General Chat

Puting this up a day early. Vote will be either Fiday pm or Saturday depending on response.

2 books as usual please.

Thank-you Ann.

I was stuck for ideas this time so looked up online "novels you should read" and came up with lots of suggestions: thought I'd try these ones.

"On the Road" by Jack Kerouac
Beat generation boys aim to “burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles”.
From Publishers Weekly:
Poetic, open and raw, Kerouac's prose lays out a cross-country adventure as experienced by Sal Paradise, an autobiographical character. A writer holed up in a room at his aunt's house, Paradise gets inspired by Dean Moriarty (a character based on Kerouac's friend Neal Cassady) to hit the road and see America. From the moment he gets on the seven train out of New York City, he takes the reader through the highs and lows of hitchhiking, bonding with fellow explorers and opting for beer before food. First published in 1957, Kerouac's perennially hot story continues to express the restless energy and desire for freedom that makes people rush out to see the world. The tale is only improved by Dillon's well-paced, articulate reading as he voices the flow of images and graveled reality of Paradise's search for the edge.

"Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant" by Anne Tyler
Three siblings are differently affected by their parents’ unexplained separation. The Tull family - frazzled and sometimes abusive mother Pearl, missing father Beck, jealous and manipulative son Cody, troubled but finally contented daughter Jenny, and loving, placid baby Ezra - resembles families most of us know. We first witness Pearl's memories as she wanders back through her life while lying on her deathbed; next, Cody takes over, and by the end of the book we have experienced each family member's perspective. Out of their often differing stories a picture emerges of Pearl: of how her travelling salesman husband left her with three children to care for, how she tried to provide both emotional and financial support, and how she failed (more or less, depending upon the perspective) to give them a loving and secure home. Her children create families for themselves with varying degrees of success - Cody with his brother's girlfriend, Jenny with a second husband and built-in family, Ezra with his restaurant - but never seem able to make it through a single dinner together without conflict. Lovable in the complicated way only family members are, they speak to us in the raucous chorus of guests at a dinner party, clamoring for our attention and inviting us to join in.

A French Affair by Susan Lewis

When Natalie Moore is killed in a freak accident in France her mother – the very poised and elegant Jessica – know instinctively there is more to it. However, Natalie’s father – the glamorous, high flying Charlie – is so paralysed by the horror of losing his daughter, that he refuses even to discuss his wife’s suspicions.
In the end, when their marriage is rocked by yet another terrible shock, Jessica decides to go back to France alone in search of some answers. When she gets to the idyllic vineyard in the heart of Bergundy she soon finds a great deal more than she was expecting in a love that is totally forbidden and a truth that will almost certainly devastate her life.

The Accidental Time traveller by Sharon Griffiths
Rosie Harford is having a very odd day.
After a blazing row with boyfriend Will, she sets off for her latest reporting assignment – an interview at The Meadows, a local housing estate and the location for a new reality TV show – The 1950s House.
But stepping through the front door, Rosie finds herself transported back in time. Everything is grey and drab – the food, the clothes, the TV.... When the penny finally drops – that she is an unsuspecting contestant on the show – Rosie decides to give it a go. After all, doesn’t she need a bit of excitement?
But, as the days go by in this new world without mobile phones and Topshop, the truth slowly dawns on Rosie that this is reality, not reality TV. She begins to embrace the simple 1950s life, which seems far removed from the noughties she left behind.
Rosie’s worls becomes even more bizarre when she discovers that Will is also trapped in the past – but here Will is a devoted family man called Billy. Thrown together by work the two grow closer until Rosie falls in love with him all over again. But now he is out of bounds. Unless she can get back to the present.

Will have to look at the books on my shelves this evening, then check which are still easily available.
Will be back tomorrow.

