I’m planning on getting the other two books in that trilogy. Have you read them? Are they as good as Seek the Fair Land?
I’m a “slow” reader too, since I’m usually so busy that my reading time is when I get in bed at night and I’m often falling asleep after only a couple of pages… 
Right now, I am working my way (slowly) through Pride and Predjudice.
The best books I have ever read tend to be popular fiction:
Lonesome Dove (has to be at the very top of my list ~ wonderful cast of characters that absolutely come alive ~ if you’ve only seen the television series, you’re truly missing something wonderful)
The Gates of the Alamo: Again, wonderful cast of characters, and a meticulously researched story, may actually surprise you!
A few others I would heartily recommend…
The Secret Life of Bees, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Gone With the Wind, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Good Earth.
For a while there, I read lots of true Crime, but I’m over that, now. 
Mary
The last book I read was Moby Dick.Talk about multiple personalities,how many wrote that?
Right now I’m reading; 1066; The Hidden History of the Bayeux Tapestry by Andrew Bridgeford. He claims that the tapestry is actually a secret Anglo-Saxon history of the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and not a Norman one and made under the eyes of the Normans.
Brunelleshci’s Dome: How a Rennaisance Genius Reinvented Architecture, by Ross King. This is a great book for non engineers to look into the genius of a man who built the first great dome.
1421: The year China discovered the world, by Gavin Menzies. His thesis is that China, with it’s great treasure fleets, actually circumnavigated the world in 1421, and that Columbus was Gino come lately.
Also over the last seven years, books, journals, papers etc dealing with the coming fresh water crisis, here in North America, and around the world and all that will be involved with it. You think that you are paying high gasoline prices now, wait for the cost of a litre of water in the not so distant future. I have no intentions of moving away from the Great Lakes area, what so ever.
MarkB
s. ambrose;nixon , also two ambrose books on Eisenhower,
the presidency and now The Supreme Commander,
about wwii. Trying to understand American history
during my lifetime
I thought they were. Very sad and tragic, but entertaining at the same time. I think my favorite was The Scorching Wind, which is the last in the trilogy. He also has written children’s books: The Flight of the Doves and Island of the Great Yellow Ox. My kids really loved them. Macken spins a good tale, and is well worth the time to read.
I’ve just started reading Martin Millar’s The Good Fairies of New York.
These fairies play some tunes we know!! Like Banish Misfortune…
It’s really cool - punk fairies from Scotland, Ireland and Cornwall, somehow get to New York and have quite an adventure.
The Irish fairies play uillean pipes and tin whistles!!
The Sea Wolf----To Kill a Mockingbird----Wind In the Willows—The Pickwick Papers----Alaska—The Sot Weed Factor—Here Comes Noddy Again----Tamalpais Trails-----The Beethoven Quartet Companion
I LOVE to read… although, I’m not doing it as much as I’d like because I’m too busy with college work.
Here’s some of my favorites (in no particular order):
Life of Pi- a married couple (living in India) decided to take thier child (Pi) and their zoo to Canada by boat. Halfway through the cruise, the ship sinks and everyone and every animal dies, except for Pi, a zebra, a hyena, and a siberian tiger. The kid and the three animals manage to stow away on a small life boat. What follows is truly an original, exhilirating story of survival. A must read.
The Demon Haunted World by Caral Sagan- I love science, and I also love the idea that anything might be possible. There are many of us who lack the skepticism to accuartly weigh an issue and therefore deem it as truth. This book pits science against pseudoscinece. Many questions are raised and firmly answered by scientifical thinking. Are there really aliens? Is the person who claims to be channeling a spirit really telling the truth? How can I, in my own life, seperate the “wheat from the chaff” and draw a sound, reasonable conclusion about such matters? Carl Sagan answers all of these questions thoroughly. I can’t tell you how important this book is. Unfortunately, there is a tendancy in our society to believe in something without really taking the time to see if it actually is founded on any basis of truth. Yes, it may be fun to believe in alien abductions, and granted that may be happening, but we shouldn’t let ourselves be swayed by just anyone’s account. Read this book.
Cosmos by Caral Sagan- an account about our solar system and the universe we live in. Very informative, and written in layman’s terms. If you are facinated by the stars, planets, etc. or are just curious about what’s up there in the skies, read this book.
Weird Tales and Ancient Sorceries by Algernon Blackwood- This is the first book I’ve read by Blackwood and I must say that it is some of the more downright creepier stories on horror/supernatural fiction that I"ve read. His style is somewhat slow, but the way he describes the stories, characters, natural settings, etc. make you feel as if you’re lost in some weird dreamland…and you’re never sure just what’s going to come out and grab you.
Chronicles: Vol. I by Bob Dylan- Well, I must admit that I haven’t even read it yet, but I’m sure it’s gonna be great!! I just wanted to let all of you other Dylan fans out there now that this book has recently come out. Enjoy!!
