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Post by Oweena on Feb 15, 2021 11:09:26 GMT -5
Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America by Ijeoma Oluo
Ijeoma always writes in a way that draws me in and this book is no different. My biggest takeaway from this book which is a history of all things white and male in the U.S. was the section on the Bernie Bros. I've always had discomfort with Sanders, now I know why.
The book is exactly what the title says it is and it's well-done.
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Post by sophie on Feb 15, 2021 15:53:54 GMT -5
Preston and Childs Old Bones. The first novel of a new series (I read the second one first, no problem). Set in the Sierra Nevadas, it brings in an an archeological as well as modern genetic mystery with the Donner party as the event being investigated. Good action.
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Post by sprite on Feb 16, 2021 6:27:51 GMT -5
fInally! I have slogged through Jonathan STrange and Mr Norrell. I should not have read this as a library book--it's over 1000 pages and I was racing the clock all the way.
the writing is cleverly done--you could quite easily assume it was written very nearly the early 1800's (The King George who went mad, probably from a bladder infection), but not too authenically so. I had to remind myself that none of the historical magicians discussed were actually part of English history.
Some of the characters you actually wanted to smack.
If you enjoy historical novels with some fantasy, this was good. But long. So long.
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Post by scrubb on Feb 16, 2021 22:01:16 GMT -5
I read "Eichmann in my Hands: A First-Person Account by the Israeli Agent Who Captured Hitler's Chief Executioner" by Peter Malkin and Harry STein last week. I wrote a scintillating review but lost it before it posted. Basically, it was very interesting and quite well written. There was lots of background that was mostly good, although in the end I couldn't tell if the narrator/agent had a good sense of humour, or if he was really obnoxious. Maybe we didn't need to try to get to know the character.
I learned quite a lot, and also realized I didn't know what Eichmann's role in the holocaust was, even though I've read LOT (both fiction and non-fiction) about the war.
Read another Harry Dresden after that (#10) which I enjoyed.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Feb 18, 2021 5:19:37 GMT -5
13. South Sea Journey, George Woodcock. A second hand bookshop find. A journey through several South Pacific countries, around the time in the 1970s when many of them were given independence. Apart from a few terms like half caste and native that wouldn’t be used today, his views were very perceptive.
14. The Beautiful Mystery, Louise Penny. Murder mystery set in a remote monastery, and centred around Gregorian chant.
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Post by sprite on Feb 18, 2021 6:05:01 GMT -5
The Strangler Vine, Miranda Carter
An adventure novel of India, again during the end of King George's reign. A young Lieutentant Avery has just arrived with the East India Company to seek fame and fortune, but mostly he's gotten into gambling debt. He's sent off with Blake, an older ex-Company man to track down a poet who has gone missing while researching his latest epic about the Thugs, a robber caste who murder travellers on the roads as a worship of the goddess Kali.
Obviously, this partnership is not happy. Avery looks down on all things native, only begrudgingly learns the local language, and insists on wearing his uniform while trekking through the jungle. He firmly believes that Britain is bringing illumination into the darkness. Blake has been in India since the early days of the East India company, is multilingual and pretty much fed up with the Company--he's only taken the job because of a personal debt to the poet.
The novel includes real characters from the era, and uses current historical research to assess the work of the East India Company of this time. It was easy to imagine myself as both Avery and Blake, and to see why Europeans were simultaneously fascinated and repelled by India.
It's the first in a series, and I'd definitely read more. Plus, it's only 400 pages, making it a nice one-week read.
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Post by riverhorse on Feb 18, 2021 8:53:09 GMT -5
The Break, by Marian Keyes.
Basically, this is this song in novel form:
Quite witty mostly, the usual characters you can identify with like all Marian Keyes novels. Although I wanted to slap the mid-life crisis stricken husband around the chops a fair bit, and raged a bit at how relatively easy it is for men to just extract themselves from their family responsibilities and go on a backpacking shagfest in South East Asia.
At one point there was quite a serious treatment of the (thankfully now done away with) very restrictive abortion laws in Ireland and how so many vulnerable women had to travel abroad.
So, entertaining chick lit with a few serious undertones.
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Post by scrubb on Feb 18, 2021 16:21:01 GMT -5
Unfortunately that video isn't available in Canada :-(
I just finished "A REcipe for Bees" by Gail Anderson-Dargatz. Apparently yesterday was "Read Canadian Day" and coincidentally, the author is Canadian.
