Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote, time for books

[scrubb]

It's the April 2019 book thread.

March is here: March book thread

[Liiisa]

... which something something something engendered is the flur

Thank you scrubb!

And actually I just finished a book a couple minutes ago:

14) R. O. Kwon, The Incendiaries

I had some issues with this, but it kept me reading it to the end. It's set on a college campus on which there's a cultlike Christian group, which the main character's girlfriend gets involved in.

What I didn't like was that it felt a lot like "The Secret History." I kept getting distracted by the comparisons I was drawing (I've read that book at least five times).... And since I find ancient Greek pagan cult college students way more interesting than evangelical Christian cult college students, I was a little disappointed in this novel's atmosphere.

What I liked was that the main characters were fairly complex and well drawn. The novel also contained some interesting insights, especially since it was written by a Korean author and contained several Korean characters. And I liked the writing style, and the book's structure; it begins with an incident and then goes back to explain it, in short chapters from different characters' perspectives. I'll look for her work in the future.

[HalcyonDaze]

I need to update some books I finished in March before I include the book club one I finished yesterday -first book for April.

[HalcyonDaze]

27. The Yellow Birds - Kevin Powers

A novel about one young man's experiences in the Iraqi War and his dealing with the loss of a friend and the general trauma the war caused him when he is back home. It is pretty hard to read at times - the author is also a poet so there are these lovely descriptive passages of rather horrific events. It is a very lyrical style and I often felt as if it was reading at a remove, but that actually worked in with the sense of dislocation with the war.

Not exactly an easy read but one I am glad I did read. And I think any 17 or 18 year old should read it before they sign up to the military - it was quite horrific to see how old these young men became so quickly.

[ozziegiraffe]

Bookmarking. Thank you Scrubb.

[Liiisa]

Hal, “The Yellow Birds” was a great book. (Not fun/easy, but good.)

He’s got a new one out and I keep resisting it when I see it at the library... must stop that.

[Oweena]

Transcription by Kate Atkinson

Mostly set in WWII era London and follows the story of a young woman working as a transcriptionist for MI5.
Easy read with a twist or two along the way.

For whatever reason I always seem to end up liking novels set in this time and place.

[HalcyonDaze]

Oweena, you might like Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans

[scrubb]

Oh, another Kate Atkinson - I generally really like her books, so will look for that one. I also like WW2 books (if they're well written).

[scrubb]

#27, Vernon God Little, by DBC Pierre. I really liked the first half or 2/3 or so but the last 1/3 turned into farce. It may well be that the author intended the entire book to be a farce, but if so he failed for the first 2/3 and actually wrote a really involving, insightful story.

About a kid in a small town in Texas, right after a school shooting when his best friend was the shooter. He comes under suspicion as being an accessory, mostly because of a guy trying to break into journalism and basically setting him up, but things snowball, no one asks for him to say what really happened, everything looks bad for him. And he's just a punk 15 year old whose father died and whose mother is broke and not all that bright...

Ok, that doesn't sound very funny. The writer was talented for being able to make the characters and the settings funny with that background. But I liked the first 2/3 of the book, when it looked like a it had something a little deeper, a LOT better than the last 1/3 that was more like a cheesy melodramatic farce.

[lillielangtry]

#22 Gabriela Alemán, Poso Wells
A novel by an Ecuadorian woman writer for my reading around the world challenge and the first book I've actually read in Spanish for several years - although it is available in English, translated by Dick Cluster (yes, that is his Name). My reading experience was coloured by the fact that reading in Spanish is slow for me, and I had an enforced break in the middle caused by my Kindle breaking. A Long time ago I lived in Quito for nearly a year, and I did a Little internal cheer every time I recognised an Ecuadorian word or Piece of slang.
Anyway, I enjoyed this. It's a short novel that brings together various issues - disappearing women, exploitation of the natural Environment - in a slightly surreal romp. Reminded me somewhat of Carlos Gamerro (from Argentina) in style. The title is an allusion to H. G. Wells' short Story The Country of the Blind, which is also set in Ecuador and which I haven't read but may seek out now, and the book Features some sinister blind characters.

[ozziegiraffe]

18. A Finely Crafted Murder. Stacey Alabaster. This is quite a short mystery, and the editing was not the best. I was a bit disappointed that the culprit only turned up very late in the story, so there were few clues for the reader to follow. Also, there was very little about the craft shop, except it’s owner falling over boxes of buttons or beads. This story could have done with more detail.

[scrubb]

Calypso, by David Sedaris. I really like his writing. His style of funny-revolting-poignant memoirs speaks to me. His final chapter, about his 94 year old father and how hard it was to get him out of his house when he was too old and feeble to manage on his own (and his hoarding tendencies) was so much like my experience in the last couple of years with my Dad that I seriously thought about writing to David. Like he doesn't already get a zillion letters a day.

[scrubb]

And with my long commute today and lots of reading time, I finished "How to Stop Time" by Matt Haig. I think it was HalcyonDaze who read and loved it last year? It was very good, I really liked it.

[HalcyonDaze]

Yes - I enjoyed it.

[snowwhite]

The Lost Staircase. Elinor M Brent-Dyer

Fun to read a book by her that was new to me. Not her greatest work, but an enjoyable read.

[scrubb]

A Woman of Substances by Jenny Valentish.

Interesting combination of memoir and research into the causes and manifestations of substance abuse, plus often co-existing issues such as eating disorders, gambling, kleptomania, etc., specific to women. It was interesting to learn that virtually all research (not just into the effects of alcohol - all medical eesearch) has traditionally been performed on men. Because female hormones might mask or change things. So it's much easier to just not use female subjects.

