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Post by ozziegiraffe on Feb 1, 2022 21:48:59 GMT -5
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Feb 1, 2022 21:57:06 GMT -5
#7. This Much is True, Miriam Margolyes. Her very funny and honest autobiography. Miriam is one of my favourite actors.
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Post by Oweena on Feb 2, 2022 21:52:04 GMT -5
Thanks for starting this thread ozzie.
You Bet Your Life: From Blood Transfusions to Mass Vaccination, the Long and Risky History of Medical Innovation
by Paul A. Offit, MD
Interesting book about medical advances and the way some of them came to be and the mistakes that cost lives.
He discusses how gene therapy came about, discusses the early trials of polio vaccines, chemotherapy, x-rays, blood transfusions, etc. All of it is written in an accessible and interesting way. He uses the experiences of individuals to tell the larger story of the medical advances.
His style reminds me a bit of how Mary Roach writes.
Recommended.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 3, 2022 6:41:10 GMT -5
Thank you ozzie, bookmarking!
I started a long nonfiction book about Neolithic and pre-Neolithic societies in mid-January, and I still am only about halfway through it. Hopefully I'll finish it sometime this month! It's really good, I just have been slothing (thank you for the new verb Hal) on the internet instead of reading it this week.
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Post by lillielangtry on Feb 4, 2022 2:15:45 GMT -5
Thanks Ozzie!
#8 Agatha Christie, Appointment with Death
I was very tired during my journey back to Germany and spent most of it listening to this Poirot mystery, which was really nice. I typically give all the Christies three stars, but I gave this one four because I really wanted to keep listening. It's one of the usual family drama-type murder situations, set in Jerusalem and Petra.
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Post by Queen on Feb 4, 2022 11:49:06 GMT -5
Cloud Cuckoo Land
Anthony Doerr
I loved his last book (All the Light you Cannot See) and was looking forward to this. It's got a lot of strands - five points of view and a sixth that weakly threads them together, I got a bit fed up with the jumps in points of view somewhere in the middle and found that the end didn't really pull them together in any meaningful way.
The stories are good, the writing is good, the characters are fascinating... but it doesn't quite assemble into a good book. A bit like the proverbial meat without salt.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 4, 2022 17:26:44 GMT -5
Yeah, I enjoyed it but didn't hit it as among best of year.
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Post by Oweena on Feb 5, 2022 11:31:27 GMT -5
Cloud Cuckoo Land Anthony Doerr I loved his last book (All the Light you Cannot See) and was looking forward to this. It's got a lot of strands - five points of view and a sixth that weakly threads them together, I got a bit fed up with the jumps in points of view somewhere in the middle and found that the end didn't really pull them together in any meaningful way. The stories are good, the writing is good, the characters are fascinating... but it doesn't quite assemble into a good book. A bit like the proverbial meat without salt. It received so much press, and when I would read what it was about it didn't appeal. So I'm glad some of you are saying it's not a must read. |
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 5, 2022 12:02:10 GMT -5
I actually liked it more than "All the Light You Cannot See," though. But then one of my favorite books is "Cloud Atlas," which is kind of disjointed like this one.
I think I just didn't rate it in the top ten because I read so many interesting books last year. Plus I'd just finished the Ada Palmer tetralogy when I picked it up, and anything would have paled in comparison to that.
So I guess I'm saying it's not a must-read unless you like stories that are kind of weird and disjointed.
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Post by lillielangtry on Feb 5, 2022 12:31:40 GMT -5
I've bought Cloud Cuckoo Land, but on Kindle, so it might be my next trip or family visit before I get around to reading it.
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Post by sophie on Feb 5, 2022 18:39:01 GMT -5
Laura Imai Messina, The Phone Booth At the Edge of the World. A sparse novel, yet so full of emotional experiences. The author (Italian, living in Japan) wrote a novel about a real place, an old fashioned phone booth which is not connected to any network but just to the wind and is used by people to communicate with their dead family. It is located near the site of the tsunami and used mostly (but not exclusively) by survivors of the tsunami. She has used a woman trying to deal with the grief of losing her dough and mother in the tsunami as the main characters. While going to the phone booth, she has met a man who is dealing with losing his wife to cancer and is trying to be a parent to his daughter who stopped speaking when her mother died. The outcome is predictable but the emotional journey each character brings is also emotional for the reader. Have some Kleenex handy! Beautifully written, and as well, beautifully translated from Italian.
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Post by scrubb on Feb 5, 2022 21:32:38 GMT -5
Letters and Dispatches: 1924 - 1944 by Raoul Wallenberg.
This is a collection of letters between Raoul Wallenberg and his grandfather, followed by his dispatches from the Swedish consulate in Hungary in 1944. I hadn't heard of Wallenberg, but I should have. He was responsible for saving up to 100,000 Hungarian Jews in the last year of WW2. He disappeared from Budapest during the Soviet occupation and it seems was taken to prison in Russia and never heard from again.
