What have you read lately?

[nonsensical]

I recently finished The Vanishing Half. I can definitely see why it's gotten so much positive attention, though it took me until the second half to really get it.

[hmaria1609]

My annual Christmas read Christmas with Anne & Other Holiday Stories by Lucy M. Montgomery, edited by Rea Wilmhurst
Collection of Montgomery's Christmas short stories originally published in various Canadian magazines in the early 20th century. It also includes two chapters from Anne of Green Gables and Anne of the Island.

[larryc]

I have recently read Power's The Overstory and Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being, both excellent. Next up is Walter, The Cold Millions.

[nebo113]

John Banville's "Snow".  Wow!

[mamselle]

I'm re-reading.

Sometimes re-re-re-reading...

Two Dick Francis mysteries in the past week...

M.

[Hegemony]

I just reread "A Christmas Carol." It is shorter than you might think. Very satisfying, although some of the film versions are so present in my mind that I had a whole mental comparison table going the whole time. I am now embarking on Dickens' other Christmas tales (he wrote five), starting with "The Chimes." I read them many years ago but there must be a reason they're less famous, because I have zero recall of them.

[Cheerful]

A PBS documentary about Laura Ingalls Wilder premieres this evening (8 p.m. Eastern Time).

[FishProf]

Bill Bryson's "The Body".  He has a gift for taking the mundane and curious and making it interesting and funny.   Now I want to reread "A Walk in the Woods".

[ab_grp]

Bill Bryson's "The Body".  He has a gift for taking the mundane and curious and making it interesting and funny.   Now I want to reread "A Walk in the Woods".

I hadn't heard about this one, but it sounds interesting from the descriptions and reviews.  I loved A Walk in the Woods, especially having hiked different parts of the AT.  We took a detour to Centralia at one point.  Very strange place.  As an aside, thanks for happening to post this.  I was trying to think of his name last night and just could not for the life of me.  And I had forgotten how much I like some of his writing.

[FishProf]

I've read (or had audio book versions of) all his books.  He is truly a pleasure to read, or listen to.

[Langue_doc]

A PBS documentary about Laura Ingalls Wilder premieres this evening (8 p.m. Eastern Time).

Thanks! Just watched it. I love her accounts of settler life and all the hardships endured without any trace of self pity.

[hmaria1609]

I've read Bryson's Notes From a Small Island and The Road to Little Dribbling from the library. In these 2 books, he chronicles about his time living in the UK and everything he's experienced and observed over the years.

[mamselle]

A PBS documentary about Laura Ingalls Wilder premieres this evening (8 p.m. Eastern Time).

Thanks! Just watched it. I love her accounts of settler life and all the hardships endured without any trace of self pity.

Have I already mentioned "The Ghost in the Little House," about her editor/daughter, Rose Wilder?

That's a very interesting complement to the L. I. Wilder books.

M.

[traductio]

Last night I got to sit in a comfy chair while my kids got along with each other in the basement (!) and my wife got to enjoy cooking a fancy meal she has wanted to make for a while. I read Jay Parini's Borges and Me: An Encounter, a book I've been looking forward to since I heard about it a few weeks ago. (I had to request it through our library.) It's a very funny book (I love Borges, and Parini's encounter with him is so much more interesting than mine could have been, if I had been born at a different time, because Parini has never heard of him and doesn't venerate him as I tend to!), followed by a lovely dinner.

Luxury.

[ab_grp]

Now we're reading another of the newer sci fi books I got him for his birthday: Red Rising (Pierce Brown).  We just started, but it sounds interesting [took the Amazon blurb out from my previous post] and is the first of a series.  I fell asleep during the first chapter so will have to catch up on the reading.

We finished the book last night, and I fell asleep during the final two or so pages.  Despite bookending the read with me being asleep, it was a pretty engaging story, and we will be reading the sequel sometime soon.  There were some interesting takes on power, in particular.  The main character/narrator seems a bit full of himself given the number of fairly obvious reveals he does not catch onto very quickly.  Aside from some minor eye rolling here and there, we thought it was a fun and intriguing story.  Perhaps not the best to read right now given the recent government events, but we did not anticipate those specifics when we started.

Tonight we will being the second book in The Expanse series, Caliban's War (Corey).   It seems to have gotten good reviews, so we'll see where it takes things from Leviathan's Wake.