as I will occasionally do to read a biography or memoir. Last night, I just began reading Watch Me - by Anjelica Huston. Not quite entranced by it yet but, as always, I'll give it a chance to grow on me. (I rarely return a book without finishing it unless it's really, really awful and I just can't.)

At the same time, I also picked up Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth on the recommendation of Enthusiast, but it's a much larger book, and there are holds on the other, so I need to be able to finish it first as I won't be able to renew it if I don't.

Hope the pharmacy still has your book so you can get back to it, sw.

I mean, imagine having John Huston for a father! I hope the book ends up proving to be worthwhile.

Even though Enthusiast has spoken highly of Sacred Hunger, I had already decided to take a pass on that particular book from the first time he brought it up. I'm just not emotionally up to reading about the slave trade at this time. I applaud you for being willing to take it on.

I hope the pharmacy has my book, too - thanks! It was maddening to have left off in the story where I did, even if I had already read it before, years ago.

it's really terrible, actually. So far it's just a laundry list of the self indulgent life of the rich and famous, lots of name dropping. Worse is that it reads very much like a laundry list, almost as if she whipped out old calenders and just transferred what she found into paragraph form: first we did this, then we went there and did that, with these people, and on and on and on. Can't even seem to work up any emotion in the retelling of her relationship with Jack Nicholson, which so far takes up much of the narrative.

Very flat, dry and boring, no depth or charm yet to be found at all.

Unfortunate, but maybe not all that surprising. In my (waaay) younger days I was involved in theater and got to know quite a few actors. I discovered that however deeply and intensely they could play a character, the majority of them of turned out to be extraordinarily shallow and insipid as their "real" selves. Quite a disappointment, especially with the dark, handsome ones.

Had hoped for your sake that maybe Angelica might have been different - but apparently I ought to have known better.

At least you've got another book to get into if you decide to give Ms. Huston's up as a bad job.

didn't see any improvement. I get it that she was young and most of us were pretty superficial and into partying, but she isn't as she writes this book, so I really expected more.

I've a lot to do this week getting ready for a weekend event, so I'll probably just continue using it as a sleep aid this week rather than get into the heavier reading right now.

Glad to hear your own book was returned to you.

Geez, scarletwoman, I hope you can get your book back!

I just finished A Dead Man's Tale by James D. Doss. I have yet to decide on a book for this week.

Mrs. Enthusiast is still reading The Source by James Michener.The Source is one massive history lesson.

I'm totally out of new recommendations, myself - although you might give a thought to At Play in the Fields of the Lord, if you're in the mood for something heavy. It really is an excellent, but dark, novel.

While re-reading the two Cordelia Gray novels has been pleasant enough, they certainly aren't of a caliber that would inspire me to say, "You've GOT to read this!" Yes, I do hope I can get my book back, too. An astonishing lapse of consciousness, there!

I'm hoping I'll enjoy the Evan Evans books. I'm assuming they'll be pleasantly amusing British cozy types - which is fine, but not really my favorite genre. Just something to hold me over until one of my preferred Scandinavian books finally comes in.

I ordered a used copy online.

I have many books to choose from in the meantime. Maybe Randy Wayne White or James Lee Burke. Nope. Steve Hamilton it will be.

We both had a sort of respiratory infection. We felt it had affected our thinking. We were certainly not as sharp as usual. Not good. We are mostly getting over it now. Maybe you had a similar affliction causing you to forget your book.

generally sound too bloody for me. As I've mentioned many times, I am no longer willing to read books that feature serial killers. Also, I'm just not much into American authors, unless they've written something particularly outstanding. Maybe I'm a Euro-snob?

Regarding respiratory infections, I've had two major bouts over the past few months, but that wasn't my problem on Friday. Just general end-of-the-work-week mental burnout. Plus, I'm old.

We all have our individual taste when it comes to novels.

When I first read the books by Steve Hamilton they struck a chord. There was something there that I connected with. When his central character wanted Canadian Molson's beer from his bartender, not American Molson's beer, I knew exactly what he was talking about. Apparently Steve Hamilton and I speak the same language even though it is nothing on a profound level.

with that last sentence, Enthusiast. One of the reasons I've not minded reading it so many times over the years. I really love how he lends voice, through his characters, to the many perspectives in this particular area of such great conflict across the centuries.

So much pain there for so long, and too many, on all sides, who are too married to the past and still so immutably attached to their own ideologies, to embrace taking steps even some of the smallest steps necessary to bring about peaceful resolution.

Michener makes so obvious the reasons it's been impossible to find peaceful solutions, or how unlikely it is that there ever will be any sufficient to satisfy all involved.

The Middle East perpetual conflict is so deeply disturbing. That is just one of the reasons I am no fan of organized religion—any organized religion.

Mrs. Enthusiast can't get over the extreme violence surrounding religious history she is reading in The Source.

It can be so very hard to read some of it, since it's very real, factual historical events and circumstances into which he weaves the lives of his fictional characters. I can't even begin to imagine what drives the desire to destroy another human life because of a simple disagreement such as what one chooses to believe. It takes nothing short of a very sick and pathological mind to even conceive its necessity.

