Reading lists

[spits]

As summer has officially begun here, it is time to begin on my official reading list for the season . Has anyone else generated a list and if so, what do you plan on reading?

Here's what I have so far...

Under a Green Sky by Peter D. Ward (finished recently!)
Gaia by James Lovelock (reading this at the moment)
Watership Down by Richard Adams (also reading this at the moment)
The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne
The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien
Turn of the Screw by Henry James
Forty Signs of Rain by Kim Stanley Robinson
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (I'd really like to re-read this)
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
Hell and High Water by Joseph Romm
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
F5 by Mark Levine
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

Oh, and the new Harry Potter, of course . We'll see how many of these I get through, but it's always fun to try to read and enjoy as many of them as time permits (and just keep the list for later)!

[ragincajun]

I have just started reading The Quickie by James Patterson, so far so good. Its helping with my CI withdrawals. It happens to mention Law and Order, One Police Plaza and the Captain of the main detective mentions that Major Case might try and take over this case since its a dead police officer, that just made me laugh, I am on page 180 and its hard to put down, the main character, the lead detective is a woman. So far I highly recomend it. It would make a good episode if Major Case did take over this case. It about this cop( the woman) sees her hubby walking out of a hotel with a blonde, so to get back she has a quickie with a fellow cop, her hubby kills the cop, she gets assigned to the case, and has to cover up the evidence. But there is so much more.

[ragincajun]

ragincajun said:

I have just started reading The Quickie by James Patterson, so far so good. Its helping with my CI withdrawals. It happens to mention Law and Order, One Police Plaza and the Captain of the main detective mentions that Major Case might try and take over this case since its a dead police officer, that just made me laugh, I am on page 180 and its hard to put down, the main character, the lead detective is a woman. So far I highly recomend it. It would make a good episode if Major Case did take over this case. It about this cop( the woman) sees her hubby walking out of a hotel with a blonde, so to get back she has a quickie with a fellow cop, her hubby kills the cop, she gets assigned to the case, and has to cover up the evidence. But there is so much more.

OMG this book is fantastic, twist and turns till the end, it keeps you guessing The Quickie by James Patterson if you like police drama, murder, mystery, this is your type of book, I could not put it down. Now time to pick my next book. I hope they make a movie about this book.

[ragincajun]

ragincajun said:

ragincajun said:

I have just started reading The Quickie by James Patterson, so far so good. Its helping with my CI withdrawals. It happens to mention Law and Order, One Police Plaza and the Captain of the main detective mentions that Major Case might try and take over this case since its a dead police officer, that just made me laugh, I am on page 180 and its hard to put down, the main character, the lead detective is a woman. So far I highly recomend it. It would make a good episode if Major Case did take over this case. It about this cop( the woman) sees her hubby walking out of a hotel with a blonde, so to get back she has a quickie with a fellow cop, her hubby kills the cop, she gets assigned to the case, and has to cover up the evidence. But there is so much more.

OMG this book is fantastic, twist and turns till the end, it keeps you guessing The Quickie by James Patterson if you like police drama, murder, mystery, this is your type of book, I could not put it down. Now time to pick my next book. I hope they make a movie about this book.

Ok I finished this book, I hope they make a movie out of this book, OMG it is Fantastic, It is a book you will not be able to put down. I give it 6 out of 5 stars. I am now reading Black Echo by Micheal Connely, Not as much of a page turner, wish I woul have stayed with James Patterson.

[DonnaJo]

Is "The Quickie"out in paperback yet?

[ragincajun]

donna said:

Is "The Quickie"out in paperback yet?

I don't know, I have a Sony Reader and download them and read them on there.

[DonnaJo]

Gee, I never thought of that.

This might sound old fashioned, but I really enjoy the act of reading a real book. You know, curling up in a chair or in bed & holding a book in my hands. Can't explain it - nostalgia? Same thing with the newspaper. I still pay & subscribe to Newsday, our Long Islands newspaper, daily. Even though it is free to subscribe to Newsday.com which has all the articles and it right there on my computer. Same concept - words on paper as opposed to a screen.

[Sirenna]

no, i know what you mean. There's a lot of indefinable reasons like the smelll of the paper as you turn the pages

[ragincajun]

Well basically, I hated getting rid of the books, ran out of place to put the books, and save the trees you know. Know I can save the books on SD cards or just my computer. And switch them out on the reader. They normally sell for about $300 dollars but ShopNBC had them for $150 so I treated my self. They had them for 5 payments of $30

[Sirenna]

This writer is a Canadian movie critic with a lot of respect and credibility in the writing community here in Toronto. I haven't read this book yet but I, too, believe in the power of film to transform the self. I think it's just so cool that he tried to connect with his son by forcing his son to watch his father's taste in movies and that it seemed to work.


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A man and his boy


Novelist and film buff David Gilmour recounts a hair-raising but ultimately successful experiment in parenting, with the help of a very trusting son
Oct 14, 2007 04:30 AM
Michel Basilières

The Film Club

by David Gilmour

Thomas Allen,

247 pages, $27.95

David Gilmour has chosen to follow his Governor General's Award-winning novel, A Perfect Night to Go to China, with a memoir. And despite its title, The Film Club isn't really about the movies. The core subject here is Gilmour's radical experiment in parenting and the journey to self-awareness of his teenaged son, Jesse.

At the age of 16, Jesse is quickly becoming a father's nightmare: a school-skipping, drug-taking layabout. It becomes clear to Gilmour that his son is simply not interested. Gilmour's daring solution is to give Jesse an option, one to spook mothers everywhere – to drop out of school entirely. The one requirement is that Jesse will watch three films a week, with his dad. This is the eponymous film club.

Gilmour was once a film critic on CBC television and served four years as managing editor of the Toronto International Film Festival. His movie choices are indeed wide-ranging, and not at all what his teenaged son would choose for himself – or anyone else, for that matter.

Gilmour's choices aren't just art house. He serves up Hollywood classics, foreign films, comedies, even the guilty pleasures some might call trash.

As the two watch, Gilmour shares his experience and critical vocabulary. He also begins to bridge, through the shared medium, the gap between the mature man and the troubled adolescent's growing pains. Gilmour chooses his films not because they deliver a message or teach a lesson, but because he believes in the power of art to transform the self – because they show things. He shows how others experience pain and doubts, how dreams are essential – even when, like the women in some men's lives, they become capable of betrayal.

There are great scenes in The Film Club. On a family vacation, Gilmour rescues Jesse from criminals in an after-hours dive in Havana. He spies on his son's appearance as a rap singer at the El Mocambo. Gilmour wisely steps away when Jesse needs the conversation of his stepmother, not of his father. He rushes with Jesse's birth mother to hospital when the boy ODs on cocaine. Father and son share tears over Jesse's broken heart.

In the bittersweet (for Gilmour) end, the boy returns to school and leaves his father behind, as one must.

The Film Club is an excellent choice for a book club, and it's as good as a David Gilmour novel. That's saying a lot.

Michel Basilières is the author of the novel Black Bird (Vintage Canada).