What are you reading this week of January 10, 2016?

[hermetic]

Still reading the 3rd Outlander novel, Voyager. Those crazy kids sure do get themselves into a lot of predicaments.

What's on your reading list this week?

[Enthusiast]

1. Hello, everyone! Thank you for this thread, hermetic.

Earlier I read In Bitter Chill by Sarah Ward. It certainly was a mystery. It has an wild outcome that was impossible to predict. In Bitter Chill was quite the first effort by Sarah Ward. What a fertile imagination! Mrs. Enthusiast liked it too. Thank you for the recommendation, scarletwoman.

Since reading In Bitter Chill I have been reading Far As The Eye Can See by Robert Bausch. This one sure has captured my interest. Far As The Eye Can See was recommended by japple. This is the sort of yarn that has great appeal for me—19th Century historical fiction.

Earlier, Mrs. Enthusiast read Tinroof Blowdown by James Lee Burke. This was by far her favorite by James Lee Burke. It was quite an eye opener in regards to events leading up to and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

After Tinroof Blowdown Mrs. Enthusiast has been on Search the Dark by Charles Todd. Maybe some of you have read the Rutledge mysteries. The Rutledge mysteries are unusual, to say the least. This would be her third one and she is very enthusiastic about this one. I am looking forward to reading it too.

[dhill926]

2. The Harder They Come by T. C. Boyle....

gripping. Usual lot of not so likeable flawed characters, but really sucks you in.

[japple]

3. Love T. C. Boyle. Have not read The Harder They Come, but have

always enjoyed his work. You're right, his characters are flawed and sometimes unlikable. Have you read Tortilla Curtain? Will put The Harder They Come on my list.

Thanks

[dhill926]

4. Oh yeah on Tortilla Curtain...

a really difficult read....but well worth it.

[japple]

5. Thank you for the thread, hermetic (and your cute little green seasheep!)

I am still on Church of Marvels, but expect to finish it tonight and will be happy to go on to something different. For some reason, this book hasn't really held my interest like I thought it would. I wish the author had just written the story without trying to make it into a mystery. It would have been much more interesting. She is certainly a good writer and has done the research; the characters are well-developed and the storyline is compelling, but for some reason, I got impatient with book.

Got a notice from the library that a book I have been waiting for (for a long time) is available for download, so I put it on my e-reader and will start tonight: Jim Shepard's The Book of Aron

The acclaimed National Book Award finalist--"one of the United States' finest writers," according to Joshua Ferris, "full of wit, humanity, and fearless curiosity"--now gives us a novel that will join the short list of classics about children caught up in the Holocaust.

Aron, the narrator, is an engaging if peculiar and unhappy young boy whose family is driven by the German onslaught from the Polish countryside into Warsaw and slowly battered by deprivation, disease, and persecution. He and a handful of boys and girls risk their lives by scuttling around the ghetto to smuggle and trade contraband through the quarantine walls in hopes of keeping their fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters alive, hunted all the while by blackmailers and by Jewish, Polish, and German police, not to mention the Gestapo.

When his family is finally stripped away from him, Aron is rescued by Janusz Korczak, a doctor renowned throughout prewar Europe as an advocate of children's rights who, once the Nazis swept in, was put in charge of the Warsaw orphanage. Treblinka awaits them all, but does Aron manage to escape--as his mentor suspected he could--to spread word about the atrocities?
Jim Shepard has masterfully made this child's-eye view of the darkest history mesmerizing, sometimes comic despite all odds, truly heartbreaking, and even inspiring. Anyone who hears Aron's voice will remember it forever.

[dixiegrrrrl]

6. Non-fiction...The Operators, by the late Michael Hastings.

One of the subjects of the book was first a magazine article he wrote for Rolling Stone, about General McChrystal, who was later fired from his role as Afghanistan head of operations, replaced by Petraeus, ( and we all saw where THAT went, right?).

The Operators is about how the Afghanistan war was being handled for the past 14 years, up to 2011.
Hastings then was killed in a very suspicious car crash.

[TexasProgresive]

7. A lady of a certain age (close to mine)suggested Stone 588 by Gerald A. Browne

I've just started it and can't say much but the blurb on the cover is, "SUPERTHRILLER OF THE YEAR! Over Two Months on the New York Times Bestseller List" It has something to do with the diamond business. What I've read so far is in a mental hospital so we'll see where that leads.

I finished Guilt by Jonathon Kellerman and I liked it a lot- he's as good a story teller as is his wife Faye, and that's saying a lot.

[SheilaT]

8. Still working on "Saturn Run."

About a third of the way through and it's still excellent.