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Post by ozziegiraffe on Mar 1, 2019 3:13:16 GMT -5
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Mar 1, 2019 3:23:14 GMT -5
13. Jennifer L. Hart, Skeletons in the Closet. The beginning of this book annoyed me because the main character went into painful detail about why it always takes her an hour to get ready to go out, due to disasters with pantyhose or makeup. As I don’t wear either, I can be ready in about 5 minutes. However it goes on with a story of how a reluctant stay at home mum becomes a house cleaner and police informer. Another series I could take or leave, but interesting enough for an audio book on a road trip.
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Post by Liiisa on Mar 1, 2019 6:52:02 GMT -5
10) Vivek Shanbhag, Ghachar Ghochar
A novella about a family in Bangalore who were happier when they were poor. Much of it happens in the home, and I really enjoyed reading the closely observed descriptions of the characters' environment (plus they're eating upma, which I love). However, most of the characters are kind of unpleasant. But it's a tiny book.
(I only had 10 more pages to read when I got up at 6 this morning, so I made sure to finish it first thing so that I wouldn't have to schlep it on the plane today.)
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Post by mei on Mar 1, 2019 7:40:11 GMT -5
after the flying start in January, I didn't even finish one book in February! Hope to be back in this thread though, reading Milkman currently which is very good so far, but it's slow going with very little time for reading these last few weeks.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Mar 1, 2019 18:58:34 GMT -5
I have three books I have almost finished. One is a book club book that I don't want to finish as I am really enjoying it. The second is my kindle night time read, a murder mystery. And then there is the book I picked up from the library yesterday - good chick lit from an author I really like.
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Post by scrubb on Mar 1, 2019 20:53:30 GMT -5
I'm reading 3 books that are all really good, but they're taking some time. One is "A Brief History of SEven Killings" by Marlon James - won the Booker a few years ago, and I really have liked it so far. But, I forgot to put it in my bag to take to work last week. And since getting home I've been short of reading time. And we leave on holidays Monday, and the book is too physically large to take with me...
Also, I started "The WArmth of Other Suns" by Isabel Wilkerson which is about the great migration of black people from the southern states to the northern states, between 1915 and 1975. I think it won the Pulitzer and it's pretty readable, but I set it aside while reading other stuff and don't know when I'll get back to it.
Finally, Louise Erdich's "LaRose" which I'm really liking. WIll probably finish it either before our trip or just as it starts.
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Post by Liiisa on Mar 1, 2019 21:33:38 GMT -5
Oooh I really want to read that Marlon James, but even more so his new thing which is something like "Red Something Leopard Something." But yeah, the sheer girth of it has been offputting.
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Post by scrubb on Mar 1, 2019 22:29:20 GMT -5
I was really annoyed when I realized I hadn't put it in my bag to take to work - had been excited about reading time on the plane, and I thought I'd be able to finish it over my shift. Ended up reading that annoying book about the douchebags lost in the jungle instead. (Ok, also the Marge Piercy, which I loved, so I guess it wasn't the end of the world.)
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Mar 2, 2019 5:18:42 GMT -5
15. The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern I don't know why I didn't read this when it first came out - I think I started it and it didn't grab me so I put it down. Clipper loved it, as did so many of you. It was the book club book this month and so I persevered past the slightly slower opening and fell in love. In love with the circus, with Fredrick Thiessen and the idea of the reveurs and with Poppet and Widget. I will be upset if people didn't like it when we talk on Monday night.  16. The Maid’s Secret - Emily Organ Historical murder mystery, the third in a series, my night time kindle read. The mystery was so-so, and the solving of it was annoying, one of the gather everyone in the room and go over how various people were involved which was never really outlined in the story. But the historical aspects are interesting and fairly well researched. I may have missed some bits as I came close to falling asleep frequently when reading it. Not a reflection of the book, more the time I was reading! |
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Mar 3, 2019 5:31:56 GMT -5
14. Never Thwart a Thespian, Edie Clare. Audiobook just the right length for this week’s road trip.
I’m still enjoying this series. This is the first I’ve “read” as an audiobook. Leigh’s twins and their cousins are now actively involved in the sleuthing, and so the series could well appeal to a whole new generation.
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Post by Oweena on Mar 3, 2019 21:36:51 GMT -5
Bowlaway by Elizabeth McCracken
Quirky story full of magical characters set against the backdrop of a candlepin bowling alley just outside of Boston, starting in the early 1900s. The story covers several generations of the people who orbit in and around the alley. The main character, Bertha Truitt, is a strong woman with many secrets, some of which we never get answers to.
I liked the author's ability to describe both the everyday and the magical in interesting ways.
