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Post by riverhorse on Feb 7, 2019 9:59:38 GMT -5
I'M really not doing to well with this reading malarkey. So far I have only managed to finish one other book and once again it was for school. The old kiddie classic Emil und die Detektive!!! Hardly adult literature. Hopefully will get a few more reads in now that the stress of preparing for speaking exams is over.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 7, 2019 10:24:41 GMT -5
Oweena, I agree re Mars Room compared with Flamethrowers, at least; she’s made a big leap.
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Post by tzarine on Feb 7, 2019 18:15:15 GMT -5
i still haven't finished killing commendatore
tho it is shorter than 1Q84
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 7, 2019 18:21:43 GMT -5
6. Sarah Moss, Ghost Wall
This is a tense little novel that I read most of during lunch today and then finished just now. An archaeology professor and some of his students join up with a local man and his wife and teenaged daughter to reenact an Iron Age village in northern England. The protagonist is the daughter of the local man, who is a brutal sort of Brexiter type who is obsessed with the sacrificial bodies that have been found in bogs.
Recommended, obviously, since I couldn't put it down!
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Post by sophie on Feb 7, 2019 20:20:26 GMT -5
Not about a book but going to a discussion tonight with Esi Edugyan and Shelia Rogers (a well known radio host of literary programs on CBC) who is the chancellor of the University of Victoria (where I got my masters).
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Feb 7, 2019 22:02:15 GMT -5
I'M really not doing to well with this reading malarkey. So far I have only managed to finish one other book and once again it was for school. The old kiddie classic Emil und die Detektive!!! Hardly adult literature. Hopefully will get a few more reads in now that the stress of preparing for speaking exams is over. Some of the best books I have read recently have been middle grade fiction. Nothing wrong with reading something other than adult literature.
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Post by scrubb on Feb 8, 2019 9:46:04 GMT -5
Not about a book but going to a discussion tonight with Esi Edugyan and Shelia Rogers (a well known radio host of literary programs on CBC) who is the chancellor of the University of Victoria (where I got my masters). Oh, I am envious! I assume it will play on "Talking Books" one of these days? I finished 9) Dragon Seed, by Pearl S. Buck. Set in China during and after the Japanese invasion, it tells the story of a very traditional rural family after occupation. Very readable, it is a bit of a shock juxtaposing the traditional life in the countryside against the planes and weapons brought there by the enemy, and the more modern lifestyles of a few of the characters. It is pretty over the top full of stereotypes and happy coincidences, but still a very interesting perspective.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Feb 8, 2019 17:39:48 GMT -5
11. Snow Can Be Deadly, Cindy Bell. This is my first book in this series, and I may go back and start at the beginning. I like the premise of a group of active retired people working together to solve a crime. The characters were well drawn, and the resort setting believable. The mystery was quite well done.
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Post by Oweena on Feb 9, 2019 16:10:15 GMT -5
The Best Bad Things by Katrina Carrasco
I wanted to like this novel. There was so much potential for the main character, a queer female passing as male in the late 1880s and set in a rough and tumble small town in the Pacific Northwest. She was interesting and multi-faceted. Supporting characters were interesting and the plot (mostly about opium smuggling) is based on fact, and the author obviously did research on the time and place.
Alas, the writing was dense and repetitive. By the 3/4 mark I skimmed through the rest so I could at last find out who was good/bad and who lived or died. This is a book with a solid premise which would have rocked had there been better editing.
It's sad because I keep thinking about what a wonderful character the lead was.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Feb 10, 2019 3:57:32 GMT -5
10) Lies Sleeping - Ben Aaronovitch The latest Peter Grant book. Still good, I still like the mix of gritty police drama with various myths and legends and the practice of magic. I did feel sometimes that I needed to reread the earlier books to refresh my memory of a few things.