I enjoyed it quite a lot. It told Augusta's story, with flashbacks to her childhood and then the first 20 years of her marriage. It was a different sort of look at a couple who didn't have a good marriage at first but sort of grew together later on. It was also interesting in that the main character managed to be sympathetic even though she was kind of an annoying old lady in the present day scenes.
I found the descriptions of aging very poignant - my father died last month, and so I've been doing lots of thinking about my parents and their marriage and the passage of time. So I think I'm especially susceptible to anything that pokes at those themes these days.
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Post by riverhorse on Feb 18, 2021 16:23:01 GMT -5
Ah, it's A Little Time by The Beautiful South.
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Post by sprite on Feb 19, 2021 6:45:22 GMT -5
I've just started the Thursday Murder Club, and it's hilarious. Set in a luxury retirement home, with a great range of older characters who deliberately play up the 'sweet old dears' persona for their own ends. The actual murder is less interesting than the characters.
If you come across this and need something light but well-written, I highly recommend.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 19, 2021 21:50:03 GMT -5
2. Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry for the Future
This book tells the history of how the planet deals with climate change during a vaguely defined period, maybe 2030 to 2060? The protagonist is a woman who is the leader of a UN ministry with the task of figuring it out.
So if you've followed ideas that have been put forth for dealing with this situation, you'll recognize them in the book. There are economic efforts, social efforts, geoengineering, uprisings. The story is told in short chapters as stories about the protagonist and others affected by the situation, with occasional chapters just textbook descriptions of different problems and solutions.
I didn't think it was perfect - a lot of it read like one of my environmental policy texts, and I never really got inside the heads of any of the characters. And as I complained when I started it, the first chapter had some issues.
But that said, I enjoyed it. I particularly loved the emphasis he placed on economic solutions.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 20, 2021 12:50:00 GMT -5
PS: I just was at the bookstore (picking up the new Sarah Moss novel!) and saw that The Eighth Life was there... and nearly bought it... but it was SOOOO LARGE that I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I'll read it eventually! I know it's supposed to be good! But yowza you could hurt somebody with that thing.
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Post by lillielangtry on Feb 20, 2021 13:27:09 GMT -5
PS: I just was at the bookstore (picking up the new Sarah Moss novel!) and saw that The Eighth Life was there... and nearly bought it... but it was SOOOO LARGE that I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I'll read it eventually! I know it's supposed to be good! But yowza you could hurt somebody with that thing. I do prefer to read books of that size on my Kindle, it's so much more comfortable.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 20, 2021 13:40:57 GMT -5
It wasn't about girth so much as commitment - ! I've only managed to read two books so far this year because they were both really long and dense, so I need a month or so of 200-pagers to wake myself back up first.
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Post by scrubb on Feb 20, 2021 14:06:56 GMT -5
It wasn't about girth so much as commitment - ! I've only managed to read two books so far this year because they were both really long and dense, so I need a month or so of 200-pagers to wake myself back up first. Yeah, I've read a lot of fairly easy and/or short things lately, so I felt ready to start Eco's "The Island of the Day Before" . Which is only ~500 pages, but I expected it to be fairly dense. Which it sort of is, but still quite readable.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 20, 2021 15:07:46 GMT -5
Huh, I tried to read "Foucault's Pendulum" many many years ago and decided it was so much pretentious nonsense, so I've never tried anything else by Eco. I suppose I could have a different attitude now.
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Post by riverhorse on Feb 20, 2021 15:25:55 GMT -5
Yes, I gave up on Foucault's Pendulum as well many years ago. I've read The Name of The Rose I don't know how many times though.
PG read The Prague Cemetery of his last year but found it very slow going as well.
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Post by lillielangtry on Feb 21, 2021 12:54:49 GMT -5
haha, sorry, I was literally thinking of its weight! Mind you, now we're not commuting that's not as important as it used to be. I still find bulky hardbacks are not very nice to read though.
#9 Francesca Wade, Square Haunting: Five Writers in London between the Wars An interesting idea for a non-fiction book: Wade looks at five women who lived on the same square in Bloomsbury - not all at the same time though - in the early decades of the 20th century. The most famous of the 5 today are Virginia Woolf and Dorothy L Sayers. The others are poet H.D., whom I had heard of, and two academics who I hadn't come across, but who were groundbreaking in their day - Jane Harrison and Eileen Power. I probably wouldn't have picked up a full biography of any of them, but it was really interesting. They get a main chapter each but there's also introductory and closing material focusing on how they crossed paths, etc. All of them used the British Library reading room at some point!
#10 Andrea Camilleri, Die Passion des still Rächers (Commissario Montalbano #8) I felt like relaxing with a Montalbano case. This one is not a murder, but a kidnapping. I sort of had an inkling what the solution was going to be from fairly early on, but the process of getting there was as entertaining as ever.
