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Jeffrey Deaver and other favorite authors


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I'm about halfway through "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" by Jonathan Safran Foer and I'm fascinated by it. It's one of the most original and memorable book I've read in a long time. Highly recommend it.

What's it about, woo? I've not heard of it.

Toots, the only SK book that didn't scare the hell out of me was Needful Things, but even it was disturbing. I'm just not a SK fan at all. I've tried a couple of his other books and just can't do it. I'm not going to try to deny that there's a tremendous appeal to his writing for the general public and is very successful.

Right now I'm reading two books. The first is call The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, which Ihave to read for my book group, but I hate it.

Didion's husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, died of a heart attack, just after they had returned from the hospital where their only child, Quintana, was lying in a coma. This book is a memoir of Dunne's death, Quintana's illness, and Didion's efforts to make sense of a time when nothing made sense.

My own husband is disabled with pulmonary fibrosis and reading this woman's torturous grief in such intimate detail gave me nightmares the first night. I haven't picked it up since. But I'll have to finish it here in the next couple of weeks.

The other book I'm reading is 'interesting'. The Case of the Missing Books, by Ian Sansom. It was gtifted to me by one of my favorite patrons - inscribed "Teri - Thanks for all your hard work!" :wub: That was sooo sweet. I'm only a few pages into it. It's a British author, and they're always a little more difficult for me to get into. Anyway, here's the synopsis.

In a field crowded with unlikely sleuths, Israel Armstrong--chubby, nervous, clumsy, headache prone, underachieving--stands out. Jewish and vegetarian, he stands out even more when he accepts a job in Tumdrum, Northern Ireland, where it's assumed that, if he's not Protestant, he must be Catholic. Hired to be a librarian, he arrives to find his library closed and his position retitled "Outreach Support Officer"--driver of the decrepit mobile library. Worse, the books he's supposed to fill it with have disappeared. Worse yet, his new boss will accept his resignation only if he finds the missing books first. Between Israel's inept sleuthing and the general unhelpfulness of the locals, it looks as if he'll be in Tumdrum a long, long time. The plot here is an excuse for the scenes, but what scenes! Begging to be read aloud, they unfold with a rollicking blend of dry humor, slapstick, and sheer farce that is nonetheless anchored by a strong sense of place and a sobering sense of the place's troubled history. Librarians have found themselves a new hero in Israel Armstrong, who, despite his unheroic demeanor, is a champion against bullshit and bureaucracy in the service of books.

For any other bibliophiles out there that are interested, here's a website where you can register and catalog your own books. It's stored on their server so it doesn't take up your harddrive space, and you can even search out cover art, there's a chat forum and recommendations and occassionally an author or two will post. You can set your account to public or private. It's free. Here's part of my library.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/Creole54

This post brought to you by Nerds R Us.

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For any other bibliophiles out there that are interested, here's a website where you can register and catalog your own books. It's stored on their server so it doesn't take up your harddrive space, and you can even search out cover art, there's a chat forum and recommendations and occassionally an author or two will post. You can set your account to public or private. It's free. Here's part of my library.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/Creole54

This post brought to you by Nerds R Us.

Thank you for the link - this looks cool!

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Bookwhore, here's a good link to Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. You might also be familiar with his first book Everything is Illuminated.

http://books.google.com/books?id=ZuqGAAAAC...result&cd=2

Edited by woo lovereyes
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The Memory Keepers's Daughter by Kim Edwards is an excellent read.

This stunning novel begins on a winter night in 1964, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins.

His son, born first, is perfectly healthy, but the doctor immediately recognizes that his daughter has Down syndrome. For motives he tells himself are good, he makes a split-second decision that will haunt all their lives forever. He asks his nurse, Caroline, to take the baby away to an institution. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child as her own. Compulsively readable and deeply moving, The Memory Keeper's Daughter is a brilliantly crafted story of parallel lives, familial secrets, and the redemptive power of love.

.

http://www.memorykeepersdaughter.com/

I started this book when I flew out to California for Kimmel.

Maybe I should dust it off and finish it.

Right after the other three books I have started but have yet to finish.......

I used to read a lot.......

Three Cups of Tea is on my long list of books to read. I've heard nothing but good comments on the book.

And I started this when I flew out to California for the CA4fer!!

Haven't finished this either.

Do you detect a pattern here???

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Any of you have recommendations for humorous books. I love David Sedaris and have read all of his.

Me Talk Pretty Some Day was just so :lmaosmiley-1: for me! His humor is right up my alley. I really neeeed a funny read right about now.

