Six of us got together at Bluffers' Park Yacht Club to share what we've been reading so far this summer. Some classics, a few epistolatory tales, chic-lit, murder mysteries, literature and non-fiction.
Never a shortage of books to read - hearing recommendations makes the list grow even longer!
Never a shortage of books to read - hearing recommendations makes the list grow even longer!
(blurbs courtesy of Google Books -
titles link to more information)
Judi
Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Anne Shaffer and Annie Barrows
January 1946: writer Juliet Ashton receives a letter from a stranger, a founding member of the
Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. And so begins a remarkable tale of the island of Guernsey during the German occupation, and of a society as extraordinary as its name.
Sunday List of Dreams, by Kris Radish
Connie Nixon is no stranger to making lists. In fact, she has rewritten the list of her deepest desires no fewer than forty-eight times. And each Sunday, for as long as she can remember, she’s tinkered with it. But actually doing something about her desires is a different story—until the night she comes across a box belonging to her estranged daughter…and makes a stunning discovery. It turns out that her seemingly straitlaced Jessica is part owner of one of the most successful sex toy shops in America.
Virginia
Case Histories, by Kate Atkinson
In this ambitious fourth novel from Whitbread winner Atkinson (Behind the Scenes at the Museum), private detective Jackson Brodie-ex-cop, ex-husband and weekend dad-takes on three cases involving past crimes that occurred in and around London.
Nicolette
The Edge of Winter, by Luanne Rice
As winter gives way to spring, and spring to summer, a secret will emerge that has lain buried in the depths just offshore for decades, a secret that will galvanize the small seaside community. For the waters bear their own vestige of the past--and their ceaseless rhythms may point the way to hope and new beginnings.
Silks, by Dick Francis and Felix Francis
Collaboration with his son has helped put this series back on track (excuse the pun). From Dick Francis and his son, Felix, comes Geoffrey Mason, a defense barrister whose true passion is riding his Thoroughbred. Mason's two lives collide when a fellow jockey is accused of murdering a colleague with a pitchfork.
Talk to the Hand, Lynne Truss
When did society stop valuing basic courtesy and respect? In the spirit of her runaway hit, #1 "New York Times" bestseller "Eats, Shoots and Leaves," Lynne Truss analyzes the apparent collapse of manners in our daily lives, and tells us what we can do about it.
Reading Birth and Death, by Jo Murphy-Lawless
Using historical records from Irish hospitals and the writings of Irish doctors, this book analyzes the core beliefs and practices of obstetric science.It reveals a belief in the incompetence of women with regard to childbirth and traces the effects on women of such a radically gendered notion. The author argues that the problem of exercising personal agency which women face stems directly from the way the science has worked.
Diane
Hurricane Punch, by Tim Dorsey
Supposedly hilarious tale about a serial killer. Save yourself before it's too late!
Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
A portrayal of the power of romantic imagination, as well as the pathos and courage entailed in the pursuit of an unattainable dream, The Great Gatsby is a classic fiction of hope and disillusion, which encapsulates the spirit, excitement and violence of the Jazz Age.
Flying Troutmans, by Miriam Toews
Days after being dumped by her boyfriend Marc in Paris – "he was heading off to an ashram and said we could communicate telepathically" – Hattie hears her sister Min has been checked into a psychiatric hospital, and finds herself flying back to Winnipeg to take care of Thebes and Logan, her niece and nephew. Not knowing what else to do, she loads the kids, a cooler, and a pile of CDs into their van and they set out on a road trip in search of the children’s long-lost father, Cherkis.
Liz P.
We Need to Talk About Kevin, by Lionel Shriver
That neither nature nor nurture bears exclusive responsibility for a child's character is self-evident. But such generalizations provide cold comfort when it's your own son who's just opened fire on his fellow students and whose class photograph--with its unseemly grin--is blown up on the national news. The question of who's to blame for teenage atrocity tortures our narrator, Eva Khatchadourian.
Isaac's Storm, by Erik Larson
One hundred years ago, come September, a hurricane ripped through Galveston, TX, submerging most of the low-lying city, killing unknown thousands of its residents, and forever changing its economic destiny. The sheer magnitude of the disaster practically guarantees that any book about it will be fascinating, but Larson goes further...
Nicki
Dancing Naked at the Edge of the Storm, by Kris Radish
Meg Fratano has just witnessed the unthinkable: her husband of twenty—seven years making love to another woman. In her bed. And all Meg wanted to do was watch. Quietly, secretly, watch. Then she realized her life would never be the same.
Too Close to the Falls, by Catherine McClure Gildener
Welcome to the childhood of Catherine McClure Gildiner. It is the middle of the 1950s in Lewiston, New York, a small and sleepy American town very near Niagara Falls. No one is divorced. Mothers wear high heels to the beauty salon and children pop Pez candy and swing from vines over a local gorge. But at the tender age of four, it becomes clear to her Cathy's parents that their rambunctious daughter is no ordinary child and they soon put her "to work" at her father's pharmacy. Already able to read road maps, she accompanies Roy the deliveryman on his routes. In memories that are by turns hilarious and deeply moving, she shares some of her more fantastic deliveries -- sleeping pills to Marilyn Monroe (in town filming Niagara), sedatives to Mad Bear, a violent Tuscarora chief, and fungus cream to Warty, the gentle, and painfully lonely operator of the town dump.
