What are you reading the week of May 4th, 2014?

[getting old in mke]

I guess I'll start this week's thread.

Continuing with _Temporal Void_ by Peter F Hamilton.

The scope and scale of this space opera are just amazing. And the collection of "Inigo's Dreams" that end each chapter are building what is essentially a solid novel-within-the-novel.

[pscot]

1. Justine by Lawrence Durrell

I read the Alexandria Quartet almost exactly 50 years ago, so it's like revisiting ancient history. It will be interesting to see if they're as good as I remember.

[CrispyQ]

2. "The Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follett.

It's my first Follett.

[TexasProgresive]

5. This is a great book

I have only read 2 books by Mr. Follettt, The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End which is a sequel.

[CrispyQ]

8. OMG, I had to have my husband hide it so I would get something done today!

[TexasProgresive]

10. It is so entertaining and

you learn so much about late middle age/early renaissance life. As someone who has spent a lifetime of working out how to get certain things done on a small scale it amazes me how people with limited power and resources could build such magnificent structures like the Gothic cathedrals.

[CrispyQ]

14. The friend who recommended this title told me these two books are unique in his catalog.

In twelve more minutes my book will be released.

[Enthusiast]

16. That would be a good one to start with.

I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

I have read them all. There's not a stinker in the bunch.

[SheilaT]

3. Just finished The Bear

by Claire Cameron.

Based on a true story, a bear attacks and kills the parents of two young children whilst on a camping trip. The kids, just two and four, survive on their own.

It's narrated by the older kid, a girl, and it just did not sound like any four year olds I've ever known, including myself at that age. And I have what everyone assures me are unusually vivid memories going farther back than that.

It's not a plot spoiler to say that the final part is likewise narrated by that girl, only it's twenty years later. I honestly think it would have been a better and more affective novel had it been narrated by the adult she became. There's an attempt to make her sound like a four, almost five year old, but it just doesn't work. She had digressions, when I don't think the kid would have. But to read the story of her going back to that place, struggling to remember what happened, could have been far more effective. And yes, I did mean affective a couple of sentences back.

In short, I would not recommend this novel to anyone.

[scarletwoman]

4. Yesterday I finished a truly wonderful book, and because it was so intricate and fascinating,

I just went ahead and started reading it again from the beginning. It's a beautifully wrought journey into a place that I really don't want to leave yet.

The book is, Vacationland by Sarah Stonich. It's written as a series of interconnected vignettes - each vignette introducing a different character or set of characters - all centered around a small resort on a lake in the far north of Minnesota, close to the Canadian border.

The chapters travel forward and back through time, from the founding of the resort by a taciturn Czech immigrant who escapes Prague in 1936 with his 2 year old son as the Nazis are on the move and his wife has run off with a German lover, through the life of his granddaughter, a painter, who after numerous twists and turns in her own life ends up making what's left of the old resort her permanent home some 20 or so years after her grandfather's death. In between we meet various resort guests from throughout the years, inhabitants of the small town nearest the resort, and the few remaining family members of the granddaughter, whose parents had died in a plane crash when she was 6 years old.

It's a gorgeous, sumptuous book, full of the sort of imagery that makes the reader just stop and breathe and savor. There's plenty of sly humor as well, and each character is drawn with compassionate detail.

I highly reccommend it.

[CrispyQ]

9. Thanks for the recommendation.

The library doesn't have it so I just ordered it.

[scarletwoman]

13. You're welcome! I hope you enjoy it!

She has two earlier novels that I think I may try to order from my library, they sound intriguing.

In the meantime, I'm headed back to Sweden to fight crime - two of the latest titles by a couple of "my" authors just got in.

[TexasProgresive]

6. Finished Paul Gallico's The Abandoned

This is one great story that gets inside the psyche of cats. There is adventure, love and fierce action.

Moving back to James H. Street and his historical novel on the revolution of Cuba from Spain, Mingo Dabney.

[SheilaT]

7. I'm now reading The Wrong Mother

by Sophie Hannah.

I read her first novel, Little Face and it was okay, although the central premise about the woman's child being replaced with another one was rather strained and far-fetched.

In this current one, a woman sees a news report of a woman who apparently killed her six-year-old daughter and then committed suicide. The husband, name of Mark Bretherick is someone the narrator had an affair with the previous year. Except that the Mark B who shows up on TV as the grieving husband is decidedly not the same man she had the affair with. Also, the dead wife looks an awful lot like the narrator. I'm quite interested to see how the author handles this.

[Worried senior]

11. I just ordered

some of the Sophie Hannah books from the library.

[Goblinmonger]

12. Restarted _Seeing_ by Saramago

Started and then a couple other teaching reading needs came up. Loved Blindness. Hopefully this one delivers, too.

[Enthusiast]

15. Thank you, getting old in mke!

I was seriously distracted.

Don Winslow's The Death and Life of Bobby Z.

Anyone read this one? It was recommended by Carl Hiaasen so I picked it up. I find it to be entertaining.