11) Radio Girls - Sarah-Jane Stratford. An interesting fictionalised account of the early days of the BBC in the late 20s, when it was purely a radio broadcaster. Quite a few real life characters mixed in with the fictional main character of Maisie. She had an interesting development from a self described mouse and "Invisible Girl" to more staunch modern girl and feminist. There was a spy storying dealing with Facists and wanting to control the media which did seem a bit forced into the main story. But it did prompt thoughts of Murdoch. I was glad to have read it.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 10, 2019 9:06:21 GMT -5
7) Karl Sharro, And God Created the Middle East and Said "Let There Be Breaking News"
This is a tiny paperback that I read over breakfast and so really shouldn't be counted as a book, but it was funny enough that I wanted to mention it here, so here, I've mentioned it.
Sharro is a Lebanese architect living in London who tweets as @karlremarks; this is a collection of his snarky humor. It's dark at times, as that region is, but very funny.
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Post by Oweena on Feb 12, 2019 16:11:06 GMT -5
Warlight by Michael Ondaatje
Loved, loved this book. Magical writing, wonderful characters.
I've never read anything else by him, but now I will.
Highly recommended.
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Post by sophie on Feb 14, 2019 0:21:09 GMT -5
The Golden Tresses of the Dead by Alan Bradley. Another book in the Flavia de Luce mystery series. These are rather interesting mystery novels; the main character, Flavia, is a young teen who is precocious and loves poison. The setting is a quiet village during the early 50’s in England. Easy read but engrossing.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Feb 14, 2019 3:28:04 GMT -5
I think it is time to start LC with that series. I know some of it deals with some 'older' themes but he loves poison and murder mysteries and I think he would adore Flavia.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 14, 2019 6:21:19 GMT -5
Oh thank you Oweena, I'd been meaning to read that but then forgot about it.
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Post by sprite on Feb 15, 2019 6:09:26 GMT -5
Not reading, but reading news. Several of us have read "Small Island" by Andrea Levy, about some of the Windrush immigrants in London. Levy died yesterday, only 62. It seems sad partly because she was rather young, but also because I wonder what books we'll miss out on.
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Post by Webs on Feb 15, 2019 14:57:49 GMT -5
Finished Circe - highly recommended.
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Post by sprite on Feb 15, 2019 15:56:01 GMT -5
i really enjoyed that, but irritatingly, someone here recommended achilles and the library doesn't have it.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 15, 2019 16:32:41 GMT -5
i really enjoyed that, but irritatingly, someone here recommended achilles and the library doesn't have it. I’ve got a copy I was going to donate to the library here - I could send it to you.
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Post by Oweena on Feb 16, 2019 15:38:45 GMT -5
Something a bit different: The Lost Words by Robert MacFarlane with illustrations by Jackie Morris.
I follow him on twitter and that's how I found out about this book. He wrote it after being upset to find out the Oxford Junior Dictionary had removed all sorts of words having to do with the natural world (bluebell, fern, acorn, heron) in order to make room for newer words (blog, cut-and-paste, broadband).
It's aimed to children, but it's beautifully illustrated and written. I recommend getting the physical book (it's short but large in size) and there's no way an e-reader would do it justice.
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Post by lillielangtry on Feb 17, 2019 13:18:10 GMT -5
I follow him on Twitter too, Oweena.
Well I've been quiet on this thread for the simple reason I've been reading a 500-page book in German. Admittedly not a very difficult one, linguistically, but still quite time-consuming for me.
#12 Walter Moers, Die Stadt der Träumenden Bücher (THe City of Dreaming Books, it is available in English) Moers is very popular in Germany, when he has a new book out they stack them up at the front of bookstores. His fantasy world is called Zamonien although I believe within it, the books stand alone. This is the story of a young poet in the form of a large lizard who tries to find a particular writer and gets drawn into all sorts of intrigue underneath a city. There are books that are alive, books that can kill, beings who hunt books, those who "eat" text... Yes, I did definitely enjoy some parts of this, but ultimately felt it wasn't really for me. It felt too episodic and for me, could have been 150 pages shorter at least. But glad I persisted with it as it was our book club choice.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 17, 2019 14:53:18 GMT -5
Oh! I had meant to put "The Lost Words" on my to-read list but then didn't - thank you.
