What you reading now?

[CeaBee]

A hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch's father is growing concerned. A hard drinker, largely absent, he doesn't show concern for much else. Esch and her three brothers are stocking food, but there isn't much to save. Lately, Esch can't keep down what food she gets; she's fourteen and pregnant. Her brother Skeetah is sneaking scraps for his prized pitbull's new litter, dying one by one in the dirt. Meanwhile, brothers Randall and Junior try to stake their claim in a family long on child's play and short on parenting.


As the twelve days that make up the novel's framework yield to their dramatic conclusion, this unforgettable family-motherless children sacrificing for one another as they can, protecting and nurturing where love is scarce-pulls itself up to face another day. A big-hearted novel about familial love and community against all odds, and a wrenching look at the lonesome, brutal, and restrictive realities of rural poverty, Salvage the Bones is muscled with poetry, revelatory, and real.

a suh the cutting for stone one sad too?

[seemiyah]

LOL dat is what the slackers said, that it was too depressing so that is why dem neva read it it is not as broad in scope as Cutting for Stone, its very concentrated on about 2 weeks in their lives but me want someone fi discuss it wid, so oonu read it!

[CeaBee]

Pz volunteer fi read it

[CeaBee]

Good news! You are entitled to a credit of $5.84 for some of your past Kindle book purchases. The credit results from legal settlements reached with publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Penguin in antitrust lawsuits filed by State Attorneys General and Class Plaintiffs about the price of eBooks.

You don't have to do anything to claim your credit, we have already added your credit to your Amazon account. We will automatically apply your available credit to your next purchase of a Kindle book or print book sold by Amazon.com, regardless of publisher. The credit applied to your purchase will appear in your order summary. If your account does not reflect this credit, please contact Amazon's customer service.

*chrrps* not even a $20. Well this is good for a couple of books fi the beanseses i guess.

Hopefully this means that the digital book prices will go down.

[seemiyah]

see how yu greedy, a only rich people scoff at $5, that is like 3 kindle daily deals! Gi it to mi if yu nuh want it. Anyway you can go buy salvage the bones now, which I did incidentally got from a Kindle daily deal for dolla ninety nine.

[seemiyah]

Good thing I neva grudge you!!

Good news! You are entitled to a credit of $5.36 for some of your past Kindle book purchases. The credit results from legal settlements reached with publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Penguin in antitrust lawsuits filed by State Attorneys General and Class Plaintiffs about the price of eBooks.

[CeaBee]

Congrats! a round of books on you!

[evanovitch]

just finished TARQUIN HALL'S SALAAM BRICK LANE…..A YEAR IN THE NEW EAST END…..enjoyed his mysteries set in India so read this one set in England…very interesting look at the changing face of Britain with the influx of East Indians etc….really very good read n very informational….

http://tarquinhall.com/salaam-brick-lane/

SALAAM BRICK LANE: A Year in the New East End

After ten years living abroad, Tarquin Hall wanted to return to his native London. Lured by his nostalgia for a leafy suburban childhood spent in south-west London, he returned with his Indian-born, American fiance in tow. But, priced out of the housing market, they found themselves living not in a townhouse, oozing Victorian charm, but in a squalid attic above a Bangladeshi sweatshop on London’s Brick Lane. A grimy skylight provided the only window on their new world: a filthy, noisy street where drug dealers and prostitutes peddled their wares and tramps urinated on the pavements. At night, traffic lights lit up the ceiling and police sirens wailed into the early hours.
Yet, as Hall got to know Brick Lane, he discovered beneath its unlovely surface an inner world where immigrants and asylum seekers struggle to better themselves and dream of escape. Salaam Brick Lane is a journey of discovery by an outsider in his own native city. It offers an explicit glimpse of the underbelly of London’s most infamous quarter, the real-life world of Monica Ali’s bestselling novel.
‘Charming, brilliant, affectionate and quietly impassioned … it manages to be balanced, humane and life-affirming.’ – Kevin Rushby, GUARDIAN
‘Tarquin Hall is right at the heart of what he writes about . . . Hall’s new friends spring brilliantly to life off the page . . . it’s hard to imagine a more moving or more telling record of lives on the edge.’ – Caroline Gascoigne, SUNDAY TIMES
ALSO in the midst of rereading MINE BOY by PETER ABRAHAMS….credited as being the first South African novel, we know Peter Abrahams as a radio personality in Jamaica with that very distinctive voice of his...

