|
Post by tucano on Jan 11, 2020 5:21:38 GMT -5
I think I'm going to get 'Where the Crawdads Sing' to read while on holiday soon. Seen many glowing reviews for it.
|
|
|
Post by Liiisa on Jan 11, 2020 17:45:25 GMT -5
However: A friend in my writing group hated 'Where the Crawdads Sing' so much that he wrote us all an 8-paragraph screed against it. But he hates everything, so feel free to ignore that... but I felt obligated to say something.
|
|
|
Post by HalcyonDaze on Jan 11, 2020 21:31:05 GMT -5
3. Instructions for a Second Hand Heart -Tamsyn Murray YA sick lit. This is the second YA book I've read dealing with a heart transplant patient trying to get in touch with the donor's family. This one took the split narrative style - one was the from the patient's perspective and the other was from the twin of the donor. It was enjoyable if a bit predictable but I think it suffered for me because the other book was just that bit better.
4. A Rose Petal Summer - Katie Fforde.
Easy to read chick lit - I had this on my phone and it really was the perfect book for phone reading. Nothing too strenuous, some lovely descriptions of the Scottish countryside and glossed over life on a barge in London (I have a feeling Wapsy would have written a very different part of the book!) As usual there was a lot of dithering that went on because the main character did not clarify or question the hero about something.
5. The Body - Bill Bryson.
One of his easy to read non fiction books explaining how our bodies work and the various systems in them with lots of good historical snippets on the development of medicine and drugs.
|
|
|
Post by scrubb on Jan 12, 2020 11:50:22 GMT -5
Finished: Walking With Ghosts in Papua New Guinea: crossing the Kokoda Trail in the Last Wild Place on Earth
As already noted, the writing isn't very good, but I appreciated learning the military history, and more about the country's relationship with Australia.
|
|
|
Post by sophie on Jan 12, 2020 18:12:19 GMT -5
Normal people by Sally Rooney. I think someone here recommended this novel; as well, several people in my book club thought it excellent so I picked it up at the library. It is a strange combination of intimacy and disassociation tracing the development and the state of a friendship/relationship between two main characters. It is sparsely written, but I think it serves to highlight the communication between them. Lots to ponder while reading and afterwards. I liked it.
|
|
|
Post by Liiisa on Jan 12, 2020 20:39:38 GMT -5
1) Jeff Vandermeer, Dead Astronauts
Aaaaahhhhhhhh what was that??!!! Aaaaaahhhhhhhhh
But ok, words... It feels like it's set in the world he created for "Borne," where most of nature has been depleted and corroded, and most life is dead except for the biotech experiments of a dominant company. Except this is like "Borne" only exploded in time/space. The parts about the blue fox, and other parts about nature, and tidal pools, are heartbreakingly beautiful. But other parts violent and horrible.
I will have to read this several more times to really get what was happening there. The writing is as experimental as it would need to be to tell such a tale.
|
|
|
Post by Oweena on Jan 12, 2020 22:33:26 GMT -5
Normal people by Sally Rooney. I think someone here recommended this novel; as well, several people in my book club thought it excellent so I picked it up at the library. It is a strange combination of intimacy and disassociation tracing the development and the state of a friendship/relationship between two main characters. It is sparsely written, but I think it serves to highlight the communication between them. Lots to ponder while reading and afterwards. I liked it. Read it last year and didn't care for it. But I should have known better because I read her earlier Conversations With Friends and didn't like that either. She gets high praise in the press and is touted as one of the next generation of authors to watch--I'm not feeling it. Maybe I read her books incorrectly...or have no taste in decent literature...
|
|
|
Post by Oweena on Jan 12, 2020 23:03:57 GMT -5
Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett
Weird book about a female taxidermist dealing with the after effects of her father's suicide. He taught her the family business and there are many, many descriptions of the skinning, cleaning, mounting, and posing of animals all played against the background of her messed up family.
It's set in Florida, and Arnett certainly can bring the hot, humid, and smelly landscape to life with her descriptions. The world she describes is unclean and messy, I suppose as a reflection of her personal and family life. I could have done with less of the taxidermy discussion (I skimmed some of those) yet I didn't hate the book.
|
|
|
Post by scrubb on Jan 12, 2020 23:12:12 GMT -5
Normal people by Sally Rooney. I think someone here recommended this novel; as well, several people in my book club thought it excellent so I picked it up at the library. It is a strange combination of intimacy and disassociation tracing the development and the state of a friendship/relationship between two main characters. It is sparsely written, but I think it serves to highlight the communication between them. Lots to ponder while reading and afterwards. I liked it. Read it last year and didn't care for it. But I should have known better because I read her earlier Conversations With Friends and didn't like that either. She gets high praise in the press and is touted as one of the next generation of authors to watch--I'm not feeling it. Maybe I read her books incorrectly...or have no taste in decent literature... Hmmm. Sort of reminds me of "C" by Tom McCarthy. It had bits that interested me and tons of metaphor but was super disjointed, confusing and dissatisfying. It did make me think, to the point where I googled, and the review I read was the most pretentious thing I've ever read. Which made me realize that I thought the book was also pretentious. It got lots of praise, and I often like experimental books, but this one was just NOT for me.
|
|
|
Post by Liiisa on Jan 13, 2020 5:53:45 GMT -5
Oh I loved "C"! I think sometimes you have to be in the mood for pretentious - er, experimental - books.
