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Post by Webs on Sept 1, 2017 12:49:04 GMT -5
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Post by Liiisa on Sept 1, 2017 15:59:14 GMT -5
Bookmarking! Thanks Webs.
Right now I'm about 3/4 of the way through "Exit West" by Mohsin Hamid, which I'm finding impossible to put down and will definitely be on my Best of 2017 list.
Edited to add:
35. Mohsin Hamid, Exit West
A story of a young man and woman in an contemporary unnamed Middle Eastern country that reminds one of Syria. It's realistic except that there are these doors - portals that you can step through and end up in a different country, and they end up traveling through one of them. I loved it for the writing style - very light and glancing is the only way I can describe it, while also touching on the way that people actually think.
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Post by scrubb on Sept 1, 2017 21:37:20 GMT -5
Today I finished 'A House Without Windows" by Nadia Hashimi. IT was an interesting story, but she's just not a great writer.
Set in Afghanistan - a woman is arrested for killing her husband (with a hatchet into his head); her lawyer is a returned Afghani who grew up in New York. She won't tell him what happened and he's not all that good at figuring it out, either. The main point of the book, though is to demonstrate how women are treated in that country. If they are raped, they are sent to jail for dishonouring their family, etc. Definitely an interesting look into the society, even if not a great book.
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Post by lillielangtry on Sept 2, 2017 0:38:47 GMT -5
Thanks Webs!
Liiisa I've heard mixed things about Hamid. Good that you liked it.
I'm part way through a few books, most notably Linda Grant's The Dark Circle, which I'm enjoying. More on that when I'm done.
Also in book news I signed up to Audible, so for just under €10 a month I get an audiobook each month. There's a huge selection in German and English. I think mostly I'll use it for non-fiction, travel writing and biographies, but I'm starting off with Zadie Smith's Swing Time, which I've read in book format already and is our book club choice this month.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Sept 2, 2017 5:30:47 GMT -5
Bookmarking, thanks Webs. I'm currently reading a hardback by Tess Gerritsen (which is interesting as she just made a cameo appearance in a tv episode of Rizzoli and Isles that I was watching), an audiobook that I should finish on my next road trip this week, and a rather ordinary young adult book on my phone.
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Post by scrubb on Sept 2, 2017 18:18:10 GMT -5
#71) The Sandman Vol 3: Dream Country. Still good, but I think weaker than the first 2.
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Post by Queen on Sept 3, 2017 9:32:24 GMT -5
#42 Duke's Shadow
The daughter of the house is having a season at age 33. And the rest of the book didn't get much better. It was a kindle freebie... and not worth the money.
#43 Can You Forgive Her?
Anthony Trollope
The story centres around three strong women and he has a lot to say about what women think and do and the choices they make. The opinions aren't as archaic as you might expect given that it was published deep into the Victorian Era.
I liked it but did get a bit annoyed with the main lead (there are three), as she fluffed around about who to marry... and the bad guy was thoroughly bad and escapes justice to America which amused me.
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Post by sprite on Sept 3, 2017 10:07:42 GMT -5
i still haven't updated from july!
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Post by scrubb on Sept 3, 2017 15:24:35 GMT -5
Sandman Vol 4: Season of Mists. REturn to form.
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Post by Liiisa on Sept 3, 2017 20:04:12 GMT -5
36) Chris Cleave, Everyone Brave is Forgiven
I've been in this giant reading frenzy lately, so here's another book.
It's kind of a romance, really, set in WW2, alternating between a sparkplug of a young woman in London and a man she knows who's a soldier. Part of the London story concerns a group of London children who were rejected by families in the countryside when they were evacuated, and were sent back to London. Now this book is fiction, but knowing people and their prejudices, I'm quite willing to believe that this happened, but I'd never heard of it; it was eye-opening. Anyway, it's not a stylistically experimental book or anything, but it's a good read.
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Post by scrubb on Sept 3, 2017 23:33:03 GMT -5
Is Chris Cleave the author of "The Other Hand" (or "Little Bee" - one's a UK title, one's NA)? That book had so many things that I should have liked, and a lot of people thought it was great - but I just didn't like it much. Makes me hesitate to pick up something else by him.
I wish I could remember what I didn't like about The Other Hand, but I just remember being really disappointed.
