Finished "Orange Is The New Black" couple of weekends ago and have been reading "Dead Until Dark" by Charlaine Harris

James McBride's latest novel: The Good Lord Bird (Aug. 2013).



I was a friend's house recently and saw McBrides' book laying on the coffee table and picked it up, browsing the introductory pages and asked if I could borrow it to read. I don't ordinarily read novels but was his first book (The Color of Water) impressed me deeply, so I wanted to explore his latest book. I'm reading it slowly... not just turning page after page, but more along the lines of filtering the story from my own life's narrative, which is not without bias, but I'm attempting to read it from the authors' perspective, with the idea possibly centering around unspoken, least heard perspective, historical narratives that often are not talked about.

Like in the book Unholy Night (Seth Grahame-Smith, 2012): Another book, novel, a re-telling of an iconic historical event, via a creative intrepretative approach. Which was a very good book.

I'm reading both books (actually).

More Good Lesfic to Add to Your Reading List
 

I posted before that I've been reading a lot of lesbian fiction and wanted to add some titles I'm not sure I listed before:

Letters Never Sent by Sandra Moran
Survived by Her Longtime Companion by Chris Paynter
Miles to Go and Scapegoat, both by Amy Dawson Robertson

BBinNYC

I just finished The Enchanted World... The Book of Christmas. This book seems to cover about every angle of the history behind this holiday. It is amazing how much as sprouted out of that wintry gloom of Scandinavia. I learned that the most common gift in the old days were candles.

Almost done with Chamber of Secrets. Going to move onto The Prizoner of Azkaban soonish.

I just read Neil Gaiman's 'The Ocean at the End of the World' - it was great, very compelling, a modern day fairytale... of sorts, in that Gaiman dark and twisty kind of way. I read it in a few hours.

I'm still thinking about Donna Tartt's 'The Goldfinch' which was AMAZING!!!

And now I'm not sure what I'll read next...maybe Donna Tartt's 'Secret History' I haven't read it since I was 23.

Woo just started Prisoner of Azkaban.

I am finally at the end of "I Know This Much is True" by Wally Lamb! I have attempted to read this 3 times and always give up about 4 chapters in. I have about 40 pages left.
It was worth it!

I am also reading "The Great Path of Awakening: The Classic Guide to Lojong, a Tibetan Buddhist Practice for Cultivating the Heart of Compassion".
It's really wonderful and so very calming.

My "bathroom book" is "Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune" by Bill Dedman.
Fascinating so far!!

Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident
by Donnie Eichar

In February 1959, a group of nine experienced hikers in the Russian Ural Mountains died mysteriously on an elevation known as Dead Mountain. Eerie aspects of the incident—unexplained violent injuries, signs that they cut open and fled the tent without proper clothing or shoes, a strange final photograph taken by one of the hikers, and elevated levels of radiation found on some of their clothes—have led to decades of speculation over what really happened.


i'm about 2/3 through so i can't give an opinion on the authors final explanation of the incident
but i have found the book to be quite enthralling

Let us know what you think at the end. Sounds fascinating!

I'm finally back from my day, gazelling about the universe, and stopped by my favorite library to check out and bring home a few books, to read during the holidays. I found two at the library and one is on the way: I had to order it on an inter-library loan because not many people ordinarily want to read it, but I do.

Czeslaw Milosz: Legends of Modernity (1996; trans. in 2005), A Treatise On Poetry (begun in the winter of 1955, finished by spring of 1956; published and trans., in 2001), and The Captive Mind (1953; trans: Vintage International; NY, NY: 1990).


Here's an interesting article (LINK), authored by Tony Judt, concerning Milosz' book, The Captive Mind, which appeared in The New York Review of Books (September 30th, 2010 issue).

The golden notebook / Doris Lessing

I don't ever remember reading this classic.

The Golden Notebook is the story of writer Anna Wulf, the four notebooks in which she records her life, and her attempt to tie them together in a fifth, gold-coloured, notebook. The book intersperses segments of an ostensibly realistic narrative of the lives of Molly and Anna, and their children, ex-husbands and lovers—entitled Free Women—with excerpts from Anna's four notebooks, coloured black (of Anna's experience in Southern Rhodesia, before and during WWII, which inspired her own best-selling novel), red (of her experience as a member of the Communist Party), yellow (an ongoing novel that is being written based on the painful ending of Anna's own love affair), and blue (Anna's personal journal where she records her memories, dreams, and emotional life). Each notebook is returned to four times, interspersed with episodes from Free Women, creating non-chronological, overlapping sections that interact with one another. This post-modern styling, with its space for "play" engaging the characters and readers, is among the most famous features of the book, although Lessing insisted that readers and reviewers pay attention to the serious themes in the novel.

