What have you read in March?

[Duvodas]

Digital Fortress, Dan Brown
The Broker, John Grisham
Relic, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
Legend, David Gemmell
First To Die, James Patterson
Sword in the Storm, David Gemmell (nearly finishing it)

after that...

finish up the Rigante Series and start reading the long, controversial but wonderful The Wheel of Time

 

[ZombieSheep]

I've read Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire, and now I'm currently reading Amy Tan's The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings. Next up shall be Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat. =D

 

[StillILearn]

There are some good books out about Sherlock Holmes lately (always?)

I have just read A Slight Trick of the Mind by Mitch Cullen.

 

[Scottishduffy]

I am currently working on The Other Boleyn Girl.

March isn't even halfway through yet, so I'll have to post again at the end of the month.

 

[pontalba]

SIL I don't have those, but I do have The Final Solution by Michael Chabon, unfortunately unread at the moment.

Have you read The Beekeepers Apprentice by Laurie King?

 

[Anamnesis]

The books I've read thus far:

Cell by Stephen King
Made Men by Greg B. Smith
Micah by Laurell K. Hamilton

There would have been more on here but since we seem to be doing this a bit early... that's all I have .

 

[Ryouko]

Finished:
Deception Point, Dan Brown
Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Mark Haddon
Your Best Life Now, Joel Osteen

Currently Working On:
Sense & Sensibility, Jane Austen
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants(re-read), Ann Brashares

I'm not doing to bad considering how much reading time I usually have when I'm in school. Actually, I've been spending quite a bit of time reading lately. Which is how I like it.

 

[aniela]

hi everybody.
finished:
-Kateb Yacine -nedjma
-Edward Said -orientalism
-Haruki Murakami -Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
-a book about muhammad's life
-Joseph Conrad -the heart of darkness (reread)
-Don DeLillo -white noise (reread)

 

[Privatjokr]

I think I finished The Kite Runner on the 1st, so technically it was in March, though most of the reading was done before then. After that I read Barrel Fever by David Sedaris and just a few minutes ago I finished Garden of Beasts by Jeffery Deaver.

Not too shabby for a full-time employee and part-time law student.

 

[steffee]

In March so far I have read:

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Pnin by Vladimir Vladimirovich
On the Road by Jack Kerouac (which I finally finished, goodness knows how)
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (reread)

And I'm now, after much anguish all day in deciding what to read next, reading Lucky by Alice Sebold.

 

[Ice]

This isn't another 'I just finished Reading' thread It is intended merely for people to list the books they have read in a particular month, as people are then looking at the stats. If you have a review (like Still's good one above), it would be nice if you could start a new thread as this would help garner more discussion

 

[Flowerdk4]

So far in March:

Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster - Great to be back in Auster´s New York!
Atonement by Ian McEwan
The house of the dead by Dostojevsky

 

[StillILearn]

SIL I don't have those, but I do have The Final Solution by Michael Chabon, unfortunately unread at the moment.

Have you read The Beekeepers Apprentice by Laurie King?

I'm very tempted to use a gift card that I got recently on Chabon's book, and yes, I have read The Beekeeper's Apprentice. I'm a great Laurie King/Mary Russell fan, and I recently read (and greatly enjoyed) Locked Rooms by her. Keep that one (TBA) near the top of your TBRP.

This isn't another 'I just finished Reading' thread It is intended merely for people to list the books they have read in a particular month, as people are then looking at the stats. If you have a review (like Still's good one above), it would be nice if you could start a new thread as this would help garner more discussion.

Ice, do you mean that it would have been a better idea for me to have started a new thread about the book A Slight Trick of the Mind? Was I too wordy for this thread?

What is meant by "stats"?

Go ahead and move my post to another spot, if you want to. (I'm often guilty of missing the finer points when it comes to following rules.)

 

[Ice]

Ice, do you mean that it would have been a better idea for me to have started a new thread about the book A Slight Trick of the Mind? Was I too wordy for this thread?

Hi Still,

It's not a matter of being too wordy It's just that anyone searching for opinions/reviews on particular books wouldn't want to sift through pages of irrelevant posts, just to find one review - once this month is over the review will probably never be seen again. However if you start up a new thread (or post in an existing thread if there is one) when you wish to review a book, it might generate more discussion

What is meant by "stats"?

Steffee posted the following after people reads for January had been listed:

In January We Read...

Go ahead and move my post to another spot, if you want to. (I'm often guilty of missing the finer points when it comes to following rules.)

Not rules, just trying to help generate more book discussion. I could always move the review if you like and still leave the name of the book in here

 

[StillILearn]

Ah. Aha! Gotcha! Okay.

