Have You Read Any Good Books Lately?

If you liked "Unbroken," you should also read that author's "Seabiscuit." I liked it even more than "Unbroken."

I also really liked "Night Circus" by Erin Morgenstern and "Glass Castle" and "Half-broke Horses" by Jeannette Walls. If you're into funny memoirs, "Let's Pretend This Never Happened" by Jenny Lawson, "Bossypants" by Tina Fey, and "Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me (and Other Concerns)" by Mindy Kaling were all very good.

I just read Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay. It was very good, but also sad.

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton is a book that I've read more than once.

Both are about a mystery in someone's family and it goes back and forth between the present and the past. Sarah's Key is about an American woman married to a Frenchman doing research on his family's Paris apartment and the Jewish family that lived there before they were rounded up by the French police for the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz.

The Forgotten Garden is about an Australian woman whose grandmother dies and she finds out that she owns a cottage in England. She finds out that her Grandmother was adopted and doing research about where she came from, and she continues her grandmother's research.

Here's my list! I have read and highly recommend them all, except Harold Fry, I'm about to start that one next :-)
http://pinterest.com/mamazitababy/so-many-books/

Just finished Silver Girl by Elin Hilderbrand.
Nothing deep--very loosely based on the Bernie Madodf scandal fallout, from the wife's perspective.

One of the advantages of having a child in high school is that you get to hear about more current books :-)

We both read "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" over the summer (assigned for AP English). Nonfiction and provoked some interesting discussions.

I also have gone back to some classics recently. "Pride and Prejudice" was most recent.

Here are some of my favorites. I like them so much I have re-read them this year:

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by See
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
Shogun by James Clavell

Also check out Wool by Hugh Howey. Get the Omnibus edition (it is a series of stories that go together). It is a really interesting dystopian short story, so if you liked Hunger Games you might like it. I will not be surprised if they do a movie based on this book.

I love reading and agree it's hard with little ones. I have a 16 month old and 2 1/2 year old. They nap at the same time and I make that "mommy time". I'm not doing dishes or laundry, but taking a breather for me and reading. I was looking for new books myself and after posting the question on Facebook, got some good ones I'm liking.

My favorite is Karen Kingsbury and she has A LOT of books that are series or stand alone ones. She has a website (www.karenkingsbury.com) that gives info about each of her books and in order for the series ones.

I've also enjoyed books by Matthew Dicks who has 3 books out as of now and all of them are pretty good. His books are titled, "Something Missing", "Unexpectedly, Milo" and "Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend". They are each stand alone books.

A friend of mine recently asked me for some book club suggestions, so below are some of the books that I recommended from the book club I'm in. I included a little info about some of the books but not all.

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh - It's about a girl who has aged out of the foster care system and how she works toward creating a life on her own. It alternates between the present time and her time as a child in foster care.

The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom - I've loaned this to a number of friends and it has been well liked (probably even more by my friends than by me).

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn - I don't want to ruin it so I can't say much. This story would get so frustrating but at the same time, everybody agreed that they couldn't stop reading because we wanted to know what happened.

The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz - This was our fun pick. It's about a family of private eyes. The characters are crazy and spy on each other as much as they spy on other people. We all agreed this was fun to read.

The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Steadman - Here's the synopsis: While working as a lighthouse keeper, WWI veteran Tom Sherbourne finds a boat cradling a dead man and a crying baby. His wife, disappointed by two miscarriages and a stillbirth, convinces him to keep the baby. That decision has a far-reaching impact in this debut from a bold new voice in fiction.

Others I have read on my own:

Room by Emma Donaghue - The story is similar to the Jaycee Dugard story and based on the synopsis I was a little afraid to read it, but it was actually a good book.

I also read a lot of young adult books as well. There are a lot of really good ones.

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell - It's a young adult book but it takes place in 1986. I just thought it was both sweet & sad at the same time.

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green - Another young adult book that made me both laugh & cry. The main characters are kids who have or have had cancer. There are a lot of happy parts, but with cancer you can't really avoid sad parts.

If you like Vampire books, there is always the Twilight series. But there is also the Vampire Academy series by Richelle Mead that I liked better than Twilight. It's a very different take on vampires than Twilight. And the first Vampire Academy movie is supposed to be coming out in February. And when the Vampire Academy series finished, Richelle Mead started the Bloodlines series which features a group of minor characters from the Vampire Academy series.