Tess

The Past and other lies by Maggie Joel:

A novel about sisters, faded memories and long-hidden secrets spanning three generations.
At the height of Britain’s General Strike in 1926 a red double-decker bus driven by a volunteer crashes into a low bridge in West London.
Almost eighty years later Jennifer Denzel reveals on daytime television that as a teenager she’d found her sister Charlotte hanging by a school tie in their bedroom. But Charlotte can’t believe her ears – it was, she protests, Jennifer who tried to commit suicide all those years ago.
Their grandmother Bertha dreams of a distant time: of a young man she met at a Socialist rally, an unexpected wedding and of a sister, long dead. Meanwhile her daughter, Deidre, remembers a night during the War forty years earlier, when a V-2 rocket destroyed an entire street, and when she made a shocking discovery.

Full of vivid detail of London past and present, The Past and Other Lies is full of warmth, atmosphere, wit and surprises.

I know this much is True by Wally Lamb.

Thomas and Dominick Birdsey are identical twins born to an unmarried, thirty-three-year-old mother. Twenty years after Thomas develops schizophrenia, he cuts off his right hand as a personal sacrifice to prevent the Gulf War between the United States and Iraq. His brother Dominick struggles to have him transferred from the maximum security ward at the state hospital to a less threatening environment. Dominick’s life is further complicated by flashbacks to their troubled childhood, unresolved grief over the death of his baby daughter, and continued problems with his irresponsible girlfriend Joy.

Initially an unsympathetic character, Dominick has developed a nasty sarcasm which is both his weapon and his shield. He has learned to withdraw emotionally, to hold himself in check. Under rigid control except for his anger, he nearly self-destructs. The discovery of his Sicilian grandfathers handwritten autobiography, together with counseling from Dr. Rubina Patel, his brother’s psychologist, ultimately enables him to understand and make peace with his family’s history.

(hard to find a review of it without too much detail - the back of the book has a lot of praises from various magazines/newspapers.)

Persey

Nineteen Minutes - by Jodi Picoult
Lacy's son was being bullied so he walked into the high school and killed ten people.
When did her shy 17 year old turn into a monster? And was it her fault?

High on Arrival - by Mackenzie Phillips
True story of a pop star's actress child. She had an early start into sex, drugs and the kind of life a Hollywood child can have with parents who were too preoccupied with their own lives and drugs to bother about where she was or what she did.

The Passage - Justin Cronin

A virus nearly destroys the world, and a six-year-old girl holds the key to bringing it back. The Passage takes readers on a journey from the early days of the virus to the aftermath of the destruction, where packs of the hungry infected scour the razed, charred cities looking for food, and the survivors eke out a bleak, brutal existence shadowed by fear.

The Accidental Sorcerer by K E Mills

Gerald Dunwoody, a Third Grade wizard and lowly safety inspector for Ottoslands Department of Thaumaturgy, inadvertently blows up a factory while trying to save it. Summarily fired, Gerald takes a job in almost bankrupt New Ottosland as royal court wizard for King Lional the 43rd. To prove his powers to the doubtful king and his put-upon sister, Prime Minister Princess Melissande, Gerald turns a cat into a lion and transforms the dowdy princess into a literally bewitching fashion plate, but preventing war between New Ottosland and Kallarap and making a highly illegal dragon for the king may be beyond his will and abilities.

My first suggestion is-

The Last Templar by Raymond Khoury

1261 AD, Acre. As the city burns under the onslaught of the Sultan's men, the "Falcon Temple" sets sail, carrying a small band of knights and a mysterious chest entrusted to them by the Order's Grand Master. The ship vanishes without a trace....

Present-day New York. At the Metropolitan Musemn, four horsemen dressed as Knights Templar storm the gala opening of an exhibition of Vatican treasures and, in a brutal and bloody attack, steal an arcane medieval decoder.

