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Post by Liiisa on Jan 20, 2020 20:47:16 GMT -5
3) Bruce Beehler, Natural Wonders
The author is a local personage who has done a lot of biological/conservation work in the tropics. However, this book is a collection of short essays talking about nature-type things he's seen bicycling to work and in parks and such, mostly in the DC area. I think this is mostly of interest to local naturalists, but maybe it could have a general readership; I found it a very pleasant read.
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Post by scrubb on Jan 22, 2020 16:36:16 GMT -5
6) Fever Pitch by Nick Hornsby. Probably a football fan would appreciate it more, but it's really all about him, not about football. He's a good enough writer that I found it worth skimming through the descriptions of goals and games for the rest of it, but only just.
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Post by sophie on Jan 22, 2020 19:01:51 GMT -5
Stoner by John Williams. Apparently a classic, I had never heard of this author or novel. Set in Missouri during the depression to post WW2, it traces the life/career of the main character as he enrolls at university in the agricultural school and ends up discovering English poetry and prose which changes his life. He is a bit of a weak person, not asserting himself. But that may be indicative of the era. I just wanted to shake him at various times .. drove me nuts.
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 22, 2020 19:43:30 GMT -5
That makes me feel better about not having read that yet, sophie!
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Post by scrubb on Jan 22, 2020 20:46:34 GMT -5
Interesting, sophie. I thought he was compassionate, more than weak, but I was frustrated too. And I really loved the book. It inspired me to find his other 2, both of which I enjoyed very much. They are all 3 really, really different from each other, although each one has a title male character who is the focus.
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 22, 2020 21:17:31 GMT -5
Dang now that makes me feel like I need to read it after all. WHAT TO DO?!
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Post by scrubb on Jan 22, 2020 22:05:07 GMT -5
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Post by sophie on Jan 23, 2020 0:27:28 GMT -5
Read it of course!! And yes, compassionate is probably a better word than weak to describe him. But still..
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Post by treehugger on Jan 23, 2020 5:43:19 GMT -5
#1 Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation Well, that was quite a start to the year's reading. It's a little difficult to know what to make of this one. It's about a young woman around the start of the millennium who basically decides to check out of life by drugging herself up to the eyeballs and sleeping as much as possible. She's not exactly a likeable person either (she's obviously not supposed to be). It's very well-written, but I also found it quite grim. I really loved this book.
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Post by treehugger on Jan 23, 2020 5:43:58 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. That's a lot of effort for a casual book group
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 23, 2020 6:05:35 GMT -5
He's a piece of work, but we love him
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Post by scrubb on Jan 23, 2020 14:15:23 GMT -5
I recently realized that the author of the Crawdads book worked as a wildlife specialist of some time in AFrica for a long time. I read a book she co-wrote with her husband about lions in the sub-Sahara. (Cry of the Kalahari? I think?) That was really good but I think it is 2 or 3 decades old, and fiction is a real departure for her.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Jan 24, 2020 4:33:47 GMT -5
8. Revenge of the Evil Librarian -Michelle Knudsen
A conversation with a friend reminded me of this series and the library now has the next two books. Think Glee meets Buffy - a girl with special powers fights demons and saves the world, all while working backstage at a musical theatre camp. Gloriously trashy YA.
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Post by sprite on Jan 24, 2020 6:03:46 GMT -5
I'm reading, and enjoying, Flights--but I think my loan ran out yesterday, and i was only halfway through. I really want to know if that guy finds his wife and kid, so will have to get back on the waiting list.
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 24, 2020 6:17:20 GMT -5
I'm reading, and enjoying, Flights--but I think my loan ran out yesterday, and i was only halfway through. I really want to know if that guy finds his wife and kid, so will have to get back on the waiting list. Oooh that was a good story. I have such a crap memory for the stuff that I read that I couldn't tell you a spoiler if I tried, though!
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Post by Oweena on Jan 24, 2020 12:17:28 GMT -5
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado Devastating, but wonderful in it's layout and prose. A memoir unlike any other. Every chapter is short and framed from a different viewpoint--from a fable, a movie plot, a Star Wars episode, etc. For example some of the chapter title are: “Dream House as Confession,” “Dream House as Stoner Comedy,” “Dream House as Word Problem” "Dream House as Self-Help Best Seller".
It recounts her 2 year abusive same sex relationship which I realize could be triggering and sounds a real downer. But how she breaks it down and puts the disparate pieces together is eye opening.
I know this one will stick with me for a long time.
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Post by sophie on Jan 25, 2020 2:32:05 GMT -5
The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes. Chick-lit, decent enough read about a team of travelling librarians (by horse and mule) in Kentucky in the thirties, with one of the librarians being a recently transplanted English woman married to one of the local rich mine owner’s son. Predictable but interesting. Easy read.. I was able to enjoy it in one evening.
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Post by lillielangtry on Jan 26, 2020 14:11:23 GMT -5
A slow start to the reading year for me, and I've started and abandoned two books... but:
#2 Teffi (pseudonym of Nadezhda Alexandrovna Lokhvitskaya), Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea (translated from the Russian by Robert Chandler, Anne Marie Jackson and Irina Steinberg) I listened to this on audio book; I would have preferred some of Teffi's stories but this was the only one available. It was pretty interesting.