Or to even begin to think that such atrocities would influence anyone to truly and willingly embrace one's own deeply held religious beliefs. I'm certain, as witnessed by the Inquisition as only one example of the many, that they really don't care if they do or merely take it on out of fear, as long as it's the law of the land, and they hold the reigns of power. The attitudes and behaviors of the powerful towards the vanquished rarely ever improve, not even over time, no matter how much they appear to accept and adopt what's been foisted on them.

I have to believe that the majority of people everywhere wish nothing more than to lead a peaceful existence, and would do just fine living side by side with all they actually share in common, without the unreal perception that a different belief system is somehow an insult to themselves, or that arbitrary and artificial borders make them so very different. I honestly really don't care what someone's personal religious beliefs are, nor do I think very many others do either, as long as it's not used it to harm anyone or is forcefully imposed upon the unwilling.

Authors such as Michener, with his very accurate research into historical events, his very deep and rich depictions of the lives and deaths of the staggering numbers of very real people affected by them, have done what they could in an attempt to bridge divides and bring about understanding. Yet the pathologically power driven minority, with the support of those too weak and fearful to think and act for themselves, have made, and still make, all of this violence possible. So it's always been and, unfortunately, so it's always likely to remain.

Doesn't pay to get me started, does it?

The pathologically power driven minority certainly have the upper hand. Those short periods of peace and prosperity we have experienced now seem to be more an aberration than the rule.

I really don't care what someone's personal religious beliefs are either. Except when they use them as an excuse to interfere with my life or use them to justify wrong headed foreign policy.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

I've started a book called "We Need New Names" by NoViolet Bulawayo. I am really enjoying it. It's set in Zimbabwe at a pivotal moment in its history. Sounds like it could be heavy going, but the narrator's voice is playful and exuberant, the sentences bounce with the life of the young girl who is the central character. I'm only two chapters in and I can't wait to get back to it.

I'm on leave from work and had to find things to do post-surgery. Interesting site!

Nice to meet you. We Need New Names sounds interesting.

This is a fictional account of the iconic political scandal of the century. Mallon tells the story through the eyes Fred Larue, Howard Hunt, Rose Mary Wood, Pat Nixon and Alice Longworth, TR's daughter and an ardent Nixon supporter. The personalities are sharply drawn, filled out with gossipy personal and political details that keep you turning the pages. There aren't many worthwhile political novels being written now days, but this is a good one. Did Pat Nixon really have an affair? Read Mallon's novel and find out.

I remember the Watergate days quite well. Back then, my husband and I didn't have a TV, nor did most of our hippie friends, so there was a whole group of us who would troop down to the local bar every day to watch the hearings. We lived in a hippie enclave on the West Bank of Minneapolis, and - of course - we all HATED Nixon.

Fun times.

the almost 600-page Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Whew. This is getting to be quite the story. Certain things I wasn't expecting, being it is so hugely popular.

One thing is nagging at me. Now, I'm no detective but it seems like they should take a little more interest in who sends the flowers. I know, no return address and no finger prints. BUT, with the list of suspects why not just check to see who was in the different countries. Too simple? I won't be happy if that end is left hanging but I gotta feeling it's all going to be wrapped up nicely. After all, there's still almost 300 pages to go.

Amazing book.

Hope you got your book back, scarletwoman, and that you enjoy Evan. Cozy, yes. Light reading, in spite of all the dead bodies.

Yeah, it's quite the story. I don't remember many details anymore - just bits and pieces - but I do remember being totally caught up in the story, and being amazed.

I hope you will read all three books - as near as I can remember, most things were fairly well tied up by the end of the third book. I think they might merit a re-read one of these days, since they were my first introduction to Nordic Noir back when I first read them.

So, it was YOU who brought up the Evan Evans books? I just started on the first one today, and I have to say it's quite fun so far - dead bodies notwithstanding.

Called there first thing this morning, and picked it up after I got off work - bookmark still in place where the dead body was discovered.

It's a small town pharmacy, I've been going there for years, and I think they pretty much assumed that the person who left the book behind would show up for it. They're all very nice people.

One of the pharmacists even commented that she thought it looked like an interesting book.

And stayed up late to do so!
I really enjoyed the book. Initially the setting is Zimbabwe, around 2005. This is the period in which Robert Mugabe was reclaiming land and property of white farmers and redistricting it to his cronies. Darling and her friends, aged 8-1, are roaming around all day due to a nation wide teachers' strike. They are the children of the many people who were displaced during the turbulent years preceding, losing their working class securities and forced into shanty towns. None of this is talked about in the book, by the way. I had to look it up in order to fully understand the context of the story.
For the narrator, Darling, this isn't context, it's just life. Like most people her age, she accepts the world around her and responds matter-of-factly to even the most disturbing events. But she and her friends know that they have no future if they stay in Zimbabwe, and Darling looks forward to being sent for by her aunt in "Destroyed, Michigan".
Although a lot of the subject matter is grim, this is a lively read. Darling is a great character with adaptive skills Darwin would applaud. I recommend this to:
-people who are interested in recent African events,
- those who look for strong female protagonists,
-anyone who wants to jump on the wagon train of a powerful new writer. This is Bulawayo's first book and it was long-listed for the Mann Booker (how I get a lot of my reading suggestions. Who knows if I would have found Kate Atkinson otherwise?), and will surely have more wonderful books to be anticipate.

Thank you so much!

I have been looking forward to this one. Ellroy returns to the netherworld of 1940s Los Angeles.