For FBI agent Sean Reilly and archaeologist Tess Chaykin, this is just the start of a deadly game of cat and mouse as they race across three continents, trying to stay one step ahead of ruthless killers while chasing down a centuries-old mystery....
- - - - - - -
My second suggestion

The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans

In the still of a snow-covered morning in upstate New York, a girl out riding her horse is hit by a 40-ton truck. Though horribly injured, both thirteen-year-old Grace Maclean and her horse Pilgrim survive. But the impact on their lives and the lives of those who love them is devastating.
Grace is the only child of a prominent New York magazine editor, Annie Graves, and her lawyer husband, Robert. In a way which none of them at first understands, their destiny comes to depend upon Pilgrim's. So mutilated and traumitised is he that even the vet who saved his life now wishes he hadn't. Annie refuses to have him destroyed, sensing that if she does, something in Grace will die too.

She hears about a man in Montana, a "whisperer" who is said to have the gift of healing troubled horses. Abandoning her job, Annie sets off across the continent with Grace and Pilgrim to find him.
The man's name is Tom Booker and he lives on the Rocky Mountain Front, a place of daunting beauty. Here under the massive Montana sky, all their lives are changed forever.


Both books available from Amazon and other outlets at reduced price,

The Penguin Modern Poets Book 10: Mersey Sound: Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, Brian Patten
Anyone fancy some poetry for a change?
'The Mersey Sound is an attempt to introduce contemporary poetry to the general reader by publishing representative work by each of three modern poets in a single volume, in each case the selection has been made to illustrate the poet's characteristics in style and form'. With this modest brief, The Mersey Sound was conceived and first published in 1967. An anthology which features Roger McGough's work, alongside that of Brian Patten and Adrian Henri (The Liverpool Poets), it went on to sell over half a million copies and to become the bestselling poetry anthology of all time.

A is for Alibi by Sue Grafton
Kinsey Millhone, private investigator, had been out most of the morning and the client was waiting in the corridor. The eight years in prison since Kinsey had seen Nikki Fife had left no visible scars. But now she was looking for help that only a detective could provide. For whoever had killed her husband, it wasn't Nikki Fife. And if his wife wasn't the murderer, that meant someone else was …......

(Both available cheaply fromAmazon)

I think just Jill to come now.

We really have been good this time Ann !! I notice GR doesn't put gold stars after our names only their own.

We have got that poetry book Pammy, came back from UK in OH's backpack many years ago.
Also have the Horse Whisperer sitting there unread...
so if those two are chosen - I won't even have to leave the house... LOL

Just Jill to make suggestions.

So sorry Ann, been a busy few days and over here, we don't worry to much about dates then wonder where the month has gone :) Still thinking we are in October half the time :))

My choices are
The Poet by Michael Connelly
The apparent suicide of his policeman brother sets Denver crime reporter Jack McEvoy on edge. Surprise at the circumstances of his brother's death prompts Jack to look into a whole series of police suicides and puts him on the trail of a cop-killer whose victims are selected all too carefully. Not only that, but they all leave suicide notes drawn from the poems of writer Edgar Allan Poe in their wake. More frightening still the killer appears to know that Jack is getting nearer and nearer. An investigation that looks like being the story of a lifetime, might also be Jack's ticket to a lonely end.

Cross Stitch by Diana Gabaldon

Claire Randall is leading a double life. She has a husband in one century - and a lover in another...In 1945, Claire Randall is back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon in Scotland. Innocently, she walks through a stone circle in the Highlands, and finds herself in a violent skirmish taking place in 1743. Suddenly, she is a Sassenach, an outlander, in a country torn by war and by clan feuds. A wartime nurse, Claire can deal with the bloody wounds that face her. But it is harder to deal with the knowledge that she is in Jacobite Scotland and the carnage of Culloden is looming. Marooned amid the passion and violence, the superstition, the shifting allegiances and the fervent loyalties, Claire is in danger from Jacobites and Redcoats - and from the shock of her own desire for James Fraser, a gallant and courageous young Scots warrior. Jamie shows her a passion so fierce and a love so absolute that Claire becomes a woman torn between fidelity and desire, and between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives

x Jill