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Post by HalcyonDaze on Dec 31, 2018 23:17:06 GMT -5
Starting this, as I think I will finish my first book today. Or not - as I am really enjoying the book and both want to yet do not want to finish it. Link to December's thread here
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 1, 2019 1:24:27 GMT -5
Thank you Hal! Bookmarking.
I'm about 90% of the way through "Washington Black," which I was having a really hard time putting down but was too busy with other stuff to get to today.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jan 1, 2019 4:33:50 GMT -5
Thank you Hal. I tried to start a January thread, as I hadn’t checked properly. Could you possibly delete what I posted in The Library, titled oops? I don’t think I can. Meanwhile my first book finished in 2019 is Able, Gold Medals, Grand Slams and Smashing Glass Ceilings, by Dylan Alcott. Great autobiography of a brilliant athlete. He writes in an easy, engaging style and tells the whole story, so it may not be suitable for very young children, but Dylan comes over as an amazing, friendly young man who is living a wonderful life. I wish I had his boundless energy. I have two more nearly finished.
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Post by crazycat on Jan 1, 2019 17:00:09 GMT -5
I want to try and read more this year so will join back in with these threads.
My first book this year is 'Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine' by Gail Honeyman.
A work colleague lent this to me months ago and I finally got time to read it over the break. Not usually the type of book I would read but I enjoyed it. Makes you have a bit more compassion for people when you really have no idea what their background is or what they have been through in their lives to make them act in certain ways.
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Post by mei on Jan 1, 2019 17:48:34 GMT -5
Good start of the year: finished two books in one evening!
#1: part 2 of the Game of Thrones series. Lots of slaughter, intrige, scheming, but overall pretty captivating so am curious what happens next (though at 1000 pages each I'll put off reading part 3 until next Christmas break).
#2: Accusation by Bandi. I've been reading it irregularly for the past half year or so, but it's a pretty unique book with fictional stories from North Korea. Only book of fiction written by a North Korean still living there and smuggled out. To be honest, the writing wasn't great but the background of the book and the stories intriguing enough to make it a fascinating glimpse of life in North Korea under Kim Jong-Il.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jan 1, 2019 18:54:42 GMT -5
Did I mention in my review of Dylan Alcott’s book that he is a wheelchair basketball and tennis player? He has broken so many barriers, that it’s not always relevant!
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 1, 2019 20:00:33 GMT -5
1) Esi Edugyan, Washington Black
A very affecting story of a young boy who is enslaved on a plantation in the West Indies and is taken on as the apprentice of the strange scientist brother of the plantation owner. The story follows the boy as he grows to be a young man and becomes a scientific illustrator, and how he deals with these experiences in this past.
Very hard to put down; the central character is intelligent, interesting, and sympathetic without being unrealistically good.
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Post by shilgia on Jan 1, 2019 20:04:17 GMT -5
Helen Thorpe - Just Like Us. Well-done account of several years in the life of four Mexican-American girls growing up in Denver, two of them documented and two undocumented. The narrative follows them from the beginning of their last year in high school through their first year out of college. The author picked (or happened upon) an interesting group of characters and seems to have gained their trust enough to be able to give a detailed description of how their life unfolds over these years. There were a few things that annoyed me somewhat about this book. For example, the author's husband was mayor of Denver during the time she writes about, and she tries to spin this fact into a parallel narrative that doesn't quite work and also seems to make her tiptoe around his political allies and opponents. But all in all, worth reading.
I also hadn't reported yet on one other book, finished a few days ago: Hannah Nordhaus - The Beekeeper's Lament. Easy read about the practice of beekeeping in America. You learn a bit about how a beehive works, but mostly the book focuses on what a beekeeper's annual cycle looks like, why they move around all the time, the biggest threats they're facing, the issues being discussed in their community, etc. Pretty interesting.
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Post by scrubb on Jan 1, 2019 22:15:04 GMT -5
Ese Temelkuran - The Time of Mute Swans. Set in the summer before the fascist coup in Sept. 1980 in Turkey - told from the point of view of two kids. One is the son of (poor) revolutionaries, the other is the daughter of a woman who had been a revolutionary but when she got out of jail she wanted a quieter life and married a man who didn't get involved in politics. The story includes all the things the children overhear and see.
