What are we reading in May?

I'm finishing Max Barry's Lexicon, but I downloaded a whole bunch of free Wharton onto my Kindle.

I'm reading 2 good books by women now. The first is Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan about a girl who models for Degas's Ballet Girls paintings and her family and the plight of the poor in 19th century France, not good. One of the best things about the book is that the author has a tie in to the paintings on her site:
www.cathymariebuchanan.com/art
How I wish all books about art had such a tie in.
I'm also 2/3 through China Dolls and am learning much about the plight of Chinese in 20th century America, and about the entertainers on the "Chop Suey" circuit.

Little Men and then I'm going to go on to Jo's Boys for the current Reading Through Time Quarterly. It's an excuse to finish up one from my piles of Library of America.

Also, Finnikin of the Rock for some fantasy reading.

Reading The Sundial by Shirley Jackson and highly enjoying it.

I'm currently making my way through It Happened One Summer by Polly Williams with The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue as its successor.

The Beauty of the Husband by Anne Carson. Gorgeously garroting thus far.

Death of Bees. Not sure if I will be able to complete it. Nicely written, interesting narrative shifts, but the Novel of the Relentlessly Traumatic Girlhood is sort of getting to me.

To be honest, I could use a good book idea right now. I'm feeling a little behind on what's current. Any suggestions?? Thanks :-)

I'm reading Penelope by Rebecca Harrington. I enjoy books set in college with a young student finding her feet, but the titular character in this one is just too socially inept and odd to be believable. The stilted speech patterns of all the characters feel artificial too. It is a fast read though, and funny in places.

Finished The Sundial. Shirley Jackson is absolutely my hero. I already knew she could write scary, creepy, dark, weird, but now I discover she's also very funny. Black humor, of course, but that's my favorite kind.

Turning to another favorite author, Margaret Atwood, and reading The Robber Bride.

Death of Bees turned out to be a very nice little read, but the ending is somewhat abrupt and a bit too neat.

Finished Life After Life by Kate ATkinson, which was a big hit with my book club. I'm having trouble settling down with anything else, but going to try Coventry by Helen Humphreys next.

I'm on the last part of The Language of Flowers which has the most self destructive main character I've ever read. The little girl Victoria was shuttled to foster home after foster home and developed an angry, violent personality. I admit, if I'd ever come into contact with her, I wouldn't have had the patience or temperament to deal with her shenanigans, even though the book makes it clear why she is the way she is. I'm not sure how this is going to end, since it's American I imagine everything is going to work out fine, but I guess I'll see. Really, this is one desperately self destructive young woman.

OtherJoyce - OMG that book drove me crazy because of that charactrer. I couldn't believe the hoops that everyone else jumped through for her. What was wrong with them? I read that for my book club, and we actually didn't have much discussion, but everyone liked it more than I did (which was not much at all). But no one really wanted to talk about it either (unlike Life After Life, which everyone liked and which generated a lot of great discussion). Not sure why Language of Flowers has such wide appeal. It's very middle of the road in my books.

Spoiler alert: you're right.

OtherJoyce - and here's the part of the review I wrote that you might relate to:

"At first I found this book readable but sort of tedious. Victoria was a difficult character to empathize with, but then she's supposed to be damaged by her miserable childhood. After all, how can one love if one has never experienced love? I soon grew frustrated with the novel, however. Victoria's problems are caused by getting in her own way, and they are then solved by either coincidences or the kindness of others (who she has mistreated): Her boss routinely gives her packets of cash; Her roommate conveniently goes away so she can have the apartment to herself at a crucial plot point; She just happens to know a midwife when she has refused prenatal care or medical insurance, etc. Through all this she's pretty much a jerk to everyone she knows. Yet people constantly go out of their way to help her. I also rolled my eyes at how easily she started a phenomenally successful florist business.

In summary, The Language of Flowers was both implausible and predicable. "

from: https://www.librarything.com/topic/164095#4612312

>15 Nickelini: Good review, and I'm glad not to be the only curmudgeon regarding the character. Understanding why she is as violent and antisocial as she is, I feel that she did deserve people to reach out to her, but her testing got out of hand. When she hit the bus driver over the head I think there would be a more appropriate response than laughter. Then there was the magical midwife who allowed Victoria to sit and breastfeed her newborn for an hour and didn't mention that that was excessive and that there could be better ways to care for a child than completely folding yourself into her. I can see why people liked the book, but I couldn't share the feeling.

