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Post by scrubb on Feb 20, 2020 11:42:27 GMT -5
11. That Night on the Bayou by Melissa Woods. This book is a reminder that not all BookBub specials are worth buying... really badly written. The author had some interesting ideas and characters but, well, didn't develop any of them very well. It's supposed to be about family dynamics and an old mystery and someone who has visions, but it's really just bad.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 20, 2020 18:53:52 GMT -5
8) Gretchen McCulloch, Because Internet
I loved loved loved this! It's by a linguist, and it's all about the history/development of internet language. As an "internet person" who started with Usenet and has been here ever since, it was delightful; felt like a description of my home town.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 22, 2020 21:31:16 GMT -5
9) William Gibson, Agency
This is the book that Gibson wrote after he was stymied in the project he'd been working on at the time of the 2016 election because it was all so weird. Those events are present in this book, but it has a lot of other elements as well. I occasionally was like "wait, what?" but had a hard time putting it down.
(I actually finished that last book a couple days ago, and then started this one.)
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Post by sophie on Feb 22, 2020 21:57:46 GMT -5
Lilac girls by Martha Gall Kelly. Novel based on real characters and situations. A group of Polish women were taken to Ravensburg, a concentration camp for women, where many of them were subjected to cruel medical experiments. After the war, an American socialite gets invoked in their medical recovery and compensation. It’s this author’s first book; a bit uneven but I liked the characters.
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Post by sprite on Feb 23, 2020 14:49:02 GMT -5
Sofia Khan is not obliged
a light romantic comedy about a 30 yr old muslim woman in London who has just broken off her engagment to a man who wants her to live in a house shared with several members of her family. it's told diary style. she works in publicity for a book agency, and decides to write a humourous book about muslim dating. of course, she finds love where she least expects it, but along the way she re-evaluates why marriage is so important to her.
it was funny, with a lot of believable banter, and it's rare to see pop fiction featuring educated women who choose to wear the hijab. but i've noticed that a lot of these books feature a heroine who thinks her bum is too big, but oddly, lots of gorgeous men find her attractive!
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Post by lillielangtry on Feb 24, 2020 7:47:32 GMT -5
#8 Karina Sainz Borgo, It Would Be Night in Caracas (translated from the Spanish by Elizabeth Bryer) My book for Venezuela, which I listened to on audio. It does a good job of depicting the chaos of modern-day Caracas, but there wasn't a great deal of plot.
#9 Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies Now I'm ready for the third part of the trilogy, which is out next month and apparently it's 900 pages long....argh! Loved this again, of course.
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Post by sophie on Feb 24, 2020 9:18:07 GMT -5
Isabel Allende, A Long Petal of the Sea. Her newest, and as many of her novels, based on facts. In this one, she traces the journey of several Spanish people thru the civil war and their subsequent escape to freedom in Chile just as WE2 was beginning and their life in Chile afterwards. I enjoyed this book but it isn’t her strongest. (However it is much better than her last one, In The Midst of Winter which I found disappointing.)
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Post by scrubb on Feb 24, 2020 14:11:23 GMT -5
Cornelia Funke - Inkheart. A fantasy YA book. My sister told me she didn't like it much and I can see some friends on Goodreads also didn't rate it too highly. However, I found it well done and I liked it. I think it would have really spoken to me if I'd read it when I was 12 or so, but even now I found it quite compelling (read it in 2 days, over 500 pages) and there were no enormous gaps or flaws. A couple, if I stop to think about it, but nothing that wrecked it for me.
It's all focused around books and a family of booklovers. The main character is 12 year old Meggie who lives with her father, Mo, a bookbinder. ONe night she sees a strange man standing outside their house staring - who it turns out her father knows. It is the start of a frightening journey for them - it's a while before Meggie finds out the big secret, that her father can read things into our world out of books. But something from our world always goes into the book, to replace it.
Maybe the "bad" part of the book is that everything is frightening and negative. Very few good things happen during their journey, and they are always being pursued by evil characters, although there are lots of lighter moments and times of respite, too. But I think the tension would be too much for younger readers.
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Post by sprite on Feb 26, 2020 10:29:11 GMT -5
I also read and enjoyed that book, enough to go find the others in the series. I was a little disappointed with the film, but can't remember why.
