Monday, April 4, 2011

Testing...testing

Wowzers. I guess it has been awhile since I checked this!

A few books I have read in the past year or so that I found worthwhile...not particularly in order.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
These Is My Words - LOVED (and Star Garden and Sarah's Quilt)
The Water and the Blood - LOVED
The Glass Castle
Half Broke Horses
All the Maisie Dobbs books - hooray!!
The Help (I liked most of it, didn't love the ending)

Recently I have been skimming Malcolm Gladwell's books (Outliers, Blink, The Tipping Point) which I find compelling because of the anecdotes, but otherwise I find them very obnoxious! His books should really be trimmed down to longish New Yorker articles. Yet the stories keep me going back anyway.

Hidden Gifts of the Introverted Child (as recommended by Kacy, because I like her recommendations.... except for Gladwell but apparently I like him anyway) is interesting and I have been flipping through it.

Re-read A Midwife's Story and A Wise Birth and have been re-reading Birthing from Within. I LOVE Birthing from Within. She's a little "out there" with some of her stuff but I still love the book. I particularly love the chapter about how labor/birth is hard and you shouldn't count on being able to "transcend" it through meditation or breathing or even drugs. It's hard no matter what, even if you do have drugs and support people, but most importantly, it is doable and it doesn't have to be scary.

That's all I can remember reading after a quick skim of my Goodreads. I recently re-read Joy in the Morning and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn which I re-read every 5 years or so. Also re-read Huckleberry Finn, a classic of course.

Now I think it's time for me to get something new from the library.

What have you been reading?

7 comments:

grannybabs said...

Right now I am almost to the end of Cutting for Stone - and it's a really great read! How did I not know about this book until now??

Phoebe said...

I just read Cutting for Stone. I liked it.
Now I am rading The Elegance of the Hedgehog. A tad slow for me, but I am enjoying it.
Next up The Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.

BTW I have read most of your reads, Eliza and I also liked them -especially These is my Words! I totally agree about Gladwell's stuff. Have you read Nuture Shock?

grannybabs said...

Persist with Elegance of the Hedgehog - it is worth the wait - the wait for it to get "compelling" that is!

hanner said...

i just read a book for my book group called "arabian days and nights" by naguib mafouz. it's basically a re-telling of the arabian nights stories, which i'm not all that familiar with. it was hard to keep up with! so many unfamiliar names. but it was alright. the next book i have next is "the year of living biblically" about a guy who spends a year living the bible literally. haha. should be... interesting. the woman who chose it was deciding between that book and "age of miracles: embracing the new middle age." her selections, thankfully, are not par for the course with our book group's usual choices.

Eliza said...

Hooray, comments!

I remember when the living biblically book came out and heard several interviews with the author at the time. I'm interested to know how you like it.

Will check out The Cutting Stone and Nurture Shock!

Eliza said...

oops, meant cutting for stone.

Eliza said...

ooh, just saw the new MD book A Lesson in Secrets. I am always behind on these. Added it to my hold queue at the library.