Welcome to bookchat where you can talk about anything...books, plays, essays, and books on tape. You don’t have to be reading a book to come in, sit down, and chat with us.
Let a man get up and say, Behold, this is the truth, and instantly I perceive a sandy cat filching a piece of fish in the background. Look, you have forgotten the cat, I say.
Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.
My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery - always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What's this passion for?
Virginia Woolf
http://www.brainyquote.com/...
Every book is unique in its own way, but just to get discussion started, tonight, I wanted to mention some books that I found unusual and that I enjoyed. Please share your favorite books in the comments below.
Several people had mentioned the mystery story Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann. I was just in the right mood to read it last week and I really enjoyed it. There is more to the story than just talking sheep and a mystery. I liked the characters of the sheep and the back story of Othello and Melmoth was poignant. Maple is the smartest sheep and Mopple the Whale remembers things except for one night when…but that would be a spoiler.
I laughed quite a lot as I read the story and while I often read a mystery in a few hours, this story took me several days to savor and digest. I am going to remember it fondly for a long time where I often forget the plot of a general mystery after I read it.
The Elfin Ship by James P. Blaylock is an old favorite of mine from 1982. Again, I was sucked into the story and never let go. It was humorous and fun to read.
Wiki says:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
The story centers on a river trip organized when trading ships with Christmas items inexplicably fail to arrive. Unknown to the heroes, their route downriver to a seaside trading center will take them through areas under siege from evil forces including crazed goblins, malevolent witches, and the sinister dwarf Selznak.
Professor Wurzle provides somewhat misguided explanations and histories for events as they arise. The youngest character, Dooly, is given to wild fantasies and stories. This frequently leaves the inexperienced adventurer, cheesemaker Jonathan Bing, with competing and implausible explanations as to what is actually going on. (As the story progresses, it becomes evident that many of Dooly’s apparently wilder statements are true.)
Downstream, they encounter Miles the Magician, the carefree link men, and the elves at Seaside running the mysterious elfin ship, which is seen at rare, inexplicable moments…
A children’s book that I really enjoyed and which I thought was very unusual and thought-provoking is Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn.
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/...
Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal pangram,* “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island’s Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop. As the letters progressively drop from the statue they also disappear from the novel. The result is both a hilarious and moving story of one girl’s fight for freedom of expression, as well as a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhere.
*pangram: a sentence or phrase that includes all the letters of the alphabet
For general fiction, I have enjoyed two books by Stephanie Kallos, Broken for You and Sing Them Home. The characters were interesting and the plot went into unusual areas and the end result was different than the usual books I read. There was depth to them so that I remember the stories years later.
The Narrow Road to the Interior by Matsuo Basho, trans. Sam Hamill, is a journal that the poet kept as he visited areas of Northern Japan with a friend named Sora mostly on foot, once in a while by boat and at the end on horseback in 1689.
page 96
The sky cleared the morning of the sixteenth. I sailed to Iro Beach a dozen miles away and gathered several colorful shells with a Mr. Tenya, who provided a box lunch and sake and even invited his servants. A few fisherman's shacks dotted the beach, and the tiny Hokke Temple was disheveled. We drank tea and hot sake, lost in a sweeping sense of isolation as dusk came on.
Wave after wave
mixes tiny shells
with bush clover flowers
The autobiographical stories by Homer Hickam were poignant and memorable.
Rocket Boys
Coalwood Way
Sky of Stone
A gripping true story is River-Horse by William Least-Heat Moon
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
River Horse is an account of a four-month coast-to-coast boat trip across the U.S., using the nation's waterways almost exclusively, and retraces of Lewis and Clark's frontier exploration.
The Summer Book and Moominpapa at Sea by Tove Jansson are two books that MT Spaces encouraged me to read.
The Dream Antilles by David Seth Michaels (A Daily Kos writer) is a book that carries you to a very unusual place.
(Dkos review)
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Other books that I felt were unusual and I highly recommend:
Bill of Wrongs by Molly Ivins with Lou Dubose
Mama Day by Gloria Naylor (GussieFN got me to read these)
Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II by Robert Kurson
A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History's Greatest Traveler, a bio of James Holman by Jason Roberts
Tigana and Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay
Naomi Novik’s books about the dragon Temeraire set in Napoleon’s time, an alternative universe
His Majesty’s Dragon
Throne of Jade
Black Powder War
Empire of Ivory
Victory of Eagles
Tongues of Serpents
Crucible of Gold (coming March 6th)
Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman (Limelite reminded me in a diary about this small book that I have read twice and loved).
A perfect fit for tonight's theme, KenBee says:
If I miss wed's diary and I always do, post this for me that they should read
"In the Sea There are Crocodiles " by Fabio Geda.
This is the best thing I have read in years, better than the 'Kite Runner' and anyone who read that should read this, it literally called me from the shelf..in the library I try to listen, but it's so noisy...
I checked it out once and didn't get to it so it hollered at me again.
by KenBee on Tue Nov 15, 2011 at 12:06:17 AM EST
Synopsis
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/...
When ten-year-old Enaiatollah Akbari’s small village in Afghanistan falls prey to Taliban rule in early 2000, his mother shepherds the boy across the border into Pakistan but has to leave him there all alone to fend for himself. Thus begins Enaiat’s remarkable and often punishing five-year ordeal, which takes him through Iran, Turkey, and Greece before he seeks political asylum in Italy at the age of fifteen.
Along the way, Enaiat endures the crippling physical and emotional agony of dangerous border crossings, trekking across bitterly cold mountain pathways for days on end or being stuffed into the false bottom of a truck. But not every¬one is as resourceful, resilient, or lucky as Enaiat, and there are many heart-wrenching casualties along the way.
Based on Enaiat’s close collaboration with Italian novelist Fabio Geda and expertly rendered in English by an award- winning translator, this novel reconstructs the young boy’s memories, perfectly preserving the childlike perspective and rhythms of an intimate oral history.
Told with humor and humanity, In the Sea There Are Crocodiles brilliantly captures Enaiat’s moving and engaging voice and lends urgency to an epic story of hope and survival.
Thanks, KenBee. I have put it on my wish list.
What books have you enjoyed reading that are unusual?
Diaries of the week:
Write On! Stay in the flow.
by SensibleShoes
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Thursday Classical Music OPUS 59: Beethoven Symphony #7, the finale
by Dumbo
http://www.dailykos.com/...
R&BLers: 2011 MBFI – Chillin’ with Calvin Trillin
by Limelite
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Limelite says:
Announcement
Tomorrow's regularly scheduled installment of the e-Readers & Book Lovers Club is postponed to the following THU, Nov. 24th at the regular time 2 PM ET -- something to go with your turkey and pie.
I will be involved with Book Fair events and am unable to be in two places at once -- mentally. So, I hope you'll join me then. I'm about half through with our selection, Stewart Buettner's The Shakespeare Manuscript: The Original Hamlet Discovered and am enjoying it more than I thought I would. Definitely lots to talk about!
FREE for Kindle owners.
For owners of Sony devices: ebookstore $2.99
NOTE: plf515 has book talk on Wednesday mornings early.