A New Year for New Books - January 2022

[scrubb]

This morning I finished a book, so needed a thread to write about it!

Fukushima Dreams, by Zelda Rhiando.

Worth reading, but not great or anything. It tells the story of Sachiko and Harry, a Japanese woman and her English husband, starting the day of the tsunami. Harry leaves for a "run" that morning before it all starts, planning to leave for good. He's been stashing food caches near a deserted cabin off in the wilderness. Sachiko is deep in post-partum depression. The tsunami hits and she manages to get out but assumes her husband and their 3 month baby were killed.

I liked a lot of things about it, but there's a sort of cheap trick surprise ending that isn't really a big surprise, but the author used an unreliable narrator to do it, which is a let down.

Two things about the book - 1. in the acknowledgements, the Irish author thanks some people in Japan for their hospitality and one of them is a guy I went to high school with. He's a dancer who lived in Japan for several years. Kind of a cool little thing.

And 2. on goodreads, one person didn't give it a rating but did write a review that basically said she didn't like the first couple chapters, or think the style was very good, so she quit reading because she knew she wasn't going to enjoy it. And the author commented on the review with "I suspect literary fiction is not a genre that you’re comfortable with ". Which is a really ridiculous thing to say and immediately made me willing to criticize her in my review ;-)

[Liiisa]

Thank you scrubb! Ha @ that sick burn by that author, which is indeed ridiculous but also really funny IMO. If I were an author I would stay well away from Goodreads - I think if I'd written a book, reading people's opinions of it would make me so neurotic that I'd never write anything again.

I only just started my first book of the year, "The Making of Incarnation" by Tom McCarthy, so it'll be a little while before I'm done. But I love it so far - of course I love everything by him, so that's not a stretch.

[shilgia]

Ha! What a comment by that author. Roxane Gay has said often that Goodreads is for readers, not for authors. She is a great contributor to Goodreads, but (I think) only as a reader, reviewing other people's books.

I'm almost done with Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem and have also started Detransition, Baby, which is great so far.

[Oweena]

shilgia I hope you like Detransition, Baby.
I starred in on my best of fiction list for 2021 but then didn't keep it on my final short list.

[shilgia]

I love it so far. Only about a quarter into it, though.

[sophie]

The Mystery of Right and Wrong by Wayne Johnston. The kind of book which stays with you. Starts out in Newfoundland in the late 60’s. A young aspiring writer meets a girl, the youngest in her family (recent immigrants from South Africa) , and gets involved. The girl is obsessed with Anne Frank, and is constantly reading The Diary of Anne Frank. As the novel progresses, more mysteries and inconsistencies in the girl’s family show up. There are shocking allegations and even more shocking revelations. Well written, good characters. Recommended.

[sophie]

Fight Night by Miriam Toews. A small novel (not quite a novela) by one of Canada’s best writers (imho). It’s told in the voice of a very cheeky girl (maybe 8?) about life with her grandmother and pregnant mother. It’s good, bordering on excellent but because it’s told from the girl’s POV, there are things I want to know about what’s going on which are skipped out or glossed over. Quick read.

[ozziegiraffe]

Thank you Scrubb. My first finished for the year is Rivers of London. I’ll be looking for more in the series.

[lillielangtry]

I'm happy to see people enjoying the Rivers of London series.

[HalcyonDaze]

So many books provided by our hosts at the Airbnb. I don't know where to start.

[Liiisa]

Jan 3, 2022 5:48:49 GMT -5 lillielangtry said:

I'm happy to see people enjoying the Rivers of London series.

I've put them on my (admittedly extremely long) to read list!

[lillielangtry]

First book of 2022!

#1 Veronique Tadjo, In the Company of Men (Ivory Coast)
I wanted to continue my project of reading a book by a woman from every country, so when I saw several mentions of an author from Cote d'Ivoire, I was on it. This book is excellent but honestly I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to many people right now, dealing as it does with the ebola epidemic of 2014-15. The book is subtitled "a novel" but it largely reads like non-fiction as it looks at the epidemic from a variety of perspectives, although these do include a baobab tree, an ebola-carrying bat and the disease itself. There's no conventional plot line, it's just a series of chapters each with a different narrator. Pretty devastating and despite the differences between ebola and Covid, of course it resonates.

This was a good start but something a bit lighter will have to come next...

[Oweena]

The Dragons, The Giant, The Women by Wayetu Moore
Moore's memoir tells of escaping the Liberian civil war with her dad and sisters when she was 5 years old along with her upbringing in Texas, and her return to Liberia as an adult.
When the war broke out her mom was studying on a Fulbright scholarship at Columbia University. They were separated and had no means of communication for a year until her mom arranged for a female rebel to get them out of Liberia.
It's an interesting read about an area of the world and a conflict I know very little about.

[lillielangtry]

That's one of the books on my list of possibles for Liberia!

[scrubb]

"Light From a Distant Star" by Mary McGarry Morris. The author appears to be well regarded, considering the awards she's won and been nominated for, but I can't believe this was one of her better ones. It's supposed to be a coming of age story, about a girl involved in a murder/murder trial. The write up compared the heroine to Scout Finch but wow, was that ever off-base.

The voice of the 13 year old girl narrating rarely rang true. Now and then, though, it did evoke strong memories of childhood, and those were the best bits of the book. The characters were mostly quite well drawn, too, if I'm looking for good things to say about it. Still, not really recommended.

