STYLETHREAD -- LET'S TALK SHOP!

iirc, you're into non-fiction? the best book i read last year was random family by adrian nicole leblanc. i'm not the biggest non-fiction person, but it was really good. it reads like a novel and the author does an excellent job of telling the stories without inserting her opinion and moralizing.  granted, i'm kind of big on the social issues that affect lower class families, but just the amount of research/work that went into the book makes it worthwhile b/c the author spent appx. 10+ years following the lives of the characters.

here's the amazon link:  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0684863871/qid=1102952364/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/102-9321451-1657706

eta: the amazon review is a tad cheesy b/c it makes it seem as though the book has a distinctive political slant (which it doesn't) and that it's some sort of "gangsta" tale (which it's not) so take the review with a grain of salt.

-- Edited by honey at 10:48, 2004-12-13

-- Edited by honey at 10:52, 2004-12-13

-- Edited by honey at 14:44, 2004-12-13

smash, have you heard about this book? it sounds like it might be up your alley. it's mainly a book of photos, but it seems really cool.
-Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death by Corinne May Botz
This fascinating and macabre volume offers readers an extraordinary glimpse into the mind of a master criminal investigator. Frances Glessner Lee, a wealthy grandmother, founded the Department of Legal Medicine at Harvard in 1936 and was later appointed captain in the New Hampshire police. In the 1940s she built dollhouse crime scenes based on real cases in order to train detectives to assess visual evidence....Botz's introductory essay, which draws on archival research and interviews with Lee's family and police colleagues, present a captivating portrait of the creator of these amazing miniatures.

Here are some of the books on my list.

-Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds by Bernd Heinrich. My parents both read this and it sounds really interesting.

-The New York Triology by Paul Auster. I usually steer clear of post 50s fiction but I'm trying to branch out a bit. The excerpt that I read on Amazon was pretty good.

-Anna Karenina. I've been wanting to read this for ages but I was waiting for a particular translation to come out in paperback. Now I can finally try to commit to reading it.

-In Ruins by Christopher Woodward. It's a discussion of ruins and of people's fascination with ruins, interspersed with personal reflections by Woodward. It seems like something light that will help me keep up with my interest in art history and archaeology.

-I want to read something by Paul Theroux, probably Pillars of Hercules.

-either A Handful of Dust or Scoop by Evelyn Waugh.

And I have my shelf of books that I always try to read and eventually abandon. which includes: The Brothers Karamazov which my ex-bf gave me for my h.s. graduation and which I've started about 10 times and never finished, Moby-Dick, a few Faulkner books (I can never get into him)


I've got a long list of books to read on my computer at home; I'll look over it tonight.

smash, you're not the only dork.  last spring i made a list of "summer reading" and let's just say, i came about 5 pages short of finishing the list.  and i do not mean 5 pages of a book, i mean my list is 5 1/2 pages long.  so it's sort of an ongoing project.  very fiction heavy though...let me see if there's anything on there to suggest...

• Siddhartha (Hesse)


• 1984 / Keep the Aspidistra Flying (Orwell)


• The Awakening (Chopin)


• Time Traveler's Wife (Niffenegger)


• Lexus and the Olive Tree (Friedman)


• Reading Lolita in Tehran (Nafisi)


• Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (Putnam)

okay, well there's a few from my list of thousands...

quote:

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Originally posted by: cc
"A Handful of Dust or Scoop by Evelyn Waugh.

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Handful of Dust is freakin' hilarious. I Evelyn Waugh.

Smash, have you read Devil In the White City? Also, I really liked The Dante Club and The Rule of Four -- both are mysteries, but for Enlglish nerds. I need to talk to someone else who's read The Rule of Four - I need to know if it's possible.

thanks for the suggestions everyone!

i've already read a lot of what was suggested (lovely bones, all of m. atwood, handful of dust, time traveler's wife, kavalier & clay, siddhartha, 1984...), but there are lots of other things for me to add to my list. yay! honey, i actually remember reading a review of that book you recommended and writing it down somewhere as something i want to read, but i totally forgot about it. thanks for reminding me.

 

 

i really liked The Russian Debutante's Handbook by Gary Shteyngart--it's fun and i think i've recommended it before--it won some awards but it seems like not a lot of people have heard of it.  it's a novel.  The Corrections (Jonathan Franzen) is great also, if you haven't already read it. 

i would also recommend The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami.  it's a dreamy/meditative kind of mystery, mixed with partly (i think?) fictionalized history.  i want to read more of his books because i liked this one so much. 

i finally finished Anna Karenina and i liked it very much.  i'm going to check out some of the suggestions here so that i can get going on a new book. 

-- Edited by bumblebee at 14:16, 2004-12-14

quote:

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Originally posted by: bumblebee
"i really liked The Russian Debutante's Handbook by Gary Shteyngart--it's fun and i think i've recommended it before--it won some awards but it seems like not a lot of people have heard of it.  it's a novel. 

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i really liked this too. forgot about it until bumblebee brought it up. it's really fun to read and is a good option if you're looking for something light that's not "chic lit."  also i *believe* they're making a movie out of it...or maybe i'm thinking of everything is illuminated which is a great read) so if you're at all interested you might want to buy it now, before they re-print it with his face on the cover. (sorry one of my random pet peeves is how they change the cover of a book after it's been turned into a movie and put star's face on it.) 

 

Smash - I don't know if you have read any David Sedaris - Hilarious and a pretty quick read.  I've read Naked and am reading Me Talk Pretty One Day.  Either or is fantastic!

~Memoirs of a Geisha

 

bumblebee -- everything is illuminated is by jonathan safran foer, and it's very, very good.