What books are you reading?

[Sue]

Originally Posted by kitap

I've always been a big fan of Ammie, Come Home.

Ok, just requested this from the library. It looks like an early title by her so I'm thinking it should be good. Just hopefully not to spooky .

[Brad from Georgia]

I read R. M. Ballantyne's The Coral Island because I never had and because I always see it referenced as a source for Lord of the Flies. It was okay in a white-man's-burden British-Empire ripping-stories kind of way, I guess--that is, viewed in context of its times--but two things occurred to me: It would have been better without the preachiness and had I been one of the other two boys shipwrecked on the island, I would have asphyxiated Peterkin at the first opportunity.

[Moku]

Have now finished Anne of Green Gables and downloaded the rest of the series on Kindle.

Still waiting for Vanilla Ride... grump.

Oh, what would be a good sort of place to leave Green Gables to be found?

[kitap]

Originally Posted by Sue

Ok, just requested this from the library. It looks like an early title by her so I'm thinking it should be good. Just hopefully not to spooky .

It's actually the prequel to Shattered Silk. I didn't find it particularly spooky.

[Sue]

Originally Posted by kitap

It's actually the prequel to Shattered Silk. I didn't find it particularly spooky.

I noticed the name Ruth Bennet in the description of the book and I did wonder. Now I'm really looking forward to it .

[Embra]

I have just finished Wool by Hugh Howey. Recommended by a friend and now I am reading a review of it I find it's apparently Sci-Fi's "answer to Fifty Shades of Grey" ( in the sense of having been initially self-published).

I really enjoyed the setting, and the plot turns. And it was about 2/3 of the way through when I suddenly appreciated that the lead character was a woman, and she wasn't just a token figure either: there was nothing remarkable about her femaleness, and there are a number of other solid female characters in the story.

I sat up three nights in a row past midnight to finish it And now doubtless I will have to read the prequel and sequel.

Also recently read Cold Comfort Farm, which I can't believe I waited until I was nearly 40 to read. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys things in the vein of P G Wodehouse, and Jerome K Jerome.

Next up What I talk about when I talk about running by Haruki Murakami. I hgaven't read any of his novels, but it came recommended through a running blog that I like.

[Magdalene]

I've been re-reading the "Song of Ice and Fire" (aka "Game of Thrones") books, and a random thought crossed my brain when one of Cersei's uncles compared Cersei's looks to Lyanna Stark's looks (the books have been out for some years, so I'm presuming no spoilers need apply). The uncle seemed to think that Cersei was the more beautiful of the two women, and I found myself thinking, "Yeah, but for all her beauty and wealth, she lost out to Lyanna Stark twice." The books explain that Tywin Lannister tried to betroth Cersei to Rhaegar Targaryen and failed--and Rhaegar ultimately ran off with Lyanna. Lyanna had been betrothed to Robert, who did eventually become king, but after Lyanna died. Robert married Cersei, but it was pretty obvious that he still loved Lyanna, and that Cersei was just a way to gain her father's support in the war.

I just started thinking that Cersei, not being the most rational person out there, would start building up one hell of a resentment towards the Starks over all this, so I wondered if she'd been out to get the family from the word go.

It did also occur to me that ironically, for all Ned's telling Robert, "You never really understood my sister," Ned is equally guilty of not truly understanding his younger daughter, Arya, who by all accounts, is her Aunt Lyanna all over again. He *did* let Arya take swordfighting lessons, true, but he also kept telling Arya that someday she would marry a great lord and be the mistress of his castle and mother of his children--something Arya didn't seem interested in.

Magdalene

[Magdalene]

Originally Posted by Embra

The bedtime stories continue:

Incidentally, I have started reading ahead because I can't remember from my own memories of the books what the family's interactions with native American people are. "Ma" has just said that she "doesn't like Indians", and we did talk a bit about why Laura's family might be called "settlers" and who might also have been living on the lands they are crossing.

What I've been wondering about those is I've read the "Little House: The Caroline Years" books that focus on Caroline Ingalls (then Quiner) as a little girl, and one of the books shows some Native Americans (I forget which tribe) bringing meat to her family during a bad winter, because the Native Americans were apparently aware that Caroline's family consisted of a widow, her seven young children, and her elderly mother-in-law. Caroline seemed very grateful and appreciative of this. The books go up until the time it's pretty much agreed she and Charles Ingalls will marry, and there's no mention of interactions with Native Americans after that, so I find myself wondering what happened that as "Ma", Caroline came to hate them.

Magdalene

[Sue]

The books written after the original Little House series are almost entirely fictional. They take a few incidents that they know happened and that's about it. I'd imagine making "Ma" unafraid of Indians in the more contemporarily written books is their way of sanitizing history.

