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Post by ozziegiraffe on May 13, 2017 8:46:05 GMT -5
Max Tudor and Sidney Chambers are both fictional clergymen who detect on the side, for a start. Father Brown would be another.
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Post by scrubb on May 13, 2017 11:50:08 GMT -5
37. Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders. It was a "wow!" book, for me. He's normally a short story writer and this is his first novel. It's a very different style - lots of very short chapters, some of them being a series of quotes from history books about Lincoln, and some being comments from dozens of different narrators who are telling the story. I'm sure some people won't like the style but it really worked for me.
It's set, more or less, on the day of the funeral of Abraham Lincoln's 11 year old son - but all the narrators end up telling stories of their lives (in small segments) which really widens the scope of the setting.
His short story writing means he knows how to get a lot across in not too many words, so the many little stories told by the narrators are all effective.
Anyway, highly recommended for people who are ok with non-traditionally structured novels.
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Post by Liiisa on May 13, 2017 18:54:18 GMT -5
scrubb, thank you! that book was already pretty high on my to-read list; I love Saunders' short stories, and I read an interview with him about this book that made it sound really interesting.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on May 13, 2017 20:50:18 GMT -5
Independently wealthy women in books for adults and orphans in books for kids. LC has been commenting on the number of orphaned kids in the books he has been reading, and I've said it is because it is easier to write adventures for the kids if there aren't parents around to tell them what to do etc. I just hope he doesn't decide he wants his own adventures and poisons us to become an orphan. ;-)
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Post by Liiisa on May 14, 2017 6:05:33 GMT -5
Hal, I remember my mom being kind of wistful about how much I loved Pippi Longstocking, because she was this completely unburdened orphan.
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Post by sprite on May 14, 2017 8:43:19 GMT -5
Max Tudor and Sidney Chambers are both fictional clergymen who detect on the side, for a start. Father Brown would be another. so a single clergyman is the equivalent of a woman of means. i'm embarrassed that i had to look up Sidney Chambers, given that i've been watching Grantchester a little, lately. LC's point (and your answer) are good ones. nancy drew was practically an adult--i don't recall her ever going to school, and trixie belden seemed to have massive amounts of free, unsupervised time.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on May 14, 2017 16:52:42 GMT -5
Those were the first ones that came to mind. I read a lot of cozy mysteries during term, so I'll have to look for others. The usual formula is single woman over 30 with her own business, and a love interest. One of my favourites is a small town school psychologist. I've just thought of another one. The sleuth in Lillian Jackson Braun's "Cat Who..." series is a male journalist, James Qwilleran, who inherits a fortune halfway through the series.
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Post by Webs on May 15, 2017 15:56:05 GMT -5
Finishing "My grandmother..." love how Fredrik Backman writes. Will move on to Britte-Marie soon.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on May 15, 2017 17:04:04 GMT -5
I've seen he has another book that hasn't been translated into English yet. Waiting is hard!
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Post by scrubb on May 15, 2017 21:39:52 GMT -5
38. Delores Claibourne, by Stephen King. I'm not, generally speaking, a Stephen King fan. I've probably read 3 or 4 of his books and not really liked any of them much. But I really liked this one.
I remember that I saw the movie back when it came out (20 years ago?) and thought it was good. From my vague memories, it followed the book fairly closely.
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Post by sophie on May 15, 2017 22:40:36 GMT -5
Scrubb, I can't sleep if I read Stephen King..thus I don't read him!
Just read 'The Women in the Castle' by Jessica Shattuck. A good novel, by a talented writer. Most of the other novels I read about Nazi resistance during WW2 were by writers such as H.H. Kurst..this is the first one I remember with a woman's voice. And it isn't really about nazi resistance alone..it is more about how people react to challenges and changes over time.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on May 15, 2017 23:20:34 GMT -5
Oh, I saw a review of that the other day and was trying to work out whether to read it or not.
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Post by sophie on May 16, 2017 0:34:17 GMT -5
Hal, I would say read it. I was really into the book, read it over two days. It isn't a perfect novel, but it made me think..and it resonates on the moral/ethical challenges people face on a daily level when living through a war or the aftermath of a war. I actually wish it was a book club book as I wanted to talk to someone about it when I finished it tonight.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on May 16, 2017 1:20:05 GMT -5
Just checked, not in my library or any of the nearby ones. So I'll have to wait for a bit.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on May 16, 2017 17:09:46 GMT -5
29. Sugar Cookie Murder, JoAnne Fluke. This book was good to read immediately after the previous one in the series, Fudge Cupcake Murder, as it completes story lines that were in that one. Good plot, interesting, believable small town characters, with some developments in their lives. So far, a good on-going series. I'm travelling again on the weekend, so should be able to complete my current audio and Kindle books.
