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Post by Liiisa on Dec 13, 2019 13:45:58 GMT -5
Ok all you people who hate personality tests: scroll on by! Because I just finished reading:
60. Donald Riso and (name forgot) Hudson, The Wisdom of the Enneagram
So I took the test from this system after seeing it on Twitter or something a while back, which describes you as one of these 9 numbered personality types. It had me pretty well figured out (summary: amusing but kind of scattered). Then I didn’t think sny more about it until a friend mentioned what number she was recently, and I was like “I have a number too! I’m a 7!” So that’s how I ended up reading this book.
There are tests and such for this on the web, and you can find out what they think your type would be, but this book goes a little farther, saying what they think a given personality type will be like when they’re doing well but also when they’re not doing well. I thought it nailed me pretty well, like “uhhh ok yeah I was a self-involved asshole like that in the 90s,” etc. And it was fun reading the other types, and guessing what other people would turn out to be and speculate on how that you help you to deal with them.
So a lot of it was interesting. However, there was way too much spiritual woo stuff in it for my taste; I pretty much skipped over that. I would have preferred reading a book on the subject that stuck to psychology and left out all the “Wisdom of Your Timeless Essence” and inspirational quotes; that all was pretty tedious.
So there’s that.
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Post by Liiisa on Dec 13, 2019 13:49:53 GMT -5
Duplicate post!! wtf
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Post by scrubb on Dec 13, 2019 17:30:58 GMT -5
The Queen's Gambit, by Walter Tevis. He wrote "The Man Who Fell to Earth". This one is very different, as it's about a human girl rather than an alien, but his clear, somewhat detached style is the same.
Beth is an orphan who turns out to be a chess prodigy. Her orphanage got her hooked on tranquilizers at age 8, and this evolved into her becoming an alcoholic, which comes into conflict with her chess ability. The story kept me reading and even though I know almost nothing about chess the descriptions of moves didn't bog it down too badly. Though in the final game discussed in the story I did skim a bit.
I'm not convinced that the alcohol part of Beth's story is even slightly realistic. And it wasn't even really necessary to the story. And the style is so detached that it's never truly involving. But I still found myself on Beth's side, and enjoyed it overall.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Dec 14, 2019 4:56:46 GMT -5
75. Murder in Cherry Hills, Paige Sleuth, an obvious pseudonym. Quite well done for a short cozy mystery. There is just enough character development to make it interesting, and a fairly simple, but well done plot. A good start to a series, and I may look for more when looking for another quick read. I’m way behind on my Goodreads challenge, so I’m looking for quick reads. I finished this one as an audiobook on the four hour trip home from Dubbo!
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Post by sophie on Dec 16, 2019 20:58:23 GMT -5
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Post by Liiisa on Dec 16, 2019 20:58:36 GMT -5
61) David Mitchell, Slade House I'd intended to go to the library on Friday but the weather was nasty, so instead I looked to see if there was anything unread on the Kindle, and lo and behold, a David Mitchell novel that I'd never read! A pair of rather unethical telepathic twins with esoteric knowledge and a desire for immortality hunt for souls in an odd part of London. Very suspenseful! One chapter had an awkward college student character named Sally Timms, but to me that's the name of one of the main people in The Mekons, so that was a little confusing. But anyway, I like his weird novels, so that was good. Now I really have to go to the library. PS - ooh, thank you sophie!
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Post by scrubb on Dec 16, 2019 23:16:32 GMT -5
Something Light, by Margery Sharp. lives up to its name. A working girl in London (a dog photographer) in the '50s sets out to get a husband. She is a fun character, well written, and amusing. Very, very light, but fun.
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Post by Queen on Dec 17, 2019 1:19:41 GMT -5
I have a solid "to be read" pile and am not supposed to buy more books, but I downloaded the free read sample of the book about travelling in Germany between the world wars that lillielangtry recommended and it's fascinating. It's all Lillie's fault obv.
