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Post by Liiisa on Jan 27, 2018 20:15:17 GMT -5
6) Anna Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World
Nonfiction, mainly about how matsutake mushrooms thrive in human-damaged landscapes and what that says about the problems and opportunities we have going forward (considering the fact that because of capitalism eventually all landscapes will be human damaged). There's some sociology, which can be a little bit of a slog, but otherwise very interesting stuff, and it ended with a nice quote from Ursula Le Guin.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jan 28, 2018 5:42:03 GMT -5
14. Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance. Brilliant radio play version as an Audible audiobook, including Miriam Margolyes. 15. Kathy Cranston, Knitting is Murder, a quite reasonable short cozy mystery.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Jan 28, 2018 5:52:38 GMT -5
So apparently I've read about 15 books so far in January, which means I have a load of updating to do on Tuesday!
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Post by sprite on Jan 28, 2018 8:35:37 GMT -5
the miniaturist, after watching the BBC adaptation.
there were several differences between the two which confused me, but overall i think they made good choices in what they kept/changed for tv. i enjoyed the window in dutch history, but found the wierdness of the miniaturist unsatisfying.
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Post by mei on Jan 28, 2018 10:59:26 GMT -5
Finally, my first book finished this year.
#1: Please look after mother by Kyung-Sook Shin. An elderly woman gets separated from her husband in a Seoul metro station and disappears. Through her children's search for her and their memories her life gets reconstructed. Enjoyed it, good read.
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Post by Queen on Jan 28, 2018 12:45:53 GMT -5
Finished "Furiously Happy:A Funny Book about Horrible Things" by Jenny Lawson... She's very open about her many issues, from crippling anxiety and depression, to compulsions to pull out her hair and pick at herself until she bleeds and harm herself in other ways - but she makes the most of the days that are good by just doing what makes her happy, whatever it is. She struggles to feel good about herself and so mixed in with the funny stuff she does and says is some self-helpy type stuff about accepting yourself and realizing that it's ok to not be perfect. She's the Bloggess (http://thebloggess.com/) I read her earlier book, Let's Pretend this Never Happened It was good, clever, and an insight into a very weird mind, but I could only read in small doses. It felt over-wrought in places, which might be genuinely what life feels like for her, it just got a bit much at times.
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Post by Queen on Jan 28, 2018 12:54:08 GMT -5
#2 The Thirteenth Tale Diane Setterfield
Set in today's time (ish) but looking back to an unspecified time perhaps 80 years ago it has a very gothic feel to it. There's a house that seems haunted, a fire, twisted families, and the strangeness grows. I guessed the major plot twist waaaayyyyy ahead of time but was still pulled in enough to want to find out what had really happened.
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 28, 2018 18:26:34 GMT -5
7) Louise Erdrich, Future Home of the Living God
Well! This was impossible to put down, i.e. I started reading it this morning and basically did almost nothing else until it was done. It's a little like The Handmaid's Tale, in that a strange environmental situation in the future causes chaos and subsequent problems with childbirth; in this case pregnant women are hunted down and held in state hospitals. The protagonist is a pregnant young Native American woman who'd been adopted by white people.
The cataclysm at the heart of this novel is a little confusing - it seems like evolution is running backwards, and no mechanism is really offered, so you have to just go along with it. But that's ok (especially since at one point an ancient dragonfly with a 3-ft wingspan turns up).
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Post by scrubb on Jan 29, 2018 0:06:14 GMT -5
Well, that has to go on my list, then, because I LOVE giant dragonflies! (Ok, that sounds weird. But ever since I read that they used to be huge, I've loved imagining it.)
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Post by Queen on Jan 29, 2018 2:10:05 GMT -5
Most animals have huge ancestors, or rather there were huge versions of the animals we have today. One theory about their demise connects it to the arrival of humans. We suck for other species.