…well, that’s about all I feel like putting down for now. There are many others, but I thought I’d just name a few…
Good thing I didn’t stop after reading Moby Dick. That was about 1955-56, when I was in the 10th grade. I l iked it so well that I read it twice.
That was unusual for me because, as a rule, I don’t seem to enjoy the “classics”. I never did quite make it through Vanity Fair, and I still don’t get the appeal of Hemingway and Faulkner.
Fav’s by category
I’ve been on a lit binge for like 4 years now.
Moby Dick
Candide
Dracula
Jude the Obscure
The Book of Disquiet (Mmm… depressing Portugese literature)
Things that may or may not count as lit
Any Vonnegut
On the Road
Science fiction/fantasy
Ender’s Game and Enders Shadow by Orson Scott Card. I didn’t like the rest of the series, but those two are an exceptional pair, running in paralell timelines.
Terry Pratchet Books. I loaned two from Alex, forget their names. They were great, though.
Picture Books
The Sleep Book (Dr. Suess)
Dinotopia
A Redwall Winter’s Tale
I probably forgot something. Oh well.
Every time I get an E-mail notification I pray that it is from my local bookshop to inform me that Chronicles:Vol.1 has arrived.
Can’t wait to read the great mans own story of his remarkable life and times.
He might even mention his admiration for Samuel Johnston,from whom Dylan borrowed the the line about “Patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings” though I seem to recall that the original quote is “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel”.
Mind you,many of dylans early lyrics borrow heavily from other works and from people like Hank Williams ,Woody Guthrie and such like.He hung out with the Clancy Brothers in the early sixties and picked up a lot of Irish traditional songs from them.“With God on our side” uses a traditional melody and “Restless Farewell” is a re-write of the “Parting Glass”.
His first ever studio work was playing harmonica on a Malvina Reynolds album (see the photo on the back of New Morning) and he got that gig through the Clancys.
Now,back to books!
(I do get carried away sometimes 
)
Slan,
D.
Then be sure to try Stillwell and the American Experience in China, by Barbara Tuchman. This is a good place to start understanding the US-China relationship(s).
I’m kind of a Stillwell nut. Theodore H. White’s The Stillwell Papers is briefer, but has some different insights. I don’t know what happened to my copy, but I think that this where I first read about the “Dixie Mission”, the US Advisory Group element that was in Yenan with the Communists.
Then there’s Walkout: With Stillwell in Burma, by Frank Dorn, which really shows the man’s character as he leads a motley crew of American and British soldiers and Burmese civilians on foot from Rangoon up a river, through the jungle, and over mountains into India just as the Japanese were invading Burma. He was already about my age at the time–the original “tough old bird”.
One of his three daughters, Alison Stillwell Cameron, was the first baby born in the then new Peking (now “Beijing”) hospital. She studied Chinese water color painting, one of her teachers being the Manchu Prince Pu Ju. Eventually she wrote Chinese Painting Techniques, which got me started. I got a chance to meet her and have her critique some of my paintings in 1973.
Finally, I have an old friend, Todd Cleave, who was in a Mandarin class a couple of steps behind me at DLI in 1963, and from whom I took finger-picking guitar lessons. Todd’s father was Stillwell’s personal physician and close friend, and he’s now working on putting together a book based on his father’s letters.
Stillwell ended up in charge of building the “Burma Road” supply line that went from India to China. I think Frank Dorn wrote about that, too. There’s also The Burma Road : The Epic Story of the China-Burma-India Theater in World War II, by Donovan Webster. I really should try to get hold of these.
Another book that looks interesting and treats the same period is Mission to Yenan: American Liaison with the Chinese Communists, 1944-1947, by Carolle J. Carter:
http://www.kentuckypress.com/viewbook.cfm?Group=18&ID=610
Somewhat on-topic for ITM, the Web site says: “Carolle J. Carter, professor emerita at Menlo College and lecturer at San Jose State University, is the author of The Shamrock and the Swastika: German Espionage in Ireland in World War II.”
Sorry Emmline, in the U.K. The first book in the ‘his dark materials trilogy’ went out under the name of ‘Northern Lights’ so I didn’t recognise ‘The Golden Compass’ ! Good books though eh, couldn’t put them down.
Most of these titles are way too thoughtful for me. Getting back and forth from work gives me 2 hrs of train time every day. Mostly I’m reading crime fiction and only paperbacks (hustling through subway stations, all books must fit in pockets) Good crime fiction is character driven and is often where one finds some of the better writing about contemporary social issues. Of course we like cheap thrills too.
