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Post by scrubb on Dec 26, 2016 17:02:18 GMT -5
Maisie Dobbs, by Jacqueline Winspear. First in the series I mentioned earlier. I'm still a bit on the fence about the writing but it's enjoyable enough that I'll probably keep going with the series when I'm not up for anything very serious.
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Post by sprite on Dec 27, 2016 11:55:41 GMT -5
Lady Susan, Jane Austen
a story told mostly in letters. i think it's been made into a movie. a crackling central character, who is either a complete narcissist or a hard-nosed realist.
i think what i like about austen's writing is that although she's quite wordy, every word is important. skip a sentence, and you miss the mood or tone.
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Post by mei on Dec 27, 2016 16:36:40 GMT -5
#28 suits and hoodies by Quintin Schevernels. A business book about 7 essentials for successful start-ups. Not rocket science, but pretty interesting considering my current work project.
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Post by scrubb on Dec 28, 2016 19:42:12 GMT -5
The Thief of Time, by Terry Pratchett. It got better as it went along - the first half didn't grip me much, but the last half was very good.
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Post by Liiisa on Dec 29, 2016 16:45:00 GMT -5
42. Rohinton Mistry, Such a Long Journey
It took me a while to get into this book; it finally took once I got a chance to read it in stretches of more than 5 minutes at a time.
It's about a Parsi family in Indira Gandhi-era Bombay, and various things happen at the family, neighborhood, and country level that move the plot and characters along. Once I got the hang of it, I decided I really liked it - good characters, and an interesting view on contemporary Zoroastrian practices (which I only knew some things about). One thing I really liked was that Mistry used a lot of Hindi in the dialogue and text, explaining what he meant in the context rather than making up English words for the concepts.
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Post by sprite on Dec 30, 2016 5:52:53 GMT -5
Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses
we have no idea why this book is in our house. my partner can't remember how he got it in the first place, and we're not sure how it survived the 'book cull' when we moved up here. the only way to read this book is in a john wayne drawl. i think the sentences are supposed to convey movement and energy, but i mostly find them long and rambling. another annoying thing is that the writer prefers allusion and ellipsis, so i spent the first 15 pages trying to work out who was speaking when, and who these people were, and how they were connected, who was dead and who was not... ffs, just say, 'it's 1950's texas. horses are out, oil is in. grandpa has just died, and mom and dad are divorcing. mom who owns the house is selling it, and dad is dying of cancer. boy has dreams, and heads off to mexico with his horse and best friends...'
i'm not sure i'll finish it. i'm finding it a bit pretentious.
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Post by Liiisa on Dec 30, 2016 6:54:24 GMT -5
I swore off McCarthy after suffering through "The Road" - glad to hear I'm not missing much.
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Post by scrubb on Dec 30, 2016 16:12:06 GMT -5
"Man's Search for Meaning" by Victor Frankl. A psychiatrist who was in Aushwitz (along with 3 other concentration camps) during WWII, who survived and went back to his practice afterwards. It's a slightly different book from other survivor stories in that it is focusing on how people react to living in the camps, rather than the things that happen to them. He uses it as a sort of case study to illustrate that people can be noble even in the worst of circumstances; that, provided that people see meaning in their lives, they can survive almost anything. He said that those who had something to live for - whatever it was - had a much better chance of being the one out of every 28 people who survived. (Hmmm, that number seems pretty high when I think about it. I thought that more than 28 people died for everyone that survived. But that's the number he used, anyway.)
The book was bound together with a couple of essays he wrote later on, describing the school of therapy he followed (created?) - logotherapy, in which the point is to help the patient find meaning in their life.
I've heard people say that this book changed their lives and I can sort of understand it. He went through about the worst thing anyone can suffer and managed to view it almost as a growth opportunity. He focused on all the positives he could find. And he also seems so completely confident that everyone's life has meaning that I think it would rub off on those around him.
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Post by scrubb on Dec 30, 2016 23:39:42 GMT -5
"The Wolf in the Attic" by Paul Kearney. Had no idea what it was when I started it, but loved it. It's about a small Greek girl living in Oxford between the wars, having lost her mother and home to the Turks. She meets CS Lewis and JRR Tolkein in a small cameo, then ends up living in "old England" with mythical beasts and guardians. I liked it a lot - kind of a long fairy tale.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jan 1, 2017 2:46:07 GMT -5
57. Even Cat-Sitters get the Blues, by Blaize Clement. Not as good as the first in the series, with a highly improbable plot.My last completed book for the year, and I'm 5 above my challenge for the year. I still have several books I'm reading, which will boost next year's numbers now.
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Post by lillielangtry on Jan 1, 2017 4:24:47 GMT -5
I like the sound of the Kearney, scrubb.
I've lost count a bit on here, but I have to mention that over Christmas I read Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. It's a Victorian sensationalist novel along the lines of Wilkie Collins. It was really enjoyable - the setting up of the plot was a little clunky at times but it was good fun. And when it came out in the 1860s it must have seemed incredibly exciting.
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 1, 2017 8:16:07 GMT -5
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Post by scrubb on Jan 1, 2017 13:13:50 GMT -5
Here's my 2016 round up. I read fewer books than I have in any year since getting a kindle, 95. Not sure why, other than that when I wasn't really into whatever I was reading, I spent more time on line instead. Hope to reverse that in 2017. Anyway, here are all the books I rated as excellent this year:
Slade House David Mitchell I Capture the Castle Dodie Smith Gilead Marilynne Robinson Shalimar the Clown Salman Rushdie The Flame Trees of Thika Elspeth Huxley East of Eden John Steinbeck Annapurna: A Woman's Place Arlene Blum Black Swan Green David Mitchell Ghostwritten David Mitchell A Hatful of Sky Terry Pratchett Shadow Baby Alison McGhee Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter Mario Vargas Llosa Stoner John Williams
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