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Post by ozziegiraffe on May 15, 2020 6:32:40 GMT -5
31. Embroidered Truths, Monica Ferris. One of my favourite cozy mystery series, and this time the murder was very close to home for Betsy. Well thought out and well written, with a lovely setting and a good, developing, ongoing cast of characters.
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Post by scrubb on May 15, 2020 12:37:18 GMT -5
Couldn't sleep last night and kept picking up a book to pass the time, so finished a book I'd started and set aside several weeks ago (because it wasn't that good): In Some Lost Place: The First Ascent of of Nanga Parbat’s Mazeno Ridge, by Sandy Allen.
I usually love mountaineering books but this guy is just not a talented writer.
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Post by scrubb on May 15, 2020 22:49:53 GMT -5
Ooh, I saw an ad for a small local bookstore today - it's sort of a political bookstore but not entirely, since no way could a political bookstore make enough to stay open here - and they had "Himself" (Jess Kidd) on for $5.95!!
I would love to support them more than I do, but their books cost cover price for almost everything. I honestly prefer reading on an ebook, and ebooks cost about 1/2 as much (or maybe 2/3 as much). And for paperbacks, there are also great used book sales that raise funds for good causes every year.
Am I making excuses?
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Post by lillielangtry on May 16, 2020 1:17:14 GMT -5
Ha, yes, but we all do!
Germany has fixed prices for books (as the UK did til the 80s), with the result that it still has lots of independent book shops but its books are expensive and there are no "three for two" offers or the like.
I do a whole combination of things. I buy some books full price from the book shop on the corner, I buy some at secondhand book sales, I pick some up off public shelves, and yes, I have a Kindle. I prefer to buy lesser-known books from small presses full price, but those are often the ones that are hardest to get hold of, so sometimes they have to be e-books. I read around 100 books a year so I couldn't buy all of them full price - although I could, of course, choose to use a library instead. But there we are.
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Post by Queen on May 16, 2020 3:04:37 GMT -5
Persuasion - Jane Austen
a reread... very soothing.
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Post by Liiisa on May 16, 2020 5:40:37 GMT -5
Exactly what lillie said. I get some full-price books from the independent bookstore because I love the experience of shopping there, but I also get them from used bookstores or from the library, or if I'm traveling I'll get a couple for the Kindle.
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Post by scrubb on May 16, 2020 11:03:10 GMT -5
Yeah, I read about 100 books a year too, so spending $20+ per book is unreasonable. I should go to the library much more - I go through phases where I use it for a month or 2 and then I forget again. I buy almost entirely ebooks because, like I said, I prefer reading ebooks. We have great used book sales here with money going to the symphony. But I do buy a few full price from independent bookstores each year.
But right now I have - literally - a stack of paperbacks that just keeps growing, because I keep buying books through bookbub instead of reading them.
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Post by sophie on May 16, 2020 15:15:18 GMT -5
Well, I splurged and added a few more books to my order and pressed the buy button. When I get my credit card statement I may have regrets, but not now.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on May 17, 2020 10:04:50 GMT -5
32. Killer Cruise, Dawn Brookes. Rachel and her friends continue to provide light enjoyable reading and mystery aboard a cruise ship. This time we sailed around the Baltic as the mystery was solved. I was a bit disappointed by a rather out of character action by Rachel towards the end, that did help her solve the mystery.
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Post by kneazle on May 18, 2020 0:38:01 GMT -5
OK I haven't posted in one of these threads for a while but I've just finished reading The Secret Runners of New York by Matthew Reilly.
Now apparently Reilly has a big following but I've not read anything by him before.
It's about a group of teens just before an apocalyptic event is due to hit earth who find a way to time travel. It sounds exactly like the kind of thing I should like.
It's just bad - the main character is 'not like other girls' and the other girls in the book are mean girls from central casting. No one sounds believably like a teenager and a lot of things don't make sense.
If it wasn't a book club book it would probably be a DNF.
Avoid.
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Post by scrubb on May 18, 2020 11:13:35 GMT -5
Thanks for the warning, kneazle!
I finished "Still Life" by Louise Penny. It's the first in her Chief Inspector Armand Gamache detective series, in Quebec. I keep thinking of ganache whenever I read his name, which is distracting, but otherwise I liked it a lot. I haven't read a good mystery for a while. I did see a few flaws in her writing, but overall liked the characters and the story arch, and while I'm hoping she improves as she becomes more experienced, the flaws weren't enough to put me off the series at all.
