paperback, The Alibi Man. Haven`t got too far into it, will try to do that this weekend. I am really interested to read two biographies that have come out (but I don`t want to spend the money on them, so I might have to dig out that old library card that`s kicking around somewhere!) They are the Eric Clapton biography, just called Clapton, and the Patti Boyd biography, called Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison, Eric Clapton and Me. I think she`d have a pretty interesting story to tell.

[luckiest1]

OK, so the Alibi Man didn't really turn me on. I think my love affair with Tami Hoag is over.

I just finished reading all 4 of the Stephenie Meyer books (Twilight, etc) and they are awesome! Looking forward to the movie adaptation later this month. I am glad I finished them all first, though. I always like to read the book before seeing the movie, no matter who the author.

Next up....Jeffery Deaver's latest. And some more of the "Bones" books. No one else reading lately?