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Post by sophie on Aug 12, 2017 15:10:48 GMT -5
The Dust That Falls From Dreams by Louis de Bernieres. I liked his earlier book (captain Corelli's Mandolin) more.. this one seemed to have to many stories going on within the actual story line. Having said that, it is fine for a lazy summer read.
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Post by Queen on Aug 14, 2017 8:14:40 GMT -5
#36 The Last Chronicle of Barset Anthony Trollope
The last of the Barsetshire chronicles. I've loved this series, although it was published 150 years ago and lots of things are different - often the moral dilemma a character faces wouldn't be relevant now - the people are still recognisable and their attitudes are surprisingly modern at times. Even though it's written right in the middle of the Victorian era (or perhaps because??) The women have agency, they decide their lives and they have considerable power albeit indirectly.
I think this is the best of the series, it has a dark plot, and it leads you to believe the worst of someone, along with the burgers of Barset, and when the light dawns you are so relieved. When Septimus Harding, the first character you meet in the first book, died I was so sad - but delighted that the Cathedral was full of mourners for this quiet honorable man. Good wins out in Trollope, but it's a delicate balance.
The name thing is kept going, with a lawyer called "Toogood", and finally we learn Mr Grantly's first name "Theophilus", all a delight.
One last comment, in this book New Zealand keeps getting mentioned as a place you can run away to and start again when your reputation is tarnished in England. That's exactly how some of Mum's ancestors ended up migrating at about that time. I was amused.
I have downloaded the Palliser series but I think I need to read something from this century otherwise I will start to speak like one of his characters.
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Post by scrubb on Aug 14, 2017 12:04:21 GMT -5
My August holiday reading has been mostly excellent.
#60 - All Our Yesterdays, by Natalia Ginzberg. An Italian family lives through WW2. THe men in the family were anti-fascist but ineffectual in opposing it, and the women were mostly more concerned with their daily lives than politics. The sort-of main character dreamed of revolution but instead got pregnant at 16 and married a much older man to cover it up. It tried to be something it wasn't - sort of Gabriel Garcia Marquez style but not-quite. Every sentence is like a statement of fact or an observation. No emotional involvement with any characters, and lots of quirky characters. Apparently it's semi-autobiographical or at least based on the author's unusual family. Good, but far from great and I don't actually remember how it ended now.
#61 No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks by Ed Viesturs and David Roberts. I like mountaineering books a LOT and this was one of the best I've read. I've known of Ed Viesturs since about 1998 or so and knew he was one of the best mountaineers in the world, and this story gained more respect from me. He comes across as someone who has a much lower risk threshold than many climbers too - he turned back from several peaks when the conditions seemed too dangerous for him. He also was instrumental in helping people during the disastrous 1996 Everest season - and he tells that story without badmouthing ANYONE.
Most interesting to me is that as I was reading it, I was talking to a friend who it turns out spent a week on Mt Rainier with him back in the '90s when he was a guide for RMI. She said he had just come back from climbing Everest at the time.
#62 The View from the Cheap Seats - Neil Gaiman. A selection of essays, book introductions, etc., all of them, I think, about books/comics/art. Most of it was quite enjoyable although there were some that I skimmed, when I knew nothing about the author/book/comic he was introducing. He had some good things to say. He arranged the book so that the most personal things were at the end and unfortunately some of the 'personal' stuff gave me a slightly negative vibe.
He mentioned his daughters on and off in many of the pieces, so my impression is that he was married at least once, probably twice, and has grown up kids now. But only in the later pieces (2010 and later) does he start mentioning Amanda Palmer, who he married somewhere around 2010 and they had a kid in 2015 or so. Which is nice, but from the way he wrote about her and their relationship he sort of came across (to me) as an infatuated older man. Which is a ridiculous judgement to make when I know nothing about him/her/them, but it's how it came across to me.
Anyway, there was lots of worthwhile stuff in the book.
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Post by lillielangtry on Aug 14, 2017 12:10:52 GMT -5
Q, I read a Trollope as a teenager - Barsetshire Towers, I think - and didn't like it. But I think now that I was just too young for it. My actual reading abilities were way ahead of my maturity, so I probably found books boring/inaccessible then just because I couldn't understand the themes. I should give him another try sometime.
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Post by scrubb on Aug 14, 2017 15:53:47 GMT -5
#63 number9dream by David Mitchell - almost more like a Murakami than a Mitchell. I think it was intended as an homage, maybe? Anyway, I liked it, but then I like all David Mitchell (and all Murakami).
#64 The Wooden Horse: A Classic WW2 Story of Escape by Eric Williams - ok, not fantastic. The author's introduction makes it clear that it's an only lightly fictionalized version of his real story. He was a POW that dug a tunnel and managed to escape with 2 other people. The time in their camp was interesting, as was their effort to get a ship out of port to a neutral country.
#65 Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly - the book the movie was based on. It had some interesting information in it, but just wasn't well put together. She jumps all over the place and has no coherent story being told. Worth reading for the information, but not particularly enjoyable. I haven't seen the movie yet, but I bet it's better.