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Post by lillielangtry on Mar 5, 2019 3:10:54 GMT -5
Thanks ozzie!
Yay for the Night Circus! I am not interested in Marlon James, although I Keep Hearing about him.
#16 Diana Athill, Instead of a Book: Letters to a Friend (reread on Audio)
Athill died recently so I was inspired to listen to this. She is amazing, although towards the end the letters do become rather focused on 1) her health and the health of those around her and 2) her difficulties learning to use email - to be fair with regard to both Points, she was 90 so health concerns were Kind of a given and she was doing great with the new technology!
I was irritated to learn I've been pronouncing her Name wrong all this time. It's Ath-ill with a "th", not At-hill.
#17 Andrea Camilleri, Das kälte Lächeln des Meeres (Montalbano #7)
Montalbano is always good to relax with.
Now on to Washington Black, which I have very high hopes for.
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Post by sophie on Mar 5, 2019 12:04:09 GMT -5
On holidays with limited internet!
The Gown by Jennifer Robson. Chick lit type of book but rather well written and a more interesting point of view. The main character (and her best friend at the time) is an embroiderer at Norman Hartnell’s at the time of the wedding of Princess Elizabeth to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten. There is a jump and connection to modern times with the main character ‘s granddaughter.
Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee. Not a good holiday book. A bleak and depressing look at how poor decisions can get worse. Yes, it is well written and yes, it explores the ‘big issues’ at the time in South Africa but it is depressing. Recommended if your optimism needs a slap in the face.
The Food Explorers by Daniel Stone. I picked this up at my s-i-l’s place.. apparently the author is a friend of our niece. Rather interesting non fiction about the golden age of plant acquisition by the US government to expand and help the agricultural industry which was just in its infancy at the time (late 1800’s and early 1900’s). I enjoyed it but then I am a gardener.
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Post by lillielangtry on Mar 5, 2019 13:15:24 GMT -5
I remember Disgrace as one of the most downbeat books I've ever read. Agree it is well-written, but you couldn't pay me to read it again.
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Post by Oweena on Mar 5, 2019 15:45:31 GMT -5
In Extremis: The Life and Death of the War Correspondent Marie Colvin by Lindsey Hilsum
Interesting bio of how Colvin grew up and became involved in journalism, leading her to become one of the most famous and respected war correspondents of the past 30 years. She was American but primarily worked for a London newspaper.
The book doesn't shy away from the less savory aspects of her personal life. She had numerous relationships, was always looking for the great love of her life, drank heavily as a way to deal with PTSD she developed from reporting in combat zones, and didn't always treat those in her orbit well.
I liked it, the author (who is also a foreign correspondent) writes in an engaging and accessible way.
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Post by Webs on Mar 5, 2019 15:52:44 GMT -5
Am listening to Early Riser by Jasper Fforde. I admit I'll have to go back and listen to the last half hour on the way home because I fell asleep on the bus going into work.
As usual it's an alternate reality and has traces of ice age, zombisim, and a little Handmaids Tale to it.
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Post by sophie on Mar 8, 2019 9:56:34 GMT -5
A Year of Marvellous Ways by Sarah Winman. A rather wonderful story of an old lady with the name of Marvellous. Set in post war England, it is a bit magical. I liked it but it (like the author ‘s previous book, When God was a Rabbit) might not be to everyone ‘s taste.
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Post by Liiisa on Mar 11, 2019 5:37:21 GMT -5
"Disgrace" put me off reading Coetzee. Not as depressing as "The Road," but up there. I suppose I should give him another chance since he is such a good writer, but yikes.
Anyway,
11) Kim Stanley Robinson, The Years of Rice and Salt
This is an interesting counterfactual novel that explores what might have happened historically if the plague had killed 99% of Europeans, thereby completely wiping out European civilization. How would history have unfolded since then, which countries would have become hegemonic, who would have developed which technologies, how would the peoples of the Americas have ended up if they'd not been largely wiped out by the Europeans, etc.
What I thought was particularly interesting about it was the plot structure. You find out at some point that in each section (it proceeds chronologically), the main characters are reincarnated from characters in previous chapters. So while the names change from chapter to chapter, it's really the same people, and you see them (and the societies themselves) changing and improving (or not) with each succeeding incarnation. In this the no-Europeans part of this plot was kind of beside the point, since that's a structure you could just as easily use with British people or whatever; it's just an interesting choice he made.
