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Post by ozziegiraffe on Feb 10, 2022 7:04:50 GMT -5
Thank you for the recommendation Sophie and Hal. I’ve just added the first in the series to my audible library. I’m driving between half an hour and an hour to work each day, and listen to audiobooks en route.
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Post by sprite on Feb 10, 2022 7:11:14 GMT -5
I'll look for more of the Horowitz's. I think I'd seen a bunch I didn't like, but there was one about spiders that was very good.
I finished Cloud Cuckoo Land, and enjoyed it. Yes, it did tie off all the knots, but I'm reading before bed and I like a tidy ending. I was pleased with Seymour's ending and the twin purposes he found for himself, although I did feel sorry for his mom--what a tough life! I think Q and I were talking about the same discovery that Konstanz makes.
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Post by lillielangtry on Feb 11, 2022 1:46:20 GMT -5
#9 How to pronounce knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa I had a feeling that someone here read this, but I've done a search and nothing came up. Anyway, Thammavongsa is Canadian of Laotian heritage and I'm counting this as my book for Laos because I simply couldn't find another Laotian female author in print. I found this collection of short stories excellent. They all somehow centre around Laotian immigrants and their experience, a few of them are funny, many are deeply sad. The author draws out your emotions in a beautifully understated way. I think one story in particular, about a relationship between an old woman and a younger man, will stick with me for a long time.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Feb 11, 2022 6:02:43 GMT -5
9. Dancing with Demons, by Peter Tremayne. Medieval cozy mystery centred around the death of the High King in Tara in Ireland.
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Post by sophie on Feb 11, 2022 9:24:52 GMT -5
Lillie, I read that book.. and I think I recommended it. It was a book I read for my book club about a year or two ago.
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Post by mei on Feb 11, 2022 10:43:24 GMT -5
For my latest bookclub meeting we read some youth literature, which I really enjoyed: "Hele verhalen voor een halve soldaat" (Full stories for half a soldier) by Benny Lindelauff. Bonuskid is now also reading it and enjoying it (although it's formally for a slightly older age group).
Apparently it's a prequel to another book, and the author used this to pull together a collection of short stories. It was very smartly done, and the stories were beautifully written and very evocative. The illustrations also added to the whole book. Not surprisingly it won a lot of awards last year.
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Post by lillielangtry on Feb 11, 2022 13:27:44 GMT -5
Lillie, I read that book.. and I think I recommended it. It was a book I read for my book club about a year or two ago. Then thank you Sophie, a good recommendation! P.s. I think I saw that the author of The Eighth Life has another book coming out in English later this year!
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Post by Oweena on Feb 12, 2022 18:05:46 GMT -5
Hip-Hop (And Other Things): A Collection of Questions Asked, Answered, Illustrated by Shea Serrano
Fun book full of in depth stories on all aspects of hip hop. It took me weeks to read because I had to watch the videos of the songs he was writing about. I love me some hip hop and rap, but I listen to it because it makes me happy, without knowing the backstories of many of the songs or artists. This book filled in those gaps and made me pay more attention. Serrano puts in plenty of fun asides and personal anecdotes along the way, and you can tell he really loves the topic. Plus he writes in a conversational and accessible style.
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Post by scrubb on Feb 12, 2022 23:06:42 GMT -5
Boy Swallows Universe, by Trent Dalton.
Oh, what a good book! The very first little bit I was afraid it was going to be overwritten, but before long I was loving the style.
Eli Bell is 12. Growing up in poverty with a mute brother, Gus, and we soon learn his ex-junkie mom and step father are selling heroin. Sounds grim, and it is, and terrible things happen. There's violence. But Eli and his brother are special. They can get through anything and Gus, at least, knows it's all going to be okay.
The language dances, the characters are crystal clear, Eli is wonderful, the story - totally over the top in so many ways - is enthralling. (And, it's heavily biographical. The author and his mom say it's about 50/50 reality/made up.) Right now I'm still in its thrall, wishing there was more of it, and I'm giving it 5 stars. Tomorrow the glow may wear off, as that happens sometimes, but it was just such a good read.
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Post by Oweena on Feb 13, 2022 10:18:59 GMT -5
Hopefully the glow sticks around scrubb.
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Post by lillielangtry on Feb 16, 2022 5:23:40 GMT -5
#10 Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things I read this 20 years ago when it first came out, and now it's our pick for book club. It's both sadder and funnier than I remembered. The little twists of language that Roy uses when she's writing from the perspective of the twins are delightful. But overall, such a sad, sad book. Masterful, but not particularly uplifting.
#11 Andrea Camilleri, Das Paradies der kleinen Sünder A collection of Montalbano short stories that I have been reading on and off all year. These were also written around the end of 90s and they don't all contain a murder - some of them are about a robbery or another little episode from Montalbano's life. A few of them do deal with very casually with sexual violence, perhaps because of the word count for a story (most of them are around 12 pages), but it was jarring. A few others were really excellent, however.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Feb 16, 2022 21:41:31 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. Reserved this from the library, it turned up the other day and I finished it this morning. Very light and enjoyable read. I like the way Horowitz includes himself in the story, and often pokes fun at himself.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Feb 17, 2022 5:51:45 GMT -5
10. TheRuin, Dervla McTiernan. Excellent police mystery set in Ireland, highlighting the failings of the church and social services in the recent past.
