MAY you get lost in a good book

[lillielangtry]

I see that the number of posts in our monthly threads has been rising since many of us have been at home more than usual :-)

Here is the thread for May. April is here - dearest mods, perhaps we can unpin a couple of the older threads?

Looking forward to hearing the good, the bad and the ugly of your current reads!

[ozziegiraffe]

Thank you Lillie. Bookmarking. I’ve nearly finished my book club book.

[Liiisa]

Thank you lillie!

Bookmarking; I'm about a quarter of the way through a rather unusual bit of nonfiction from the 1930s about people on an expedition to what was then called Tanganyika to collect snakes for the Smithsonian collection at the zoo.

[mei]

already a book finished in May! well, it was a quick read, of which I read most in April obvs.

#10 - "Vrijhaven Shanghai" (translates to Sanctuary Shanghai, I think) by Joan Veldkamp, a Dutch journalist who has worked as a correspondent in China and Japan. It's a fairly short non-fiction book detailing how ten thousands of Jews were able to flee to Shanghai from Austria and Germany during the Second World War and what life in Shanghai was like for them, caught in the midst of the same war but with the Japanese as aggressors. Very interesting.

[ozziegiraffe]

29. Lonely Girl, Lynne Vincent McCarthy. The story of a young woman who grew up as a traumatised child, and the extraordinary situation she finds herself in when she becomes a witness in a murder.
The story was dark, and the young woman’s life bleak. Well written, but too stark and bizarre for me.
This is the first read for our local virtual book club. A first novel by an Australian author.

[HalcyonDaze]

Once again I have to finish Monday's nights book club book. Thankfully this time it is a book I've read multiple times before and have also seen the movie a few times. So it should be fine.

[lillielangtry]

OK, I finished three books this weekend:

#25 Eure Heimat ist unser Albtraum
A selection of essays about life in Germany by people who have immigrated to the country, or whose family did, mostly focusing on racism, discrimination and the concept of belonging. Like most collections, I found some contributions stronger than others. But as someone who came to Germany as an adult, but is also white and thus sometimes "read" as German more than other people in the second or third generation, I found it very interesting.

#26 A Winter's Promise, by Christelle Dabos (translated by Hildegard Serle)
YA fantasy. Ah... I quite enjoyed this, but it just sort of ended, so you have to continue to the next book in the series. I like even books in a series to stand up on their own. So that was a bit annoying.

#27 The Eighth Life, by Nino Haratischwili (translated from the German by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin)
Do you have room in your life for a 1,000-page novel about Georgia (the former Soviet state, not the US one!)?? If you like family sagas, YES! It's the story of four generations of the same family through the twentieth century, covering the Revolution, Communist era, fall of the Soviet Union... And with a load of love stories going on as well. I absolutely loved it. The most fun book I've read all year I'd say.

[sophie]

Lille, Taft last book sounds interesting, especially about a part of the world not featured much in literature.

I finished ‘The Golden Mean’ by Annabel Lyon. It’s a novel (based on documented details) about Aristotle‘s life before he set up his school in Athens. Good read if you like factual historical fiction.

[Oweena]

Apeirogon by Colum McCann

Read this book!
Lyrical, sad, hopeful, the struggle between justice and revenge, how frigate birds fly for months, it's all in this book, and more.

The narrative examines the lives of real life friends Rami and Bassam, an Israeli Jew and a Palestinian who both live in Jerusalem. They're toiling towards peace in the region through the telling of their stories of loss. Rami's teen daughter Smadar was killed by suicide bombers, and Bassam's 10 year old daughter Abir was killed by a rubber bullet to the head fired by an Israeli soldier.
The book is about so much more though--about how actions taken years, decades, and centuries before affect today, and how no action happens that doesn't have an effect somewhere.

I loved this book and how it spins the tale in differing directions but comes back to the center.
Who knew the details of the best way to get through a checkpoint could be mesmerizing, or that a trip through Jerusalem via motorbike could be like poetry?

I've read other McCann books, but this one is the best, I'll be thinking about it for a long time.
Read this book.

[Liiisa]

Ooh noted Oweena. I really like Colum McCann, and I love frigatebirds!

[riverhorse]

lillielangtry - is the novel about Georgia originally published in German? If so, I might try to find it in German.

[lillielangtry]

May 5, 2020 10:43:31 GMT -5 riverhorse said:

lillielangtry - is the novel about Georgia originally published in German? If so, I might try to find it in German.

Yes. I generally read German books in German also, but at over 1,000 pages in the German edition, I was quite frankly too lazy! Also I "know" the translators on Twitter. I'm considering reading another of her novels in GErman at some point now though.
It's called Das achte Leben (für Brilka).

