Novel-ember

[lillielangtry]

Yes, it's time for the November book thread (obviously not just for novels, but novellas, non-fiction, and whatever else!)

The October thread is here

[lillielangtry]

65 Bessie Head, When Rain Clouds Gather
Bessie Head was born in South Africa but emigrated to Botswana and is generally considered the most famous Botswanan author.
This novel is about a man who also arrives in Botswana from South Africa in the 60s and how he settles into village life there - this is a life that is undergoing change in its traditional and agricultural practices but still facing natural challenges such as drought.
You may or may not find the details of crops and cattle farming interesting, but Head's real genius is in the characters. She keeps diving into the heads of different people and drawing out the most complex personalities, it's really beautiful.

[scrubb]

Thanks, lillie!

I like the sound of that book, too.

[ozziegiraffe]

Thank you Lillie. Bookmarking.

[sophie]

Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck translated by Susan Bernofsky. This was my book club read for the month and I think we will have quite a discussion about it. First, a superb translation job. The rhythm of the text, the vocabulary.. hard to believe it’s a translation. The book is about a German academic who just retired and encounters African refugees. His awareness of them as people changes as does his awareness of the world (prior to retirement his world was the ancient classics of Rome and Greece) which had previously reflected his East German background. Excellent book.

[lillielangtry]

I've read that in German Sophie, and enjoyed it too. I think the translator is Susan Bernofsky? I think it captured the mood of Germany in 2015ish very well. I did read a criticism from one reviewer that the author got one cultural point wrong and that made her doubt the research of the whole book. Honestly I hadn't noticed it before she pointed it out.

[Liiisa]

Thank you lillie!

I'm about 2/3 of the way through Jonathan Lethem's new meta-postapocalyptic novel, which I am really enjoying and having trouble putting down, so I'll likely have it to report later today or tomorrow.

[sprite]

I'm reading Shadowplay, a novel about Bram Stoker, but although I like each individual bit that I read, I'm struggling to make myself read often, so it's very slow going. I feel like someone here recommended it.

[riverhorse]

"Fugly" by Clare Waller. A YA novel that I found when browsing on the Lilly app. I think this book should be made compulsory reading for every teenager in either IT classes or PSHE in high school.

It's the story of a socially isolated girl in her first year of university, self-conscious about her figure and with a lot of family problems. Her life basically revolves around trolling pretty Instagram girls and playing round on the dark net, where she meets Tori, a similar girl (or is she?) who befriends her. They get more and more caught up in their trolling until it starts to spill over into real life and Beth is confronted by the fact that what she is doing has real-life and real-time consequences.

I found it really well-written and relatable, and the build up of suspense to a quite shocking outcome was well done.

[Liiisa]

Oops, I posted this in October. Here it is, in its rightful place since i finished it yesterday:

40) Jonathan Lethem, The Arrest

I love Lethem anyway, and here he is writing a postapocalyptic novel - sort of a self-aware postapocalyptic novel, since two of the characters had worked on a postapocalyptic dystopian film script, and that comes up from time to time. I really loved it - it's highly amusing and surprising.

[mei]

#17 - Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism by Anne Applebaum

My next bookclub read, although it looks like I won't be able to attend the discussion itself.

It's a very interesting read, although now that I've finished I'm not sure I fully understand the author's main argument on why/how authoritarianism is on the rise is in so many places around the world. Or rather, there are many reasons for it, it seems, and it's probably too simplistic to expect one all-encompassing answer.

She discusses Poland, Hungary, the UK, Spain and the US which brings in more perspectives than the ones that are most often on the news (although Poland & Hungary are quite often in the news here). Interesting backgrounds to people, political developments that I didn't know about etc. She's very well-connected herself, and there's a lot of name-dropping throughout the book. I'm not sure yet what I think about that: it serves a purpose as it shows changes in the political elite but I think it could do without the many personal anecdotes maybe?

[Liiisa]

I have that on my to-read list, mei, because I've seen Applebaum interviewed (she's a friend or former colleague of one of the co-hosts of the live webcast thing that we watch), and based on that knew it would be interesting. But I'm waiting to be a little less overworked before tackling such a depressing topic.

Those sorts of personal anecdotes can be an annoying distraction.

[lillielangtry]

It's a delicate balance, isn't it, because I think it's human nature to be interested in personal details, but too much detracts from the main message

[ozziegiraffe]

70. State of Wonder, Ann Patchett. Loved it. With my background in teaching science, biology and health education, as well as first hand experience with malaria, of course I would. My malaria experience was with the side effects of chloroquine, rather than Larium, but they were just as nasty. Hence my reaction when it was suggested for Covid. When you get malaria, you take the medication over three days, because if you take them all at once, you will probably die!

[scrubb]

John Muir and the Ice That Started a Fire: How a Visionary and the Glaciers of Alaska Changed America, by Kim Heacox.

I didn't know much about Muir and this was an ok introduction to his story. The author focused on how Muir spearheaded conservation ideals, and pointed out the relevance to today's climate change crisis. it also made me really, really want to get back to the mountains and do some hiking!

[Oweena]

The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee by Sarah Silverman

Not recommended. I'm not really a fan of her comedy to start with, and it's pretty crass which is what she's known for, so I should have expected the tone.

[Liiisa]

41) Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Before the Coffee Gets Cold

An odd little Japanese novel in translation that I found on the New Acquisitions shelf at the library.