Recent authors include Ken Bruen, Ian Rankin, S J Rozen, James Lee and Alfair Burke, Michael Connelly, Andrew Vachss, Greg Isles, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Childs, Minnette Walters, Peter Robertson…
Actually, like Woody Guthrie, most of his early melodies were from traditional songs:
“Masters of War” = “Nottamun Town”
“Bob Dylan’s Dream” =“Lord Franklin”
“Girl of the North Country” = “Scarborough Fair”
“Farewell” = “The Leaving of Liverpool”
“A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” = “Lord Randall”
“With God on Our Side” = “The Patriot Game”
“Percy’s Song” = “Two Sisters”
I’m sure there are more. I recall hearing one that I could identify as “Maggie Walker Blues”, but don’t recall which. This would have been in about 1964-65.
Guthrie did often write unique choruses for his songs, as many of the old ballads didn’t have choruses. Someone claimed that only “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos” (“Deportees”) had a wholly original melody, but that someone else wrote it. It’s my all-time favorite Guthrie song. http://www.geocities.com/Nashville/3448/deportee.html – even more so now, living just a few blocks from the Salinas Valley vegetable fields that are still full of migrant workers several times a year.
I might as well tack on my only Dylan story.
In early 1963, before the Monterey Folk Festival, I think, several friends and I were sitting in a little cafe down on Cannery Row, playing guitars and singing folk songs. One of the guys was a fairly new Hungarian student, named Brian Voorhees. Brian was from Boston, and could play every Dylan song–guitar, harmonica, and vocal, in amazingly precise imitation of Dylan himself.
The cafe had a big picture window, which Brian was facing. Suddenly, he threw his Gibson down on the table and rushed out the door. The rest of us were just staring at each other, asking what the heck had just happened.
In a couple of minutes, Brian came back in. He had seen Dylan walk by the front of the cafe. As he ran out the door, he saw him going into the (now defunct) Steinbeck movie theater. So, Brian rushed in–without buying a ticket–and ran up to where Dylan was buying popcorn.
He asked whether Dylan was performing in the area, and Bob said, “No”, that he was just visiting a friend. We later analyzed this as referring to Baez.
Dylan performed at the Monterey Folk Festival, but Baez didn’t.
After he got out of the Army, Brian came back to the area and ended up on at least one recording: http://www.deaddisc.com/ot/Cleanliness_Greatest_Hits.htm
I need a book that covers history immediately
after the Axis defeat in WWII through about 1952.
Any suggestions?
Being from Boston, do you like the Robert B. Parker books? I loved the early ones, but he seems to have gotten into an odd rut over the past several years, as though he’s been going through some kind of personal crisis. The Fletch and Flynn books from Gregory McDonald can be fun, but I’m not sure they’re particularly deep.
Being from Texas, I’ve been enjoying a series from a guy named Rick Riordan. Looking at http://www.lowth.com/blist/-/69608/1 I see that there’s a new one out that I don’t have yet.
Lawrence Block’s books about retired burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr are also fun. The Burglar in the Closet is very vaguely the source of the Whoopi Goldberg movie, Burglar, with modifications that involved more than a sex-change for the main character. Very little violence–if you don’t count murder.
I don’t know if they’re available in paperback, but a rather different series is by Nevada Barr http://members.tripod.com/~MindHarp/nbarr.html about a National Parks Ranger, Anna Pigeon. The settings range from limestone caverns to forest fires to the Statue of Liberty.
Almost two years ago, I suffered a shoulder injury and couldn’t work at the computer or play the guitar, so I started reading mysteries from the library. In order to make it efficient, I started working my way through the shelves in alphabetical order. Unfortunately, I got well before I was even through the B’s–even reading 3 or 4 a day. 
One thing that surprised me was how good most of them were, including many that I would never have glanced at twice under normal circumstances. Lots of good British stuff, and even one Irish writer that I picked up because his book had been put on the shelf under his first name, Bartholomew Gill (Death of an Irish Lover).
I haven’t read a mystery since that time. I should start lifting weights again… 
By me, that counts as lit.
I go through phases also. Right now I’m re-reading sf short stories from Hugo and Nebula winner collections. I also found two Thurber collections at a book sale that I’m re-reading with much delight; also dutifully slogging through Kenneth Rexroth’s Classics revisited.
Well said; the importance of the relationship between character and story is what most of the “thriller” writers like Clancy totally miss, IMHO… the better mystery writers don’t succumb to cheap thrills, fortunately.
Being from Boston, do you like the Robert B. Parker books? I loved the early ones, but he seems to have gotten into an odd rut over the past several years, as though he’s been going through some kind of personal crisis.
I’ve enjoyed Parker’s work for many years and respect him as a writer. Early Autumn, in particular, is a fine book, whether one is a mystery fan or not. I think lately he’s just lost his edge. It happens. There’s a point where a series should just gracefully end, but publishers rarely see eye to eye with frontlist authors on that. And there are always the bills to pay, after all…
[edited to add a plug for Early Autumn]