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Any of you have recommendations for humorous books. I love David Sedaris and have read all of his.

Me Talk Pretty Some Day was just so :lmaosmiley-1: for me! His humor is right up my alley. I really neeeed a funny read right about now.

Toots skids into the book thread to help out woo...Hi woo

I said somewhere in here that I found Janet Evanovich, The Stephanie Plum novels somewhat refreshing. She's rather funny and a good writer. If you decide to try, read the 1st book in the Stephanie Plum series. The titles are numbered. I'm usually like more serious stuff but enjoyed them in spite of myself.

Also said here that I just love the Ladies Detective Agency novels by Alexander McCall Smith. They are not so funny. Just plain old cute! The central character is a tradionally built woman in Botswana who starts the Ladies Detective Agency. All of the characters are built from there and they are just so much fun to read. Warms your heart and makes you long for the next book. He's written 8 in the series so far.

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Any of you have recommendations for humorous books. I love David Sedaris and have read all of his.

Me Talk Pretty Some Day was just so :lmaosmiley-1: for me! His humor is right up my alley. I really neeeed a funny read right about now.

Toots skids into the book thread to help out woo...Hi woo

I said somewhere in here that I found Janet Evanovich, The Stephanie Plum novels somewhat refreshing. She's rather funny and a good writer. If you decide to try, read the 1st book in the Stephanie Plum series. The titles are numbered. I'm usually like more serious stuff but enjoyed them in spite of myself.

Also said here that I just love the Ladies Detective Agency novels by Alexander McCall Smith. They are not so funny. Just plain old cute! The central character is a tradionally built woman in Botswana who starts the Ladies Detective Agency. All of the characters are built from there and they are just so much fun to read. Warms your heart and makes you long for the next book. He's written 8 in the series so far.

Thanks Toots, I shall check out J.Evanovich's The Stephanie Plum. I always find reading something lighthearted does wonders to my psyche during stressful times. :F_05BL17blowkiss:

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Don't know much about non-fiction funny, but since we're talking detective fiction, the Maggody series by Joan Hess is absolutely hilarious. Laugh out loud funny.

Laugh out funny is good! :cryingwlaughter::RedGuy:

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Woo, Sharyn McCrumb's If I'd Killed Him When I Met Him had me giggling through the whole thing. I've never read anything else by her, but I do remember really enjoying this one:

Three grievously wronged women take murderous revenge in this sharp-edged, witty tale, the eighth appearance of forensic anthropologist Elizabeth MacPherson. Her skills at research and detection come into play when she is hired as an investigator by her brother Bill's Virginia law firm. Bill has been asked to defend a woman accused of poisoning her philandering husband, a piously hypocritical preacher. Another law partner, the resolute Amy Powell Hill, ponders how best to defend a Richmond socialite who gleefully admits to shooting both her ex-husband and his new wife. Intertwined with these contemporary cases is a 19th-century mystery: How did a genteel Southern lady manage to poison her wealthy Yankee husband? Buoyed by intriguing characters, a wry?sometimes macabre?wit, and lush Virginia atmosphere, McCrumb's (MacPherson's Lament; The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter) mystery spins merrily along on its own momentum, concluding that justice will triumph... but in surprising ways.

Or

how about the "Miss Julia" series? They're a quick, funny read and the ladies in my book club really enjoyed the first one when we read it. She's written several in the series, but I've only read the first two, because I tend to get bored with series.

The first one is Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind - author Ann Ross.

Also, have you read Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt? True, the story is depressing as hell, but his way of telling it is laugh-out-loud funny. I'm sure his sense of humor is what helped him cope and survive through such desperate conditions as a child.

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Woo, Sharyn McCrumb's If I'd Killed Him When I Met Him had me giggling through the whole thing. I've never read anything else by her, but I do remember really enjoying this one

I've read almost everything she's ever written. Some of her books are funny and some are more serious. Dale by McCrumb is a great read if you've ever known anyone who was obsessed with auto racing. I'd call it serious/funny. Her earliest books were really odd/funny: Bimbos of the Death Sun and Zombies of the Gene Pool.

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.

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For any other bibliophiles out there that are interested, here's a website where you can register and catalog your own books. It's stored on their server so it doesn't take up your harddrive space, and you can even search out cover art, there's a chat forum and recommendations and occassionally an author or two will post. You can set your account to public or private. It's free. Here's part of my library.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/Creole54

This post brought to you by Nerds R Us.

You have 199+ books? I'm trying to visualize how many that is. This is a great idea as I have all my books in rubbermaid containers that slide under the bed and I can't remember what I've got.

