Well, here's the obscurity find of the day:

I just finished reading "The Last of the Titans", which is an autobiography/memoir of Ernestine Schumann-Heink, an Austrian-born opera singer who died in the early thirties.

Before you say "whuh?", Heink was someone whose voice my mother greatly admired as a girl. In fact, I have a letter written to my mother by Heink's secretary/assistant concerning a letter Mom had apparently written to Heink.

My curiosity got the best of me, and I found the book on ebay (written in 1928) and it has been fun to read. I did a little research on Heink and found out that she apparently put a positive "spin" on much of her life story! But I STILL liked it. Maybe I'll have to find a CD or something so I can listen to her sing.

Not that I know anything about opera, unless you count Bugs Bunny singing the Barber of Seville.

Not my usual read, but nevertheless. You asked!

My brother has his master's in opera and he and his wife sang with the Metropolitan Opera in NYC. I can't stand opera. LOL

Just for you . . .Give it a little and you will hear her sing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1DD1lNkrcs

I always wanted to belong to a book club so a year or so ago I joined one with a few local moms I met on a mom's site. The best part is they are now my good friends. We actually met today to discuss our latest book. We do have a few favorites that I want to recommend. They are all books that we were able to discuss at length, and they are books that have stuck with us long after we read them.

The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger - we saw the movie together too
World Made by Hand by James Howard Kunstler
Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold - we are going to see the movie together also

We go to Barnes & Noble, enjoy a coffee, discuss our last book, then look at the books on the tables to pick one. But we check it out from the library to save money. Besides reading good books, we get together for good conversation and eventually get around to talking about the book.

I just finished a great book, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. It's historical fiction about the lives of the people in Guernsey during the German Occupation during WW2. I loved it and couldn't put it down! Another favorite of mine is "Water for Elephants", it's about a man who is a circus vet during the depression. I'm about to start "South of Broad" by Pat Conroy, he's one of my favorite authors.

I am always reading so I'd love to have a book club to share books with!!
Karen

hulagrl - the one you just finished is one we looked at. I'll make sure to put it on our to read list!

Karosel - I just finished The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls!

I am now reading A Team of Rivals, The Genius of Abraham Lincolnby Goodwin(?).

I use a Kindle 2 and it does not give the entire title or author name after I purchase it. It does (so contradictory) somewhere, I am just too lazy to figure it out later to put it into long term memory!

I love my Kindle. It recharges with electricity, simply plugging it into one of the outlet in my home. I can only purchase books through Amazon Kindle Books. Easy to google to see the choices are huge and the prices for books are much less than if I bought them new. Some older books can be purchased for $1.

Might be comparable to getting them slightly used.

I can look online by computer or by my Kindle. WiFi is built in so I can look anywhere, in a airline terminal or in a park, etc.

It loads a sample for free to read the beginning chapter or so. At the end, I can either buy the book or not. That is a cool feature. It holds a crazy amount of books.

It also had a built in dictionary. My favorite feature.

Cost is initially high but book costs and lightweight and convenience. Really it is simply amazing. (Can you tell I am VERY happy with it?)

Thanks, Erin. How long does the battery last?

So it is like a phone, and it just goes to a nearby tower?
Our tower up North is only 2G so far, and maybe it won't work?
My husband's laptop was very slow this summer, for example with his 3G card.

I can see a distinct advantage for heavy big books...which hurt my hands.

I read the 4 huge books in the Song of Fire and Ice Saga...by George R.R. Martin. These were immensely interesting. And they had over 1000 pgs each. A Kindle would have been nice for them. It was quite the addicting series of books...far better than Harry Potter, and more adult IMO. The violence was bad at points, but still it was a neat thing to have for the long cold wet vacation, that the weather dished up for us. The magic was subtle, so it was rather like historical fiction. George Martin is really a good writer... you can imagine it all in your head easily.
I love books like this with easy visualization. This book series will be on HBO as a series starting in 2010. They are casting it now, and all his fans are awaiting book FIVE... its been 4 yrs in the making!