The letters between him and his grandfather are really interesting. His grandfather basically planned out his life. He was willing to pay for his grandson's education and travel as long as it followed the path he thought it should. Raoul seemed to agree with the overall plan and usually did exactly what his grandfather wanted - with a few small rebellions along the way. He did once reluctantly give up a job he was really enjoying at his grandfather's insistence that it "wasn't as good for the plan" as if he did X. But usually he seemed to be completely on-board with the suggestions.
Anyway, it was interesting to see a young man (about 18 in the early letters) with such a clear picture of his future. The person who compiled the letters wrote a few pages of introduction and said that in the young man's letters he sees the attributes that lead to his work in Hungary.
That said, I think a book telling his war story would be overall more interesting.
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Post by Queen on Feb 6, 2022 3:28:12 GMT -5
The Unexpected Mrs Pollifax
Funny and fun read... quite dated with references to "Red China" and some pretty unfeasible antics from a 60+ year old woman. Did make me go and check a map of Albania though.
Some of the reviews on good reads are hilarious... some of the readers don't seem to have the smallest clue about the cold war and are all on about racism (against Chinese) when it's really about the US fear of communism. Hey ho.
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Post by Queen on Feb 6, 2022 3:28:58 GMT -5
I hadn't heard of Wallenberg, but I should have. There are streets named after him all over the place here... |
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 6, 2022 7:01:33 GMT -5
Yes, there's a Raoul Wallenberg Place here in DC, it's one way that you can walk from the Washington Monument down to the waterfront. I have to admit I knew he had something heroic to do with the Holocaust but wouldn't have been able to say what, so thank you scrubb.
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Post by scrubb on Feb 6, 2022 9:49:56 GMT -5
The Unexpected Mrs Pollifax Funny and fun read... quite dated with references to "Red China" and some pretty unfeasible antics from a 60+ year old woman. Did make me go and check a map of Albania though. Some of the reviews on good reads are hilarious... some of the readers don't seem to have the smallest clue about the cold war and are all on about racism (against Chinese) when it's really about the US fear of communism. Hey ho. I love Mrs. Pollifax. Those books are my comfort rereads. Yes, the context is important and it's a bit odd to see the CUA being the good guys, but I love the places she goes and the people she meets. |
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Post by scrubb on Feb 6, 2022 18:29:32 GMT -5
Piranesi, by Susanna Clark.
Really, really liked it. Very different from her first book (which I liked too). Hard to describe. Piranisi lives in "The House". A labyrinth of great halls filled with statues, by the sea.
It's excellent.
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Post by sophie on Feb 7, 2022 2:30:50 GMT -5
Sankofa by Chibundu Onuzo. Novel about a middle aged woman (Anna) living in London figuring out who she is after the death of her mother. Her mother was a single parent and Anna was the product of a love affair with a student from West Africa boarding with the family. Anna discovers the identity of her father when she finds her mother’s suitcase of important papers; turns out he ended up being ruler of his country. Good writing and interesting content about identity and family and all the complexities within those parameters.
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Post by sprite on Feb 7, 2022 6:38:02 GMT -5
Cloud Cuckoo Land Anthony Doerr I loved his last book (All the Light you Cannot See) and was looking forward to this. It's got a lot of strands - five points of view and a sixth that weakly threads them together, I got a bit fed up with the jumps in points of view somewhere in the middle and found that the end didn't really pull them together in any meaningful way. The stories are good, the writing is good, the characters are fascinating... but it doesn't quite assemble into a good book. A bit like the proverbial meat without salt. Currently reading this, and I'm enjoying it, but then I've realised that lately, all my non-mystery reads are this sort of narrative, and Doerr is easier than Neil Stephenson. I'm just at the point where the girl on the spaceship has made a stunning discovery in the virtual library, so I am on tenterhooks to know how she's going to resolve that. Maybe I'm over thinking it, but it struck me as funny when the space girl is shocked to realise she's walked 7 miles in a day. That's not far. That's a nice Saturday walk, but it's not epic. |
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Post by Queen on Feb 7, 2022 11:20:39 GMT -5
Maybe I'm over thinking it, but it struck me as funny when the space girl is shocked to realise she's walked 7 miles in a day. That's not far. That's a nice Saturday walk, but it's not epic. my first thought was "why would this be in miles?" If you only have the area of your space ship, then seven miles would be a long long way. There's another discovery she's going to make soon... annoyingly I guessed it before she did. |
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Post by sprite on Feb 7, 2022 11:29:50 GMT -5
He's American, so the miles isn't surprising. I'm forgetting how to work in KM, which worries me. I think she walked it on her treadmill, while she was doing stuff in the virtual library.
Arsenic and Adobo, Mia P. Manansala
Cozy mystery, revolving around a family of Philipina immigrant to the US, and their restaurant. Features some amazing-sounding food.
The writing is light and funny in the right places. It's as much a little novel about being young and urban in a small town where you don't look like anyone else, as it is a mystery.
