Gotta Sees

From Kathy...

• It's Complicated

From Liz...

• Mr. Holland's Opus 

"I forgot how good Mr. Holland's Opus was! Definite must see for anyone who hasn't seen it.

From Les...

• Infamous
• Capote 

Above titles are set during the time Truman Capote was researching Clutter murders for In Cold Blood.

From Mary...

• Rome

Met for lunch yesterday and Mary again raved about this TV series available on disc through Netflix.  Very explicit scenes and adult content.

From Pat...

• Black Boy - Richard Wright
• The Piano Teacher - Janice Y.K. Lee

From Les...

• Half Broke Horses - Jeannette Walls

"Author of The Glass Castle,  Jeannette Walls delves deeper into her family history and offers in this latest book, a wonderful tale about her remarkable grandmother - Lily Casey Smith.  Thoroughly enjoyable."

From Greg...

• Last Night in Twisted River - by John Irving

"I kept wondering what writers Kelly and Dennis (and top chefs Mary and Kathy) would think of this book.  Think typical Irving – biographical, New England setting, epic plot over decades.  There is fair amount about the crafts of novel writing and cooking  woven into the plot.   I think Irving must journal everything he observes every day, then stitch it all into his novels.  Recommended."

From Jim...

• Night and Day by Robert B Parker
  

"It was on the best seller list for a while. Short read, (too short) and very enjoyable. It's not a book you can't put down, but one you are always glad to pick up again. It has a couple of minor plots going on but they are incidental to the book which is really about the characters in the book, their foibles, how the react to each other and to circumstances. I love a book that fills out a character so fully that you really know them."

 

From Kelly...

• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins -  "...was fantastic - I reserved book 2 right away."

• Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry - "I'm currently reading --excellent, excellent, excellent.  Terrific for characters." 

For all you music lovers out there...

Liz brought this link to my attention.  Apparently one of her Elementary Ed Profs used it to open the semester.

Enjoy!

• Playing for Change
  

5 Minute Gotta Sees...

These are amazing.  Sean turned me on to them.  (Click to view)

• The Black Hole 
  

• Sebastian's Voodoo 
  

• Reach
  

More from Pat...

"Hi Leslie and Happy New Year!"

"Sorry it has taken me so long to respond - can't keep my nose out of this book you gave me.  Let's make that the first entry!"

• Under the Unbroken Sky - Shandi Mitchell - Riveting
• The Kite Runner -Khaled Hosseni - Any one reading this blog has probably read this, but I felt it should be on the list anyway.
• A Northern Light - Jennifer Donnelly - Favorite book of 2006
• Infidel -Ayaan Hirsi Ali -Somalian woman's struggle to help Muslim women
• A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini - Set in Afghanistan; woman's struggle for freedom against oppressive family and Taliban - Excellent
• Any Human Heart - William Boyd - A must read; written in the style of a journal
• Restless - William Boyd - So happy to have discovered this author
• The Industry of Souls - Martin Booth - Wonderful book about an Englishman imprisoned in a Russian Gulag for 25 years; his life during and afterwards; excellent
• The Road - Cormak McCarthy - Very good; father and son trying to survive the end of the world 
  
• Old School - Tobias Wolff - Great writer; must read more of him
• The Space Between Us - Thrity Umrigar - Setting is India; two women; one wealthy - the other her servant; spans their lives together and apart
• The Book Thief -Markus Zusak -German town during WWII; "death" is the narrator
• Before You Know Kindness - Chris Bohjalian - Favorite book of 2008
• The Zookeepers Wife - Diane Ackerman - Very good; WWII; Warsaw
• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society - Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows - Favorite of 2009
• Mudbound - Hillary Jordan - Set in Mississippi in the 40's - winner of the Bellweather prize for fiction
  

Favorites from Mary

• The Book Club - Mary Alice Monroe
• The Red Tent: A Novel  - Anita Diamont
• Perfume: The Story of a Murderer - Patrick Suskind
• The Jungle - Upton Sinclair
• Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
• Burned Alive - Souad
• The Road - Cormac McCarthy
• Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet - Jamie Ford
• The Color of Water - James McBride
  

Happy New Year!

Movies - Instead of partying with the masses, we chose movies last night. Liz found both at our library.

• On A Clear Day - with Brenda Blethyn - If you liked Saving Grace, she was the master gardener in that. I thought this was charming.

• Girl with a Pearl Earring - Colin Firth, Scarlett Johansson & Tom Wilkinson - Mom recommended this to me some time back and last night was second time I watched it. Good story, excellent photography, lighting and color.

Email from Kelly - says she just purchased the following. Let us know what you think, Kel.

• Botany of Desire (Michael Pollan)
  

• No-Impact Man (Colin Beavan)

• Eating Animals (Jonathan Safran Foer)

From Dennis -

"Here's one of my all-time favorite science books, Les The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time. Yale researchers Rosemary and Peter Grant have spent 20 years on Daphne Major in the Galapagos, studying natural selection. They recognize each individual bird on the island, when there are four hundred at the time of the author's visit, or when there are over a thousand. They have observed about twenty generations of finches -- continuously."

Dennis also recommends the author Harlan Coben. "Harlan Coben is a funny detective-thriller writer. Virtually anything he writes is pretty great stuff." See Jim's December 28th post for some titles by him.