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Post by Liiisa on Dec 21, 2021 21:55:26 GMT -5
47) Jeanette Winterson, 12 Bytes
Yaaaaawn. I've loved all of her fiction that I've read, but this selection of essays about AI and computer technology wasn't much of a revelation. I think I'd like it more if I hadn't already read most of these takes on Twitter. OK, the chapter on sexbots was new to me.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Dec 22, 2021 4:24:20 GMT -5
80. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?, Jodi Taylor. Love this series. Listened to a couple of hours of it today while waiting in queues for the drive through covid test and the car wash! Next audiobook will be Rivers of London.
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Post by scrubb on Dec 22, 2021 17:37:34 GMT -5
"The Ghost of Henry Putt and Other Firehouse Tales" by Rich Grimm.
I bought this because I know the author and the proceeds go to a foundation that provides for otherwise uncovered health care for 9/11 firemen survivors who have long term health issues because of their work there. Also, because I know the author through skydiving, and although the focus of the book was his 30 years as a fireman in LA, it also had some skydiving stories.
It's not particularly good. I didn't find the pranks that all the good old boys play on each other particularly amusing. But I liked the skydiving stories. I know several of the people he mentioned, and was on two of the trips he talked about, so that made it worthwhile for me.
ETA: this was book 104 for the year, meaning I managed 2 books/week all year, on average.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Dec 23, 2021 5:13:30 GMT -5
81. Murder at the PTA Luncheon, Valerie Wolzien. Not very likeable characters, to much money and too little empathy, except for the police. I’ve been reading random mysteries on Kindle to complete challenges on Goodreads. Some of them were only useful to tell me not to bother with more in the series.
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Post by sophie on Dec 23, 2021 10:25:38 GMT -5
Ocean Prey by John Stanford. Another mystery/thriller which is relatively brainless with good action. Same characters used in his previous novels (Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers) end up in Florida on a cocaine bust. Predictable easy read.
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Post by scrubb on Dec 23, 2021 14:31:25 GMT -5
sophie, I read the first couple of the "Prey" novels - and found them really kind of ugly. I don't even remember exactly what it was about them anymore, but I finished them thinking that Lucas D was way too violent and the world view too twisted for me to want to carry on with the series.
Was it just the mindset I had at the time? Or does the series evolve differently from that? I have a vague memory that I actually read one of the later ones in the series several years earlier (before I read those first 2) and not feeling that way about it.
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Post by sophie on Dec 23, 2021 22:40:35 GMT -5
He does have a different view of justice but it has evolved over the series. The Virgil Flowers spin off series I think is more mellow in a way.
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Post by scrubb on Dec 23, 2021 23:39:39 GMT -5
Thanks. Maybe I won't write the series off completely.
Just finished the second Rivers of London book - Moon over Soho, Ben Aaronovitch. Enjoyed it a lot. I can foresee buying the next few in the series...
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Post by scrubb on Dec 26, 2021 15:49:14 GMT -5
And my foresight was correct - just read #3 Rivers of London - Whispers Under Ground, Ben Aaronovitch.
The series makes me wish my memory of the geography of London was better. I lived there for 6 months in 1985 and got a feel for the city, and knew more or less where each area was, but I've forgotten much of it.
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Post by Liiisa on Dec 26, 2021 19:30:34 GMT -5
48) Erik Larson, Dead Wake
The story of the sinking of the ocean liner Lusitania during World War I.
So on the 24th I was in this coffeeshop where they have a "take a book, leave a book" shelf, and I saw this there. I'd been intending to read Erik Larson books for a while so I took it along with my cappuccino, and then I basically spent most of yesterday and today reading it because I couldn't put it down.
Part of what gripped me was the fact that I've taken the QM II from New York to Liverpool, so I could easily imagine what it was like to be on the ship before it happened. So that and the story of the passengers was fascinating, but it was the political context at the British end that really surprised me.
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Post by Oweena on Dec 26, 2021 21:39:13 GMT -5
That's a good book Liiisa, I read it a few years ago. Our first trip to Ireland (2003) we were in Cobh and ended up going to the cemetery there where there is a mass grave from the Lusitania along with a few individual graves from the sinking.