The kids find out that the fascist gov't people are trying to move swans from the public park to a minister's estate and they plan to cut their wing muscles so they can't fly away. They decide they have to rescue at least one swan, and that will help the revolutionaries and make the girl's parents love each other more, and fix everything.
The author was the age of her characters when this coup happened - she does a very good job of keeping the kids' perspective while telling a bigger story.
I liked it a lot
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Post by kneazle on Jan 2, 2019 3:00:15 GMT -5
ok I'm going to try and follow along this year as it's always a good way to get recommendations.
1. Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer Liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiisa sent this to me along with the sequel a few years ago and it has been on my to read list since. Really good, really enjoyed it. Basically, 'something' has happened in an area or what is now wilderness and they keep sending in teams to find out what is going on but with not actually giving the team all the info of what's going on.
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Post by lillielangtry on Jan 2, 2019 3:46:48 GMT -5
Yay!
I hot Washington Black for Christmas, Liisa, so I'm looking Forward to that.
I feel like it should be new year, new books, but in fact I've still got 3 on the go from last year and they are all good, just Long/slow. So I will Keep plodding on with them.
One, which I have almost finished, is Segu by Maryse Condé (winner of the "alternative Nobel"). It's a pretty amazing multigenerational story of a Family in West Africa (present-day Mali) in the 19th century. The Major Change they are experiencing is the Arrival of Islam and its clash with polytheism, although the English and Christianity Play a role too. It's dense and there are many, many characters and the men all have multiple wives, so even with the helpful Family tree at the beginning it's not always easy to follow! But really interesting. Some members of the Family convert to Islam, others continue to follow the "fetish priests", some have their first experiences of discrimination based on Skin colour, they have their tribal allegiances... it's unlike anything I've read before. It's really taken me a while to get through though.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Jan 2, 2019 4:54:02 GMT -5
1. Lenny's Book of Everything - Karen Foxlee Middle-grade fiction. This was coming up on a load of Australian book sites in the latter months of last year. I delayed getting it as I thought it might be overly sentimental. It wasn't - yes, it was heartbreaking but it was also wonderful. Lenny and her younger brother Davey who won't stop growing, are raised by their single mother. It is a hard life (late 70s America) with the bright spot of a weekly delivery of volumes of an encyclopaedia. The months detail Davey's growth along with the information they learn from the encyclopaedias and the often prickly Lenny coping with her life.
Plenty for adults to enjoy, as well as for kids. And having had our own set of The World Book Encyclopaedias in the 70s made the book even more special. It brought back memories I had forgotten of the layered transparent pages showing various anatomy diagrams.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Jan 2, 2019 4:55:31 GMT -5
Have discovered the mute swan book is at my library. Yay.
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 2, 2019 6:09:08 GMT -5
kneazle I'm so glad you liked it! I love Vandermeer. (I have to admit I wondered if maybe it was too weird, not quite your kind of thing or something, so phew!)
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Post by scrubb on Jan 2, 2019 12:34:01 GMT -5
Have discovered the mute swan book is at my library. Yay. It's not a traditional structure at all - jumps from voice to voice with no warning - so be ready for that.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jan 2, 2019 18:21:16 GMT -5
2. Murder with Peacocks, Donna Andrews. Three Weddings and a Murder. A very funny romp with a completely bizarre family. I worried that Meg allowed herself to be dogsbody to three very demanding brides, but that only added to the fun. I did have a fair idea who the murderer was, but was absorbed in the mayhem until the end of the book.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jan 2, 2019 18:21:41 GMT -5
oops, glitch caused double post.
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 2, 2019 23:09:23 GMT -5
2) Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper
Classic 19th century feminist novella, in which a wife is essentially imprisoned in a room with horrible wallpaper "for her own good" because she's understandably depressed.
Next is the new Murakami! It was right there at the library, didn't even have to put myself on a waiting list for it.
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Post by shilgia on Jan 3, 2019 11:43:50 GMT -5
2. David Rakoff - Half Empty. I liked this a lot. Hard to describe; they're humorous personal essays and the author was very likable.
