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Post by HalcyonDaze on Jun 30, 2020 21:18:10 GMT -5
New book thread for July.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Jun 30, 2020 21:18:46 GMT -5
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jul 1, 2020 3:43:12 GMT -5
Thank you Hal. Hoping to finish a few soon.
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Post by Liiisa on Jul 1, 2020 4:55:10 GMT -5
lol Hal, thank you both for the thread and for the apocalypse prevention device.
I'm reading some 1960s sci-fi short stories now, so I should be through with them soon. Not great art, but so amusing.
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Post by sprite on Jul 1, 2020 7:40:32 GMT -5
Are these all through Libby? does your library use Libby too? i have some gripes, although i do generally like it.
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Post by scrubb on Jul 1, 2020 13:02:29 GMT -5
I just finished a sort of apocalyptic book. "East" by Kirk Kjeldsen. It was a bookbub special and it was ok. He's not a great writer, at all, but it was an ok story.
Set in the future after American society has collapsed and everyone lives a hand-to-mouth existence. Job is about 12, in Oregon, surviving by hunting for meat and picking nuts. It's so polluted that they can't grow gardens, apparently, and there's hardly any wildlife left. His last remaining family member dies and he decides to go to China to look for his mother, who went there to look for work when he was 4.
The concept is that China and America have "switched". All the work is in China; illegal immigrants from America go there in boat loads and work as indentured labour. It discusses how things are cyclic, and eventually it'll be the other way around again.
He never addresses the population of China, though. It seems to me that there will never be a need for foreign labour in China, given the vast numbers of people already there. It doesn't say how the country managed to get everyone to such a level of prosperity that they won't work for the factories/manufacturers anymore.
What it does do well is look at the insecurity and desperation of illegal immigrants.
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Post by sophie on Jul 3, 2020 9:17:35 GMT -5
Whispers of War by Julia Kelly, a chick-lit novel about 3 friends in London at the beginning of WW2, with one of them being a German national. It was light but well written and kept me entertained. I have several heavier books on my ‘to read’ pile, and have been procrastinating about them. I need to start.. Hilary Mantel, here I come...
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Post by scrubb on Jul 3, 2020 13:38:29 GMT -5
Like sophie, I've been reading a bunch of lightweight stuff recently and avoiding anything long or heavy. It did the trick, though, and got me back into the swing of reading a lot. I finally picked up a 1000 page tome on Dunkirk - only to discover that it's a collection of 3 different books about WW2 by the same author, not the single one that I was interested in reading (it's an ebook, and I didn't look at it closely when I bought it, so didn't realize).
So even the heavy book I started turned out to be a quicker read than expected. (Not that I'm done it yet.)
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jul 4, 2020 10:51:33 GMT -5
39. Off the Beading Path, Janice Peacock. A different kind of craft cozy, featuring bead makers and glass blowers. There is a mystery within the mystery, and the characters are well drawn. My only niggle was the level of importance the author gives glass-blowers in Venetian society. I think she has overrated their rank in that society.
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Post by sprite on Jul 4, 2020 17:13:59 GMT -5
I've started reading what I thought was going to be a whodunnit, but has begun with a young boy realising he's gay at the same time as he joins a choir conducted by a pedophile. disturbing.
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Post by Oweena on Jul 5, 2020 14:29:46 GMT -5
THe Giver of Stars by JoJo Moyes
Super easy read that I think a few here have read. All the storylines are wrapped up in a bow at the end. Good people triumph, bad people are put in their place. Those are the parts I didn't like. What I liked: learning about the female packhorse librarians of Appalachia in the 1930s-40s. I'd like to read a non-fiction book on the subject but a search only shows children's books on the topic.
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Post by Bastet on Jul 5, 2020 21:27:55 GMT -5
I’m reading a lot of urban fantasy, steampunk and regular fantasy series. I’m book 6 into Emperor’s Edge by Lindsay Buroker.