Edited by sheiladownunder
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Well, no.....I actually have about 300+ books, I just haven't added them all into my catalog yet. When we moved my DH made me get rid of about half of what I had because he said he wasn't going to pay the movers $100/hr to move my books. :( He can be so unreasonable sometimes. So the ones I have left are just my favorites. :)

And I'm so excited, because today I'm going to Borders to pick up copies of several of the titles that have been talked about in this thread. I'm soooo excited! A trip to the bookstore for me exceeds the joy of watching new Clack. And I have some of that set aside for this afternoon, too.

Life is good. :)

Edited by Bookwhore
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Wheee! I just purchased A Thousand Splendid Suns this morning. I opened an account at Library Thing too because I need to start keeping track of my books. They are scattered all over the house and I find that I will be in a bookstore, and afraid to buy one in case I already have it. Hee, I have a bad memory!

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I'm home from Border's where I purchased a copy of Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn. JaMar recommended this book to me months ago, and it sounds really different:

Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal phrase containing all the letters of the alphabet, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."

Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island's Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop. As the letters progressively drop from the statue they also disappear from the novel. The result is both a hilarious and moving story of one girl's fight for freedom of expression and a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhere."

I also picked up copies of The Color Purple, Lord of the Flies, Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451. I read all of these years ago and want to read them again. For my library I'm working on a project for Banned Book Week, researching books that had been banned or challenged over the years, and the reasons for it. All of these books were on the list and it prompted me to want to read them again.

Luckiest I haven't read A Thousand Splendid Suns yet. I'll be interested to know what you think of it. I wasn't a fan of Kite Runner. :( Bad Clayfan.

edited a dozen times to fix tags, correct grammer, punctuation and spelling. **sigh**

Edited by Bookwhore
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I loved the Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. The subject is gritty but very real and he's a fantastic author.

Read Angela's Ashes many moons ago and although depressing, it was an excellent read and I enjoyed it very much.

Edited by Toots
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Thanks again for all the great recommendations. I've read many of the books you have been talking about throughout this thread. I'll start reading the Magoddy series next.

BTW the one book I found totally joyless was A Bend In The River by V.S. Naipaul. Did any of you ever read that?

Edited by woo lovereyes
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Well I'm still reading the last of the SK Dark Tower books.....and all the references to other Stephen King books is intriguing me, because it's been so long since I read them, I don't remember them! I just passed a part with a big reference to Insomnia, so I think I may have to dig it out again when I get finished. Hopefully I'll get to A Thousand Splendid Suns by Christmas. I don't go through books at the rate I used to, because I split my time between boards and clack and kids and pets and work. Hee, probably in that order too.

So yesterday I got really inspired and managed to input about 3/4 of the books on my various bookshelves into the Library Thing site - 190 of them! About half are sitting here in a pile, ready to be taken down to the used book store for trade in or sold or donated somewhere....I just know I don't need them anymore and I certainly don't have room for them. Many are Beatle books, some are doubles.....I just need to STOP collecting non-Clay things. Hee.

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Well I'm still reading the last of the SK Dark Tower books.....and all the references to other Stephen King books is intriguing me, because it's been so long since I read them, I don't remember them! I just passed a part with a big reference to Insomnia, so I think I may have to dig it out again when I get finished. Hopefully I'll get to A Thousand Splendid Suns by Christmas. I don't go through books at the rate I used to, because I split my time between boards and clack and kids and pets and work. Hee, probably in that order too.

So yesterday I got really inspired and managed to input about 3/4 of the books on my various bookshelves into the Library Thing site - 190 of them! About half are sitting here in a pile, ready to be taken down to the used book store for trade in or sold or donated somewhere....I just know I don't need them anymore and I certainly don't have room for them. Many are Beatle books, some are doubles.....I just need to STOP collecting non-Clay things. Hee.

OMG the final SK dark tower book made me dig up all the other books...but I downloaded the audiobooks and re listened to them again even the stand...and I do believe thats what eventually wore down my ipod until hubby fixed it. There is one reference I do not get and I keep thinking there will be somthing coming up in future books.

I started inputing books in the library thing...but started with my SK collection, paper backs, hardcover and audiobooks...and I found one book I didn't have. everything;s eventual...I'm reading it right now and I see something that is coming in 2008...

My basic problem is trying to get new books ..we live so far from any English bookstore that I have to get books from amazon and the shipping is really killing me...that is why I turned to audiobooks I can get from torrents. I also found a site libirivox that is a volunteer site where you can get audio version of public domain books. I downloaded most of the Jane Austen. The readers are volunteers so are not professional quality but its pretty good.

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