I didn't care for Larson's Devil in the White City, but his recent one The Splendid and the Vile about one year under Churchill during WWII when it looked like all was lost is absorbing.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Dec 26, 2021 22:21:08 GMT -5
82. Y is for Yesterday, Sue Grafton. Sadly the last in the Kinsey Milhone series that started with A is for Alibi, as Sue Grafton died four years ago tomorrow. I have now read the whole series.
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Post by sophie on Dec 27, 2021 1:46:57 GMT -5
State of Terror by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny. A decent read, about high level political and international deceits threatening internal US policies and statehood. Some characters from Louise Penny’s Quebec town even figured in the mix.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Dec 27, 2021 3:29:28 GMT -5
State of Terror is on my TBR list.
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Post by Oweena on Dec 27, 2021 17:01:06 GMT -5
I Can't Date Jesus: Love, Sex, Family, Race, and Other Reasons I've Put My Faith in Beyoncé by Michael Arceneaux
If you're offended by discussions of gay sex or cursing, this is not the book for you. Arceneaux grew up in Houston in a rough neighborhood with an extremely Catholic mom and an alcoholic, abusive dad. The book is a series of his essays that among other topics, cover his struggle to get to college as the first one in his family to graduate (Howard Univ.) along with his struggle to accept being gay. Several of the essays discuss his dating life, fear of contracting AIDS, and finally his coming out. Parts of it were good, but I found his writing choppy. I finished the book feeling that in spite of his saying he's accepted his parents marriage, his dads alcoholism, and being single, he really hasn't. Almost like he had to wrap the essays up by declaring he's cool with all the stuff he wrote about that caused him hurt and pain.
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Post by scrubb on Dec 27, 2021 19:04:57 GMT -5
I didn't care for Larson's Devil in the White City, but his recent one The Splendid and the Vile about one year under Churchill during WWII when it looked like all was lost is absorbing. I've read his one "In the Garden of Beasts" about the American ambassador living in Berlin in the 1930s. I liked it, but didn't think it was fantastic. Just finished "What Was she Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller. I mentioned it a couple months ago when it was a Bookbub special - Booker nominee, made into a movie. It's really well done. Ostensibly about a ~40 year old teacher who has an affair with one of her 15 or 16 year old students, but actually more about the narrator, the elderly friend of the teacher who is looking after her after the affair comes to light. There's no one likeable in the entire book, which often leaves me unengaged in fiction - but this one sucked me in.
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Post by shilgia on Dec 27, 2021 19:37:02 GMT -5
Neil Gaiman, American Gods I listened to this and it was a good audiobook. However, I think I've given Gaiman a good go and he's not really for me. I did enjoy this, but it's over-long and has an oddly emotionless quality that made it just a three-star read for me. Yes! I had the same reaction. Also 'read' this as an audiobook, and though it was very well produced, I really did not love the book. Currently reading: Liu Cixin - The Three Body Problem. Sci fi, which is not usually a genre I seek out, but this was recommended to me by multiple people, and I am really enjoying it. I've been thinking that maybe I should try other Sci fi, too. Ed Yong - I Contain Multitudes. About microbes. Interesting. Recent reads: Sarah Gruen - Water for Elephants. Many people have loved this, including several people here, I think, and there was a lot about it that I liked, too - good storytelling, an interesting main character - but omg were the descriptions of the sole female character annoying. It made me look up whether Sarah Gruen is an actual person or a pseudonym for a male author, but no, turns out she's an actual female author. David van Reybrouck - Revolusi. Excellent, excellent book by a Belgian author about how the country of Indonesia came into being. (In Dutch, but an English translation should be out soon.)
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Post by riverhorse on Dec 28, 2021 9:47:35 GMT -5
Sisters of the Resistance by Christine Wells. Another story in my one of my favourite genres of WW2 resistance novels featuring strong female characters. Based in Paris in 1944. Although the main characters are fictional, there is a connection to the real-life resistance fighter Catherine Dior, sister of fashion designer Christian, which sent me down on a bit of an Internet research and reading rabbit hole.
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Post by scrubb on Dec 28, 2021 13:47:09 GMT -5
Sarah Gruen - Water for Elephants. Many people have loved this, including several people here, I think, and there was a lot about it that I liked, too - good storytelling, an interesting main character - but omg were the descriptions of the sole female character annoying. It made me look up whether Sarah Gruen is an actual person or a pseudonym for a male author, but no, turns out she's an actual female author. I remember liking it a lot, but not as anything very profound. just pure escapism. Now I want to read it again with a more critical eye. Just finished "Educated" by Tara Westover. I felt that it deserved the accolades it got. I've read a couple other stories about women leaving a Mormon/other religious family but they tended to be just a straight forward memoirs, usually with a ghost writer. Westover is a philosopher/historian who makes an effort to understand her bizarre upbringing and family and understand why she is different.
