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Post by sophie on Apr 15, 2021 7:46:26 GMT -5
Becoming Mrs. Lewis by Patti Callahan. Interesting novel based on true facts on how C.S.Lewis met and married his wife from her point of view. Interesting book but parts of it were rather repetitive and not as well written.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Apr 15, 2021 19:04:16 GMT -5
30. Ain’t seen Muffin Yet, Leighann Dobson. Another light cozy mystery.
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Post by Liiisa on Apr 18, 2021 19:33:04 GMT -5
7) Aoko Matsuda, Where the Wild Women Are
A group of short stories loosely based on Japanese ghost stories. For whatever reason, the first couple stories didn't really grab me, so I put it down and didn't pick it back up for a couple of weeks. But then this weekend I picked it back up again and finished it quickly. My favorite ones were these stories about a company where ghosts work and perform various services for society.
I ended up quite enjoying it!
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Post by Oweena on Apr 19, 2021 8:36:11 GMT -5
A Star Called Henry by Roddy Doyle
Have had this book for a while and finally decided to read it. Henry's an Irish kid from the slums of Dublin who takes part in the Easter Rising and the later war for independence. I've read other Doyle books, and this one is similar in how he writes dialogue. Henry is a great character, the narrative never slows down so it kept my interest, and since it's based on history I learned a few things along the way.
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Post by Phar Lap on Apr 20, 2021 2:51:16 GMT -5
Because this is the April thread, may I suggest Enchanted April. Not a book, a film about four women who share a villa in Italy for a month and their lives are slowly changed as they experience a different world. Beautiful scenery and colour.
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Post by weeg on Apr 20, 2021 4:28:01 GMT -5
30. Ain’t seen Muffin Yet, Leighann Dobson. Another light cozy mystery. It occurs to me that nothing in the world of books is more appealing to me than 'light cozy mystery' and I must look this book up. You may like the works of Simon Brett. I'm still doing a thing of alternating fiction and non fiction (which seem to be mostly memoirs) So this month I've read How does it feel. Mark Kermode. Which is a film critic's side career playing skiffle and Grownups by Marian Keyes. Which I loved, as I tend to with her books
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Apr 20, 2021 4:46:53 GMT -5
Weeg, there is a whole section of Goodreads for Cozy mysteries. They vary from themed, historical, and just about everything you could imagine. Look for Diana Xarissa’s Isle of Man series, about Aunt Bessie for example. I enjoy knitting themed books, real ones set in the English countryside, and another favourite author is Mary Daheim, whose books are set in USA’s Washington State. Ellis Peters writes books with the medieval monk, Brother Cadfael, set in Shrewsbury. There are loads more really good ones. The LeighannDobbs books are relatively fluffy. I read Simon Brett’s books, as well as Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh and Dorothy Sayers decades ago.
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Post by weeg on Apr 20, 2021 5:27:44 GMT -5
Weeg, there is a whole section of Goodreads for Cozy mysteries. They vary from themed, historical, and just about everything you could imagine. Look for Diana Xarissa’s Isle of Man series, about Aunt Bessie for example. I enjoy knitting themed books, real ones set in the English countryside, and another favourite author is Mary Daheim, whose books are set in USA’s Washington State. Ellis Peters writes books with the medieval monk, Brother Cadfael, set in Shrewsbury. There are loads more really good ones. The LeighannDobbs books are relatively fluffy. I read Simon Brett’s books, as well as Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh and Dorothy Sayers decades ago. I don't use good reads, so I should take a look. My favourite Simon Brett books are the most recent ones - Fethering and Blotto and Twinks, I've never really read the ealy ones, although I've listen to most of the Radio adaptation - I love Bill Nighy!
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Post by Liiisa on Apr 20, 2021 5:42:47 GMT -5
I'm not a big reader of mysteries, but I do absolutely adore Dorothy Sayers and Lord Peter Wimsey.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Apr 20, 2021 5:42:59 GMT -5
I haven’t come across the recent Simon Brett books. I didn’t realise he was still writing.
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Post by lillielangtry on Apr 20, 2021 11:09:28 GMT -5
Because this is the April thread, may I suggest Enchanted April. Not a book, a film about four women who share a villa in Italy for a month and their lives are slowly changed as they experience a different world. Beautiful scenery and colour. It was a book originally, and I just read it! I want to watch the film as well though, it's got a good cast. #20 Elizabeth von Arnim, The Enchanted April As Phar rightly says, 4 British women - who didn't know each other previously - end up in Italy in April and it is sort of "magical", smoothing out their relationship problems and other unhappinesses. Nice, sometimes funny.