I read Let's Take the Long Way Home, and as expected I cried a lot. Wonderful book though. Makes me miss strolling around Fresh Pond. Thanks for the recommendation.

I can see why people liked the book, but I couldn't share the feeling.

Well . . . I'm not sure I can even see why people like it. ;-)

>15 Nickelini: & 16. I'm glad that I was not alone in my thinking about The Language of Flowers. It was given to me by a friend who liked it, so I thought that perhaps I couldn't relate to the book since motherhood was a central theme, and I am not a mother. I also felt that the book was over the top melodramatic, which is something that annoys me as a reader.

I finished The Valley of Amazement and it was okay. The plot was a bit too implausible and neat, and I really don't think that the structure worked. Two thirds of the way in, the point of view changes to the mother's, but the voice doesn't really change and the mother's story feels rushed and expository. /. I couldn't help but think that there must have been a better way to structure it.

I don't regret reading it, but it is definitely not my favorite Amy Tan.

Despite being somewhat turned off to it after my last foray into YA fantasy, I wanted something quick and easy, so I started Poison Study which was highly recommended to me. We shall see.

>20 vwinsloe: I'd be interested to see what you think of Poison Study as I've recently been given a copy of Inside Out by the same author. I get the impression it's a completely different premise, but, apart from the person who passed it to me, I haven't found anyone who can comment on the actual writing quality.

I just started Half of a Yellow Sun. Seeing as how I haven't read Adichie yet, despite owning three of her books, it's about time.

>20 vwinsloe: I've read 3 of the Study series and liked Poison Study best for the world building and plot. As I remember, I also liked the charaacters quite well.
>17 lemontwist: I can't think of the number of people to whom I've recommended Let's Take the Long WaY Home. I even gave a copy to a woman I met at the dog park. It's such a wonderful book.

I am re-reading Mary McCarthy's The Group after nearly 40 years. Still compelling reading, though I can't help wondering if I belong to one of the last generations to really "get" this book.

>24 nohrt4me2: I've got to get around to The Group. I downloaded it to Kindle just a couple weeks ago when it was selling at a special price of $2.51.

The one book I remember having read, too many years ago to want to confess, is Memories of a Catholic Girlhood. I think I've got a copy around the house somewhere, and if I come across it I'll probably give it a reread.

>24 nohrt4me2: I remember liking The Group. Perhaps I'll try again. I feel that generational ache about Marilyn French's The Women's Room which changed my life and probably won't resonate with any for much longer if at all. For a long time, if I saw it at a yard sale or thrift store, I had to buy it. I couldn't tolerate it just languishing away and would give it to people.

I'm completely sucked into Affinity by Sarah Waters. When I began it, I was convinced it wasn't for me despite having loved Fingersmith. I kept reading somewhat reluctantly to hit the Pearl Rule. Of course, I love it and want to read it every minute of the day.

I read The group last summer and could see why it would have been a significant book at the time. It was a bit frustrating when the focus switched between characters and someone who had been in the foreground was relegated to the sidelines, and a major event in their life was just mentioned in passing. I do remember thinking that the "losing virginity and getting contraception" scene read like Judy Blume in its slightly clinical, informational style! - maybe she was influenced by the book?

I've just started Testament of youth, for the Virago WWI group read.

I started a thread on The Group with spoilers allowed. I enjoyed the open thread on The Goldfinch started earlier, and do check back there as new people post their impressions. Hope this encourages more folks to read McCarthy.

>26 nancyewhite: I loved Fingersmith and really liked The Little Stranger, so I guess I should look at some other Sarah Waters.

>26 nancyewhite:

i read the women's room maybe in 2008 and felt like (even being in the feminist movement for a handful of years) that it totally resonated. i reread it for a feminist book club at the end of last year and didn't think it it still did, but all the newbie feminists in the group thought it was amazing. so maybe it's less the book's aging than it is that we are!

>24 nohrt4me2:

I remember liking The group when I read it years ago (I admire McCarthy in general), but now you've got me wondering whether I've "got" it. Which aspects do you think might be lost on the reader today?

I don't remember very many details of the plot, but the impression of the difficulties of sexual relations decades before "The Pill", and just getting taken seriously as a professional-while-female, is still with me.