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Post by lillielangtry on Jan 29, 2018 2:31:35 GMT -5
Finished Fates & Furies by Lauren Groff, a book from 2015 that apparently got some good press back then. Looks like Q-pee and lillielangtry read it back when it was fresh. I liked the 1st (longer) half and the author's style, yet I struggled with the implausibility of the 2nd half. I only read it last year. I was really drawn into it, but with distance I agree that the second half was probably a Stretch.
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Post by lillielangtry on Jan 29, 2018 5:10:07 GMT -5
#2 The Thirteenth Tale Diane Setterfield Set in today's time (ish) but looking back to an unspecified time perhaps 80 years ago it has a very gothic feel to it. There's a house that seems haunted, a fire, twisted families, and the strangeness grows. I guessed the major plot twist waaaayyyyy ahead of time but was still pulled in enough to want to find out what had really happened. Just noticed that I gave this a 1-star Review on Goodreads. I no longer remember what I so disliked about it!
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Post by Queen on Jan 29, 2018 13:35:20 GMT -5
Finished Fates & Furies by Lauren Groff, a book from 2015 that apparently got some good press back then. Looks like Q-pee and lillielangtry read it back when it was fresh. I liked the 1st (longer) half and the author's style, yet I struggled with the implausibility of the 2nd half. I only read it last year. I was really drawn into it, but with distance I agree that the second half was probably a Stretch. I read it in 2016... and I agreed with lillielangtryhere's what I said back then... I can remember being intrigued by what had been attempted but not convinced by the writing.
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Post by scrubb on Jan 29, 2018 13:56:21 GMT -5
Just finished "Heir to the Glimmering World" by Cynthia Ozick. While it was on the whole good, with some excellent writing, it sometimes jumped away from narrating the story to lecturing about esoteric religious studies. Religious studies were part of the plot and theme, but these chunks of lecture were boring and unnecessary and clunky.
Also, although the book was full of really well drawn characters the main narrator/character was much less clearly portrayed, and less interesting, than everyone else. Which distracted a bit. Plus, nothing much happened to the main character - she observed a bizarre family for a year or so, and they went through a real variety of things, but whatever the effect on her was, was not evident.
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 29, 2018 19:16:58 GMT -5
Most animals have huge ancestors, or rather there were huge versions of the animals we have today. One theory about their demise connects it to the arrival of humans. We suck for other species. It's true that we ate most of the nice big Ice Age mammals. But thankfully the giant dragonflies weren't around long enough for us to eat them all - they got that large because of elevated oxygen levels during that period and then eventually dwindled to their current size. (Thanks for the oxygen, plants!) And scrubb if it's weird to like giant dragonflies, then I am very very very weird.
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Post by sophie on Jan 29, 2018 20:48:33 GMT -5
I just got ‘Future Home of the Living God’ after reading Liisa’s comments.. I will let you know if I agree with you in a few days...
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 29, 2018 22:00:43 GMT -5
I just got ‘Future Home of the Living God’ after reading Liisa’s comments.. I will let you know if I agree with you in a few days... Hope you like it! It wasn't perfect, but it was definitely compelling.
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Post by Queen on Jan 30, 2018 1:57:49 GMT -5
And scrubb if it's weird to like giant dragonflies, then I am very very very weird. Ahem, this might not be our first clue. **runs**
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Jan 30, 2018 20:30:18 GMT -5
Liiisa, I tried to read The Imperfectionists as I really enjoyed one of Rachman's other books, but I just couldn't finish it . Thank you! It had been raved about so I put it on my list, but no. So I saw that Rachman has a new novel out and the first review I read was someone saying that they couldn't finish The Imperfectionists, even though all their friends raved about it, but that they loved this one. So I may give this new one a try.
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 30, 2018 21:09:02 GMT -5
Huh Hal! Interesting how opinions are so polarized about that book. I would have abandoned it if I wasn't stuck on an airplane with only that to read (I was saving the in-flight magazine for an emergency)
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jan 31, 2018 7:15:12 GMT -5
16. The Skeleton Haunts a House, Leigh Perry. These books continue to amuse me. The characters, mainly college professors, are intelligent enough to make a completely silly theme credible.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Jan 31, 2018 20:24:09 GMT -5
6.The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone - Jaclyn Moriarty Another wonderful middle grade book with an adventurous female protagonist. Good world building, some well written characters and I'm looking forward to a potential sequel.
