One more time

Alright lets try this again..

How about we all take a few days to come up with three books each to suggest and then narrow it down from there of which book we will all read first.

Anyone else is welcome to suggest books and join in as well.

Excellent Idea..

Disregard my post in the other column.. lol

To be fair it was your idea, I just put it as a post

I think I mentioned this previously, but I'm the kind of person who finds it incredibly difficult to suggest books for other people and would prefer reading other people's suggestions over my own. I'm basically up for anything, though.

There may be points where I'm busy in the future and have to disappear for a book or two, so it would be fun if we could get some more involved besides me, Kenya, and Stacie to help generate some more discussion. Like there's no obligation to purchase every book and follow along with strict deadlines and penalties for not reaching them. I figure this will be a more low-key, laid-back type of thing where anyone can pick up a book we're reading at a local library and randomly pop-in and contribute to the discussion if they want.

Agreed....


My suggestions are as follows:

The Book Thief: It's about Death (who narrates this story) and the exact moments he takes souls. He comes across a girl when he is "taking" her young brother. She steals a book that the grave diggers drop. The story seems to follow this girl throughout her life. I haven't read it but it sounds fascinating. It is set in the Holocaust Era.

The Restorer: It's about a woman who restores old cemeteries, and she can also see ghosts. It's mostly sci fi (paranormal), but a whole lot of mystery. I read that it has some really great twists at the end.

Buried Prey: This book is set in 1985, where a block is being torn down for new development, a new cop finds two dead bodies (young girls wrapped in plastic), and he gets to head up the investigation. Sounds like a suspense and mystery novel.

Anyway, I'm not glued to these three, but they all seem like interesting reads to me.

I'll tell yall the same thing I told Rich. Im a very picky reader, and although I do like to read, I have to be in the mood to read and it has to be something that will capture my attention. I like such few authors that, Im afraid, if I were to start reading a book by an author I am not familiar with, that I wont like his style (or hers) and become quickly disinterested in the book. This is what happens to me when I try to read things by authors I am not used to. I like books that I guess are suspense/thriller/horror/espionage/political intrigue. I read all the bourne books before movies were even considered for them lol They werent my favorite of Robert Ludlums though. I thought he had other books that might have been better movies imo. I try not to be closed minded but in reality, im just picky. Im afraid I would be a lowsy member to this book club which is why I havent joined.

I'm so not good at picking out books.. but I've kinda been looking at like top 100 books and what not.. and these books look interesting to me.. some a tad older.

Book number 1: "To the lighthouse" By Virginia Woolf

"After Woolf published her breakthrough novel Mrs. Dalloway, she raised the stakes and broadened her focus. To the Lighthouse
is a stately dance of time, hope and art, as performed by the Ramsay
family and their immediate friends as they vacation at a house in the
Hebrides. Mrs. Ramsay is a housewife and hostess; her husband is a cold,
analytical philosopher; drawn in their wake are, among others, a
struggling young painter named Lily Briscoe and their little son James,
whose dearest wish is to take a boat ride to a nearby lighthouse. The
novel begins as a poignant portrait of family dynamics, but Woolf sets
the second half of the book a decade after the first, and that allows
her to turn To the Lighthouse into a study of the damage that time and history inflict on the Ramsays' hopes and dreams, and a celebration of what endures."

The whole changing from different times.. is a bit intriguing to me.



Book number 2: another older book

The Big Sleep By Raymond Chandler

""I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I
was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be." This
sentence, from the first paragraph of The Big Sleep,
marks the last time you can be fully confident that you know what's
going on. The first novel by Raymond Chandler, who at the time was a
51-year-old former oil company executive, is a mosaic of shadows, a dark
tracery of forking paths. Along them wanders Philip Marlowe, a cynical,
perfectly hard-boiled private investigator hired by an old millionaire
to find the husband of his beautiful, bitchy wildcat daughter. Marlowe
is tough and determined, and he does his best to be a good guy, but
there are no true heroes in Chandler's sun-baked, godforsaken Los
Angeles, and every plot turn reveals how truly twisted the human heart
is."


Book Three:

White Teeth By Zadie Smith

"This may be the first novel ever written that truly feels at home in our
borderless, globalized, intermarried, post-colonial age, populated by
"children with first and last names on a direct collision course."
Published when Smith was just 24, White Teeth
follows the friendship of two Londoners, a pub-going working-class
bloke named Archie and a Muslim from Bangladesh named Samad. Archie
marries a Jamaican; Samad has twin sons, one of whom becomes a religious
militant, the other a rabid Anglophile. The overlapping fates of
Smith's characters seem to trace the new structures of 21st-century life
and test their sturdiness as framework for peace and happiness. Both
deeply Dickensian and playfully post-modern, White Teeth doesn't quail before the rampantly ramifying novelistic complexities of a multicultural world. It revels in them."

Stacie - if I had to choose one out of the three you suggested. I would pick the first one Just trying to narrow some things down.. lol!


Brant - where is your list?

I know we said pick 3 books.. but this book just totally caught my attention..

The hunger games by Suzanne Collins

"In the ruins of a place
once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol
surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and
cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one
boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate
in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.


Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother
and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she steps
forward to take her sister's place in the Games. But Katniss has been
close to dead before—and survival, for her, is second nature. Without
really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she
will have to start making choices that will weigh survival against
humanity and life against love."

Cool Kenya. I have read The Hunger Games, but would read it again. They are making a movie over it.