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Post by lillielangtry on Dec 28, 2021 14:29:59 GMT -5
Westover is a very good writer as well too, in my opinion, which lifts the books above "just" a retelling of her extraordinary life. Educated is one of my books of the year, I'd say.
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Post by shilgia on Dec 28, 2021 16:39:05 GMT -5
Also agree about Tara Westover.
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Post by Liiisa on Dec 28, 2021 21:45:50 GMT -5
49) Sharman Apt Russell, An Obsession with Butterflies
A little book that I've had on my shelf since I read her book about tiger beetles a while back and then never got around to. It has some nice moments and interesting info on people who researched butterflies in the 19th century, so I recommend it for people who want kind of a poetic take on butterflies. She gets moths wrong, but that's just a tiny chapter (it's now known that butterflies are just fancy moths, but she didn't say this).
The big downside for me is that I now want to find a copy of Evelyn Cheesman's "Hunting Insects in the South Seas," but the only copy I can find online is an $80 first edition and I don't want to read it THAT badly.
This may be the last thing I finish in 2021, since tomorrow I'll start the new one by Tom McCarthy, which is 300-some pages long.
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Post by sophie on Dec 29, 2021 0:54:03 GMT -5
The Night Hawks by Elly Griffths. A rather good murder mystery set in Norfolk with an archeologist working with a local police force to solve a series of murders. An easy read but actually much better than some of the other stuff I’ve been reading lately!
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Post by lillielangtry on Dec 29, 2021 1:47:48 GMT -5
I have 2 books I'd really like to get finished by the end of the year, just for neatness' sake! One I will manage, the other possibly not.
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Post by scrubb on Dec 30, 2021 19:18:45 GMT -5
Just finished a quick reread of Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel. We're watching the miniseries and lots of things were very unfamiliar, but I couldn't remember the book well enough to know if I'd just forgotten those things, or if they'd been added.
Turns out they'd mostly been added. And, I really enjoyed the reread.
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Post by lillielangtry on Dec 31, 2021 4:41:01 GMT -5
Agatha Christie, The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding A collection of five stories featuring Poirot, I thought they were all going to be Christmas-themed, but in fact only the title story was. A nice, relaxing audiobook read.
Dorothy Dunnett, Niccolo Rising I am cheating, because I have 100 pages left to go on this 470-page book, but I don't think I'm going to change my opinion about it now, especially as it's the first in an 8-book series, and I really want to include it in my books for 2021! This was a birthday present from a friend who promised that if I persevered through the first 150 pages I would LOVE this and have to read all the rest. Well... I do understand why she likes Dunnett. This was a complex historical novel, mostly set in 15th century Bruges, with a long list of characters. I still feel like my historical background is a bit lacking and Dunnett's deliberately flowerly style is not quite for me. I am not going to rush on with the series immediately, but I might indeed try the second one at some point.
That takes me up to 79 for 2021, rather less than in previous years but that's OK, and it includes some long and difficult reads that took quite a while. 80 would have been a more satisfying number though ;-)
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Post by Liiisa on Dec 31, 2021 7:56:34 GMT -5
I only read 49 books in 2021, which is less than usual, but for whatever reason a lot of it was nonfiction, which goes more slowly. Plus some of them were real bricks, so, all is well! On to the future
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Post by sophie on Dec 31, 2021 17:21:20 GMT -5
My last book of the year is a little gem, a first novel by a local author. Astra by Cedar Bowers tells the story of a child born on a remote commune and gradually evolving to a grandmother by the book’s end. Each chapter tells of a different stage of her life, but each chapter is narrated by a different person in her life. Excellent literary technique. I think this author will be heard from again.
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Post by scrubb on Jan 1, 2022 13:38:55 GMT -5
I needed the January thread after finishing a book this morning: it's HERE
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Post by mei on Jan 1, 2022 15:42:54 GMT -5
shilgia I loved the three body problem trilogy, hope you enjoy it too. I'm also not a SF reader, but someone whose books I do read is Kim Stanley Robinson. Very good. And also fully agree with the Revolusi book. An eye-opener for me.
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