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Post by ozziegiraffe on Mar 2, 2021 1:18:42 GMT -5
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Mar 2, 2021 1:24:01 GMT -5
18. First finished in March. People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks. This is a brilliant novel, alternating between the present and the past, about the history, the preservation and the restoration of a beautiful illuminated manuscript. Wonderful stories of memorable people.
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Post by Liiisa on Mar 2, 2021 5:53:15 GMT -5
Thank you ozzie! I loved "People of the Book"; good stuff.
Right now I'm about 1/3 of the way through "The Mothers," by Brit Bennett, the story of a teenaged Black girl who's smart but going through some stuff, told through the lens of the church her family attends. It feels very real - it's very well written, and I'm having trouble putting it down because I want to know that Nadia's going to be ok and go to college in the fall like she plans to now without getting in some mess.
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Post by Liiisa on Mar 2, 2021 21:38:06 GMT -5
And then I finished reading it, so
4) Brit Bennett, The Mothers
This wasn't really the sort of novel I usually read - no background of apocalypse or aliens or history or anything, just a story of a young black woman who's had some heartbreaks and is now trying to navigate her life with regrets but also promise and the usual frenzied crap you end up dealing with as a young person. As you see I pretty much read it straight through because I wanted to see if the characters were going to be ok.
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Post by Oweena on Mar 2, 2021 22:01:17 GMT -5
So you must not have also read Britt Bennett's newest book, The Vanishing Half. She's getting quite a lot of buzz and I read her new one a month or so ago, but I'll be darned if I can remember what I felt about it.
Edited to add I know I liked it, and remember the plot is, but that's about where my pandemic brain drops off the cliff.
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Post by Liiisa on Mar 2, 2021 22:07:36 GMT -5
So you must not have also read Britt Bennett's newest book, The Vanishing Half. She's getting quite a lot of buzz and I read her new one a month or so ago, but I'll be darned if I can remember what I felt about it. That's the one that's got more buzz, but when I went to the bookstore this one was on the Featured table so I picked it up. I felt compelled to continue reading it because I needed to see how it would end, and thought it was well written. There was too much church in it for my taste, and a lot of the drama was about an abortion, which I consider to be an unsentimental medical procedure, so that was slightly uncomfortable. But I know that some people do react that way, so it didn't bother me all that much or make me think it was unrealistic or anything. I really liked the lead character; she's flawed in lots of ways, and I thought she was relatable and felt like a real person.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Mar 4, 2021 1:06:36 GMT -5
19. I lost my mobile at the mall, Wendy Harmer. I picked this up as a freebie at a tourist information centre, because I’ve seen the author on the ABC, and I had nearly finished my last “real” book. Should have packed more real ones, and not just relied on all the books in my iPad. Written a little over ten years ago, it tells what happened when a 15-year-old loses her mobile, and her parents can’t afford to replace it. Some useful information about cyber bullying, for example. Overall funny, light, young adult reading.
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Post by lillielangtry on Mar 4, 2021 3:00:05 GMT -5
Thanks Ozzie!
I enjoyed The Vanishing Half, Bennett certainly knows how to set a pace... I suspect it will show up on the Women's Prize list.
#12 Karla Suárez, Havana Year Zero (trans from the Spanish by Christine MacSweeney) My read for Cuba... this is a fairly short book about a young woman in Havana in 1993, when the island is really struggling with food shortages, blackouts etc. She becomes involved in a complicated attempt to recover a document proving that the telephone was first invented not by Alexander Graham Bell, but by Antonio Meucci on Cuba. It's also a love triangle. Or love rectangle, or... I'm not even sure! It's quite funny and enjoyable and gently highlights a lot of the difficulties of life in Cuba at that point without rubbing it in. Not an outstanding book for me but a good one.
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Post by sprite on Mar 6, 2021 4:58:41 GMT -5
This morning, I spent several minutes trying to remember the book I'd been reading until 1am. Title, characters, plot.. no idea.
