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Post by mei on Jun 1, 2020 13:44:46 GMT -5
No inspiration for a punny thread title but I have a new book to post so this will have to do. Come in here for all your new reads, book reviews, author complaints etc. May thread is here
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Post by mei on Jun 1, 2020 13:48:04 GMT -5
was hoping to get this book finished in May but Saturday/Sunday turned out too busy (but lovely!). So, I spent most of today reading and finished #13 "'t Hooge Nest" (translated: 'the high nest') by Roxane van Iperen. A best selling recent book about a true story from the second world war and two Jewish sisters who set up a Jewish hide-out in the middle of the woods in a house called (t Hooge Nest). The author moved into this house years ago and when renovating discovered all kinds of resistance papers, jewish memorabilia, 2nd WW bits which led her to investigate the history of the house, resulting in this book. It's a pretty amazing story, very well researched, well written and though I don't usually read these types of books I really enjoyed this.
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Post by Liiisa on Jun 1, 2020 13:54:59 GMT -5
Thank you mei! Bookmarking.
I just began the final part of the Nnedi Okorafor "Binti" trilogy, but I'll be back with you all soon because they're short.
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Post by scrubb on Jun 1, 2020 19:20:03 GMT -5
I'm reading Thomas King's "Green Grass and Running Water". He's an indigenous author who had a long running radio program that I used to listen to, that had many of the characters from this book. I'm only about 1/10 of the way through, but it's funny and good so far.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Jun 1, 2020 20:39:00 GMT -5
41. The Two Lives of Lydia Bird - Josie Miller.
Chick lit - Lydia and Freddie have been together since they were 14. On Lydia's 27th birthday Freddie dies in a car accident and the novel looks at Lydia's grief and how she manages to find a new life. Or lives - as some pills given to her by a doctor seem to give her the ability to join Freddie in another life when she is asleep. The story looks at Lydia's life when she is awake and dealing with her grief, getting on with life with her work, her friends and her family. And also her life when asleep, when her relationship with Freddie continues. I had a few niggles with the story - if she is slotting into this alternate universe life when she takes a pill, what happens to that Lydia during that time. etc. On the whole it was a very easy read.
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Post by Oweena on Jun 1, 2020 21:55:01 GMT -5
mei that book sounds interesting.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Jun 1, 2020 22:37:06 GMT -5
Yes - hoping there is an English translation.
Ah, there is. Called The Sisters of Auschwitz.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jun 2, 2020 6:18:19 GMT -5
Bookmarking. Thank you Mei.
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Post by Liiisa on Jun 3, 2020 5:14:53 GMT -5
27) Nnedi Okorafor, Binti: The Night Masquerade
The third of the Afrofuturist Binti trilogy of novellas, as noted above. She ties things up nicely and as always I love her science fiction from an African perspective.
Now I'm on to another sci-fi novella that I downloaded onto the Kindle... killing time until the weekend, when I can pick up the new Hilary Mantel (and something else that I've now forgotten) from the bookstore curbside pickup.
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Post by Oweena on Jun 4, 2020 21:59:38 GMT -5
Yes - hoping there is an English translation. Ah, there is. Called The Sisters of Auschwitz. Yes, I looked it up too. In hardcover here, still hasn't made it to our library kindle offerings.
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Post by Oweena on Jun 4, 2020 22:19:20 GMT -5
The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care By Anne Boyer
She's a poet so there are lyrical parts to this book which tells the tale of her breast cancer diagnosis, treatment, and recovery. But not in the usual fighting the disease as a battle and triumphing over it. It's an angry book, and rightfully so. It's a clear eyed critique of the profits to be made from BC patients, the brutal takedown of the pink ribbon bullshit (I cheered through this part), and how she struggled to continue working so she could keep her insurance. She touches on women who choose to forgo chemo and the pushback they receive. She touches on how some oncologists will never stop offering just one more chemo cocktail to obviously terminal patients. She confronts the PC version that a BC patient must be a warrior against the disease. My closest experience with BC is as the primary caretaker of my friend M in the last year of her life. I think I liked this book because I could relate to many of the things that angered the author were things I railed against during the 4 years M was receiving treatment.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Jun 4, 2020 22:23:53 GMT -5
Yes - hoping there is an English translation. Ah, there is. Called The Sisters of Auschwitz. Yes, I looked it up too. In hardcover here, still hasn't made it to our library kindle offerings. It is waiting for me at one of the local libraries. Unfortunately not the one where you can just drop in for a 15 minute borrow, return and browse. It is the one where I have to ring up to make an appointment to collect the book. Am holding off for now as I am hoping some of the other books I have reserved will turn up soon.
