Friday reads

 

    We haven't had a Friday reads post for quite a while so let's have one today - just tell us what you're currently reading, and if you like, how you're getting on with it.

    I have three books on the go at present: A Wizard of Earthsea, this month's CBG book, and although I'm still in the early stages I'm finding it good bedtime reading; on the Kindle there is Lyndall Gordon's Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds (which is also available in paperback) and which again I'm not very far into, and lastly The Secret Mandarin, another excellent historical novel by Sara Sheridan whose Secret of the Sands I read earlier in the year and greatly enjoyed.

    So, what are you reading this Friday?

Comments

[catharina]

As an Emily Dickinson admirer I am looking forward to your thoughts on the book you are reading, I have it on my Christmas wishlist. I am reading -very slowly- Now All Roads Lead to France by Matthew Hollis, rereading Kathrine Kressmann Taylor Address Unknown (1939)and while contemplating to read the series I've started Ian Rankin's first Inspector Rebus Knots&Crosses.

[Dark Puss]

Nothing, but I did finish yesterday My Tango with Barbara Strozzi by Russell Hoban. Not bad, a slight book, quite clever with the instant acquaintances and sad and funny and remote in some ways. Chapters told by the protagonists in turn and lots of references to art and music. It is about the possibility of writing a novel as much as a novel in itself. There is a review here which describes it well.

[Ruth M.]

Three-quarters through The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, everyone read it last year but I held off waiting for it to come around on the book group schedule next week. Amazed how much I like it. Fascinating.
Also processing with deliberately slowness through The Lady in the Palazzo: At Home in Umbria by Marlena de Blasi, a book to be savored on the palette.
Reading poet Jane Hirschfield's latest Come, Thief while waiting for her book of essays The Nine Gates to arrive.
Actually, I'm not reading at all, but sitting at work wishing I had this lovely cool Friday off to sit in a sunny window and read.

[Charlotte]

I finished Neville Shute's "A Town Called Alice" yesterday, ready for the first meeting of our new book group. I haven't quite decided what will be next, am torn between "Cider with Rosie" (I must be one of the few people who have never read it)or "The Sea" by John Banville". Both are on a list of "1001 books to read before you die", through which, over the last year or so, I have been introduced to authors and books I would never have considered reading, and have for the most part thoroughly enjoyed.

[Mary Grover]

I've just started reading "Loving Graham Greene" by Gloria Emerson. I am enjoying it so far. I'd never heard of it but picked it up at a book sale (I think, it may have been at a 'free market'). I was attracted by the title since Greene has been a very important author for me. I'm also reading, very slowly, "The Cloud of Unknowing" a Christian spiritual classic. I'm reading it with my meditation group and it's very helpful to have the benefit of their thoughts and insights.
I just finished (and loved) "Let the Great World Spin" by Colum McCann for my book group which meets Monday. Next month's book is "Monsignor Quixote" by Graham Greene and I'm looking forward to re-reading it.

[MzTallulah]

A very Persephone week: just began Dorothy Whipple's "Someone at a Distance" after racing through Penelope Mortimer's "Daddy's gone a-hunting" (it had been an awfully long time since I read a book in a single day, but 3 hours in my GP's waiting room and a slow day at work helped). I'm also dipping in and out of "The Country Housewife's Book" and "The Complete Book of Self Sufficiency" by John Seymour (I live in a large city but I've been experimenting with pickles and chutneys and have been using these as reference, together with Monty and Sarah Don's "The Home Cookbook").

[craftygreenpoet]

I love Sara Sheridan's Secret Mandarin and The Secret of the Sands, two of the best books I've read this year. I'm currently reading The Cowards by Josef Skvoercky, which focuses on the life of an annoying teenager growing in Czechslovakia at the end of the second world war. The character is annoying but is probably fairly typical of teenage boys... Excellent book.

[craftygreenpoet]

Sorry that should be Skvorecky....