#3 Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge A lot of people have probably read Strout, but it was my first one of hers and I am going to see her at a literary festival in March. I really enjoyed this collection of linked stories about the cantankerous Olive and other inhabitants of her small town. Will probably buy the sequel at the festival, and maybe get it signed if the line isn't too long.
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 26, 2020 15:35:24 GMT -5
4) Ursula Le Guin, The Birthday of the World
This is a compilation of short stories plus a novella that I read for a book discussion class at my favorite DC independent bookstore. I signed up for it because I hadn't read any LeGuin in a while, and thought it would be fun. These are not all fun, but I've really enjoyed reading them.
These stories feel kind of like anthropological field research, in some ways; each entails a different society on one of a number of planets. The commonality among most of them is that families and gender power relations are each very different from ours, with interesting (and occasionally upsetting) results. One is about a society with slavery, which is disturbing and feels like an echo of much of modern history.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jan 27, 2020 6:05:35 GMT -5
13. Aunt Bessie Believes, Diana Xarissa. I’m really enjoying this cozy mystery series, set on the Isle of Man. 14. The Colours of All the Cattle, Alexander McCall Smith. Another delightful book featuring Mma Ramotswe and her friends. The outcome of her political career is excellent, and quite a surprise and Charlie is advancing in his detective career. 15. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro. A very gentle book, about the reminiscences of an English butler, on a road trip through the West Country after World War II. It actually includes some acute observations about both the politics and the social mores of the first half of the twentieth century. Not exactly what I was expecting from an author with a Japanese name!
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Post by Oweena on Jan 27, 2020 12:41:39 GMT -5
Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson
How to explain the plot? It involves ten year old twins who tend to catch fire when stressed, angry, or excited. Their politician father abandoned them 5 years ago but due to the death of their mother, he now needs to reintegrate them into his family.
The narrator is the woman found to look after the twins until their catching on fire can be brought under control. She has a history with the stepmother of the twins and her refreshing view of the world of haves and have nots made me like her.
It's a weird little book, easy to read, funny in parts, and I recommend it.
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 27, 2020 21:17:28 GMT -5
Oh yeah, the book about the children who spontaneously catch fire! I read a review of that and it sounded like just the kind of weird that I like, and then I forgot all about it, thank you.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Jan 28, 2020 2:32:42 GMT -5
I've been wanting to read that for a while.
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Post by scrubb on Jan 29, 2020 10:51:56 GMT -5
Lucy's Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins by Donald C. Johanson and Kate Wong.
WRitten by the paleoanthropologist who found LUcy back in the '70s. He already wrote a book about that, I believe, but he discusses it again in the fist part of this book, then spends the rest of it talking about the various other hominid fossils that have been found, and where, and how they all fit into the evolutionary tree. Which, he's saying, we don't really know yet, and won't unless we find a lot more fossils.
His writing certainly makes it clear that there is a lot of contention between different scientists. He "fell out" with the Leakey's for questioning their interpretation of something they found. He spends a lot of this book looking at theories, and then saying what evidence there is to counter the theories. Which sounds balanced, but actually he manages to always make the theories he believes seem like the most reasonable, while I"m sure that other scientists would be able to do the same for the theories they prefer.
It was interesting. Got a bit dry about half way through for a while, but generally good reading. One thing: when he wrote it in, I think, 2011, he said there was no DNA evidence that Neandertals and Homo sapiens interbred, and he personally doesn't think they did. I know that now all those DNA tests are telling people they are 1 or 3% Neandertal - but I don't know if that's a more recent discovery, or if it's possible that the genetic material is inherited from a common ancestor?
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Post by Webs on Jan 29, 2020 13:37:15 GMT -5
#1 Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation Well, that was quite a start to the year's reading. It's a little difficult to know what to make of this one. It's about a young woman around the start of the millennium who basically decides to check out of life by drugging herself up to the eyeballs and sleeping as much as possible. She's not exactly a likeable person either (she's obviously not supposed to be). It's very well-written, but I also found it quite grim. I hated everyone in that book. Everyone. Except the Egyptian guys in the bodega. But never have I read a book where I was insulted these people were even thought up. None have any redeeming qualities.
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Post by Webs on Jan 29, 2020 13:41:31 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.) Sigh, remember Bill&Ben's rant about EatPrayLove?
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Post by sprite on Jan 29, 2020 15:57:17 GMT -5
sniff.
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 29, 2020 18:22:00 GMT -5
I liked the Egyptian guys too. They reappear as the sole tolerable people in one of her unpleasant short stories, too.
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Post by Queen on Jan 30, 2020 15:35:29 GMT -5
FINALLY finished something. Don't Be Evil: The Case Against Big Tech Rana Foroohar It's another call for control and regulation of big tech companies with some pretty good research and reasoning. It's by a business journalist, so not too geeky
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 31, 2020 20:31:02 GMT -5
5) Judith Schalansky, A Pocket Guide to Remote Islands
This is the book I've been reading at night. Schalansky wrote tiny essays about 50 remote islands. Some of it feels like her take on what she felt about what she'd read about the islands; some of it is, I imagine, factual. I loved all of it, will surely pick it up again someday.
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