Will you move it for me? Thanks!

 

[dwellerintruth]

hi everybody.
finished:
-Kateb Yacine -nedjma
-Edward Said -orientalism
-Haruki Murakami -Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
-a book about muhammad's life
-Joseph Conrad -the heart of darkness (reread)
-Don DeLillo -white noise (reread)

Aniela, you must be of algerian descent to have decided to read kateb yacine as he specifically speaks to the lost illusions of what algeria is. I am of algerian descent myself and I live in the US. I used to read Nedjma every so often until I exorcised the demons which were chaining me to a specific place which conjured so much pain...but now i look at the stars and realize that viewed from up there, earth is but a very tiny spot...and I belong to all of it.

 

[aniela]

hi,
no, i am not of algerian descent, but right now i am in france and i am very interested in algerian culture and literature in particular. i am in rennes right now and last week we had a film festival on algeria. i saw la bataille d'alger and le vent des aures. i found them outstanding.

about nedjma, i also sensed the dispair of the author, the feeling that there is no way out, that everything is eventually sterile, just like nedjma was. but i think algeria has since then passed through many stages and i think it will finally come out of her history fertile, and still beautiful.
as for the belonging issue, i think that we can all understand each other, since we are all human beings and we necessarily pass through similar crisis, but i really think that each of us comes with the specificity of the land where each of us grew up. and even if these differences may look shallow or artificial, i really think they are important for the diversity of relationships. i think the key point is not that we admit the fact that the place where we were born put in us a seed of knowledge, view of life etc that differentiate us to a certain extent from the others, but the core issue is to be receptive to the experiences of others and to see these differences not as dividing, but as enriching (i mean enrichissantes).

 

[dwellerintruth]

on the one hand you talk about everything being sterile and on the other you talk about algeria becoming fertile...may be paradoxes are our way of dealing with life....Where are you from? you talk about the necessity for diversity, and I think we still can have a lot of diversity without having to have recourse to nationalities and nationalism...Just like each one of us is stamped with a unique genetic code, we still can step out of the maddening hatred generated either by nationalism or religion and still be unique individuals contributing a rich diversity. I also saw that you read Edward S. and I think he makes this point very eloquently in some of his writings....there is only an earth civilization which has been fueled throughout the ages by disparate individuals and now we have a common civilization instead of a clash of civilizations as put forward by huntington. You must have a lot of friends who were born in algeria or whose parents were born there to be intrigued by interested by that corner of the world.

 

[aniela]

i am romanian ( a country un eastern europe), but i left my country two years ago.
about nationalism. i do not think that the fact of being aware of belonging to a certain nation necessarily makes one to be nationalistic. just like the fact that i have brown eyes. that does not mean that i hate people with green eyes. the fact that i am romanian does not mean that i cannot understand or that i despise germans or whatever other nation. i think that the place i grew up in left me with a certain inheritance that people from other places did not have. as a human being, one cannot pass through all the possible experience. for example, i was out of a communist system. other people have not met with this issue, but have passed for example through a war. communication between people with different experiences brings new perspectives on things over which we have never brooded before. and since the very fact of belonging to a certain region influenced our past and our lives, i do not see why we should avoid talking about this. if the feeling of belonging to a certain area is taken to extremes by some groups, that does not make it bad. there are many aspects of the world that are not inherently negative, but become like that just because people employ them in an ugly purpose. i think that accepting the labels sticked to us (like nationality, gender etc) is the first step in overcoming the artificial obstacles some people would find in those denominations.

as about edward said, i do not consider him to be a very good orator, and his book is not that outstanding. it has a lot of gaps in his arguments (actually he does not bring so many arguments in any case). the only thing he does in his book is to destroy a stereotype, just by saying that that stereotype has all the negative caracteristics of a stereotype. but when in comes to convince people of his own point of view, he cannot appeal but to those who have shared his own perspective before reading the book. he does not offer any arguments for those who have a different position from his. he does not enter a dialogue with people who have the opposite stand. he just reinforces the ideas those who agree with him have.
even if in general i agree to his position, from a technical point of view i found his book to be lacking in logical argumentation.

 

[dwellerintruth]

Romania is a country which is known to some of us in the US despite our legendary reputation of ignorance of the outside world. I also enjoyed your opinion on E. Said. It is true that Said does try to address himself to only a specialized public and therefore does not take the time to go deeper into concepts which he takes for granted his reader already knows.How did you come to read him anyway? assignment at school? I have taken the time to read all of your other posts and i enjoyed the originality of your opinions, especially the one on Brown...which i share incidentally...