Saturday, February 26, 2011

Catching Up

It's been a while since I added books. This doesn't mean I haven't been reading, of course. I've been working on the Whidbey Island Writers Conference, coming April 1-3. Garth Stein will be keynote speaker. His book, The Art of Racing in the Rain is wonderful. I'm hosting a chat house, and an author will be staying with me.
Soo, to some of the books I've read.
The one witih the most impact was Gargoyle.  Here's the background. A porn star/director is burned so badly he has to spend months in the hospital, where he meets a woman stone carver who says he was burned last time she knew him, when she was a nun. I highly recommend it, though in places it's a hard read.
I went from the bizarre to the sublime: a food book!
Well, more than food. Its title says it all: The School of Essential Ingredients. It's a debut novel. (Forgive me, but as I write, I forgot the authors' names of these two.) I have never, not even in Water for Chocolate, read such wonderful descriptions. It's also very romantic.
I always like to read Nancy Pearl's Book Lust  books, so I was happy to find the new one, Book Lust to Go, for people like me who love to read about places I'll never go to. Each chapter is about a different place, and she lists books and authors to read. The chapter titles are fun: Afghanistan: Graveyard of Empires; Cavorting Through the Caribbean; Frolicking in Finland; Texas Two-Step. In Veni, Vedi, Venice, she mentions my alltime favorite author, Dorothy Dunnett, and her book in the Niccolo series, Scales of Gold. In Turkish Delights, she recommends Barry Unsworth's Rage of the Vulture. I also recommend all his other books, which range from historical novels, to a nonfiction book about living on Crete.
Gee, maybe I should do a book on writers.

No comments:

Post a Comment