|
Post by scrubb on Jul 12, 2017 11:35:04 GMT -5
Yes, sophie - it made me quite happy to never visit a pristine, untouched jungle!
|
|
|
Post by Webs on Jul 12, 2017 13:43:05 GMT -5
I have officially given up on "The little old lady who broke all the rules". It's not a language thing. It's really just an overly long story that doesn't need to be. I no longer give a damn about their antics or how horrible their nursing home is.
|
|
|
Post by Liiisa on Jul 12, 2017 17:44:53 GMT -5
Thanks for the warning, sophie... I'll wait to read that one until after I get back from Panama.
|
|
|
Post by scrubb on Jul 14, 2017 15:54:13 GMT -5
#55 The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan
I really liked it - the story of 2 girls growing up in Paris in the 1800s; one of them was the model for Degas famous sculpture 'The Ballet Girl, age 14".
There is Antoinette, the older sister who has always looked after her younger siblings as their mother is a selfish drunk; the younger Marie, who is intelligent and too aware of reality. They are ballet girls - and the history of ballet that I read suggests that the author did her research about how that all worked, and how the ballet was potentially a way out of hard-scrabble life on the streets for poor girls.
Their story is woven together with a famous criminal case at the time, but plot isn't really all that important. It's the relationship between the two sisters, and the Zola-esque look at whether or not the bottom of the heap can ever get out of the gutter.
SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER
Right now I'm all caught up in the happy ending; truth be told, it might be a better book with a less happy ending, but sometimes it's just so much more enjoyable to NOT have the tragedy. It would have been cool if the author had written two endings, because the bad ending - or at least a partly bad ending - would have been more realistic, truly.
|
|
|
Post by lillielangtry on Jul 14, 2017 16:23:10 GMT -5
Off topic I suppose but those are my mum's and my aunt's names, scrubb!
And yes calling your daughters Marie and Antoinette in England in the 50s was regarded as a little odd!
|
|
|
Post by scrubb on Jul 14, 2017 21:44:04 GMT -5
That's interesting! Was your grandmother of English descent?
|
|
|
Post by lillielangtry on Jul 15, 2017 0:30:19 GMT -5
Yes, and her name was also Maria. My mum was named after her uncle Anthony who was killed in the war. Don't know why they went for the French version rather than Antonia which might have been a little less unusual. My mum has never liked it and is always called Toni.
|
|
|
Post by ozziegiraffe on Jul 15, 2017 5:39:32 GMT -5
41. Murder of an Open Book, by Denise Swanson. I'm really continuing to enjoy this series, and this one is particularly good, with lots of insight into school politics and the work of a school psychologist.
|
|
|
Post by mei on Jul 15, 2017 16:33:12 GMT -5
Just finished Teju Cole's Open City. It took time, slow reading, but beautifully written. Nothing much happens, it's a year in the life of a young Nigerian man in New York, but there's a lot in the book.
|
|
|
Post by ozziegiraffe on Jul 16, 2017 6:16:11 GMT -5
42. The Light Between Oceans, M. L. Stedman. My latest audiobook, finished on today's four-hour road journey. A very good book about people with impossible choices, set mostly post World War 1 in a remote part of Australia. Recommended for those with an interest in human nature, and also child protection practices. I wonder what would happen if these circumstances were repeated now, nearly a century later?
|
|
|
Post by scrubb on Jul 16, 2017 11:41:10 GMT -5
I think I've heard of that before, ozziegiraffe - it sounds very interesting.
I just finished the graphic novel: The Sandman Volume I: Preludes & Nocturnes. Written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by 3 graphic artists whose names I don't remember. IT's a 10 volume series, collecting the monthly editions, and my friend has loaned me the entire set. They're in pristine condition so I'm not taking them out of the house or reading them anywhere they could be spilled on or damaged, so it may take me some time to get through them all!
Anyway, it's very good. Very Gaiman-y.
|
|
|
Post by mei on Jul 16, 2017 14:42:07 GMT -5
Ah I like weekends where I can just read :-D
Just finished David Mitchell's Slade House. A short read, so done in a day, but I liked it more than I had expected. Wasn't a fan of The Bone Clocks so was a bit sceptical, but liked this much better. But I should re-read The Bone Clocks again, to make sense of how it connects exactly (but there are linkages to other works as well, I think. Or at least, I picked out a reference to Jacob de Zoet)
|
|
|
Post by lillielangtry on Jul 16, 2017 15:48:58 GMT -5
Ooh yes! I want to reread both Slade House (maybe at Halloween...) and the bone clocks.
|
|
|
Post by Queen on Jul 17, 2017 8:36:09 GMT -5
#25 The Mysterious Affair at Styles; Agatha Christie
Blame @lilylangtry for this, I downloaded it from Guttenberg.