There's also one character who ends up with a "girlfriend"... I think? The loveliest of them all? If I dreamt that, don't wake me up. ;)

I re-read Call the Midwife for my RL book club tonight, and while I was at it I decided to do the whole trilogy. The second, Shadows of the Workhouse had more concentration on men - the difference between boys and girls in the workhouse, how a boy becomes a coster and what life was like in the trenches of WWI. The third, and my favorite, Farewell to the East End is the most political and talks about (among many other things) The Contagious Diseases (Women) Act of 1864 which allowed police to pick up any woman of any age who was unescorted on the streets and forcibly examine her vaginally and test her for venereal disease with the idea that women spread the diseases so must be controlled. This act was removed from the statute books of Great Britain in 1883, but Lisa See mentions the exact same thing being done to unescorted American women during WWII. I'd never heard of that before. Have any of you? Anyway, to me the third book is the best, I highly recommend it.

Hi all, I've been away from LibraryThing discussions for about a month and just now caught up on reading all your lovely posts in this thread and the April one. Some quick updates on my end.

I finished reading MaddAddam and was a bit disappointed with this final book in the trilogy. I didn't really feel like it added all that much to the story, except giving a little bit of back story to the Gods' Gardener group. I still felt like I had a number of questions, especially regarding the MaddAddamites themselves, at the end of the book.

I also finished reading Orange is the New Black and found I enjoyed it a great deal more than I thought I would when I went into it. I thought the way the author approached it - in a rather anthropological manner - was very effective and it was quite the opposite of what I expected.

Currently I'm slogging through The Shoemaker's Wife. This was a real-life book club choice and I'm finding it very difficult to like. It's not particularly well-written (or well-narrated in the audio version) and I found myself rather annoyed that the main female character gave up a promising career, a very close female friend, her (adopted) home city, and basically everything she loved to marry a man she met only a handful of times. I suppose it's fairly accurate for a work of historical fiction, but I still found myself rolling my eyes at things like her new husband responding with "Be my wife." to her questioning what she'll do without herself now that she's quit her job and moved across the country to a place where she knows no one.

Otherwise, I've been reading "bloke books" as well as a bunch of children's literature for work.

I finished Poison Study which was okay, but it didn't make me want to read any more of the series, which didn't get terrific reviews anyway.

This morning I am starting Amy Bloom's new book Lucky Us that I got from Early Reviewers. This is my first Early Reviewers book, and I am very excited about it!

Oh, I'll be interested in what you think of the new Amy Bloom. I'm a fan of her short stories, but was not as wowed by the novel she wrote a few years ago.

>33 sweetiegherkin: Glad you liked OITNB. I loved the book. Do you watch the show? I had read the book first and didn't think I'd like the show, but it's amazing.

>35 rebeccanyc:. I will report back, but I don't think that we share the same taste. I adored Amy Bloom's Away. I really felt like I was inhabiting the same time and place as the protagonist while I was reading that book.

>31 LolaWalser: LolaWalser: No you didn't dream it about the girlfriend. She has a small but quite stunning part in the end. :-)

(edited for typo)

>34 vwinsloe: I'm glad to see someone else didn't care for Poison Study. I just had this sense that it was a little too much a "domination" kind of romance -- if I recall correctly, because it's been ages since I read it (when it first came out on Kindle, and I think it was one of the first books heavily promoted on Kindle wa-a-a-ay back).

>39 CurrerBell:, a bit, perhaps. The physical and mental abuse was all part of the plot, to show the evil nature of the antagonists and as justification for the acts of the heroine, but I dislike the use of rape and torture as a plot device to galvanize a heroine. There wasn't too much romance, thank goodness, but there was too much martial arts stuff.

In the end, I am starting to conclude that I am just not fond of the simplicity of YA fiction. I believe that The Hunger Games was an outlier, and that there is very little other YA fiction that has the complexity of ideas, emotions and characters contained in those books.

> 36 I haven't watched the show yet. Have it on my Netflix queue but haven't had the time for it yet. Soon! I heard it's rather different from the book.

> 40 Have you tried The Adoration of Jenna Fox? It's the first of a YA sci-fi series (I haven't read the other books yet) and tackles some complex themes. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks and Speak also stand out as thoughtful YA works.

finally! reading a woman again. the red tent by anita diamant - i read this a long time ago and liked it but am not super enthused to reread it. it's for feminist book group; i'm hoping there's not too much religion in it (i can't remember anything at all about it).