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Post by riverhorse on Jul 6, 2020 2:36:12 GMT -5
Have just finished "The Glass Ocean" by Beatriz Williams/Lauren Willig/Karen White (how on earth do 3 people manage to write a novel together?!) - historical fiction based around passengers on the ship Lusitania, which was torpedoed by German submarines in 1915 when crossing the Atlantic, interlaced with the modern day story of an historian doing research for a book trying to piece together the various mysteries involved with some of the passengers, potential spies, traitors, etc. It was enjoyable and I got through it quickly.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jul 6, 2020 5:55:32 GMT -5
40. Blood from a Stone, Donna Leon. Another excellent Brunetti mystery, set in Venice in winter, this time dealing with African migrants and blood diamonds.
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Post by lillielangtry on Jul 6, 2020 10:10:05 GMT -5
Zadie Smith, White Teeth Nearly 20 years on, I re-read this via audiobook with some trepidation because I LOVED it first time around. It was one of my all-time favourite books. I'm pleased to report I still really like it! I will say there are some bits where Smith falls into caricature and can get a bit annoying, but for a first novel its still an amazing accomplishment. THe world has moved on from thinking about genetically engineered mice as well. But the issues of religious extremism, multiculturalism, racism etc have not gone away.
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Post by scrubb on Jul 6, 2020 22:46:17 GMT -5
43. The Miracle of Dunkirk by Walter Lord.
Not a history book, it doesn't approach the Dunkirk evacuation by fully presenting the context and events to lead to hit; he focuses on personal accounts of what happened to individuals or specific battalions/squads/etc. Still, I did learn a lot - for instance, I didn't realize how many days and nights the evacuation lasted; it also was more clear about how many French troops were left behind than I knew before.
If you're interested in this specific event it's worthwhile, although if you're really into war stories and already know a lot about it, it probably wouldn't add much.
44. Shop Cats of New York by Tamar Arslanian. Not sure it counts as a book, exactly... it's only ~52 pages long with a lot of photos. Not great on the kindle. Sort of a cute concept but could have been a lot better.
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Post by Liiisa on Jul 7, 2020 5:06:38 GMT -5
32) Margaret St. Clair, Three Worlds of Futurity
More 1960s pulp sci-fi! Three weird little short stories (this is the other half of the double paperback I was reading before this).
These were a little more linear than the near-psychedelic "Message from the Eocene," but her writing is definitely imaginative and strange, so I looked her up. She had a degree in ancient Greek and was a Wiccan, which is all very interesting for a woman who was a science fiction writer in the 1950s and 1960s. It's not high art, but I'll definitely look for more of her stuff in the future.
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Post by Oweena on Jul 7, 2020 7:23:38 GMT -5
The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
A man in his 60s reminisces about 3 male friends from school and his first girlfriend. The first chapter tells what happened to them in their late teens/early 20s along with the break up with the girl. The second (longer) chapter describes his life 40 years later and how he's still obsessing over how it all ended and what it means now that he's older and can reflect.
The whole time I'm thinking, "just get over it you obsessive self-centered clod". Are there really people who rehash what happened 40 years ago as if trying to sort it out will somehow change how they and others feel? The character was so focused on the past I could not relate. I don't rehash things that happened last month let alone a year ago, so I found the book frustrating.
There is a small twist at the end that I only saw coming about 10 pages before it happened, but that wasn't enough to make up for slogging through this guys regrets of his young adulthood.
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Post by Liiisa on Jul 7, 2020 9:34:33 GMT -5
I read that in (checks notes) 2012, so I don't remember exactly how I felt about it, but I 100% agree with not relating to the rehashing thing. I also am 100% over books about men obsessing about their exes, or women they want to date but can't, or women they are dating but maybe they want to date other women, or etc.
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Post by sprite on Jul 7, 2020 10:03:07 GMT -5
I've read the first two Donna Leon's in the Brunetti series, and enjoyed them. a nice mix of characters. I don't lie the bits where the detective eats, because it just feels like a less drool-inducing version of Montalbano. Perhaps if I'd read these first, I'd feel differently.
Edinburgh: Edward Chee for some reason, I thought this was a Scottish mystery, but no, it's a sort of double coming-of-age story set in Maine. A young boy, Fee, chooses to join the regional boys choir, and quickly discovers that the choirmaster is a pedophile, working his way through the choirsters. Fee himself is in love with one of the straight boys who is abused, but has an ongoing sexual relationship with another boy. It's slightly disturbing, as the ages are clearly defined for some time, so it reads as though 10 yr olds are making out, which I suppose could be true, but none of the ten yr olds I knew would admit to it. Possibly they are actually 12 by then, which makes more sense.