It's good, but somewhat contrived. The attitudes expressed are a bit outdated to say the least as Lily mentioned, but it's because of the date it was written... I dunno, it wouldn't change the story much to change the offending phrases but I'm not sure I want that - I have an unease about sanitising a work from another time.
#26 The Secret Adversary; Agatha Christie
the only other book by Ms Christie on the Gutenberg site.
It features Tommy and Tuppence a crime solving duo, and it whizzes along at a great pace. There are some surprisingly modern things in the book (published in 1922), and it's full of false clues and surprise twists. Even so I guessed who the real baddie was rather early.
|
|
|
Post by Queen on Jul 18, 2017 7:04:54 GMT -5
#27 The Chibok Girls: The Boko Haram Kidnappings and Islamist Militancy in Nigeria (Columbia Global Reports) by Helon Habila
Really interesting read, and should be compulsory reading. At 100 pages it will only take you an hour.
It's less about the Chibok Girls as individual people and more a crash course on the history of Nigeria and the rise of fundamentalist Islam (which one Muslim in the book says is not Islam). Made me want to read more about Nigeria/African history.
|
|
|
Post by ozziegiraffe on Jul 19, 2017 1:50:44 GMT -5
#26 The Secret Adversary; Agatha Christie the only other book by Ms Christie on the Gutenberg site. It features Tommy and Tuppence a crime solving duo, and it whizzes along at a great pace. There are some surprisingly modern things in the book (published in 1922), and it's full of false clues and surprise twists. Even so I guessed who the real baddie was rather early. Tommy and Tuppence are my favourite Christie sleuths. I didn't like the way Tommy is portrayed in the tv series, though.
|
|
|
Post by Queen on Jul 19, 2017 9:51:08 GMT -5
Agree ozziegiraffe, he didn't match my impression - or at least when I read the book it wasn't a match, too old for one thing. I think the casting of Tuppence was good.
|
|
|
Post by ozziegiraffe on Jul 19, 2017 17:00:31 GMT -5
Exactly, Q. Tommy on tv is the wrong type altogether, although the rest of the characters are good. Love all the books, though.
|
|
|
Post by scrubb on Jul 20, 2017 22:05:24 GMT -5
Bailey's Cafe, by Gloria Naylor. A cafe with a very limited menu and bad coffee that sits in limbo. Literally. Customers seem to mostly be people who stay at Eve's "boarding house" (brothel?) up the road, which is only visible when people need it. It tells the stories - all tragic - of the people who live there. Many of them are poor black women who were abused or came from an intolerant society (there's some time travel, and some huge distances covered, when you step out of the cafe).
I liked it a lot. The author's first book won the National Book Award; from stuff I've read, this one is similar but a lot of people said the other one was better, so I will keep my eyes open for it.
|
|
|
Post by Liiisa on Jul 21, 2017 15:39:09 GMT -5
26) Ned Beauman, Glow
Ned Beauman is a young British author of interesting, strange novels; this is the third novel of his that I've read, I think. This one involves a young Londoner with a circadian rhythm disorder and a fondness for raves and their attendant drug scene who gets involved in a convoluted scenario involving a mining corporation and Burmese revolutionaries. Recommended!
|
|
|
Post by scrubb on Jul 23, 2017 12:50:06 GMT -5
Loving Day, by Mat Johnson. Very, very pale black (Irish father) graphic novel artist in a bad place in life returns to Philadelphia when his dad dies and he's inherited an old mansion that's crumbling. Then discovers he has a daughter from a high school fling, who is now 18. She didn't know she was black.
They discover a group of people pushing a bi-racial identity - acknowledging all their ancestors and cultures, not just going with "if you are the least bit black, you're black" which is the norm. He falls in love with one of the women in the group which makes him more sympathetic to their cause, though he never quite buys in all the way.
I have no idea how real the representation of attitudes is, but it was convincing, and very readable.
