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gp2.0




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Jul 16 2015, 8:51 pm
WriterMom wrote:
I LOVED Gone Girl (before the movie) - it has a twist that really caught me, although since the movie I'm not sure who's unspoiled. Her other books are better than average, but IMO not as good as Gone Girl.

The JK Rowling as Galbraith novels - ok, I'm intrigued. I loved the HP books, and have reread the whole series three times. But I never even tried the Galbraith books. Are they in any way comparable to the HP-verse? Or totally different, but still really good?


Rowling wrote another book between HP and the Galbraith novels - the casual vacancy - which was terribly boring. I was almost afraid to read the Galbraith novels because I didn't want to be disappointed again. But they are really good. They are about a private detective solving crimes, very interesting with great characters and the writing sparkles just like it does in the HP books. Other than the exemplary writing and taking place in England, they are totally different from HP in every way.
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Amarante




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Jul 16 2015, 8:56 pm
I found the Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street by Susan Jane Gilman to be a fun read.

Now in paperback, bestselling author Susan Jane Gilman's IndieNext Pick novel about an immigrant girl's transformation into an indomitable businesswoman in early 20th century New York.

As a child in 1913, Malka Treynovsky flees Russia for New York with her family--only to be crippled and abandoned in the streets. Taken in by a tough-loving Italian ices peddler, Malka survives. When she falls in love with Albert, they set off together across America in an ice cream truck to seek their fortune; slowly, she transforms herself into Lillian Dunkle, "The Ice Cream Queen of America"--doyenne of an empire of ice cream franchises and a celebrated television personality.

Spanning 70 years, Lillian's rise--fraught with setbacks, triumphs, and tragedies--is inextricably linked to the course of American history itself, from Prohibition to the disco days of Studio 54. And when her past starts catching up with her, her world implodes spectacularly.
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WriterMom




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Jul 16 2015, 8:58 pm
OK, I'm going on holiday in a few weeks and have pledged to read only fun things, no work. I will put Galbraith on my iPad! I hope it's ok if I post here and let you know what I think Very Happy

Thank you! I read all the time for work, so for my pleasure reading I'm a bit fussy: I want something totally enjoyable. So it means a lot to have a rec, rather than just going by the bestseller lists/what looks pretty on amazon.com.
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amother
Sapphire


 

Post Thu, Jul 16 2015, 8:58 pm
Did anyone read the book. Cut me loose
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Amarante




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Jul 16 2015, 8:59 pm
If people want Jewish themed books, The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant is an easy read.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Red Tent and Day After Night, comes an unforgettable novel about family ties and values, friendship and feminism told through the eyes of a young Jewish woman growing up in Boston in the early twentieth century.

Addie Baum is The Boston Girl, born in 1900 to immigrant parents who were unprepared for and suspicious of America and its effect on their three daughters. Growing up in the North End, then a teeming multicultural neighborhood, Addie’s intelligence and curiosity take her to a world her parents can’t imagine—a world of short skirts, movies, celebrity culture, and new opportunities for women. Addie wants to finish high school and dreams of going to college. She wants a career and to find true love.

Eighty-five-year-old Addie tells the story of her life to her twenty-two-year-old granddaughter, who has asked her “How did you get to be the woman you are today.” She begins in 1915, the year she found her voice and made friends who would help shape the course of her life. From the one-room tenement apartment she shared with her parents and two sisters, to the library group for girls she joins at a neighborhood settlement house, to her first, disastrous love affair, Addie recalls her adventures with compassion for the naïve girl she was and a wicked sense of humor.

Written with the same attention to historical detail and emotional resonance that made Anita Diamant’s previous novels bestsellers, The Boston Girl is a moving portrait of one woman’s complicated life in twentieth century America, and a fascinating look at a generation of women finding their places in a changing world.
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gp2.0




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Jul 16 2015, 9:01 pm
OP if you're looking specifically for genre romances or formulaic "chick lit" some of my favorite authors are:

meg cabot
sophie kinsella
sarah dessen
stephanie perkins
rainbow rowell
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Amarante




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Jul 16 2015, 9:03 pm
WriterMom wrote:
OK, I'm going on holiday in a few weeks and have pledged to read only fun things, no work. I will put Galbraith on my iPad! I hope it's ok if I post here and let you know what I think Very Happy

Thank you! I read all the time for work, so for my pleasure reading I'm a bit fussy: I want something totally enjoyable. So it means a lot to have a rec, rather than just going by the bestseller lists/what looks pretty on amazon.com.


Easy reads that are not trashily written - Me Before You by Jojo Moyes and The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty.

I absolutely loved The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud and Life After Life by Kate Atkinson. These were more cerebral but still books I looked forward to rather than feeling "dutiful" about reading literature. LOL
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WriterMom




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Jul 16 2015, 9:04 pm
Sophie Kinsella is AMAZING, totally fun and not trashy. Liane Moriarty is the Australian Sophie Kinsella, and likewise.