There are predictably horrible consequences from the abuse the boys suffer, but the real crux of the story comes when Fee starts teaching at a private school attended by the son of his abuser. Fee doesn't know who the boy is, and the boy doesn't know who/what his father is, nor Fee's connection to him, as the father has been in jail all this time, and the mother went back to her own country after her sentence.
Fee's paternal grandparents are Korean, from a small island whose inhabitants believe they are descended from a Vixen spirit, and this theme of the fox/human/spirit--living in a skin that changes from day to day, weaves through the book.
It's a short book, beautifully written. It is better to read it slow, as some parts are almost stream of consciousness. I'm not sure if I'd recommend it to someone who was sensitive to child abuse.
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Post by scrubb on Jul 7, 2020 10:46:27 GMT -5
Another bookbub special - He Wanted the Moon:The Madness and Medical Genius of Dr. Perry Baird, and His Daughter's Quest to Know Him, by Mimi Baird. The author`s father disappeared when she was 6, in the early 1940s. Her mother refused to talk about him, and remarried within a couple of years. She did learn that he was manic-depressive, but aside from him visiting her once when she was about 11, she didn't see him again until his funeral when she was in her early 20s.
Eventually she tracked down his family and more of his story - he had been a brilliant doctor before his bipolar disease went out of control. He wrote a manuscript about the horrific treatments he was subjected to, and his daughter works it, plus notes from his case files at various institutions, into this book.
It`s a very sad look at what happened to people with mental illness in that era - but also just a very sad look at what mental illness does (or can do) to people.
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Post by scrubb on Jul 8, 2020 21:43:03 GMT -5
The White Album, by Joan Didion. It's a series of essays looking back at the years 1966-1978 or so in southern California. She was a journalist who was right there throughout the uprisings of the '60s - interviewed the Black Panthers, and Nancy Reagan. She says she was depressed during about 1966-1971, though.
It was interesting and she's a talented writer, but she came across as so focused on being an insider that she sort of forgot that most people are from a completely different world.
One essay was devoted to feminism, which she seemed to think was a manufactured cause. Her summary, paraphrased, is that sure, some women are exploited and repressed - but hey, some aren't, and it's really women's fault if they let themselves be. They can always just refuse to let themselves be exploited and repressed, right?
So, a mixed bag. I have another short collection of her essays and I might just wait a while to bother with it.
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Post by scrubb on Jul 9, 2020 11:43:23 GMT -5
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart. I didn't know it was YA fiction when I started it. About a girl from a rich family and her summers with her cousins on the family's island, until she's 15 when there's an accident and everything changes, but she has a brain trauma of some type and can't remember what happened. It's got very well drawn characters.
I'm now reading a book by Pearl Buck that is NOT set in China - it's set in the southern USA just after the civil war. I have enjoyed all of her books about/in China, so it'll be interesting to see how she handles such a different world.
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Post by scrubb on Jul 11, 2020 0:18:35 GMT -5
The Angry Wife, by Pearl S. Buck. About a Southern family right after the Civil War. Not bad, but not great. She does have some insights about southern women, possibly, but her ex-slaves are all complete stereotypes: either half white and intelligent and refined, or ignorant and dark skinned and foolish. But even her half-white intelligent refined ones fall in love with white men.
Her main character is supposed to by sympathetic, and probably was more so when the book was written, but I found him quite unlikable until nearly the end of the book. But he probably did represent a reasonably realistic man. He was able to see that his life (southern gentleman) was the past, but simply couldn't understand the changing world. Plus he was utterly devoted to his horrible, horrible wife, basically because she was beautiful.
