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Post by sophie on Apr 29, 2021 9:10:36 GMT -5
The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles. Even though it’s set during WW2 for much of the novel, it’s a bit of a lighter chick lit type of book. I have some issues with these books which gloss over or glamorize aspects of living through a war or occupation but otherwise it was an okay book. (And I understand the glossing over bit, as otherwise no one would want to read any novel with that setting, but WW2 seems to be a favourite setting these days)
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Post by sprite on Apr 30, 2021 5:47:32 GMT -5
Nearly finished some Murakami short stories, Men Without Women. I think someone else mentioned him having odd ideas about breasts, and yes, that does seem to be a feature.
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Post by lillielangtry on Apr 30, 2021 6:12:24 GMT -5
Nearly finished some Murakami short stories, Men Without Women. I think someone else mentioned him having odd ideas about breasts, and yes, that does seem to be a feature. that was me and yeah, I feel like he has odd ideas about women and the breasts are a feature of that... which is not to say he can't spin a good story.
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Post by Oweena on Apr 30, 2021 9:01:43 GMT -5
The Fifth Woman by Nona Caspers Short book of inter-connected stories. The theme is the grief the narrator is going through after the sudden death of her partner in an accident. At times the stories veer into magical realism. She's able to describe that otherworldly, drifting, above the crowd feeling of grief. It sounds depressing but it wasn't. Mostly because her writing almost floats and I wanted to read her descriptions of how the unnamed narrator was experiencing her day to day life.
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Post by scrubb on Apr 30, 2021 20:57:53 GMT -5
The Secret of the Notebook: A Woman's Quest to Uncover her Royal Family Secret by Eve Haas.
Pretty awful name, but a quite interesting story. Very amateur writing, but at least it's told clearly and with good grammar. A Jewish refugee to England in the 1930s is given a notebook that came down from her grandmother (who stayed behind in Czechoslovakia and died in Theriesenstadt) which suggests that they descended from the Hapsburg royalty. She starts trying to track the story down in the 1970s, including a couple of trips into East Berlin. Family legend was that the prince hooked up with the daughter of a Jewish tailor but there was just no information anywhere. In the '80s she finally put the whole story together, at least to her own satisfaction. The last bit of evidence is fairly flimsy, but hey, whatever.
I knew so little about the Prussian empire that I enjoyed these glimpses into it.
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Post by sprite on May 2, 2021 3:50:30 GMT -5
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Post by HalcyonDaze on May 3, 2021 2:35:40 GMT -5
22. The Institute - Stephen King. Another book club book. It was seriously decades since I'd read anything by Stephen King and I'd forgotten how much fun his books could be - the way he draws you into a story and keeps you reading. This book was really a YA novel but because it is Stephen King it was marketed to adults. Luke Ellis, an incredibly intelligent 12 year old is kidnapped and ends up in a special facility where kids with special gifts (telepathy, telekinesis) undergo tests to try and enhance these abilities. Why does the institute want these kids and what are they doing with them? And is there any hope of escape?
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