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Post by Queen on Jan 13, 2019 16:36:31 GMT -5
AB #1 An Unsuitable Match Joanna Trollope
My first abandoned book of the year!!!!
I got to page 150 and was thinking it was pretty terrible, and awfully predictable... so I read the last chapter and I was right.
I walked home thinking "that was tripe, what happened to the fascinating books she used to write?" and then realised I had mixed up the writers Joanna Harris and Joanna Trollope.
DUH!
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Post by shilgia on Jan 13, 2019 17:01:46 GMT -5
Ha!
I actually also have an AB to report. AB #1: Peter Singer - Ethics in the Real World. I may come back to it, but it's abandoned at least for now. I have read and enjoyed other books by him, but this one felt repetitive of other books but shallower - short essays in which he just scratches the surface of a million issues but doesn't go in depth on any of them. Maybe some other time.
"Prayer Cushions of the Flesh" is so extraordinarily awful!
7. F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby. Nothing to say about this book that hasn't already been said, of course. I finally read it, and enjoyed it, more for the writing than for the story. I'd like to try another book by him.
8. Dale Russakoff - The Prize. About an attempt to fix Newark's public school system, by Mark Zuckerberg, Corey Booker, and Chris Christie. This book got rave reviews from serious book critics, but honestly it annoyed me a bit. The topic is interesting; many of the players are interesting; but to me there were too many names and dates in this book. There are 20 or so main characters, which is a lot already, but why then do we also need to know all the particulars about many dozens more side players? If they're relevant, by all means mention their name and role, but why do we need to know that so-and-so who implemented X policy at Y school has since left the school to join Amplify, which is an education company, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who is the owner of News Corp. Etc. etc. etc. Too many names, too many dates. I guess the critics were more tolerant of this than I was. Anyway, the story itself is pretty interesting. It was nice to read some sympathetic stories about Chris Christie - he's mostly a positive force in this book. Corey Booker comes across as a mix of genuine good intentions, good ideas, great competence, but also too much image building. Zuckerberg comes across as remarkably sympathetic.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jan 15, 2019 9:07:41 GMT -5
6. Dark Witch and Creamy, H Y Hanna. The audiobook I listened to on my recent road trip. A fairly silly cross between fantasy and cozy mystery, but quite well written.
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Post by Queen on Jan 16, 2019 2:16:14 GMT -5
On to book 3... Middlemarch, the writing is miles better but it's long. See you in March?
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 16, 2019 6:03:10 GMT -5
On to book 3... Middlemarch, the writing is miles better but it's long. See you in March? Ah yes. I remember being happy in the end that I'd read that but it is indeed quite looooooong.
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Post by shilgia on Jan 16, 2019 15:58:15 GMT -5
9. Colum McCann - Let the Great World Spin. Probably already discussed in some iteration of this thread. I thought it was really good.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Jan 16, 2019 16:44:19 GMT -5
On to book 3... Middlemarch, the writing is miles better but it's long. See you in March? Ah yes. I remember being happy in the end that I'd read that but it is indeed quite looooooong. I remember not getting to the end because the characters annoyed me so much.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jan 17, 2019 1:59:20 GMT -5
7. A Penny Urned, Tamar Myers. Unfortunately this series is getting sillier, and I think I’m needing something with fewer puns etc. I have one more to read for this month’s Cozy Mystery challenge on Goodreads, and a couple more on my shelf, but I won’t be looking for any more books by this author.
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Post by lillielangtry on Jan 17, 2019 2:00:23 GMT -5
Oh I really enjoyed Middlemarch. Obviously it took a while....!
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Jan 17, 2019 3:28:19 GMT -5
5. The Things That Will Not Stand - Michael Gerard Bauer Well done Australian YA. There wasn't anything really new in the story - boy meets girl at University Open Day. Boy and Girl spend a lot of time talking, etc. But the characters were well done, a lot of the talk was witty, sections were hilarious and other parts were heartbreaking. The owner of a local bookshop does regular posts on FB of the books he reads during the year, and this was one he wrote about. His books posts are worth following.
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Post by Webs on Jan 17, 2019 16:32:05 GMT -5
I am listening to "A Gentleman in Moscow" and loving this book.
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Post by tzarine on Jan 17, 2019 19:00:01 GMT -5
when the emperor was divine by julie otsuka a japanese family is split & interned some nice writing but soooooooooooooo heavy handed! kept thinking how much better fare to manzanar is
otsuka drove me to murakami!
