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Post by HalcyonDaze on Feb 29, 2020 18:09:23 GMT -5
The book thread for March. I have a book club meeting on Monday night and still have about 300 pages left in the book. I should do it as it is a very easy read. A link to February's books
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Mar 1, 2020 6:57:26 GMT -5
Thank you Hal. Bookmarking. Interesting that I finished two audiobooks in February, but am still trying to finish the paperback I started. I must be back at work.
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Post by Liiisa on Mar 1, 2020 7:18:47 GMT -5
Thank you Hal! Bookmarking.
I'm nearly done with a rather affecting book about the death of a Turkish sex worker... will probably get back to you all on that one tomorrow. Then my simultaneous nonfiction book is a very long history of Americans traveling in Europe in the 1830s, so I'll be reading that for several months, I'm sure.
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Post by lillielangtry on Mar 1, 2020 8:57:05 GMT -5
Elif Shafak, Liiisa?
Thanks Hal!
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Post by Liiisa on Mar 1, 2020 16:06:58 GMT -5
Elif Shafak, Liiisa? Thanks Hal! Yes, exactly!
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Post by Liiisa on Mar 1, 2020 17:06:00 GMT -5
And in fact, I just got home and sat down and finished reading it:
10) Elif Shafak, 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World
This is affecting, as I said... it's partly a history of modern Istanbul, partly the story of love and friendship among people living in the fringes of society. After a chapter with a chase scene that's a bit of a (stress-relieving) farce, the final chapter is incredibly strong. Good book!
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Post by scrubb on Mar 1, 2020 19:08:50 GMT -5
14) Summer of my Amazing Luck, by Miriam Toews. Might be the author's first - but I think I liked it just as much as her later, prize-winning novels. About a teenage mother living in social housing with a lot of other single welfare moms. It's funny and sweet without being cloying.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Mar 2, 2020 7:20:37 GMT -5
21. Death of a Domestic Diva, Sharon Short. Quite a good cozy mystery, with a complex and empathic plot, that kept me guessing almost to the end. Interesting small town characters and secrets and a well drawn main character.
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Post by Liiisa on Mar 4, 2020 6:13:25 GMT -5
11) Christopher Priest, A Dream of Wessex
Back to the pile of weird old sci-fi paperbacks. This one is from the 70s, so it's less innocent than the ones from the 50s and 60s. The premise is that there's a project where a group of people go to the future, but just in their minds, into a future Wessex that they've created collectively. It all gets weird when the protagonist's creepy stalker ex shows up.
Interesting and gripping, though the plot relies excessively on who the protagonist is sleeping with.
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Post by Oweena on Mar 5, 2020 18:50:28 GMT -5
Three Women by Lisa Taddeo The author follows three women over a period of years chronicling their relationships with men. There was little I could relate to but the story of Maggie Wilkins who was sexually assaulted by a high school teacher at age 17 was the most affecting. Five years after the crime she reports him and her chapters document her efforts to deal with the fallout and trial. The other two women are far from my experience with relationships and life, so much so that it was a bit of a window into "women really think and act this way about sex and men?". I guess in that way it was enlightening.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Mar 7, 2020 0:22:28 GMT -5
18. The Girl in the Photograph - Kate Riordan
A bookclub book. Interesting enough but very slow at times. And frustrating in that the author flirted with a gothic ghost story but then seemed to ignore that. Anyway, one of those books with two different stories and timelines - one late 1800s, the other the 1930s. For once I didn't have a favourite timeline.
19. The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep - H. G Parry
Sheer brillance. Fantasy novel set in Wellington in NZ with characters from books being read into existence, a battle for control of the fictional world all tied up with the idea of brotherly love and how we see ourselves. Loved it.
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Post by sophie on Mar 7, 2020 0:30:10 GMT -5
Son of a Trickster by Eden Robinson. One of the very literate, rising voices of our First Nations, Eden Robinson’s book uses a 16 year old boy as a main character in a novel full of magic realism. His family life is horrendous but there are saving graces and his own attitude and humour. It is a novel of hope and love, despite what life can throw at some people.
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Post by lillielangtry on Mar 7, 2020 4:48:30 GMT -5
#11 Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea Very much in the same vein as her first novel, The Night Circus, so if you enjoyed the dreamlike atmosphere of that, you will probably enjoy this. I think I probably didn't love it as much as Webs did, but it was good.
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Post by Oweena on Mar 7, 2020 13:48:17 GMT -5
Red White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
The son of the female US president and the prince third in line to the UK throne fall in love and all sorts of political and social intrigue follows. I couldn't get past all the completely implausible situations, so much so that I started to laugh at the book in places it wasn't meant to be funny. It gets a lot of rave reviews, but man this is not my style of book. It's time to head back to non-fiction.
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Post by Liiisa on Mar 7, 2020 16:48:43 GMT -5
That sounds realllyy bad Oweena! lol
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Mar 7, 2020 17:23:19 GMT -5
I've seen that pop up on a few lists and had already decided it wasn't for me - glad to get the confirmation from you, Oweena!
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Post by Oweena on Mar 8, 2020 11:29:29 GMT -5
The Need by Helen Phillips
I need to find some different books, this one definitely wasn't for me. The story centers around Molly, a young mother with a 4 year old and a baby who is overwhelmed with motherhood and work and life. With her husband away she experiences an intruder in her home and other odd happenings. But is she really, or is she just sleep deprived and hallucinating? While that narrative may in some way be intriguing, I found her writing super repetitive. I mean if you want to read about breast feeding and how it takes over your life, this book has plenty of that, over and over again.
It may have all played better with me if I could relate as a mother. I kept thinking while reading of her exhaustion and jumbled thoughts, "this is exactly why I didn't have kids, it's too much work!"
