@Isabel - I loved Cleopatra, A Life.

@Suz - I love your short story!

I recently finished The Moon in the Mango Tree by Pamela Binnings Ewen and loved it!

Pil, thank you so much ! I have never heard of Boxcar Children. Both my kids love cooking, so that is a really special treat. I am off to look it up on Amazon. ( this is just the greatest place )

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Thank you all for your very kind words on my essay. Most of my writing is not online so it is a very novel thing to think that I might actually find an audience! I am honoured that you actually took the time to read it.

Ummm, this is such a fun thread.

I am not much of a reader in English but I do read in Spanish ( I am trying hard to maintain my vocabulary), so I have very little in the way of reccomendations. However, I just read Suz's book, Pathologies, and loved it.

I am currently re-reading " El Amor en Los Tiempos Del Colera" ( Love in the Time of Cholera) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, in Spanish. I do recommend anything by him, even in the English translations. His work will blow you away.

Mochi, I think your friend would love Garcia Marquez.

Oh yes, Zap, I think you're right. He is the original "Magical Realism" guy and no one does it like him.

If I can come up with some Spanish-language writers to recommend (based on my or colleagues' having read good translations of them, so the field would be limited), I will also let you know.

Yes, please Mochi. My reading list is quite short and I re read a lot.

Zap, One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of my all-time favorite books. I envy you being able to read him in Spanish!

Allicat, that is my favorite book of his too, that's his Nobel Prize! I must have read it at least 5 times! The way he chooses his words is a delight and I know that is preserved in the translations. Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a source of pride for all of us Colombians. I am so glad he has become so well known.

Zap, you'd have to find his books in a library probably, but you could try the novels of an Argentinian writer, Manuel Puig. They are a bit experimental but certainly readable. Kiss of the Spiderwoman, Betrayed By Rita Hayworth, Heartbreak Tango, etc. I'd also mentioned Isabel Allende's House of the Spirits. Maybe books by Mario Vargas Llosa such as Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter. I'll try to come up with more.

Thanks Mochi. I have read Allende's La Casa de los Espiritus and La Tia Julia y El Escribidor by Vargas Llosa, which but I must look for Puig. I know I have heard of El Beso de la Mujer Arana but never read it. I am so psyched you know the good Latin American / Spanish writers. So happy!

Gaylene thanks for the link to Suz's piece.

suz I have a whole day at home (rare for me) & have just read your essay & loved it. I must admit Anna really annoyed me when I first read the book (at 15). The book marked the beginning of my relationship with feminism though. The utter hypocrisy of what was acceptable behaviour depending on your sex really stoked those fires in me. My husband read The Once & Future King to me as I'd never read it as a child All power stems from the nape of the neck does it not?

One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of my favourite books too.

I usually have about five books on the go at one time. I just finished I Want To Be Her by Andrea Linett - very light but interesting. I loved that she recognised the Australia input into Lucky.

Also reading A Possible Life by Sebastian Faulks. I really enjoy his prose.

Zap, Latin American fiction was at the forefront of postmodern experimental literature in the 60s and 70s, and as far as I understand, that's where magic realism came from, or at least became a phenomenon. Writers such as Carlos Fuentes, Julio Cortazar (I read some of his short stories, but wasn't sure you wanted stories), Jorge Luis Borges, etc etc, not to mention Brazilian writers like Jorge Amado that are not writing in Spanish but have also been highly influential. It is disgraceful how much international literature remains untranslated into English, considering how in reverse, other countries are so much more open-minded about reading works in translation.

Anyway, I just finished Big Brother by Lionel Shriver, a novel about an adult woman who intervenes to help her extremely obese brother lose weight. It was a compassionate (and not sentimental) book, very insightful and timely. It was very very sad, so I'd recommend it based on your tolerance for non-uplifting books, but I won't be forgetting it.

Still trying to make my way through Kazuo Ishiguro's The Unconsoled.

Does anyone like sophisticated graphic novels? (I know Girl X would, but she's not on here often.) I have read some really good ones like Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (educated, middle-class Iranian girl growing up in Iran during the revolution), La Perdida by Jessica Abel (young expat American woman in Mexico gets caught up in all sorts of trouble), Maus by Art Spiegelman, of course (Holocaust theme)....

I just finished 419 by Will Ferguson and it's a great read about email scams, Nigeria, oil companies....very complex but it all dovetails so well in the end. I highly recommend it!

My summer list is remarkably "light" in content; I was a high-school English teacher for a long time and read a lot of complex novels so my senior students would have plenty to analyze. Now that I'm no longer teaching, I find myself going for lighter fare in fiction, but I enjoy non-fiction as well. Here's what's on the night-stand -

- The Checklist Manifesto - Atul Gawande
- Lean In - Sheryl Sandberg
- Inferno - Dan Brown
- Kitchen Confidential - Anthony Bourdain
- The Next Best Thing - Jennifer Weiner
- The Story of Beautiful Girl - Rachel Simon
- The Lake of Dreams - Kim Edwards
- Purpose-Driven Life - Rick Warren

If I get through half of them, I will consider it a successful summer!

Best book almost ever for me was:
The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
Brilliant!
David Copperfield- just finished, had never read it before, made me want to read Great Expectations which I liked but not as much as David Copperfield.

Have to post to say that I just went to the library to pick up,

AND, a very stylish woman saw me in line, and told me it was a great book. "Laugh out loud funny", she said. She was wearing a black and white dotted dress, black-t-strap sandals, cool glasses, short great hair and red lips! She looked great!

(On the other hand, I was wearing frumpy too-big (but comfy) white shorts, a sour yellow t-shirt, old-lady sandals, and a white watch.)

The book is very funny. And so cool that I had an interaction with someone stylish, which never happens at my library. All because of this thread.

Thanks Alicat!