>30 overlycriticalelisa:. This makes me soooo happy.

I finished Affinity and loved it to the end. I've spent a little time thinking about the reviews that described this one as slow-moving or overlong while I wish there had been at least another 100 pages. Recently I watched the TV show 'True Detective' with a family member. He found it frustrating and bloated while I loved it. We've been talking a lot about how this may be a product of my love of storytelling for its own sake while his enjoyment of fictional books and movies is largely plot-driven. I think that difference between readers/watchers may be a part of why there are such disparate experiences of Affinity.

Has anyone else had this experience? I love wondering about what makes people experience the same thing so differently.

>41 sweetiegherkin:. No, I haven't even heard of those YA books. Thanks, but I really am swearing off them. There are just too many other good things to read!

>43 nancyewhite:

at first i was like, it makes her so happy that i'm reading the red tent?? then i looked at the actual number you were responding to...

i wasn't a big fan of affinity but don't need my books to be plot driven at all. mostly, though, i think i just really don't like sarah waters, although i'm not ready to write her off yet.

>45 overlycriticalelisa: Ouch, you don't like Sarah Waters. How is such a thing possible? My daughter doesn't like chocolate which seems just as bizarre to me.

>46 Citizenjoyce:

i don't like chocolate either. maybe that explains it. ;)

Omigosh, I think we've found the answer to a medical mystery.
I recently finished a couple of good books by women.
His Majesty's Dragon by is about a ship's captain who captures a dragon egg from a French ship, and bonds with the emergent dragon who changes his whole life. The dragons are the air force during the Napoleonic wars. Though the dragon and the captain are both male, there are female dragons, captains and crew and sex is treated as some sort of consensual pleasure open to either gender. I loved the book so much I ordered the first three novels for my 14 year old grandson. Sex is mentioned only obliquely and in a way that I think would be good for him to be exposed to. Besides, the story is great. Now if I could only convince him to read.
I also just finished Spider Woman's Daughter by Anne Hillerman who I think is Tony Hillerman's daughter and does a great job following in his foot steps. Her main character is a woman police officer married to one of Tony's old characters, Jim Chee. Bernie is smart, brave and loving and their marriage is an inspiration, besides the great plot.
I'm almost done with a mother-daughter book Traveling With Pomegranates by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor about life's milestones - entering menopause for Sue, beginning her adult life for Ann. Since Sue had just come off a 7 year course of Jungian analysis before she wrote the book it's all about symbolism using black madonnas as the archetype for the essential feminine.

Just Pearl-ruled the memoir MWF Seeking BFF, by Rachel Bertsche. It lacked charm and humour, and the author was whiny, judgmental, and not very interesting. On wards . . .

>44 vwinsloe:, >45 overlycriticalelisa: Speaking of Sarah Waters, I read the "big three" in reverse order, so I don't really care that much for Tipping the Velvet. It's just that Fingersmith was much better and Affinity was still better yet, which is to be expected (hoped) as a writer's work progresses.

Have you ever read Moll Cutpurse by Ellen Galford? It's definitely similar to Tipping the Velvet, and it's based on the Jacobean comedy The Roaring Girl by Middleton and Dekker.

>50 CurrerBell:

fingersmith was one of the ones i wanted to keep trying her with, but if affinity is better, i'm in trouble...

btw, i agree - i liked affinity better than tipping the velvet which i really didn't like.

>45 overlycriticalelisa: & >46 Citizenjoyce:, I also dislike Sarah Waters. Disappointing. Couldn't get more than 5 pages into Tipping the Velvet. Oh well.

Still on my Caroline Knapp kick after having read a couple other random books by dudes. Now I'm reading Appetites: Why Women Want.

I have to say, after reading Drinking: A Love Story, I was terribly disappointed by Appetites: Why Women Want which seemed to be a book in a bit of an identity crisis. Not quite memoir, not quite feminist treatise, not quite research-based cultural study. More of just a long-winded rant. I had a hard time feeling connected with it, and just sort of forced myself to finish.

I've started listening to an audiobnook of Cinder by Marissa Meyer (because of recommendations from this group) and like it very much - Cindedrella is a cyborg and the best mechanic in New Beijing. Just great, I know I'll be moving on to Scarlet when I finish.

just starting cool for you for a book group. going in with super low expectations so maybe i'll love it!