Anyway, I gather the author was a bit of a minor celebrity in England, well known ladette, etc., but I'd never heard of her. She seems pretty honest about her past terrible behaviour and her flaws, and she writes very readably.

[Liiisa]

15) Rutger Bregman, Utopia for Realists

Enjoyed this! Bregman talks about how universal basic income, a shorter working week, shutting down tax shelters, and developing alternatives to GDP as the measure of economic health can be part of the solution to a lot of the problems of contemporary society. He talks about the history of these ideas, and a bit about how we got where we are. It's written in a very accessible, amusing style; I don't think you need any background to understand it. I think it's an important book. This edition I read was a revised edition from 2017 - it was originally published in 2014.

I have to admit that none of the ideas in it were new to me, because I learned them all in my Ecological Economics classes 10 years ago. But at the time they seemed pretty wacky and experimental, so it's really fantastic seeing them enter the mainstream, and coming from someone who's getting so much attention these days. (For those who haven't been following along at home, he's the Dutch historian who made the fantastic speech about tax evasion at Davos.)

[scrubb]

What's Eating Gilbert Grape, by Peter Hodges. Very readable. Poignant but not a tear jerker. Really well drawn characters.

I think I saw the movie, many years ago, and it seems like they followed it fairly closely for the most part. Except that the mentally challenged kid in the book was not small and cute like Leonardo diCaprio was in the movie. He was a chubby 18 year old who had terrible teeth and snot all over his face most of the time. But of course, they won't put people with those sorts of challenges in hollywood movies.

[scrubb]

32) Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch - the first of the Rivers of London series. It was fun. It wasn't what I expected, though - I hadn't realized it was a mystery/crime series. I'll read the next ones, but probably won't rush out to get them immediately. Will see how long the waiting list at the library is.

[ozziegiraffe]

19. Murder with Puffins, Donna Andrews. Quite a good mystery. Some similar characters to the first in the series, but a totally different setting. Good development, good characters, and an interesting ending, with quite a bit of fun included.

[mei]

Finally! I'm back with a new book.

#7 - Island Songs by Alex Wheatle. Bookclub read, but really enjoyed it. Following the life of two Jamaican sisters and their family as they move from their village to Kingston to London. Very interesting insight into Jamaica in the 1950/60s, and about migration as a theme and how it affects people.

[snowwhite]

I've read three books on similar themes in (fairly) quick succession (mentioned at least one here already):

The Fast 800 - Michael Moseley
In Defence of Food - Michael Pollan
Gene Eating - Giles Yeo

I think they're all, in different ways, preaching against fad diets - MM proposing his own version of how to lose weight sustainably and healthily (it's what he does himself), MP saying we need to get back to eating actual food and GY unpicking the pseudo-science behind various dodgy eating fads/diets, and throwing in a bit of education about how genetics relates to some of this stuff.

I enjoyed all of them.

[Queen]

The Cut Out Girl
Bart van Ess

This is the story of a Jewish girl who was hidden by a family during the second world war. It's written by the son of her (foster) brother. It's a fascinating honest look into Dutch history, even more fascinating because I've been to some of the places.

The book has (apparently) been somewhat controversial here because it's not a glowing portrait of resistance, which is the usual tone of WW2 discussion. Instead he talks about the danger and the efforts by Dutch police... and citizens... who were paid a bounty for disclosing hidden Jewish families.

Good read.

[ozziegiraffe]

20. Alaskan Dawn, Edie Clare. I enjoy Edie Clare’s writing and characters, and love her mystery series, so I thought I’d try one of her romances without the mystery. Beautiful settings, good characters, and a couple of serious issues, surrogacy an the environment treated well. Overall a good story. However, I still prefer mystery with my romance!

[scrubb]

Finished a book I've had on the go a while - The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. About the migration of Anerican blacks from the southern states to northern cities between 1915 and 1975.

She followed 3 individuals, telling their whole life stories, and interspersed them with statistical and sociological information. It was all interesting although some parts felt drawn out and/or repetitive. Also, she jumped back and forth between the 3 "charscters", telling very small snippets of their stories at a time, which sometimes felt too sporadic.

But criticisms are minor. Overall it was good, and although I took ages to read the first 1/3, the rest of it went pretty quickly.

[Liiisa]

16) Richard Powers, The Overstory

A group of interconnected stories about people and trees.

What was great about it was how he wove the science of forest ecology into the story, talking about how forest systems, particularly old-growth forests, operate. I love when authors put ideas I'm interested in into books and tell them engagingly. There are also a couple of good characters, and interesting plotlines that kept me reading to the end. I didn't love ALL of this book, but the parts I liked were so good that I'll recommend it.

[sophie]

I have been reading a few silly Danielle Steele type novels for easy reading .. can’t even remember the titles as I took them right back to the library.. but did the trick for light entertainment. Also Wilbur Smith’s Courtney ‘s War. I used to really like all his novels but now not so much.

[scrubb]

Yeah, I read a few Wilbur SMith's about 20 or more years ago and enjoyed them, but find I can't read them now at all.

34) The Man WHo Fell To Earth, by Walter Tevis. I knew there was a movie of this with David Bowie, in the '80s I think. Title says what it's about - an extra-terrestrial lands on earth and sets about to make money and build a ferry boat to go back to his planet and bring the remaining few of his dying people to Earth.

I think my favourite thing was the author's predictions for technology and the future (it was written in 1963, set in 1988ish). It had that very '60s element of believing that the human race was going to wipe itself out in a nuclear war, too.

[ozziegiraffe]

21. Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingoes. Donna Andrews. The humour of this series is growing on me. The very quirky family remains the constant, and so far the settings have been very diverse. This one is set in a historical re-enactment, which creates all sorts of interesting situations for the participants.