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Winter of 2007-2008 February 17, 2008

Posted by Jackie Sampson in : All Posts , 3comments

This is a great picture of Dave’s kids, Cormac and Josie, atop a pile of snow in their yard in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.  Any challengers out there who can top this claim to an especially snowy winter?

Books, Books, Books February 1, 2008

Posted by Diane Bird in : All Posts , 4comments

The proposal to share suggestions for good books is alive and well, just slow in getting started!

Reading has always been one of my personal favorite pastimes, and after talking with others in the family I know I am not alone. In fact, though we may rank fiction, biography, sports, politics or history in different order, none of us is stuck in any one genre; rather I think we are willing to act on most any recommendation regardless of type. We all have our favorite authors as well. Now, with this blog, we have an easy method for letting others know what we are reading, why it is a good book or not, why we chose that book, who our favorite authors are, what is our favored genre, and sharing titles, titles, and more titles.

When a few of us visited family in Central City in October of ’06, Jackie introduced us to a website called www.paperbackswap.com I became a member and my “history archive” already shows that I have read 75 books since joining (!), many of which I may never have come across except for this club. Always a lover of good fiction, my list of recommendations is long on fiction, though I will frequently pick up a non-fiction book that Mike liked.

Mike tends to concentrate on a subject before moving on to the next; for example, he has gone through phases of reading about the Civil War, the Holocaust, the Vietnam war, books on India, on Vietnam, and on Afghanistan. Mike enjoys biographies, politics, sports and history, and has read several books by Halberstam, Woodward, Tolstoy, Sagan, Michael Ondaatje and Cormac McCarthy. If you would like to see a list of books Mike has read in the recent past, you can go to www.golflakeview.blogspot.com and type “books” in the search box.

From way back when, authors I have considered unforgettable are G.K. Chesterton, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, Pearl Buck and Washington Irving. Stories about settling the Midwest are beautifully told by Willa Cather. Books that changed my life were written by Richard Bach and Robert Farrar Capon. More recent favorites are any books written by Margaret Atwood, Barbara Kingsolver and Chris Bohjalian. If you liked “Little Women”, there is an interesting book titled “March” by Geraldine Brooks that is written about their mostly absent father. For fun and laughs, try the “#1 Ladies Detective Agency” series by Alexander McCall Smith. Women authors who have written good reads are Anita Shreve, Louise Erdrich, Monica Wood, Sue Miller and Susan Isaacs. For light, enjoyable reading there is always the series by Sue Grafton. Do read everything by Cormac McCarthy.

Most recently I have completed “The Kite Runner”, “Atonement” and “A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khaled Hosseini, “Ahab’s Wife” by Sena Jeter Naslund and “The Bookseller of Kabul” by Asne Seierstad. Right now I am about halfway through “Ask the Dust” by John Fante, and enjoying it immensely. Waiting in the wings are a book about Marie Antoinette called “Abundance”, written by Sena Jeter Naslund, and also Brian O’Doherty’s “The Deposition of Father McGreevy”.

Anyone who hasn’t read “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” must turn off their computer right now and go get it from your local library or bookstore. I loved it! It granted me the right to correct anyone’s grammar, syntax, spelling or pronunciation… even Mike’s!

Your turn now. Please use the following “comment” section to add your recent good reads, your favorite authors and your thoughts on any written subject matter whatsoever. Let’s have a conversation!