Recent content by mamabookworm61

More on The Red Tent I just finished The Red Tent and enjoyed it immensely. So did my (all-women) reading group. I've enjoyed hearing about men's reactions to the book, too. One member of our reading group told her male friend that the red tent was where ancient women spent the days of their...

Yes, thanks, Stewart, for the great review!

Well put! Shade, Interesting comments--particularly about the book's filmic aspects. I enjoyed the playfulness of Eugenides' narrative techniques--the "rewind," the first-person narrator with an omniscient view of his own grandparents' lives, the narrator's repeated hints that he isn't...

txgirl, Let us know what you think when you've read more. My book club is discussing Middlesex tonight.

Thanks for the awesome rundown!

I haven't read it, but thanks for your assessment. It will help me decide whether to add it to my list.

Nebraska original I moved from Nebraska a couple of years ago. A chain of fast-food restaurants there has been built around a sandwich that's based upon an old German-Russian family recipe. The Runza is a filling of ground beef, onions, cabbage, and seasonings that's enclosed in bread dough...

This thread has been inactive for a while, but as I just finished enjoying the book, I thought I'd throw my 2 cents in. Place: I enjoyed J.E.’s depictions of place. He gave a wonderful, authentic-feeling, detailed sense of life in Bithynios and Detroit, in terms of the landscape, the...

Coastal New England I'll go first. Here are my recommendations for a trip to coastal New England: 1) Beth Gutcheon's More Than You Know (terrific novel set in coastal Maine village) 2) Harry Goodridge's A Seal Called Andre (non-fiction; humorous story of a man's experiences with a tamed...

What to read while in . . . When I'm vacationing in a new place, I make it a point to read books by local authors with local settings. It gives me a different window on the local culture, and it gives me an insider's thrill to visit a landmark and think, "Yeah, this is where that scene happened...

Here are the American Library Association's Notable Books in fiction for 2005: I Sailed with Magellan by Stuart Dybek Dybek connects gently ironic stories of growing up and getting out in Polish American Chicago in the 1960s and 1970s. Popular Music from Vittula by Mikael Niemi The...

mehastings is correct. Ideas cannot be copyrighted, but actual text can. So, you are free to use another's ideas without requesting permission--only a citation giving credit is necessary. But to quote or excerpt text from another source, permission may be required. The permission must come...

More Than You Know , by Beth Gutcheon Highly recommended! With the wisdom of age, Hannah looks back to her seventeenth summer, spent in Dundee, Maine, her family's ancestral home. The anguished events of Hannah's summer--chafing under the suspicious, dissatisfied eye of her stepmother...

No one has mentioned the Betsy-Tacy books by Maude Harte Lovelace. (Betsy and Tacy , Betsy, Tacy and Tib , Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill , etc.) I don't know if anyone has mentioned Walter Farley's Black Stallion series, or that other horse-lover's classic, Black Beauty .

Love the library! I only go to the bookstore when the library doesn't own a book I've got to have (or when the waiting list is a mile long). I especially appreciate being able to check out six books, and then return five of them unread--with no guilt or regret. Can't do that at a bookstore...