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Post by scrubb on Nov 1, 2022 17:02:19 GMT -5
And hearths that never can grow cold: These make amends!” — Alexander Louis Fraser, “November”
Last night I started Richard Wagamese's "Indian Horse", about an Indian child who loses his family and is sent to a horrendous residential school in the 1950s. Hockey gets him out of the school.
I planned to just read a few pages last night but ended up reading over 1/3 of it before bed, and finished it this afternoon. It's fairly short and simple while telling a horrendous, but far too common, tale.
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Post by scrubb on Nov 1, 2022 17:09:57 GMT -5
p.s. Since resigning myself to reading library ebooks on my phone and/or laptop, I've gone a bit crazy with them - have read almost nothing else for over 2 months now. I've been working through my "want to read" list and getting a few favourite authors, too.
Finished the last one I'd borrowed and thought I'd get back to working through the backlog on my kindle, but instead I just borrowed 4 more books that have been sitting on my 'want to read' list for ages...
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Post by Liiisa on Nov 1, 2022 17:30:23 GMT -5
Aren't libraries great? Not sure why I was underusing them until this year. And - I read a Richard Wagamese book a couple of years ago; it was a Secret Santa gift from sophie. I remember it was quite good (and very affecting, like what you describe there).
I just started a new book this morning, so it'll be a little while until I'm back. Thanks for the thread!
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Nov 1, 2022 18:24:58 GMT -5
Bookmarking. Thank you Scrubb.
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Post by Liiisa on Nov 4, 2022 14:04:37 GMT -5
56) Eddie Robson, Drunk on All Your Strange New Words
This was a weird, interesting and often very funny little sci-fi novel, which I found on the recent sci-fi acquisitions shelf at the library.
The protagonist is a simultaneous interpreter for the cultural attaché of a group of telepathic aliens in Manhattan. It ends up being a murder mystery of sorts.
There were lots of reasons to like this book, but mainly it's the protagonist, who is from a working-class Yorkshire background and so there's a lot of cultural/class stuff there. The setting is fun too, so you have aliens wandering around the East Village. The interpretation/translation part was well imagined, and the author did a good job of projecting what current internet/tech/media trends might end up evolving into in the near future. It's a quick read, I recommend it.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Nov 4, 2022 22:56:20 GMT -5
67. The Most Misunderstood Women in the Bible, Mary de Muth. A good premise, women’s stories from a women’s perspective, but I found it disappointing. It was a audiobook read by the author, whose voice was too flat. I also felt she didn’t take the women’s stories far enough.
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Post by Liiisa on Nov 5, 2022 6:36:02 GMT -5
57) Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These
Another book from the Booker shortlist. This is a very short book about a town in rural Ireland that has a convent where there's a Magdalen Laundry, an institution where unwed women had their babies taken from them and were forced to labor for the nuns in terrible conditions - these were only exposed and apologized for by the Irish government recently. The protagonist had been born of a mom who wasn't married, but she worked for a widow in town, so his mom's life was better than these women's for that.
I just sat down and read the whole thing last night - it's only about 100 pp long. It's very well written, and the ending is thought-provoking. Recommended
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Post by lillielangtry on Nov 5, 2022 8:42:26 GMT -5
Those both sound really good, Liisa.
Ozzie, I read a long interview with an audiobook reader recently, who trained as an actor. It's not a matter of just reading out your own words and I honestly think if authors aren't sure they can really do it well, they should let a professional do it.
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Post by sophie on Nov 5, 2022 14:18:37 GMT -5
The Bullet that Missed by Richard Osman. The third novel in a series featuring a group of seniors living in a retirement village and formed a club (Thursday Murder Club) to solve old murders. Clever, well written and interesting.. perfect for the genre!
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Nov 5, 2022 20:21:51 GMT -5
Ozzie, I read a long interview with an audiobook reader recently, who trained as an actor. It's not a matter of just reading out your own words and I honestly think if authors aren't sure they can really do it well, they should let a professional do it. The audiobook of Richard Osman’s The Man Who Died Twice finished with an interview between him and the actor who read the book. It explains why hiring a professional is a good idea.
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Post by scrubb on Nov 7, 2022 0:35:36 GMT -5
#90 The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, by Arundhati Roy.
About modern India, mostly Kashmir, but also Hindu nationalism. Full of fascinating characters, the horrors of war, and it elicited the feel of India.
