Books I've been reading

Constance wrote:Finished Inside of a Dog by Alexandra Horowitz. Summary: Dogs need to sniff.

I've taken your word on this Constance. I walk my dog for an hour every day and used to get impatient when he wanted to go off and sniff everything. Now I let him.

Glad to know, Moonie!

The author said that sniffing for the dog is as important as seeing for a person. Now I let her sniff to her heart's content. It doesn't make the walk that much longer. She will sniff and then look up to let me know that she's finished with that particular spot.

I also walk for an hour most days. I think I cover a mile and a half. I walk in a beautiful park with a big lake which is right around the corner of my house. Nothing much goes on there in the winter except people running or walking their dogs.

Do you walk fast, Moonie?

I think I must walk slowly despite letting the dog sniff because most people pass me, even the old people. The other day a woman I know walked past me wheeling her baby grandchild in a stroller. She stopped to talk. She was wearing make-up to go to the park! Her lips were carefully lined and filled in with lipstick. She walked much faster than I was going, I mean she really walked fast. She got to the red barn and back before I got to the bench. I think she's my age. I was chagrined.

We have been having very unseasonable weather for January. The temperature has been in the 40s and on Tuesday and Wednesday it was as high as 60 degrees. Last year in January we had tons of snow. It was piled high in great mountains. I hope our warm weather continues into February.

Hello Constance. Yes, I'm a fairly fast walker. I walk about 5 kilometres or so in the hour that I walk. I usually walk along the back-tracks around town (bush tracks made of dust) or across grey-white saltpans that are sometimes so baked dry the salt crust over the clay crackles underfoot. But although it's late, we're in the middle of the wet season so the tracks are too muddy and the saltpans, being tidal and given that its the time of the highest tides of the year...they're underwater.

So I've been walking along the road. Perhaps 10 cars pass me in the hour. I know most of the passers-by, so I wave. it's pretty much scrubby bush on each side of the road. at the moment it's lovela and green because of the rain.

I was glad to get the advice about letting the dog sniff because I'm an impatient walker and it never occurred to me that lingering and smelling were healthy for a dog.

I've been rereading the most incredible book, Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie. The accounts of the virtual slaughter of Russian troops in the first World War, the lurid story of Rasputin, and the terrible account of the events leading up to the abdication of the Tsar and the revolution are breathtaking. Then of course there is the tragic story of the murder of the Romanovs.

...that sounds really interesting Constance.

I think it was you who recommended 'The Glass Mansion' ??

I finished it a week ago and enjoyed it, with a few reservations. Initially I liked the way the book was 'reported' rather than narrated, as it suited the objective 'telling' of a young child. But later on it was distancing, and I would have liked to hear the voice of the author, rather than that of a reporter. Especially as it was such a personal and revealing tale.

I wish I was at home typing this rather than being in the visitor information centre / library. I'm under time-pressure here and it clouds my thinking (I can't access internet at home at present).

The Glass Castle--yes, it does have an overall reporting style. I think the author knew that this device would make the humor more approachable, aand it a funny book. Too familiar and it gets sad and pathetic and I know she didn't want that. Reporting is her writing style naturally from her stint at New York Magazine.

Half-Broke Horses is Jeannette Wall's second book. She calls it a "novelization of her grandmother's life." I don't know to call it, "a fictional memoir of my grandmother's life"? It doesn't read like a novel. She maintains her reporting tone here and finds the humor. But the reader can fill in the big emotions. That happens too, in The Glass Castle.

Read the new bok if you can. More about this extraordnary family.

Constance wrote: "Too familiar and it gets sad and pathetic..." "... the reader can fill in the big emotions".

...ahh that makes sense. I found it easy to fill in the big emotions when the young girl was talking, but felt distanced when the story became the womans. (I hope that makes sense.)

After the wonderful Nicholas and Alexander, have been reading junky books suggested by ads in the New York Times book review. So many superlatives for such bad writing and outrageous plots. Nothing at all like the intelligent, heart-breaking, and funny The Glass Castle!

I need book recommendations! Can't say why, but I'm not interested in Scandinavian mysteries. Don't read mysteries at all.

For leisure time, though, I have been watching episodes of House. Madeleine got me started. Very good. High Laurie is a master. I remember him with Stephen Fry in Jeeves and Wooster. (Should have put this in the TV and Cinema section, I know).

But back to literature, I've heard that Stephen Fry's books are amazing. Hmmm, so maybe I know what to read next!

I'm pretty excited Constance. We have a tiny (I mean tiny) library in town and I'm getting a part-time job there for a while (more work will be available when the tourists come as it's also a tourist information centre).
The exciting part is that I'll be able to order books from the Brisbane library. Yay. I'm going to make a list of all the books recommended in this thread, order tham, and then work my way through them.
I'd also like to co-ordinate reading a novel with you, so we can discuss it before the details get lost in the strange nebulous cloud that's my memory

Anything by Fry would be worth the read, I'm guessing.

Re recommendations, you might like 'Cloudstreet' by Tim Winton.

Wonderful to hear about the new job, Moonie. I know how you'll love being surrounded by books all day.

But do you need to be part of the library staff to be able to order books through the system? We can order from 3 counties, and that's a lot.

I just ordered Cloudsteet and Platero. I thought I had ordered Platero already but I checked my library list and I had overlooked it.

The last amazing book I read is called The Boy in the Moon by Ian Brown. It's a meditation by a father of living with his profoundly handicapped son. Sounds gruesome, but the book is written with such insight.

The last best novel I read was a while back, this summer, I think. Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. It's about a young doctor, but it's a whole lot more. Very improbable plot but the author makes it work.

Both are recent books, so I hope your library can get them.

Yes, I like the idea of commenting on a novel. Have you read Atonement by Ian McEwan. That's a great book. If you want to read that, I'll reread it.

Hello Constance. I've just ordered Atonement!
I'm looking forward to talking about it with you.
It'll take about a week to get here so I'll let you know when it arrives and I start reading it.
I really am looking forward to the job. I love books. Being surrounded by them is my dream job!

Platero and I and Cloudstreet have arrived from the library. I've just started a novel called The House at Riverton. A historical novel/mystery. Not very promising.

I have Atonement but Elisabeth is reading it. Not easy but she surprises me. I may have to order my own copy from the library because it will take her a while to get through it. The children are studying the Holocaust at schol and she's reread The Diary of Anne Frank. They had a concentration camp survivor come and talk to the students and she said it was very moving. The man became a medical doctor.

Moonie, there's a new short book out called The Puppy Diaries by Jill Abramson, the Executive Editor of the New York Times. Cute, light report on her and her husband's first year with a Golden Retriever puppy. I read it in a few hours and enjoyed it a lot.

Really enjoying Andrew Miller's subtle poetic prose in Pure, a kind of parable of personal/political change set in pre-Revolutionary Paris (see thread in Literature section):

JUst finished the second of Catharine Arnold's London Trilogy:


Bedlam: London and its Mad- CA

(I think Nash is familiar with CA's Necropolis: London and its Dead.

Like the first, it's very well researched, with some entertaining historical nuggests.

I've got CA's book on London's Vice (mostly about sex) lined up.

The author doesn't shy away from the big themes, does she?