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jan 18, 2019 8:38:42 GMT -5
8. Murder at Maypole Manor, L.B. Hathaway. A mystery set just after World War 1. I think the author tried to use too many plot threads in this story. I found it a bit hard to follow, which may have been partly due to it being the first story in the series I’ve read. I picked up a few inaccuracies and anachronisms, which the author spends too much of the appendix explaining.
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Post by shilgia on Jan 18, 2019 14:42:12 GMT -5
Gentleman in Moscow is on my list, Webs. Will be curious to hear what you think.
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Post by sprite on Jan 18, 2019 17:10:54 GMT -5
Oh I really enjoyed Middlemarch. Obviously it took a while....! I only read it because a close friend from Slovakia loves it. I found it really hard going, and didn't enjoy it. I think it's more the era than the writer, there's a way authors of that time set up narratives that I find tiresome.
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Post by sophie on Jan 19, 2019 0:14:01 GMT -5
I used to love Middlemarch; even back in the day wrote a long thesis type paper as part of an honours degree.
Just finished Kate Morton’s The Clockmaker’s Daughter, her newest. I liked it. A bit too romantic, but the characters are full of life and the story line is interesting.
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Post by scrubb on Jan 22, 2019 19:21:46 GMT -5
Finally finished Mary McCarthy's "The Compny She Keeps". Think it was her first book? It is about a young woman's life in the '30s. It's told from several different perspectives and voices with each chapter looking at a different part of her life. In some chapters the focus is on other characters and she is almost peripheral.
I liked it, but the final bit is when she is married again, and miserable and in therapy. It is sort of vague in a way I find a bit irritating - you cant really tell what is wrong, versus how she interprets it, and her therapist's advice is vague, and you can't tell whether she has a hope in hell of being happy in the future. I can be ok with unresolved endings, but in this case it left me feeling like the rest of the book didn't lead anywhere.
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Post by lillielangtry on Jan 23, 2019 2:16:05 GMT -5
Oh I'm way behind, here goes:
Martin Suter, Elefant - a homeless man in Switzerland finds a pink, glow-in-the-dark mini elephant. He starts to take care of it but obviously the geneticists who created it want it back... I just enjoy Martin Suter. This was one of his more whimsical ones but still with a dose of scientific realism in there.
Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods (Audio) - I got a biography of LIW for Christmas, so I thought it was a good time to reread (listen to) the books, which I absolutely adored as a child. In fact even now most of my knowledge of Wisconsin Comes from this book. I had forgotten how much Detail there was about killing animals for Food ("Laura loved bear meat SO MUCH") but given the time period, that's understandable. The Reader was very good.
Nicole Krauss, Great House - this is marketed as a novel, although it's really more of a series of interweaving stories linked by a large writer's desk. It's about Memory, particularly the Memory of Holocaust survivors and how it is passed down the Generations. I liked it, but it was sometimes tricky to remember all the Connections between the various characters, especially as you can't flick through a Kindle very well.
Judith Schalansky, Der Hals der Giraffe (The Giraffe's Neck) - first-Person narrative about a biology teacher in newly reunified Germany. The world has moved on and she hasn't. It was sometimes amusing, sometimes touching.
Yoko Ogawa, The Housekeeper + The Professor - oh this was lovely. A short novel about a Young housekeeper who gets employed to look after a mathematician who, after suffering a brain injury, only has 80 minutes of short-term Memory. Really good, and I didn't even skip the bits about maths!
Jan Morris, Heaven's Command (Audio) - the first in Morris' huge trilogy about the British Empire, first published 1973. This is about the early decades of empire. I'm sure some would say now that it's not critical enough, but it is certainly very critical in places. It has a lot of anecdotal stuff about various figures of history. I've been listening to this on and off for several months. Sometimes Audio is not the best Format to take in really new Information, but some parts of this will stay with me.
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Post by sprite on Jan 23, 2019 5:31:57 GMT -5
I'm reading three books at the same time, so no likely hope of finishing much by the end of this month.
Into Thin Air, Ann Cleeves. From the Shetland series, which I haven't been watching on tv because the Jimmy Perez actor doesn't look "mediterranean", as he does in the books and i'm judgemental like that.
