Wednesday, December 08, 2010

Recently Read

As always, skip it if you wanna.

1. The Blue Cotton Gown by Patricia Harman - Memoirs of a midwife. Interesting.

2. Still Life with Chickens by Catherine Goldhammer. I got about a third of the way through this one before realizing I'd read it before. It's a memoir about a woman who, among other things, raises a few chickens. Good if you want to learn about chicken-raising.

3. Sweet Tea and Jesus Shoes by various authors. A collection of adorable short stories about the South - recommended.

4. Whitethorn Woods by Maeve Binchy. Ah, Maeve. I love her books - you just sit right down and sink right in. This one is about a little town in Ireland and its inhabitants - very entertaining.

5. Letters of a Woman Homesteader by Elinore Pruitt Stewart - Self-explanatory title, there. Good book.

6. Leave the Building Quickly by Cynthia Kaplan - Vignettes and stories from the author's life - Interesting and very funny.

7. A Good House by Bonnie Burnard - Novel detailing 50 years in the life of a family. I never did get into this one, mainly because the author seemed detached from her characters. I finished it, but I can't recommend it.

8. Welcome to Utopia - Notes from a Small Town by Karen Valby. The author went to a tiny Texas town and wrote down the stories of the people who live there - very good.

9. Charming Billy by Alice McDermott. Novel about a beloved drunk. I'll bet English Lit teachers love this sucker, but I was bored and quit about sixty pages in, mainly because I know too many drunks to find anything about them "charming".

10. The Wedding Dress by Carrie Young - Short stories set in the Dakotas - very good.

Okay, so right now I'm struggling my way through The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James, which made a lot of "100 best books" lists, and all I can say is, Really? Woo boy, so far it's just a bunch of proper people sitting around talking, and maybe it was, I don't know, scandalous for its day or something, but I really don't care about a bunch of self-important twits out in the English countryside, so whatever.

What are YOU reading right now? Is it any good?

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, you might have mentioned this before, but do you have a Kindle? I've been thinking about getting one, but I don't even read that much. I was thinking that an avid reader like you would probably have some opinions on the device.

Anonymous said...

P.S. Henry James' Turn of the Screw is pretty good. No one ever seems to talk about it, but I enjoyed it.

rockygrace said...

I don't have a kindle - can't justify the cost right now. :( I also like holding books, and looking at the books on my bookshelf. Picking them up and leafing through them. (I am a NERD) Plus, I have a bad tendency of spilling stuff on the books I'm reading - pretty sure that'd fry a kindle.

And I'll put Turn of the Screw on my "to read" list - thanks!

Badass Nature Girl said...

I'm a nerd without a pocket protector, so I know exactly what you are talking about :o) I am reading two books right now (one is in the living room and one is in the bedroom) "Writ in Blood" by James A. Moore and "man and boy" by Tony Parsons. Not very far in either to tell you if they are worth it yet!

Anonymous said...

Yes, I like book-books too. I like the way they smell, and I can't imagine teaching a class while holding something digital in my hands. Weird. Still, I like the neatness of having a ton of books in one tiny location. Hm.

rockygrace said...

A kindle would come in handy when you were traveling, instead of lugging a bunch of books with you.

Oh! But if you lose the kindle, you lose all the books you stored on it, right? I've been known to misplace stuff ... not sure I'd be okay with misplacing four dozen books at once ...

rockygrace said...

And BNG, "Writ in Blood" sounds like it'd give me nightmares. Great big vivid LAVENDER nightmares. But let me know if the OTHER book's any good!

Anonymous said...

I've heard that with the Kindle, your books are saved in your account, so if you lose the Kindle, you can replace it and just add your books back on. Trouble is, of course, you have to replace a $150 item instead of a couple $10 books. I like reading in the bathtub myself, so I'm thinking that would be a dangerous mix :/