I think my mom disliked "Normal People" too, which also tells me I might like it... the Venn diagram of our favorite books is rather small.
|
|
|
Post by sprite on Jan 13, 2020 9:22:07 GMT -5
I just read a mini book, 3 of Jean Rhys' short stories.
"Let Them Call it Jazz"
It reminded me why i really dislike short stories--i hate having to try and guess what the metaphors are, what is happening but unsaid,
they were well-written, characters brought to life, the world of the story vivid--but i dunno. The first was about a black woman in London who ends up in prison, possibly on drunk/disorderly charges? all i understood was that racism and culture shock were working against her. i think the second is about a prostitute in hospital for an abortion.
the third, i can't even remember. having looked it up, it was about a woman in her late-20s working in wartime london. there is no 'spirit of the blitz' on these pages. she resents her work, her clothes, her life. she loses herself in fiction, and assumes everyone else is doing better than her.
possibly a theme was women trying to survive in a world not designed for them, surrounded by those who it was designed for, and who subsequently have no empathy for outsiders.
I'll stick to novels.
|
|
|
Post by scrubb on Jan 14, 2020 22:29:44 GMT -5
A few years late, but I just read Fifty SHades of Grey. The sex was written pretty well, I thought, but otherwise it's just sooooooooo bad.
|
|
|
Post by Webs on Jan 15, 2020 10:31:43 GMT -5
Okay, I have to say it, this book "My Year of Rest and Relaxation" is starting to piss me off. The timeline is fucked up and her age doesn't make sense. Also, they've got her using a digital camera in 2000 when digital cameras were not available for mass market consumption.
I don't hate the story but the glaring errors, if they continue, are going to get to me.
|
|
|
Post by scrubb on Jan 15, 2020 18:14:38 GMT -5
Last night I finished "The Cure for Death By Lightning" by Gail Anderson-Dargatz. About a 15 year old girl growing up somewhere very rural in BC., during WW2. A bit of mysticism, a bit of mentally ill people, a bit of poverty, a bit of nostalgia... I think it was her first novel (?) and it's really good, but not super-fantastic. REcommended, but not in my "favourite books" list, either.
|
|
|
Post by sprite on Jan 16, 2020 4:58:35 GMT -5
I had a digital camera in 2001, and my parents had a very nice one in 2000. Theirs was about 800USD, mine cost around 200. A lot of ppl around me were using them, but then I was in tech-crazy South Korea.
|
|
|
Post by Liiisa on Jan 16, 2020 6:08:02 GMT -5
2) John E. Muller (Lionel Fanthorpe), Survival Project
Ok, so last year I read a terrible little British sci-fi novel by Lionel Fanthorpe, and it was so fabulously entertaining that I did some reading about him and it turned out that in the 1960s he wrote hundreds of these tiny pulp sci-fi novels under a variety of aliases. So I'm making it a bit of a project to try to find them all.
This one - where do I start. It's 2165, and there's a mysterious building in London that a young government agent named Natasha decides to investigate. This leads her into a series of implausible yet entertaining adventures.
These are the novels I mentioned elsewhere that I'd read that the publisher got the cover art first, and then assigned the writers to write books based on the art. This cover is of an attractive woman swooning in front of an abstract-looking modernist office building.
|
|
|
Post by scrubb on Jan 16, 2020 20:34:32 GMT -5
I started a Gerald Durrell book yesterday - The Bafut Beagles - that I thought at first was a kid's book but decided to try anyway. Turns out it's not for kids, it's set in West Africa, where Durrell went to collect animals. Although it has his usual humour and animals, which are always good, it's also kind of condescending. The local men speak Pidgin and he replicates it in a meant-to-be humourous way. i.e., making fun of them.
It's not mean spirited at all, but it's that old-fashioned "aren't the natives enchantingly childlike?" sort of angle on things.
|
|
|
Post by Liiisa on Jan 16, 2020 21:58:32 GMT -5
Yeeeeah I don't think I could deal with that.
|
|
|
Post by scrubb on Jan 16, 2020 22:08:58 GMT -5
Yeah, unless it improves a lot in the next few pages, I may have to give up.