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Post by Queen on Aug 15, 2017 8:07:36 GMT -5
Q, I read a Trollope as a teenager - Barsetshire Towers, I think - and didn't like it. But I think now that I was just too young for it. My actual reading abilities were way ahead of my maturity, so I probably found books boring/inaccessible then just because I couldn't understand the themes. I should give him another try sometime. Could be worth retrying, I read "The Way We Live Now" and didn't get it so was put off Trollope until now. My opinion now is very positive, he's very funny.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Aug 15, 2017 8:48:30 GMT -5
I read the Barchester Chronicles years ago and loved them. But then I understood the hierarchy of the Anglican Church, so that part made sense.
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Post by Queen on Aug 15, 2017 10:33:42 GMT -5
I read the Barchester Chronicles years ago and loved them. But then I understood the hierarchy of the Anglican Church, so that part made sense. I had to look up some bits of that! But one of my old great-aunts used to take me to Church and she would have been in the Bishop Grantly camp so some bits I got.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Aug 16, 2017 6:48:50 GMT -5
48. Beastly Things, Donna Leon. Another excellent mystery evocative of Venice. All our favourite characters are in this one, and a villain is brought to justice.
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Post by lillielangtry on Aug 17, 2017 1:21:07 GMT -5
OK, Goodreads seems to have heard me speculating on Trollope and is recommending "Can you forgive her?", although it's apparently basing that recommendation on the fact that I'm currently reading Merce Rodoreda, a 20th century Catalan writer - don't really see what they have in common! Goodreads recommendations generally seem to be wildly off the mark.
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Post by scrubb on Aug 17, 2017 19:27:43 GMT -5
Purity, by Jonathan Franzen. Huge disappointment after I loved both The Corrections and Freedom. Some good bits, some good writing, but overall not cohesive story and pretty weak effort. He writes from a female character perspective a couple of times and I'm not convinced it was realistic; probably most annoying is that he has a character that everyone keeps saying is super charismatic and appealing, but he's not written as charismatic or appealing.
Just not very good.
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Post by scrubb on Aug 17, 2017 19:32:24 GMT -5
oh, also I stopped reading the "Bugs, Bowel, and Behaviour" book. It seemed to be a mix of gobbledy gook by homeopaths and serious research by actual scientists so I was just going to skim the good articles - but when I saw one chapter that cited a Wakefield study, and then saw his biography at the back of the book, I just deleted the book.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Aug 20, 2017 5:22:12 GMT -5
49. Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. This is a very insightful view of both first and third world mores, by someone with a keen understanding of both. I listened to the audiobook on several road trips, and it's brilliant in that format. Highly recommended.
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Post by Queen on Aug 20, 2017 10:35:24 GMT -5
that's one of my all time favourite books - love her.
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Post by Webs on Aug 21, 2017 14:43:55 GMT -5
Elinor Oliphant is Completely Fine- this is an interesting book. The main character is anti-social and has long standing issues due to... well you'll see. It's well written. I'm about halfway through.
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Post by Liiisa on Aug 21, 2017 20:56:47 GMT -5
I loved "The Way We Live Now" - reminds me to read some more Trollope.
Anyway, I've been traveling with basically no internet connection, so just catching up posting now:
28. Amitabh Ghosh, The Great Derangement
As I noted earlier this month, this is partly about how climate change hasn't really made its way into mainstream literary fiction yet and partly just about climate change and society. Interesting perspective on the topic. My theory is that it hasn't made its way into anything but sci-fi yet because its effects haven't really been felt directly by mainstream literary fiction writers yet. Wait a couple years, or read Kim Stanley Robinson.
29. Paul Beatty, The Sellout
This won the Man Booker a couple years ago (the first year it let Americans in, maybe?) It's a strange satire about an African-American guy who lives on a farm (yes) in a rather terrible neighborhood in south central LA. IMO likely to be best enjoyed by African Americans, but I thought it was pretty great (though shocking at times, as in "I can't believe he just said that").
30. Geoff Dyer, White Sands
I LOVED this - ! It's Dyer writing about travel, but travel as pilgrimage, sort of. Intellectual pilgrimage rather than religious, though he draws some parallels. I loved it loved it because it kind of unfurled stuff about why I travel that I didn't recognize, hadn't really thought about too much.
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Post by scrubb on Aug 21, 2017 22:15:12 GMT -5
Those all sound intriguing, Liiiiiisa.
I just finished a reread of Watership Down. I still liked it.
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Post by lillielangtry on Aug 22, 2017 3:24:59 GMT -5
Elinor Oliphant seems to be doing the rounds on Twitter and Youtube. I love that name - recently discovered there was a Victorian writer called Margaret Oliphant.
@liisa - so Long since I read Geoff Dyer, but I remember really enjoying him. I think there was one about not really writing a biography of D. H. Lawrence, if I remember rightly...?
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Post by Liiisa on Aug 22, 2017 5:00:05 GMT -5
Ooh lillie, I'll have to read that.
I resisted Dyer for some reason - I think I read a review of "Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do it" and was baffled by it - but now I have read that and several others, and I just love his voice and the hilarious way he interjects himself into the subjects he writes about.