It's about a strange little basement café in an unnamed town in Japan that has this one table where if you sit there, you can go backward or forward in time. There are regulars and staff in the café that you get to know, and it's a little sentimental, but also pretty absorbing and a little strange. I enjoyed it.

[lillielangtry]

I really like the sound of that one Liiisa.

[scrubb]

Yeah, I read it a few months ago and enjoyed it, though not in an earthshattering way.

[scrubb]

Just finished "Perfect Peace" by Daniel Black. About a family/community of poor blacks in Arkansas between 1940-60. The main event is that when Emma Jean has her 7th child, and it's her 7th boy, she decides that she NEEDS a girl, and tells everyone that she had one. Then she raises the child as a girl. But the story is about the whole family, and some of their community. The dialogue is all written in dialect and some of the writing is a bit amateur which make this dialect almost descend into something like blackface - but not quite. Overall, characters were sympathetic and the writing evoked time and place well. The story could have been really great in the hands of a great writer - the author has lots of good ideas.

[Liiisa]

Nov 5, 2021 12:43:54 GMT -5 scrubb said:

Yeah, I read it a few months ago and enjoyed it, though not in an earthshattering way.

Ah, I must have forgotten you'd said that at the time - I thought I'd never heard of it when I picked it up. Yes, exactly - enjoyable but not earth-shattering.

[ozziegiraffe]

71. Shakespeare’s Christmas, Charlaine Harris. Much less dark than the previous book in the series, but still dealing with murder and child abduction, which is very topical here in Australia at the moment.

[Liiisa]

42) Hari Kunzru, Red Pill

OK, enough of happy enjoyable books, let'd get back to the apocalypse!

Well not really, but although this book has a number of very amusing moments and is very compelling (I read it in 24 hours), it's pretty intense. An American writer of South Asian ancestry gets a fellowship to write at a place in Germany. This doesn't go well for him, and he keeps seeing hints of old and new authoritarianism. This sets him on a problematic course.

I thought it was great - very well written, couldn't put it down - but not for certain moods.

Now I'm going to read the final book in Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota series! Yay! I hope I remember what those were about... the previous one came out a couple years ago, and they're very strange and complicated and have a billion characters. But I love them, so yay.

[lillielangtry]

#66 Banine, Days in the Caucasus
Banine (real name Umm-El-Banine Assadoulaeff) was born in Azerbaijan in 1905. This memoir is the account of her childhood in a family made hugely rich by the discovery of oil on their land, the Russian revolution, her arranged marriage at 15, and eventual emigration to France. She has a very light tone throughout describing all this upheaval and the book is often very funny and doesn't beat about the bush on subjects like sex either. Really interesting. (Still unconvinced that the audiobooks of translated works need to be read by an actor in a foreign accent, by the way).

#67 Maggie O'Farrell, Hamnet
Beautifully written historical novel loosely based on Shakespeare's family. I loved it. Wouldn't recommend if you are sensitive about acounts of children dying though, since the death of Hamnet is the focus of the entire novel (although the main character is really his wife Anne/Agnes - Shakespeare himself is only a bit part). Tugs at the heartstrings.

[Oweena]

I really liked Hamnet lillie, it's one of those books that has stayed with me.

The memoir sounds interesting. I always end up back with non-fiction/biography/memoir so I'll have to look for that one.

[mei]

Nov 4, 2021 7:19:21 GMT -5 lillielangtry said:

It's a delicate balance, isn't it, because I think it's human nature to be interested in personal details, but too much detracts from the main message

Yes, I remember another bookclub discussion about 'The Sixth Extinction' which also uses a lot of personal anecdotes and experiences. In that book, I thought it worked very well and made the content easier to understand but not everyone thought the same.

[Liiisa]

Oh yeah, i just loved "The Sixth Extinction." But that didn't sound like insider-y gossip, that was more like journalism.

[scrubb]

Nov 8, 2021 12:59:08 GMT -5 mei said:

Nov 4, 2021 7:19:21 GMT -5 lillielangtry said:

It's a delicate balance, isn't it, because I think it's human nature to be interested in personal details, but too much detracts from the main message

Yes, I remember another bookclub discussion about 'The Sixth Extinction' which also uses a lot of personal anecdotes and experiences. In that book, I thought it worked very well and made the content easier to understand but not everyone thought the same.

I agree with Liiiiisa - it didn't come across to me as anecdotal in The Sixth Extinction.

For me - if I like the author then I usually find anecdotes and details worthwhile. If the author rubs me the wrong way then personal details irk me and I find fault with both them, and how the author tries to extract meaning from them into the bigger story s/he's telling. That's not very objective, I realize, but it's true.

[scrubb]

The Nest, by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney. About 4 siblings (and some of the people in their lives), living in New York, who have always had an inheritance coming to them when the youngest turns 40. (A nest egg, which they shorten to "the nest".) Some of the story is about how the expectation of this money influenced them over the years, but that's not the whole thing.

Some of them weren't very likeable characters, so it was impressive that the author made me care about them, or at least stay interested.

It was very readable and last night I couldn't sleep so ended up finishing it. By 2:30 a.m. or so it was probably the book keeping me awake. The only real criticism is that the ending is way too pat and finished

[mei]

#18 The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

A good reminder that I should read more gripping fiction as it takes me away from my phone. This had been on my to read list for a while and finally picked it up from the library.

Really enjoyed it, though the ending seemed rushed after a long build-up. It ties together a lot of things about the workings of Gilead which I found satisfying.