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Post by lillielangtry on Dec 17, 2019 2:17:13 GMT -5
Liiisa Slade House was a Halloween Piece from Mitchell I think. It's loads of fun isn't it? Queen I do indeed have a lot to answer for! Donna Leon, Death at La Fenice I've never tried a Donna Leon. This is the first one with Commisario Brunetti. It was fine - not as good as Camilleri. Margarita García Robayo, Fish Soup (Colombia, translated from the Spanish by Charlotte Coombe) Two novellas and a few short stories from the wonderful Charco Press, which specialises in bringing Latin American literature into English. Really had some good moments although Overall, I didn't love them.
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Post by sophie on Dec 17, 2019 10:56:28 GMT -5
The New Girl by Daniel DeSilva. A decent spy thriller which has a way of echoing current events and makes one think of possible conspiracies!! This is part of a series featuring an Israeli agent /art restorer. Good break from more serious stuff.
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Post by scrubb on Dec 18, 2019 11:30:01 GMT -5
Mother's Milk by Edward St. Aubyn - the 4th in the Patrick Melrose books. The main character (based on the author) is now a married lawyer with kids, but he's still completely messed up inside his head, warped by his upbringing, desperate not to pass along the misery he was raised with and very loving with his children, but unable to control his bitterness and anger and self-destructiveness.
This book didn't have all the horrible people of the first few - it was focused on him and his immediate family (mother and mother in law included). He writes some chapters from the point of view of small children and while he does a great job of capturing perspective and thoughts in some ways, I'm fairly sure that those kids have better reasoning power and language skills than real 3/5/8 year olds. Overall, well done. I'll read the last one with some hope.
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Post by scrubb on Dec 20, 2019 11:18:43 GMT -5
The Crossing, by Cormac McCarthy. I didn't really expect to like it - after "The Road", which I found well done but so bleak that I didn't rush out to read more of his stuff, I was finally giving him a second chance.
It's still fairly bleak/harsh, with not a lot of happy moments, but it was well enough done that parts of it will really stick with me. The writing is very much just writing what the main character said and did - not a lot of analysis - but what he does is enough to expose his inner workings. Not that his motivations are ever really clear.
I think I'll likely look for the rest of the trilogy that this one belongs to. Not right away, though.
ETA: not sure this comes across quite right - I thought it was really excellent. Better than I expected. But challenging enough that I might wait to read more in the trilogy.
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Post by sprite on Dec 21, 2019 5:50:38 GMT -5
Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition John Geiger, Owen Beattie (foreword by Atwood)
You know you've made it as an author when you write the intro to a book, and you get more cover space than the actual authors.
An excellent recounting of everything we know about the Franklin expediiton, which failed miserably when attempting to find the Northwest Passage. Covers previous expeditions, follow up, rescue expeditions, and archeologists from the 1980s discovering that lead, not scurvy, was the main culprit. It's hard to imagine that the Victorians didn't know how dangerous lead was.
Since this book, I think there's been a discovery of one of the ships underwater, in a documentary, so may try to find that.
Much easier to read than many of this sort of factual book.
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Post by Liiisa on Dec 22, 2019 8:05:59 GMT -5
lillielangtry yesterday I bought that traveling in the 3rd Reich book for my mom for Xmas; she's fascinated by that period, so I think she'll enjoy it. So thank you! (Is it tacky of me to ask if I can borrow it after she's done?) But I was reading something very different: 62) Fred Hoyle and John Eliot, Andromeda Breakthrough One of those little sci-fi paperbacks from the 1960s that I always look for when I'm in a used bookstore. I picked it up because one of the first sci-fi books I ever read was by Fred Hoyle, and it blew my mind (in fact I still have my copy from when I was 14 years old, and am going to reread that next). Anyway, aliens from a planet in the Andromeda constellation have sent data to Earth, from which British people have built a computer and used biotech to synthesize a beautiful young woman! But an evil corporation based in Vienna but operating through a client government in a place like Dubai want to use the technology for themselves! And one brave genius British scientist wanted to destroy the alien computer out of fear for humankind, but instead made things worse! And the plot was really quite complex considering that the novel was only 200 pages long, and had a quite unexpected ending!
