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Post by Oweena on Aug 16, 2020 12:16:33 GMT -5
The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power by Deidre Mask
Interesting read that covers lots of ground in an intriguing way. The author uses most chapters to focus on one city (Vienna, Paris, London, Philadelphia, Kolkata, Rome, etc.) and how it's system of assigning addresses came about, and how these systems can improve or cause harm to the people who live there. It's published this year so up to date with what's happening with our political systems and what the world is facing. So it's topical, with lots of historical background as well as a bit of a travel around the globe. Overall a good combination.
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Post by lillielangtry on Aug 16, 2020 12:34:47 GMT -5
I've never read any Philip K Dick, as it's not really my genre, but didn't he also write the origin of the series The Man in the High Castle (an alternative history in which Germany won WWII), which I heard was good?
Leila Slimani: Sex and Lies, True Stories of Women's Intimate Lives in the Arab World, translated by Sophie Lewis Slimani is a writer of Moroccan origin who lives in France and recently had a lot of success with her novel, The Perfect Nanny (US title Lullaby). In this non-fiction book she returns to her home country, where both homosexuality and sex outside marriage are illegal but, of course, happen anyway, to talk to women about their experiences. Very interesting.
Maria Fernanda Ampuero, Cockfight (translated by Frances Riddle) A collection of short stories from Ecuador. I'm really pleased to see another Ecuadorian woman translated into English; fairly recently there were none, except for a few contributions to anthologies, and now there are at least two. I would say the main theme of these stories is the huge rich/poor divide in Ecuador and the experiences of women. Some of them are brutal with a lot of sexualised violence and honestly, I found them hard to stomach. But anyone who enjoyed Mariana Enriquez's collection, Things we lost in the fire, may also want to look into this one.
Shokoofeh Azar, The Enlightment of the Greengage Tree (translated by anon) A novel by an Iranian author now living in Australia, this was shortlisted for the Stella Prize and is also on the Booker International shortlist. I loved this magic realist journey through recent Iranian history. It's both sad and funny. If you enjoy a tone that is a little elaborate and whimsical and the odd appearance of ghosts etc - think Isabel Allende, please please read this. It says something about Iran that the translator of this work, who still lives in the country, cannot be named for her own safety.
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Post by Liiisa on Aug 16, 2020 20:03:55 GMT -5
Yes, I think the Man in the High Castle is indeed one of his. I should read that sometime. But instead, I chose to read:
39) Carey Rockwell, Tom Corbett Space Cadet: On the Trail of the Space Pirates
Another book from my used bookstore grab bag, where I asked for old weird sci-fi novels. This one, from 1953, seems to have been written for 12-year-olds who are tired of cowboys and Indians... about some brave Space Cadets who, with their skipper Captain Strong, are on the trail of the space pirates!
So, lots of flying around in the velvet darkness of space and fighting and threatening to shoot people with paralyzer ray guns. To be honest much of it was boring, though it did get kind of gripping as it approached its Exciting Conclusion. The best part of it was the endpapers, which look like a woodcut landscape of one of the moons of Saturn. There are also various little illustrations of the Strapping Young Cadets within.
Anyway, let's move on.
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Post by scrubb on Aug 16, 2020 20:54:27 GMT -5
Another bookbub special, and not such a good one - but it was interesting in that it was set among the Yazidi in Iraqi Kurdistan in the extremely recent past: "What Comes with the Dust: Goes with the Wind" by Gharbi M. Mustafa. Wikipedia says
It follows an 18 year old girl who was planning to escape to Turkey with her secret boyfriend - her parents had engaged her to her first cousin. She had genetic dysplasia and her sister was a deaf-mute, because her parents were first cousins, and she wanted to break the chain but knew her community couldn't accept her marrying outside of her parents' arrangements.
Then ISIS arrives in their village and killed all the men and took all the women as slaves. The book follows her horrific story, and in other chapters, a boy from her village who managed to survive.
Anyway, unfortunately it's not well written. It's not really, really badly written, but it's just not good. I think he writes in English, since it didn't name a translator, and maybe he just can't express himself eloquently.
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Post by scrubb on Aug 17, 2020 23:12:30 GMT -5
I should add that the punctuation in the title of the book makes me nuts. What is that colon doing there?? And if the author teaches English, he should know better!
Today I read "Tambourines to Glory" by Langston Hughes. Two poor black women in Harlem decide to start preaching on a street corner to try to save the poor, and try to improve their own lot as well. Apparently it started as a play but he didn't change much to turn it into a novel - there are few or no descriptive passages.
It captured the time and place really well - worth reading.