[Embra]

Interesting, I hadn't heard of "the Caroline Years" at all.

Little House on the Prairie ends as the Indians around the Ingalls home are being forced West by soldiers: there is in fact a lot of sadness in the writing about this, so Sam and I have talked very generally about whether that sounds fair, and why people might be afraid of one another, that kind of thing.

[Morwen Edhelwen]

Originally Posted by Embra

Interesting, I hadn't heard of "the Caroline Years" at all.

Little House on the Prairie ends as the Indians around the Ingalls home are being forced West by soldiers: there is in fact a lot of sadness in the writing about this, so Sam and I have talked very generally about whether that sounds fair, and why people might be afraid of one another, that kind of thing.

Some American Indians don't like the portrayal of American Indians in those books.

[Sue]

Originally Posted by Embra

Interesting, I hadn't heard of "the Caroline Years" at all.

Sometime after Rose Wilder Lane died her heir, Roger MacBride, penned a similar series to the Little House books which featured a young Rose Wilder as the protagonist. These sold well enough that the publishers decided to mine Laura's history for further series and ended up with "the girls of Little House"

http://www.littlehousebooks.com/

[Richard W]

In May I read:

A Cruel Bird Came to the Nest and Looked In - Magnus Mills.

The Hundred-Year-Old Man who Climbed out of the Window and Disappeared - Jonas Jonasson. Sort of a Swedish Forrest Gump shaggy dog story, and quite entertaining. I thought it was going to be similar to The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, which I read earlier this year, but it's nothing like it, despite the similar initial premise.

Lost At Sea - Jon Ronson. Collected journalism. Sometimes I wonder how he still gets people to talk to him...

Railsea - China Miéville. This was another Young Adult book, although it's not as obvious as some. A strange cross between Moby Dick, Thomas the Tank Engine and Duncton Wood. Pretty good, although I found I couldn't think in too much detail about how the Railsea would actually work, or it stopped making sense. I liked the way that the moletrain captains who all had personal nemeses actually referred to them as "philosophies" and consciously made up their own symbolism about them, as though Ahab had known he was in a novel called Moby Dick and his whale was a symbol of some kind.

Building Stories - a graphic novel by Chris Ware. B S Johnson wrote a "book in a box" called The Unfortunates, where each chapter was bound separately and you could read them in any order apart from the first and last. This is a similar graphic novel in a box, and personally I think the execution is way better than B S Johnson's. It's nicely produced and colourful and great to look at, with a variety of different formats, from broadsheet papers to little strips and pamphlets, a couple of board-bound books and one piece like the board for a board game.

I thought it was a little pretentious at first (the back of the box is - it's something to do with McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, which I'm not a great fan of) but once I'd read enough to get into it, it's well enough done, with great attention to detail, that I forgot that. It's mostly about the life of a lonely young woman, but there's also a building in the centre of it - the apartment block that the woman lives in for part of her story - and you get the life stories of the other people who live in the block as well. (And a passing bee, and the building itself.) It's quite depressing in parts, since most of the characters are sad and lonely and unfulfilled for most of the book. But (unlike B S Johnson's effort, I think) it does actually make a difference which order you read the pieces in as to the first impression you have of each character, and how you therefore react to the things you find out about them. Worth looking out for - it's a big box so you need a big shelf to keep it on, though.

I'm currently reading Robinson Crusoe, and A History of Christianity by Diarmaid MacCulloch.

[Embra]

Originally Posted by Morwen Edhelwen

Some American Indians don't like the portrayal of American Indians in those books.

Yes, it would hardly be surprising.

I've found myself editing the book as I've been going along (which I hate doing: I think in general that if I find a book needs editing then its's not suitable for the audience I've got).

I think the portrayal of Indians in the book ranges between the fearful negative and the "noble savage" stereotype, and it's not context that I can really introduce to small children at bedtime... I really should have read the whole book again before I started reading it to them: it was pure thoughtlessness on my part to start the story. And the kids really enjoyed the early chapters about the trek west, and the family building the house, digging a well etc.

For my own reading I recently finished The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan, which I enjoyed for its ambiguous central character, although I didn't find it as compelling a thriller as the jacket suggested i ought to.

[Sue]

For some reason I've gotten out of reading fiction lately and have been reading biogs. Just finished "Wait for Me" an autobiography by the Duchess of Devonshire, also known as Deborah Mitford. It's a fascinating read. I'd highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in the Mitford "girls", and if you weren't before I'd suspect after reading it you may well go seeking out other books about them.

[Lainie]

Just finished Roger Ebert's memoir, Life Itself. I highly recommend it.