It is all about identity politics but it's also pretty funny and it is not at all heavy reading.
|
|
|
Post by scrubb on Jul 23, 2017 12:57:10 GMT -5
Oh, and I started a book called "Bugs, Bowels, and Behavior" about the link between gut flora and the brain. Which is an area I'm really interested in, but having finished reading the introduction and the pre-word, alarm bells are going off.
I know that the gut/brain connection is an emerging area of study and that there's really interesting stuff coming out about it; but the introduction is all about autism and it states unequivocally that it is increasing dramatically (without discussing the changes in diagnostics); and it appears to be claiming that it's been proven that it's all due to gut bugs.
All the authors have a bunch of letters after their name but some of them are unfamiliar and I'm beginning to suspect they might be made up qualifications related to homeopathy/naturopathy... I could be wrong, and I'm hoping the book is about the research that's happening and what it MIGHT be pointing toward, but I'm suspicious that it's got a much broader agenda than that.
|
|
|
Post by lillielangtry on Jul 23, 2017 13:49:33 GMT -5
#47 Camron Wright, The Rent Collector Huh, this is about a Cambodian woman living in desperate poverty in a rubbish dump, who then learns to read and finds out about the past of the women teaching her. It's based on a true story. Fairly interesting premise, unfortunately it's not well-written. I didn't believe in the "voice" of the Cambodian narrator at all and some aspects were not well-explored.
#48 High Albania, M. Edith Durham Classic piece of travel writing by Edith Durham, who went to Albania in the early years of the 20th century. She was brave, she writes extremely engagingly and her subject matter is fascinating. V good.
|
|
|
Post by Liiisa on Jul 23, 2017 15:13:45 GMT -5
scrubb,
1) I read "Loving Day" last year (?) and thought it was great.
2) That does sound alarm-bell-worthy... I'll take "significantly related," but nothing is due ENTIRELY to anything.
|
|
|
Post by Webs on Jul 24, 2017 15:30:01 GMT -5
Read "The Little French Cafe" which was by the same author as "The Little Paris Bookshop" but takes place in Brittany and is about a woman who is trying to escape her lousy marriage by committing suicide. Except she fails and ends up at the end of the world (according to the French). A romance for the mature set. A quick read but satisfactory.
Now I'm starting "Flaneuse:Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, ..." to quote the author "the flâneuse is a “determined, resourceful individual keenly attuned to the creative potential of the city and the liberating possibilities of a good walk.”
|
|
|
Post by Liiisa on Jul 24, 2017 17:29:33 GMT -5
To be a flaneuse sounds like an excellent goal, Webs.
Had a hard time putting the following down:
27) Jonathan Lethem, A Gambler’s Anatomy
A professional gambler in a strange and difficult situation, which forces him to come to terms with his childhood with his hippie mother in Berkeley. (But this is Lethem, so that's just the bare bones of a plot that's larded with interesting characters and strange things.)
|
|
|
Post by Queen on Jul 26, 2017 9:41:50 GMT -5
#28 Lucia in London E F Benson Social commentary with bite. The Lucia/Mapp series is fantastically funny with a cast of characters drawn from upper middle class mid (last) century England. They're earnestly snobbish, their lives would be dull except that they take up a range of pastimes. I had lots of laugh out loud moments.
#29 The Warden Anthony Trollope More social commentary, Trollope is brilliant, although it took me a bit to get into his writing style as it is, by today's standard, a bit florid. His descriptions of people are so tangible... "He was as bright as a diamond, and as cutting..." the book revolves around the potential loss of a sinecure for the Warden. The scandal of it is talked of in the press and the Warden's son-in-law warns against trying to engage with the press and says
Which made me think of social media/cyberbullying of today. Nothing new under the sun.
|
|
|
Post by Queen on Jul 26, 2017 9:42:31 GMT -5
I want to read "Weapons of Math Destruction".... about big data, algorithms, and their misuse.
|
|
|
Post by scrubb on Jul 27, 2017 0:46:07 GMT -5
Just loaded up 4 new books on my kindle that I've been wanting to read for ages. They're for my upcoming holidays - woohoo!
Butcher's Crossing (John Williams) Purity (Jonathan Franzen) The View from the Cheap Seats (Neil Gaiman) Number9dream (David Mitchell)
|
|
|
Post by Webs on Jul 27, 2017 15:05:41 GMT -5
Oh I'm disappointed in "Flaneuse". I thought it would be more memoir but it's more about other writers and while they travel, they're not really "Flaneusing". I'll read the whole thing but I'm not sure where to go from here.
|
|