http://www.africabookclub.com/?p=853

Published in 1946, Peter Abraham’s Mine Boy was one of the first books to look at what life as a black person meant in South African society during the days of Apartheid.
The book’s main character, Xuma, is a man in transition. He leaves his home in the north to go find work in the big city of Johannesburg at the gold mines. He ends up in Malay camp; a suburb for blacks. There, he meets Leah, a tough but kind woman, who gives him a place to stay. Though everyone in Leah’s house does not like the idea of Xuma working in the mines, he is determined to work there, despite the harsh conditions that blacks are forced to work under.
Xuma is naïve about the city and its ways. On his first walk around the city, he is shocked to see his fellow blacks take off from whites when they have not done any harm. Rather than run, he stands his ground. When a policeman attacks him, he strikers back. This gives him reason enough to flee. His friends call him a fool because of his naivety.
Leah is a tough and strong willed woman, unapologetic about her way of life. She brews alcohol, something illegal for blacks but not for whites. When other women bootleggers in her camp are arrested, Xuma feels bad because Leah did not warn them. To which Leah says, “Life is so in the city.”
Among the other people that live in Leah’s household are Johannes and Daddy, both of whom find their solace in taking liquor.
Xuma falls in love with Leah’s niece, Eliza,, who is a teacher and dresses like the white folks. She loves Xuma but because she has passion for the white man’s things, wants someone who speaks like them she runs away, leaving him bitter. Abandoned, Xuma turns to Maisy whose love he had earlier turned down.
At the mines, Xuma’s strength makes him a successful mine boy – a boss boy for one of the mine supervisors – Paddy Oshea, or the red one, as Xuma calls him. Paddy is considerate and understanding, and despite his not being black, he becomes friends with Xuma. To Paddy, a man is a man first and then color comes second. But as Xuma soon realizes, as a black man, he remains a second-class citizen under the apartheid regime.
After an accident in the mines that takes the lives of Johannes and other miners, Paddy and Xuma lead the strike together with the mine boys when they are forced to back to work before the place is repaired. It is this incident that makes Xuma understand the real meaning of being a man first and color next, as all the workers join hands and put their differences aside.
This is a melancholic story that paints a picture of resilience in the face of numerous setbacks and unfair laws. As the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) put it, man is born free but every where in chains. After all, what has colour go to do with personality?

alternating with new authors n rereading the classics

[CeaBee]

http://tarquinhall.com/salaam-brick-lane/
SALAAM BRICK LANE: A Year in the New East End

After ten years living abroad, Tarquin Hall wanted to return to his native London. Lured by his nostalgia for a leafy suburban childhood spent in south-west London, he returned with his Indian-born, American fiance in tow. But, priced out of the housing market, they found themselves living not in a townhouse, oozing Victorian charm, but in a squalid attic above a Bangladeshi sweatshop on London’s Brick Lane. A grimy skylight provided the only window on their new world: a filthy, noisy street where drug dealers and prostitutes peddled their wares and tramps urinated on the pavements. At night, traffic lights lit up the ceiling and police sirens wailed into the early hours.

^^^ That one sounds interesting.

I've read quite a few books that speak about the men from neighbouring countries going to work in the S. African diamond mines...i was just trying to remember which books exactly...but a few that i have read mention the harsh working conditions.

[Pepper]

Cutting for a Stone is one of my favorite books of all time. Verghese is a master story teller

I have it on Kindle, CB.

Really? I find it so predictable and the characters are annoying. The only character I have any Empathy for is the twins adopted/surrogate father. Everyone else is one dimensional. I have about 1.5 CD's to go.

[Wahalla]

Mine Boy is on my to read list as well as Wild Boys but it may be a time before i get to them...

