Sacramento Public Library discussion

We're reading the Slender Poe this month for One Book Sacramento and we hope you are too! You might be reading some other good books as well. Please share your recommendations below and help someone else find their next great read.

I started "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn. It is so gripping! I'm questioning characters, making assumptions, and devouring the text at a rapid pace. It's grand!

I'm finally picking up Sabriel. It's been in my TBR forever.

I started reading Come hOme for Christmas by Brenda Novak ( local author) and No angel

Julie wrote: "I started reading Come hOme for Christmas by Brenda Novak ( local author) and No angel"

I played basketball with one of her daughters in 8th grade! :)

Got my copy of the Slender Poe a few days ago. In the meantime, I'm reading "Shapeshifter," by J. F. Gonzalez--a good old-fashioned werewolf tale.

I just finished "My Antonia" for my Women in Literature class and I cannot believe that I bypassed Willa Cather for all these years. It brought back memories of when my grandmother raised me in a small town and of my Slovak heritage. It was different from my regular reading of mysteries and fantasy and I enjoyed the departure into the American past. And then Poe becomes the lead story! American nostalgia and then American horror--what better way to start October!

Annemarie wrote: "I just finished "My Antonia" for my Women in Literature class and I cannot believe that I bypassed Willa Cather for all these years. It brought back memories of when my grandmother raised me in a ..."

I haven't read My Antonia in forever. Need to revisit it, I remember really liking it when I read it back in college.

Over the past month or so I have been reading the delightful Amour et Chocolate series of contemporary romances by Laura Florand. The Chocolate Thief, The Chocolate Kiss and The Chocolate Touch. Each is set in Paris and the hero in each book is a professional chocolatier and a definite bad boy. Chocolate, Paris, bad boys...what more could you want in a romance?!

Alex by Pierre Lemaitre.

I was very intrigued by the dust jacket synopsis and finished it in one night as I wanted to find out what would happen to the girl. The story morphs and characters come and go (i.e. they die). You'll be confused as to motives until the very end when all is revealed. Imagine a film noir hard boiled detective meets Sherlock Holmes's step by step explanation of the sequence of events.

I was really taken by the main girl character and was at turns rooting for her, repulsed by her and finally left with a, "huh" feeling because of the "life is not black and white, but shades of grey" resolution. My favorite line, "what's important is not truth, it's justice." Wrap your head around that one.

If you like murder mysteries, film noir storytelling, translations, and/or are interested in the French police procedural, this is a very good book.

I am now reading The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch and absolutely loving it. It is a fantasy, volume one of the Gentlemen Bastards serie, and it is full of politics, scheming, thievery, betrayal, and so much more. It also builds gradually from one type of story into another. I have about a third more to go and I absolutely hate when I have to put it down.

Finally getting around to reading . I've already read , which I liked, so I'm figuring I'll enjoy this one too.

I just finished "Anansi Boys", and really enjoyed it. I almost didn't read it, because I read "The Ocean at the End of the Lane", and didn't like it at all. But this one was completely different, and I liked it a lot. And I kept thinking back to when my daughters were little, and we read the Anansi picture books. :)

I am reading The lair by Emily Mckay and Being sloane jacobs..I finished This side of salvation by Jeri smith ready :) and my college class book

@tabitha I had already read the Farm and enjoyed it. :)

I loved Good Omens!

I am very fond of Jacquline Carey's other series...I may just read that when I find the time.

I'm now reading short stories and poems from "The Slender Poe Anthology" which I've missed in previous readings of Poe, and am now listening to "Frostbite" by David Wellington on audio. In between I'm skimming books on writing: "The Fire in Fiction," "No Plot? No Problem!", and "The Nighttime Novelist," all to get ready for NaNoWriMo on 11/1/13.

I am *ahem* trying to read Twelve Years a Slave - Enhanced Edition by Sue Eakin, PhD, but the Kindle app doesn't work well on my NOOK. Come on, Amazon, get it together!

Eakin is the historian who pretty much single-handedly rescued the book from obscurity and validated much of the events and details described in Northup's autobiography. It's a fascinating read... when the damn app isn't locking up. I could have gotten a *free* PDF of Northup's original from archive.org (it has been out of copyright for 100 years), but thought 99¢ seemed like a bargain to get Eakin's annotated version. I spent more than 20 minutes last night rebooting and force quitting and downloading updates, and read a grand total of 3 pages. What an unpleasant experience!

Sorry for the venting... If you've got a Kindle app that works smoothly I highly recommend this version of 12 Years a Slave. Otherwise, you might try to find a different edition.

Besides reading Poe for the challenge, I read Neil Gaiman this month. "Unfortunately, the Milk," was a wonderfully illustrated tale that I read to my children. They didn't want me to stop reading, so we read it in two sittings in one day. I also read "The Ocean at the End of the Lane." Gaiman's writing inspires me. So simple and not at all cliche.

Chip wrote: "I am *ahem* trying to read Twelve Years a Slave - Enhanced Edition by Sue Eakin, PhD, but the Kindle app doesn't work well on my NOOK. Come on, Amazon, get it together!

Eakin is the historian who ..."

You just summarized my argument for why e-books will never replace the dead trees editions. ;-) I own a Kindle Fire, and while I like it, I still prefer reading a paperback book over the electronic edition. The paper version doesn't need to have its battery recharged; I don't have to worry about the text downloading properly, or the reader breaking if I drop it.

I will second you, Sue Eakin's annotated version of Twelve Years a Slave is excellent, and I also recommend it. The library has a newer edition edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. with a forward by Steve McQueen, director of the new movie. I haven't seen that one and am disappointed the library doesn't carry Eakin's edition, but Solomon Northrup's account is still moving 150 years since its publication.

Eleanor wrote: "You just summarized my argument for why e-books will never replace the dead trees editions..."

My negative comment was specifically aimed at Amazon's releasing a bug-ridden Kindle app to run on their competitor's hardware, not a criticism of e-readers in general. After a couple of years of using my NOOK, I definitely prefer it for books with mostly text. I love to be able to (1) look up definitions in the dictionary, or (2) use Google or Wikipedia to read up on things like historic places or people or battles, or (3) to find out where else in this book this character has appeared. All of this from within the book!

I recently read J.F. Cooper's Ned Myers: A Life Before the Mast and spent almost as much time in Wikipedia as I did in the book - all those ships and captains and battles and destinations! And last night, I looked up "prepossessing" - I sorta knew what it meant, but wanted to see a precise definition. And if it takes me several days to read a book, I may have forgotten that one paragraph on page 17 that introduced "Simon" by the time he reappears page 283. Who the heck is Simon? On my NOOK, I can look him up quickly. If I had been reading a traditional book, I don't think I would have bothered with any of these.

On the other hand, books with a lot of illustrations (especially detailed maps) are still a pain on the NOOK, and I wouldn't dream of reading an art book or something like that. But if it's basically text, I'm a huge fan!