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Post by mei on Jul 25, 2018 15:50:17 GMT -5
#6 the latest Haruki Murakami, The murder of Commendatore: 1. An idea appears (rough translation of the Dutch title).
Classic Murakami, really enjoyed it. Just started book 2.
#7 The Samurai's garden by Gail Tsukiyama. The next book club read. Coincidentally also Japan themed. Enjoyed it, mostly for the setting of a young Chinese man spending a year in 1938 Japan.
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Post by Liiisa on Jul 27, 2018 17:55:26 GMT -5
Ooh! I haven't read the new Murakami! On the list. I liked "Samurai's Garden" too.
36. Lisa Halliday, Asymmetry
This was an odd little book - the first part is about the relationship between a young woman and a much older man who is a celebrated writer, the second part is about a completely unrelated Iraqi-American economist, and then the third part returns to the writer. It's wonderfully written, and the unexplained juxtaposition of the different sections leaves you thinking about what the significance of juxtaposition of these characters might be.
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Post by sophie on Jul 28, 2018 22:57:54 GMT -5
The Punishment She Deserves by Elizabeth George. A classic.. wonderful read. I am actually not done yet but I will be late tonight or tomorrow. I don’t want to put it down.
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Post by lillielangtry on Jul 29, 2018 3:38:41 GMT -5
#6 the latest Haruki Murakami, The murder of Commendatore: 1. An idea appears (rough translation of the Dutch title). Classic Murakami, really enjoyed it. Just started book 2. #7 The Samurai's garden by Gail Tsukiyama. The next book club read. Coincidentally also Japan themed. Enjoyed it, mostly for the setting of a young Chinese man spending a year in 1938 Japan. I read this article recently about Murakami's new novel being censored in Hong Kong. |
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Post by Liiisa on Jul 29, 2018 6:02:50 GMT -5
What the hell lillie! And they banned the book about the gay penguins? People are going crazy these days.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Jul 29, 2018 7:05:51 GMT -5
LC has just finished reading a book called "Ban this book", about an enterprising kid who sets up a secret library in her school locker after various books are banned at her school. Every title mentioned in the book that was taken out of the school library had been challenged or banned at some stage in the US. One of the books mentioned was one LC read with me last year, and trying to explain to him that people wanted to ban that (and also Harry Potter) was something he had immense difficulty grasping.
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Post by mei on Jul 29, 2018 11:27:50 GMT -5
Ooh! I haven't read the new Murakami! On the list. I liked "Samurai's Garden" too. Huh, I knew the Dutch translation came out early, but the English translation Killing Commendatore doesn't come out until October this year. Oh, and I got The Power from a friend of mine, so will be reading that soon too! |
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Post by mei on Jul 29, 2018 11:31:08 GMT -5
#6 the latest Haruki Murakami, The murder of Commendatore: 1. An idea appears (rough translation of the Dutch title). Classic Murakami, really enjoyed it. Just started book 2. #7 The Samurai's garden by Gail Tsukiyama. The next book club read. Coincidentally also Japan themed. Enjoyed it, mostly for the setting of a young Chinese man spending a year in 1938 Japan. I read this article recently about Murakami's new novel being censored in Hong Kong. That is really weird. I'm a few chapters into part 2 now and haven't come across anything that is remotely indecent. Yes, there's sex in the book but nothing very explicit (or maybe that is still to come but it doesn't seem typical of Murakami to include very graphic sex in his books.) |
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Post by mei on Jul 29, 2018 14:53:41 GMT -5
oh forgot to add, there is some war stuff in there but actually that should make the Chinese quite happy to see the cruelty of the Japanese in China in a Japanese book.
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Post by Liiisa on Jul 29, 2018 18:07:46 GMT -5
Aha - hence why I hadn't seen anything about it here yet! OK, no rush yet then.
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Post by scrubb on Jul 30, 2018 23:47:54 GMT -5
Finally - FINALLY - I finished Dumas' "The Man in the Iron Mask". Sadly, much of it isn't very good. But it finishes the Musketeer chronicles so I felt I had to actually read it. Much of it is the most overwrought, melodramatic story imaginable. And it's very long. I have been known to fly through 800 page novels in a day or 2, but not this one.
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Post by sophie on Jul 31, 2018 13:49:58 GMT -5
Jacqueline Winspear’s To Die But Once. Another book in the Maisie Dobbs series... a good fast summer read set at the beginning of WW2 with the Dunkirk rescue included as part of the backdrop.
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Post by lillielangtry on Aug 1, 2018 0:55:58 GMT -5
Liisa, the censorship Thing is Kind of crazy, but not really new, is it?
My last reads for July:
Janet Sternburg (ed.), The Writer on her Work
A Virago green-spined anthology of women writers discussing their craft, including Margaret Atwood, Erica Jong, Joan Didion, Alice Walker, Anne Tyler... it was oríginally published in about 1980 I think. Some of the essays were really great.
Merle Collins, Rain Darling
A collection of short stories from Grenada that I picked up from the free bookshelf. It's out of print but I believe she has other books available (although even the best known of them has less than 50 Ratings on Goodreads). Really good, the stories were beautiful and she incorporates Creole into the speeech really effectively. There was a lot of about bringing up children, how Girls were treated differently, People emigrating and sending back Money, and so on.
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Post by Liiisa on Aug 1, 2018 5:24:28 GMT -5
Liisa, the censorship Thing is Kind of crazy, but not really new, is it? No, and it shouldn't really be surprising, considering the authoritarian fever so many people are infected with right now. |
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Post by scrubb on Aug 1, 2018 11:50:35 GMT -5
July wins as the month with the fewest books read (by me) of any month in the past 10 years!
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