I have also read Divergent by Veronica Roth. It's the first of a 3 book series and the movie comes out in March. I stopped reading the series temporarily because.....

I switched the Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare because the first movie just came out this week. I just started on book 4 and parts of it are frustrating, but I'm still reading.

I plod through books now that I'm a mom. I used to read 3 a month, now its 3 a year. On Christmas break I read Gone Girl (Gilliam Flynn) which was an engaging read and many others have read it so I could discuss it. During summer I read The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (sp?) Which is a long drawn out fictional account of the battle of Gettysburg from the viewpoint of people on both sides. Great book if you like historical fiction (he sticks really close to facts of the battle and historical accounts, but written as a novel). You have to pay really close attention to it to keep the characters straight at first. Now I am reading The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver (slowly but surely not that I am back at work). Really enjoying it so far, I've read a lot of her books and this might be my favorite so far, it also has a bit of historical element in it, just by the period and setting she wrote it in.

I recommend all 3 :)

I just finished Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, now I am reading another of her books called Dark places right now.
Before these I was reading the prequels to Wool by Hugh Howie.

I just read The Language of Flowers. It was really good- a little sad, but not so heavy that it was depressing!

I just read 50 Shades of Grey and 50 Shades More and really enjoyed them. I'm looking forward to 50 Shades Freed. I just downloaded a parody, 50 Shames of Earl Grey. It looks funny. I am also on book #10 of the Southern Vampire series(True Blood). They are pretty good. I have just started James Patterson's Zoo which is off to a slow start, and a couple of chapter into Stephen Kings Wind Through the Keyhole. I always seem to be reading five books at once, one in the bathroom, one in the bedroom, one in my purse, one on my ereader and one in the van. I read for entertainment, so it doesn't need to be fine literature!

My kids are 5 and 3 and in the last year I've started reading again. So nice.
Books I remember really liking are:

Heft, by Liz Moore

The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times, by Jennifer Worth (non-fiction, there was BBC miniseries made from this)

City of Thieves, by David Benioff

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, by Helen Simonson

If I Stay (If I Stay, #1), by Gayle Forman (young adult genre, really really fast read)

I really like The Other Boleyn Girl, Constant Princess, etc. by Phillipa Greggory (I think the author's name may be slightly off...)

Also anything by Nora Roberts, or her pseudonym, JD Robb. :) (Chesapeake Bay series (4 books) is a good one to start with.)

Harry Potter series... If you haven't already it is a MUST read. I don't care how old you are! ;)

Everyone keeps recommending Unbroken to me....

I'm really enjoying The Buddha in The Attic by Otsuka.

I really like books by Jodi Picoult. I also loved the Glass Castle.

"A Postcard from the Volcano" by Lucy Beckett was the book I finished last week. I loved it. I'm having trouble finding a new book to start because I enjoyed that one so much.

Carpool Diem--a fun, quick read to assuage our lives.

I've been sucked into the Jack Reacher thriller series, lately.

Also I've been doing the free downloads of classics (anything 70+ years old is free. You can find em at www.gutenberg.org and some also on amazon). From Jane Austen & Sir Arthur Conan Doyal to Shakespeare and Dostoevsky. HG Wells to Mark Twain. Bronte Sisters to Kipling. Dickens to Poe.

My highschool education was fairly lacking, so I've never read most classics.

The Spellman Files. Funny, tarty, smart. It's about a family of private eyes and told by Isabel, the (sort of) grown daughter. Dysfunctional and kooky family. Very funny.

There's 5 or 6 books in the series. By Lisa Lutz.

I just finished a great book called In The Woods by Tana French. My friend mentioned that French is one of her favorite authors and, after reading that, I'm really looking forward to reading more!

I also have read several books lately by Kristen Hannah and by Lisa Scottoline and have enjoyed all of them.

Lots of other good recommendations below. I have read many (Snow Flower, Sarah's Key, many by Wally Lamb, etc) and really enjoyed all of them. I also read Gone Girl last week and have very mixed feelings, too. The book is weird and frustrating, but also makes you want to know what happens.