August 2006 Weddings
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Need reading recommendations.
Any good books that you would like to recommend to me? I have "under the banner of heavan" on my list, but I was hoping y'all could give me some suggestions. Thank you. 
Re: Need reading recommendations.
my read shelf:
Water for Elephants.
My Sisters Keeper
The Time Travelors Wife
For chick lit: Something borrowed/Something blue series.
Good nonfiction I've read recently: Ghost Wars (Steve Coll) and Generation Kill (Evan Wright). I have The Bin Ladens (Steve Coll) checked out from the library, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. If polygamy is a topic of interest to you, I also recently read Shattered Dreams (Irene Spencer). It's weird but good.
Fiction: American Wife (Curtis Sittenfeld) is the book that is the fictionalized story of a first lady modeled after Laura Bush. It's really, really good. In fact, Curtis Sittenfeld's other two books, Prep and The Man of My Dreams, are also really good. Prep is a masterpiece. Pretty much anything by Jennifer Weiner is a good read. The Brooklyn Follies (Paul Auster) is really good. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant) is a fictional account of the life of the Biblical character Dinah. Up soon, I plan to read A Confederacy of Dunces (John Kennedy O'Toole) because a friend of mine swears by it. I also like pretty much anything by Larry Brown (gritty, southern writer) or Anne Tyler (contemplative Baltimore writer).
Humor: I just read Are You There Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea (Chelsea Handler), and it was hilarious! I can't wait until My Horizontal Life (Handler) arrives at the library. Lewis Black's Nothing Sacred is really good, but it's better as an audio book because he reads it.
these are all good - I highly recommend
my read shelf:
Prep I wasn't a big fan of. I just didn't get it when I read it for my book club.
I agree, Red Tent is on of my favs. Also might try The Tender Bar bu JR Moehringer. It was my first memoir and I ate it up:
"Long before it legally served me, the bar saved me," asserts J.R. Moehringer, and his compelling memoir The Tender Bar is the story of how and why. A Pulitzer-Prize winning writer for the Los Angeles Times, Moehringer grew up fatherless in pub-heavy Manhasset, New York, in a ramshackle house crammed with cousins and ruled by an eccentric, unkind grandfather. Desperate for a paternal figure, he turns first to his father, a DJ whom he can only access via the radio (Moehringer calls him The Voice and pictures him as "talking smoke"). When The Voice suddenly disappears from the airwaves, Moehringer turns to his hairless Uncle Charlie, and subsequently, Uncle Charlie's place of employment--a bar called Dickens that soon takes center stage. While Moehringer may occasionally resort to an overwrought metaphor (the footsteps of his family sound like "storm troopers on stilts"), his writing moves at a quick clip and his tale of a dysfunctional but tightly knit community is warmly told. "While I fear that we're drawn to what abandons us, and to what seems most likely to abandon us, in the end I believe we're defined by what embraces us," Moehringer says, and his story makes us believe it.
my read shelf:
have you read Thousand Splendid Suns or Kite Runner yet? If not, highly recc.
Also Glass Castle is a great memoir.
not sure what you're into, but here are some goodies i'm reading or have read lately:
nonfiction:
The Political Brain by Drew Weston. a psychologist explains how voters ignore facts and act on emotions. fascinating.
and, In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan, the Omnivore's Dilemma author who urges us to eat food. not a lot. mostly plants.
fiction: Drown by Junot Diaz, collection of hilarious short stories by the same author who wrote the pulitzer-prize winning novel The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao, which i adored.
i just started this because i desperately needed a laugh after reading Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt for the first time. i love me some McCort, but boy is his memoir depressing. still, it's a moving story and beautifully written.
I haven't read Kite Runner, but I will second the recommendation of Thousand Splendid Suns. Don't read the ending in public, though. I finished that book when I was down in my judge's chambers waiting on a jury to finish, and I was crying like a baby. Ridiculous.
Have you watched the HBO series True Blood? It's based on a very entertaining series by Charlaine Harris, which I totally recommed. If you read King and Koontz, you might enjoy those. I'd also recommend anything by Neil Gaiman.
The only nonfiction I've read lately that wasn't about knitting, is From Baghdad with Love and Sex, Love and Cocoa Puffs, both of which were pretty good.
I thought the Kite Runner seemed... forced. I'm not sure if that's the right word, but I thought it was just alright. It had a lot of potential it didn't meet.
That said, I LOVED A Thousand Splendid Suns.
Ooooh, you'll love Under the Banner of Heaven! So good!
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and the Omnivore's Dilemma are my top two recommended books these days. So good.
I love Jodi Picoult for fiction.?
Nonfiction:
The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How it Has Undermined All Women.
Fabulous book.
agree - read KR first (partly bc it IS a good read but TSS is better IMO... I read TSS first and was disappointed by KR. I think if I read in the opposite order I would have enjoyed KR more)
I am reading The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath - a classic I had never gotten around to and it is great!
I also recommend Erica Jong's Isadora Wing series. I just got done reading them and they are amazing. The 1st book in the series is Fear of Flying which is always one the top 100 book lists. My fav is the 2nd How to Save your own Life. The books are fiction but based on the author's own life. She has some hard core sex and cussing in there but she is amazing!!!!