- Total Garbage: How We Can Fix Our Waste and Heal Our World – Edward Humes, 2024. Nature/Enviro selection, quotes TBD.
- The Cuckoo’s Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage – Clifford Stoll, 2005. This was recommended by multiple people (I don’t remember where) and it’s indeed great. Plus it led me to Stoll’s amazing Klein bottle site.
- Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886. For a Catherine Project group; quotes TBD.
- Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys, 1966. Great Books, quotes TBD.
- The Night Bookmobile – Audrey Niffeneger, 2008. I was hoping this was another novel like The Time Traveler’s Wife, but it’s a slim graphic novel, almost a picture book. I didn’t like it much but was having trouble putting my finger on exactly why – this Goodreads review did the work for me!
- Billy Budd – Herman Melville, left unfinished in 1891, published in 1924 in a version assemebled by his widow; I’d like to read one of the updated versions. Re-read (after many decades) because of Far Out Film watching Beau Travail. A very interesting contrast between the two.
- Romola – George Eliot, 1863. Great Books selection; quotes TBD.
- Little Men – Louisa May Alcott, 1871. Children’s book group selection, re-read but I barely remembered it. What a weird mix of wacko kid behavior/observation and sentimental stories, with what feels like quite a bit of padding (“let’s stop everyone who comes to the schoolroom and make THEM tell a story!”)
- Flaubert’s Parrot – Julian Barnes, 1984. For the Massachusetts Center for the Book challenge, “A book found at a Little Free Library, tag sale, or used bookstore.” I picked this up from a free library in an old newspaper kiosk on Main Street because I’ve wanted to read it for a long time. I owned a copy for many years but never actually got around to it, so this felt good, and it’s not long. I wrote: “A wonderful book-length essay on Flaubert in a variety of forms, coated in a tiny bit of fiction – I don’t think it needed to be a novel, but it’s delightful in any case.” I really enjoyed it.
- Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen, 1823. I became addicted to the Trung Le Ngyuen read-along thread and had to re-visit. Then off to the 1995 BBC and 2005 film adaptations, so it turned into a P&P month. Thanks, Trungles!
- Number One Joy Street – 1923. This first in an anthology series of children’s stories and poetry was in my grandmother’s collection and I remembered it fondly. It came up for smooth reading on Distributed Proofreaders so I was happy to help get it ready for Project Gutenberg. Alas, it doesn’t hold up as well as I hoped. I think as a child I enjoyed the illustrations more than the content.
- How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming – Mike Brown, 2010. An engrossing and enjoyable science memoir about Brown’s discovery of a tenth “planet,” Eris, leading to the demotion of Pluto.
I didn’t finish a book group selection (Second Monday), which is unusual for me. It was The Russian Debutante’s Handbook by Gary Shteyngart, which I had been looking forward to. But it was not funny to me and very long, so I gave up after 150 pages. I still enjoyed the discussion but it didn’t make me regret dropping the book.