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Post by sophie on Aug 22, 2017 10:14:08 GMT -5
Liisa, I couldn't get into 'the sellout '.. finally gave it away as I had a guilty feeling when I saw it laying on my book pile.
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Post by mei on Aug 22, 2017 15:07:00 GMT -5
finished, finally, a book I've been reading for a long time - it seems. Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. Mostly read because it's the third and last in a series of three, and I mostly enjoyed it. I still am amazed about the worlds that the author builds in his books, but the technical talk gets a bit too much in this one and too little action (those parts are still good).
I have Game of Thrones waiting for me, but moving on to something more realistic (?) first, before I tackle that. Underground Railroad seems fitting at the moment...
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Post by Liiisa on Aug 22, 2017 18:44:59 GMT -5
Liisa, I couldn't get into 'the sellout '.. finally gave it away as I had a guilty feeling when I saw it laying on my book pile. Yeah, like I said it's probably one of those satires best appreciated by people in the culture it's grown out of.
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Post by Liiisa on Aug 23, 2017 4:54:41 GMT -5
And then I finished the following, which I'd bought in the remarkably good Miami airport bookstore, because I couldn't put it down:
31. Junot Díaz, Drown
This is a set of short stories about people from the Dominican Republic by the author of "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," which was also really good.
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Post by lillielangtry on Aug 23, 2017 5:38:33 GMT -5
Ooh lillie, I'll have to read that. I resisted Dyer for some reason - I think I read a review of "Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do it" and was baffled by it - but now I have read that and several others, and I just love his voice and the hilarious way he interjects himself into the subjects he writes about. "Out of Sheer Rage" is the title of the Lawrence book.
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Post by Queen on Aug 23, 2017 11:01:35 GMT -5
#38 Rolling Rocks Downhill: The Agile Business Novel that NEVER mentions Agile.
This gets good reviews on Amazon but I thought it was TERRIBLE.
And that's all the review I can be bothered to write about it.
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Post by lillielangtry on Aug 23, 2017 12:07:02 GMT -5
#56 Mariana Enriquez (trans Megan McDowell), Things we lost in the fire Short stories from Argentina. Dark, very dark. Violence, dysfunctional relationships, memories of police brutality, polluted rivers - they're all here in these spooky stories. Very far from my usual taste but I really liked them (probably partly because I love Argentina and because McDowell is an excellent translator).
#57 Scholastique Mukasonga, Our Lady of the Nile This Rwandan novel focuses on a group of girls at a school for privileged young ladies, "the female elite" of the country - but there is a horrible foreshadowing of the future genocide. Very good.
#58 Mercé Rodoreda, Der Garten über dem Meer ("the garden above the sea" - this one is not available in English but some of her other books are) Rodoreda is a Catalan writer. This book focuses on a group of rich young people at their summer home near Barcelona in the '20s and is told from the point of view of the gardener. It's slow, quite melancholy; I liked it.
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Post by Liiisa on Aug 24, 2017 5:02:40 GMT -5
32) John Lewis et al, March, Book One
I had bought this at a yard sale last weekend and it was sitting on my desk, so I read it while I was waiting for my home computer to download an upgrade. It's a graphic novel talking about the early days of Civil Rights Movement activist and now-Congressman John Lewis, covering his childhood on an Alabama farm and his youth working as an activist in the early movement actions, doing nonviolence training and participating in the lunch counter sit-ins.
The art is wonderful, and it's an important story to be reminded of, especially in this current fucked-up political context. Will look out for the rest of the series.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Aug 24, 2017 6:03:40 GMT -5
50. The Golden Egg, by Donna Leon. Another good read set in beautiful Venice. An intriguing outcome, and a rather sad story of how people are, or were, forced to deal with the consequences of perceived sin. I'm on a roll this year. 50 is my usual annual total. I think it is partly due to the audiobooks I listen to on long road trips. 2 more work trips tomorrow and Monday.
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Post by Queen on Aug 24, 2017 9:55:03 GMT -5
#39 Wives and Daughters Elizabeth Gaskell
Awwwwww!
Lovely story, totally pulled into it and then crash! What a shock.
For those that don't know the book was never finished, as Mrs Gaskell died suddenly. It's missing maybe 2 chapters and the denouement is strongly indicated but it's not actually there.
There is a wonderfully modern character in the book, Miss Cynthia Fitzpatrick, who is beautiful and frivolous and not very good... and yet gets to marry well.
There's also a wonderfully awful Stepmother...and the father takes a long time to see her for what she is which is so well done!
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Post by Webs on Aug 24, 2017 12:07:04 GMT -5
Recommendation on Elinor Oliphant is *****. It's emotional, yet funny and I was wholly satisfied with the ending. It will not be a waste of your time to read this.
Moving on to a short book of quotes from the Endlessly Quotable Terry Pratchett that was sent by someone and is much needed.
I'm still trying to finish "I Shot The Buddha" by Colin Cotteril. I got it last year and have been reading bits, but it's not as interesting as the other Dr Siri's.
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