Amazon to the rescue with Shelfari

Greetings!

 

Thank you for using Reading List by Amazon and for your patience as we’ve worked to make your book information available after LinkedIn deprecated their application program. Your Reading List information has been preserved and is available for import on Shelfari.com. 

This is the message I got in my inbox today, and it took me about 10 minutes to figure out how to retrieve my LinkedIn list and post it on the blog.  I haven't figured out where my reviews are, but at least I have the books!

Cool.

Open City: A Novel

I'm halfway through this book - it won all sorts of awards and I downloaded the sample from Amazon and really liked it, so bought the book.  I can only describe the writing as dense - every sentence is packed with meaning and words that I've never encounterered before.  It starts with the main character Julius walking through the streets of New York and I am enjoying reading it on my iPad so I can look up words and pull up google maps to see where he is.

But it's starting to read more like nonfiction than fiction.  Everything is told from Julius' point of view and the narrative is dark.  It meanders quite a bit - I think that's why there is so much walking - paralleling what you encounter on the streets of cities.  The story moves to Brussels and becomes even more somber as stories unfold about disenfranchised immigrants who fled impossible situations in their home countries.

I wish I could sense that this story is going to go somewhere, or if it will continue on its current path.  If I had a paper copy I would be flipping through for hints of redemption or hope.  I haven't got the hang of how to do that on Kindle.  For now I'm not sorry I've read this far, but think I will put it down for a while and decide whether to try and finish it.  Although I probably won't...I think a good book should leave the reader unambiguous about needing to turn the page.

http://www.amazon.com/Open-City-Novel-Teju-Cole/dp/0812980093

Yech and Double Yech

I know this blog is called books we love to share, but I think I need to make room for books we need to issue warnings.  "Don't read this!!!!"

So really I have no one to blame but myself and Amazon reader reviews.  I saw this book "How I Came to Sparkle Again" by Kaya McLaren and it looked like saccharine, but it was about a woman who'd lost her sense of who she was and returned to a ski town in Colorado to heal.  I ignored my better judgment partially because of the ski town thing.  The other thing that drew me was a review from an author I'd been wanting to read based on some book club reviews and perusing Amazon's recommends.  I had been keeping Kristin Hannah's book "On Mystic Lake" only wish list and she loved the book.

Well I barely got through the Sparkle book but I managed to finish it.  Felt like watching The Hallmark Channel and I was ashamed.  So then I thought "who is this Kristin Hannah?" and decided to read her book out of a weird kind of curiosity.  I couldn't believe it - the plot lines were nearly identical!  I think there may actually be a genre for it:  woman's husband cheats on her, she returns home to find herself, and meets a recently widowed man with a troubled daughter who desperately needs someone to help her cope with her mother's death.  Woman steps in, they fall in love, and she stays in the town she thought she left behind forever.

I only got about 10% through the Mystic book when I skipped to the end to confirm my suspicions.

So please don't read these books.  Please.

What's with Wisconsin?

I have been mentally trying to recreate my reading list I lost (really irked at LinkedIn...holding a grudge and avoiding their site for awhile).  Edgar Sawtelle was a wonderfully read - poetic about the Sawtelle dogs.  The Art of Fielding was wonderful, too - poetic about baseball and friendship.  I found A Reliable Wife stark and chilling, but I couldn't put it down.

It occurred to me that all three of these books were set in Wisconsin.  A state I only knew as the summer vacation of my younger life - Ken Murphy's classic log cabin on Spider Lake.  And then I moved to Wisconsin with my family in 2006.  Reluctantly moved for all the right practical reasons - job, school, proximity to Chicago.

First I fell in love with Packer fans.  Then the amazing cheeses that we discovered in Chicago but finally found at Nola's Fromagerie in Green Bay.  Then I visited Madison on a beautiful fall day.  I guess I've been slow to appreciate all that is uniquely Wisconsin, but these three books are proof that this state is a hidden, misunderstood gem of a place.

But I still hate the grocery stores and shopping.  Too many sweatshirts, not enough beautiful shoes.

Reading G is for Gumshoe

I have recently started reading mystery series.  I asked my friend Jack Frye what he reads and he told me about a book series set in the national parks.  Jack retired after a career as a librarian, so I thought I should consider his recommendation seriously. Plus he and his wife Marcy set the bar high for what to do in retirement.  They canoe, bike, sail Lake Superior and are game for anything without being fitness jocks.

Nevada Barr wrote the series with Anna Pigeon as the detective.  The books were so easy to pick up and read, yet intelligent enough to hold my interest.  I read several until the last one got a little gruesome on me.  I'm now reading Sue Grafton and Kinsey Millhone is the private investigator.  I am being true to the series and reading in order.  It's a little dated but I like Kinsey.

The great thing about liking a series is you've always got something to read when you don't have a good book waiting for you.  Not that these aren't good books but they're not great books, books you hate to end.  In fact you're always kind of glad when a mystery is solved and you can check that book off and mark a notch on your reading belt.  Sort of like watching Castle or Bones.

I think it's a coincidence that the protagonists are female, but maybe it isn't.

Falling Together

Just finished my third novel from Marisa de los Santos.  I love her characters, and I loved Pen and Will in Falling Together.  I had read some reviews that this book was not quite up to her first two, but I enjoyed this one, too.

Maybe the stories were better in Love Walked In and Belong to Me - but in each book she just knows how to use words in a lovely wonderful way.  Sometimes I don't know what kind of books I like - when people ask me what I read I can't really describe what draws me to a book.  How do you explain that you like books that are well written???  My favorite books might be thematically linked or primarily a similar genre, but I don't see it that way at all.

I hardly ever read nonfiction for pleasure - almost all the nonfiction books I read are related to work - strategy, marketing, consulting, innovation.  They never captivate me the way literature does.  I think it's the heart/head thing.  I really liked and valued Jim Collins "Good to Great" - but love?  No nuh-uh.

http://www.amazon.com/Marisa-De-los-Santos/e/B001I9TVFC

I lost my Amazon reading list!

I'm bereft!  I was trying to be good about adding books I was reading to the LinkedIn Reading List application - and when I looked for it this morning, pouf! it was gone :(

I was inspired by my former neighbor Sher Isenberg - inspired to read more books and better books.  She kept a notebook of books she had read, and books she wanted to read.  I just wanted it to be digital - always available, easy to share (not that I think many people ever looked at it).  So I'm going to give it another go via Google and hope they're decent enough to let me know if they decide to delete my stuff.

So here goes another blogger sending thoughts into the blogosphere - hope someone reads and especially hope someone recommends a great book.