Argh, the whole middle part of my copy of Cinder is not downloaded so I have to go back on the waiting list to get another one. Three people are ahead of me, but it's a short book so won't take long. Instead I'm listening to an author I've never heard of, virginia DeBerry - Better Than I know Myself. So far it's about 4 very different college friends and begins with one of them attending the funeral of another. So, I guess we get the ending out of the way first.

Reading and loving The Seven Sisters by Margaret Drabble. She is a terrific writer.

Finally getting to Flight Behavior.

Nearly done with Donna Tartt's The Secret History. It started to lose steam about two thirds through. However, have about 50 pages to go, so maybe she'll make that last third worth it in the final moments.

>59 nohrt4me2:

i have a terrible memory so can't remember things like how many pages before the end certain things happened, but i don't think you'll be disappointed. or at least you won't be able to say it didn't pick back up.

>58 vwinsloe:

finally? it just came out a little while ago! that's pretty good in my book! i'm just getting to things that came out 10 years ago, so...

>60 overlycriticalelisa:. That's true. But as I noted on the "favorite authors" thread, Barbara Kingsolver used to be one of my favorites--by the definition that I would buy anything that she wrote right after it came out. At some point though, I found that her books were so didactic that it turned me off. Since then I have put her on the back burner.

Besides, this is a borrowed book, and two years is a bit too long for me to keep a borrowed book. lol I, too, have books for more than a decade in the TBR pile, mostly on account of their weight. Anything that is too heavy to take on my commute is sort of languishing in the pile.

Done with Secret History. I think a lot of Tartt's work, always good characters, and good character dynamics. But her endings peter out. There were some intended shockers at the end, but by it was pretty clear something of the sort was coming, and I really just didn't care.

There wasn't that no-I-need-this-book-to-never-stop feeling at the end.

Still, I think an ambitious and talented work, with flaws can be more satisfying than something that is slick but shallow.

>61 vwinsloe:

yes, but you didn't say that you read them right away, just buy them right away. i do that too. but they still wait for 10 years to be opened. except for purposes of admiration and longing.

;)

>62 nohrt4me2:

bummer you didn't like that ending! that's the only one of hers i've read so far. it got so in my head i spent a day of my limited time in bangkok sitting by the river finishing it so i could focus on my trip instead of on that dang book.

i feel that way about john irving's books - the man can't close but i love him anyway.

>64 overlycriticalelisa: elisa.saphier:

I had nightmares, hot flashes, and general feelings of dread up until the last third of the book. So it definitely got under my skin.

Yes, Irving is another good example of a someone who fails to close.

A dear departed friend who was a music major said the same thing about Beethoven. And he didn't do too badly, all things considered.

>65 nohrt4me2:

we should all do so badly

I am reading The Penelopiad for the June LT book read. Falling in love with Margaret Atwood all over again. This is extremely light compared to her usual writing, but a wonderful sense of humor and clever angle. Let's see how it goes.

>63 overlycriticalelisa:. Good point!

>67 krazy4katz: I'll be doing the same thing. I just picked up the book from the library, but have a couple more I really need to finish before starting it.

I finished the un-put-downable The Bird's Nest by Shirley Jackson -- Jackson at her compelling and disturbing best.

> 44 There certainly are not enough hours for all the good books out there to read!

Shirley Jackson keeps cropping up here, so I want to plug her hilarious memoir, Life Among the Savages. Certainly shows a different side of her. Would like to read Judy Oppenheimer's Private Demons bio of Jackson, but pricey on Amazon. Will try to get it through interlibrary loan.

>55 overlycriticalelisa: I read that one and thought it was not bad. Not my favorite but not awful.

>70 rebeccanyc: I really enjoyed The Bird's Nest.

Just finished Where'd You Go, Bernadette which I thought was fun. I don't usually read fiction but I wanted something enjoyable to read last weekend.

>72 nohrt4me2: i have a copy of Private Demons that an LT friend sent to me -- will have to get to it.

I started Unbroken by Lauren Hillebrand and am enjoying it.

>76 sweetiegherkin:. Enjoy! Louis Zamperini is a fascinating person, and Laura Hillenbrand is a wonderful writer.

> 77 Yes, I'm finding it incredibly interesting so far. I have the audiobook version and Edward Hermann is a great narrator.

>76 sweetiegherkin: I liked the book very much until about the last fourth when it became an evangelical screed. Can't say I'd recommend it to anyone.