I would read your second book, The Big Sleep. It sounds pretty good!

Oh yeah, my list.

I'll get right on it and have it up by the end of the day.

lol

Here are 3 books of varying type, which I've never read but saw were relatively popular and well-liked on other sites. I am not familiar with the authors, but I intentionally tried to strain from the normal Stephen King/Dean Koontz books I've been reading lately.

1 - Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind (2003) - Fantasy

Wizard's First Rule marks the debut of a new fantasy writer. Truly epic in scope and filled with burning intensity, it is the story of Richard Cypher, a modest woodsman in a world achingly beautiful, alive with the joys of nature: a world the reader comes to love as fiercely as do Richard and those around him. Though a mere woodsman, he is the one destined to battle the ultimate adversary - Darken Rahl, an evil mage who bids to destroy all that Richard holds good and beautiful, dooming him and the rest of the people of Westland to a living Hell of subjugation and degradation.

2 - A Little Death In Dixie by Lisa Turner (2010) - Mystery, Suspense

The Blues were born out of need, anger and pride. Murder comes from those same dark places. Memphis has both. One of Memphis' most seductive and notorious socialites has vanished. Either she's off on another drunken escapade or the disappearance is something much more frightening. What begins as an ordinary day's work for Detective Billy Able quickly grows into a complex spider's web of tragedy, mystery, suspicion, and sordid secrets including a few of Billy's own. With the help of Mercy Snow, the estranged sister of the missing socialite, Billy follows a twisted trail of human frailty and corruption to disturbing truths that undermine everything he thought he knew about himself and the people he loves.

3 - The Dervish House by Ian McDonald (2010) - Science Fiction

McDonald takes the history of Istanbul, both real and imagined, and forges a multi-faceted and fascinating character out of the city itself; then he adds in the experiences of six people whose lives are about to intersect in the most unexpected ways. Over the course of a week, following a suicide bombing in which only the bomber dies, these people will discover conspiracies, legends, and long-dormant memories. In the not-so-distant future, five years after Turkey became part of the EU, the city that straddles Asia and Europe is again the center of global trade. Three seemingly disconnected stories meet in the streets and coffee houses of Istanbul: the travails of a young man who was caught in the blast who suddenly sees djinn, the efforts of an art dealer set on a mad quest for something even the buyer believes is a mere legend, and the greatest stock-market scheme ever imagined. McDonald creates a magnificent knot of intrigue, thrills, and daring adventures, with the flair for character and setting that make his tales so satisfying to indulge in.

Brant wrote:

.

1 - Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind (2003) - Fantasy

Wizard's First Rule marks the debut of a new fantasy writer. Truly epic in scope and filled with burning intensity, it is the story of Richard Cypher, a modest woodsman in a world achingly beautiful, alive with the joys of nature: a world the reader comes to love as fiercely as do Richard and those around him. Though a mere woodsman, he is the one destined to battle the ultimate adversary - Darken Rahl, an evil mage who bids to destroy all that Richard holds good and beautiful, dooming him and the rest of the people of Westland to a living Hell of subjugation and degradation.

A fabulous read.

I read several of this series.

By the way Stacie.. buried prey is part of a series I've started reading.. although I guess you don't HAVE to read it in order or anything.. but I have a lot of the prey books

I read that it was in a series... I haven't read the others at all, but I'd be willing to.

Brant, I like your #2 pick, the Death in Dixie one. Sounds very interesting!

I was planning on reading The Hunger Games someday, just so I'm not clueless about what other people are talking about. Although I said the same thing about Twilight a few years ago and still haven't found the motivation to start it.

Of Stacie's books, I think I'd be most interested in reading The Book Thief. Of Kenya's books, I agree with The Big Sleep as well.

I was just talking to Kenya, and she mentioned that she also likes A Little Death In Dixie out of my three suggestions. I think there's agreement that one of these three books would be best to start with, one from each of us:

1 - The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

It's about Death (who narrates this story) and the exact moments he takes souls. He comes across a girl when he is "taking" her young brother. She steals a book that the grave diggers drop. The story seems to follow this girl throughout her life. I haven't read it but it sounds fascinating. It is set in the Holocaust Era.

2 - The Big Sleep By Raymond Chandler

""I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be." This sentence, from the first paragraph of The Big Sleep, marks the last time you can be fully confident that you know what's going on. The first novel by Raymond Chandler, who at the time was a 51-year-old former oil company executive, is a mosaic of shadows, a dark tracery of forking paths. Along them wanders Philip Marlowe, a cynical, perfectly hard-boiled private investigator hired by an old millionaire to find the husband of his beautiful, bitchy wildcat daughter. Marlowe is tough and determined, and he does his best to be a good guy, but there are no true heroes in Chandler's sun-baked, godforsaken Los Angeles, and every plot turn reveals how truly twisted the human heart is."

3 - A Little Death In Dixie by Lisa Turner

The Blues were born out of need, anger and pride. Murder comes from those same dark places. Memphis has both. One of Memphis' most seductive and notorious socialites has vanished. Either she's off on another drunken escapade or the disappearance is something much more frightening. What begins as an ordinary day's work for Detective Billy Able quickly grows into a complex spider's web of tragedy, mystery, suspicion, and sordid secrets including a few of Billy's own. With the help of Mercy Snow, the estranged sister of the missing socialite, Billy follows a twisted trail of human frailty and corruption to disturbing truths that undermine everything he thought he knew about himself and the people he loves.