[oxslip]

The Dud Avocado. But I think there is something wrong with me and I'm the dud as I don't quite see it as any more than gentle humour and reasonable writing, not the hilarious comic tour-de-force I've read about elsewhere. My fault I'm sure.

[Dark Puss]

Dear Oxlip, of course it is not your fault!!

DP

[Geraldine]

Three books on the go at the moment for me.

In the sitting room, a library book, "Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer", by Jane Brocket.

In bed, "Priorsford" by O Douglas, from my own shelves, enjoyable re-read.

In what should be our spare bedroom, but is used as computer room/library. "The Fair Miss Fortune", by D E Stevenson, published by Greyladies earlier this year, and this is my 2nd re-read of it! This re-reading is for the DES email discussion group, so the book needs to be next to the computer.

[adele geras]

I am reading my nice Times offer book: THE TRINITY SIX by Charles Cumming which I grabbed for £2.99 when I bought the Times at WHSmith on Monday! It's ace...a fast moving spy type thriller but not too complicated so far. But I'm waiting eagerly to read a book that came through the post two days ago: the NEXT Dorothy Whipple book which Persephone are publishing on Oct 20th. It's called GREENBANKS and I really can't wait. A treat in store I'm quite sure. it's Dorothy W's second novel, after the terrific HIGH WAGES.

[B R Wombat]

Well, I feel as if I should be reading Life and Fate (or Love and Death as I think of it) since Radio 4 would have us believe that it's at the top of the Required Reading list but actually I've just finished Peter Robinson's Before the Poison which I would definitely not recommend. I enjoy his Alan Banks series of crime novels and fancied a simple thriller but instead landed myself with a book whose tedium I cannot describe! I had to resort to skimming which I'm no good at. I'm about to fall into the arms of The Wizard of Earthsea with huge relief!

[Jo]

Have just finished Far to Go by Alison Pick. Still have How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran on the go.....

I am going to indulge in some comfort reading this weekend.

[Sandy]

I'm struggling with 'The Long Song' by Andrea Levy. It is set in the slave plantations and I am just not embedded there. OK it is a decision - time to stop and get out Ursula le Guin (2nd time through the Earthsea set should be a lot more fun). The readers who like 'The Wizard' and go on to read the rest of the series should be sure to read 'The Other Wind', the final volume, which was written a little later I think and which lets us understand more of Le Guin's world.

[m]

I also felt I hadn't read the same book as everybody else!

[Ros]

I am reading Angel by Elizabeth Taylor, love it! the main character , the eponymous Angel is a vile and at the same time compelling 'heroine'... really unusual....

[Anji]

I have just finished 'The Wizard' and I am half way through ' The fates will find their way' by Hannah Pittard and it is going well.

[Linda P]

My bedtime reading is Anita Brookner's Hotel du Lac.

[Rhys]

I have been reading a book called Reading Chekhov by Janet Malcolm for the second time. It is very very good.

[Claire]

A themed read - The Fortnight in September, RC Sherriff. A Persephone comfort read par excellence.

[Julie Fredericksen]

I am reading In The Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson. I am not far into it but already learning some shocking things - such that Americans in Berlin in the 1930s were savagely beaten by the Storm Troopers for not saluting the fuhrer (deliberately not capitalized).

I just finished Wizard of Earthsea, and before that Doc, by Mary Doria Russell about the life of Doc - Dr. John Henry - Holliday before the shootout at OK Corral. Maybe it wouldn't appeal as much to your British readers but I found it a fascinating read. I admired how Russell distinguished between the facts of Doc's life and some of the outrageous fiction of it.

[Julie Fredericksen]

I stumbled onto the ILLUSTRATED Cider With Rosie some years ago. Delightful.

[Barbara MacLeod]

I got Jeanette Winterson's The Stone Gods out of the library recently and started it with high hopes as I like her writing. Oh dear ... I am grinding to a halt, I'm afraid.

[EllenB]

Read The True Deceiver yesterday and Stoner by John Williams today. Totally brilliant, particularly Stoner. What a luxury to have a terrible cold and thus an excuse for staying in bed reading.