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Post by scrubb on Apr 20, 2021 22:41:11 GMT -5
Because this is the April thread, may I suggest Enchanted April. Not a book, a film about four women who share a villa in Italy for a month and their lives are slowly changed as they experience a different world. Beautiful scenery and colour. It was a book originally, and I just read it! I want to watch the film as well though, it's got a good cast. #20 Elizabeth von Arnim, The Enchanted April As Phar rightly says, 4 British women - who didn't know each other previously - end up in Italy in April and it is sort of "magical", smoothing out their relationship problems and other unhappinesses. Nice, sometimes funny. I read that a few years ago, and agree it was nice, sometimes funny.
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Post by mei on Apr 22, 2021 14:09:31 GMT -5
#5 Zakendoen van hier tot Tokyo ('Doing business from here to Tokyo') by Esther Janssen. I just finished a book I had been reading on and off, about cultural differences and how Dutch business people can navigate those successfully (and what their main pitfalls are). It was a nice read, mostly because it was very practical away from the theoretical models that are usually used for this.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Apr 22, 2021 19:54:53 GMT -5
31. A Design to Die For, Kathleen Bridge. A cozy mystery about interior designers in the Hamptons. I felt it was a bit cliched, and the people overall were a bit too precious. The author was trying to be disability aware, which was a good point.
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Post by scrubb on Apr 22, 2021 20:22:43 GMT -5
The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen by Jacques Pepin. The first half was really engaging, about his childhood in a village near Lyon during WW2 and his apprenticeship in restaurants in Lyon first, then Paris. During the '50s he was in the Army, when France had a war going on in Algeria, but ended up being assigned to cook for gov't officials. He ended up being cook for the Presidents for a while, including when they brought back de Gaulle.
After the war he went to the USA, planning to spend a year there, but ended up staying permanently. It was still reasonably interesting in the second half - he did a ton of different things and it's well written. I enjoyed it quite a bit.
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Post by sophie on Apr 22, 2021 22:02:11 GMT -5
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi. Her second book. I liked her first book (Homegoing) so much I bought this one as soon as it came out. Excellent novel about a woman (it does some flashbacks to her childhood in Alabama and time in Ghana) completing her PhD in Neuroscience at Stanford and in the process, dealing with depression, addiction, grief, faith, science, religion and love. Beautifully written.
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Post by scrubb on Apr 23, 2021 10:16:54 GMT -5
Daughters of Britannia: The Lives and Times of Diplomatic Wives by Katie Hickman.
Reasonably good, with some interesting characters over the years who had some fascinating experiences. There were a few duller chapters and I took a break in the middle, but overall it was not bad.
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Post by sprite on Apr 24, 2021 5:49:19 GMT -5
Maskerade, Terry Pratchett. Loosely based on the Phantom of the Opera. Standard Pratchett,a fun read. Where did he get his smilies?
"She fit in perfectly, like a dead chicken in a maggot factory."
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Post by Liiisa on Apr 24, 2021 18:21:02 GMT -5
8) Jeff Vandermeer, Hummingbird Salamander
OK that was unexpected. A woman gets drawn into a strange situation involving ecoterrorists? visionaries? criminal wildlife traffickers? all of the above? Surprisingly violent, if you know Vandermeer... I guess his Southern Reach novels have some implied violence, but this book has lots of people getting shot, blown up, etc. Running throughout it is the thread of ecosystems and extinctions. It's kind of "The Crying of Lot 49" crossed with a natural history text.
Compelling and very hard to put down!
CW: There is some cruelty described happening in the past.
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Post by sprite on Apr 26, 2021 4:42:34 GMT -5
I really want to read Laurent Binet's "Civilisations" about the Incas invading Europe, but it's a tenner on Kindle and I'm cheap.
Ann Cleeves, Murder In my Backyard. A murder mystery from the Vera/Shetland author. A woman leading the opposition to a new housing development is stabbed to death in her own driveway. The lead detective has just moved into his own cottage which is near land that might be bought by the same developer. THe underlying story is about the helplessness many communities felt in the late 80s and early 90s as expensive neighbourhoods went up in their countryside while affordable housing became harder to find. Some things haven't changed.
