Wednesday, November 07, 2012

Recently Read

Skip it if you wanna.

1.  Flower Children by Maxine Swann - Novel about ex-hippies raising kids.  Started out interesting and then got meh - I didn't finish it.

2.  The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb - If you can't say anything nice ... Okay, I'll say something anyway.  It was seven hundred and forty pages of BO-RING.  Jesus.  That's several months of work lunchtimes that I'll never get back.  None of the main characters were particularly sympathetic, which made it a long, tough, slog.  I liked his book "She's Come Undone", but this one?  No way.  Waste of my time.

3.  The Queen of Palmyra by Minrose Gwin - Novel about a girl growing up in 1960s Mississippi - good.

4.  Movie Review!  "Hey, Boo - Harper Lee and To Kill a Mockingbird" - Doc about, well, you guessed it.  And I will tell you what, the people who made this doc managed to talk a great book into the damn ground.  What a snooze-fest, especially since Harper Lee was (of course) absent.  (When the subject of your doc refuses interviews, you might have a problem.)  Although I did learn that the neighbor boy in the book was based on a young Truman Capote.  The more you know!  And I have since learned that there are rumors that Tru actually ghost-wrote To Kill a Mockingbird, which I don't believe.  He's not that good a writer.

5.  The Drifters by James Michener - Great big honking novel about young people in Spain in the 60s.  I read this as a teenager and was fascinated with it.  I just picked it up again, and, like a lot of books I first read as a teen, it just doesn't have the same resonance with me today.  Still, a good read. 

6.  The Gift of Pets by Bruce Coston - Memoir of a veterinarian - Goes into WAY too much technical detail - Eww.

7.  Angie, I Says by Avra Wing - Think "Working Girl", the movie, and then throw in a pregnancy that derails the career plans. Interesting.  Oh! And evidently they made a movie out of this book, too, with Geena Davis.

8.  The Lost Saints of Tennessee by Amy Franklin-Willis - Novel about a man who can't get over the death of his brother.  Eh.

9.  An Irish Country Doctor by Patrick Taylor - Self-explanatory title.  Fiction.  Good.

So!  That's what I got.  How about you?

5 comments:

Becs said...

Enh, right now I got nothing. Because "Prey" by Michael Crichton changed M the Perfect Roomie's life, I've been reading that. Nearly done. Meh. Booga booga, doesn't technology scare you?

I have some mindless trash books waiting at the wings.

I have lately tried to read:
Not Buying It about some poor old New Yawker going for a year without buying anything non-essential. Come ON, she has an apt in NY, a house in Vermont and whines because she can't find her SmartWool socks (hey! I would too!) or her ski wax to go cross country skiing with her buds.

Then, The Sociopath Next Door. I stopped reading it when it started to feel eerily like me. But I do have a conscience and apparently, that's the key to not being a sociopath. Still, great reading and recommended.

And I can't remember where I heard about Tru being Dill but that's why Dylan started out life as Dill. You're right, he wasn't as talented as Nell. I knew a guy who recognized her once in a bar in NY (how, I don't know) and bought her a drink. Maybe the woman just managed to keep her drink meter above "E" because of the resemblance.

How I do go on...

rockygrace said...

Oooh, maybe I'll give the sociopath book a try.

Anonymous said...

I'm reading *Rabid* -- I am finding it fascinating, lurid, fast-paced, and informative. Scary and gross in parts, it makes me realize what a wonderful age we're living in.

- bridgett

http://www.npr.org/2012/07/19/157049292/terrible-virus-fascinating-history-in-rabid

rockygrace said...

"HydroPHObee?!"

That would only make sense if you've seen Old Yeller.

Oh, and now that's got me thinking about the rabid dog scene in To Kill a Mockingbird. And let's not even mention Cujo, shall we?

If I read "Rabid", I would probably never sleep again.

Becs said...

"Old Yeller" was made to make children cry. To sob hysterically. DON'T LET THE DOG DIE!