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Post by Oweena on Feb 17, 2022 7:51:11 GMT -5
Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America by Nicole Eustace
In 1722 outside of Philadelphia, two white fur traders killed an Indigenous hunter after a disagreement over payment for furs. This book covers that event and what followed between the Five Nations and the colonists, who were far apart in their world views and goals. It delved into the myriad ways miscommunication contributed to repeated misunderstandings, and the differences between the colonists Puritan ideals of punishment versus the tribes ideal of crime and punishment. I found parts of it repetitive, but I'm glad I read it. I have a much better idea of the roots of restorative justice, which is being tried in this area in our juvenile justice system for non-violent crimes.
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Post by sprite on Feb 17, 2022 10:21:08 GMT -5
The Lost Man, Jane Harper.
I felt warm just reading this book. In a cattle-ranching area of the Australian Outback, a local man dies of dehydration, which everyone else finds perplexing. The story is told from the perspective of his slightly older brother as the family gathers for the investigation, the funeral, and Christmas. It is more about the dynamics of families and communities where most people have very little interaction with each other, but where those interactions can be the difference between life and death. There was a powerful sense of isolation, both physical and emotional.
I'm not sure I was completely convinced by the ending, which requires a few people to overcome a lifetime of conditioning--like they suddenly wake up one day and decide to take action.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Feb 21, 2022 0:06:34 GMT -5
11. The Alpine Nemesis, by Mary Daheim. One of my favourite cozy mystery authors. Her mysteries are set in Washington state, one of only 3 USA states I’ve visited. (The other two are Hawaii and Alaska).
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Post by scrubb on Feb 21, 2022 15:09:48 GMT -5
You Don't Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War, by Elizabeth Becker.
The author tells the stories of how Catherine Leroy (French), Frankie FitzGerald (American) and Kate Webb (Australian) became some of the very few female reporters/photographers in Vietnam in the 1960s.
The writing was clear and informative and I learned a lot about the timeline of the war, how Cambodia got pulled in, etc. The women were interesting people, as one would expect. The author is also a respected journalist who was in Cambodia in the '70s, and who was part of a Pulitzer winning team who wrote about Sept. 11.
Definitely worth reading - although I didn't find the writing absolutely rivetting, which somehow it seems should have been possible with that material. But she did write objectively and clearly.
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Post by tzarine on Feb 21, 2022 19:18:17 GMT -5
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 21, 2022 21:30:06 GMT -5
3) David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything
An anthropologist and an archaeologist tackle the question of whether the path of history that we've all been taught is actually always true: i.e., the necessary association of large-scale agricultural societies with top-down political organization. And their conclusion was no, and their discussion to come to that conclusion was very convincing and supported with reams of evidence.
It took me all month to read this book because it's very long and has a million footnotes! But it's definitely worthwhile if this kind of stuff interests you.
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Post by Oweena on Feb 22, 2022 19:34:33 GMT -5
Better to Have Gone: Love, Death, and the Quest for Utopia in Auroville by Akash Kapur
Auroville is an intentional community in South India, started in the 1960s. It still exists today which is unusual for the utopian communities of that time period. I visited Auroville when I lived in Chennai, and since a good chunk of the residents are US citizens, I dealt with them regularly for my job. So I was interested in this book that charts the beginnings of the group, it's growing pains, and current situation. The narrative goes into all of that, but it's set against the story of the author's in laws, who were early adopters of the group, and who ended up dying within a day of each other in 1986. Their deaths being a result of their beliefs. The author grew up in Auroville, his parents still live there, and he knew his wife when they were children. So he's got deep knowledge of the lifestyle as well as insight into the different controversies over the years. It was interesting to me due to my time in India, and the book is well-written. Not sure the story would appeal to anyone else though.
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Post by snowwhite on Feb 23, 2022 17:47:54 GMT -5
The Stranding by Kate Sawyer - I think I requested this from the library after Hal mentioned it here or elsewhere.
I enjoyed reading it and also thought the narrative structure worked well.
Not sure what conclusion I draw from the discussion / disagreement between two main characters about staying and going.
In other book news I just asked on a Sci-Fi fb group how many people have read The Silmarillion and how many of them are in that group. I think they should get a group of their own... But then I couldn't get through the whole LoTR trilogy so what would I know?
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 23, 2022 18:34:55 GMT -5
I loooooooooved The Silmarillion when it first came out; I was really into that First Age High Elvenlore stuff. I've never read it since, though.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 24, 2022 12:26:52 GMT -5
4) James Kestrel, Five Decembers
A kind of implausible but nonetheless page-turner of a crime novel set during World War II. It begins in Honolulu, and I found that setting really interesting. Fun characters, too.
However: Strong content warning re. gruesome descriptions of murder victims.
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Post by lillielangtry on Feb 25, 2022 1:48:44 GMT -5
I was very into LotR as a teen but couldn't get into the Silmarillion.
