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Post by Liiisa on Feb 2, 2023 19:25:02 GMT -5
Because I finished a book and there wasn't one yet
12) Tamara Shopsin, LaserWriter II
A sweet little book about a scrappy little 1980s NYC computer repair shop specializing in Apple products. It captured the early days of personal computers so well - really a delight to read.
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Post by scrubb on Feb 2, 2023 22:32:24 GMT -5
Thanks, Liiiisa!
I have 2 books on the go. Started the new Barbara Kingsolver (Demon Copperhead), and am also reading "The Grail Bird: Hot on the Trail of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker" by Tim Gallagher. The ivory billed woodpecker is probably extinct but once every few/10 years, someone has a sighting, though none have been verified since the 1940s. I was excited about the woodpecker book at first, and the first couple chapters that summarized sightings from the 1930s to 2004 were really interesting.
But I don't think he had enough material for a real book, because after that there is just a ton of filler. The author is travelling around meeting with everyone still alive who ever says they saw one, or their widow, or their old friends, and he provides copious detail on the roads to get there, his friend he travels with, the appearance and personality of all the people he meets.... I'm pretty much skimming these chapters. I believe that the author saw one sometime in this century so I'll read that part more closely when I get to it.
Oh, the only other interesting, but depressing, part is that he compares some of the habitat in the swamps and woods of the southern USA when he was here in 2004, with how it was described in he writings of early ornithologists. The terrible loss to logging and agriculture is horrifying.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Feb 3, 2023 2:43:04 GMT -5
Thank you Liiisa. Bookmarking.
I love Tim Flannery, but I usually read the books he writes about places I’m familiar with. I’m not sure that would include an American woodpecker.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Feb 3, 2023 3:06:43 GMT -5
Seems the author is Tim Gallagher - I misread it as Flannery at first as well, and did think it was a bit of a departure for him.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 3, 2023 6:25:55 GMT -5
The Ivory-billed Woodpecker thing is exasperating. The videos used as "evidence" for its survival are so indistinct that people in the birding community make jokes about them. It's sad; even if there are any left, there are so few that they're really ecologically unimportant compared with other things, so I really wish people would focus their attention on something else.
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Post by scrubb on Feb 3, 2023 19:12:52 GMT -5
Seems the author is Tim Gallagher - I misread it as Flannery at first as well, and did think it was a bit of a departure for him. I came back here to change it, as I saw I'd got it wrong when I looked at it this morning. The Ivory-billed Woodpecker thing is exasperating. The videos used as "evidence" for its survival are so indistinct that people in the birding community make jokes about them. It's sad; even if there are any left, there are so few that they're really ecologically unimportant compared with other things, so I really wish people would focus their attention on something else. Yeah, that's all valid. But at the same time, anything that might promote conservation is valuable, including tales of an elusive, enormous bird. |
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 3, 2023 19:40:58 GMT -5
True! But I go a little crazy when I hear about funds going to chase a let's face it, completely nonexistent bird when there are thousands of actually living species going begging. OH WELL
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Post by scrubb on Feb 3, 2023 20:58:52 GMT -5
Ha, yes, that's for sure. I'd like those funds to go to preserving the habitat in which there MIGHT be an IBWP but there DEFINITELY are lots of other animals who need the space.
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Post by Q-pee on Feb 4, 2023 6:07:56 GMT -5
Gun Island Amitav Ghosh It's a saga that tries to twist an old oral history & shrine of a "Gun Merchant" in the Ganges Delta with the current end state capitalism mass extinction we're all in. I don't think it succeeds. I agree with a lot of the points he's making - climate change is a disaster, and it's the cause of a refuges crisis and a function of corporate greed... but I'm not looking for lecture in my fiction and this felt a bit lecturing. There's also a nod to ancient mythology which doesn't quite come off and an unconvincing romance. I've enjoyed his writing before but this was disappointing - however it has a beautiful cover  |
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Post by scrubb on Feb 4, 2023 19:52:35 GMT -5
Finished "The Grail Bird". It was as described above. Strong start, reasonably strong finish, and a lot of filler in the middle. I'd only recommend it for people very, very, very interested in Ivory Billed woodpeckers. Although, it does give a lot of first hand detail about the 2004 sightings.
