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Post by Liiisa on Nov 16, 2022 8:31:57 GMT -5
Yeah that sounds like wishful thinking, mei.
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 12, 2023 6:22:17 GMT -5
Does a book count as Abandoned if you bring it home from the library, take one look at it, and decide that life is too short for this sort of thing? If so,
Mark Danielewski, House of Leaves
It might be an incredible book (someone on Mastodon liked it), but I opened it up and realized it was one of those kinds of books that's very experimental and complicated, and I just don't have the strength right now. Maybe I'll read it after I'm done with Proust after I retire.
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Post by scrubb on Jan 12, 2023 16:07:03 GMT -5
I think that counts, Liiisa.
I got a history of Mao out of the library a couple weeks ago. It's by the same author as "Wild Swans" which I really liked a lot, and has been on my 'to read' list for a while.
But I think I finished 10-15 pages and realized I don't really want to read a history of Mao. I find 20th century Chinese history fascinating, and was glad I read a biography of Mme Mao (about whom I knew very little before reading it), but the 10 pages that got Mao into his early 20s just didn't inspire me to keep going.
Something that was interesting, and yet somehow annoying at the same time, was the author's choice to make pointed comments such as "nothing he wrote during his 2 years working in a rural place shows any concern for peasants, which counters his later claims that those years were when he was first inspired to try to improve their lot". Even if her book provides evidence to counter all of his later claims, well, I don't think I'm her target audience. I already don't expect his political speeches and claims to care deeply about the working man to reflect reality.
So: Mao: The Untold Story, by Chang Jung
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Post by lillielangtry on Jan 18, 2023 13:59:19 GMT -5
Claudia Winkleman's Quite This was a gift. It's perfectly pleasant and amusingly written so if you like Claudia Winkleman, by all means a good read, but I decided I had lots of other books I wanted to read more. (For the non-Brits, she's a TV presenter, known in particular for presenting Strictly Come Dancing).
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Post by sophie on Jan 21, 2023 22:46:05 GMT -5
Madly, Deeply. The diaries of Alan Rickman. I picked this up in a local free library box and wondered why someone put it there as I had heard good things about it. 10 pages in I knew. Diary format doesn’t interest me and I know very little about the theatre circles he moved in.
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Post by tzarine on Jan 21, 2023 23:17:36 GMT -5
sophie i love alan rickman's voice, tho.
sounds much like an insider book
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 18, 2023 13:10:33 GMT -5
I love Alan Rickman too and also would find that boring.
Anyway, I just abandoned what actually was a very good book:
Yevgenia Belorusets, Lucky Breaks
This is a set of sort of nonlinear short stories about the Donbas region of Ukraine, written about the present (during the Russian invasion) but not directly - they refer tangentially to the fact that it's happening. They're actually very good - I will pick it back up again - but they're all in 7-point type and so nonlinear that I'm not really following them; there's too much else going on and I can't cope. So back to the library it goes; I'll read it in the summer.
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Post by lillielangtry on Feb 18, 2023 17:28:57 GMT -5
Ah I read that one Liisa. I quite enjoyed it, but as you say, it's not always the right time.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 18, 2023 17:35:58 GMT -5
I know that I'm going to really get into it when I can actually concentrate!
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Post by tzarine on Mar 9, 2023 12:33:19 GMT -5
under the glacier halldor laxness icelandic fellow sent to a parish supposed to be funny? an exercise to see if you get the humor? masterpiece?
PASS
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Post by Q-pee on Mar 25, 2023 14:01:48 GMT -5
Re: Claudia Winkelman and Alan Rickman.
A quote from my mother, who wrote biographies: "very few people have an interesting life, don't bother writing about someone who has not"
And I suspect that although their lives might be more interesting than mine they're still not interesting enough for me to read a whole book about - and I like both of them as people and in their work.
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Post by Q-pee on Mar 25, 2023 14:09:19 GMT -5
Right, I'm close to abandoning a book.
The Magician Colm Toibin
I loved Brooklyn and I loved The Testament of Mary so when this came up in recommedations I was all in. I should have paid more attention and checked some reviews...
It's a fictionalised version of Thomas Mann's life. I can see that the writing is good, and that the construction is superb - you're seeing the formation of the German state in late 1800's early 1900's and the lead up to war, then the journey to well, you know... but you sort of see it out of the corner of the eye, Toibin has been very very careful not to provide any foreshadowing.
So there's a lot that's good.
But I haven't read any Thomas Mann, and (sorry) don't care about him enough to keep going.
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Post by lillielangtry on Mar 26, 2023 2:42:29 GMT -5
That's understandable. I've been to Mann's house in Lübeck, which has lots of quotes from his Buddenbrooks all over the place, but since it would probably take me a year to get through the book, I still haven't read it!
Side note: I seem to remember it was a dispute over the copyright of Mann that got the Gutenberg Project blocked in Germany :-( (he's out of copyright under US law but not German, so his German publishers sued)
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Post by Q-pee on Mar 26, 2023 3:52:57 GMT -5
Side note: I seem to remember it was a dispute over the copyright of Mann that got the Gutenberg Project blocked in Germany :-( (he's out of copyright under US law but not German, so his German publishers sued) Three writers - Heinrich Mann, Thomas Mann and Alfred Döblin. teleread.org/2018/03/03/project-gutenberg-blocks-german-users-after-court-rules-in-favor-of-holtzbrinck-subsidiary/But the case was about copyright because in Germany copyright exists until 70 years after the end of the author's life. And in the US it's counted from date of first publication. Interesting case - because technically you could easily block access to people in Germany to the works still under German copyright. People would be able to get around it but Gutenberg would have been able to credibly say they're following German law.