It wasn't perfect - there were a couple chapters where I felt it was a bit of a slog, and a couple of generalities that he used about "the Chinese" and Islam set off my political radar (though I guess if you're positing a group as a hegemon, you're allowed to make generalities about them). But despite those few negatives, I really enjoyed it.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Mar 11, 2019 17:03:43 GMT -5
15. Just Add Salt, Jinx Schwarz. This is not your usual cozy, as it features an adventurous career woman on a boat trip to Mexico. Fun characters and some improbable situations make this an enjoyable romp.
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Post by lillielangtry on Mar 12, 2019 2:21:30 GMT -5
#18 (I thought it was 17, but Goodreads thinks differently) Esi Edugyan, Washington Black
I know some People here have read this. I thought it was really great! Really engaging Story, beautifully written. Some violence that was quite difficult to read, especially at the beginning.
I read the same author's Half Blood Blues some years ago but now can't remember much about it.
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Post by Oweena on Mar 12, 2019 8:53:52 GMT -5
Bringing Down the Colonel: A Sex Scandal of the Gilded Age, and the "Powerless" Woman Who Took On Washington
by Patricia Miller.
Interesting book that documents an early case of women breaking away from the social/sexual mores of the time (late 1800s). It centers around the case of Madeline Pollard, the long time mistress of a US congressman from a storied Kentucky family. After the death of his 2nd wife, Pollard claims he promised to finally marry her. He instead marries another, and she files suit for breach of promise, becoming the 1st supposedly "ruined" woman to willingly and very publicly share her story.
Pollard's case is the background for detailing the beginnings of several women's organizations, and how many of them were inter-related.
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Post by sophie on Mar 12, 2019 21:22:32 GMT -5
The last of the holiday reads:
Ruth Rendell’s No Man’s Nightengale. Another excellent mystery by the master mystery writer. Good end to the reading end of the holiday. I picked up a couple at the book exchange here at the hotel and I leafed through them. I understood why they were left behind.
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Post by lillielangtry on Mar 13, 2019 1:52:35 GMT -5
The last of the holiday reads: I understood why they were left behind. Ouch! ;-) |
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Post by sprite on Mar 13, 2019 12:57:06 GMT -5
I'm reading 3 books that are all really good, but they're taking some time. One is "A Brief History of SEven Killings" by Marlon James - won the Booker a few years ago, and I really have liked it so far. But, I forgot to put it in my bag to take to work last week. And since getting home I've been short of reading time. And we leave on holidays Monday, and the book is too physically large to take with me... this book popped up on my library app so i borrowed it, forgetting your comment about size. it's good, but deciphering the different levels of dialect is a bit of work. also, i'm really tempted to read up on the events to get a better handle on what's happening, while also enjoying being in the same place as the characters--knowing something will happen, but not exactly what. |
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Post by scrubb on Mar 13, 2019 19:49:58 GMT -5
Catch up after a week with no internet and a fair bit of reading time!
LaRose by Louise Erdrich - I've become a big fan of her books, and I enjoyed this one a lot. A man accidentally kills a child while hunting - his wife's half-sister's son - and he follows an old tradition of giving his child to the bereaved family in exchange. There's some flashbacks to the child's great great great great grandmother, with a touch of magic realism, and a few other backstories too. She's very good at acknowleging that many Native communities have really messed up, damaged people and huge alcohol and drug problems, then taking the reader beyond it.
Crying to the Moon by Mary Walsh - she's a Comedian from Newfoundland who I like, so I bought her book for $2. No idea if it's semi-autobiographical or all imagined, but the character was believable. YOung girl from a messed up family who goes to Expo in Montreal (1967), gets pregnant, is forced to give up her baby for adoption, then she falls into various very negative relationships. It sounds depressing and awful but is told with good humour and a sense of indomitableness, somehow, so it doesn't come across so negatively.
An Acceptable Time by Madeleine L'Engal - turned out to be something I'd read before, but completely forgotten. It's YA fiction, I think, though aimed at teenagers at least (main characters are finishing high school). Meg from "A Wrinkle in Time" has a daughter who travels through time. It was ok, not great.
Blindsided by the Taliban by Carmen Gentile - a journalist who got shot in the face with a rocket while embedded with American troops in Afghanistan. He's not a very sympathetic person, but he doesn't try to put himself in a good light, either. It had a few interesting pieces of info about how embedding journalists is done and what they do, but mostly it's just a kind of vanity project. I wouldn't recommend it, particularlly.
The Alice Network by Kate Quinn - it wasn't bad, like Kristin Hannah's book about women in the French Resistance, but it wasn't fantastic, either. Pretty good, I guess. Maybe worth reading if you like books set during WW2. The plot was quite good, with 2 time lines that come together, and ok characters - but it felt superficial overall. The afterword states that some of the characters were based on real people and provided some history that made me like the book a little better in the end.