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Post by lillielangtry on Sept 4, 2017 1:23:49 GMT -5
i still haven't updated from july! Get on it, sprite! |
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Post by lillielangtry on Sept 4, 2017 1:49:27 GMT -5
#61 Linda Grant, The Dark Circle
This Baileys prize-shortlisted novel is set in England at the beginning of the '50s and centres around a pair of Jewish twins from London, aged around 19, who are found to have tubercolosis and are set to a sanatorium in the country which has been newly opened to NHS patients.
Grant chose a fascinating time in which to situate the story - the NHS is opening up the health system to people who previously had little or no access to it, while the country is in limbo between the horrors of war and the liberation of the '60s. In the US, the treatment of TB has been revolutionised by the antibiotic streptomycin, but the UK is so cashstrapped after the war and its aging doctors are so suspicious of the developments that it is not yet available. The patients start to realise that a "miracle cure" is on the way, but will it be in time for them, while they are still being subjected to months of bed rest and useless, barbaric treatments?
I really enjoyed this. I can see why it's possibly not for everyone - it's got a big, fairly rambling cast of characters - but I empathised so much with the patients and was just rooting for them. I also think she does dialogue and description very well.
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Post by Liiisa on Sept 4, 2017 6:09:47 GMT -5
scrubb: yes, that's the same person. I haven't read "Little Bee" so I can't say if this one is going to be problematic in the same vein or not. I probably wouldn't have picked it up on my own - I'm not really given to reading WW2 love stories - but my mom loves to press books on me and I hadn't gotten around to reading any of them in a while. Like I said, it's not great art, but it definitely made me care about whether the characters survived their various tribulations.
lillie: ooh, I'm going to look for that!
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Post by sprite on Sept 4, 2017 6:13:36 GMT -5
#71) The Sandman Vol 3: Dream Country. Still good, but I think weaker than the first 2. thank you for reminding me to look this up--way back in Uni i read some of a friend's comic collection, and really loved the Death character. my library stocks these, so after hols i'll reserve the first in the series. |
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Post by scrubb on Sept 5, 2017 2:23:59 GMT -5
Staying up to meet my parents' delayed flight, I. Finished the 5th Sandman - A Dream of Me, or something like that. Good but not as remarkable as some.
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Post by scrubb on Sept 5, 2017 20:33:16 GMT -5
Today I finished a collection of Inspector Rebus short stories by Ian Rankin - A Good Hanging. He managed to get much of Rebus' character and mood accross but with the focus on the crime necessarily using up most of the space, they weren't as psychological as the full length books. Made it a bit lighter reading, although that's not probably the right word.
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Post by sophie on Sept 5, 2017 22:38:28 GMT -5
Glass Houses by Louise Penny. This is her newest novel and like her others, well written and suspenseful. Good mystery.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Sept 6, 2017 5:09:46 GMT -5
52. Flesh Wounds by Richard Glover. Richard reads his own autobiography in the audio version of this book, which makes it even funnier and emphasises the pathos and the weirdness of his parents. As I usually listen to him on the ABC presenting Thank God it's Friday, the reading did give me a feeling of unreality.
Richard's mother appears to have been a real life Hyacinth Bucket!
Finished this one today on my return trip from Bourke to Enngonia.
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Post by Queen on Sept 7, 2017 10:54:09 GMT -5
#44 Phineas Finn Anthony Trollope (again - and there are another four in the series) Fab stuff. Political intrigue and layers of romance. He is rude about redheads though, I haven't quite forgiven him for that  |
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Post by Liiisa on Sept 7, 2017 12:49:20 GMT -5
37) Richard Comstock, Phoenix
A rather dissolute young man in 24th century England chooses 3 years of suspended animation in order to avoid being thrown out of university, with unintended consequences!
Another tiny sci-fi paperback. It should be made into a movie, with some dim but hot young man in the lead. Sadly Alan Rickman is not available to play the bad guy.
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Post by scrubb on Sept 8, 2017 18:57:54 GMT -5
PD James - A Mind to Murder. The second Adam Dalgleish mystery in the series, written in the '60s. A little too formulaic - a group of people, one of whom must be the murderer... it was interesting in that it was set in a clinic where psychiatric treatments were performed, from marriage counselling to ECT to art therapy to experiments with LSD. Also reflected '60s attitudes to mental health.
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Post by lillielangtry on Sept 11, 2017 1:54:29 GMT -5
#62 Martin Suter, Allmen und die Libellen - this is the first in the Allmen series but I've already read the 2nd and 3rd and didn't like this as much. Maybe because I didn't really need the character-building and scene-setting, of which there was a lot.