But... it was a bit too rambling and disjointed. The first section kind of sped up 40 years to get a character to the right age and history to the right place. Some characters were obviously just for colour. I loved her first book - I know a lot of people didn't, but for me, the stuff written from the point of view of a little girl was just so perfect, so evocative of childhood.
This one had lots of good stuff, but it didn't feel all that well put together.
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Post by sophie on Nov 8, 2022 0:54:53 GMT -5
Kate Atkinson, Shrines of Gaiety. A great read, filled with well defined characters and just the right amount of detail in each scene to make it become a picture in your mind while reading. It’s the story of several people, interwoven and connected yet in most cases, independent of each other; the setting (London. 1927, nightclubs, police stations..) defines each character and their actions. A master storyteller at work!
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Nov 8, 2022 1:47:30 GMT -5
68. Maisie Dobbs, Jacqueline Winspear. The first in a series I’m enjoying about a woman psychologist and investigator between the World Wars. Disappointingly, the audiobook was abridged.
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Post by sprite on Nov 8, 2022 6:01:01 GMT -5
The Bullet that Missed by Richard Osman. The third novel in a series featuring a group of seniors living in a retirement village and formed a club (Thursday Murder Club) to solve old murders. Clever, well written and interesting.. perfect for the genre! Ooh! Going to keep an eye out for that. Agree that some readers are better than others. Stephen Fry reads his own books very well, but then he was an actor who went into writing.
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Post by scrubb on Nov 8, 2022 13:29:54 GMT -5
Kate Atkinson, Shrines of Gaiety. A great read, filled with well defined characters and just the right amount of detail in each scene to make it become a picture in your mind while reading. It’s the story of several people, interwoven and connected yet in most cases, independent of each other; the setting (London. 1927, nightclubs, police stations..) defines each character and their actions. A master storyteller at work! It really was a fun read, wasn't it?
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Post by lillielangtry on Nov 9, 2022 1:54:44 GMT -5
I think I might put that (Kate Atkinson) on my Christmas list.
I'm reading some long/slow books so will be a while, though I do need to read the book club book at some point.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Nov 10, 2022 3:46:32 GMT -5
69. The Alpine Traitor, Mary Daheim. Next in a favourite mystery series set in Washington State. This one was just a little absurd.
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Post by Liiisa on Nov 12, 2022 22:13:44 GMT -5
58) Colin Thubron, The Amur River: Between Russia and China
Thubron, at age 80, decided that he wanted to travel the length of the Amur River. I thought it was great - beautiful descriptions of nature interspersed with the history and contemporary politics of the region. He's a very intrepid traveler, making plans on the fly and meeting various random people who accompany him on the trip, and these characters added so much to the story. I hadn't read any of his other stuff, so now I'm going to have to eventually.
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Post by lillielangtry on Nov 13, 2022 2:25:26 GMT -5
58) Colin Thubron, The Amur River: Between Russia and China Thubron, at age 80, decided that he wanted to travel the length of the Amur River. I thought it was great - beautiful descriptions of nature interspersed with the history and contemporary politics of the region. He's a very intrepid traveler, making plans on the fly and meeting various random people who accompany him on the trip, and these characters added so much to the story. I hadn't read any of his other stuff, so now I'm going to have to eventually. I think Shadow of the Silk Road was one of the first audiobooks I listened to on Audible. I liked it.
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Post by sprite on Nov 13, 2022 17:36:55 GMT -5
Kate Atkinson, Case Histories. Of course, 50 pages in, I realised that I'd read it before, but couldn't remember how everything tied together in the end. I enjoyed it, and have borrowed the next one in the series.
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Post by Q-pee on Nov 14, 2022 4:33:06 GMT -5
58) Colin Thubron, The Amur River: Between Russia and China Thubron, at age 80, decided that he wanted to travel the length of the Amur River. I thought it was great - beautiful descriptions of nature interspersed with the history and contemporary politics of the region. He's a very intrepid traveler, making plans on the fly and meeting various random people who accompany him on the trip, and these characters added so much to the story. I hadn't read any of his other stuff, so now I'm going to have to eventually. My Russian teacher used to make a great joke about the "Amur river symbolises the immense love between these two great nations" On other days "two great countries divided by a river of love" Might have been my first trans-lingual joke
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Post by Liiisa on Nov 14, 2022 6:27:09 GMT -5
I was going to say that must be a subtle Russian joke, if the history in that book is correct! But then the Russians were quite willing to murder each other in that region as well. The history portions of that book are pretty dark.