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Post by Oweena on Aug 19, 2020 8:46:31 GMT -5
Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey
Memoir centering on her childhood leading up to the murder of her mother by her ex-stepfather when the author was 19 years old. Trethewey is a poet, she's a two time US Poet Laureate so the writing is lyrical and compelling. It's not a conventional memoir, and she reflects on how she avoided the details of her mothers murder for over 20 years yet it shaped almost every step she took along the way.
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Post by Liiisa on Aug 19, 2020 12:23:09 GMT -5
40) Sarah Waters, Fingersmith
I absolutely could not put this down. It's a Victorian-type Gothic novel set in 1860s London, with murderers, thieves, double-crossing subplots, and lesbian protagonists! Oooh this was so good. I kept sneaking downstairs to read it instead of working - another 600-page book read in less than 3 days.
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Post by mei on Aug 19, 2020 15:49:25 GMT -5
Not sure what number I'm on, finished Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell. Enjoyed it, but didn't think it's as good as his other books. One storyline was by far the best, but other parts felt a bit too imaginery (don't want to give away too much). I do like how his books always connect some elements from the story.
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Post by Oweena on Aug 19, 2020 18:39:52 GMT -5
40) Sarah Waters, Fingersmith I absolutely could not put this down. It's a Victorian-type Gothic novel set in 1860s London, with murderers, thieves, double-crossing subplots, and lesbian protagonists! Oooh this was so good. I kept sneaking downstairs to read it instead of working - another 600-page book read in less than 3 days. Have you read any other Waters? I love her, my favorite being The Night Watch followed by Tipping the Velvet and then The Paying Guests. The only one of hers I didn't like is The Little Stranger. Get more of hers Liiisa if you haven't read her other stuff!
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Post by Liiisa on Aug 19, 2020 20:12:01 GMT -5
I've read The Paying Guests - not sure why it took me so long to pick up a second one. Will do!
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Post by scrubb on Aug 19, 2020 22:27:46 GMT -5
I liked The Night Watch quite a lot. The Paying Guests was also good, but not as much my cup of tea. Sounds like Fingersmith is great - I'll add it to my list!
I'm currently reading Ferrante's 'My Brilliant Friend" and really liking it, but so far since getting to work I have had no reading time. Tomorrow I will NOT work late!!
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Post by Liiisa on Aug 20, 2020 8:47:45 GMT -5
I guess I'll be reading The Night Watch next, of her books!
I want someone to write a fanfic sequel to Fingersmith about the two women starting an underground publishing company.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Aug 20, 2020 8:51:46 GMT -5
48. Death in the English Countryside. Sara Rossett. What I liked about this mystery set in England was that the protagonist was an American working in England, rather than an American author pretending to be English. The idea of a movie location scout was also a little different, and the outcome was interesting and quirky.
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Post by lillielangtry on Aug 20, 2020 9:57:03 GMT -5
I remember the BBC Tipping the Velvet adaptation (complete with leather dildo) causing quite a stir in the early 2000s!
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Post by Liiisa on Aug 20, 2020 11:08:30 GMT -5
I remember the BBC Tipping the Velvet adaptation (complete with leather dildo) causing quite a stir in the early 2000s! Oh my....
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Post by Oweena on Aug 20, 2020 18:44:46 GMT -5
I remember the BBC Tipping the Velvet adaptation (complete with leather dildo) causing quite a stir in the early 2000s! It was a really well done production shown in the US on PBS and I remember thinking, wow how did that get on non-cable TV.
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Post by lillielangtry on Aug 21, 2020 1:43:58 GMT -5
I think Waters started off writing in a bit of a lesbian niche and at some point she became mainstream - both because she is simply an extremely good and entertaining writer and because society was more open to books focused on relationships between women - and then a lot of people, including me, went back and read her back catalogue.
Now I want to reread Waters. But I won't. Because I have a lot of other books waiting.
Greece: Fotini Tsalikoglou, The Secret Sister (translated by Mary Kitroeff) Sadly a disappointment for me. This short book is about a Greek American guy who is travelling to Greece, where he has never been, and on the way he is thinking about his family and their history of emigrating to the US, etc. But it's just really dull unfortunately.
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Post by Oweena on Aug 21, 2020 12:20:28 GMT -5
I like her books for both the well written lesbian characters and for the historical research she does for each book.
I love the title of her PHD thesis, "Wolfskins and togas : lesbian and gay historical fictions, 1870 to the present".
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Aug 22, 2020 5:28:56 GMT -5
49. Aunt Bessie Enjoys, Diana Xarissa. An interesting insight into women of our parents’ generation. The mystery has the police department very worried, and it takes Aunt Bessie’s intuition and awareness to solve it.