City of God by Paulo Lins - the book the movie was based on. Pretty much just a bunch of vignettes and scenes from the brutal, horrible life in the flavellas of Rio in the '70s. Kids starting their lives of crime age 7 or so; everyone doing drugs and killing and no one has alternatives. Bleak.
March, by Geraldine Brooks - told from the point of view of the absent father in Little Women, who is away being a chaplain in the civil war. It was an interesting idea, and was good at depicting conditions and attitudes. I sort of liked that she upset the over-the-top goodness of the mother and father from the original book and made them much more flawed.
Now I'm reading 'A Start in Life' by Allan Sillitoe. It's good, but it's also very, very similar to his "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner". It says it's the first in a series about the character, but I can't see reading the sequels because it's just about this guy going along, falling into various situations and women, and there's not really any direction. A couple other characters give their backgrounds, and they're all similar and they've all fallen into a bunch of situations like the main character anad it's all kind of much of a muchness.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Mar 13, 2019 22:29:56 GMT -5
I managed to finish a load of books last week while LC was ill. 17. Don't You Forget About Me - Mhairi McFarlane Have enjoyed the Mharia McFarlane books I have read before and this one was also enjoyable. Could loosely be described as chick lit, but with less emphasis on romance. And there were some #metoo moments and looking at gender politics. 18. Take Three Girls - Cath Crowley, Fiona Wood, Simmone Howell Decent Australian YA novel - three students at an elite school in Melbourne end up in the same group for an anti bullying/wellness class. Strong characters. I did find it a bit depressing on how accurate some of it was - one section I thought was inspired by a recent incident. And then I read the date the book was published and realised the book became before the incident, it is just that this toxic shit girls have to put up with is so common and so predictable. 19. Someday We Will Fly- Rachel DeWoskin A serendipitous library find. This was on the shelf of new books and I would have ignored it if not for the addition of the words "Shanghai 1941" on the cover. As just that morning I had read an Atlas Obscura article on the Jewish ghetto and the refugees who fled to Shanghai during WW2. The book was an excellently researched YA novel about life in the Jewish quarter of Shanghai as experienced by Lillia, a teenaged refugee from Poland. Some of it is a little far-fetched but generally it is well done. And it was a glimpse of a history that I did not know. 20. Legendary (Caraval #2) - Stephanie Garber YA fantasy. I read Caraval ages ago and was in no rush to read the sequel. Which turned out to be a lot better than the first book. 21. On the Come Up - Angie Thomas Pretty sure I loved this more than The Hate U Give. I certainly loved Bri more - she is fierce, a smart arse who gets things wrong at times. Deals with gender issues in music, racism and racial profiling. The book that proves Angie Thomas can write and has more than just one story in her. |
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Post by sprite on Mar 14, 2019 17:06:46 GMT -5
I enjoyed"the Alice network" but agree, it's not literature. I didn't feel I'd wasted my time reading it.
I like mharia McFarlane, so will look for that one. "You had me at hello" was hysterical.
I've just finished "sing the unburied" which was beautiful but bleak. The hate ppl carry in them, the behaviours ppl are locked into--it's heartbreaking.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Mar 14, 2019 18:33:06 GMT -5
I stil want to read The Alice Network - every so often I go on WW2 related reading binges.
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Post by Oweena on Mar 15, 2019 20:11:56 GMT -5
Shotgun Lovesongs by Nickolas Butler.
Picked it up from the library based on recommendations from both shilgia and scrubb in previous threads. Their recommendations were spot on. It's an engaging story with well drawn characters and relatable story lines.
He's got another book coming out this Tuesday so I've put a hold on one at the library and we'll see if this one is as good.
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Post by scrubb on Mar 16, 2019 19:52:37 GMT -5
Glad you enjoyed it too, Oweena!
I finished a Nevil Shute today - Requiem for a Wren. He's a good writer, and I enjoyed it overall, but I have to say I don't always love his ultra-self controlled male narrators. Still, it was good.
A war story mostly, told by an Aussie who signed up and got through WW2, but lost his brother shortly before D-Day. The Wren is a military wren, who was his brother's girlfriend, and how the war ended up really messing her up.
Probably the best thing about it was the discussion of how the war impacted that entire generation - they kept saying it was "fun" and "the best time they'd ever had" but I think maybe the point of that was to partly show how it damaged them. Even though the title character lost the people she loved most during the war, and she also did something that she felt extremely guilty about for the rest of her life - she still wanted nothing more than to get back into the military afterwards. Like there wasn't anything else she was suited for. But maybe it's more about the vitalness of it - of feeling that they are integral parts of something very important. And nothing else is quite like that.
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