Anita Diamant - oh, I was really, really offended by the Red Tent. Should I give her a try anyway?
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Amarante




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Jul 16 2015, 9:06 pm
WriterMom wrote:
Sophie Kinsella is AMAZING, totally fun and not trashy. Liane Moriarty is the Australian Sophie Kinsella, and likewise.

Anita Diamant - oh, I was really, really offended by the Red Tent. Should I give her a try anyway?


I didn't read The Red Tent as I am not that into retold Bible stories which for some reason I thought that was. I do have a soft spot for stories about Jewish immigrants so that may or may not be coloring my judgment. I think everybody has quirks - my friend loves dysfunctional memoirs and I like historical fiction. Very Happy
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Amarante




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Jul 16 2015, 9:10 pm
I also really enjoyed The Engagements by J. Courtney Sullivan. It's a series of stories in the form of a novel which are held together by the central character who is a woman character, based on a real person, who invented the De Beers campaign slogan. You'll never look at an engagement ring the same way. LOL

From the New York Times best-selling author of Commencement and Maine comes a gorgeous, sprawling novel about marriage—about those who marry in a white heat of passion, those who marry for partnership and comfort, and those who live together, love each other, and have absolutely no intention of ruining it all with a wedding.

Evelyn has been married to her husband for forty years—forty years since he slipped off her first wedding ring and put his own in its place. Delphine has seen both sides of love—the ecstatic, glorious highs of seduction, and the bitter, spiteful fury that descends when it’s over. James, a paramedic who works the night shift, knows his wife’s family thinks she could have done better; while Kate, partnered with Dan for a decade, has seen every kind of wedding—beach weddings, backyard weddings, castle weddings—and has vowed never, ever, to have one of her own.

As these lives and marriages unfold in surprising ways, we meet Frances Gerety, a young advertising copywriter in 1947. Frances is working on the De Beers campaign and she needs a signature line, so, one night before bed, she scribbles a phrase on a scrap of paper: “A Diamond Is Forever.” And that line changes everything.

A rich, layered, exhilarating novel spanning nearly a hundred years, The Engagements captures four wholly unique marriages, while tracing the story of diamonds in America, and the way—for better or for worse—these glittering stones have come to symbolize our deepest hopes for everlasting love.
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gp2.0




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Jul 16 2015, 9:12 pm
WriterMom wrote:
Sophie Kinsella is AMAZING, totally fun and not trashy. Liane Moriarty is the Australian Sophie Kinsella, and likewise.

Anita Diamant - oh, I was really, really offended by the Red Tent. Should I give her a try anyway?


Thanks for the rec! Just looked her up and I'm putting "what alice forgot" on hold because it seems to be ringing a bell. I must have heard it somewhere.

....

And now that I read the summary, I think I *did* already read it. LOL
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Amarante




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Jul 16 2015, 9:13 pm
Mystic River by Dennis Lehane is a good mystery - but adult themes so perhaps not for everyone. The movie was also very good.
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WriterMom




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Jul 16 2015, 9:18 pm
Amarante wrote:
I didn't read The Red Tent as I am not that into retold Bible stories which for some reason I thought that was.


It was. It had Yaakov Avinu and Rachel Imenu doing things that ... Jews are never, ever supposed to do, and it just drove me insane, it was so offensive. But if that's not what most of her books are like, I'm open to it. Immigrant stories sound like a totally different kettle of fish.
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gp2.0




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Jul 16 2015, 9:22 pm
amother wrote:
Did anyone read the book. Cut me loose


No I didn't sorry. Do you mean the one by Leah Vincent? Is that the kind of book rec you're looking for?
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WriterMom




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Jul 16 2015, 9:26 pm
I haven't read Cut Me Loose either. If you're looking for memoirs of those who left chassidism, Deborah Feldman's books are both available in Kindle. I found them fascinating, but it's not exactly non-fiction; I mean it's her account of her perceptions, but it's hardly objective, if that makes sense. Better seen as 'a look into the mind of an unhappy person' rather than 'a true account of chassidic life.'
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amother
Sapphire


 

Post Mon, Jul 20 2015, 5:31 pm
Ok I just downloaded the "the girl on the train" did anyone read it ?
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Amarante




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Jul 20 2015, 5:37 pm
Writermom. Check your messages
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bobeli




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Jul 29 2015, 6:51 pm
any jewish books?
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gp2.0




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Aug 03 2015, 7:56 pm
I devoured "what alice forgot" over the last two days! It was really good. Thanks again! I think what was ringing a bell was a TV show about the same concept, called samantha who? This book did a much better job than that TV show did though.
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