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Post by Liiisa on May 18, 2020 18:20:55 GMT -5
23) Peter Brannen, The Ends of the World
Oh! I really loved this! It's a well-researched history of the five major mass extinctions, which sounds grim, and of course it is grim. But he wrote it in an engaging and even often fun way (I mean how can you resist someone who describes trilobites as "benthic Roombas"?). It's one of those science books that include a lot of information on the researchers themselves, which I love, and had a lot of geology in it (continental drift!). The only chapter I found to be a little slow was the one about our current predicament, but that's probably because I've read SO much about how much we've screwed up the biosphere that I'll admit I had sort of a "yes yes yes I know that already, go back and tell us more about the Ordovician" reaction to it. But that doesn't take away from the value of the work in general; for anyone who's interested in this sort of stuff, I highly recommend it.
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Post by Liiisa on May 24, 2020 5:34:47 GMT -5
24) Jessica Anthony, Enter the Aardvark
The story of a hypocritical closeted gay Republican Congressman with a Ronald Reagan fetish who is given a taxidermied aardvark, and, in parallel, the Victorian story of the taxidermied aardvark itself.
So. On the one hand I did stay up a little late to see how this book would end, because the writing does carry you along nicely to the tying-up of the various plots. But if she'd spent some more time with this it might have been a much better book - it feels raced through (like a large chunk of the plot mechanics is presented to you on a single page, by the lead character imagining that that's what must have happened). Plus she has no idea of DC geography - she says the Congressman lives in Foggy Bottom in order to be near the Capitol, which is like saying that he lived in the Marais to be near the Sorbonne or something. But she did put a great deal of work into describing the taxidermist, and his shop, so that was good at least.
So anyway, I thought it was sloppy, and I didn't like the way either plot turned out, but it kept my interest nonetheless.
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Post by mei on May 24, 2020 12:49:20 GMT -5
finally finished #12 Invisible Women: Exposing data bias in a world designed for men by Caroline Criado Perez.
I think it's been mentioned here by many of you already. It's very good. Well-written, super informative, but also pretty disheartening at times :-( Very important book, hopefully more people read it!
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Post by Liiisa on May 24, 2020 17:38:49 GMT -5
25) Samuel R. Delaney, The Ballad of Beta-2
1960s sci-fi paperbacks are the best. This one is about a galactic anthropology Ph.D. student who goes to investigate a distant Earth colony that had suffered a disaster that is only known from a group of folk ballads. Was it great art? No. Was it better than "Enter the Aardvark"? Yes.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on May 25, 2020 8:02:26 GMT -5
33. Little Donkey, Jodi Taylor. A short book read to fulfil a Goodreads challenge. A very sweet and beautifully funny Christmas story. Anyone, like me, who has ever produced a Nativity Play should appreciate it.
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Post by Oweena on May 25, 2020 11:45:54 GMT -5
Things in Jars by Jess Kidd
Read this because I liked her book Himself so much. And I think both sprite and scrubb have read this. I liked it. The narrative moved at a good clip, I liked the main female character Bridie, and who doesn't love a book that can use the word muculent so well?
IMO, Himself is her better novel, but Things in Jars is entertaining and I like her writing style in both.
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Post by Liiisa on May 25, 2020 14:26:29 GMT -5
I've always prided myself on my vocabulary, but I had to look up "muculent"! Now I'll have to read these books.
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Post by scrubb on May 25, 2020 15:13:29 GMT -5
I just finished 'Himself' by Jess Kidd, and loved it. A bit hard to describe. Orphan Mahony, now 26 and quite disreputable, discovers who his mother was and goes to the village where she was from to find out what he can. Lots of good magic realism and great characters and an involving story. And it looks below the surface.
Oweena, I haven't read "Things in Jars", it was "Mr. Flood's Last Chance" that I read and liked very much. But I think I liked "Himself" better.
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Post by Oweena on May 25, 2020 16:17:52 GMT -5
I'm glad you liked Himself scrubb, it was on my favorite fiction list for 2019.