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Post by Oweena on Feb 18, 2019 14:54:46 GMT -5
Name All the Animals by Alison Smith
A memoir of her teen years in the 1980s. At age 15 her 18 year old brother was killed in a collision, and this book describes what that event did to her family. She writes engagingly of the relationship she had with her brother, and it's heartbreaking to see the effect his death had on every aspect of her life. She also delves into the confusion she felt at realizing at around the same time as the loss of her brother, that she is gay.
It also shows that our avoidance of conversations about death, grief, and loss do more harm than good.
It was written way back in 2004, not sure how it ended up on my library wish list.
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Post by Oweena on Feb 18, 2019 14:56:59 GMT -5
Oh! I had meant to put "The Lost Words" on my to-read list but then didn't - thank you. I think it will appeal to the naturalist in you liiisa.
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Post by sophie on Feb 19, 2019 0:36:29 GMT -5
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. Someone here read it and really liked it.. maybe Webs? I saw it in the library and grabbed it. Glad I did. A wonderful, elegant novel. Very well written, it shrinks the world of the main character yet manages to show so much more of that same character. At the same time, the author is able to use the history of Russia/USSR as a backdrop. To me that was the amazing part: to use something so huge and historical significant as the history of Russia in the first half of the 20th century as a mere backyard!! That is literary skill.
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Post by scrubb on Feb 20, 2019 7:56:43 GMT -5
The Martian, by Andy Weir. Basis I'd the movie s couple years ago. Very readable. Author claims that astronauts tell him he got everything right, but the premise is that there is lots of technology developed by the time this happens, that doesn't exist yet. Anyway, enjoyed it.
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Post by Oweena on Feb 20, 2019 9:42:58 GMT -5
So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
So much good stuff in this book. Some of it is uncomfortable, but all of it important to ponder, reflect on, and discuss.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 20, 2019 19:06:23 GMT -5
8) Kevin Kruse and Julian Zeliser, Fault Lines
Kruse and Zeliser have been teaching a history course at Princeton on American history from 1974 to the present, and then wrote this book on the subject. I follow Kruse on Twitter and really like his writing, so I put their book on my list.
Most of this I already knew, since I lived it - in 1974 I was in high school, and well aware of what was going on. My conclusion from reading it is that YES, it is all the fucking Republicans' fault, and yes, Ronald Reagan was just as bad as I remembered but Mitch McConnell is the worst.
I didn't read the whole thing in a rage, though; it was good to read about some of the marches we'd all been to, the hearings we followed obsessively on the radio, and the occasional steps forward that we've taken in this country despite the other steps back that I guess are inevitable since we're just human. (Plus those &^%$# Republicans)
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Post by scrubb on Feb 20, 2019 23:03:10 GMT -5
Oh, I missed posting one earlier this month - The House in Paris, by ELizaheth Bowen. The first section is about a couple of little kids, one going to live with her grandmother, as her father doesn't know what to do with her after her mother died; one about to meet his mother for the first time in his 8 years. They are prickly little kids who aren't written to be particularly likeable, though also not particularly unlikeable. They are both spending the day at a house in Paris with a woman who knows both their families, and who is a long-suffering doormat.
Then most of the rest of it is set earlier, about the boy's mother and her coming of age within the British class system. Wanting to break out of it, some of the time, and wanting its security the rest of the time. She is also not particularly likeable, although in some ways she is sympathetic, more as the books goes on.
It did make me think, but it didn't make me feel very much. So, it was good (well written, etc. She draws people extremely clearly, but gives them all so many flaws that it's hard to like anyone), but I didn't particularly enjoy it and will not rush out to find more by her.
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Post by sprite on Feb 21, 2019 17:24:07 GMT -5
I enjoyed the Martian, although by the end I felt he had a list of disasters and was determined to cram every single one in!
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