I have just started to read 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower' by Stephen Chbosky. It is written as a series of letters by a teenage boy. It was recommended in the Author's Lounge book club.

"The Ocean at the End of the Lane" by Neil Gaiman - it's really fun and well written. It's both a little scary and very quirky.

I read that about six months ago skunkee, really enjoyed it. His stuff can get a bit over convoluted and loose you sometimes, but this one is very good.

Oh I usually enjoy Neil Gaiman's work, and haven't read that on eyet, Skunkee. I think I'll put it in my next order for Kindle.

Just finished it and liked it enough to buy another by Gaiman one for my Kindle.
Reading Elizabeth George in paperback - "Just One Evil Act". Having a little trouble getting into it though. I don't normally with her books.

I've just finished the latest Stephen Fry autobiography. For those who aren't aware he has written two previous instalments, and this is the third.

I enjoyed it as I do all his books, but this one left me a little disappointed as there didn't seem to be a resolution at the end. I don't want to give anything away so I'll say no more, I would just like to know if anyone else has read it and feels the same.

My first time on any of the forums, so HELLO

Hello! I can't say I have read it.

Trident!
Take no notice, and welcome slfcpd.
I think the book is called "More Fool Me".
I am getting left behind as I have only read the first which I found OK. He is so funny in real life, I think I expected funnier in that one.

I struggled a bit with that one as well. I do like her books, I think she shows a remarkable understanding of English policing and life, but every so often I think she lets the characters get too introspective and dwells too much on them and how they feel rather than moving the plot along. Her earlier books were, to me, much better than the later ones. Shorter, pacier, more police books than books about people and their feelings that just happen to be based around crime.

slfcpd - didn't know this one was out yet, I'll be looking for it.

Have just started "Burial Rites" by Hannah Kent. It's a murder (not sure yet if it's also a mystery) story set in Iceland in the1800s. It's interesting.

The Killing by David Hewson

If you saw the TV series, well forget all about it. This is far superior. Completely unputdownable, and without giving anything anyway, the last few pages are simply WOW!
Had me up to 2am finishing it, I just had to know what happened

It's all your fault, you people. I read a review of a book one of you has liked and I order it. Now I need yet another bookshelf!

Without this review I wouldn't have even considered the book because the TV series was SOOOO slow!

It was slow I agree. The book grabbed me from the start and just didn't let up all the way through

"The Egg and I" by Betty MacDonald.

A couple of weeks ago I watched the movie version of this, with Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray. It was a lot of fun, in a 1946 kind of way, most notable for being the first appearance on film of Ma and Pa Kettle - those characters later went on to have their own very successful franchise in the late forties and early fifties. Later on I was reading reviews of the movie and quite a few of them said that the book was way better, so I ordered the book from the library.

And the book is delightful. It's funny, it's earthy for the times, it's really quite a small treasure. This isn't great literature by any means, but it's very enjoyable.

opiate withdrawal symptoms wikipedia.

Just about to start something called The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. I was told I would like it. Will I?

Working on The Paris Wife by Paula McLain, a fictionalized story about Ernest Hemingway and his first wife and their years in Paris. I like it though there's not really a lot of 'action'

I loved that one. The joy of it was it was about her , not Hemingway, there are enough books about him.
It gives about the best description of the 20's ever, especially in Paris.

Yes I like her as a character. I had almost no prior knowledge of Hemingway though so I find myself wondering how much of the story is accurate.

re The Historian by Elisabeth Kostova . I had to give up
It just doesn't interest me. Maybe later.It seemed so slow. Has anyone finished it?
So I re read "The Hobbit"
I had forgotten how exciting it is and how beautifully crafted. Wow.Thanks to
Elisabeth Kostova, I really enjoyed an old favourite!

Ooops! What I meant to say was that Hemingway is now thought of as a prime example of a Bi-polar-Manic Depressive, who must have been very hard to live with .Has anyone got a good biography of him?

Oooh I love the Hobbit! At the moment my son is re-reading it, and my daughter is reading it for the first time. (We have two copies). When they're finished I'll probably go through it again.

I don't know much about Hemmingway, ren, I only read (and actually enjoyed) his The Old Man and the Sea, when I read it as a teen. I might try it again and some of his other work, and read up a little on the man himself.

With internet it's so easy to gather lots of information about authors, something I didn't do very often when it meant ploughing through dusty old encyclopaedia and library books. I now find it interesting and it often helps understand where they were going with some of their works.

"The Hobbit" is one of the books that I really recommend reading aloud to children.

Reading aloud to children who are old enough to read, themselves, but not quite old enough for this particular book, is a real joy. For me "The Hobbit" was the first one - I read it to my little sister, and it helped turn her from a "books are boring" non reader into a reader. She read it to her own son when the time came.

With my own kids, it was Narnia, Freddy the Pig, E Nesbit, Edward Eager, "The Egypt Game", "Treasure Island", the Little House books....and of course Bilbo. I have such a clear memory.... reading that book to my daughter, while my son, who had had his own go-round with it a few years earlier, would sneak in from his bedroom to sit at the foot of her bed and listen in again.

I fully agree, agony. I have always read to my kids, way beyond the age when I should I stopped and let them get on with it on their own. When I read to the youngest, the older two used to come snuggle up and listen too, even though they were young teens at the time.

We went from Dr Seuss, to Enid Blyton (politically uncorrect and all as she may be), to CS Lewis and a whole heap of other things in between. The Hobbit was the first "big" book (& book with no pictures) that my youngest read for himself at about 8 years, and he has been a totally addicted bookworm ever since ... working his way through my collection of doorstop fantasy novels, classics and whatever is on the shelf.

It's great as it's made me re-read old favourites so that we could discuss them together, I've had such fun with him!