It's much like her other murder mysteries; someone dies because they are upsetting someone else's ideas of what family should be, or are unearthing old secrets. And then others are killed because they know something. But she gives a pretty good sense of place, and I am quite keen to go to Shetland now, between these novels and some documentaries i've seen.
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Post by scrubb on Jan 23, 2019 11:06:05 GMT -5
Lillie, I really liked the professor and the housekeeper book too! Haven't looked to see if the author has other books too, but I keep meaning to.
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Post by shilgia on Jan 23, 2019 12:15:31 GMT -5
I'll put that book on my list, Lillie. It sounds good. Also the Nicole Kraus book.
I realize I'm behind, too. Here we go:
10. Nicholas Carr - The Shallows. This book is mostly about how using the internet changes our brain, in both positive and negative ways, but I found the most interesting parts to be those where he takes a broader view and walks through history to show how different modes of communication of information have changed cultures. From oral tradition to writing by a select educated few, to wider-spread writing abilities, to the invention of the printing press, to newspapers, etc. Example of a fascinating fact: when more people were able to write their own ideas without having to work with a scribe, they started to write more personal reflections, and also things like pornography - things that would have been uncomfortable to dictate to a scribe! Writing without a scribe also made it easier to edit work and refer back to earlier passages, so people started to write longer, more complex pieces, with paragraphs and chapters. There are a lot of digressions in this book that felt quite pointless, though. Pages and pages about how Google ads work, or what a kindle is. (The book is a few years old, so maybe some of that was necessary or interesting in 2010.)
11. Roxane Gay - Hunger. Very honest, very powerful. About the pain of living in a very large body. At times it felt a bit uncomfortable to read, as if I was a voyeur who had no right to see all this vulnerability.
12. A.J. Jacobs - The Year of Living Biblically. Secular guy decides to follow all the rules of the bible as best as he can, for one year. A bit silly really. I don't think I'd expected anything better. He's pretty respectful, but also pretty ignorant about religion. There are a few funny passages in here, but on the whole, meh.
13. Haruki Murakami - What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. On the author's running life and also a bit about his writing life. About endurance, focus, calm, patience. Pretty light. I enjoyed reading it, but honestly doubt that this will stick with me or that I'll remember much of it in a few months.
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Post by mei on Jan 26, 2019 15:43:26 GMT -5
#5!!
Fathers and sons, by Turgenyev, in Dutch translation, for tonight's book club.
Really enjoyed it. A relatively compact 19th century Russian read, centering on a generational conflict. Quite an accessible read, and I loved (as always) the glimpse into daily life in Russia in 1800s (1858, in this case)
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Post by MsMitty on Jan 26, 2019 16:01:36 GMT -5
Hello All, Just popped back in to the forum after a five year absence. It's so nice to see all your familiar usernames. Hope you are all well. x
I have just finished Swimming Studies by Leanne Shapton It's a memoir by a Canadian swimmer who made the Olympic trials, but not the Olympic team. She writes evocatively about her swimming journey, not in chronological order, but in a stream of consciousness style of writing. She’s also an art editor and graphic novelist, and includes some of her own paintings and photographs of her many swimsuits, which give this book a different texture and flavour.
Now reading A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit.
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 26, 2019 19:15:27 GMT -5
Hello All, Just popped back in to the forum after a five year absence. It's so nice to see all your familiar usernames. Hope you are all well. x I have just finished Swimming Studies by Leanne Shapton It's a memoir by a Canadian swimmer who made the Olympic trials, but not the Olympic team. She writes evocatively about her swimming journey, not in chronological order, but in a stream of consciousness style of writing. She’s also an art editor and graphic novelist, and includes some of her own paintings and photographs of her many swimsuits, which give this book a different texture and flavour. Now reading A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit. Hi! Welcome back! Ooh, I haven't read the swimming book (it's now on my list, thank you), but I did love another one by her ( Important Artifacts....) and am eternally grateful to her because that's what got me listening to Radiohead, which now gives me endless joy. And I love Solnit too, so this post gives me endless joy too. Yay!
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Post by sophie on Jan 27, 2019 21:59:58 GMT -5
Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese. This novel deals with issues related to the residential schools for First Nations children in Canada. The main character is a child in one of these after being (sort of) orphaned, he discovers hockey which gives him some opportunities and dreams, then he has to find himself when the hockey ceases to give him hope. Fabulous book. There is a movie based on this novel but I haven’t seen it.
