All your reading in August

[ozziegiraffe]

53. Journey to Munich, Jacqueline Winspear. In the months before World War II, a woman impersonates another in order to free a man from Dachau prison, in a negotiated deal. But everything else isn’t as it seems either. Great audiobook for my journeys to and from work.

[Oweena]

Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks by Patrick Radden Keefe

I'll read anything by author and journalist Radden Keefe. This, his latest book, is a compilation of longform stories he's published over the past 10 years, most of them in The New Yorker.
A few stories I'd previously read, but they hold up. He has a way of telling the story of the people or issues that are involving and enlightening.

Here's one example of his writing: A Loaded Gun

[Liiisa]

Oh yeah, Radden Keefe wrote the book I read about The Troubles last year - excellent book. I saw "Rogues" at the library but didn't take it out because it was an "express" book and I didn't know if I could do nonfiction as "express." I'll read it eventually, though, I'm sure. Anyway --

37) Ned Beauman, Venomous Lumpsucker

I love Ned Beauman, so every year or so I go into the "B" section of the bookstore and am occasionally rewarded. This one was absolutely fantastic - it's set in the near future where there's a credits system to combat species extinction the way that carbon credits work... however, of course there's corruption in the system and thus do we have a plot. The thing about this is that Beauman is so insanely inventive that every page is an interesting surprise, and sometimes hilarious. Absolutely one of my favorites of the year.

[scrubb]

65) Bellwether, by Connie Willis. I can't believe I haven't read more of Connie Willis' books or how I didn't hear of her until recently. Well, I did read her "The Doomsday Book" back in the '90s and loved it, but then I never heard of her again for 25 years until my friends were talking about her last year and it turned out several of them have read all her stuff. She is categorized as sci-fi, I guess, but Bellwether isn't sci fi.

anyway, Bellwether is about scientists, sheep, chaos, management, fads, barbi, and a bunch of other stuff, it's very funny, and I really enjoyed it.

[Liiisa]

38) Ken Kalfus, 2 a.m. in Little America

Another short near-future kinda dystopian novel. The protagonist is a refugee from a violent American civil war; he works a series of menial jobs in unnamed foreign cities and ends up in an American migrant enclave in someplace that seems like southeast Asia. It's kind of a meditation on what it's like to be a refugee for people who could never imagine being a refugee, but also a plot that gets more tense by the end as the protagonist starts failing to be uninvolved in enclave politics. It's a little vague but engaging.

[scrubb]

The Assistant, by Bernard Malamud. Really well written story of a Jewish immigrant in the 1950s and his struggling, impoverished life as a grocer, and of the drifter who starts helping him at his store. The people and places are so well drawn, but my god, is it bleak.

[Oweena]

Ten Steps to Nanette: A Memoir Situation by Hannah Gadsby

Interesting memoir that would benefit from being 100 pages shorter. Gadsby spends quite a bit of time explaining how her autistic brain works, and how that affects everything in her world. Much of those descriptions felt repetitive.

That said, I do like her writing style.

[sophie]

The Apothecary’s Garden by Jeanette Lynes. Set in a small town Eastern Canada during the mid 1800s, the main character is a single woman whose father recently died and left her with no means. She finds a way to make a meagre living while she searches for her mothers’s legacy and encounters love. First book I’ve been able to concentrate on in a bit so I enjoyed it, but it’s not fabulous literature.

[lillielangtry]

A Bookshop in Algiers by Kaouther Adimi (translated by Chris Andrews)
I loved this tiny little book. It's described as a novel but most of the characters are real people, most notably Edmond Charlot, who ran a bookshop and publisher in Algiers and Paris and became the first publisher of Albert Camus. Unfortunately his literary sense was better than his business one and he was in constant financial difficulties. I had to google quite a bit, but I found it fascinating and beautiful.

[scrubb]

To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis. It's sort of a sequel to "The Doomsday Book" in that it's in the same world - Oxford, mid 21st century, when time travel has become an academic research tool. But it's more a comedy than sci fi, and it's quite entertaining. Travel back to the late 1800s where the main character is supposed to set right a 'glitch' that has potentially changed history, but everything he and his accomplice do seems to make things worse; it's all a very light hearted romp, but has enough interesting theories about history, and all the silliness is well enough done, that it's worth while.

