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Post by scrubb on Jan 11, 2022 12:04:03 GMT -5
The North Water, by Ian McGuire
Oof, a tough one. Booker nominee. Some very vivid writing and great characterization – but it revels in gore and violence and greed and villainy, and also had some very clunky writing.
Set mostly on a whaling expedition sometime in the 1800s. Every character is horrible with barely a single redeeming quality in any of them, and most of them are straight out evil, making it so that there was never anyone, or any path the story could take, to cheer for or even care about. Eventually the main character developed a scruple or 2 and represented “good”. I think he was supposed to be complex, a flawed hero, but he wasn’t particularly interesting.
Everything is filth, grime, disease, rape, murder, killing, criminal, and horrible. Human life has zero value. I can’t count how many descriptions of pus, shit, blood, innards (animal and human), killing (animal and human), slime, disease, stench, and other filth there was.
Some reviews called it “dicklit” but I think that was (slightly) too dismissive. Some of the writing was excellent – it was so easy to visualize every thing. But, he was very heavy handed with obvious foreshadowing, telegraphed most plot points, and engaged in some literary “tricks” that I thought weakened it all.
Weirdly, I still felt it was worth reading even though it was largely disgusting.
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Post by lillielangtry on Jan 11, 2022 12:53:22 GMT -5
Wow, scrubb. I appreciate your review, but I won't be picking that one up!
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 11, 2022 19:13:37 GMT -5
Yes, thank you scrubb for reading that so we don't have to.
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Post by Oweena on Jan 12, 2022 12:52:23 GMT -5
Ugh scrubb--everything I DON'T want to read about!
The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris There was lots of buzz for this book. Lots of reviews said it was a bit of Get Out combined with The Devil Wears Prada. I would describe it as neither of those and the first 3/4 was so slow. I thought it was weighed down by all of the dialogue. As in constant conversations, that never advanced the narrative. The final 2 or 3 chapters halfway wrap up what was going on but I found the female who was supposed to be the heroine of sorts to be weak and all over the place. The story revolves around the offices of a large NYC publishing house. It's supposed to be an indictment of racism, microaggressions in the workplace, and the terrible world of publishing. IMO it should have stuck to one of the other. Of course after I read it I see it's been optioned for a movie. I guess the script is pretty well done with all the dialogue already written.
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Post by scrubb on Jan 12, 2022 18:14:29 GMT -5
The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig.
Very readable but I was disappointed. The idea is that in between life and death is the opportunity to try out your alternative lives - what could have been.
The idea is cool but the way it worked was kind of clunky. And the really disappointing bit was the simplistic, lecturing approach to the protagonist learning life lessons.
I think that if I suffered from depression, I would have truly hated it. But I don't, so instead I just found it twee and facile.
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 12, 2022 21:41:58 GMT -5
1) Tom McCarthy, The Making of Incarnation
Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh! This book! Ahhh!
I don't know if this book will be to everyone's taste, because it doesn't really have a single unified plot other than that of the movie Incarnation in the title being made, which the book kind of dips in and out of. But I just loved it; it circled around ideas of complexity and turbulence and chaos, which always makes me so happy. So it was one of those books where while I wasn't sure what was going on some of the time, every chapter had some paragraph where I made a kind of alarmed sound that made pero ask if I was ok.
Plus the plot of the movie in the movie being made subplot tracks the plot of another thing that I love, which I won't give away in case anyone wants to read this, since the surprise was super fun.
So! It goes on my best books of 2022.
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Post by lillielangtry on Jan 13, 2022 3:15:49 GMT -5
I don't know who likes Matt Haig's books, because it doesn't seem to be the people I know, but he sells loads of them!!
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Post by scrubb on Jan 13, 2022 7:11:24 GMT -5
I remember liking the first one I read of his, How to Stop Time. But I've now read 2 more and not liked either one at all. I'm done with his stuff.
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Post by scrubb on Jan 14, 2022 11:01:44 GMT -5
The Secrets of Roscarbury Hall, by Anne O'Loughlin.
It was a sentimental romantic novel, but had a bit of a hard centre. At the base if it was nuns in Ireland forcibly taking babies from unwed mothers and sending them for adoption, telling the mothers that the baby died, and telling the adoptive parents that the mother died.
The author was a journalist before trying fiction.
It had a heap of cliches and it piled on the tragedy. Enjoyable none the less.