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Post by sprite on Jan 28, 2019 17:00:09 GMT -5
Two books finished yesterday. Canada, by Richard ford. Slow. So slow. He covers 2 wks in a sentence, and then 5 minutes covers two pages. A teen's parents Rob a bank, and he is sent to live with the brother of his mother's friend, In Saskatchewan.
I didn't care for the writing style. It's evocative, and thoughtful, and the picture painted is vivid. But it just took forever for the story to move. It was all foreshadowing.
Oscar Wilde and the dead man's smile, by Gyles Branwith. Branwith is a well-known known radio comedian in Britain, and I hadn't realised he'd written this series. Wilde gallivants around solving mysteries, basically. Liberally peppered with his real life encounters and quotes. Good fun, not badly written, but the narrator is a little over-besotted with Wilde.
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Post by scrubb on Jan 28, 2019 21:56:12 GMT -5
Not sure if I'll finish another book this month or not. I started the excellent "Do No Say We Have Nothing", but due to working a lot of overtime in the last week, and not getting anywhere near enough sleep, I didn't want to read anything really, really good. Because a) it would keep me awake reading when I needed to sleep and b) my brainpower is way down and I probably wouldn't get as much out of it as if I was fully functioning.
So instead I've been reading Herman Wouk's "The Caine Mutiny". I had assumed it was going to be historical fiction, for some reason, but it's set in WWII and based on the author's experiences. He wrote "War and Remembrance" which was made into a TV Mini-series and which I read a couple years ago. He's a good writer, but it's kinda schlock. Really good schlock, though! I guess it won the Pulitzer so maybe it's not as schlocky as it feels to me so far.
Anyway, it's also ~800 pages of schlock and I'm a little over half way through. But I should get a good night's sleep soon, and get my brain back, and maybe I'll finish something before the 31st.
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Post by shilgia on Jan 28, 2019 23:22:55 GMT -5
800 pages of schlock is a lot of schlock!
14. Jesmyn Ward - Sing, Unburied, Sing. After reading rave reviews about it, I found this a bit disappointing. Which is not to say that the book isn't good. The writing is very lyrical, a bit over the top so, to my taste. This is mostly a story of deprivation and neglect, and it was just jarring to read some of it in language that seems to aim to convey something sensual. Also, there are ghosts. For the largest part of the book, they aren't very central to the story. But the last quarter is a big reckoning with all the ghosts in play. Not my jam. Which, again, is not to say that the book isn't good. She's a good writer. If her next book isn't magical realist, I'll try it.
15. Lauren Hilgers - Patriot Number One. One of the best books I've read recently. Fascinating and very well written depiction of the Chinese dissident/activist community in NYC (including both genuinely persecuted activists and those who know that masquerading as an activist is helpful in asylum proceedings) and in particular of one family's adjustment to life in the US. I don't think I've read anything before that provided this kind of insight into the mindset and priorities and family dynamic of relatively uneducated Chinese villagers trying to find their way in NYC.
I'm now trying to read Bowling Alone, and it's annoying me. So far it reads like a Central Bureau of Statistics report turned into a book. Every sentence, another percentage. Between 1952 and 1967, X has gone up by 20%, but Y increased by only 12%. Conversely, after 1967, Y has been steadily rising with 5% each year. And on and on and on. I hope it will get better, but I doubt it.
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Post by lillielangtry on Jan 29, 2019 2:02:39 GMT -5
I've heard very mixed things about Sing, Unburied, Sing shilgia - for the two reasons you mention: the style and the supernatural element.
#8 this year I think?? Lucy Mangan, Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading Lucy Mangan is a British Journalist and here, she discusses all her favourite childhood books, from Picture books through to C. S. Lewis, Alice in Wonderland, Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton and so on. If you grew up in the '80s (or before) and enjoyed reading, this is really nostalgic and lovely. It's pretty UK-specific, although like me, she did discover the really famous US classics - Little House, What Katy Did, Little Women etc.
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 29, 2019 5:58:02 GMT -5
shilgia - I liked "Sing, Unburied, Sing" (I didn't think it was perfect, but I thought it was good); but then I have a high tolerance level for magical realism. The bowling book sounds like it could use some tables in an appendix that one could choose to look at (or not). I'm still in the middle of "The Invention of Nature" and it's going to be a long while to the end. I mean, I really love it, but I've been busy.
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