what are you reading?

[Anonymous]

Beneath a Marble Sky - by John Shors

[zumbamama]

Just finished Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I loved it so much and finished it so fast, today I bought The Caged Virgin.

[Anonymous]

Half The Sky. The authors have found an effective way to communicate the gravity of the situation (abuse/enslavement/poverty of women worldwide) without totally bumming the reader out on every page. It seems that all the named individuals are ones who survived the problem in question-- perservered, escaped, etc. But of course the authors follow up with the statistics. Every individual story told is a lucky one-- ie, this girl was sold to a brothel at 12, but she escaped and now she educates other former sex slaves. There are umpty-million sex slaves worldwide, and many/most die of AIDS or are murdered before their 30th birthday.

And so on. So it ends up being kind of inspiring. And I'm very sensitive to tales of horror and abuse.

[Anonymous]

Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo---excellent!!

[Anonymous]

A ridiculous historic romance novel. Love em... and all that are judging I have a MD and a PhD. I love mind numbing fiction. I heavy medical articles day in and day out. Love light absolutely mindless reading at home.

[Anonymous]

Oops, pp here. Meant I read heavy medical articles...

[Anonymous]

Just read Russo's That Old Cape Magic and enjoyed it a lot. Will have to look for Bridge of Sighs, as well as Empire Falls, which won a Pullitzer.

[Anonymous]

I too am reading That Old Cape Magic. So far so good. Before this I read The Girl Who Played With Fire (sequel to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) and liked it very much. Also enjoyed the newest John Irving, which I think is called Last Night At Twisted River (or something like that).

And I agree that The Help is overrated--very trite and predictable, I thought. Also did not love Olive Kitteridge and certainly can't imagine how it won a Pulitzer.

Next on my list is The Lacuna, which I am looking forward to b/c I love Barbara Kingsolver.