May the Force of Reading books be with you

[Webs]

Love the thought of the force being with you when you read.

Here is April

[Webs]

I finished "A Man Called Ove" on Audio book. It was good. It was a good story and mostly made me laugh. I like being read to.

I've been audiobooking a few books lately but I started a "read it on your own book" Just One Damned Thing After Another: The Chronicles of St. Mary's Book One (The Chronicles of St Mary's 1) - by Jodi Taylor. Sci-fi time travel. We'll see

[ozziegiraffe]

27. Aunt Dimity Snowbound, Nancy Atherton. An excellent mystery of the type when all the participants are stuck with in one place, with no one able to enter or leave. There are good twists, and Aunt Dimity provides a touch of the supernatural.

[Liiisa]

Thanks Webs! Bookmarking.

I'm about halfway through a Saramago, which I'd be enjoying a little more if it weren't for the fact that the new Jeff Vandermeer novel is sitting here waiting for me to finish it.

[HalcyonDaze]

42. Black Cats and Butlers (Rose Raventhorpe Investigates #1) - Janine Beacham

Another children's murder mystery novel. Decent enough mystery set in a fictional Yorke in the Victorian era. Not as good as the Robin Stevens novels, and Rose was the most adult 12 year old I've ever come across. I kept on having to flip back to check her age (yes, just turned 12) and I wouldn't have been surprised if this had started as a young adult novel and then scaled back to middle grade fiction, dropping a potential romantic plot line but otherwise keeping the character the same. Think Dawson's Creek teen.

LC loved the book and has happily been quoting from it since he finished it. He was desperate for me to read it so we could discuss it together. Apparently this is the first in a series and I will look out for more books even if it doesn't quite have the wit of the Murder Most Unladylike series or the charm of the Withering-by-Sea books.

[sophie]

Donna Leon, 'Earthly Remains'. The newest Commissario Guido Brunetti novel. Very much in tone like her others, but this time much of the setting is in the lagoon and the islands off Venice.

[ozziegiraffe]

I posted in a hurry this morning, and forgot to thank Webs. Thank you for posting the thread Webs.

[Liiisa]

12. Jose Saramago, All the Names

I love Saramago's writing style, how he goes on and on for pages and writes conversations like, Hello I said, What, she asked, not hearing me, I said Hello, Oh I'm sorry, I didn't hear you, Well that's all right, so how are you, I'm fine, thank you, and how are you, I think I'm all right,

Anyway, this is a strange novel about a bureaucrat who becomes obsessed about something he discovers in the files. I really enjoyed it - it's suspenseful! But there's something deep about life and death that the book is discussing metaphorically that I just didn't fully grasp. I know it was something... important... but just didn't quite get it. But I enjoyed it anyway! I'm going to keep this so I can read it again later and maybe then I'll get what I was supposed to get the first time around.

[scrubb]

Finished Mo Yan's "The Garlic Ballads" today, about life in rural China in the 1980s and first published in 1988. Calling it bleak would be kind - tragedy follows close on tragedy. Very interesting look at the society though.

I also read Harry Potter and the Cursed Child today. She is definitely creative and always finds ways to make things more complicated and interesting than other writers would, and I think this one was a bit more "adult" in terms of not having black and white bad guys/good guys. So I enjoyed it.

[mei]

#4 (only...!) - The Culture Map by Erin Meyer. Really interesting book about culture across business. kind of voluntarily read for work, but very interesting and well put together I thought.

moving into some easier fiction now I think after giving up on Alice Munro earlier. Have JK Rowling's The Casual Vacancy to start with.

[sophie]

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter. This was popular a few years ago; I had looked at it yet never read it. This month it was my book club's selection, so I 'had to' read it. Entertaining, interesting novel but there were too many back stories and threads going on; they all eventually entwined and wrapped up nicely, but it was a hard book to put down and pick up as those threads were hard to remember. I found myself skimming backwards to remind myself who was doing what to whom.

[Liiisa]

13. Jeff Vandermeer, Borne

READ THIS BOOK!

Set in a future city that's about as appealing as the setting of "The Road," this book is about a woman's relationship with a surprising entity she finds on a scavenging mission. It's wonderful- Vandermeer has become one of those authors I will always look for.

[Liiisa]

14. Muriel Spark, The Driver's Seat

A disturbing novelette published in 1970 about a young woman who is traveling, and how her plans are eventually revealed.

[lillielangtry]

Thanks webs!

I've got a few non-fictions on the go.

#28 Claire Tomalin, The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft
Tomalin is a famous biographer now but this was her first book, based on her PhD thesis I think. Despite that(!), it's excellent - very readable with interesting details. Wollstonecraft was a fascinating figure, a proto-feminist who wrote Vindication of the Rights of Women, was in Paris during the French revolution, had a child out of wedlock and then, horribly, died following the birth of her second child aged just 38. Oh, and that child went on to become Mary Shelley and write Frankenstein.

