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Post by lillielangtry on Aug 1, 2018 1:03:03 GMT -5
Let's talk about books in August, Folks! July is here. As for the past few years, I'll be reading exclusively women in Translation in August. Anyone who is interested in that, there's loads on Twitter under the hashtag #WITMonth. But interested to hear about all your reads as usual!
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Post by tucano on Aug 1, 2018 1:20:31 GMT -5
First appearance in this thread since forever.
I'm reading Matt Haig's Notes on a Nervous Planet. Great reviews but not loving it. Lots of run-on sentences (oddly the book is about anxiety and reading long lists of things makes me want to take out my editing pen!)
Apparently it gets better (I'm halfway through) so I'll persist but so far, not at all what I expected.
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Post by Liiisa on Aug 1, 2018 5:22:26 GMT -5
Thank you lillie!
I've just started reading a longish book, Ada Palmer's "Seven Surrenders" - this is book two of a political/sociological sort of sci-fi trilogy, the first of which I read last year.
After I'm done with that I will check out your #WITMonth hashtag, lillie; that's a great idea.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Aug 1, 2018 6:19:52 GMT -5
Bookmarking. Thank you Lillie. I'm in the middle of 2 ebooks and one long audiobook, and nearly finished a heartbreaking "real" book.
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Post by scrubb on Aug 1, 2018 11:52:47 GMT -5
This morning I finished Jose Saramago's memoir of his childhood as a Portugese peasant, "Small Memories". It's a quiet, enjoyable little book.
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Post by Liiisa on Aug 1, 2018 17:15:38 GMT -5
This morning I finished Jose Saramago's memoir of his childhood as a Portugese peasant, "Small Memories". It's a quiet, enjoyable little book. I love Saramago. Does he write memoir in the same way he writes novels, with the dialogue embedded in his paragraphs? I love how he does that.
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Post by scrubb on Aug 4, 2018 12:44:48 GMT -5
Not quite, no. He has a lot of interjections, but it's not that same style as his fiction.
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Post by mei on Aug 4, 2018 15:36:24 GMT -5
Finished part 2 of Murakami's Killing Commendatore. Very good, very strange but with a slightly unsatisfying ending.
Now onto The Power as my mountain read.
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Post by scrubb on Aug 5, 2018 14:27:24 GMT -5
Finished a re-read but I had forgotten everything about it (last reading being about 30 years ago). "My Brilliant Career" by Miles Franklin. Enjoyable.
Now I'm reading "The Soul of an Octopus". so far, I think it's going to confirm my plan to never eat octopus again...
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Post by sophie on Aug 5, 2018 17:07:14 GMT -5
Finally finished George Saunder's Lincoln in the Bardo. It's brilliant, but it sure took me a long time to be able to get into the reading of this particular style of writing. I finally channeled 'The Laramie Project' format and (weirdly, but honestly) Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book and started reading. It worked, and I really got into this book. Amazing what lengths a reader will go to make a book accessible!
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Post by scrubb on Aug 5, 2018 22:45:19 GMT -5
Used my first day of extreme leisure to finish "The Soul of an Octopus" by Sy Montgomery (I think. Don't have it with me and am not positive of the last name.) It was quite good. She has written a bunch of natural science books about animals and I'd try another. I am fascinated by octopuses and I learned a fair bit.
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Post by lillielangtry on Aug 6, 2018 1:21:35 GMT -5
Robert MacFarlane, The Old Ways: A JOurney on Foot Audiobook that I started quite a while ago. I became Aware of MacFarlane through his Twitter account, where he Posts all sorts of great, nature-related words. However, Audio wasn't the ideal Format for this reflection on Walking, somehow. I kept missing bits and my Attention was wandering. I don't think I really did the book justice.
Norah Lange, People in the Room (translated by Charlotte Whittle) Lange was an Argentinian of Norwegian heritage and involved in the literary Scene of the 40s and 50s (Borges, etc). This novel was originally published in 1950 but is now appearing in English Translation for the first time. It's about a teenage Girl in Buenos Aires who becomes obsessed with spying on the three women who live across the road from her. Not a lot happens, it's all about the atmosphere. If you enjoy short, creepy books like Samanta Schweblin's Fever Dream, this is probably one for you.
La Bastarda, Melibea Trifonia Obono (translated by Lawrence Schimel) Apparently the first book ever by an Equatorial Guinean woman to be translated into English, and it's banned in its Country of origin. This is billed as a novel, and I guess it is in scope, but it's a scant 90 pages - and they are small pages as well - so it could also be termed a novella, I'd say. Again, it's a teenage Girl narrator. This time, she is a member of the Fang culture living under the patriarchal rule of her polygamous grandfather. Then she realises she's a lesbian and rebels against expectations of women, and as you can imagine this doesn't go down well at all. It's a really fascinating book that you could read in one sitting no Problems. I'm not surprised it has caused controversy because it doesn't paint a very positive Picture of traditional Equatorial Guinean Society - especially for women but also for Young men. I will Keep thinking about it for a Long time, and just deducted one star (4/5) because I felt occasionally the dialogue was a bit stilted and more there for Exposition purposes.