[snowwhite]

Due to incompetence, I ended up with a couple of credits on audible, so I used one to get The Rearranged Life of Oona Lockhart (aka Oona Out of Order) - good value since it's a 350 page book and fairly expensive to buy.

I really enjoyed it, although it wasn't quite what I was expecting somehow.

Not sure what to get with my other credit, although I did manage to pick up a free short story in the Rivers of London series. I've not listened to it yet.

[HalcyonDaze]

32. The Cottage at Rosella Cove - Sandie Docker
Australian chick lit. Nicole flees from Sydney and her relationship and ends up in a small beach side town. There she finds letters that give the story of Ivy, who lived in her cottage during WW2. There were some parts of the book that niggled at me, but on the whole it was better than a lot of other chick lit

33. Jasper Jones - Craig Silvey
A reread for bookclub. Still a wonderful book.

34. Intermediate Thermodynamics - Susannah Nix
Chick lit that tried to be intelligent by having the main character work as an aerospace engineer and like science fiction and horror movies. This lead to too many mentions of being a rocket scientist. I felt like the author wasn't sure whether to make Esther neurodivergent or not and the story didn't really gel.

35. The Song of the Quarkbeast - Jasper Fforde
More Jasper Fforde silliness.

[scrubb]

May 6, 2020 3:59:09 GMT -5 snowwhite said:

Due to incompetence, I ended up with a couple of credits on audible,

That reminded me that I ended up with a huge credit on my visa. While I'll use about 2/3 of it on my car insurance in a couple days, that still leaves me with a few hundred $ to spend. I hate leaving it in their hands, so I need to spend it ASAP Better buy books!

[ozziegiraffe]

30. A Cruise to Murder, DawnBrooks. This story is well thought out and believable, with a likeable set of characters and a well written setting on a cruise ship. A quick, east and enjoyable read.

[Oweena]

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
Interesting characters, many of whom make choices they know will likely end badly but still they choose that path.
Mostly told from the point of view of a young woman named Vincent, it centers on a Bernie Madoff type character and the ponzi scheme he's been running for decades. His victims also tell their side of the story, and their stories intersect in interesting ways. Quite a bit of the book is set in British Columbia in and around a hotel.
I liked the structure, and even when the narrative is going back and forth, not chronologically, it's for a good reason.
You won't necessarily like any of the characters, but pretty much every one of them is interesting.

[Liiisa]

Good to hear, Oweena. I'm going to have a copy of "The Glass Hotel" to read as soon as I manage to get over to my mom's place when all this is over... she did NOT like it, and said she'd be glad to get rid of it. Which means I'll probably love it - we enjoy talking books but rarely like the same ones! Anyway:

21) F. G. Carnachan and H. C. Adamson, The Empire of the Snakes

Where do I start.... So a local used bookstore had a thing where you give them your credit card info, set a price, tell them the kinds of things you like, and they'd assemble a Mystery Box of books for you. So one of the things I said were "books by naturalists from the 1930s or earlier," so what did I find in my box when I received it but this, The Empire of the Snakes (first edition, 1935).

This book is the memoir of a naturalist (Carnachan) from fieldwork he did in Tanganyika (now Tanzania) in the 1920s to study animals and local culture and capture animals for the DC zoo. One of the things he has trouble with is finding people who will help him find snakes, but eventually he finds that the reason is that there is a powerful society in the region that has a social/magical/political relationship with snakes, and interesting things happen from there.

This is presented as a true memoir - it reads quite literally. Some of it I found a little implausible, but I enjoyed reading it. I went into it with a great deal of trepidation, expecting it to be paternalistic about the local people at best, outright racist at worst. And it wasn't by any means free of those things (it was written in the 30s by a white guy, after all). But it was really surprisingly ok. Carnachan becomes friends with the people he's working with, and writes about them from that perspective, and with respect. So I ended up being really quite pleasantly surprised.

[mei]

my pace of reading seems to be picking up :-)

#11 The Vegetarian by Han Kang. A book that's been on my list for a long time, and it became a book club read. Intriguing book, I really enjoyed it - and finished it within two days. It felt very 'Korean', based at least on a few Korean films I've seen, but also because I suppose it reflects a little of what I know about Korean society (which is not much, but still). Recommended.

[sophie]

Welcome to the PineAway Motel and Cabins by Katarina Bivald. Chick lit about a small town in Oregon, USA .. the main character is actually a ghost as she dies at the beginning of the novel. It was light and a bit fluffy.. not Pulitzer writing but perfect for reading in the hammock.

[Queen]

My ability to concentrate on anything outside work hours is severely reduced... the consequence is that I have half a dozen unfinished books. I'm struggling to settle into reading.

I did finally finish one.