[sprite]

Let's be honest, I just finished a Bridgerton novel. The F child, I've missed kids 4 and 5.
It was predictable, but it was fun. Recommended if you want a light historical romance.

Proceeds from the sales went to a charity that fights malaria--one of the characters returns from India with the infection.

[scrubb]

The Drug Hunters: the Improbable Quest to Discover New Medicines, by Donald Kirsch and Ogo Ogas.

Very non-technical discussion of both the historical discovery and development of different kinds of drugs, and the current state of affairs. The author worked in Pharmacology research.

It's really interesting, and very easy to read (possibly that was my least favourite thing about it - simplistic analogies and total lack of technical info).

One of the more distressing things I learned is that in spite of the increases of antibiotic resistant bacteria, none of the major pharmaceutical companies are working on developing new antibiotics.15 of the 18 biggest pharmaceutical companies have shut down their antibiotic sections. Mostly because they aren't big money makers, as people only need to take them for short times, and when it costs literally billions of dollars to develop and get approval for any new drug, for-profit businesses are going to focus on the real moneymakers.

Which seems like a crystal-clear explanation of why governments should not be leaving drug development entirely in the hands of big pharma.

[Liiisa]

I can attest to that scrubb -- there are lots of new antivirals, but I can only think of one or two antibacterials in the past couple of years.

That does sound really interesting, especially with my druggy job, though if it's too simplistic it might get on my nerves. Does it at least refer to drugs by their generic name instead of tradename? That's a weird peeve of mine, when it's all tradenames.

[scrubb]

You'd likely enjoy the history bits, unless you know all of it already. He talks about the discovery of several kinds of drugs, and several specific drugs, and I found that all very interesting. But the technical stuff is presented so simplistically that I started to find it annoying, so that would be amplified for you.


During the discussions of their developments he uses the generic names. Seems to me he must occasionally use brand names though, because I remember reading "paxil" and "prozac" and "tylenol" - but I think that was mostly when he was discussing drugs that competing companies came up with, kind of thing.

[lillielangtry]

Ah, scrubb, I had one like that that I think I forgot to mention here: Extraordinary Insects by Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson (translated by Lucy Moffatt). It was interesting and I learned some fun facts, but the CONSTANT analogies just started to feel very patronising. Like, yes, I can learn about what an insect eats without something having to read something like "it's like you forgetting to pack your healthy salad and having to stop for a burger and fries before you get back in your car". It wasn't exactly anthropomorphising the insects, it was more like thinking every single aspect had to be somehow compared to humans in an amusing, "quirky" way. The translator did an excellent job - it all sounded very natural. It was just an annoying method carried out over a book-length work.

[Liiisa]

Thank you scrubb. Hmm - it's not like I'm a pharmacologist or anything, but I have been reading about that stuff for 37 years.

Analogies are useful -- I'll admit that I tell people "female dragonflies are often found away from the pond to have a break from the constant aggression of mating; it's like the women's bathroom at a disco". But not constantly.

[sprite]

I've just started 'Where the Crawdads Sing' for work, and am now going to see if anyone here has read it.

[Oweena]

After the Parade by Lori Ostlund

The plot is built around a mid forties gay guy who's just broken up with his long term partner. He up and moves to California where he teaches ESL in a falling down school. The narrative moves between present time and his childhood in Minnesota with lots of strange and/or odd characters from both periods of time populate the book. It's an overall mellow and enjoyable book.

[Oweena]

Aug 31, 2022 7:13:09 GMT -5 sprite said:

I've just started 'Where the Crawdads Sing' for work, and am now going to see if anyone here has read it.

I think quite a few of us read it.
I didn't care for it, the murder plot and the investigation that followed had so many holes in it I couldn't get past that part. Plus there were other unbelievable (to me) plot points.

[lillielangtry]

I was totally drawn in by it during the reading experience, but I do agree with some of the criticism I've read since.