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Post by mei on Feb 27, 2020 8:59:46 GMT -5
#4 - The Hidden Impact (in Dutch though) by Babette Porcelijn. A book which investigates the environmental impact of the things we do/eat/own. The 'hidden' part refers to the impact that is out of our sight: production, energy needed for transport, mining, etc. It's well researched, provides a lot of information in an accessible way of writing and with lots of graphics. The first part especially was good (about the impact of various categories of things/activities) and I learned a lot of new things (eg how EV compare to fossil fuel cars). The second and third part were less well written, and for me more about stuff I know already.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Feb 27, 2020 9:05:37 GMT -5
19. Horror in the Highlands, Alison Golden. A fun cozy mystery, and I think my favourite Rev. Annabelle story so far. It was a great audiobook for a 5 hour road trip. Loved the journey and the remote Scottish island. 20. Cappuccinos, Cupcakes and a Corpse, Harper Lin. Franny inherits her grandmother’s coffee shop, and helps her neighbour find his fathers murderer. Quite a good story, although the villain didn’t really make an appearance until quite near the end, after a lot of red herrings.
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Post by Queen on Feb 28, 2020 10:39:09 GMT -5
Does it count if you don't finish it?
The other half lives Sophie Hannah
It's a murder/pyschothriller and I got 35% of the way through it and totally gave up. I just did not care who killed her or why the detective was weird.
Went online to read reviews and read one with the spoilers... which confirmed my decision to stop reading it.
So don't read it.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Feb 28, 2020 19:19:30 GMT -5
I also read and enjoyed that book, enough to go find the others in the series. I was a little disappointed with the film, but can't remember why. another who enjoyed Inkheart but I was less satisfied with the next books. Think I didn't bother after the second one.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Feb 28, 2020 19:28:32 GMT -5
13. Diary of a Somebody - Brian Bilston. A sort of grown up Adrian Mole, Bilston writes mundane poetry on Twitter. I found it funny, other people have said it was irritating and the character was a twit (which is the whole point, really)
14. The Case Against Fragrance - Kate Grenville. Looks at fragrances and the potential health impacts. Very easy to read, may not be the best science (as it is written by a layperson who has issues with fragrances, not a scientist)
15. Our Magic Hour - Jennifer Down
A beautifully heartbreaking novel about the fall out amongst some friends after a tragic loss. The book was set in Melbourne and it had such a strong sense of place - Melbourne felt like another character. There was a lot of 20 something angst in this but it is really worth a read.
16. Our Sussex Murders - Ian Sansom. The next book in the county murders series. I did enjoy reading it but I also forgot about it very quickly - I was searching the house to finish it when I then recalled I had finished it and it was already back at the library.
17. The Last Dragonslayer.- Jasper Fforde.
I borrowed this for LC to read as he has enjoyed the Tiffany Aching books and figured this might be similarly mad. It is about the only Jasper Fforde series I hadn't read, so started it myself and really enjoyed it. Very Fforde.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Feb 29, 2020 18:09:54 GMT -5
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Post by scrubb on Mar 1, 2020 1:10:43 GMT -5
Not midnight here yet, and I just finished Wallace Stegner's "The Big Rock Candy Mountain". Liiiiiisa described it very well sometime last fall - her description is what led me to it. The story of a family in the western US (and Canada) in the very early part of this century. The father is always finding a scheme to make it big, but of course they never quite work out, or if they do, the money doesn't last. He makes life pretty rough for his family.
The last part of the book focuses mostly on his younger son who is looking back and trying to understand the man he's mostly hated, and himself, and their life.
It was sometimes a little too close to home for comfort - my dad isn't really much like the main character, but there were some things that felt very familiar and made the book feel very, very real. Although any book looking at a flawed father and the conflicting emotions a child feels would speak to me these days, this one really is excellent.
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Post by lillielangtry on Mar 1, 2020 8:59:37 GMT -5
#10 Margery Allingham, The China Governess I picked this up off the free bookshelf because it was a nice old green Penguin edition and I was intrigued. Allingham was quite well-known in her day apparently, chiefly for her books featuring detective Albert Campion. The story is ok, but the language is rather dated and overdone. I wanted to finish it but I won't be seeking any more of her work out.
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