#12 Candice Carty-Williams, Empress and Aniya A cHristmas gift, it's a short YA novel about two teens from very different backgrounds whose birthday is on the same day. There's a bit of magic of involved, though I don't really know why, and it's set in London. I don't really like YA but this was a pleasant way of spending the time in a dr's waiting room and I would recommend it for YA fans as it's quite a sweet, cheerful little book.
#13 Agatha Christie, Murder in the Mews Poirot short stories. Just OK.
#14 Pat Barker, Regeneration Another reread of Barker's World War I novel (the first in an award-winning trilogy). I genuinely think this book is a masterpiece, I've read it about 4 times now. It's based on the real-life meeting of poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon in Craiglockhart hospital in Scotland, where they were both being treated for shell shock (now known as PTSD), although in Sassoon's case, he was largely being kept out of the way having made a politically inconvenient protest against the war. My favourite character is the doctor Rivers (also based on a real person), himself too old to fight, who knows it is his duty to get these traumatised men functioning again to an extent that they can go back to France, probably to be killed.
#15 Nicole Seifert, Frauen Literatur: Abgewertet, vergessen, wiederentdeckt Not available in English, as far as I know. Seifert's book looks at why books by women have been - and still are - given less attention than books by men. She covers the usual arguments, like "I don't look at gender, I only look at quality", "women didn't use to write much", etc. She's obviously preaching to the converted as faras I'm concerned. I was a tiny bit disappointed. It is a good book but I don't feel like I learnt a lot. She picks up on some classics of feminist literary criticism, I don't know how well known they would be to a German audience, but they were the same texts I covered in my degree 20 years ago, and they weren't new then. I was perhaps expecting a little more.
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Post by Oweena on Feb 26, 2022 9:08:23 GMT -5
Hell of a Book by Jason Mott
An unnamed Black author on a whirlwind book tour and the young Black kid he talks with throughout the book, who may or may not be a figment of his imagination, and who may or may not have been killed by the police. The story has funny manic parts that describe what it's like to be on a book tour where the author never knows what day it is or what city he's in. Running alongside that narrative is the heaviness of being Black in the US, with ever present threats of racial violence. Mott describes well the fear of parents trying to raise their children in a world that looks at them as a threat. Mott sums it up quite well when he describes the South as "America's longest-running crime scene".
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Post by sprite on Feb 26, 2022 9:46:13 GMT -5
The Man Who Died Twice, Richard Osman.
It won't change your life, but if you'd like a well-written, gently funny murder mystery with a variety of fleshed-out characters, this is it. It's a pleasant picture of aging, because the 4 key people (or their children) are wealthy enough to live in a very nice retirement village. They are generally successful in their schemes because younger people consistently underestimate them.
It doesn't ignore the unpleasant sides of aging. One character has a partner with Dementia, although it glosses over the harder moments of that. Another develops depression and anxiety after a mugging, and doesn't really respond to the help offered by friends.
I'd read the next book in this series.
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Post by scrubb on Feb 27, 2022 16:33:13 GMT -5
Note to all: the Lovesongs of W E B Dubois is currently on sale for kindle. $5.
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Post by scrubb on Feb 28, 2022 16:49:05 GMT -5
Finally finished "Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control" by Stephen Kinzer.
Thoroughly depressing story of the guy who headed up CIA research into mind control in the '50s and '60s. Headed the infamous "MK Ultra" where the CIA lured unsuspecting civilians into drug experiments, and oversaw experiments on "expendibles" in US and overseas prisons, mental institutions, and hospitals. It's not much of an exaggeration to call him a Mengele. He destroyed all the records when he retired (with a good pension, while still in his 50s) and then he, and all his co-workers, lost all memory of everything they did. So there's no way of finding out everything they did.
The book focused on his "other" side a lot - family man, loved the outdoors, animal husbandry, folk dancing, and travel. After retiring he became a speech therapist and worked to help people. But he also never seemed to express remorse for ordering and approving torture and killing. It's likely his death was a suicide so that he wouldn't have to face up to all the charges/trials in his future (all civilian since there wasn't enough official documentation to charge him with anything criminal).
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Post by lillielangtry on Mar 2, 2022 3:04:43 GMT -5
#16 Winifred Holtby, Anderby Wold I picked up this in an Oxfam bookshop while I was in England, and then by coincidence saw that the podcast Backlisted was about to do an episode on Holtby, although focusing on her most famous novel, South Riding, so this fitted in well. A writer from Yorkshire! It's about a village in early 20th century Yorkshire, and especially a young woman who becomes caught between the traditional farming ways and the winds of change - unions, etc. It's easy to read and the characters are beautifully drawn.
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Post by sophie on Mar 7, 2022 0:09:27 GMT -5
Finally back reading! Just finished Bewilderment by Richard Powers. I liked it much more than The Overstory. It tells of a man, widowed, who is trying to raise his autistic and of ADHD son in a midwestern town where he is a professor. There is great juxtaposition of his teaching and research (astrobiology) and the use of new research to treat his son to cope with his issues. A bit dystopian, a bit depressing but nonetheless, well written and edited. It’s a much shorter book than The Overstory.
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