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Post by scrubb on May 16, 2017 22:20:27 GMT -5
Just read 'The Women in the Castle' by Jessica Shattuck. A good novel, by a talented writer. Most of the other novels I read about Nazi resistance during WW2 were by writers such as H.H. Kurst..this is the first one I remember with a woman's voice. And it isn't really about nazi resistance alone..it is more about how people react to challenges and changes over time. My all time favourite forum threads were the book club on the Thorn Tree. It was great to have someone to discuss books with. I really should try to find one here in town - I actually did search for one a few years ago, but most of them were either sci fi themed, or generally not reading my kinds of books. The only one that looked really good and read a lot of stuff I was interested in was a "closed" club and when I approached them they said they weren't looking for new people. If only my friends here were interested in the same kinds of books I am. Hmmm. Now that I think about it, maybe there are enough who are to give it a try...
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Post by Liiisa on May 18, 2017 17:06:05 GMT -5
16. Tejai Vesaas, The Birds
A man lives with his sister in rural Norway and has some sort of neurodeficit that causes him to not be able to hold down a job or really deal with social relations. However, he is highly sensitive to his natural surroundings, the weather, trees, and birds. It's beautifully written; touching and sad.
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Post by scrubb on May 18, 2017 22:41:36 GMT -5
39. The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story by Douglas Preston.
Heard this guy interviewed and the trip sounded fascinating. He was working for National Geographic, looking for a "lost city" in Honduras. There were many legends about a "White city" or "the City of the Monkey Gods" somewhere deep in the jungle, which was cursed. Archeologist and anthropologists recognize there is no one lost city, there are many lost cities.
Anyway, the story is well told in the book - it starts with the excitement of discovery; of setting foot in untouched (for 500 yrs) jungle; of stumbling over a cache of statues and vessels; of facing deadly snakes, torrential rain, and biting insects; and of walking down crystal clear streams surrounded by monkeys and other wildlife with no fear of humans, because they'd never seen them before. The area they were looking at is Misquitia - and there's clear evidence that they had a very discrete and advanced civilization contemporary with the Mayan empire, about which almost nothing is known.
The last half of the book is about the price the explorers paid, and how that reflects history. Half or so of them came down with a nasty strain of leishmaniasis. It can be very nasty - faces get eaten away, and it can be fatal. The usual treatment is very hard on the body and some of them couldn't handle it - 2 years later, some of them were still struggling with the disease, some seemed to be okay, and the author said his seemed to be coming back. He then goes into the history of disease in the New World and presents a very sound-seeming argument that disease - epidemics of flus or various other old-world diseases - wiped out 90% of the people which is enough to destroy an entire civilisation.
And his final point is that with climate change, leishmaniasis is moving northwards and is just one more of the diseases moving out of tropical areas into more traditionally temperate areas in the southern US, etc.
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Post by sophie on May 18, 2017 23:50:06 GMT -5
I also heard an interview about this, scrubb. Sounded like a book I want to read. Edited to add that today I put it on the wait list at the library. Sounds like there is a bit of a line up for it!
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Post by scrubb on May 19, 2017 10:44:45 GMT -5
Augh. I slept all afternoon yesterday, and then ended up NOT sleeping all night. Well, I dropped off around 5 a.m. for a couple hours. Sigh.
So anyway, I read the book Karen by Marie Killilea while awake. I first read this book when I was about 8 or 9 and I reread it and its sequel many times over the next 10 years, but hadn't read it since. It's the story of Karen, a little girl born with cerebral palsy in 1940 when very little was known about it. Her parents went to more than a dozen doctors before finding one who knew that CP kids could be helped. She had no cognitive impairment (although it sounds like she was dyslexic), only physical. Her parents ended up founding the national association for the disease. The book talks a bit about that work, but it focuses on their EXTREMELY CATHOLIC family and how they all worked to help their handicapped daughter be as independent as possible.
I was kind of surprised to realize that the book wasn't written for children - because I'd read it as a kid I'd assumed it was meant for kids, but it's not. I remember as a kid that I desperately wished I had known the family because they were very funny, frantic, and fun. (Then I realized that the "little girl" was only 10 years younger than my mother.)
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Post by Webs on May 19, 2017 13:15:25 GMT -5
I'm listening to "Britt-Marie" was here, by Fredrik Backman. It's about a very regimented 63 year old who, after 40 years of marriage, had to find herself a job and a life, because the bastards been cheating on her. I really recommend reading "My Grandmother wants me to tell you she's sorry" before hand, it gives the back story. I could see how some of her quirks can be confusing for anyone who doesn't know the back story.
She is a sad figure, who spends most of her life in the same place as a victim of circumstance and doesn't realize how free she is, and how appreciated her gifts can be to those whose lives are so worse off than hers.