>79 Citizenjoyce:, I wouldn't call it an evangelical screed. When I read about the undeniably extraordinary life of Zamperini, I was amazed that he survived at all, let alone with his faculties intact. If I remember correctly, he became an alcoholic, and then finally recovered and became religious. Whatever it took, the man is a miracle. I don't think that the book itself became at all preachy. I just think that it was an accurate account of this man's life.

I have recommended the book several times as a testament to the human will to survive. >78 sweetiegherkin:, let us know what you think when you are done.

Still on my Wharton jag. Finished The Custom of the Country and The Bunner Sisters.

CoC seems to be about what women become when, according to the custom of the country, i.e., America, they are considered useless and purposeless except as social ornaments or mothers. Once this becomes clear, the reader's sympathy (or lack of it) for the very spoiled central character starts to shift somewhat. Strikes me that Betty Friedan was still writing about this "custom" decades later in "The Feminine Mystique."

"The Bunner Sisters" is an interesting view of two sisters with a close relationship who own a little notions shop and what happens when one of them marries. (This is Wharton, so you know it won't be good.) This one seems unnecessarily bleak, even for Wharton.

>81 nohrt4me2: Unnecessarily bleak even for Wharton? Yikes, I couldn't even make it through The House of Mirth.

>82 Citizenjoyce: joyce: I think The Bunner Sisters devolves into bathos.

Now on The Touchstone, in which the central character's moral dilemma is whether he ought to have published the letters, often romantic, written to him by a dead woman writer of some fame.

I'm not sure that, in this confessional age, that this kind of problem would even register.

I loved House of Mirth!

I've picked up Slammerkin (Emma Donoghue) again--read Part I in early January and then had to put it aside. I'm wondering if I care enough to finish it.

No ladies for me right now!

>84 Nickelini: and I loved Slammerkin. Perhaps we're not twins separated at birth after all. Why is it that I can take the misery dished out by Emma Donoghue and deeply enjoy her books yet recoil from the misery dished out by Wharton? Perhaps it's because I identify more fully with Wharton's characters, which I guess would make her the better writer - the better writer that I cannot read.

@ 84, 86: And I can't take Donoghue. Too raw, at least Room was, and I hesitate to try much of anything else after that; I had to skim large portions of it (and this from someone who managed to get through The Road).

Much of Wharton's misery is implied. And people keep stiff-upper-lipping their way through it (even when they take desperate measures).

>87 nohrt4me2: You got through The Road but not Room? Amazing. I also read The Road and, not only have not seen the movie, have vowed never to read anything else by McCarthy. It was truly one of the most horrible books I've ever read. To me Donoghue is P. L. Travers in comparison.

We all have our thing, don't we! I don't find either of the two Donoghues that I've read to be disturbing (Room and now Slammerkin, which I finished this afternoon). The thing that disturbs me is capricious cruelty when done realistically (which is why I want to be done with slavery and holocaust stories). Donoghue's books feel like novels to me, so not so troubling.

#86 - OtherJoyce - maybe I just needed to spend more concentrated time with Slammerkin, because I loved the last 100 pages of it.

I found both Room and Slammerkin manipulative, at the same time that Donoghue's writing made me not want to put them down. On the other hand, I detested The Road so much that it made me not want to read any more McCarthy even though people keep pressing me to read All the Pretty Horses.

Cormac McCarthy is a terrific writer, I think, but he's not for everyone. His worldview is very bleak. Even All the Pretty Horses, which is probably his "lightest" book, is not going to make you want to turn cartwheels at the end.

I have been avoiding Room because I have a little boy about the same age as the character in the novel, and I don't think I could take it.

June is Women in Sci-Fi/Fantasy month over at the 2014 Category Challenge, so I will be reading girlybooks all month long. I've already started with The Office of Mercy and The Golem and the Jinni.

>91 sturlington:. Thanks for mentioning the Women in Sci/Fi/Fantasy month in the 2014 Category Challenge. I just joined the group, because coincidentally, I just started The Wolf Gift. I haven't read any Anne Rice in a long time--she was one of those favorite authors that turned me off at some point, and I stopped reading her. The same thing happened with Barbara Kingsolver, and I just finished Flight Behavior and it was better than I expected.

I found both Room and Slammerkin manipulative, at the same time that Donoghue's writing made me not want to put them down.