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Post by lillielangtry on Dec 22, 2019 8:09:35 GMT -5
Hope she enjoys it Liiisa. No of course you should ask to borrow it! :-)
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Dec 22, 2019 11:33:57 GMT -5
76. Death in Trout Fork, D. M. O’Byrne. This book has likeable characters and good descriptions. There are a number of possible culprits which the MC needs to investigate, and an interesting conclusion. My only concern is where the next in the series will be set, as Trout Fork is too small and too nice a community for more to happen there.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Dec 23, 2019 0:42:43 GMT -5
77. Loco Motive, Mary Daheim. OK. I admit I a train lover from way back. This isn’t Murder on the Orient Express. Much more modern and more convoluted, but I envy Judith and Renie their trip across America by train. A fun mystery, with a lot of shenanigans.
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Post by sophie on Dec 23, 2019 0:49:11 GMT -5
A Bloody Genius by John Sandford. A decent murder mystery set in Minnesota with Virgil Flowers as the lead cop. Good for this genre. A decent read when an uncomplicated murder mystery is needed.
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Post by Oweena on Dec 23, 2019 10:45:36 GMT -5
The Unwinding of the Miracle by Julie Yip=Williams Her memoir of dying from colon cancer at a young age. Based on the blog she wrote while undergoing treatment. Born legally blind in Vietnam and ethnically Chinese she goes back to tell the story of her family making their way to the US as well as how she came to accept what her diagnosis meant.
Face It by Debbie Harry If you have a fondness for Blondie, or the early punk scene in NYC then this is for you. She tells her story in a totally informal way so it goes very fast. She has such a matter of fact way of dealing with some bad things that happened to her that it can be startling in its nonchalance.
One Day: The Extraordinary Story of An Ordinary 24 Hours in America by Gene Weingarten Proof that everyone of us has a story. The author is a longtime Washington Post writer who randomly chose a date (a December day in 1986) and set out to tell the stories of what happened to regular unknown people that day. Each chapter is from a different hour of the day and he pulls each one together so well that it was really enjoyable.
Life Undercover:Coming of Age in the CIA by Amaryllis Fox She spent about 7 or 8 years in the CIA right out of grad school and I couldn't get past her ego and moralising. Some interesting bits of how she was recruited and her undercover training but I come away from the book thinking she couldn't have been much respected by her colleagues, despite what she thinks.
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Post by scrubb on Dec 23, 2019 13:48:27 GMT -5
Of Monkey Bridges and Bánh Mì Sandwiches: from Sài Gòn to Texas, by Oanh Ngo Usadi
AS per the title, the story of the author's life. She was born in Saigon but after it fell and the Communist rule started, her family moved to the countryside for several years. Then they escaped, stopping at refugee camps in Thailand and the Philippines for over a year altogether on their way to the USA. Settled in Texas, she finished growing up there in the '80s.
It was interesting and well written.
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Post by Liiisa on Dec 23, 2019 19:06:36 GMT -5
63) Fred Hoyle, October the First is Too Late
A reread, but since as noted above I read it first in 1970 or something and have only reread it once since, in my 20s, I'm going to count it.
The Earth ends up in a strange time-warp situation, in which different parts of the globe are in different periods of history/future. Contains interesting stuff about different potential timelines branching off, and what it would be like to live in a society that doesn't value "progress," which I think has influenced a lot of my ideas about how this sort of thing works.
(Of course being a British sci-fi novel from 1966, it also contains lots of sexist nonsense and a smattering of racism... I've only noticed that stuff this time around.)
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Dec 23, 2019 21:54:51 GMT -5
Isn’t it funny how racist and sexist some of the literature we loved as young people have become?
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Dec 25, 2019 10:01:01 GMT -5
78. The Anchoress, Robyn Cadwallader. I read this book in small doses over a period of time, for much of what was accepted in medieval England is shocking to modern thought,and much of the first two thirds of the story made me increasingly angry. How could the church assume that a celibate man with little or no experience of women would be an adequate mentor for a young woman in such an unnatural situation? The story did resolve at least to some extent towards the end, and became easier to read. Sarah, however, is no Julian of Norwich. Overall interesting and well researched, but quite disturbing.
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Post by scrubb on Dec 25, 2019 15:38:02 GMT -5
100. At Last, by Edwin St. Aubyn. The last in the quintet about Patrick Melrose.
The entire book is set on the day of his mother's funeral. It follows several characters around with their thoughts - most of whom have been introduced in earlier books. The focus is still on Patrick, though, and his efforts to fight his depression and misery. It's probably the most optimistic of the 5 books in that he seems to finally be able to glimpse what it might be like to not be self-defeating all the time.