Which is a shame because I really, really love some of his other books.
|
|
|
Post by sprite on Jan 17, 2020 11:23:35 GMT -5
yes! someone donated Stephen Fry 'Mythos' so I can start that as soon as i finish my library copy of 'Flights.'
|
|
|
Post by Webs on Jan 17, 2020 13:41:58 GMT -5
Mythos is better in audio book because Stephen Fry is reading it to you.
|
|
|
Post by sprite on Jan 17, 2020 15:11:07 GMT -5
I'm so glad he's gay, otherwise i'd have lustful thoughts that might interfere with my relationship.
|
|
|
Post by ozziegiraffe on Jan 17, 2020 19:10:42 GMT -5
Book update after a week offline, with the nearest phone charger on a neighbouring island. I was reading mostly downloaded bookbub freebies, plus 3 paperbacks which I’ll leave with a friend here. Two of the paperbacks were a goodreads cozy mystery challenge for the month. AT least this had set my yearly challenge off to a good start, numberwise. 3. Tamar Myers, Splendour in the Glass. A particularly silly cozy in this series. 4. Anne R Tan. Gusty Lovers and Cadavers. Better than the title would suggest. 5. Publishable by Death, ACF Bookens Not bad. 6. A Vow of Obedience. Veronica Black. The best of the bunch. But then I like cozies featuring English nuns, if they’re plausible. 7. Tiles and Tribulations, Tamar Myers. Less silly than the previous one in the series, and therefore better. I don’t mind Myers’ books, but prefer them in small doses. 8. Roses in the Rainbow. I was completely misled by the title and the author’s name. Thinking the author was African, I was somewhat forgiving of the stilted writing style, woefully pedestrian sex scenes and poor grammar. The plot itself wasn’t bad. Then I got to the end and discovered the author was a former American marine and NCIS agent. Appalling! 9. Ghost of a Chance, Cate Dean. Not too much supernatural thank goodness. 10. Deep Space Accountant. Mjke Wood. This one was fun, as the title suggests. I needed something other than a cozy, but The Explosive Child seemed a bit too work-related in the setting I was in. 11. Pineapple Lies. Amy Vansant. Quite good. Set in a very active retirement community, which is sort of appropriate as I’ve been staying in several recently.
|
|
|
Post by Webs on Jan 17, 2020 22:56:24 GMT -5
Finished "My Year of sleep and relaxation" and all I can think of is how toxic every single character in this book is. Seriously, not a single redeemable person. None. All heinous.
|
|
|
Post by Liiisa on Jan 18, 2020 12:04:28 GMT -5
Finished "My Year of sleep and relaxation" and all I can think of is how toxic every single character in this book is. Seriously, not a single redeemable person. None. All heinous. I know - horrible! (The characters in her short stories are even worse.) I like her writing anyway, though... but I think I'll wait a couple of years before reading anything else.
|
|
|
Post by scrubb on Jan 18, 2020 16:45:05 GMT -5
Finished The Bafut Beagles. Durrell's attitude towards/writing about the Africans did not improve throughout the book, although some actual respect does shine through once or twice. The last 1/3 of it is just about the animals he's caught, which is entertaining and interesting as I hadn't even heard of several of them. He also captures personality of the animals well.
|
|
|
Post by Webs on Jan 18, 2020 16:54:45 GMT -5
Finished "My Year of sleep and relaxation" and all I can think of is how toxic every single character in this book is. Seriously, not a single redeemable person. None. All heinous. I know - horrible! (The characters in her short stories are even worse.) I like her writing anyway, though... but I think I'll wait a couple of years before reading anything else. I don't think I'll read anything else of hers.
|
|
|
Post by Liiisa on Jan 18, 2020 17:01:25 GMT -5
Understandable! I hear "Eileen" is even more unpleasant, which is why I've been afraid to read it so far. Why put ourselves through this?!
|
|
|
Post by ozziegiraffe on Jan 19, 2020 18:04:46 GMT -5
12. Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun, Lois Winston. Not bad, but she isn’t Janet Evanovich, who is her ideal!
|
|
|
Post by HalcyonDaze on Jan 19, 2020 18:56:37 GMT -5
6. The Cafe by The Sea - Jenny Colgan. Standard chick lit set on a Scottish Island. A basic holiday read. There are more books in the series but I won't bother to continue.
7. Serious Moonlight - Jean Bennet. YA coming of age style book with super cute teen protagonists. (think slight manic pixie girl and hipster god each dealing with their own issues). Enjoyable with good David Bowie references and a bit of a homage to various mystery writers and mystery detectives in the story. Not sure if I will read more from the author.
|
|