Book Lovers Club

I just finished The Girl who Played with Fire and am going to start The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest tonight.....I really like the main character.  I am a late starter on these since think most people read them a long time ago. 

I'm reading Rockefeller Suit too... love it! I like to think I'm too sharp to fall for an imposter such as Mr. "Rockefeller," but I was quite intrigued by a millionaire "spy" in my naive 20's who claimed, like Mr. R, that his parents were killed in a car crash and he inherited a fortune... hmm...      

Well I've read a few new ones in the past few weeks,  Two that I didn't care for Tinkers by Paul Harding and The Judges By Elie Wiesel.  Judges was ok, but it didn't keep me up nights.

I also read The Lake Shore Limited by Sue Miller and loved it.  I like her as an author and I think this might be my favorite of hers.  The story had a lot to do about obligations and expectations and relationships, ending them, complications.  I don't know how else to explain it without giving too much away.

I am hoping to head to the library today to find some new ones.

I read Blame and liked it, too.I have not read anything else by Michelle Huneven. Right now, I'm reading A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick and I'm not loving it. I'll stay with for a little longer.

Laurie, I just finished "While I Was Gone" by Sue Miller..interesting..

also a strong 9-11 thread through the book.

Thank you Konakat for giving us this place to talk about something we love.  Rest in peace.

A profoundly sad day for us all.

As if You Don't Have Enough to Read

By HUGO LINDGREN

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 





AP
Photo/Knopf/Brigitte LacombeJoan Didion, author of "The Year of Magical
Thinking" and "Slouching Towards Bethlehem," among other books.

Inspired
by The Guardian's recent list of the 100 greatest nonfiction
books, we here at the magazine decided to create our own list.
Dispensing with all pretense to rigor - it's a list, silly! - we simply asked
each member of the staff to pick their five favorites. The complete list is
after the jump. But here a few details:

First, the
best nonfiction book of all time, according to the staff of the New York Times
Magazine, is ...

A
tie! Between two books by Joan Didion - "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" and
"The Year of Magical Thinking" - and Michael Herr's "Dispatches" and "The
Emperor," by Ryszard Kapuscinski.

Of the 33
lists submitted, each of those books appeared three times. (Yes, I know that is
a completely unscientific basis for deeming them our picks as the best of all
time, but what did I say about rigor?)

Jon
Krakauer received four votes overall, but they were split among three books:
"Into the Wild" (two votes), "Into Thin Air" (one) and "Under the Banner of
Heaven" (one). Didion's "White Album" was also mentioned.

These
books received two votes:

"Moneyball,"
by Michael Lewis

"The
Forever War," by Dexter Filkins

"Out of
Sheer Rage," by Geoff Dyer

"On
Photography," by Susan Sontag

"A
Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again," by David Foster Wallace

"Random
Family," by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

"The Path
to Power," by Robert A. Caro

"The
Warmth of Other Suns," by Isabel Wilkerson

Two
members of the staff saw fit to pick six titles (they've been reprimanded), one
identified the author of "On Photography" as Susan Sarandon (she has been
ridiculed), and one expressed dislike of the term "nonfiction" (that poor soul
will be reading the Lives slush pile for a week).

The
nuttiest choice, which has surely never before appeared on any list like this,
not The Guardian's nor anyone else's, is: "Transit Maps of the World" by Mark
Ovenden and Mike Ashworth.

Can you
guess what department that person works in?

Oh, and
the Bible got one mention.

Please
share your thoughts in comments - your own picks, withering critiques of our
choices, doubts about whether Kapuscinski belongs in nonfiction, whatever you
like.

Here's the
unabridged list, in no particular order.

"The
Gathering Storm," by Winston Churchill

"The Dirt: Confessions of the
World's Most Notorious Rock Band," by Neil Strauss

"Friday
Night Lights," by Buzz Bissinger

"A Brief
History of Time," by Stephen Hawking

"Homage to Catalonia," by
George Orwell

"The
Author of Himself," by Marcel Reich-Ranicki

"On
Writing," by Stephen King

"Transit
Maps of the World," by Mark Ovenden and Mike Ashworth

"Ways of
Seeing," by John Berger

"Fermat's
Enigma," by Simon Singh

"Twelve
Who Ruled: The Year of Terror in the French Revolution," by R.R. Palmer

"Into Thin Air," by
Jon Krakauer

"Surely
You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" by Richard Feynman