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Post by lillielangtry on Feb 5, 2023 14:01:30 GMT -5
Kate Atkinson, Shrines of Gaiety
I forgot to add this to the January thread. Anyway, I agree with the couple of people here who said this was really fun. Loads of characters, plenty going on, the local colour of 1920s London. In addition, for me, some characters from York (where I'm from) and even a tiny mention of my parents' village!
Duong Thu Huong, Paradise of the Blind, translated from the Vietnamese by Phan Huy Duong and Nina McPherson
The first novel from Vietnam published in the US, according to the cover of my edition, and later banned in its own country. This book, set in the 80s, tells the story of Hang, her single mother whose belief in family duty crushes her own happiness, Hang's horrible maternal uncle Chinh and her loving but ruthless paternal aunt Tam. Pretty interesting, with lots of food description.
Also nearly done with E. M. Forster's A Room with a View on audio. I'm not sure if I'd read this before - perhaps I had only seen the classic film with Helena Bonham Carter. It's quite amusing.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 6, 2023 12:47:15 GMT -5
We had a hilarious conversation with a friend yesterday about the fact that there are Facebook Ivory-billed Woodpecker conspiracy groups run by a handful of interesting people... the 21st century is just too much.
Anyway,
13) Hiromi Kawakami, People from My Neighborhood (transl. Ted Goosens)
A group of weird little short stories set in a Japanese village. There's a group of recurring characters. The village appears to not obey the usual laws of logic and physics, but the stories are written in an amusingly straightforward way. I love odd little Japanese paperbacks.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Feb 7, 2023 4:34:33 GMT -5
8. Different, Not Less, Chloe Hayden. An Audible special. Chloe is a young autistic woman who talks passionately about her own experiences, with growing up, school, relationships etc. She talks about the history of diagnosis (including a scathing discussion of Hans Asperger) and the difficulties in diagnosing girls, as their symptoms differ from the “classic” symptoms.
I may disagree with some of her generalisations, but overall worth a listen by anyone, especially women, dealing with neurodivergence.
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Post by scrubb on Feb 7, 2023 12:11:37 GMT -5
Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead.
Yow, several gut punches in this one. It's the story of poverty in deeply rural America, told by a kid who lived with a ton of neglect and abuse.
There was a very occasional slightly wrong note but mostly I thought that she did an amazing job of getting inside his head. She also had a couple great characters to provide her own viewpoint on how America has failed these people, from the days where they got people to sell their land cheap to coal mining companies, to starving the education system now. And it's also all about the whole oxycontin thing, making it so easily available.
I'm not sure objectively how good it is because I always love her books and read with a positive bias. But it sucked me in enough that I stayed up till 3 a.m. to finish it last night.
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Post by sprite on Feb 7, 2023 12:57:11 GMT -5
Ha, yes, that's for sure. I'd like those funds to go to preserving the habitat in which there MIGHT be an IBWP but there DEFINITELY are lots of other animals who need the space. This week's "Curious Case" from Rutherford/Fry was about blackfooted ferrets in the US. The breeding population is dangerously inbred, so clones are being made to inject new DNA. This argument does come up--at one point do you ask tech-geeks to put their millions of dollars into saving large habitats for hundreds of species as opposed to shiny toys that will save one, and will they actually switch over to funding less exciting projects? |
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 7, 2023 13:55:02 GMT -5
Ding ding ding 🛎️ sprite
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Post by scrubb on Feb 7, 2023 22:07:35 GMT -5
yup.
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Post by sprite on Feb 8, 2023 5:02:08 GMT -5
The response was that the people funding cloning projects are interestd in DNA/cloning. So they aren't going to fund something else.
If I were a billionaire, I would fund environmental protection projects purely to piss off other billionaires I didn't like.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 8, 2023 6:34:32 GMT -5
That's a good reason to become a billionaire
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 8, 2023 21:38:34 GMT -5
14) Martin Riker, Samuel Johnson's Eternal Return
Riker has a new book that I saw an interesting review of, so I went to order it from the library. But they didn't have a copy yet, so I decided to read this other book by him instead, thinking it was about Samuel Johnson, the 18th century writer.
But it wasn't even remotely about that; rather it was about a person who dies protecting his son, and whose spirit ends up possessing a series of different people. The spirit's one goal over the many decades the story describes is to get back to rural central Pennsylvania to see his son again, and he does figure out ways to attempt this. It was quite imaginative and well written - strange book.
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Post by scrubb on Feb 9, 2023 1:49:38 GMT -5
17) My GRandmother Sends her Regards & Apologises, by Fredrik Backman.