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Post by tzarine on Jan 14, 2022 14:35:58 GMT -5
revenge - yoko ogawa - short stories)
found this in my hood (yes, peeps leave new unread volumes as well as near dead books out all the time) went to park, read the first story - afternoon @ the bakery. wow, devastating, dark & beautiful. don't think i can eat strawberry cake for a long time
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Post by shilgia on Jan 14, 2022 19:11:48 GMT -5
Almost done with Midnight Library as it happens. Easy and enjoyable enough bedtime reading, but I completely agree with your review, Scrubb. (Will probably write more when I finish it sometime in the next days.)
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jan 14, 2022 21:05:32 GMT -5
Finished two books in the last 24 hours. #3 Master of Souls, Peter Tremayne, mystery based in sixth century Ireland. #4 Aunt Bessie Joins. Mystery based on the Isle of Man.
Both are series I enjoy.
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Post by Oweena on Jan 15, 2022 10:28:07 GMT -5
The Secrets of Roscarbury Hall, by Anne O'Loughlin. It was a sentimental romantic novel, but had a bit of a hard centre. At the base if it was nuns in Ireland forcibly taking babies from unwed mothers and sending them for adoption, telling the mothers that the baby died, and telling the adoptive parents that the mother died. The author was a journalist before trying fiction. It had a heap of cliches and it piled on the tragedy. Enjoyable none the less. Sounds like she wrote a novel about what actually happened in Ireland with the church running institutions for unwed mothers. The church and the Irish government are still today trying to keep the records sealed about all the dead babies, babies sold to American parents, mothers and adoptees lied to about their bio families, etc. The two most egregious are the Tuam babies and the Magdalene Laundries. How the church hasn't had to pay out millions is beyond me.
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Post by scrubb on Jan 15, 2022 14:55:12 GMT -5
Yes, that was my thinking, Oweena. Set her novel in the midst of that very real background. She made the nuns and priests very much absorbed in trying to cover everything up at all levels.
Unfortunately, she packaged it in a rather silly story. Although as I said, I still liked it.
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 15, 2022 21:41:25 GMT -5
2) George Saunders, Pastoralia
A novella about a badly managed historical reenactment park where the protagonist was hired to be a caveman, plus a couple of short stories about various pathetic souls. Occasionally uncomfortable but well written.
Now I'm about to read a very long nonfiction book, so I'll see you all again in April or something.
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Post by lillielangtry on Jan 16, 2022 5:16:00 GMT -5
#3 Salena Godden, Mrs Death misses death Our book club read. It's a novel narrated by Death, who here is an old Black lady living in London. Great premise, didn't quite live up to its promise for me.
#4 Rashmii Amoah Bell (ed), My Walk to Equality An anthology of essays and poetry by women from Papua New Guinea. Recommended if you are interested in the region, not really from a literary point of view. The repeated, casual mentions of domestic violence were depressing. Also, the ebook had not been converted very well, so the line breaks of the poems had often been messed up.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jan 16, 2022 6:14:52 GMT -5
Lillie, unfortunately, domestic violence is all too common in Melanesian communities.
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Post by shilgia on Jan 16, 2022 9:13:07 GMT -5
#3: Deesha Philyaw - The Secret Lives of Church Ladies. Short stories about Black women in Christian communities. Very good writing, and good stories. Liked it, even though it veered into porn/romance novel a bit too much for my taste. (That's probably on me, not Ms. Philyaw.)
#4: Caroline Criado-Perez - Invisible Women. A thoroughly sourced investigation of all the aspects of life that are designed without taking women in mind. From cars that are tested with male crash test dummies, to medicine trials that by default are done only on men, to tools that are designed for men's hands, to office temperature, to medical text books, to humanitarian aid, to AI technology, etc. etc. etc. We all know it on some level, and yet this book's systematic account of it is kind of mind-blowing.
#5: Matt Haig - The Midnight Library. See Scrubb's review above. Light and pretty enjoyable reading, but also really reductive and at times moralistic, and all in all just a waste of a good premise.
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Post by scrubb on Jan 16, 2022 21:17:53 GMT -5
FINALLY!! The first actually good book I've read this year!
The Past is Never, by Tiffany Quay Tyson. Advertised as Southern gothic, it does fit into the genre, but mostly it's a good story about family and place.