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Post by riverhorse on Jan 3, 2019 12:52:40 GMT -5
I'm hoping to be a more active reader this year so am popping in to say hi. At the moment I'm reading Dschihad Calling by Christian Linker. It's a German novel from 2015 about the radicalisation of a young German guy to extreme Islam. I have to confess, I'm reading it in preparation for teaching it as part of my Year 12 literature course next week. But it is very well written and the pages are flying by. An added bonus is it is set in Bonn and I'm loving all the references to familiar places from my time then.
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Post by scrubb on Jan 3, 2019 21:49:08 GMT -5
I read a Fannie Flagg book today (I Still Dream About YOu) - they are silly schlock*, but she writes well. Even when the "homey" voice gets a bit old, it's still very readable. This one was a bit different in theme - the main character is a 60 year old woman who decides that life doesn't have anything for her to look forward to, and she's going to kill herself.
Anyway. I am not exactly recommending it, but for a super easy feel good read, it was pleasant.
*Fried Green Tomatoes had a little more depth - I really liked it.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Jan 4, 2019 1:52:16 GMT -5
2. I just finished a box set of cosy mysteries by Brianna Bates. They were a kindle freebie and it showed. The books needed a lot more editing - some basic spelling errors, continuity errors, quotes attributed to the wrong person etc. Then you had the fact that for each mystery I was able to work out the murderer very early on. If it hadn't been so hot lately and I wanted something light to read during the night when I couldn't get to sleep easily I would have given up on these long ago, Don't bother.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jan 4, 2019 7:07:49 GMT -5
I’ve found that with a lot of free cozy mysteries, but occasionally a good one pops up. Like you, I enjoy reading them in bed when tired.
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 4, 2019 8:38:03 GMT -5
I can’t read fiction before bed - I’m always like “I’ll just finish this chapter “ and then suddenly it’s 2 a.m.
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Post by sophie on Jan 5, 2019 9:10:03 GMT -5
Louise Penny: Kingdom of the Blind. Her newest instalment in the inspector Gamache series. It’s her first after the death of her husband, and a bit of a surprise as I was under the impression she wasn’t going to write any more, at least not this series. Well written, with excellent characters and plot line...two plot lines.
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Post by Oweena on Jan 5, 2019 13:03:32 GMT -5
1) Esi Edugyan, Washington Black A very affecting story of a young boy who is enslaved on a plantation in the West Indies and is taken on as the apprentice of the strange scientist brother of the plantation owner. The story follows the boy as he grows to be a young man and becomes a scientific illustrator, and how he deals with these experiences in this past. Very hard to put down; the central character is intelligent, interesting, and sympathetic without being unrealistically good. Really want to read this, but I feel like there will be cruelty within it. I can't do books with torture, cruelty, that kind of thing. Is there a lot of that in the book liiisa?
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Post by Oweena on Jan 5, 2019 13:10:16 GMT -5
Seduction, Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Hughes's Hollywood by Karina Longworth.
This was a slog, over 500 pages of heavily sourced information on Howard Hughes and how he manipulated the studio system. In a larger sense it's an indictment of how Hollywood has since its start, looked upon females as nothing more than a commodity. Not really news, but she does a good job of showing how the misogyny has been in place in every facet of movie making with parallels to how it is to this day. I picked it up because the author has a podcast I enjoy, called 'You Must Remember This'.
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Post by snowwhite on Jan 5, 2019 17:16:22 GMT -5
I rattled my way through Neil Gaiman's Art Matters - it wasn't really what I was expecting, and I'm not convinced the format was the best way to convey the message, but it's short and interesting.
Now started reading Little Fires Everywhere.
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 5, 2019 17:20:13 GMT -5
Oweena: Yes, there is some description of cruelty - impossible not to when talking about slavery. It's just in the first hundred pages, and it's not constant, but there are a couple of descriptions of terrible things happening to people.
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Post by Oweena on Jan 5, 2019 20:27:45 GMT -5
Oweena: Yes, there is some description of cruelty - impossible not to when talking about slavery. It's just in the first hundred pages, and it's not constant, but there are a couple of descriptions of terrible things happening to people. I figured, I'll have to take a pass.
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