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Post by sprite on Aug 6, 2018 4:43:29 GMT -5
i read a book in translation,and one of the authors was a woman! of course, it's a swedish murder mystery, so i've read this sort of translation before... (i volunteer in a used book store, i really should go through the fiction shelves more carefully.)
"the laughing policeman" which is apparently the first in a series of novels written by 2 authors together. 9 people are shot on a bus, including a policeman who has no reason to be on that bus. It is, of course, winter, dark, cold, gloomy. I enjoyed it, and it was well written, but mostly i liked seeing the difference between swedish society described in this novel (1960s), compared to others written more recently, like Wallander or the dragon tattoo series.
i did notice that the description of women enjoying sex seemed different from american crime writing of the same era--it was more normalised, more positive.
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Post by scrubb on Aug 6, 2018 14:30:16 GMT -5
Read a Bookbub special called "The Sisters of Glass Ferry" by Kim Michelle Richardson. Eh. Some good ideas but not put together very masterfully.
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Post by scrubb on Aug 7, 2018 16:01:30 GMT -5
Finished something I'd been wanting to read for a long time today: "The Professor and the Madman: a tale of murder, insanity, and the writing of the Oxford English Dictionary" by Simon Winchester. Quite enjoyable although less rivetting than I'd hoped. Much more readable than the other book I read by this author.
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Post by sophie on Aug 7, 2018 21:19:45 GMT -5
Another winner! I really enjoyed 'When God was a Rabbit' by sarah Winman. A interesting sort of 'coming of age' book, but more about family and friendship. A gentle yet easy read, hits all the right emotional spots. Recommended.
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Post by scrubb on Aug 8, 2018 15:47:53 GMT -5
Just finished one of Elizabeth George's Inspector Linley mysteries that turned out to be a reread. I remembered nothing at about the solution to the mystery. "A Great Deliverance". Was good.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Aug 8, 2018 17:28:50 GMT -5
Another winner! I really enjoyed 'When God was a Rabbit' by sarah Winman. A interesting sort of 'coming of age' book, but more about family and friendship. A gentle yet easy read, hits all the right emotional spots. Recommended. I finished that on Tuesday.
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Post by sophie on Aug 8, 2018 20:08:11 GMT -5
Did you like it Hal?
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Aug 8, 2018 22:16:45 GMT -5
Yes. Not usually a fan of family saga stories, but there was more to it than just that. I also liked Winman's "A year of Marvellous Ways"
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Aug 9, 2018 5:59:59 GMT -5
61. Overcoming a Loss by 1000 Deaths, Katrina Jeffery. Finally finished an autobiography started two years ago, when I bought it at a book launch to which I was invited by a friend who met the author when both of them were nursing their husbands through MND. Not an illness I'd wish on anyone. This book is heartbreaking. Not something you can read in one go. I have lost two friends to MND, and Katrina's husband died at around the same time, and in the same area. Katrina tells her story warts and all, and it is a difficult story, but worth reading, especially for anyone associated with someone with MND.
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Post by scrubb on Aug 11, 2018 18:07:55 GMT -5
What is MND, ozzieg? We must call it something else here. I might have asked that before, actually, but don't remember the answer.
I've read 2 more in the Inspector Lynley series by Elizabeth George - For the Sake if Elena, and Careless in Red. Enjoyed them both quite a lot.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Aug 11, 2018 18:32:27 GMT -5
Motor Neurone Disease. When I google it shows up as Lou Gehrig's Disease or ALS.
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Post by sophie on Aug 11, 2018 19:27:58 GMT -5
Another one in a series (Flavia de Luce mystery)... The Grave’s a fine and Private Place’ by Alan Bradley. An easy, fun summer read.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Aug 11, 2018 21:13:10 GMT -5
62. Holy Island, by L.J. Ross. Very good mystery, set on the Holy Island, Lindisfarne, in the North of England. Some surprising outcomes, and good characters in a well-drawn setting. I'll look for more in this series.
Thank you for the explanation, Hal. It's the one the ice bucket challenge was designed for, because being diagnosed with MND is like pouring a bucket of ice over someone's head. Apologies for only writing the initials - I was a bit rushed last week.
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Post by sprite on Aug 12, 2018 3:43:54 GMT -5
Red Dwarf, Grant/Naylor.
the back story to the tv series. quite funny, especially if you liked hitch hikers or terry pratchett. i sometimes watch this on tv, and now a lot of things make more sense.
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Post by tucano on Aug 12, 2018 3:59:38 GMT -5
Finished the book mentioned above. Still unsure why it's had such good reviews.
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Post by mei on Aug 12, 2018 13:19:11 GMT -5
#9 The Power by Naomi Alderman. Wow, loved it. Fast read, a lot happening from a really interesting perspective. And as Liiisa said, very much about people, relational and political power.
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Post by scrubb on Aug 12, 2018 18:16:15 GMT -5
Read a brief Murikami - Pinball - and eventually realized I'd read it before. Still a pleasure.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Aug 13, 2018 6:02:16 GMT -5
63. Aunt Bessie Decides, Diana Xarissa. Another mystery set on an island off the English coast, this time more cozy. Aunt Bessie is definitely my sort of sleuth. An independent woman of uncertain age, who is trusted both by her fellow island residents and the local police, Bessie uses her common sense and maturity to solve crimes. I also love the setting on the Isle of Man.
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