Elm Creek Quilts Series: The Winding Ways Quilt, by Jennifer Chiaverini
Jennifer Chiaverini's bestselling Elm Creek Quilts series continues with The Winding Ways Quilt, in which the arrival of newcomers into the circle of quilters heralds unexpected journeys down pathways near and far.
Judi
Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Anne Shaffer and Annie Barrows
January 1946: writer Juliet Ashton receives a letter from a stranger, a founding member of the
Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. And so begins a remarkable tale of the island of Guernsey during the German occupation, and of a society as extraordinary as its name.
Sunday List of Dreams, by Kris Radish
Connie Nixon is no stranger to making lists. In fact, she has rewritten the list of her deepest desires no fewer than forty-eight times. And each Sunday, for as long as she can remember, she’s tinkered with it. But actually doing something about her desires is a different story—until the night she comes across a box belonging to her estranged daughter…and makes a stunning discovery. It turns out that her seemingly straitlaced Jessica is part owner of one of the most successful sex toy shops in America.
Virginia
Case Histories, by Kate Atkinson
In this ambitious fourth novel from Whitbread winner Atkinson (Behind the Scenes at the Museum), private detective Jackson Brodie-ex-cop, ex-husband and weekend dad-takes on three cases involving past crimes that occurred in and around London.
Nicolette
The Edge of Winter, by Luanne Rice
As winter gives way to spring, and spring to summer, a secret will emerge that has lain buried in the depths just offshore for decades, a secret that will galvanize the small seaside community. For the waters bear their own vestige of the past--and their ceaseless rhythms may point the way to hope and new beginnings.
Silks, by Dick Francis and Felix Francis
Collaboration with his son has helped put this series back on track (excuse the pun). From Dick Francis and his son, Felix, comes Geoffrey Mason, a defense barrister whose true passion is riding his Thoroughbred. Mason's two lives collide when a fellow jockey is accused of murdering a colleague with a pitchfork.
Talk to the Hand, Lynne Truss
When did society stop valuing basic courtesy and respect? In the spirit of her runaway hit, #1 "New York Times" bestseller "Eats, Shoots and Leaves," Lynne Truss analyzes the apparent collapse of manners in our daily lives, and tells us what we can do about it.
Reading Birth and Death, by Jo Murphy-Lawless
Using historical records from Irish hospitals and the writings of Irish doctors, this book analyzes the core beliefs and practices of obstetric science.It reveals a belief in the incompetence of women with regard to childbirth and traces the effects on women of such a radically gendered notion. The author argues that the problem of exercising personal agency which women face stems directly from the way the science has worked.
Diane
Hurricane Punch, by Tim Dorsey
Supposedly hilarious tale about a serial killer. Save yourself before it's too late!
Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
A portrayal of the power of romantic imagination, as well as the pathos and courage entailed in the pursuit of an unattainable dream, The Great Gatsby is a classic fiction of hope and disillusion, which encapsulates the spirit, excitement and violence of the Jazz Age.
Flying Troutmans, by Miriam Toews
Days after being dumped by her boyfriend Marc in Paris – "he was heading off to an ashram and said we could communicate telepathically" – Hattie hears her sister Min has been checked into a psychiatric hospital, and finds herself flying back to Winnipeg to take care of Thebes and Logan, her niece and nephew. Not knowing what else to do, she loads the kids, a cooler, and a pile of CDs into their van and they set out on a road trip in search of the children’s long-lost father, Cherkis.
Liz P.
We Need to Talk About Kevin, by Lionel Shriver
That neither nature nor nurture bears exclusive responsibility for a child's character is self-evident. But such generalizations provide cold comfort when it's your own son who's just opened fire on his fellow students and whose class photograph--with its unseemly grin--is blown up on the national news. The question of who's to blame for teenage atrocity tortures our narrator, Eva Khatchadourian.
Isaac's Storm, by Erik Larson
One hundred years ago, come September, a hurricane ripped through Galveston, TX, submerging most of the low-lying city, killing unknown thousands of its residents, and forever changing its economic destiny. The sheer magnitude of the disaster practically guarantees that any book about it will be fascinating, but Larson goes further...
Nicki
Dancing Naked at the Edge of the Storm, by Kris Radish
Meg Fratano has just witnessed the unthinkable: her husband of twenty—seven years making love to another woman. In her bed. And all Meg wanted to do was watch. Quietly, secretly, watch. Then she realized her life would never be the same.
Too Close to the Falls, by Catherine McClure Gildener
Welcome to the childhood of Catherine McClure Gildiner. It is the middle of the 1950s in Lewiston, New York, a small and sleepy American town very near Niagara Falls. No one is divorced. Mothers wear high heels to the beauty salon and children pop Pez candy and swing from vines over a local gorge. But at the tender age of four, it becomes clear to her Cathy's parents that their rambunctious daughter is no ordinary child and they soon put her "to work" at her father's pharmacy. Already able to read road maps, she accompanies Roy the deliveryman on his routes. In memories that are by turns hilarious and deeply moving, she shares some of her more fantastic deliveries -- sleeping pills to Marilyn Monroe (in town filming Niagara), sedatives to Mad Bear, a violent Tuscarora chief, and fungus cream to Warty, the gentle, and painfully lonely operator of the town dump.
Elm Creek Quilts Series: The Winding Ways Quilt, by Jennifer Chiaverini
Jennifer Chiaverini's bestselling Elm Creek Quilts series continues with The Winding Ways Quilt, in which the arrival of newcomers into the circle of quilters heralds unexpected journeys down pathways near and far.
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