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What are you reading this summer?


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With Memorial Day weekend approaching, I thought I'd start our annual summer reading thread.  Let us know what you're planning to read, and report on what you do read!

This might not be the perfect summer reading book but I am in the middle of an excellent book. It is about a poet who returns home to a small village in Turkey. There is romance, there is history, there are philosophical thoughts about whether Turkey is European or Asian. The writing is excellent.

SNOW by Orhan Pamuk

My next book will be an autobiography of the man whom the film with Russell Crowe was made--something like "Master of the World"--takes place on a ship in the 1800s. This book is called COCHRANE: Britannia's Sea Wolf, by Donald Thomas. It comes highly recommended and I hope it lives up to the recommendation!

Carol

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This is going to be a busy/crazy summer for me and I probably won't get to read much, so I'll be checking this thread for some vicarious pleasures. :o

I do, however, have to read "Passion and Property in Manhattan," by Steven Gaines, for work, and I'm looking forward to it. It's supposed to be a dishy book about the fabulously rich and their real estate. I enjoyed his previous book, "Philistines at the Hedgerow," about the Hamptons, which was a total hoot. :wink:

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A few weeks ago, I finished reading "The Birth of Venus" by Sarah Dunant. It's a historical novel about a Florentine noblewoman, an untrained artist (women couldn't get training in those days) living in the 1490's. This was the period of time where the fundamentalist monk Savonarola was destroying the Medici rule and had taken over the city. Very startling parallels to today's world, I think. Excellent book - it's well-written, well researched, discusses famous and not so famous paintings, the Medici family, and politics of the times. Not only that, but there are plenty of plot twists and turns to make it a page turner. :wink:

Books on my table right now are "Frankenstein" (after reading in the NYTimes about the author's mother -read here- and I'm going to try to get my hands on Wollstonecraft's "Vindication of the Rights of Woman" too.

I also just read, because a high school student of mine needed help writing about it, Jean-Dominique Bauby's slender book, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly". I'd like to recommend that too. He was the editor-in-chief of "Elle" magazine when he had a massive stroke that left him a victim of "locked-in syndrome", with all his cognitive capabilities but the only physical thing he could do was blink one eye and slightly move his head. His autobiography about life inside this "diving bell" is poetic, poignant, and sarcastic all at the same time. It's a quick read but you'll find yourself rereading it over and over again, I think.

More books on coffee table: Edward Rutherfurd's "The Dublin Saga: The Princes of Ireland", John Banville's "Shroud", and Amarillo Slim Preston's "Amarillo Slim: In a World Full of Fat People." It's a story about a renowned gambler. (Yeah, don't ask :o )

Also am re-reading, and loving once again, "Tale of Two Cities" because two of my tutees are reading it, and "A Separate Peace" which I am very surprised to find myself enjoying. I'd read it in 8th or 9th grade and didn't like it. I was too young for the book.

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My summer reading so far will include these books, which I own, with supplements from my library. :lol:

I just finished Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews. This book is about 4 siblings locked in an attic by their mother. One of the siblings reportedly loves ballet and practices on her own. This was recommended by a friend. It is written well but it is not pleasant to read due to the subject matter.

I have begun Class Act, The Jazz Life of Choreographer Cholly Atkins by Cholly Atkins & Jacqui Malone (2001). It is a bit difficult to read because it is written as Mr. Atkins would talk in first person, and in dialect at that. Its interesting but hard to keep my interest in it because there is not a strong plot, which usually doesn't bother me in a biography.

Waiting to be read:

The Shape of Love by Gelsey Kirkland (1990).

The Ballet Book by Nancy Ellison (2003) -there are a few words amidst the glorious pictures!

Yoga, Tai Chi, Massage, Therapies & Healing Remedies by Mark Evans (2004).

Edgar Degas by Trewin Copplestone (1999).

They are mainly dance related but also my summer reading (no summer school this summer!) so please move if necessary.

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......."A Separate Peace" which I am very surprised to find myself enjoying. I'd read it in 8th or 9th grade and didn't like it. I was too young for the book.

Same here. When I was a kid I thought of it as boy stuff -- came back to it years later and liked it much better.

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