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Post by mei on Mar 8, 2020 14:57:08 GMT -5
finished the book for this week's book club: Saman by Ayu Utami (#5 for me this year). An Indonesian novel (read in Dutch translation), about relationships, sex, politics, activism and community in the '90s in Indonesia. I'm not sure yet. I was pretty put off in the first part - which seemed too superficial to be believable, and probably would have stopped reading if it weren't a bookclub read. It got much better with much more interesting story lines, so enjoyed reading it but mostly because it was an insight into a country I don't know well.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Mar 9, 2020 8:52:07 GMT -5
22. Yesterday’s Spacemage, Timothy Ellis. Timothy is Hellis’s son, and, having met him and enjoyed his mother’s books, I had to try one of his. It was fun. Timothy Ellis manages to blend fantasy and science fiction to produce a well thought out story of a young man from the past with magical abilities who uses them to right a series of wrongs in the future. This is quite different to anything of either genre I’ve previously read, and made an enjoyable read.
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Post by mei on Mar 13, 2020 6:13:25 GMT -5
#6 very interesting and fast read: De bananengeneratie (The Banana generation) by Pete Wu. A Dutch journalist of Chinese ethnicity exploring the position of Dutch Chinese 2nd and 3rd generation in the Netherlands. Very interesting and relevant. Also written with humour, and from a personal point of view which made it a good read. recommended (well, to the Dutchies here).
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Post by Oweena on Mar 13, 2020 10:33:29 GMT -5
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
Decided I should read some American classics. Published in 1940 (when she was only 23) it's an honest tale of the American South. It took me a bit to get into the story, but her characters sucked me in.
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Post by Liiisa on Mar 13, 2020 21:48:38 GMT -5
12) Jenny Offill, Weather
A novel, sort of, taking place in 2016-2017 in New York, told in short bursts of narration. Really liked it - took a while to read it because I kept getting distracted by the constant state of emergency that we all seem to live in now, but the book seemed appropriate to that.
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Post by scrubb on Mar 14, 2020 12:53:49 GMT -5
I have FINALLY finished reading John Cheever's Short Stories. All 889 pages of them.
The first half were ok, but started to seem too much all the same and I put it down for a couple months.
The second half seemed a bit more wide spread. Some were in the realm of fantasy, and there were some style experiments. I found them more entertaining.
His characters are very much of a place and a time, and they are not a place or time I am familiar with, or can relate to. But the stories are well done and have some universal truths, and I found them overall worthwhile.
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Post by Oweena on Mar 14, 2020 21:42:36 GMT -5
Congrats scrubb on finishing, I know I could never plow through that.
Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane Spans the 1970s to the present telling the story of two families. The husbands are both officers with the NYPD, and they're partners for a very short time but end up as next door neighbors. Their children grow up together and when a tragedy affects both families the rest of the book tells of the fallout from several viewpoints. The narrative sucked me in-love, infidelity, marriage, parenthood, divorce, mental illness-it's all here.
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Post by scrubb on Mar 15, 2020 10:57:45 GMT -5
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers Decided I should read some American classics. Published in 1940 (when she was only 23) it's an honest tale of the American South. It took me a bit to get into the story, but her characters sucked me in. I read that years ago and don't remember much about it except that I thought it was really good. And I think it took me a while to get into it too. Was that the one with the woman with big, rough hands and big knuckles? Or was she in Ballad of the Sad Cafe? A mental picture of her has stayed with me over 20 years.
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Post by Oweena on Mar 15, 2020 19:13:37 GMT -5
Not the same one scrubb. The one I read has a mute man as the main character and the story revolves around him and several of the townspeople who are drawn to him. The 2nd biggest character is Mick, a young teen girl.
I probably will pick up another of her books as I'm now reading a strange biography of McCullers.
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Post by scrubb on Mar 15, 2020 23:54:25 GMT -5
Oh, yes, the mute man. I vaguely remember it now.
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Post by snowwhite on Mar 16, 2020 9:55:42 GMT -5
I've recently read False Value (Rivers of London series) and The Flatshare (by Beth O'Leary). False Value was as enjoyable as the rest of the series and frustrating in approximately the same ways (loose ends, characters I wanted to know more about), The Flatshare was a nice read. It was predictable but well enough written I didn't mind. I have one story left in The Long and Short of it (Chronicles of St Mary's) and am halfway through Before the Coffee Gets Cold, which is good reading, if not gripping. Still plenty of other material in the house once I've got through them
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Post by Oweena on Mar 18, 2020 17:25:03 GMT -5
My Autobiography of Carson McCullers by Jenn Shapland
A totally different kind of bio, maybe it doesn't even count as a bio. Shapland was an intern archivist and discovered love letters between McCullers and another woman which pushed Shapland to investigate McCullers life. At the time Shapland was in the process of her own coming out in her late twenties and she combines the two topics in an engaging way.
She also ruminates on how well any biographer can ever really "know" their subject, and how an autobiography is almost always slanted by the subject to show their best sides and blunt the negatives.
There's a lot about how queer artists (mainly females) have often had their queerness denied by biographers, and that euphemisms for their queerness abound. It also questions what is the truth of a persons life, using her own and McCullers lives as a backdrop.
Now I have to read McCullers final book, "A Clock Without Hands" as I'm more intrigued with her writing after reading Shapland's book.
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Post by Liiisa on Mar 19, 2020 19:00:45 GMT -5
13) Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
Well that was a messed-up novel! It was mostly one character talking about her childhood relationships. But the thing is that her talking about this slowly reveals what those children were there for, and what their lives would be like, and yiiikes. So it had its tedious moments, but was also compelling to read in a very low-key kind of way.
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