[ozziegiraffe]

28. The Fudge Cupcake Murder. Another good mystery from Joanne Fluke. Interesting developments with the characters in the story, and a believable plot.
I'm driving to Weilmoringle on Friday. Two hours each way, so I should be able to finish my current audiobook.

[scrubb]

36. The Imposter Bride by Nancy Richler. A Polish Jew comes to Canada after losing everyone in WWII, to marry someone she's been corresponding with. He changes his mind when he sees her step off the train, but his brother steps in and marries her instead.

The reader knows she has taken the name of a dead girl whose ID she found. She is broken. She has a daughter and then leaves a few months later.

The book switches narrators and focii a few time, but the majority of the book is about the daughter, and how her mother's abandonment affects her. When she is 5 or 6, she receives a stone in the mail, from her mother, with a file card saying where and when she picked it up. New stones arrive every now and then throughout her childhood and teens.

It was really good. In fact, some of it was great, but there was something a little bit dissatisfying about some of the later scenes. Overall, well worth reading.

[Webs]

I've downloaded another Fredrik Backman book - "My Grandmother asked me to tell you she's sorry". I was so delighted with "A Man Called Ove" I looked up his other books. I'm also enjoying the Audible versions because I'm finding that it helps me to drown out the outside world better than a book (and I think I need reading glasses).

I'm still reading "One Damned thing after another".

Do audio books count? Is it weird that I've listened to 'A Man Called Ove' 3 times in as many weeks because I found it so delightful?

Anyhow, that's me for today.

[lillielangtry]

They absolutely count!

I listen to Harry Potter loads when I'm stressed or sleepless.

[mei]

agree, they count (though the force is stronger when reading? ;-))

[sprite]

The Sunday Philosopher Club, by Alexander McCall Smith (No1 Ladies guy)

Set in Edinburgh, so i was mentally travelling around the city with the heroine, sometimes getting out the map.
Isabel Dalhousie is the Editor of the Review of Applied Ethics journal, and witnesses a young man die after he falls from the balcony in a concert hall. It becomes a sort of mystery novel, but also includes her attempt to nudge her niece back into a relationship with a classical musician.

I liked that the central character is a 40-something woman who's only had one real love, but is not depicted as a spinster or love-crazy. there's a hint that she may get together with a much younger man.

I had no idea that McCall Smith has written two series of books about Edinburgh. i also feel that he writes female characters more realistically than many other male authors. these women spend most of their days living very full lives without worrying what men think of them, or how to fit men into their lives.

[ozziegiraffe]

While I love both No. 1 Ladies and 44 Scotland Street, also about Edinburgh, I can't stand Isabel Dalhousie, who struck me as a dilettante, and frankly, a waste of space!

[sprite]

now, now, she didn't choose to be born independently wealthy!

[Webs]

I think the use of a financially independent woman is convenient to male writers who can't figure out how a woman would be able to work and do all the things an interesting woman does in their books. Even Mma Ramotswe has "money" from her fathers cattle to keep her afloat and set her up in business.

[ozziegiraffe]

Webs, you're probably right. Some of the. Women in the 44 Scotland Street series are a bit like that. Others aren't, though. There's a teacher and a hard-working coffee shop owner, for example.

[Liiisa]

15. Helen Simonson, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

This novel had been around my house a while, and thanks to the alphabetical to-read shelf I finally got around to it.

I wouldn't say it's great art, but it was sweet. I really enjoyed getting to know the main characters, and had trouble putting it down; I almost missed my bus stop this morning because I was so concerned for the Major and Mrs Ali.

[HalcyonDaze]

I remember reading the first Isabel Dalhousie book and not bothering with any of the others.

[ozziegiraffe]

Hal, have you read any of the 44 Scotland Street series? The central character is a very bright small boy.
I was the same with Isabel, though.

[lillielangtry]

Liiisa, have you got to S now?!

The McCall Smith discussion is interesting. I enjoyed several Ladies Detective Agency books, but haven't read any of his others. I got through them so fast I thought they weren't really worth buying, but of course there are libraries and they often turn up on the swapping website I use.

[Liiisa]

I'm on V, lillie! (But then the alphabet starts back up again because of course I've been acquiring new books all along.)

[sprite]

yes, mcCall smith is a light writer, but he writes well, so i don't feel like i've od'd on sugar.

i get webs point about the financially independent woman being easier to write, but in the case of Precious, was there any other realistic way a woman in her place could start a detective agency?

i'm now trying to think of male characters who are non-professional detectives, and all i can come up with is Batman!