#63 Ricarda Huch, Der Fall Deruga (The Deruga Case)
A German classic, from 1917, although apparently its author, who was better known for her poetry and more intellectual works, admitted that she wrote it for the money. It's a courtroom Drama focused on a man accused of murdering his ex-wife - he was the beneficiary of her will. I sort of got distracted by other things and had a big pause in reading this book, so I lost momentum with it.
#64 Fiona Mozley, Elmet
Mozley was the surprise newcomer to be longlisted for the Booker prize and she lives in York and works in an Independent bookshop there, so my mum went in and got me a signed copy :-)
I would never have heard of this if it hadn't been for the Booker but I devoured the whole thing on a long train journey on Friday. It's set in rural Yorkshire and is narrated by a teenage boy who lives with his sister and a man they call "Daddy". Daddy is hugely strong and makes a living by participating in illegal, bare-knuckle boxing matches. The children don't go to school and in fact the whole book focuses on people who fly under the radar of the State - earning cash under the table, building without planning permission, sorting out disputes without the involvement of the Police. There's a building atmosphere of tension and dread as Daddy's enemies close in.
I don't think this will win the Booker but I think it's an excellent book and I'm excited to see what Mozley does next (apart from finishing her PhD!).
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Post by mei on Sept 11, 2017 3:04:41 GMT -5
just finished The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. Really enjoyed it, interesting story line and about a part of US history that I don't know much about (but is extremely relevant at the moment)
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Post by Queen on Sept 11, 2017 9:16:45 GMT -5
#45 The Eustace Diamonds
Anthony Trollope (again - 3 to go)
Loved it, it's a mix of romance, treachery, politics and there are diamonds.
The protagonist is completely unlikable and yet you're somehow wanting her to get out of the trouble she gets herself into. Quite a writing feat.
#46 Murder from the Newsdesk: Seven Crampton of the Chronicle mystery stories
Peter Bartram
Fun quick crime stories, I guess based on real events.
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Post by Webs on Sept 11, 2017 9:40:00 GMT -5
The Fifth Season - N.K. Jemisin. First in a series - 2016 Hugo winner I've been wanting to read for a while. It's a whole world so I can't really explain what it's about.
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Post by Liiisa on Sept 11, 2017 12:00:42 GMT -5
38. Edwidge Danticat, Breath, Eyes, Memory
The story of a young Haitian woman who was sent as a child to New York to live with her mother. There's a lot of pain in this novel, but also a strength and presence of the women in the girl's family and community that is hard to pull yourself away from.
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Post by Liiisa on Sept 14, 2017 5:34:10 GMT -5
I've been reading a lot lately!
39. Philip K. Dick, Puttering About in a Small Land
If you've read Philip K. Dick before, you probably already have an idea about what this book would be like, but you'd be wrong. Instead of being strange sci-fi, this is a realistic novel about people in Los Angeles in the 1950s. It's not the most pleasant novel - the main character, a rather highly strung man who operates a TV sales and repair place, is kind of a pain in the ass - but Dick is such an interesting writer that it's hard to put down anyway.
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Post by scrubb on Sept 14, 2017 23:16:17 GMT -5
lillie - Elmet made it to the short list!
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Post by lillielangtry on Sept 15, 2017 1:20:58 GMT -5
lillie - Elmet made it to the short list! I know! And Arundhati Roy didn't; bit of a surprise. I can't say much about the list because I'd only read Elmet and Zadie Smith. I definitely don't want to read the Paul Auster - life is too short! Is it weird to say I almost hope Elmet doesn't win? I don't know, I think just winning a massive prize for your first novel must be a huge pressure. I really, really like Elmet but it also made me curious for where she will go next and I'd like it to be somewhere even better. But anyway, no one's asking me! Anyway, speaking of the Booker... #65 Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust Prawer Jhabvala is better known for writing the screenplays for the Merchant Ivory films, but she actually won the 1975 Booker with this slim novel. It's a dual storyline, focusing on a British woman who travels to India following in the footsteps of her step-grandmother, who caused a scandal by eloping with an Indian prince. It's well written and engaging - I never doubted that I would finish it - but the characters are curiously emotionless. You never get much of an idea of how they actually feel, which given that half the book is in diary form, is odd! |
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