7. The Witch Squad - M.Z. Andrews YA mystery set in a college for witches. Entertaining without being really memorable or great. First in a series, I can't see myself continuing with the rest.
8. Ghosts of Greenglass House - Kate Milford. The sequel to one of my favourite novels from last year. Another middle grade book. Some of the best descriptive writing I've ever come across - I really wanted to live in this world. More mystery, more role playing games and more ghosts.
9. The Forbidden Garden - Ellen Herrick Modern gothic tale about an American gardener coming to England to restore a possibly cursed garden at a grand house.
10. Wonder - R. J. Palacio One of the few times I've read a book after seeing the movie. And I still choked up at exactly the same part!
11. Murder at Merisham House - Celina Grace Cozy mystery set in the 1930s. Free kindle read, ok for insomniac night
12. Protagonist Bound - Geanna Culbertson YA free kindle read. The offspring of fairy tale protagonists are at a special school waiting for their own stories to be written. Some interesting ideas, but not something I'll continue with. And it took a long time for the book to really get going.
13.A Case of Blackmail in Belgravia - Clara Benson Jolly good hockey sticks murder mystery. Something fun to read when you can't sleep.
There have also been a few more kindle freebies that aren't really worth recording.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 1, 2018 5:44:22 GMT -5
Sliding one more in at the last minute, since I finished it last night:
8) Catherine Lacey, The Answers
This was strange, and GOOD! She's a great writer! Read this book!
A young woman in NYC is desperately broke, so she takes this weird job as part of an experiment where she (and a number of other women) acts, under a very specified protocol, as a famous celebritity's girlfriend.
Having written that I'm thinking that that doesn't seem like the kind of book I usually read... but it was in the new acquisitions section of the library, the book design was interesting, and page 56 was intriguing, so I took it home and now am on the hunt for other things by Catherine Lacey.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 1, 2018 5:53:38 GMT -5
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Post by lillielangtry on Feb 1, 2018 8:05:15 GMT -5
Ah, I'm going to put Kate Briggs' This Little Art in for January (#6 I think?). It's an Extended Essay on literary Translation. Really great if you're interested in that sort of Thing.
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Post by scrubb on Feb 1, 2018 13:17:11 GMT -5
Also sliding in one I finished last night - "The Accountant's Story: INside the Violent World of the Medellin Cartel" by Roberto Escobar and David Fisher. Pablo Escobar's brother tells his side of the story.
It interested me because we were in Colombia just before Christmas, and had a few fascinating history lessons/discussions with our guide. The book was a bit interesting but mostly a huge load of downplaying Escobar's role in all the violence. "The government forced us into this war! It wasn't Pablo's fault".
He'd go on and on about how "the gov't did this" and "the Cali cartel did that" and "the police did x" but whenever it was his own group, the language used was "there was a bombing campaign" or "there was targetting of the families" or "the Minister's daughter was kidnapped". Never, ever, ever did he say "we bombed..." "we kidnapped" or "we killed".
When the gov't refused to change their extradition policy "there was a huge bombing campaign". It went on for 2 weeks and hundreds of people died. Then Pablo offered that if the gov't agreed to change the policy it could all stop. But they wouldn't, so the violence continued. "We had no choice."
Ummmmm, yeah, no.
I get that the gov't and police were very corrupt. I get that lots of lies were told for personal gain. I get that Escobar probably didn't do everything he was accused of. But his brother tries to make Pablo into a victim and barely acknowledges that they ever did anything wrong, and NEVER anything that wasn't justified. Oh, and they had a lot of fun living it up with their billions, too. Until they were on the run, and that was awful, just awful, and we should feel really sorry for them.
By the end of this relatively short book it had become very off-putting.
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