It's Achilles, and so far so good, but yeah, could not remember a thing this morning.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Mar 6, 2021 5:13:04 GMT -5
Had you been sleep reading? I sometimes do that - I'm sure I'm reading the book (or kindle) I've been holding in front of me, and I've been moving to new pages but when I look back the next day nothing I thought I'd read actually exists and II have to go back to the last bits I was properly awake for. I will say that sometimes what I thought I'd read was better than the actual book!
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Mar 6, 2021 23:41:45 GMT -5
20. Miss Seeton Sings, by Heron Carvic. An old and very funny British cozy mystery about a retired art teacher with an eye for detail, who inadvertently solves crimes. Audiobook finished on yesterday’s road trip.
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Post by lillielangtry on Mar 9, 2021 6:36:44 GMT -5
#13 Jenny Offill, Weather A very short, fragmented stream-of-consciousness novel about a woman worried about climate change. And other things. I loved this. It was a little confusing to start with but it reflected so well how a person can go about their daily life, having big, important thoughts, and at the same time doing the laundry, taking the dog out, etc. I think it might be a divisive book club choice but looking forward to discussing it.
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Post by tucano on Mar 9, 2021 7:46:16 GMT -5
I'm reading 'Nothing by Accident: Brazil on the Edge' which is by a British journalist called Damian Platt who lived in Rio for many years and worked for a number of NGOs. Really interesting.
Non-fiction of course because when do I ever read anything else.
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Post by Liiisa on Mar 9, 2021 8:02:23 GMT -5
#13 Jenny Offill, Weather A very short, fragmented stream-of-consciousness novel about a woman worried about climate change. And other things. I loved this. It was a little confusing to start with but it reflected so well how a person can go about their daily life, having big, important thoughts, and at the same time doing the laundry, taking the dog out, etc. I think it might be a divisive book club choice but looking forward to discussing it. I really loved that book when I read it last year!
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Post by lillielangtry on Mar 9, 2021 8:44:57 GMT -5
But I've already heard from two people who abandoned it! One said she only got 20 pages in or something, "couldn't work out what was going on" (obviously stream of consciousness not her thing!), the other said "it just seemed like it was the protagonist complaining about everyday life" (this is kind of true, but it's done so well!).
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Post by sprite on Mar 9, 2021 9:08:49 GMT -5
The Western Wind, Samantha Harvey
A sort of medieval mystery, set in an isolated village near the end of the 15th century. The wealthiest man in the village has drowned in the river, although his body has not been found. The Dean is convinced that it was murder, and is leaning on the priest, who tells us this story, to find a culprit who will be burned at the stake. The problem is that there are multiple suspects and multiple people confessing to the murder.
The story is told in reverse, and the emphasis is less on the death, and more on the effect it has on the village, along with all the relationships between villagers. It was historically interesting--the church is using a confessional box,but this is not yet standard practise. Henry the 8th hasn't come along yet, so the local monastery is eyeing up the village fields owned by the dead man. Christianity is barely recognisable.
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Post by Liiisa on Mar 9, 2021 9:52:14 GMT -5
Some people just hate nonlinear books. Hence why my mom and I never agree on books; she likes a plot-driven thriller about spies in World War 2, and I like 300 pages of loosely connected paragraphs about someone doing their laundry.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Mar 9, 2021 16:40:24 GMT -5
21. About Face, Donna Leon. Another excellent mystery set in Venice, as usual, leaving more questions than answers.
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Post by scrubb on Mar 10, 2021 22:32:44 GMT -5
Augh. I've been reading Umberto Eco's "The Island of the Day Before" all month. I go hot and cold on it but never find it super gripping, so it's taking me forever. I'm 3/4 of the way through but at the moment, the final 130 pages feel like a slog.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Mar 12, 2021 8:45:47 GMT -5
22. West with Giraffes, Lynda Rutledge. I picked this up as an Amazon first reads, because of the title. An interesting journey, but I found the colloquial style and philosophising of the first person narrator tedious, and ended up only reading small bits at a time.