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Post by Liiisa on Jun 5, 2020 7:03:05 GMT -5
Ooh Oweena - I want to read that, I have many many thoughts about that stuff.
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Post by Liiisa on Jun 5, 2020 19:52:38 GMT -5
28) Brooke Bolander, The Only Harmless Great Thing
Another novella... this being a counterfactual history of elephants working in factories using radium. It has a revolutionary spirit. I really really liked it. I learned of the author because on Twitter she wrote an imaginative, angry yet humorous screed against the NYPD, and I thought "I need to read your book."
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Post by Oweena on Jun 7, 2020 17:56:29 GMT -5
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
Tells the story of a mid 20s african american female, struggling to decide what she wants to do with her life. In the meantime she babysits 3 days a week for an obnoxious rich white woman. A racist event happens which is caught on videotape and the rest of the book builds to how the different characters deal with it.
While I can see the larger social issues the author was trying to get at, I felt like the characters conversations and situations made it lean towards reasding a bit like chick lit, and that's not my bag.
There is also a sub plot concerning a high school relationship between two of the characters. It ended badly 16 years ago, and these two characters are still obsessing over it. I mean, are there really people in their mid 30s hung up on a relationship that ended badly in high school? I couldn't relate to that part of the book in the least.
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Post by sophie on Jun 7, 2020 19:26:52 GMT -5
The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna. Excellent novel, set in Sierra Leone before and after the civil war. This book was the winner of Commomwealth Writers Prize; the author is of Sierra Leone/ Scottish background. Her father (the Sierra Leone part) was executed by one of the military juntas prior to the war, and her writing is full of the shadows war and civil strife throws upon the mental health of the civilian population. This novel has several layers exploring relationships, betrayals and the effects of colonial issues. Highly recommended.
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Post by scrubb on Jun 7, 2020 20:29:01 GMT -5
Green Grass, Running WAter by Thomas King. Canadian indigenous author - he had an ongoing radio program on the CBC (Canadian public radio) about "The Dead Dog Cafe" with recurring characters - I think this book was the origin of it. Set in rural Alberta with First Nations characters and some magic realism and some mythical ancestors. It was fun and looked at some of the issues among First Nations around here, but not in depth.
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Post by lillielangtry on Jun 10, 2020 0:12:20 GMT -5
sophie I read Forna's autobiography - or rather the biography of her father - last year, The Devil that Danced on the Water. She's a wonderful writer. I'm not reading much at the moment, at least not in physical form. But here are my first ones for June: Leila Chudori, The Longest Kiss, translated by Pamela Allen and other translators A book of short stories from Indonesia. Some of these were linked short stories and those were the ones I liked best. By the time I'd read four or five stories featuring the same family, the ones that didn't have those characters seemed out of place. Still, a generally good collection. I'm surprised to see on Goodreads that it has only a very few ratings. Johny Pitts, Afropean: Notes from Black Europe (on audio, read by the author) Pitts is from Sheffield in South Yorkshire, which is where I was also born, but he is black (or mixed race, as he called himself growing up - his dad was African American, his mum white British) and grew up in a tough area. In this book, he backpacks around Europe visiting black communities and looking at their similarities and differences. It's very interesting. The only criticism you could really make, as he says himself, is that he didn't have the time to really dig deep in each country. So in GErmany,he only visits Berlin, which as the capital is a special case. I enjoyed it though, his style is engaging and he gives a good mix of background material and anecdotes about the people he met along the way. Important though the events in the US are globally, I think discussions of race can sometimes become very US-focused to the exclusion of almost everywhere else, so I liked the European perspective. This book also recently won the Jhalak Prize for a book by a British BAME writer. The author has donated his prize money to a local charity, so I hope he at least sells some more books! I for one wouldn't have read it without the prize.
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Post by lillielangtry on Jun 10, 2020 0:13:28 GMT -5
p.s. Oweena Oh, someone suggested Such a Fun Age for our book club. I'm kind of hoping that suggestion doesn't get picked up on.
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Post by Liiisa on Jun 10, 2020 5:10:26 GMT -5
I saw mention of "Afropean" on a tweet from the Jhalak prize, lillie, and thought I might read it, so thank you for seconding it.
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Post by sophie on Jun 10, 2020 20:25:02 GMT -5
After my last read, I wanted an easy and entertaining book, so I got David Baldacci’s newest: Walk the Wire. Good thriller which no doubt will be made into a genre movie.