[Oweena]

The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story by Nikole Hannah-Jones

I wish this book was compulsory reading in every high school in the US, but of course that would probably cause a riot.
This book grew from The New York Times Magazine "1619 Project" which was published in 2019, on the 400th anniversary of the first ship arriving on the shores of the US with enslaved Africans aboard.
It's an expanded version of that article, with a wide range of contributors. There are poems, photographs, essays, and historical dates of note all pulled together in an eye opening and anger-inducing book.
If you're American, or if you have any interest in why the citizens of this country are why we are the way we are, or why many of our political and cultural systems function the way they do, this book will give you the background to understand.

[shilgia]

Finished Torrey Peters's Detransition, Baby yesterday. A novel about transgender-woman culture, basically. Really enjoyed it.

[ozziegiraffe]

#2 The 5:2 Diet Book, Kate Harrison. I’ve been considering intermittent fasting for a while, and I’ve started a separate thread on the subject.

[Oweena]

The Smallest Lights in the Universe: A Memoir by Sara Seager
Seager, an MIT professor of astrophysics, is famous for her work with exoplanets. She writes of her odd childhood growing up in Toronto, and how as a teen she fell in love with the stars. Going on to get advanced degrees she struggled to connect with people in social situations but was singularly focused on her work.
She met and married a man who allowed her to keep her focus while he took care of their home and family. Then he was diagnosed with a rare cancer and died, leaving her adrift.
This book is interspersed with explanations of her discoveries, her work with NASA and the JPL, and learning how to take care of all the mundane day to day things we all deal with which she'd never had to worry about.
It was an interesting read. She was able to make her work at least somewhat understandable to me, and I think in some ways I related to her non-emotional outlook. She was disarmingly honest about how grief hit her, and she had some spectacular meltdowns in public that she makes no apology for.

[mei]

I finished my first book of the year a few days ago: #1 "Het tij keren" (Turning the tide), with Rosa Luxemburg and Hannah Arendt written by Joke Hermsen who is a Dutch philosopher/author.

I've been curious about Arendt's work for a longer time, and was inspired to finally find something accessible recently again. In the library I found this book which considers the question of hoping for a better world, using the work of these two intellectuals. Very interesting, and a good introduction into some of their work. Still interested to read more of Arendt's work so may look for some of her own writing soon.

[scrubb]

Finished Madeleine L'Engle's "The Summer of the Great Grandmother" which was her journal, and some added stuff, from the last summer she spent with her mother who had Alzheimers.

The first chunk really spoke to me, as she was struggling to cope with her mother's decline and the forthcoming death. She articulated many of the same thoughts and feelings I, and probably many of us, experience at this stage of life.

But the middle of the book is her talking about her ancestors - I think she's trying to speak to the continuity if life, but it didn't work for me. And she finds comfort in prayer and church rituals, which don't speak to me.

So, after a good start, withsome helpful perspective, the rest of the book was disappointing.

[sophie]

The Tiger by John Vaillant. A true story of vengeance and survival, in the Far East of Russia in the late 1990’s between an Amur tiger and local villagers. There is a great deal of information about this part of Russia, Primorye. I found the book as well as all the historical and environmental background fascinating. Recommended, but it’s non fiction so it may be a heavy read for some.

[lillielangtry]

#2 Margaret Atwood, Good Bones
A Virago green-spined modern classic I picked up in one of those converted phone boxes in England last summer. A short book full of mostly very short pieces on Atwood's familiar themes of gender, the environment, and a bit of science fiction-y stuff. I saw a comment on Goodreads that if you are an Atwood fan, you will like this, but if you are looking to start with her work, this is not the place, and I completely agree. It's a little companion piece for fans.

[scrubb]

Jan 10, 2022 4:20:27 GMT -5 lillielangtry said:

#2 Margaret Atwood, Good Bones

I saw a comment on Goodreads that if you are an Atwood fan, you will like this, but if you are looking to start with her work, this is not the place, and I completely agree. It's a little companion piece for fans.

That's an interesting perspective. Someone gave me that book to try to convince me to give Atwood another chance. Before, I'd absolutely hated what I'd read of hers (which admittedly wasn't much - some poetry, and " Surfacing", plus maybe 1 more early novel).

I enjoyed the collection enough that I did give her another shot, and have since become a devout fan.

Though I still think she has some stinkers in her oeuvre.

[lillielangtry]

That's interesting scrubb! Many of the pieces seemed quite slight to me, and I would've thought they could be offputting, but it's good that I was wrong in your case. I would also describe myself as a fan, but Atwood is quite prolific and I haven't liked everything equally. And I've tried twice to read Cat's Eye and just couldn't get into it. I don't know why, as I think it is one of her popular books. I loved The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments and the Maddaddam trilogy.

[scrubb]

I really liked Cats Eye, and Lady Oracle, The Blind Assassin, the Madd Addam trilogy (especially the middle one), Handmaid's Tale, and The Testsments.

Then there are a few that i thought were good but not great (Alias Grace, The Robber Bride, Good Bones, are examples of this category but there are more).

And then there are some I really dislike and/or think are very weak.

[lillielangtry]

The middle one, Year of the Flood, is my favourite of all her books that I've read, I think.

[scrubb]

Jan 10, 2022 15:15:53 GMT -5 lillielangtry said:

The middle one, Year of the Flood, is my favourite of all her books that I've read, I think.

Might be mine, too, though I remember really liking The Blind Assassin, too.

[ozziegiraffe]

The Blind Assassin was my first, a gift from Canayangel when I was staying with her a few years ago. I’d never heard of Atwood before that. I rated Good Bones 4 stars on Goodreads, but can’t remember much of it. I have to be in the right headspace to read this type of book.

[lillielangtry]

I devoured The Blind Assassin when it came out, but haven't reread it since.