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Post by lillielangtry on Mar 26, 2023 4:58:42 GMT -5
Yes - it's frustrating they've blocked the whole site (I haven't tried it recently but i assume it is. And probably I could get around it with a VPN? But I'm not going to go that far!)
Of course we're talking about the original works too, as translations have their own copyright.
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Post by Q-pee on Mar 26, 2023 5:59:26 GMT -5
I suspect it's a cost-based decision, and a dose of pique.
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Post by lillielangtry on Apr 4, 2023 12:12:36 GMT -5
I've abandoned The Age of Goodbyes by Li Zi Shu. It's a shame because I think it's potentially a good book but it has a complex structure with a frame narrative, an additional strand addressing the reader, and two characters with the same name - and I was trying to listen to it on audiobook. I stuck with it for a couple of hours but I was no nearer having any idea what was going on.
I was reading it for my book from Malaysia and I think I have found a couple of shorter alternatives on Audible, so I'm going to try them instead.
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Post by lillielangtry on May 9, 2023 14:05:56 GMT -5
I'm thinking of abandoning Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig.
I've been wanting to read this for ages as I have an interest in Argentinian literature. It's really an interesting premise - it's almost entirely a dialogue between two men in a prison cell. One is gay, and the other is a political prisoner, and they pass the time talking about old movies. And it's got really high ratings on Goodreads.
But I just don't feel like picking it up again. Maybe it's not the right time.
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Post by Liiisa on May 9, 2023 16:41:03 GMT -5
I have a copy of that in Spanish and have never quite gotten to the point of picking it up.
It's a great movie - maybe just watch that, if you haven't seen it yet!
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Post by lillielangtry on May 9, 2023 23:41:38 GMT -5
Yeah I did think of that!
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Post by sophie on May 17, 2023 22:26:10 GMT -5
Not often I abandon a book.. but here’s one: Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati. A retelling of Greek myths.. I was hoping it would be like some of the others I’ve read over the past couple of years (like those by Madeleine Millar) but it’s clunky. Just can’t get into it..suffered through a quarter.. will pass it on. Maybe someone else will appreciate it.
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Post by Liiisa on Aug 11, 2023 19:59:47 GMT -5
Beyond the Burn Line, by Paul McAuley
It's set in the far future, and the central characters are sentient dogs (?) bipedal, clothing-wearing sentient dogs? maybe? and the lead character is going to Discover something that will probably lead to him discovering humans or something.
It could be good once it warms up, but there's just too much lead-up -- instead of jumping right into some sort of action, the protagonist dog (?) has spent several chapters fighting with people about how to fund his scientific expedition and trying to defend his asexuality or feeling bad about it all and I just can't really get into it.
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Post by Q-pee on Aug 12, 2023 5:14:16 GMT -5
Not often I abandon a book.. but here’s one: Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati. A retelling of Greek myths.. I was hoping it would be like some of the others I’ve read over the past couple of years (like those by Madeleine Millar) but it’s clunky. Just can’t get into it..suffered through a quarter.. will pass it on. Maybe someone else will appreciate it. ooops taking it off my tbr wishlist. Try Natalie Haynes, her retellings are action packed, often female centered. She also has a podcast "Natalie Haynes stands up for the classics"
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Post by lillielangtry on Aug 12, 2023 8:10:26 GMT -5
Liisa, I love the fact you're not sure if the characters are actually dogs. That does sound like a reason to abandon!
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Post by Liiisa on Aug 12, 2023 9:51:51 GMT -5
Right? They have muzzles and their children are “pups,” so that’s a point for the “dogs” column, but they also have tattoos and ride horses
I think I’m just not sufficiently into fantasy for this type of novel, though it is postapocalyptic, which of course I usually like.
It does have cool stuff about evolution, but the whole interpersonal drama part isn’t my thing.
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Post by sophie on Aug 20, 2023 9:27:19 GMT -5
I got a book from the library by John Vaillant who wrote several books I really liked. This book, Fire Weather (the Making of a Beast) is about the big fires in Fort McMurray a few years back. Then the fires in the interior of our province began and I lost my appetite for this topic. I may get back to it at some point in the future but it’s going back for now.
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Post by lillielangtry on Sept 25, 2023 3:13:03 GMT -5
Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Before the coffee gets cold Oh dear, I think I might actually have bought this as a gift for someone before reading it myself. I know plenty of people really liked it, but I was bored. I actually persisted with over half the audiobook and then realised I had no interest whatsoever in continuing to the end.
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Post by scrubb on Sept 27, 2023 13:31:11 GMT -5
Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Before the coffee gets cold Oh dear, I think I might actually have bought this as a gift for someone before reading it myself. I know plenty of people really liked it, but I was bored. I actually persisted with over half the audiobook and then realised I had no interest whatsoever in continuing to the end. It was short enough that I finished it, in spite of feeling like it was an interesting concept, but poorly realized. I'm definitely not interested in the sequel!
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Post by lillielangtry on Sept 27, 2023 14:06:44 GMT -5
It must have sold heaps though. There's always shelves full of them in German bookshops, facing out.
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Post by Liiisa on Sept 27, 2023 15:12:56 GMT -5
It wasn’t a favorite, but IIRC it held my attention. I looked at my comment about it and it was something like “sentimental but good.” Probably because I usually like reading books with lots of everyday details about life in Japan.
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