The Strawberry Thief
Joanne Harris

fourth in the Chocolat series, and I seem to have missed out on #3

This seem to have way too much internal monologueing and not enough human conversation... it's written in 3 voices and one of those characters doesn't speak so that was someone inevitable. There seemed to be mundane where there should be magic and not enough magic when it was needed. The bad characters are so obviously bad and the characters that were interesting in earlier books are wasted strolling around the edges of the story.

There were bits I enjoyed but on the whole disappointing.

[Oweena]

A Woman Like Her: The Story Behind The Honor Killing of a Social Media Star by Sanam Maher

Picked this book up because the murder of of Qandeel Baloch happened when I was living in India and it was big news for days. The book filled in the background of what I didn't know about her life as well as what she'd supposedly done that brought dishonor upon her family and resulted in her brother strangling her.
It's a frustrating book when you read all the stupidity and misogyny and how few rights females have in Pakistan. It's not written all that well, and there were no surprises, and my bottom line is I wouldn't recommend unless you really have a super need to read depressing material about how far we still have to go in coming even close to equality.

[Liiisa]

22) Nnedi Okorafor, Binti: Home

Okorafor writes really interesting short science-fiction novels featuring characters from Africa. The Binti series features a college-age woman from a tribal community who leaves to go to university on another planet, and things happen. In this one she comes home to earth and discovers something powerful about herself and her family.

What's great about these is how densely imagined the world and communities are, and how different it feels from your standard Western European fantasy novel (e.g., the magic/meditation technique that Binti's tribe uses is based in advanced mathematics).

[sophie]

Yikes, I looked on line to order ‘The Eighth Life’ that was mentioned a few posts back, and a paperback edition will set me back (with shipping) over $50... I haven’t pressed the order button yet!!

[scrubb]

First book I have finished in AGES - Nature Obscura by Kelly Brenner. The one Liiiiiisa recommended last month about a back yard naturalist in the city. I figured anything with a chapter on dragon flies was definitely of interest. It was really good and I learned a lot about some kinds of life that I didn't know much about.

[Liiisa]

May 14, 2020 14:07:11 GMT -5 scrubb said:

First book I have finished in AGES - Nature Obscura by Kelly Brenner. The one Liiiiiisa recommended last month about a back yard naturalist in the city. I figured anything with a chapter on dragon flies was definitely of interest. It was really good and I learned a lot about some kinds of life that I didn't know much about.

Yaaaaaaayy!!! I'm so glad you enjoyed it.

[whothingie]

I'm struggling to read anything that requires more than 5 minutes of concentration. Sign of the times I suppose.

[scrubb]

May 14, 2020 14:34:14 GMT -5 Liiisa said:

May 14, 2020 14:07:11 GMT -5 scrubb said:

First book I have finished in AGES - Nature Obscura by Kelly Brenner. The one Liiiiiisa recommended last month about a back yard naturalist in the city. I figured anything with a chapter on dragon flies was definitely of interest. It was really good and I learned a lot about some kinds of life that I didn't know much about.

Yaaaaaaayy!!! I'm so glad you enjoyed it.

I'd love to go for a walk with her. And look at her tardigrades.

[Liiisa]

Me too! I am super jealous of her tardigrades.

[lillielangtry]

May 14, 2020 9:42:11 GMT -5 sophie said:

Yikes, I looked on line to order ‘The Eighth Life’ that was mentioned a few posts back, and a paperback edition will set me back (with shipping) over $50... I haven’t pressed the order button yet!!

Oh that is a shame Sophie... I must admit I got a fairly cheap Kindle edition.

Marijke Lucas Rijneveld - The Discomfort of Evening, translated by Michele Hutchinson
Rijneveld is a Dutch author shortlisted for the Booker International.
A short novel about a girl on her parents' dairy farm and what happens after her brother died. I guess this is really a book about grief. The family is very religious and the combination of a child's understanding of god, animals, sex etc has blackly humorous elements. It's pretty dark overall though, and not one for people who are squeamish about bodily functions, as the narrator is quite preoccupied about the state of her bowels!

Asja Bakic, Mars, translated by Jennifer Zoble
A short story collection by a Bosnian author. I really, really enjoyed these stories. Some of them are darkly humorous, most are speculative (although only one takes place on Mars!). They are really well constructed.

Molly Keane, Devoted Ladies
Keane wrote about the Anglo-Irish upper class of the 30s. Wow, the characters are fantastically unlikeable, almost all of them. Just horrible people. But she describes the inner workings of people's minds so well. However, didn't love the fox-hunting description and, 250 pages in, was jarred by a bit of casual anti-Semitism and then, on the very next page, the n-word! Both of these were in the mouths of characters who, as I say, you are not supposed to like and I'm sure they were absolutely true to the time. Still, for the modern reader it's a distraction.