The Book Thief
 

http://fullcirclebooks.com/wp-conten...ook-thief.jpeg
Trying to get this done before I see the movie but my reading time is limited. Maybe the movie will stay in the theaters until I am done or Christmas can wait so I can finish. :)

Wally Lamb is my all time favorite author! :) I just received his latest book We Are Water for my bday. I can't wait to have a free second to sit down and read. I'm craving one of those weekends where you can not look at the clock at all and get totally immersed into a book.

I am reading this fasinating article about phantom sensations in people who are transsexual

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/p...-gender-brain/

Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened by Allie Brosh

It's finally out: my favorite blog is now a book! If you're already a fan of the blog Hyperbole and a Half, you'll no doubt recognize most of the content of this book, but will love it all the more. There were a few chapters/posts that I didn't recognize, but I'm not sure if I missed it in the blog or if it's actual new content created just for the book. Either way, it was an unexpected bonus.

Each chapter/post is on different colored pages, which is good when skipping around: it would be hard to distinguish one story from another, just based on the artwork, which looks like a 5 year drew it (which is, of course, part of the blog's brilliance)… so the color-coded chapters are really handy. The placement of art on the page is nice too.

Allie Brosh has launched dozens of hilarious (to me) catch phrases that cause mostly blank looks in those around me when I say them…which is often ("I made food! I'm magical!" "Cake is the only thing that matters." "Can't anyone see how dead these are?" "Clean ALL the things!") Now maybe the rest of the world will catch up and recognize the manic brilliance they've been missing.

http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs71/f/20...nd-d4h3v8w.png

All about love : new visions / Bell Hooks.

Everyone who has witnessed the growth process of a newborn child from the moment of birth on sees clearly that before language is known, before the identity of caretakers is recognized, babies respond to affectionate care. Usually they respond with sounds or looks of pleasure. As they grow older they respond to affectionate care by giving affection, cooing at the sight of a welcomed caretaker. Affection is only one ingredient of love. To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients-care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication. Learning faulty definitions of love when we are quite young makes it difficult to be loving as we grow older. We start out committed to the right path but go in the wrong direction. Most of us learn early on to think of love as a feeling. When we feel deeply drawn to someone, we cathect with them, that is, we invest feelings or emotion in them. That process of investment wherein a loved one becomes important to us is called "cathexis." In his book Peck rightly emphasizes that most of us "confuse cathecting with loving." We all know how often individuals feeling connected to someone through the process of cathecting insist that they love the other person even if they are hurting or neglecting them. Since their feeling is that of cathexis, they insist that what they feel is love.

--------
All About Love offers radical new ways to think about love by showing its interconnectedness in our private and public lives. In eleven concise chapters, hooks explains how our everyday notions of what it means to give and receive love often fail us, and how these ideals are established in early childhood. She offers a rethinking of self-love (without narcissism) that will bring peace and compassion to our personal and professional lives, and asserts the place of love to end struggles between individuals, in communities, and among societies. Moving from the cultural to the intimate, hooks notes the ties between love and loss and challenges the prevailing notion that romantic love is the most important love of all.

Visionary and original, hooks shows how love heals the wounds we bear as individuals and as a nation, for it is the cornerstone of compassion and forgiveness and holds the power to overcome shame.

-----------------

Fascinating reading for a snowy day.

I'm making my way through James Patterson's Alex Cross series... crime thrillers and some ugly stuff going on so I may have to take a break soon for a good Tilly Bagshawe bonkbuster or some chicklit! I recently downloaded over 1000 books with lesbian themes to my kindle so I guess I should tackle those one of these days XD I saw others mention the Sookie Stackhouse books... I read all 13 of them this year - so much fun!!!

In real book form Mo Stars Complete Dark by Stephen King

In Kindle form starting the Deviations Series

Finished only 3 books in December but they were really good. And because of this thread, I am now reading the following:


Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident
by Donnie Eichar

and

James McBride's latest novel: The Good Lord Bird (Aug. 2013)


and my current "fluff" (not necessarily a silly book but something I read on and off in sections) is a vintage Thanatochemistry/Embalming manual. It's a tome at over 500 pages and I skip the mathematical equations for fluid levels but the explanations of restorative art are fascinating.

I too am reading, The Good Lord Bird
(I borrowed it from a friend, recently).


After spending my day out and about, I picked up several books to stash away for reading late at night:

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: The Annotated Frankenstein (2012).
-- Edited by, Susan J. Wolfson and Ronald L. Levao

Written On The Sky: Poems from the Japanese (2009 edition).
--Translated by, Kenneth Rexroth

Dancing Embers (Twisted Spoon Press, Prague: 2002).
-- Poetry and Prose by an ethnic Hungarian poet who resides in Transylvannia, Romania: Sándor Kányádi.