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Post by Oweena on Feb 8, 2022 20:38:21 GMT -5
In the Country of Women: A Memoir by Susan Straight
Absorbing memoir that is part genealogy search, part letter to her 3 daughters, and part love story.
Straight was born into a German Swiss family of immigrants to California in 1960. She was raised poor by her mom in a diverse neighborhood. She attended integrated schools where she met and fell in love with her husband to be who is Black.
The bulk of the book traces both his and her ancestors, and the struggles those relatives had to be free and provide for their children.
Her love of the topic and her passion for the ancestors stories comes through on every page.
She covers race, family, poverty, and more from a feminist viewpoint. And amazingly it's not depressing like it could be with a different author.
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Post by shilgia on Feb 8, 2022 20:39:51 GMT -5
5. James Nestor - Breath. So-so. Nonfiction on an interesting topic: how we breathe and why that matters. It's worth reading (esp. if you're a person who's into yoga and that kind of thing) for the things you'll learn about our respiratory system. But it's not particularly well written. Or rather, the writing is fine, but the explanations are pretty poor in places. (Sending me to Google to figure out what it is that the author was trying to say.)
6. Lulu Miller - Why Fish Don't Exist. Just wonderful. Hard to describe, but it's a short, illustrated book about the taxonomist who identified and categorized a very substantial portion of all fish known today, as well as about Lulu Miller herself. About chaos and order, depression, happiness, how to live life, etc. And if you read it you'll also *actually* learn why fish don't exist. Because they don't.
7. Marjan Kamali - The Stationery Store. I wanted to like this book. It's partly set in Iran, and partly in the US; it has interesting historical parts and the makings of a good plot. But omg was the execution of the plot frustrating. It reminded me of those puppet shows where the main puppet does not notice another puppet sneaking up behind him, and the kids in the audience go "look behind you!" but he still doesn't see it. You're that audience, for about 200 of the 300 pages. It's clear where this is going and why can't the author just get to it.
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Post by Webs on Feb 8, 2022 21:10:27 GMT -5
Okay, it's not a favorite. It's panning. I'm annoyed that I picked up "A Darker Shade of Magic" by V.E. Schwab. I liked another book by the author so I thought I would try this and find I don't care enough about these characters to finish this book.
They're stupid. They're supposed to be highly skilled magicians and theives but they get caught, or miss all the signs of danger that are clear as day. They're just stupid. And I don't want to read it anymore. They're stooopid.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Feb 8, 2022 23:42:07 GMT -5
Arsenic and Adobo, Mia P. Manansala Cozy mystery, revolving around a family of Philipina immigrant to the US, and their restaurant. Features some amazing-sounding food. The writing is light and funny in the right places. It's as much a little novel about being young and urban in a small town where you don't look like anyone else, as it is a mystery. I was going to put this on my to read list as your review sounded good. But then I read some other reviews that were slamming it for a dodgy representation of diabetes managemment. I've been annoyed with down right false and dangerous information about epipen use and allergies in novels before (and have given up on books and given bad reviews in the hope authors will learn) I'm not sure I want to read this now. |
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Feb 9, 2022 6:09:35 GMT -5
8. Crafting Disorder, ReGina Welling and Erin Lynn. A funny cozy mystery with no actual murder, just a series of robberies.
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Post by sprite on Feb 9, 2022 6:40:04 GMT -5
Arsenic and Adobo, Mia P. Manansala I was going to put this on my to read list as your review sounded good. But then I read some other reviews that were slamming it for a dodgy representation of diabetes managemment. I've been annoyed with down right false and dangerous information about epipen use and allergies in novels before (and have given up on books and given bad reviews in the hope authors will learn) I'm not sure I want to read this now. As a non-diabetic with diabetic friends/family, I didn't pick up on anything like that, but then I might think differently if I knew more from personal experience. The murder victim has diabetes, and initially the death is thought to be a diabetic coma--but we all know different, because otherwise it wouldn't be a murder mystery? I haven't got the book now, but there may have been some comments along the line of that character not having a particularly healthy diet which would make it harder for him to regulate his blood sugars, leading to the reaction. But it's not like it's the book of the year, so if you think it'll irritate you, give it a miss. |
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Post by Webs on Feb 9, 2022 22:12:34 GMT -5
Piranesi, by Susanna Clark. Really, really liked it. Very different from her first book (which I liked too). Hard to describe. Piranisi lives in "The House". A labyrinth of great halls filled with statues, by the sea. It's excellent. I started reading the book but I was having trouble following so now I'm listening to Chiwetel Ejiofor read it to me. He can read me anything. |
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Post by sophie on Feb 10, 2022 0:56:56 GMT -5
A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz. I like his style of writing: he writes about himself as the author while shadowing a detective. Clever murder mystery set on an island off the coast of England during a literary festival. Good book worth reading if you like murder mysteries.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Feb 10, 2022 2:55:38 GMT -5
Oh. I've read the first two in that series. Good fun.
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