"Slouching Towards Bethlehem," by
Joan Didion

"Random
Family," by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

"The Lost City of Z," by
David Grann

"The Year
of Magical Thinking," by Joan Didion

"Cleopatra:
A Life," by Stacy Schiff

"Surprised
by Sin," by Stanley Fish

"Dispatches," by
Michael Herr

"A Civil
Action," by Jonathan Harr

"Under the
Banner of Heaven," by Jon Krakauer

"Brilliant
Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football," by David Winner

"The
Silent Woman," by Janet Malcolm

"Maus," by Art
Spiegelman

"The White
Album," by Joan Didion

"A Season
on the Brink," by John Feinstein

"Deeper
Into Movies," by Pauline Kael

"The Diary
of Anne Frank," by Anne Frank

"All the
President's Men," by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein

"Personal
History," by Katharine Graham

"Out of
Sheer Rage," By Geoff Dyer

"Mayflower," by
Nathaniel Philbrick

"A Severe
Mercy," by Sheldon Vanauken

"Burning
the Days," by James Salter

"The Arcades Project," by
Walter Benjamin

"Twiggy
and Justin," by Thomas Whiteside

"Speak,
Memory," by Vladimir Nabokov

"On Being Ill,"
by Virginia Woolf

"The Arc
of Justice," by Kevin Boyle

"The Path
to Power," by Robert A. Caro

"The
Emperor," by Ryszard Kapuscinski

"The
Warmth of Other Suns," by Isabel Wilkerson

"A
Midwife's Tale," by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

"The
Elements of Typographic Style," by Robert Bringhurst

"Tibor
Kalman: Perverse Optimist," by Tibor Kalman

"Seabiscuit,"
by Laura Hillenbrand

"Into the
Wild," by Jon Krakauer

"The Substance of Style," by
Virginia Postrel

"Voices
From Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster," by Svetlana Alexievich

"The
Difficulty of Being," by Jean Cocteau

"The Human
Condition," by Hannah Arendt

"Maps of
the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer," by Peter Turchi

"Nature's
Metropolis," by William Cronon

"The Looming Tower," by
Lawrence Wright

"A Savage
War of Peace," by Alistair Horne

"Understanding
Comics," by Scott McCloud

"Moneyball,"
by Michael Lewis

"The
Emperor," by Ryszard Kapuscinski

"The Price
of the Ticket," by James Baldwin

"Between
the Woods and the Water," by Patrick Leigh Fermor

"Confucian China and Its Modern
Fate," by Joseph R. Levenson

"Basel in
the Age of Burckhardt," by Lionel Gossman

"The Heart That Bleeds," by
Alma Guillermoprieto

"In
Patagonia," by Bruce Chatwin (arguably this is not nonfiction)

"The
Forever War," by Dexter Filkins

"The Loss
of El Dorado," by V.S. Naipaul

"Is There
No Place on Earth for Me?" by Susan Sheehan

"The
Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer," by Siddhartha Mukherjee

"Zeitoun,"
by Dave Eggers

"Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey
Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America," by Paul Tough

"Beautiful
Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction," by David Sheff

"Boswell's
London Journal, 1762-3," edited by Frederick A. Pottle

"Role
Models," by John Waters

"Popism:
The Warhol Sixties," by Andy Warhol

"I'm With
the Band: Confessions of a Groupie," by Pamela Des Barres

"Please
Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk," Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain

"On
Writing," by Stephen King

"Conditions
of Liberty," by Ernest Gellner

"The
Invisible Woman: the Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens," by Claire
Tomalin

"I Will Bear Witness," by
Victor Klemperer

"What It
Takes," by Richard Ben Cramer

"Tears in
the Darkness," by Michael Norman and Elizabeth M. Norman

"Great
Plains," by Ian Frazier

"The
Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800," by Lawrence Stone

"Parallel Lives: Five Victorian
Marriages," by Phyllis Rose

"The
Politics of American English, 1776-1950," by David Simpson

"Women's
Diaries of the Westward Journey," by Lillian Schiessel

"The
Warrior's Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience," by Michael Ignatieff