I read this because my sister really liked it. It was ok, but there is no longer any question but that we have very different tastes. Think it'll be a while before I pick up another Backman. He cleans up all the loose ends way too neatly.
Anyway, it was about a precocious little girl getting through a lot of rough times with imagination and courage. I liked the underlying concept, that her grandmother had created an imaginary kingdom full of heroes and monsters, etc., which the grandmother told her all about, and then during the events in this book the girl figures out what all the symbolism in the tales is and how all the people in her life are the characters in the tales.
But... it was kind of facile, and the imaginary kingdom stuff got repetitive and a little preachy.
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Post by riverhorse on Feb 10, 2023 12:08:05 GMT -5
Nine Parts of Desire - the Hidden World of Islamic Women by Geraldine Brooks.
Geraldine Brooks is better known for her historical novels, especially the story of the Plague village, "Year of Wonders".
Nine Parts of Desire is her memoirs/collection of stories from the six years she spent as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East.
She tells the tales of women in Islam she met at that time, from places as diverse as Palestine, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and the way their lives are massively shaped by their and their society's religion. At times I raged about the injustice and cruelty against women and at other times it was interesting and uplifting to see how many of these women lived their lives.
Well worth reading!
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Post by Q-pee on Feb 10, 2023 14:23:43 GMT -5
Nine Parts of Desire - the Hidden World of Islamic Women by Geraldine Brooks. I read this years ago and found it really good. It's come into some criticism as being too western and too focused on the veil... I can also recommend Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism Karima Bennoune although it's probably a bit dated now - it was written when there was a lot of hope from the Arab Spring and i don't think there's been much sustained improvement unfortunately. |
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Feb 10, 2023 21:11:19 GMT -5
Sounds interesting, river, and I love the Geraldine Brooks books I’ve read so far.
Headscarves and Hymens by Mona Eltahawy is an interesting read too.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 11, 2023 13:10:34 GMT -5
15) Nnedi Okorafor, Akata Witch
This novel had kind of a YA fantasy feel to it: that "teenager initiated into magical underworld because of powers she didn't know she had" kind of plot. But great characters and Okorafor's African setting made it much more than that - had a hard time putting it down. I've loved everything I've read by her.
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Post by riverhorse on Feb 11, 2023 13:28:08 GMT -5
Nine Parts of Desire - the Hidden World of Islamic Women by Geraldine Brooks. It's come into some criticism as being too western and too focused on the veil... I do wonder why a work that is a Western woman's personal observations and thoughts on her encounters as a guest in this society should be subject to criticism as being "too Western" - surely that is the prism she is seeing through? |
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Post by Q-pee on Feb 11, 2023 14:13:32 GMT -5
I do wonder why a work that is a Western woman's personal observations and thoughts on her encounters as a guest in this society should be subject to criticism as being "too Western" - surely that is the prism she is seeing through? People gotta people. It might have been more about how come she gets a platform and Muslim women can't get published... which is a fair point. It was a long time ago! I thought it was really good and I learnt a lot. But the criticism did lead me to seek out works/journalism by Muslim women. Which was also a win. |
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Post by scicaro on Feb 11, 2023 14:33:26 GMT -5
15) Nnedi Okorafor, Akata Witch This novel had kind of a YA fantasy feel to it: that "teenager initiated into magical underworld because of powers she didn't know she had" kind of plot. But great characters and Okorafor's African setting made it much more than that - had a hard time putting it down. I've loved everything I've read by her. I bought that for mini2 a while ago, must borrow it. |
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 11, 2023 16:57:50 GMT -5
I bet mini2 (and you) will like it! The big bad guy at the end is a massive evil eldritch female centipede thing, what's not to like
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Post by scrubb on Feb 12, 2023 11:15:20 GMT -5
18) How the One Armed Sister Sweeps her House, by Cherie Jones. The author is Barbadian and the book is set on a tropical island where most local people live in poverty. Most of her characters work for tourists, either in real jobs (renting out jet skis), informally (braiding hair on the beach) or in the sex economy; the only character who has legitimate jobs needs 3 of them to survive. Domestic violence abounds, the police are corrupt buffoons...
Which all sound very bleak, and it is pretty freaking bleak. But it's still very readable. I found it worthwhile, although the ending, which was designed to provide at least a modicum of hope, seemed contrived and unlikely compared to the rest of the book.
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