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.
NER: What should I read next?
After last week's thread about books, I have decided that I need to read more (plus I'm not sure I will ever have this much free time again, so I might as well be mentally productive).
This weekend I finished Time Traveler's Wife (hated) and The Other Boelyn Girl (loved) and I am almost done with Bel Canto (enjoying).
I have a bunch of books to choose from to read next. Out of the following list, which do you suggest that I read?
- The Memory Keeper's Daughter.
- Water for Elephants
- Middlesex
- No Ordinary Time (about the homefront during WWII)
Or
- The Sun Also Rises or The Garden of Eden.
Any thoughts? Or do you have a different suggestion entirely?
Re: NER: What should I read next?
Other choices I have laying around:
- She's Come Undone
- Bonfire of the Vanities
I've read the first three and Middlesex was my favorite of the three. I liked the other two, as well though.
I also highly recommend Sex Wars by Marge Piercy. I think you would love it.
One of my all time favorites. It is so good.
The other one was a little too Oprah-ish for my taste.
I thought that Middlesex was pretty darn good and worth a read.
If you liked The Other Boleyn Girl, I highly recommed any of Philippa Gregory's other books. I have read them all and loved it.
Oh how I hated Brave New World. But 1984 is definitely on my "read before I die" list.
Thanks for the suggestions everyone.
I am reading a book about Katrina that my PSS Meganne gave me, and I really like it so far. It's called 1 Dead in Attic. It's very sad, but really good.
Ditto jlaj on Philippa Gregory. The Queen's Fool is amazing!
I've only read Memory and Water out of the list. I recommend Water for Elephants over Memory Keeper's Daughter. Also, look into Mary (Mrs. A. Lincoln) by Janis Cooke Newman. It was really good!
Here's the amazon.com review:
Mary is a novel written in the first person, comprised of notes composed by Mary Todd Lincoln when she was an inmate of a lunatic asylum. She takes up her pen to block out the screams and moans of the other inmates and to save her own sanity. According to these notes, although she held s?ances in the White House and drove her family deeply into debt because of compulsive shopping, she was perfectly sane. She makes a good case for herself, despite occasional manic behavior and often uncontrollable grief.
Mary was born to southern slaveholders in Kentucky, moved to Illinois when she was 20 to live with her sister and met Abe at a cotillion. His opening line was "Miss Todd, I want to dance with you the worst way." Their relationship was odd, to say the least. Lincoln, as portrayed by Janis Cooke Newman, was sexually repressed and feared Mary's passion. She was in an almost constant state of trying to seduce him, usually without success. Despite his gawky, angular, unlovely looks, she adored him--even when she had an affair with another to defuse some of her heat. How much of the bedroom scene is fact and how much fancy must be left to the reader to decide, but it does give credence to Mary's very forward manner and her later "passionate" approach to shopping.
She used her shopping expeditions to accumulate things that would "protect" her family--and finally herself, when she felt her son Robert's growing disapproval of her. In his statement to the "insanity" lawyer, Robert said, "I have no doubt my mother is insane. She has long been a source of great anxiety to me. She has no home and no reason to make these purchases." Mary saw them as talismans against disaster, and she certainly had suffered disasters in abundance. She buried three sons and was holding her husband's hand when he was assassinated by a bullet to the head. Her eldest son, Robert, was a cold, unfeeling, haughty shell of a man to whom Mary did not speak after she was released from the asylum to her sister's care. She spent four years in Europe and, when her health failed, returned to her sister's house, where she received her son once before she died.
"First Lady" is a term that was coined to describe Mary Todd Lincoln, while she was the President's wife. It was meant as a backhanded compliment, because she was front and center during much of Lincoln's term. Presidential wives usually stuck to their knitting, but not Mary. Her unconventional ways did her husband a great deal of good; indeed, it was her ambition for him that finally ignited his own ambition. She also helped him to become a great orator. Ultimately, her "unsexed" manner contributed to her being judged insane in 1865 and committed to Bellevue Place, an asylum in Batavia, Illinois, outside Chicago. No President has been more praised nor any first lady more vilified than Abraham and Mary Lincoln. Janis Cooke Newman brings a time, a place and a person to life in a wholly believable and compelling manner.
my read shelf:
my read shelf:
I thought that the Memory Keeper's Daughter was a terrible book. ?Just treacly and inane.
Water for Elephants was great, although I read it on the plane ride to Japan, in one sitting followed by jetlag haze, so I don't really remember it much. ?I just remember really enjoying myself.
Middlesex was also a good book.
I enjoyed Brave New World much more than 1984, but I also read them over 10 years ago. ?I may appreciate 1984 much more today than I did back then.
Have you read anything by Michael Chabon? ?His books are great reads. ?Pick up The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay if you get a chance.?
Deductive reasoning isn't a conservative or liberal attribute. ~epphd
I loved Middlesex. ?Water for Elephants was okay...I didn't love it as much as other people seem to.
A few other fiction suggestions:
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
Little Children by Tom Perrotta?
Case Histories by Kate Atkinson?
The Memory Keepers Daughter was awful to me. I really loved Water for Elephants, but then again, I loved TTW too!
Have you read My Sisters Keeper by Jodi Picolt, that is so good to me.
And I loved TOBG too, and I really enjoyed the The Boleyn Inheritance.
Another favorite of me is the Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfeld.
Of the books on your list, I read and enjoyed Water for Elephants and Middlesex. Of those two, I'd give the edge to Middlesex, but I thought both were really good. You should read both!
I also recently read 1984, so if that's on your list, I highly recommend it!
Other recs:
The Abstinence Teacher (fiction - it's about a liberal sex education teacher who battles it out with the religious right)
A Year of Living Biblically (non-fiction - one man's attempt to take the Bible literally for one year. It's hilarious and thought-provoking.)
Middlesex and Bonfire are great books! She's Come Undone is one of my all time favorite reads.
I also suggest Life Of Pi by Yann Martel. I loved it and gave it to my DH to read who also loved it! It's a very different and interesting book.
I also suggest anything by Margaret Atwood or Erica Jong.
An FYI on Phillipa Gregory. I'm in the middle of Wideacre and it's easily one of the worst books I've ever read. It was selected by a Gregory fan in our book club and even she agreed that it just wasn't good. The writing is straight out of a soap opera (the first one hundred pages involve bisexuality, masochism, patricide, and incest, the latter two committed by a 15-year-old) and the lead character is completely unlikeable.
With that said, I've heard that her other books are good.
ETA: to clarify, the only reason bisexuality is "controversial" is because the novel is historical fiction. The bisexuality is thrown in for the shock value given the time period, rather than to advance the story.