I am slowly reading Commanding Heights ... Daniel Yergin a book on economy development i made another guy read it and we both discuss it at work...and we realise how ignorant we are of economics and developmental models... it looks at varying developmental systems from Marxism to Asian tigers to the post colonial africa.. i am just starting the chapeter on India.. it looks at China and gave perspective on Tienaman Square incident... Why it happened and the pressure that the reformers.. it looked at corrupttion associated with Korea and the development... (interestingly Korea goverment at the moment wants to develop creative industry anmd are sponsoring pop music and films as part of the deve

..while reading a page turners on my kindle app....at the moment i am reading Sam Barone Clash of Empire.... It covers the development of the Akkadian civilisation from the Trella and Esskar series Historically i wouldn't say it is accurate.. he places a lot of military skills that happen in the future and gives them logistic and communication networks from three centuaries ago.....

Last week i finished The Pagan Lord Bernard Cornwall last in the current historical novel series on the development of England as Vikings and Saxons clash over the development of England... this is how i learn english history...Bernard Cornwall may write in the style of a cowboy novel but he brings English history to life... Something Jamaican authours Andrew Starkley CS Reid did on Jamaica history did decades ago.. (Hurricane, Earthquake Riot, The Young Warriors, 65)

Cornwall does small subversive stuff.... on the Arthurian series he wrote, Sir Sagamore is an African, in this series the wife of the Priest that the hero Uthred the hero of the Pagan Lord respects is an African and tells him that a lion is a six legged animal.....He makes a point that the Saxons were a step back from the Romans they stripped the marble from buildings and made lime from it..Uthred hates Christians followers of the Nailed God he calls them and or White Christ.. He takes the piss out of saints, one saint was tyhe lover of a Abbot anotehr was a dog...He kills an abbot and his son is a preist he hates....

i love the part that the he sticks in great quotes from antiquity on a silver bowl the hero chops up from Ovid " Moribus et forma conciliandus amor" Pleasant looks and good manners aids love.... and on a bridge they destroy he stole a quote from anotehr bridge in Alcantara in Spain. "potem perpetui manurum insaecula" which means I have built a bridge that will last forever...

however suddenly i need to go read a history of the development of Tigres and Eurphraties valley.... And Babylon,,,,... what this book dis it introduced

[evanovitch]

Wahalla, i like Cornwall as well….am rereading all the classics of my youth,,,,especially the ones done in school n am realizing that we did a LOT…also rereading the plays…..to help the progress i picked up the coffee table sized collections, (thankfully have been able to get them cheaply off the sale tables) n have just blocked a couple weeks to wade thru…..trying to build up to Dante's Inferno n Chaucer…whoa…..btw, have u watched the latest movie effort on Anna Karenina…did not see it wen it came out in 2012 but finally watched it after rereading the book n rather liked how the director approached the filming….cross between a stage production (in terms of backdrop etc) n film….

http://youtu.be/rPGLRO3fZnQ

my next thing is rereading Fanon…want to see how things have changed or not changed since he wrote his books…..n finally, going to read THINGS FALL APART…..that one is a perennial…been slacking off on reading but wen i get the mood these days i go all hog…

[Wahalla]

Wahalla, i like Cornwall as well….am rereading all the classics of my youth,,,,especially the ones done in school n am realizing that we did a LOT…also rereading the plays…..to help the progress i picked up the coffee table sized collections, (thankfully have been able to get them cheaply off the sale tables) n have just blocked a couple weeks to wade thru…..trying to build up to Dante's Inferno n Chaucer…whoa…..btw, have u watched the latest movie effort on Anna Karenina…did not see it wen it came out in 2012 but finally watched it after rereading the book n rather liked how the director approached the filming….cross between a stage production (in terms of backdrop etc) n film….

http://youtu.be/rPGLRO3fZnQ

my next thing is rereading Fanon…want to see how things have changed or not changed since he wrote his books…..n finally, going to read THINGS FALL APART…..that one is a perennial…been slacking off on reading but wen i get the mood these days i go all hog…

Surprised me u like Cornwall... He has gained litary credibility as the years have gone by.. Esstential the protagonist of all his novels is the same character... but i read the first sharpe novel and must admit it is date,,,,,,I love him for the research... His Agincourt was praised by serious historians.....I loved his Grail Quest till the last book and his Arthurian cycle is brilliant!


