Book Lovers Club

Oy.... I was 5 pages into Alice Hoffman's The Museum of Extraordinary Things, but, Walter Kirn's Blood Will Out, won out!  Having previously read The Man in the Rockefeller Suit and couldn't BELIEVE THAT STORY, I just had to read Kirn's account of his relationship with "Clark Rockefeller. " Opened the book yesterday and just could not put it down. Tore through it!  This story has octapus legs, I tell you!  I can't read enough about this character and the people in his orbit...

And Elizabeth?  What a wonderful legacy she's left us...

reading The Timekeeper by Mitch Albom..amazing book!

I believe it, as it seemed like it took me 10 years to read it!!!

Love it Sandra

Thanks for the comments on The Goldfinch.  Makes me feel better about taking my name off the reserve list last week.  I requested it way back in January and was fifth on the list but it was taking for freaking ever, way longer than usual.  Now I know why.  Instead of reading right through it, as one would do with a really good book, people put it aside so the copies didn't circulate very fast.

Reading Michael Gross's, House of Outrageous Fortune.  Although it is billed as the back story about Manhattan's most expensive building, it's about that and so much more. I've read all of his books, and just like Erik Larson, boy oh boy, can he weave a story!  I've written to him on a few occasions,and just like Larson, he is more than happy to hear from fans.  I regularly refer to his book about The Metropolitan Museum of Art.  I'm surprised they even let him in the building.  And for Jackie Kennedy buffs, her grandfather was responsible for building 740 Park Ave...the now SECOND most important residence in Manhattan.  Gross wrote a bang up job about that building too...where Jackie spent her childhood.

reading ' the emperor of maladies'. Very informative and interesting.

I loved The Emperor of Maladies. Sandra, I couldn't have said it any better.

Goldfinch just won Pulitzer Prize....

Seriously? Well, that shows what kind of taste I have in books......which is either not a compliment to me or else not to the Pulitzer Prize pickers!

reporting in after reading Geoff Dyer's Out of Sheer Rage - Wrestling with D.H. Lawrence  for a book about procrastinating instead of writing a book about Lawrence, I feel I learned a lot about Lawrence and Dyer, the crafts of literary criticism and biography and extended travel.  Thank YOU VR!!!!

Jelson....So happy to hear that you enjoyed Dyer's book!  Now you probably understand why my family and I adore him!   If you have the time to watch some youtube posted lectures of his, you will see how extraordinary his perceptions are.  My favorite lecture of his is his discussion of war books.  He believes most war books, once read are anti-war books.  No matter how pro war they might be, once you finish reading them, one comes away with the feeling    against war.  His thoughts, IMHO are mind bending and captivating and make me think really, really hard.  And when he talks about his perceptions of himself, as VR's mother would say, "If he is on drugs, he needs to come off them... And... If isn't on drugs, he most definitely and desperately needs them!"

Yes, Jelson.  Dyer has the uncanny ability to articulate his feelings in minutiae detail...and yet, after reading his words, one realizes there is a grander meaning to the details....This scale is appreciated in everything that he writes about.  Whether he is talking about his feelings, a photograph, a person or even a culture or cemetery, somehow, after you finish reading or listening to his descriptions, you can never look at something, that you thought was so familiar, whether it was your feelings about something or someone else in the same way again.  I can safely say that he warps my mind...in a good way! His words DO resonate! We should all be so blessed to be such wordsmiths!