I hated her in the first book, I'm rooting for her in this one.
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Post by scrubb on May 19, 2017 15:43:05 GMT -5
After finishing Karen at about 3:30 this morning, I started a book I got from Bookbub on a whim for $0.99 that was really crappy. Called "The Red Notebook" by Antoine Laurain, it was originally in French and it was a crappy romance. Worse, the guy was creepy as hell. He finds a lost purse (well, stolen and dumped) and instead of turning it in to the police or a lost and found he digs through it to try to figure out who it belongs to. Reads her diary, eventually figures out her name, and then goes to her apartment where he runs into a friend of hers (because of course, she's in a coma as a result of the purse mugging) and pretends that he knows her. Ends up snooping through her apartment.
I only finished it because it was short.
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Post by Queen on May 21, 2017 2:38:49 GMT -5
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. Miss Fisher, written by a woman. Hercule Poirot, written by a woman, and although he is professional his income is very sporadic. Jane Marple, written by a woman, she's "of a certain age" but doesn't seem to ever have had a profession. I don't think this is a gender thing. Just that real jobs are nine to five and people who do them can't be dashing off at a moment's notice to interrogate suspects.
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Post by Queen on May 21, 2017 2:43:23 GMT -5
The Patience Stone Atiq Rahimi
A woman in a war zone is trapped in her house with her injured husband. He's in some form of coma, and she feels safe enough with him to reveal her secrets. It's a litany of gender persecutions essentially rising out of the repressive culture they are in.
It should be shocking, but the way it's written it feels more like a series of stage directions. So I ended up feeling like a complicit observer.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on May 22, 2017 4:54:27 GMT -5
30. The Chocolate Affair, by Helen Ellis. I wish her books were available in paperback as well as eBooks. Great light read with an Australian setting. 31. Reckoning, by Magda Subanski. Brilliant as an audiobook, with Magda as the reader. It added a dimension that wouldn't be there if you just read it. Loved her very honest account of her own and her father's life.
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Post by Queen on May 22, 2017 9:18:23 GMT -5
The Land of Green Plums Herta Muller
Weird and wow.
The writing has a the quality of a poetic fable, but the subject matter is living in a totalitarian regime - although the specifics of the regime are barely mentioned. It's the quality of the half-life, and the omnipresent fear that come across. All the unspoken truths that you would never be able to state in such a place/time.
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Post by scrubb on May 22, 2017 11:56:57 GMT -5
That atmosphere sounds like A Handmaid's Tale, Q.
I just finished #42, Illumination Night by Alice Hoffman. Set on Martha's Vineyard, it's about a young family with a little boy who doesn't grow much, the next door neighbours who are an older woman and her teenage granddaughter, and a giant. There's some plot - the teenager wants to seduce the husband; the mother develops agoraphobia; there are background stories to their lives - but it's really about relationships and communication (or lack thereof) and how everyone's world is different from inside their own head. The author goes into everyone's thoughts some of the time so the perspective is rounded.
I liked it a lot.
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Post by lillielangtry on May 22, 2017 13:12:20 GMT -5
#29 Women Travel: A Real Guide Special - I picked this up for 50p at a book sale. It was published in 1990, so obviously quite out of date; there are countries in there that no longer exist! But some of the women's experiences travelling in various countries were very interesting.
#30 A. L. Kennedy, On Writing - a collection of Kennedy's non-fiction on writing (obviously). She's an amusing but sensitive writer, also spent a long time running workshops for various vulnerable groups (prisoners, people with learning difficulties, etc. Very good.
#31 Fred Vargas, An Uncertain Place - my first Vargas, although it's the 8th in her Commissaire Adamsberg series. It didn't seem to matter too much that I hadn't read the previous ones. An intriguing crime novel with a bit of potential vampire action. I would pick up another of hers if I saw it on the free shelf.
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Post by Queen on May 23, 2017 2:09:26 GMT -5
That atmosphere sounds like A Handmaid's Tale, Q. Sort of, but it's less definite than that. I think it show psychologically what totalitarianism does to people, it creeps up on you and eventually oppresses you from the inside. Because nothing really happens, there's no big trigger event. Some events are left unclear, perhaps it's suicide, perhaps it's the regime's murder... it's better not to know. It's all vague. Whereas in "The Handmaid's Tale" the regime is made clear and the rules are explicit. The writer grew up in Romania but as a German speaker, and then escaped Ceaușescu's regime, and that's the basis for the book.
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Post by Liiisa on May 24, 2017 6:53:35 GMT -5
Yes, I thought "Green Plums" really gave you the feeling of what it would be like to live in such a regime, in terms of psychological effects.
I love Atwood, but I think Müller is the better writer. Her one about the Russian work camp (Hunger Something) is harrowing.
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