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Post by Oweena on Jul 11, 2020 17:22:35 GMT -5
The Margot Affair by Sanae Lemoine Tells the story of a 17 year old French girl raised by her single mother who has grown up knowing her father is a high ranking memeber of the French government. He has a wife and children, and he has never publicly acknowledged her paternity although he has spent time with her and her mother over the years. The plot deals with the lead up to, and what happens after the secret child and long term mistress finally come to light. It's about secrets, and French culture, and mother/daughter relationships. I found it well-written, and you can tell the author has a background in food writing since those were some of the best parts, when she documents the meals the characters cooked and consumed. I like that I was never quite sure what was going to happen next, or who of the numerous characters may have ill intentions. And now I'm craving pear clafoutis...
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Jul 11, 2020 23:11:02 GMT -5
50. The Secret Chapter - Genevieve Cogman
The latest book in the Invisible Library series - still good fun, a heist story and a big reveal that will advance the story of the dragon in future books. Not much of Vale or Lord Silver in this one, but we do met some interesting Fae.
51. The Hand on the Wall - Maureen Johnson.
What I thought was the last book in the Truly Devious series. Instead, while the story at the Academy has been finished (both the historical murder and the present day murders neatly solved) it appears there will be more books. So this is still fun YA Scooby gang crime solving. Some interesting characters but also some problematical ones. And the relationship between Stevie and David is not a healthy one. I raced through the book and enjoyed it at the time but on reflection there are some niggles.
52. When We Were Vikings - Andrew David Macdonald
A different sort of coming of age novel. Zelda is 21 and was born with fetal alcohol syndrome. She lives with her brother, who takes care of her after their father left and their mother died when they were young. They spent some years living with Uncle Richard, who turns out to have been a rather unsavoury character. To escape Uncle Richard, Gert (Zelda's brother) ends up working for a gang and become indebted to them. Zelda finds this out, and finds out that Gert has not been attending college and so sets out to rescue Gert. Because Zelda is fascinated by Vikings she sees this as part of her Viking quest to become a legendary Viking.
There are some parts I felt were problematic with this story - I am not sure how accurate the depiction of Zelda's fetal alcohol syndrome was (I know it is a spectrum). Zelda is a bit of an unreliable narrator - do we always get the full story from someone who can't always pick up people's motives or the nuances of what is going on? Also as part of Zelda's quest to live her own life it includes Zelda exploring her sexuality and wanting to have sex with her developmentally delayed boyfriend. And that is fine. I just wondered why the author made every sexual (well, near sexual) experience Zelda had in the book to be so negative?
Still a book I am glad I read and Zelda is certainly a different voice than you find in most books.
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Post by scrubb on Jul 12, 2020 12:14:04 GMT -5
Neverworld Wake, by Marisha Pessl.
She wrote "Special Topics in Calamity Physics" which I thought was fantastic, and her next books have also been very good, but not as good as her debut. The premise of this one is that some characters are caught in the moment of their death indefinitely, groundhog day style, until they reach consensus about which one of them should survive.
It pulled me in and kept me reading, but there were a few spots where the way the characters manipulated their groundhog day didn't make a lot of sense - the internal logic was pretty weak. But I guess if you can suspend disbelief enough to accept that they live the same day over and over, you can suspend it a little further and accept that they can manipulate it, too. And, the characters were kind of one dimensional. In fact, none of them are well rounded except the narrator. It's not even clear why any of them like each other. Anyway, great premise, interesting storyline, but nowhere near as strong a book as her others.
Technically I guess it's YA fiction - her characters are the same age/type of people as her previous books' characters, but this one is slightly less adult, somehow.
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Post by mei on Jul 12, 2020 15:04:22 GMT -5
#14 The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Book club read, which I finished half an hour before our book club skype this evening. I was really curious about this book, but mostly because I'm curious about the author's non-fiction work. Still want to read some of that, this debut novel is not as good as I had hoped. It's the story of a slave in 19th century Virginia. The story is interesting, with some magic realism in there, but overall it's a bit too mixed, a lot of small incidents but a lot doesn't get explained, and the ending is quite rushed. I enjoyed reading it, but think I will stick with his non-fiction.
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Post by tzarine on Jul 12, 2020 18:30:39 GMT -5
mei
have you read toni morrison's beloved. it's also about folks following the civil war & the ghosts of slavery & she can do all the magic.
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Post by Liiisa on Jul 12, 2020 18:53:56 GMT -5
Yeah, Beloved is deservedly listed among the best American novels.
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