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Post by scrubb on Jun 11, 2020 13:37:46 GMT -5
Just finished Anthony Burgess' "Honey for the Bears". Very dated. Very sexist and homophobic. British man and his wife going to Russia, ostensibly for a vacation but they plan to sell a bunch of dresses on the black market, as a favour to the widow of a friend who used to do it annually but died after buying hte stock but before the trip.
It's a ridiculous schmozzle from start to end - intended to be a farce, with Paul lurching from one catastrophe to another while his wife is sick and ends up turning out to be a lesbian who runs off with a russian doctor. But it was just so stupid and no one was the least bit sympathetic and I'm honestly not sure why I bothered to finish it.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jun 12, 2020 6:42:51 GMT -5
35. Two Down, Nero Blanc. Disappointing. A cozy mystery that wasn’t cozy, with cryptic crosswords that weren’t cryptic. The amateur sleuth’s PI boyfriend was more prominent than the crossword constructor sleuth.
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Post by sprite on Jun 14, 2020 15:44:49 GMT -5
Black Mass, John Gray
ugh. OK, a very clever man, but he likes to remind you how clever he is. and has an infuriating habit of making sentences with multiple interjections that double back on themselves. I had to reread several passages.
the main idea is that "western" politics is based on the Christian idea of the apocalypse. So every political movement believes that history is heading towards something better, that there is a narrative. And, most of these movements believe that there will be some period of diaster before heaven.
he spends a lot of time detailing where the idea of apocalypse comes from, then looks at how different political schools of thought incorporate it, and gives some examples of how this causes governments to make poor decisions, particularly the invasion of Iraq, and the attempt to wage a 'war on terror' in the same way as a war against another country.
There was a lot of interesting stuff, but it was exhausting getting at it. possibly, if i had a background in political theory i would have found it easier. He makes a lot of assertions, but doesn't always back them up or develop them. Remember--he's very clever! (ugh)
He briefly touches on how political theory in 'Eastern' societies is different, because they do not have messianiac religions. This, to me, was far more interesting. I would like to read something (not by him) comparing how this has influenced the history and modern day politics of these countries.
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Post by sprite on Jun 14, 2020 15:52:18 GMT -5
Green Grass, Running WAter by Thomas King. Canadian indigenous author - he had an ongoing radio program on the CBC (Canadian public radio) about "The Dead Dog Cafe" with recurring characters - I think this book was the origin of it. Set in rural Alberta with First Nations characters and some magic realism and some mythical ancestors. It was fun and looked at some of the issues among First Nations around here, but not in depth. I loved the Dead Dog Cafe, and I miss that no one here gets me 'Wait for the signs!" comments.
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Post by Oweena on Jun 14, 2020 20:54:12 GMT -5
The King at the Edge of the World by Arthur Phillips
Set in England in the late 1500s when Elizabeth I is nearing death with no issue, this novel uses the quest to determine if James of Scotland is a Protestant or a Catholic as the backdrop to the story. Everyone wants to know if he is fit to be the ruler of a united Scotland and England when Elizabeth dies.
The main character is a doctor from the Ottoman Empire who is part of a diplomatice mission to England. He is left behind when the Turks return home and the story follows him from Elizabeth's court to James' in Scotland. We get to witness the backwaters of England and Scotland through his eyes. He's a sympathetic character, and you root for him as he's shuffled around as a gift and decoy.
It's well-written with intriguing characters, and the story sucked me in. It's also of course an allegory to today and our fears of "otherness" and how humans choose to fear that which we don't understand. The narratie is dense and I liked the twists and turns of the plot.
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Post by Liiisa on Jun 15, 2020 5:22:33 GMT -5
sprite, that sounds like one of those books I'd want to read and regret reading because it's such a slog; but also it sounds kind of interesting. Oweena, that sounds interesting too; could read that next though I might be tired by then of the 16th century (currently still mid-Hilary Mantel).
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Post by sprite on Jun 15, 2020 5:33:31 GMT -5
If someone else could rewrite it, I'd read it again.
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Post by scrubb on Jun 16, 2020 20:12:43 GMT -5
Just finished Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse". Only the second book of hers I've read, and I liked it much more than Mrs. Dalloway (the first).
She captures all the tiny little thoughts and nuances of thoughts in a variety of people's heads. I find it evocative - I remember so many of the feelings she elicits from her characters, and all the meaning in tiny gestures. But it gets exhausting, having every single moment carry layers and depths of meaning.
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Post by sophie on Jun 16, 2020 23:18:07 GMT -5
In Another Time by Jillian Cantor. A chick lit type of novel about a beautiful young violinist who loses 10 years of memory (before, during and afterWW2) in Germany and her lover who mysteriously disappears once in a while. A bit strange but I enjoyed it as an easy read.
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