What are you reading?

[yollie]

Just finished a murder book by Patricia MacDonald, called "Married to a stranger" it was excellent, really exciting right up to the end. I couldn't put it down, and the end had a really unexpected twist!
Read the first chapter of her next book (at the end of this story) and I want I want I want!!!
On my list to look for on my next visit to the library!

[minx]

Have just finished reading Shadow In Tiger Country

I quite enjoyed it. It was nothing exciting but an easy to read, insight to a
woman who was diagnosed with a brain tumor and how she lived her life from
diagnosis to death. Sounds morbid, but its not. I just hope that if my time came
I would do it half as well as she did then I would be content.

Determined to leave something behind when she went, she started a blog/online diary
with the intention of turning it into a book. The blog became a huge success and
she died before the book.. It was published posthumously with alternate entries
from her husband......so you see both sides of it.

Fairly fast moving, doesn't dwell much on the doom and gloom, and I am
quite glad I read it.

Have just started another called Emma, VIP, about a woman & her guide dog Emma
after the womans sight is miraculously restored........

[maire]

The first one sounds very sad to me Minx, I don't think
I could cope with so much sadness.
But the 2nd one, sounds good. I'll keep an eye out for that one.

At the moment I'm reading Promise of the Wolves by Dorothy Hearst. Set 40,000 years ago and is narrated by a she-wolf.
It's a bit different, but you forget it's from a wolves perspective.
I read something similar a few years ago, but that involved mammoths .. a sad tale as it was set in the time they were becoming extinct.

[ringdove]

Sorry Sparrow it's only today that I saw your msg about the film based on the book Waiting to Exhale.
I'll remember to avoid the film, while you get hold of the book!
Cheers
Ringdove

[herodotus]

stranger and friend: hortense powdermaker

[herodotus]

thinking to some purpose: L. Susan Stebbing...written in 1929, Ms Stebbing was one of Bertrand Russels students at Cambridge in the twenties. this is an excellent book for the layperson to check their logic against the real thing..much ofun

[minx]

Just opened, Virgin King, the story of Richard Branson.

Fell asleep reading the foreward so hope its not an indication of the way the book will go

Looks interesting tho...

[herodotus]

Marvin Harris: "Our Kind"....google it!

[herodotus]

secrets of the temple:william greider....how the federal reserve runs the u.s.

[Misstique]

Follow the North Star by Harriette de Jarnette

Historical romance certainly, but has elements in it which makes it interesting reading. The Civil War, Revolutionaries, black slaves who had been freed but then recaptured by Bounty Hunters and enslaved again. Their attempts & struggles to leave US and enter Canada by following the North Star, and the white people who helped them.

[Misstique]

DESERT FLOWER .... by Waris Dirie & Cathleen Miller [/b][/size]


A truly heart-wrenching & touching true story of this Somalian girl (Waris Dirie) who ran away from the only home she knew, because at age 13 she was to be married off! She ran off into the desert, and survived against all odds.

Worst part of the bio is that at age 5 she suffered Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) as female circumcision is practised in their culture so to keep the girls 'pure' for marriage! Real cruel.

Upshot is ... she ended up a SUPERMODEL, wife, mother and now an United Nations Ambassador for the rights of women against FGM. She is an absolutely gorgeous woman, strong, courageous, and the book is well worth reading.

[minx]

Misstique, there is a sequel to that book.
Its called "Desert Dawn"

It follows on, and covers her return to Somalia, she traces the roots of her courage and resilliance and humour, back to her culture, and particularly to her mother.

[Misstique]

Really minx? Excellent, I'll keep an eye out for it.
Desert Flower was real heartrending, but well worth staying up late at night to read!
Thanks for sharing minx.

[yollie]

I just finished Triptych by Karin Slaughter. Up to her usual standards

[Misstique]

Ok, I just finished a book:


A CHILD NAMED NKOSI by Jim Wooten -


Heartwrenching true story of a young African boy born with Aids and how he touched the hearts of millions. What got my attention right from the start was the boy was practising his speech he was to speak at an Aids Conference. It went like this -

"We are all the same, We all belong to one family. We are all the same, We are not different
from one another."

This is an adaptation of the memorable words spoken by Shylock in Shakespeare's - The Merchant of Venice:

I am a Jew.
Hath not Jew eyes?
hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?
If you prick us do we not bleed?


In this sense, Nkosi was not speaking for Jews, but rather an expanding extended family he had not asked to join: the millions of Africans who carried the deadly HIV virus in their bodies, an infection that stigmatised them as the lepers of the new millenium. he child was speaking for them, for himself, and for all the maligned & marginalised of the earth.

We belong to one family
We love & we laugh
We hurt & we cry
We live ..... and we die


He rounds his speech off with:

Care for us & accept us
We are all human beings
We are normal
We have hands
We have feet
We can walk
We can talk
And we have needs like everyone else
Don't be afraid of us
We are all the same.



Isn't that beautiful people? I think so. I was deeply touched by this book, this story. Go figure, I always seem to be picking out books that really pull at my heartstrings lately?!

Making me a big ole sooky la la ....!!!

[ringdove]

Very moving.
It's interesting and ironic how it takes disease. conditions like AIDS and disasters for us to transcend religion, national and ethnic identity.
Ringdove

[yollie]

I found another book by Cathy Reichs that I hadn't read, so finished that this week.

[maire]

I've started four different books in the last week, while waiting for one
to arrive from a TM purchase.
I don't usually read autobiographies, but saw and bought "Bitch & Famous" by Wendyl Nissan.
I've read the first four chapters and it promises to be a very interesting book.
Sad first chapter, she writes about losing her 3 month old daughter to a cot death
That's going to be my daytime read [when I get the time] and my night one at the moment is Odalisque by Fiona McIntosh. It's the 1st of a 2 book series and I bought the 2nd book a while ago not realising it was #2 and luckily found the #1 on TM.

[herodotus]

frieda fromm reichmann, m.d. : principles of intesnsive psychotherapy

[herodotus]

and...upstairs...meet your lesbian match******browse photos now! www.pinkcupid.wow!

[naki]

currently reading "Rommel?""Gunner who?" by Spike Milligan. A unique recollection of the part a young and scrawny trumpet player, armed with nothing more than raging hormones and heavy artillery, spent his war. There are several volumes of Milligan's war diaries, I get them out and read them occasionally as an antidote to the way that war gets reported to us.

[sparrow]

I'm reading the Conqueror series by Conn Iggulden about Ghengis Khan. Well recommended.

[demeter1]

naki. Mt Dad is obsessed with Spike Milligan. We used to love Badjelly the witch. So much talent in one guy

[Lux]

Listened to Bad Jelly on Radio every Sunday morning, loved it too!
I'm reading Lovely Bones - Alice Seabold

[maire]

My current book .. World without End by Ken Follett.
During my holiday, I went on a book buying spree and bought
a series by K.J Parker plus a few other books from various sources.