THere are still horrible people around him some of the time and a couple are charicatures (entertaining ones) but he has more generosity of spirit than earlier.
Overall, I did enjoy the books and they're very well written. They're overall not happy books, but at least now and then there is a glimpse given of why the main character keeps trying; a belief that life can be worthwhile, even though it doesn't usually feel that way.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Dec 25, 2019 23:41:52 GMT -5
79. The 28-day Gout Diet Plan. The last of the unfinished books I was determined to finish before the end of the month. While I may need to modify some of this plan because I live in a fairly remote part of Australia, and for my own tastes, I think it could provide what I need to follow in the new year. I have learnt quite a bit about gout-friendly and unfriendly foods. While I knew about cherries, for example, I had no idea that sodium was a major problem
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Post by scrubb on Dec 26, 2019 15:02:55 GMT -5
WHo She Is by Diane Byington. This was a Bookbub special that turned out to be more a YA book than advertised. It was ok, though the plot is fairly preposterous in the end. The main character is a girl in the '60s whose family always moves every few months so she doesn't usually make friends. This move, her mom says they'll stay till she finishes high school in a couple of years. She starts running track, which for some reason her parents don't want her to do, and her goal is to run the Boston Marathon.
The writing is kind of, um, stolid. Faye (the narrator/main character) just says what she does and how it makes her feel. As mentioned, the plot gets silly but that would have been ok if her relationship to her parents had been better handled. Spoiler alert - it turns out her parents aren't her real parents. Suddenly at the end, when she finds out her real history, she's completely relieved to get away from her adoptive parents and says she feels safe for the first time ever. Which would be fine, if the first half of the book had built that vibe, but it didn't.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Dec 27, 2019 3:31:09 GMT -5
80. Mummified Meringues, Leighanne Dobbs. An excellent cozy for a road trip audiobook. The Murder Club of senior sleuths are lots of fun, and the story was absorbing, if a bit improbable. I had a fair idea who the real murderer was by the last quarter of the book, but the outcome was quite a surprise, regardless.
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Post by Liiisa on Dec 29, 2019 6:51:45 GMT -5
64. ~~~
The book I read over the past couple of days was a rather intense, very good book that I got from my Secret Santa! Since it's a book related to the region where my Santa lives, I'm not going to describe it until after the Reveal. (Thank you again, Santa... wow)
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Post by snowwhite on Dec 29, 2019 14:38:10 GMT -5
It's a light read, Liiiisa, but entertaining. There's a typo in my post - it's the discomfort of airports, not airplanes, that allows people to change dimensions. Gives them something nice to do while waiting for planes. (And time is different so they can spend a few days away while only an hour passes at home.) Sounds really interesting - sadly no library copies where I am, and 2nd hand copies start at £6 I've read 'Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas' by Adam Kay, a (short, Christmas-themed - duh, follow-up to his earlier book This is Going to Hurt). If you enjoyed the first, you'll probably enjoy the second as well, but for reasons that might constitute a spoiler I did some googling around and discovered this discussion on Mumsnet which made me think about both books a bit differently - essentially the contributors to the discussion think Mr Kay is a thoroughly unpleasant person, at least as revealed by his humour. It's not how he comes across in interviews (I've heard him on the radio a couple of times) or in the afterwords in his books, but something to think about anyway.
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Post by mei on Dec 29, 2019 16:04:03 GMT -5
#24 last one for the year I expect: Ball Lightning by Liu Cixin. I bought this as soon as I discovered it in the shop because I thought his Three-Body Problem trilogy was great, but, meh. This isn't.
In the afterword he mentions this book is much more like more traditional Chinese sci-fi: "the invention story, a form that was preoccupied with the description of a futuristic technological device and speculation on its immediate positive effects [...]".
It is that. There's no real plot. It's very descriptive, about the scientific process and experimentation around a new discovery, linking it to a war between China (and the rest of the world?). I probably also lack knowledge of physics to appreciate the development of the story line better.
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