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Post by sophie on Aug 23, 2020 19:30:13 GMT -5
The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa. This is our book club read for the month. I had a heck of a time getting my hands on a copy; ended up getting it shipped from the UK. It was written in the mid fifties, based on the author’s great grandfather mid 1800’s when Sicily was in transition and Garabaldi was uniting Italy into a coun. The author died shortly after finishing his novel and never saw it in print. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it; very current despite it being set 150 years ago. Beautifully written (credit to an excellent translation)with well developed characters. Recommended.
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Post by scrubb on Aug 23, 2020 22:46:35 GMT -5
That book has been on my to-read list for many years, Sophie, but somehow never close enough to the top for me to search out a copy. Maybe I'll make the effort now.
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Post by riverhorse on Aug 24, 2020 2:18:35 GMT -5
I loved Fingersmith and all the other novels by Sarah Waters as well!
I have just raced through "The Weight of Ink" by Rachel Kadish. I could barely put it down, it is a fabulous book. Very much in the style of Geraldine Brooks, in fact, the subject matter and the characters remind me a lot of "The People of The Book". Goodreads summarises the plot as: "Set in London of the 1660s and of the early twenty-first century, The Weight of Ink is the interwoven tale of two women of remarkable intellect: Ester Velasquez, an emigrant from Amsterdam who is permitted to scribe for a blind rabbi, just before the plague hits the city; and Helen Watt, an ailing historian with a love of Jewish history.
Electrifying and ambitious, sweeping in scope and intimate in tone, The Weight of Ink is a sophisticated work of historical fiction about women separated by centuries, and the choices and sacrifices they must make in order reconcile the life of the heart and mind."
I ended up going down an Internet rabbit hole about Portuguese Jewish refugees in Amsterdam and England, the philosophies of Spinoza and the plague in London.
I really really recommend this book for those who love historical fiction and strong female characters.
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Post by Liiisa on Aug 24, 2020 4:48:54 GMT -5
Wow river, that sounds great. Noted!
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Post by sophie on Aug 24, 2020 9:58:49 GMT -5
River, that’s my next book. Especially after your comments. I have a couple other books which are on my to read pike ahead of it, but now it seems much more interesting than the others.
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Post by Liiisa on Aug 24, 2020 14:29:38 GMT -5
Eeee "Apeirogon" is at the bookstore, waiting for me!
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Post by Oweena on Aug 24, 2020 17:37:14 GMT -5
River, that’s my next book. Especially after your comments. I have a couple other books which are on my to read pike ahead of it, but now it seems much more interesting than the others. Yes, sounds good river. I'll have to see if the library has it. Edit: they have it. I am #16 in line.
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Post by Liiisa on Aug 24, 2020 19:40:49 GMT -5
41) Tom Wolfe, The Pump House Gang
You know, I've already read this book. I've been carrying this beaten-up, shocking pink paperback of Tom Wolfe cultural essays from 1968 around for who knows how long, and I thought you know, I am FINALLY going to read the damn thing, and then about two essays in I realized wait, you know, I have already read this. But I decided to finish it anyway because he has an amusing writing style.
Quite a bit of the language would be fairly unacceptable today, but still, it's quite interesting as a little window into 1968.
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Post by Oweena on Aug 25, 2020 8:42:37 GMT -5
Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar
Tells the life story of one of George and Martha Washiongton's slaves, Ona Judge Staines. She escaped from them near the end of Washington's second term as President and fled to New Hampshire. Of course not much is known about Ona's life except for a few mentions in Washingtons papers and the ads they placed offering a reward for her return. She gave two interviews near the end of her life when she felt it was safe for her to talk about her life but even those interviews didn't give the author lots of hard facts to go on. Good chunks of the book are conjecture of what her life must have been like, based on the lives of other enslaved women of the time. My big takeaway is that Martha Washington was a bitch and an unrepentant slave owner to the end.
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Post by scrubb on Aug 26, 2020 12:38:10 GMT -5
I accidentally reread The Beginner's Goodbye by Anne Tyler. I needed something light to read on the treadmill, and didn't realize till I was about 1/3 finished that I'd read it before. Since I didn't remember anything that happened, I kept going.
Clearly not very memorable, but I sometimes appreciate her presentation of relationships with flawed communication, and this is one of them.
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Post by scrubb on Aug 28, 2020 15:53:40 GMT -5
I have a few pages left of Elena Ferrente's "My Brilliant Friend ". A lot of people think it's great but a lot of other people gave it luke warm reviews, so I wasn't sure what to expect.
Turns out I really like it. Will have to find the sequels. The setting is 1950s Naples, in a fairly poor neighborhood- really paints a fascinating picture of time and place. One of my favourite reads this year.
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