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Post by sophie on Feb 23, 2021 10:39:17 GMT -5
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. Loved it. Apparently the most read (or was it most sold) of Murakami’s novels. A gentle coming of age novel of a young man and his encounters with love and death and life. Beautifully written but I really like his style of writing.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Feb 24, 2021 20:18:07 GMT -5
8. Murder in the Crypt - Irina Shapiro. Historical murder mystery that was ok but not good enough to continue the series.
9 At the Edge of the Haight - Katherine Seligman This won an award for 'socially engaged fiction' but don't let the wanky award category put you off. YA novel about a young homeless woman who comes across a dead body (a murder) in a park and so becomes the only witness to a murder. The book traces her moves as she works out whether to tell anyone about what she saw, the life she lives on the street with her friends and her choices of whether to keep on living this way. It was a hard read at times because a lot of the book came across as very real and so rather depressing even with all the moments of hope and caring.
10. We Could be Heroes - Mike Chen Mike Chen is now on my 'must read everything written' list. This wasn't as absorbing as his other books and seemed lighter - a comic book style with plenty of action. A supervillain (bank robber) and a superhero meet up in a memory loss support group. It turns out they both woke up in their apartments with no memories of their pasts and decide that maybe by working together theyy can find out about their pasts. The mission evolves when they find out there is a sinister threat involved. Rollicking good fun that will make an excellent movie.
11. Dead Man in A Ditch - Luke Arnold. The second Fetch Phillips book. This took a long time to read as there was just so much happening in the book. But that isn't necessarily a complaint. A good urban fantasy series.
12. Death in Daylesford - Kerry Greenwood The latest Phryne Fisher novel.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 25, 2021 20:51:02 GMT -5
3. Sarah Moss, Summerwater
Oh I really liked this; I'm sure it's going to be on my best books of the year list.
It's the story of a single day, set in one of those vacation rental places where there are a bunch of cabins in the woods, in Scotland on the edge of a loch. It's a bad day to be up there, because it pours rain the whole time. Each chapter is told from the perspective of a different person in one of the cabins. There's a sense of tension about it - it seems like something terrible is going to happen, but you can't tell what it is, and I won't say any more. I thought it was great. Moss wrote "Ghost Wall," the equally tense book about the Iron Age reenactment camp that she came out with last year (or the year before).
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Post by lillielangtry on Feb 26, 2021 0:38:49 GMT -5
#11 Suki Kim, The Interpreter A young, and very lonely, Korean-American woman is working as an interpreter and one of the Korean speakers she interprets for seems to know something about the death of her parents. Suzy gets drawn into trying to find out more and is also on the trail of her sister, who cut off contact after the parents' funeral. In that sense it's sort of a mystery but it's also very much about identity and family. It was good - and at one point near the end I thought it might suddenly turn into the sort of literary fiction that refuses to tie up any of its ends, but that's not the case, fortunately! However, still missing a little something for me, not quite sure what.
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Post by mei on Feb 26, 2021 11:42:23 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. picked up this order this afternoon at the bookshop. looking forward to it! although I'm currently in the middle of a book explaining how our current economic system is destroying the world, so I might read something a bit different before starting this new book!
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 26, 2021 13:48:23 GMT -5
Ooh mei the one you're reading now sounds like the kind of happy book I like - which one is it?
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Post by Oweena on Feb 26, 2021 23:41:13 GMT -5
One Life by Megan Rapinoe
Rapinoe's bio that details her rise to soccer domination starting from her childhood in California. I picked it up because I respect how she's used her platform to work for social justice. She was also the first openly gay player on the US Women's Nat'l Team. She makes no apologies for how she leverages her fame to get attention for the causes she believes in. It's not great writing, but that was never my expectation, and I read it less as her autobiography and more of her manifesto to try to motivate others to take a stand on the issues they care about.
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Post by riverhorse on Feb 27, 2021 4:01:15 GMT -5
Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriaty.
Loved this by the author of Big Little Lies (still on my to-read list). The story of 9 people with various stresses in their lives that lead them to sign up for a 10 day health retreat that promises to transform their lives.
At the beginning I thought this would just be an enjoyable interaction between the characters and their stories but in fact it turns out to be a great psychological thriller thanks to the woman who runs the retreat, who turns out to be quite the megalomaniac psychopath.
I won't spoil things by revealing any more but it was a great read!
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 27, 2021 7:14:44 GMT -5
Oweena Megan Rapinoe is wonderful. I read an interview with her and her wife (in The Cut, maybe?) that made me like her even more than I had already. Hmm I looked in The Cut and it wasn't there, oh well.