Dante Inferno is being read on BBC Radio 4 this week by John Hurt. if u want a cheat ... I heard it when i was a child in Jamaica on the radio and relisten to mopst of it a couple years back read by Hurt... I am sure there will be a link... unfortunately I will miss it she who must be obeyed has told me i am going to the theater this week end to see the first born on stage in a musical.....

Cant face Fanon after all the Algerian Revolution has descended inot a Danteque hell of military dictatorship, ethnic strife and islamic madness.....What Fanon beleived and practised was lost alfter all Ben Bella spent 20 years in prision! I was in algeria for the 90s and say he was barely remembered in the boonies....

Dont get tolstoy!

u know i know we get told that we were miseducated in Jamaica by younger folk on here who didnt experience it.... But i think as we get older i can see the power of the sylabus that we were taught... unfortunately I am of the belief that the teachers available to most dont have the skill to bring subjects alive... From literature to history as i get older the more i value it and the more i note people our age appriciate it....are notbut it still surprises me that i will start talking stuff we learnt in school or off the radio and europeans are like astonished we know more of our histroy and the impact their history have... imagine telling a Dane their part in the slave trade and in the Napoleonic war ? or a German they actually won the battle of waterloo.... or an Italian of the battel oc Cannae or Trasimena ?

[evanovitch]

u know i know we get told that we were miseducated in Jamaica by younger folk on here who didnt experience it.... But i think as we get older i can see the power of the sylabus that we were taught... unfortunately I am of the belief that the teachers available to most dont have the skill to bring subjects alive... From literature to history as i get older the more i value it and the more i note people our age appriciate it....are notbut it still surprises me that i will start talking stuff we learnt in school or off the radio and europeans are like astonished we know more of our histroy and the impact their history have... imagine telling a Dane their part in the slave trade and in the Napoleonic war ? or a German they actually won the battle of waterloo.... or an Italian of the battel oc Cannae or Trasimena ? 

i had a wonderful education…..from home to primary school n topped off at HS…i stand firm in saying that we had some wonderful teachers at SAHS…n i had a gem of a literature teacher…..love her to this day like cook food…..i got a distinction in A level literature n u know the syllabus for that was something else….2 Shakespeares, 1 complete poetry series, 2 novels…and allll essay questions replete with quotations…mercy….i found myself working to meet her expectations….no joke….i would not change my Jamaican education n the time period for anyting

[CeaBee]

This may be good for SandiF and others who like the shoot em up/action kind of books. Kindle version is free right now in the US and maybe Canada as well, but check price before you buy.



41uaM4CJhPL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-v3-big,TopRight,0,-55_SX278_SY278_PIkin4,BottomRight.jpg


Ratcatcher (John Purkiss Book 1) [Kindle Edition]

Tim Stevens (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (162 customer reviews)

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Digital List Price:	$3.99 What's this?
Print List Price:	$14.99
Kindle Price:	$0.00

The police have Internal Affairs departments. British Intelligence has John Purkiss, the Ratcatcher. Purkiss’s job is straightforward. Track down agents of the intelligence services who are taking kickbacks, committing crimes, or otherwise abusing their positions. And bring them to justice. Straightforward doesn’t mean easy… After a renegade British former spymaster, Fallon, is sighted in the Baltic city of Tallinn on the eve of a historic summit meeting between the Russian and Estonian presidents, Purkiss is despatched to investigate, and uncovers a conspiracy that threatens to tear Europe, and the world, apart.

But Purkiss has personal reasons for going after Fallon. Four years ago, Fallon was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Purkiss’s fiancée, a murder Purkiss himself witnessed. Now, in an atmosphere of treachery and sudden violence, as the countdown begins to a potentially catastrophic conflict between Russia and the West, Purkiss must keep his desire for revenge under control for the sake of the world’s – and his own – survival.