The Poems of Li Ho: 791-817 (Oxford University Press, 1970).
--Chinese poetry by Li Ho translated by, J. D. Frodsham.

What I'm reading
 

House Girl by Tara Conklin~~

Just finished reading
 

Joyland by Stephen King & One Degree of Separation by Karin Kallmarker

Gone by Jonathan Kellerman ... it is one in his Alex Delaware (AD) series. I love the characters, they are all familiar to me since I've read so many of the AD ones. I have had it awhile now. In real life, Jonathan Kellerman is a child psychologist.

I am a very active person and lately it has been difficult to be still and read - would rather be outside tooling around (woodworking) or indoors assembling a gadgie. My current on going indoor project is making a lamp for the fun of it. I am sure I will give it to someone, don't know who yet, when completed. I think I am finished with it and then get another idea to do something more to it. About a week ago, I found the neatest switch (very unusual looking) on a sale table at Home Depot. It works great and is so cool. I like using my hands to create things.

Common Murder: A Lindsay Gordon Mystery by Val McDermid

A series about a journalist who turns detective on occasion. This is book two in the series. A good read set in Scotland and England.

I discovered the Ender series and loved the writing style. I had grand plans to read the whole thing and I was SO excited to have found a new series. Then Orson Scott Card turned out to be a giant homophobic, racist weirdo. I feel dirty that I gave him money for this books with the way he spews vitriol.

Thank goodness I just got "The Wolves of Midwinter" by my dear Anne Rice, it
seems a perfect antidote for that hateful Card. Anne Rice publicly denounced the Catholic church for their antigay foolishness. My kinda girl.

Yes OSC is terrible person!!

I just downloaded a whole bunch of books about Marilyn Monroe to my Kindle so I am super pleased about that! Will take a break from Alex Cross soon to give them a read!

3 different romance series... at once... teen romance at that... I'm sad...

Think I am in love with this woman's mind
 

Communion : the female search for love / Bell Hooks

Beginning with All about Love (2000), hooks, a courageous, incisive writer whose compassion is backed by vigorous intellectualism, embarked on a provocative, invaluable dissection of the myriad obstacles to love in a society shackled by racism, the subject of Salvation: Black People and Love [BKL F 15 01], and patriarchal assumptions, the focus of this blazing inquiry.

Working from the premise that women of all backgrounds are still made to feel that their worth, or lovableness, is gauged not by inner qualities but by their appearance and how they serve others, especially men, hooks traces the dire effects of society's ongoing devaluation of women as she parses the dynamics of marriage, contrasts the experiences of different generations of women, analyzes women's collusion with patriarchal culture, and assesses feminism's achievements and failures.

Digging deeply into the snarl of sexist habits of thought and being, hooks concludes that women can have true love and autonomy in their lives only if, starting with mothers and daughters, they genuinely support each other in confronting misogyny in all its insidious forms.

"The Seven Story Mountain" by Thomas Merton.

"Contemplative Prayer" by Thomas Merton

and......

"Pinewood Derby Speed Secrets; Design and Build the Ultimate Car" by David Meade


Katniss~~(Competition and Contemplative topics....it's all about balance!)

finally finished
Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident
by Donnie Eichar

overall a pretty good easy read and i was all in all the way through

the author's theory of the hikers last night - chilling

mystery solved to my satisfaction

Queering Marriage: Challenging Family Formation in the United States (Families in Focus) by: Katrina Kimport

This is a fascinating book on how same sex marriage impacts heterosexual privilege. In certain ways it supports the family values of the past, while building new bridges into a new worldwide cultural expansion. It illustrates how we as gay people have altered the thinking of millions of heterosexual couples. They have understood marriage is more than just a fact of life which is natural and taken for granted. It is to be cherished because we have been fighting for the ability to love and share in marriage. Must read.

Almost finished with..
 

Pecan Man by Cassie Dandridge Selleck

It was described in a blurb I read as the Help meets To Kill a Mockingbird

I'm reading 'Envy and Gratitude', a collection of papers by Melanie Klein.

The woman is awesome if not a little bit scary.

Feminist nostalgia continues.....
 

Feminist theory from margin to center / Bell Hooks.

Black women: shaping feminist theory -- Feminism: a movement to end sexist oppression -- Significance of feminist movement -- Sisterhood: political solidarity between women -- Men: comrades in struggle -- Changing perspectives on power -- Rethinking the nature of work -- Educating women: a feminist agenda -- Feminist movement to end violence -- Revolutionary parenting -- Ending female sexual oppression -- Revolution: development through struggle.

Just finished "MockingJay" the 3rd book in the Hunger Games. Was pretty good. Now I think I will look through my books and start up a new read.