Yesterday I sat down and read another book:
59) Lydia Millet, A Children's Bible
I'd been reading about this since it came out in 2020, but hadn't quite gotten around to it until I read a reference to it in some article that made me realize that I was going to like it. The story seems straightforward at first: a group of now-older college friends gather with their kids, most of whom are teenagers, at a large lakeside cottage. The protagonist is one of the teenagers, who have varying levels of contempt for the parents. Things get interesting when a cataclysmic storm hits. The tone of the novel is generally light and funny, with touches of magical realism toward the end. Recommended.
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Post by Q-pee on Nov 14, 2022 8:12:06 GMT -5
I was going to say that must be a subtle Russian joke, if the history in that book is correct! But then the Russians were quite willing to murder each other in that region as well. The history portions of that book are pretty dark. Amur = amour think French - does that help? He had a dark sense of humour.
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Post by Liiisa on Nov 14, 2022 12:24:27 GMT -5
Oh! Ha - I guess I pronounce "Amur" and "amour" differently enough in my head that that didn't even occur to me - very good.
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Post by scrubb on Nov 14, 2022 18:54:11 GMT -5
Michael Pollen, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence
This has been on my 'to read' pile since I heard him interviewed 4 or 5 years ago when the book came out. It's pretty fascinating. Although, the first section talks a LOT about the spiritual/mystical elements of trips on psilocybin or LSD (which are the drugs he focuses on, mostly just to help the book format). He's pointing out how a lot of serious scientists are so swayed by the experience that they can't just look at it from a neurological, medical-based, 'material' point of view. I'm extremely un-evolved spiritually, and hyper skeptical/cynical, especially to new age type stuff. So, it helped me that the author is also an atheist and "un-evolved spiritually". When he decided to try the drugs and was looking for a guide, he was pretty quick to dismiss the real hippie-dippie types, and laughed at himself for ending up feeling comfortable with a couple people who were pretty new-agey.
Anyway, the book also has lots of neuroscience, discussion of trials held (both historically, back in the '50s and '60s before they became banned substances, and starting again in the 1990s) and the preliminary results of current investigations at Harvard and Johns Hopkins.
It was really interesting and the science, though preliminary, makes sense and the theory of how the drugs affect the mind, and why it is therapeutic for various mental illnesses - and even why it can be 'transcendent" for anyone - is pretty convincing. As of publication in 2017 the researchers were preparing stage 3 trials and many were optimistic that psilocybin, at least, will be FDA approved for therapy for depression, alcoholism, and end-of-life anxiety of terminal patients.
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Post by sophie on Nov 14, 2022 19:23:52 GMT -5
I like Michael Pollen’ s writing.
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Post by Liiisa on Nov 14, 2022 20:58:03 GMT -5
I loved "How to Change Your Mind," partly because I was a great user of psychedelics back in the day and I'm convinced they did help me to a certain extent. They actually made me LESS spiritual - like "oh so that's what that mystical sensation is - it's chemicals in my brain rather than some external force"
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Post by scrubb on Nov 14, 2022 21:20:38 GMT -5
I like Michael Pollen’ s writing. I REALLY liked "In Defense of Food" and thought the Omnivore's Dilemma was very good too, but got a bit bored with "Botany of Desire".
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Nov 15, 2022 5:14:01 GMT -5
70. Birds of a Feather, Jacqueline Winspear. Second in the Maisie Dobbs series.
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Post by lillielangtry on Nov 15, 2022 13:54:56 GMT -5
Finally finished Charles Dickens' Bleak House on audio, wonderfully read by Miriam Margoyles. But oh, it is long. So long. Too long. And it felt very, very predictable - I acknowledge that it probably didn't to its original readers, very possibly Dickens invented some of the plotlines that now seem so well-worn. But when it's so obvious what has to happen, and then it takes hours and hours for it to actually happen, it gets annoying. Did I hate it? No, definitely not. Dickens does amazing character studies, for a start. I wouldn't have stuck it through over 40 hours(!) if I hadn't enjoyed it, but I would recommend David Copperfield over this one, without hesitation.
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