"Manipulative" --yes, I see what you mean. It wasn't as obvious in some books I've read by lesser writers but you're right. I think that's part of what makes me see these books as just novels and not stories that touch my emotions very deeply.

Yes, we've discussed the manipulation in Room--I think it's there. It's a very powerful book, it sticks with you, but there was so much immediacy and anger in that novel that I found it hard to bear.

Nonetheless, I find Donoghue a compelling writer and I may read more by her, knowing what to expect.

No-one has mentioned Life mask yet, Donoghue's historical novel about the friendship between the artist Anne Damer and the actress Eliza Farren, both fascinating women largely overlooked by history. It is long, but I found it totally absorbing.

>96 Sakerfalcon: Thanks, I'd never heard of it, but my library system has a copy.

>86 Citizenjoyce:, >90 rebeccanyc:, and >96 Sakerfalcon:. I have read Room and while I wouldn't say that I "enjoyed it," it was a good read. I have both Slammerkin and Life Mask in my TBR pile and I haven't felt compelled to move them to the top. They were passed on to me by my 85 year old mother--maybe that's why. Based on the discussion here, I should probably move them up.

Just finished Astrid and Veronica on audio book. I'm puzzled by it.

99 - I loved it until 'that' point when I was left wondering what just happened. It was an odd book.

#100 Yes, "that point" . . . an odd book indeed.

Reminder that we have a thread for what we're reading in June (though May has been a great reading month; I realize it's hard to give it up!)

In some groups I belong to, we've moved from having month by month threads to just adding a new thread when one gets too long. For example, What Are You Reading in 2014? Part 1, followed by What Are You Reading in 2014? Part II, etc. Makes "housekeeping" easier and also lets people use the LT continuation feature.

Something to consider for Girlybooks?

#103 - It's working well in ClubRead, I think.

>103 rebeccanyc: I like the idea.

So you let the messages reach, what, 100 or so and then start a new thread?

Only after the LT continuation feature appears. It's somewhere under 200, but I'm not sure exactly where. I think in Club Read we wait until around 200 or so

Can someone enlighten me as to what the LT "continuation feature" is?

If you go to the end of this current Club Read reading thread, you'll see the opportunity to click on a link to start a new thread with the same name. Then you just need to edit the name to have the new number. If you look at the top of of the previous Club Read reading thread, you'll see links to the preceding topic and the following topic and at the bottom you'll see a link to the following topic. This makes navigation much easier. For people who use the starred thread feature, this will preserve the star in the new thread, making it easier to find from the Talk tab.

>109 rebeccanyc:, thank you. I've never seen that before. Does the continuation link appear automatically once the thread reaches a certain number of posts? If so, who chooses the number? The group administrator or is it a built in LT feature?

It appears automatically and is an LT feature. Not sure at what number but under 200.

>111 rebeccanyc: maybe 150? I think they shortened it after the feature was initially rolled out.

I'm currently enjoying The Penelopiad for the One Library group thing.

And from my Planet of Unread Books, I'm reading Karen Armstrong's Buddha.

>111 rebeccanyc:. Kudos to the programmers on this site. Definitely more thoughtfully designed than most!

I just let messages pile up on my e-mail for the most part and if I need to find something, I search.

In any case, I'm not the group originator, or even an original member, so I'll let the rest of youse set up what you want and continue to enjoy your posts.

Well, if we want to do this as a continuing rather than monthly thread it has to be under a better topic name than "What are we reading in May", so I started a new thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/175474
I think it's been said before that the originator of Girlybooks is no longer around, or we would have tried to convince her to change the name of the group.

>115 Citizenjoyce:

Someone on the staff could change the name. I'd certainly vote for a change.

>116 LolaWalser: Really? That would be great. I'm sure many people have passed the group by because of the name.

>115 Citizenjoyce:. I sort of like the name of the group. When I came here, I thought that it was totally tongue in cheek. Works better than "Boyz Keep Out!" lol

It would be interesting to see whether the membership would change with a different group name. Not that I particularly want it to...

Thanks for starting the new thread.

I made a poll:

https://www.librarything.com/topic/175480

If a majority wants a new name, someone should then ask Tim to change it and also--why not?--to transfer administrator powers, such as they are.

Another thing to consider is whether to drop the joining requirement for posting. Not sure whether it offers any advantage against spammers, though.