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Post by tzarine on May 27, 2020 0:40:36 GMT -5
hello cathy & heathcliff better you than me
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Post by lillielangtry on May 27, 2020 0:41:26 GMT -5
May Sinclair, The Life and Death of Harriett Frean This is a Virado Modern Classic, originally from 1922, that I read in one sitting. I believe Sinclair invented the term "stream of consciousness". So yes, it's the story of the whole of a woman's life and shows how she repeatedly suppressed her own desires and tried to do what others wanted, but ultimately also caused pain to them in doing so. Which is kind of devastating. If you like Virginia Woolf, you'll probably find this interesting.
Ian McEwan, Sweet Teeth This was a book club pick. I would not have chosen to read it. It's sort of a spy story (not really a thriller) set in the UK of the '70s, which was actually the aspect I liked the best - he writes a lot about that era, the political turmoil, the strikes, the oil crisis, bomb attacks by the Provisional IRA - all things that were very influential on my parents and their politics, and that I grew up in the '80s hearing about. As for the story, meh. I read so few white men these days I'm not really used to them anymore :-)))
p.s. "muculent" was new to me too. Ew. ;-)
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Post by Liiisa on May 27, 2020 5:05:24 GMT -5
"I read so few white men these days I'm not really used to them anymore" -- THAT made me laugh, well done.
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Post by mei on May 27, 2020 6:30:42 GMT -5
I'm adding Himself to my 'to read' list, if so many of you are enthusiastic!
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Post by Liiisa on May 29, 2020 19:50:43 GMT -5
26) Emil Petaja, Alpha Yes, Terra No!
So this and the previous book I read were actually both halves of a 1960s double-novel paperback!
I have read one other Emil Petaja novel, and I can say based on those two data points that he puts something about the Kalevala into everything he writes. This one was no exception; the hero is actually genetically partly from Alpha Centauri but he grew up in Finland, so etc etc The Kalevala. The plot is all over the map, but of course irresistible because it's a 1960s sci-fi paperback.
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Post by scrubb on May 30, 2020 0:03:28 GMT -5
Ha, that sounds awesome, liiiiisa. If you ever crossed paths with Kape on LPTT, he's a Fin who had a running joke that he was actually from Alpha Centauri. I remember discussing the Kalevala with him, too.
I finally finished plowing my painful way through George Bernard Shaw's "Man and Superman". If it's really a play, it's the most boring play ever. Mostly it's a guy philosophizing, with the base premise that women's only motivation in life is to marry and have kids, and men who give in to it throw away the opportunity to use their talents and genius. I mean, it's Shaw, so it's got a few more layers than that, but he doesn't even come close to looking at why it may have been true that women's main goal was to marry. (I.e., what the fuck else was there for them in life?)
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Post by lillielangtry on May 30, 2020 3:11:01 GMT -5
How is it the end of May already?
Mia Alvar, In the Country This short story collection is my read by a woman for the Philippines. Another book I probably wouldn't have got to if I hadn't been doing this reading challenge and an absolute gem. All the stories are focused on the people from the Philippines but in different contexts - some have emigrated to the US, some are expat workers in the Middle East, others are still in the Philippines. There is a greal focus on the importance of education for getting out of poverty. The characters are so beautifully drawn. I feel like if you enjoy Jhumpa Lahiri, you would enjoy this.
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Post by Oweena on May 30, 2020 16:55:54 GMT -5
The Plaza: the Secret Life of America's Most Famous Hotel by Julie Satow
Not sure why I read this. I learned a bit about early 1900s NYC but beyond that it's a big zero.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on May 30, 2020 21:10:24 GMT -5
34. Come Homicide or High Water, Denise Swanson. This is more like the original Scumble River series, and had me laughing out loud at the hoops a small town school psychologist has to jump through to get decent working conditions. It so resonates with me. Interesting double mystery, with a good solution that was somewhat unexpected.
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Post by lillielangtry on May 31, 2020 2:36:00 GMT -5
I squeezed another one into the month: Emily Koch, If I Die Before I Wake A colleague lent me this, so I thought I'd give it a go for politeness' sake, but I don't really read thrillers and this one has not changed my mind. It's told from the point of view of a man with locked-in syndrome (ie he appears to be in a permanent vegetative state but actually he can think and hear what's going on) as he tries to work out who put him there (and why!). I had to finish it because the story does draw you in to a point where you need to find out the solution - which I guess is what thrillers are supposed to do. And I did not guess either. But otherwise, I wasn't thrilled by the writing or by having to suspend my disbelief that every important piece of information would be revealed in a conversation by a hospital bed. If this is your genre, you may enjoy it!
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