Thursday, February 23, 2006

"what to read next?"

I thought I would try out the "What should I read next?" website since I'm on vacation and the girls are napping (I'm listening to The Accidental right now as well). I put five titles into the mix: The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, The Time Traveler's Wife, The Lovely Bones, The Poisonwood Bible, and The Known World.

The database spit back three pages of books. Some of them classics like Catch-22, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, 1984, etc. A few others I took note of:
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn
The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen

Ella Minnow Pea sounds interesting to me (and not just because I like the first name) and seems to fall into the same category as Jasper Fforde's books (Allison: you should look this one up!). There seems to be several books about book clubs lately. Besides Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons and The Jane Austen Book Club, there's also The Book Club by Mary Alice Monroe. I just think it's interesting this is such a hot topic.

I'd be curious to hear if anyone liked Life of Pi. And Cloud Atlas seems to keep popping up in things I've read. So I might have to add that one to my reading list. A friend of mine enjoyed Practical Magic as well as some others of Alice Hoffman's books.

Kind of a fun website to play around with.

4 comments:

allisonmariecat said...

My book club read Life of Pi a while ago, and we all enjoyed it. It's very...strange, but very engrossing. The ending is completely unexpected. Have you read any Margot Livesey? We read Eva Moves the Furniture, and people either loved it or hated it. I loved it, and I think you might, too.

Ooh, I will be checking out Ella Minnow Pea!

Mary said...

I just tried reserving Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen at my local library and they don't seem to have this book in their collection. Is it brand new? I believe I've read nearly every Hiaasen book published. He's very irreverently funny w/bizarre characters and silly plots.

Kirsten said...

I didn't see the movie but Memoirs of a Geisha is one of my all time favorite books. It's filled with incredible detail, visuals, and has great vocabulary choices.

Holly said...

I just looked up Tourist Season on the B&N website. It looks like it was published in 1987 and there was a paperback reissue May 2005. So you would think the library would have it.