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Post by Oweena on Feb 21, 2021 12:57:44 GMT -5
You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories about Racism by Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar
Amber and Lacey are sisters who grew up in Omaha Nebraska. Amber left and moved to NYC where she's a comedian and Lacey stayed in Omaha. The book recounts the stories of everyday racism that Lacey encounters and shares with Amber. The stories are both funny (in the way they're recounted) and appalling that this level of racism exists. The sisters have a conversation throughout the book discussing the racist run-ins Lacey has, mostly at her different workplaces and where she's often the only Black person in the room.
I've loved Amber ever since watching her on Drunk History (where she explains the Little Rock Nine and other stories).
I'd like to say the book was fun since it WAS funny in places, but it's also frustrating for all the reasons we know about how white people suck.
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Post by sprite on Feb 21, 2021 15:33:05 GMT -5
I've just started the Thursday Murder Club, and it's hilarious. Set in a luxury retirement home, with a great range of older characters who deliberately play up the 'sweet old dears' persona for their own ends. The actual murder is less interesting than the characters. If you come across this and need something light but well-written, I highly recommend. Very happy with this one. Some good red herrings, fun romance subplots, and a real sense of the different people. Most of the characters are over 75, and they have useful skills, a wide range of hobbies, use technology, have sex, and sometimes admit that dying is a worrying thought--but seeing friends die first is more worrying.
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Post by scrubb on Feb 21, 2021 23:01:58 GMT -5
Huh, I tried to read "Foucault's Pendulum" many many years ago and decided it was so much pretentious nonsense, so I've never tried anything else by Eco. I suppose I could have a different attitude now. Yes, I gave up on Foucault's Pendulum as well many years ago. I've read The Name of The Rose I don't know how many times though. PG read The Prague Cemetery of his last year but found it very slow going as well. Yeah, I read The Name of the Rose years ago and really liked it. Didn't get into Foucault, but I didn't actually give it a chance. I'm not sure I'd call Eco's stuff pretentious, but it's definitely different. I think he's genuinely intellectually curious, and playful, and he writes that way too. Anyway, different strokes for different folks! I remember we had the opposite opinions of "C" several years ago - I thought it was a load of wank, but you liked it!
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Post by lillielangtry on Feb 22, 2021 1:56:23 GMT -5
I've heard several recommendations of the Thrusday Murder Club from very different people, some of whom don't typically read mysteries (cosy or otherwise), I think I might treat myself to the audiobook. Updated to say - ah! The abridged version is available on BBC Sounds, but the first episode only for 2 more days! I'll have to get listening! www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000rmhy
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Feb 22, 2021 2:51:15 GMT -5
15. True Girt, The unauthorised history of Australia, volume 2. David Hunt. This wasn’t quite as good as the first book in the series. It seemed to jump around a bit too much from one place or set of people to another. You definitely need an Australian sense of humour to get a lot of the references and the tongue in cheek footnotes. I think it is only available as an audiobook, with the author as narrator.
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Post by sprite on Feb 22, 2021 3:57:32 GMT -5
I liked Foucault's pendulum, but if it's the one im thinking of, it struck me as the thinking person's Dan Brown.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 22, 2021 5:46:22 GMT -5
Re Foucault - the funny thing is that I usually like things that other people call pretentious, but IIRC I wanted to throw that one across the room. But it was probably 25 years ago when I attempted to read it, so maybe I should give it another try.
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Post by sprite on Feb 22, 2021 6:32:49 GMT -5
Save it for retirement.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 22, 2021 7:33:58 GMT -5
I still haven't read Proust yet either
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Post by scrubb on Feb 22, 2021 14:25:41 GMT -5
I still haven't read Proust yet either I read the first volume - Swann's Way - a few years ago. Although I am glad I read it, I am completely uninspired to continue with the rest! And... last night I decided I wanted a break from Eco for a bit, too. I realized I was forcing myself to read it. Not all the time, but sometimes it's just not what I'm in the mood for. So I started "10 Minutes and 38 Seconds in this Strange World" - a Turkish novel, that I am enjoying very much so far.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 22, 2021 16:19:16 GMT -5
Ooh I read "10 Minutes and 38 Seconds" last year - it was haunting. Better than Proust or Eco, I think!
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Feb 23, 2021 5:03:05 GMT -5
16. High Seas Murder, Shelly Freydont. Cozy mystery, quite readable, but I’m not likely to hunt for more in the series.
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