quote:

Originally posted by BeeLady:
My Mom is feeling well enough to start reading again..I wheeled her to her community library and this book was on the shelf...Too much for her but I took note, now I have a rec! I LOVED "Overstory" BTW...

quote:

Originally posted by AdagioM:
I just finished Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr. Loved it.

There’s a climate change theme here, too. I loved the Overstory by Richard Powers. Climate change is big in fiction now?

BTW Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See is one of my favorite books, ever.

Yay! I’d love to know what you think of it, when you’re done.

Currently cruising through C.J. Sansom’s Matthew Shardlake Tudor Mysteries. A nice diversion.

Broken News - Why the Media Rage Machine Divides America & How to Fight Back by Chris Stirewalt.

I'm reading Kingsolver's latest, "Demon Copperhead." So far it hasn't reached out and grabbed me by the throat like many of her previous ones have, but also the political screeds haven't appeared, which is good.

It is weird for me because her protagonist is male. Maybe because I know her in a six degrees of separation sort of way, I have to keep reminding myself of that. I think this is her first novel with a male protagonist?

So far (and I'm very early into it) there's enough to keep me going.

Has anyone read "Horse"? It's next on my list. I grabbed it on impulse.

I liked Kingsolver’s early work. The Poisonwood Bible was a particular favourite of mine. The last one I read was Prodigal Summer. I’m not sure why I haven’t read anything of hers since.

What I’ve learned about myself over the past year is that how much I read is directly linked to my mental health, and my mental health is directly linked to work. I love my current school and grade level and so I’ve read 65 books so far this year.

Recently I loved Goldilocks by Laura Lam. A team of women is trying to save the world (which is in environmental collapse) by stealing a spaceship and flying to another planet.

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green was a lot of fun - I have the sequel on my nightstand. The main character stumbles across a giant sculpture that has just popped up in New York and uploads a video about it to YouTube. The video goes viral and the story tells what happens next. It’s kind of sci-fi, but funny and light and really enjoyable.

The Break and The Strangers are two books by Katherena Vermette that I finished recently and LOVED. Very heavy fictional story of an Indigenous family in Canada. Both are incredibly well written intergenerational family sagas. Generational trauma is a focus, so they aren’t fun reads but compelling and beautiful.

Last one… I finished it at the end of August but it was so excellent I’ll share. Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don’t Rhyme and Other Oddities of the English Language. Both enlightening and fun. I listened to it on audio and it was excellent.

My favorite Kingsolvers are her super early ones - Bean Trees and Animal Dreams. I just loved the vibe and voice of those two books--and I don't feel like she's really captured that again, which is not to say I didn't like her others.

Highly Irregular.... sounds fascinating. I'm reminded me of something we stumbled upon with basic cable in Canada--it was a show with a guy who was dissecting accents used by actors, and explaining why this particular accent used by (fill in the blank) was so great, in very specific phonetic detail. I was totally intrigued. I do recall that the USA American accents done by Daniel Day Lewis and Kate Winslet were deemed as "perfection."

Just finished this from a local author. She is an EL History teacher at our city HS.

We hosted a book launch for her at our local indie bookstore as part of our year of events series. It was wonderful and 3 of her students featured in the book attended. They are all wonderful young people and all are currently in college.

The sections on the historical episodes in American education were a revelation. Lots of the old anti immigrant sentiment of old is word for word what we hear now.

That looks interesting, BL! I'll see if I can find it out here on the opposite coast.

quote:

Originally posted by AdagioM:
I loved the Overstory by Richard Powers.

Yes! And I loved his “The Time of our Singing” even more.

Jf