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Post by Oweena on Apr 27, 2021 18:46:11 GMT -5
Smalltime: A Story of My Family and the Mob by Russell Shorto
Shorto tells the story of his grandfather who ran the mob in Johnstown PA in the 1940s-1960s and the effect it had on his father and in turn himself. Lots of details of immigration from southern Italy in the late 19th and early 20th century which I found interesting and then lots of details about running a numbers game or other gambling scams that I found dull.
Once again I need to remember to read fewer books by male authors.
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Post by scrubb on Apr 27, 2021 20:10:47 GMT -5
The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortune, by Juliet Grames. The story of the 7 or 8 times that Stella Fortune nearly died over the course of her 97 years, starting when she was about 3 years old in a tiny Calabresian town and finishing at 67 in Hartford, Connecticut. The first part, in Italy, was great. The overall premise was also really good - that Stella was different, and didn't want the traditional life of an Italian girl, but that there simply wasn't any other way and she had to submit. But after she did, she pretty much lost all sense of self and was no longer an interesting character, and there were a lot more pages about her. The conclusion came back, a bit. But somehow it wasn't completely satisfying.
Still, well worth reading.
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Post by lillielangtry on Apr 28, 2021 0:05:44 GMT -5
Once again I need to remember to read fewer books by male authors. That's been my policy for years! :-) #21 Beauty Boois, Namgu's Escape Theory YA from Namibia! I'm not a YA reader, but I had a choice of a few books for Namibia and I decided to go for something completely different to my usual taste. This book has not converted me to YA, but for those who like it, I think it is good. It's pretty short and A LOT happens, focused around Namgu, who is trying to negotiate teenage life with a straitlaced Christian boyfriend and a rebellious best friend. The cast of characters is pretty broad. It deals with controversial topics in the African context like same-sex relationships, rape and mental health. So yeah, interesting, but not my thing.
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Post by riverhorse on Apr 28, 2021 1:17:36 GMT -5
I've downloaded the Enchanted April book, hope I get to it in time.
I've just finished HRT - Husband Replacement Therapy by Kathy Lette. She can be very hit or miss, in my experience, tending to rely too much on oh-how-clever-am-I word plays and pubs, but this was a little more toned down and very funny in parts. The story of a woman whose life implodes when she gets pissed and tells everyone what she REALLY thinks at her 50th birthday party. After getting a false terminal cancer diagnosis.
She then takes her estranged sisters on a "last hurrah" cruise and they find out that each others' lives aren't quite so Instagram perfect as they make them out to be.
A quick, entertaining read but won't ever win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
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Post by Oweena on Apr 28, 2021 8:00:31 GMT -5
lillie I know! Then I'll read a review of a book and think oh, that sounds good and then I read it and it does nothing for me and I'm let down by the book and I again tell myself to only read female authors and it's like a viscous loving-books-too much cycle.
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Post by lillielangtry on Apr 28, 2021 9:40:16 GMT -5
I'm sure you know this, but even though women actually make up the majority of readers and writers, they are underrepresented as reviewers and reviewees...
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Post by lillielangtry on Apr 29, 2021 0:56:09 GMT -5
Probably my last book for April: #22 Andrea Camilleri, Die dunkle Wahrheit des Mondes (The Paper Moon, Montalbano #9) I got quite a way into this before I started to wonder if I had read it before. If so, it was before 2016 (when I started using Goodreads regularly) and I hadn't kept the book. Just some parts of it seemed vaguely familiar. But you know, I like a nice Montalbano inbetween weightier stuff.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Apr 29, 2021 3:31:44 GMT -5
32. Riding the Rapids: the story of Sylvia Jeanes., by Ashleigh Hooker. I found this authorised biography, which Sylvia herself autographed for me, when I was unpacking my books, and realised I’d never read it. The writing is a bit stilted, but the story is compelling. Sylvia went to Sabah as a young missionary teacher in the 1960s, and stayed for forty years. She won awards for education from the government, but often doubted her own worth. She ended up staying for forty years. Conditions were pretty primitive , especially in the interior, where she was sent when she started.
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Post by Oweena on Apr 29, 2021 8:26:30 GMT -5
I'm sure you know this, but even though women actually make up the majority of readers and writers, they are underrepresented as reviewers and reviewees... I should know that lillie, but I didn't. Which shows I should look at who's writing the reviews that then prompt me to read certain books.
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Post by lillielangtry on Apr 29, 2021 9:03:55 GMT -5
I'm sure you know this, but even though women actually make up the majority of readers and writers, they are underrepresented as reviewers and reviewees... I should know that lillie, but I didn't. Which shows I should look at who's writing the reviews that then prompt me to read certain books. So much interesting data at Vida
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