"Boys on
the Bus," by Timothy Crouse

"Politics," by
Hendrik Hertzberg

"Arc of
Justice," by Kevin Boyle

"The Devil
in the White City," by Erik Larson

"Marie
Antoinette," by Antonia Fraser

"In Cold
Blood," by Truman Capote

"Into the
Wild," by Jon Krakauer

"Infidel,"
by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

"Camera
Lucida," by Roland Barthes

"Mythologies,"
by Roland Barthes

"Regarding
the Pain of Others," by Susan Sontag

"The Year
of Magical Thinking," by Joan Didion

"The
Elements of Style," William Strunk Jr. & E.B. White

"The
Devil's Teeth," by Susan Casey

"The
Autobiography of Malcolm X," by Malcolm X

"Shadow
Divers," by Robert Kurson

"Silent Spring," by
Rachel Carson

"What Is
the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng," by Dave Eggers

"The
Gnostic Gospels," by Elaine Pagels

"Understanding
Media," by Marshall McLuhan

"Extra
Lives," by Tom Bissell

"Lenin's
Tomb," by David Remnick

"On
Photography," by Susan Sontag

"The
Americans," by Robert Frank

"Dear
Theo: The Autobiography of Vincent Van Gogh," by Irving Stone and Jean Stone

"Life
Adjustment Center," by Ryan McGinley

"A Pattern
Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction," by Christopher Alexander

"Safe
Area: Gorazde," by Joe Sacco

"Revolution
in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties," by Ian MacDonald

"A Year
(With Swollen Appendices)," by Brian Eno

"Fast Food Nation," by
Eric Schlosser

"The
Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America," by
Nicholas Lemann

"Genie: A
Scientific Tragedy," by Russ Rymer

"The Last
Shot," by Darcy Frey

"The
Journalist and the Murderer," by Janet Malcolm

"A
Commotion in the Blood," by Stephen S. Hall

"Always
Magic in the Air," by Ken Emerson

"The
Bible," by Various

"Lush Life," by
David Hajdu

"Outliers,"
by Malcolm Gladwell

"About a
Mountain," by John D'Agata

"We Wish
To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families," by Philip
Gourevitch

"The
Perfect Storm," by Sebastian Junger

"The Great
War and Modern Memory," by Paul Fussell

"Essays,"
by Michel de Montaigne

"Hiroshima,"
by John Hersey

"U and I,"
by Nicholson Baker

"A History
of Western Philosophy," by Bertrand Russell

"A
Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again," by David Foster Wallace

"Conversations
With Igor Stravinsky," by Robert Craft

"Discipline
and Punish," by Michael Foucault

"A Life of
Picasso," by John Richardson

"The
Prince," by Niccolo Machiavelli

"Mexico:
Biography of Power," by Enrique Krauze

"The
Mysterious William Shakespeare: The Myth and the Reality," by Charlton Ogburn

"A Giacometti Portrait," by
James Lord

"The Long
Way," by Bernard Moitessier

"Fear and
Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72," by Hunter S. Thompson

"The
Poverty of Power," by Barry Commoner

An earlier version of this posting
misidentified a Michel Foucault book, "Discipline and Punish," as "Discipline
and Punishment."

• 
  

Top of Form

bump for Jo

Thanks badger. Added to my favorites.  As I mentioned, I'm currently reading Ken Folletts latest Fall of Giants. So happy it is the first of 3, wonder how long it will take for the next one to come out.

So, I went to the opposite end of the spectrum today.  After finishing the thick Follett picked up the last Spenser book that Robert Parker wrote.  His books definitely had less writing and more white as  time went on.  So, change of pace.  Like them though, you know what you're getting and I enjoy them.  Very sad that this was the last book he wrote

marybe- I guess I was the only one who didn't care for that series, the first book was ok, second I thought was awful, third I just wanted to get through.  I felt I was reading through so much boredom to get to the good parts, but stuck it through.

Am I alone on this? 

The woman who lent me the last two, did not like them at all so you are not alone, Laurie, but I liked them.  I think someone on here pointed out earlier you take a risk when recommending a book since everyone has different tastes.  I love Cutting for Stone and a friend of mine did not like it at all, whereas another really did.  Right now I am supposed to be reading Twilight which one of the office girls brought in for me since she knows I love to read and I just cannot bring myself to read it....already have made up my mind that I won't like it

Marybe- I felt the same way about the Twilight series.  I joined a book club for a little while and they decided to read the series.  I was so annoyed at their choice and got the first book- aughhhh.....OMG I loved it, lol!  I read them all and enjoyed everyone of them.  They are a bit predictable and a little  "young" but you read through them in a couple of days and somehow I got sucked into them.  It is funny how tastes vary so much.  Alpal you are right about the risk when recommending a book.