[sprite]

I read a review of the movie: "It's the all-white reboot of 'To Killn a Mockingbird'!"

[sprite]

Yeah, so far I've been very surprised by the amount of crime-scene-preservation and CSI-ish stuff going on in backwater 1969, but my only other reference point for that is Blue Dahlia () so I'm no expert.

[Liiisa]

Aug 31, 2022 7:13:09 GMT -5 sprite said:

I've just started 'Where the Crawdads Sing' for work, and am now going to see if anyone here has read it.

I was warned off of it by people here and other friends who share my taste in novels, but I forget why

[scrubb]

Aug 31, 2022 4:19:31 GMT -5 lillielangtry said:

Ah, scrubb, I had one like that that I think I forgot to mention here: Extraordinary Insects by Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson (translated by Lucy Moffatt). It was interesting and I learned some fun facts, but the CONSTANT analogies just started to feel very patronising. Like, yes, I can learn about what an insect eats without something having to read something like "it's like you forgetting to pack your healthy salad and having to stop for a burger and fries before you get back in your car". It wasn't exactly anthropomorphising the insects, it was more like thinking every single aspect had to be somehow compared to humans in an amusing, "quirky" way. The translator did an excellent job - it all sounded very natural. It was just an annoying method carried out over a book-length work.

Yes, exactly. It wasn't ubiquitous in this book, luckily, but I'd begun to really notice them towards the end. Or at least, I noticed one that felt egregious and it made me realize there'd been at least a couple others, and I didn't think that the things he was talking about were complex enough to need a super simplistic analogy to be understood.

[Liiisa]

I just also got warned off the new Julian Barnes novel by the Washington Post, which was a relief since I wasn't intending to read it anyway. I am really sick of reading books about men's obsessions with women.

I think Pamuk's "Museum of Innocence" is what pushed me over the edge about that topic. Füsun! Ugh

Edited to add:

39) Premee Mohamed, A Broken Darkness

The second in a trilogy -- I'd read the first, Beneath the Rising, earlier this year. The protagonist is a Guyanese-Canadian sidekick of a young white woman who is a prodigy and a genius but... for unsavory reasons described in the first book, and Earth is beset by an invasion by forces of ancient evil.

This sounds kind of predictable, but I really like her writing. Scene descriptions are creative and interesting, and the dynamic between this guy and his frenemy the genius is really interesting.

I will read the third part of the trilogy, but later this year because I have this pile of library books to read....

[scrubb]

The Sunday Philosophy Club, by Alexander McCall Smith.

I didn't like it at all. The main character was super annoying and the "mystery" was lame. There was a weird occurrence near the end that I guess was a red herring in that it ended up having nothing to do with the mystery, but then there wasn't any explanation for it.

The worst part was that the main character is a philosopher so the author had her constantly go off on mental philosophical discussions about the most elementary, facile topics imaginable. I took to skimming over those pages.

I enjoyed the first few "No. 1 Detective Agency" books but thought they became twee before long. This one has made me actually dislike the author enough to cast a worse light than "twee" on them.

[sprite]

THe charity bookshop gets so many of his books in, last time the manager was on holiday we did a £1 promotion on all the paperbacks we had of his. Still only managed to shift a few, probably should have put a sign in the window for tourists.

[ozziegiraffe]

Aug 31, 2022 21:08:57 GMT -5 scrubb said:

The Sunday Philosophy Club, by Alexander McCall Smith.

I didn't like it at all. The main character was super annoying and the "mystery" was lame. There was a weird occurrence near the end that I guess was a red herring in that it ended up having nothing to do with the mystery, but then there wasn't any explanation for it.

The worst part was that the main character is a philosopher so the author had her constantly go off on mental philosophical discussions about the most elementary, facile topics imaginable. I took to skimming over those pages.

I enjoyed the first few "No. 1 Detective Agency" books but thought they became twee before long. This one has made me actually dislike the author enough to cast a worse light than "twee" on them.

I love the No 1 Ladies series, and the other Edinburgh series, 44 Scotland Street, but I found Isabel Dalhousie a complete waste of space.