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Post by sprite on Mar 12, 2021 10:51:47 GMT -5
The Long Petal of the Sea, Isabelle Allende.
Some of Allende's stuff I love, others I find mechanical--this was one of those. It's the life story of Victor, based on someone she and her father really knew. His life sounds impossible; a doctor on the Republican front lines in the Spanish civil war, a refugee in France, a refugee in Chile, success in Chile along with a friendship with Allende's father and Pablo Neruda, political prisoner under Pinochet, refugee in Venezula and friend of political heavyweights, a return to Chile and golden years spent volunteering with his Spanish wife in the slums.
It was rushed. "here is character A, and this is how they met Character B, whose life story you must now hear." There was little sense of where they were; just as she settled into a description of a landscape or home, something happened and we were whisked off again. To be honest, I'd have preferred the wife's story; born as an illiterate goatherd's daughter, she ends her life as the conductor and composed of an orchestra composed of ancient instruments from around the world. Victor is quite passive; he makes friends, and those friends ensure he is safe and employed. His wife, Roser, is a real hustler. She makes the most of every connection or opportunity.
If you'd like to learn more about the civil war and Chile, this is a good book. But as a novel about one man's journey, it tries to do too much in too few pages.
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Post by riverhorse on Mar 12, 2021 13:30:55 GMT -5
"The Husband's Secret" by Liane Moriarty. Since I enjoyed her novel last month about the psychopathic spa retreat, I thought I'd try another of hers and really enjoyed it as well.
It's based on the shock waves that ripple though a community (of a variety of well-drawn characters) when a wife opens an old letter from her husband she finds in the attic which he says should only be opened upon his death.
Very easy read with lots of twists and turns.
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Post by sophie on Mar 12, 2021 23:18:17 GMT -5
Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami. Oozing with magic realism and or symbolism depending on how you read it. I liked it but it’s quite different and I think while reading it, you need to suspend your own logical train of thought. He plays around with what is consciousness and what the mind is and what the mind is capable of. Not your average linear story!!
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Post by scrubb on Mar 13, 2021 0:12:49 GMT -5
I think that's my favourite Murakami, sophie.
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Post by Liiisa on Mar 13, 2021 6:41:11 GMT -5
Have I read that? For some reason I feel like I haven't. There's something to look forward to, nice excuse to go the bookstore.
I want to add that I'm halfway through "Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead" and I just love it, love love it.
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Post by sprite on Mar 13, 2021 12:07:38 GMT -5
"Drive Your Plow" was beautiful. I really felt like I was there.
I've just started 'Anxious People' and can't stop giggling. It is tender and observant, but also very funny.
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Post by lillielangtry on Mar 13, 2021 14:54:47 GMT -5
sprite totally agree that for some of them, Allende is just phoning it in (did you know she starts a new book on 8 January every year?!) sophie ooh, I have that one on my shelf in German, I think Liiisa yay! Tokarczuk's epic Books of Jacob, which is over 1,000 pages long, is finally finished in English translation and due out in the autumn, I think. Just saying...
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Post by Liiisa on Mar 13, 2021 15:34:00 GMT -5
Wow lillielangtry by autumn I think I'll be able to read 1000-page books again, woo hoo!
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Post by scrubb on Mar 14, 2021 14:51:27 GMT -5
Well, I FINALLY finished Umberto Eco's "The Island of the Day Before". I found it a slog, just barely staying on the side of being worth keeping going and looking back, I'm not sure it was worth it overall.
The premise is that a guy is shipwrecked, and ends up washing up against a ship that is stranded, stuck securely just off shore an island. He wrote letters to his beloved while on the ship and the book's narrator is creating the story using that manuscript.
The interesting ideas in it that appealed to me the most include the race to figure out how to determine longitude while at sea, and early attempts at snorkelling and deep sea diving.
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Post by scrubb on Mar 15, 2021 22:41:18 GMT -5
So next was a super quick read - My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite. I heard part of an interview with the author when it was nominated for the Booker and it was on sale with Bookbub recently. It was well done. Interesting but frustrating and sad, too.
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