Book Club: What are you reading?

[Virginia]

Wonderful that you have that connection Linda. I would think it would be a good outlet for you with all the other stuff you have going on. Keep us posted on when it comes out.

[Virginia]

I just finished listening to a podcast. I really enjoyed it. The name of it is Bag Man by Rachel Maddow. It is about Spiro Agnew and how he was forced to resign the Vice Presidency and why he was allowed to resign rather than face charges even tho he was found guilty of criminal conduct. I found it fascinating that much of this is just coming out.

[agate]

Appreciate knowing about the Rachel Maddow book. I didn't follow the Spiro Agnew story much at the time and never really knew anything about why he resigned. I'll get hold of the book and find out.

[Virginia]

Agate, it is a Podcast and not a book. You can download it for free on your iPad or iPhone and just listen to it. There are some heroes - such as then Attorney General Elliott Richardson, even though he was Republican, without him as AG I am not sure what would have happened. Several other heroes and some that surprised me that they would try to cover things up.

[agate]

Toni Morrison 1931 -2019

RIP Toni Morrison. I've read only some of her books but hope to read others. She was one of the most significant voices in modern American literature.

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[Virginia]

I recently read The Snowden Files. I read this with my book club. It was interesting in the parts that told how he did what he did. How he got the highly classified files out, etc. But the rest of the book I found to be dry and slow reading.

We didn’t know when this book was chosen that he is just now coming out with one of his own. I saw him just a few nights ago in an interview. He is still in Russia and doesn’t know if they will ever let him out.

Before that I read a book on the civil war.

Now I am going to read a follow up to that one .

[Sunshine]

Wow Virginia! Thanks for the book review :)

I am in hot last quarter of Women of the Sea by Lisa See. Very interesting fiction based on historical reality. Follows a group of North Korean Women from pre-WW2 era Japanese occupation through the WW2 and up until 2008. Impact of world events on their culture. In that real culture, women work, men stay home with the kids etc. The women dive for food in the ocean and work the land when theyre not diving.

Edited to add: The book title is actually Island of Sea Women. My mistake...

[Virginia]

Forgot to add that in between the couple of books I listed above I also read two more:

Patrick Swayze's "The Time of My Life" - this was his autobiography written shortly before his death. I found him to be very honest and straightforward about his life. Some of it surprised me, such as the fact that he was very insecure, but especially during the first 10 years of his marriage he was insecure about his wife. He had met his wife of 34 years when they were both teenagers in Texas and dancing in his Mother's dance studio. He asked her to marry him when he was 22 and she was 19. They were by then living in New York. Because she was going to set a date a little over a year away he always felt she had not wanted to marry him, even though they ended up getting married in Texas two months later. He was truly a one woman man. Something I am not sure you see to much of in Hollywood.

Since I had read that, I decided to then read his wife's book "Worth Fighting For". It too was very open and honest and I enjoyed reading it. Since the very sudden death of my Mother at the relatively young age of 66 and then the subsequent death of my husband at a much younger age, I have had an interest in grief and how people are able to move forward. I have always wished I had remained healthy and could have found a way to work with people who might be going through similar situations.

Both of these book were instantly bestsellers back when they were written.

[clouds z]

books by peter ackroyd

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[Sunshine]

Loved him in Ghost.

Just in the pa;rat of my book where the US Military is now in charge of South Korea, and hence the character’s village. They were more brutal than the japs. Terrible. Must kill the S Koreans to have to be allies of ours nowadays.

[Virginia]

Sunshine, my husband spent 13 months in S. Korea. This was after the war, but before he met me. He always said it was the unhappiest year of his life. When he retired from the military he had been put on a roster to be promoted in about six months. It would have been a big promotion, but if he had stayed and taken it he was told he was what they called a short tour short. That means you are sent where your family cannot join you. He had just spent a year in Viet Nam, a country he liked. But that meant there was a good chance that short tour would be Korea, so he got out. My older brother liked S. Korea. He went over a couple of years after my husband and the country had changed a lot.

[Sunshine]

That’s interesting Virginia.

You might enjoy the book

The book is actually titled, Island of Sea Women

[Virginia]

I was thinking that also Sunshine.

[Sunshine]

I was thinking that also Sunshine.

If you read it. Let me know what you think.

[Virginia]

I haven’t been doing my usual amount of reading. I need to get back into it, but have not felt like it lately. However I am trying to read the book the book club brought to me. Just started this morning and haven’t really gotten very interested yet. Will come back and report when I get it read.