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Post by mei on Feb 27, 2021 10:23:37 GMT -5
Ooh mei the one you're reading now sounds like the kind of happy book I like - which one is it? Less is More, how degrowth will save the world - by Jason Hickel. It's really excellent, and I think you'll like it too, but I'm looking forward to the uplifting solutions part after a 140 pages of explaining the problems.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 27, 2021 11:30:02 GMT -5
Thank you! I'll look for it (despite being forewarned)
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Post by Oweena on Feb 27, 2021 12:31:48 GMT -5
Oweena Megan Rapinoe is wonderful. I read an interview with her and her wife (in The Cut, maybe?) that made me like her even more than I had already. Hmm I looked in The Cut and it wasn't there, oh well. Yep, Rapinoe and Sue Bird are both awesome. And Seattle can claim them since they play on our soccer and basketball teams.
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Post by scrubb on Feb 27, 2021 15:12:32 GMT -5
10 Minutes and 38 Seconds in this Strange World, by Elif Shafak. A novel about Leila, a murdered sex worker in Istanbul and her thoughts immediately after she is killed. She remembers her life, and meeting her closest friends. There are a few more chapters about what her friends do after she dies.
It's a good mix of humour and tragedy and pathos. I liked it a lot.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Feb 28, 2021 3:25:53 GMT -5
17. The Survivors, Jane Harper. A fascinating audiobook for a road trip around Tasmania. Set in a delightful seaside village, of which Tasmania has many, the dark secrets of the coast are exposed, along with their effects on the lives of those who live there. A very well-written and absorbing book, by the author of The Dry. The only downside was the narrator who dropped his voice in tense bits, making it hard to hear with the noise of tyres.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 28, 2021 10:33:06 GMT -5
4. Octavia E. Butler, Pattern Master
This is sci-fi that reads kind of like a comic book, featuring people who have developed telepathic and telekinetic abilities and a feudal society on a planet in the distant future. It's also a bit like a Shakespearean history play, with a dying king who has two sons vying for the throne, and one son is the good guy and the other is the bad guy. It took me a couple of days to get around to picking it up but then couldn't put it down.
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Post by Oweena on Feb 28, 2021 12:26:23 GMT -5
4. Octavia E. Butler, Pattern Master This is sci-fi that reads kind of like a comic book, featuring people who have developed telepathic and telekinetic abilities and a feudal society on a planet in the distant future. It's also a bit like a Shakespearean history play, with a dying king who has two sons vying for the throne, and one son is the good guy and the other is the bad guy. It took me a couple of days to get around to picking it up but then couldn't put it down. Do you ever listen to Throughline, the NPR history podcast? They just did an episode on Ocatavia Butler. How Octavia Butler's Sci-Fi Dystopia Became A Constant In A Man's Evolution
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Post by Oweena on Feb 28, 2021 12:40:44 GMT -5
The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson. My last book for February. I've been juggling 3 books at once and this was the final one and as I got nearer to the end I started reading it in shorter and shorter chunks because I didn't want it to end! Larson takes a close look at Churchill's first year as Prime Minister (May 1940-May 1941) using what he and his family were going through, but also those who worked along side him, as well as ordinary citizens of the UK. This time period is when the aerial assault on Britain took place and when the US was trying hard not to be pulled into the war. While 500 pages focusing solely on just one year sounds like a lot, it never moved slowly.
You get a sense of daily life as well as the big picture because Larson uses a large swath of different people to shape the story.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 28, 2021 12:50:35 GMT -5
Huh Oweena no, I am not a big consumer of podcasts. I'll check that out, though, thank you!
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Post by shilgia on Feb 28, 2021 14:09:11 GMT -5
Oweena Megan Rapinoe is wonderful. I read an interview with her and her wife (in The Cut, maybe?) that made me like her even more than I had already. Hmm I looked in The Cut and it wasn't there, oh well. Yep, Rapinoe and Sue Bird are both awesome. And Seattle can claim them since they play on our soccer and basketball teams. I just realized that Megan Rapinoe and Abby Wambach are different people. Thank you! I finished Obama's recent book last week. 700 pages, and a lot of it was largely a reminder of things we've all lived through with a bit of Obama's perspective added, but the two parts that made the entire book worth reading were the descriptions of (1) how the Paris Accord came to be; and (2) the killing of Osama bin Laden.
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Post by Oweena on Feb 28, 2021 19:20:48 GMT -5
shilgia, Rapinoe and Wambach used to date back in the day.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Mar 2, 2021 1:19:42 GMT -5
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