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Post by sophie on Jan 16, 2022 22:59:21 GMT -5
And I have just read an awesome novel: The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles. A great story for a day (or longer) when you want to sink into a great story with engrossing characters. It tells the story (in a rather round about way) of a young man who was in a reform school and released upon his father’s death to look after his younger (and precocious) brother. The story takes place in the mid 50’s, with the appropriate behaviour and mores of that era. There are twists, friends, so called friends and everything in between. Highly recommended.
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 17, 2022 7:38:26 GMT -5
Great news, sophie! That one is definitely on my list, since I liked his other books.
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Post by Oweena on Jan 18, 2022 19:54:14 GMT -5
Glad you liked it sophie. I read it back in November and liked the Emmett character, but not some of the others. Did you feel it's as good as his Gentleman in Moscow book?
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Post by Oweena on Jan 18, 2022 20:04:10 GMT -5
Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach
Tells the stories of different animal/human conflicts and the people whose job it is to deal with these conflicts. Each chapter she travels to another area and follows the experts around. There are chapters on bears and cougars as well as longer chapter on the invasive species of New Zealand. The section on elephant/human conflict in India was the best due to how Roach writes about the experts she traveled around with. Roach is a great writer, she's super accessible, educational, and entertaining all at the same time. I can definitely recommend, even the footnotes are great.
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Post by shilgia on Jan 18, 2022 20:20:59 GMT -5
Interesting. Thanks for the review. Mary Roach has recently randomly come on my radar a few separate times and I've been meaning to check out some of her work.
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Post by sophie on Jan 18, 2022 20:39:00 GMT -5
Oweena, I think The Gentleman in Moscow was overall a better book. I loved the historical panorama behind the main story, while this novel had a bit of that but on a much more regional level.
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Post by Oweena on Jan 18, 2022 21:33:07 GMT -5
Interesting. Thanks for the review. Mary Roach has recently randomly come on my radar a few separate times and I've been meaning to check out some of her work. I've read a couple of Roach's other books. Stiff is a great one of hers.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jan 19, 2022 7:44:58 GMT -5
5. The Shelly Bay Ladies Swimming Circle, Sophie Green. A warm, gentle book about women’s friendship and a variety of issues women face, set in an Australian suburban beach community in 1982.
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Post by sophie on Jan 19, 2022 23:42:26 GMT -5
Over my Dead Body by Jeffery Archer. Dreadfully written, poor plot, miserable (and very stereotypical) characters .. don’t waste your brain cells. It’s probably written at a 10 year olds vocabulary and sentence structure level. In my defence, it was in the new books section of the library and I was in a hurry.
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Post by scrubb on Jan 22, 2022 13:16:00 GMT -5
Had a quick reread of a kids book that I read back in the '70s, Where the Lilies Bloom, by Vera and Bill Cleaver. It was a movie, which I wanted to see and didn't so I got the book back when I was 9. I know I read it a few times over the years, but had very little memory of it and I ran across some discussion of it recently so I ordered a copy.
It's about a hillbilly family, basically, in North Caroline. 4 kids, the mother died a few years earlier and their father is dying. Oldest child is "cloud headed" so all the responsibility for keeping the household going falls on the 14 year old narrator.
The part that I found interesting is the comparison with more recent books about survivalists (like Tara Westover's family, in "Educated"). The father makes his daughter promise that they will never accept charity, and not allow the kids to be taken to the county home. But, all he has is a shotgun, used to kill snakes and have ready for wild animals. No arsenal, no plan to shoot up anyone who comes on their property. No apocalyptic beliefs or convictions that the rest of the world is dammed and only their version of righteous will survive.
When he dies, the kids are left trying to survive on their own. They take up "wildcrafting" - picking herbs and roots, etc., that they can sell to the pharmacist in town. The narrator is also determined to go to school and make sure her younger siblings do too, seeing education as the way out of poverty.
This rereading made me a bit surprised that I liked it as a kid - it's a fascinating setting and much of the story is pretty gripping, but there are also lots of bits of the narrator rambling on about nature and so on in a much less entertaining way.
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Post by Oweena on Jan 23, 2022 22:00:49 GMT -5
Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford Well-written and enjoyable book. It tells the story of 5 individuals over 60+ years from 1944 to 2009 in and around London. Nothing dramatic, nothing mysterious, just engaging in how he tells the stories of how they grow and mature. Other than a few times the characters don't interact with each other, their stories stay separate. What the 5 share is that they were all at a Woolworths in 1944 when it was hit by a German V2 rocket and they were all killed as kids. So the novel describes what their lives would have been had they not died.
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