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Post by Liiisa on Feb 24, 2023 6:48:43 GMT -5
And: ha, ok, I have to read that book (the 1979 one)
I mentioned that to pero and we're now listening to "Uptown Top Ranking"
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Post by sophie on Feb 24, 2023 8:17:15 GMT -5
The Apollo Murders by Chris Hatfield. A good murder mystery set at the end of the Apollo rocket launches and with a good knowledge of how all that stuff works especially given the author was a bona fide astronaut. Good US-Soviet tension. I enjoyed it.
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Post by scrubb on Feb 24, 2023 17:59:21 GMT -5
21. The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.
I'm in between those who love it and those who think it was crap. As melodramas go, it was quite good; once I stopped taking it seriously and just went with it, it was quite enjoyable.
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Post by lillielangtry on Feb 25, 2023 1:49:09 GMT -5
You can tick it off your list now, scrubb!
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Post by riverhorse on Feb 25, 2023 6:47:20 GMT -5
I have once again managed to overachieve my "one book a month" goal for February.
"The Moroccan Daughter" by Deborah RodrÃguez. Amini returns to visit her family in Fez for the wedding of her sister. She's been studying in the US and has secretly married her American boyfriend without her family's knowledge or consent. She's accompanied by her best friend Charlie and her blind grandmother, Bea. A cut above usual chick-lit, this had lots of fascinating insights into Moroccan culture and had some refreshingly strong female characters.
It became obvious while reading that this book was part of a loose series, as quite a bit of reference was made to Charlie and her previous trip to Haiti with her grandmother, so I'll be on the lookout for more by this author.
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Post by riverhorse on Feb 25, 2023 6:50:55 GMT -5
Oops, hit send too quickly. I also churned through "Meet Me In the Margins" by Melissa Ferguson. A quick, light read about Savannah, working in publishing whilst trying to secretly make it as a romance author, and the back-and-forth interaction with her "Mystery Editor", who leaves post-it notes critiquing her manuscript hidden in a secret location in the publishing house. All quite predictable but an easy, feel good read.
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Post by lillielangtry on Feb 26, 2023 9:48:04 GMT -5
Miranda Seymour, I used to live here once A biography of the author Jean Rhys. One for the fans, I'd say, (which I am), because not I'm not sure it would be really interesting for someone who hasn't read the earlier novels.
Claire Keegan, Small Things like These A tiny but spectacular novel (novella?) set in Ireland in the 1980s, but honestly apart from telephones it could almost the 1880s. Keegan sets up the traditional community and then exposes its dark heart, the cruelty of the local convent. So sensitive and beautiful. I devoured the whole thing on a 2 hour train journey.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 26, 2023 16:30:40 GMT -5
That Keegan book was amazing, agree
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Post by sprite on Feb 27, 2023 11:21:43 GMT -5
I liked that Keegan book too, especially as I'd tried to read a few other Booker nominees before it, and found them harder work than I like from a book.
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Post by sprite on Feb 27, 2023 11:32:42 GMT -5
Nightcrawling, Leila Mottley.
Disclosure, I read 170 pages, then skipped to the last 10 pages. It was pretty intense, and I just felt such despair reading those pages. Kiara is 17, no longer in high school after her father dies as a result of trauma from being in prison, and her mother disappears to a rehab facility (at first it reads as if her mother is dead, which for all intents and purposes she is). She ends up caring for her older brother who is putting his dreams ahead of paying rent, and for a small boy next door, who was born to an addict. The one adult family member who is in a position to help has decided to reinvent himself, and doesn't even leave a phone number. By chance, Kiara starts to work as a prostitute and is pulled into a group of police officers who treat the night city like their personal playground.
It was just so hard to see how Kiara would ever escape from anything. On paper, she could just go back to school, sign on to benefits, maybe even move in with the small boy and his not-always-around mom, and report the cops for raping a minor. It's clear why none of those things are going to happen. I couldn't take another 180 pages of that, so just read the ending out of curiousity.
I didn't realise it was the author's first novel, so hell of an acheivement to be nominated. It's also inspired by a true case of Oakland cops being indicted for corruption and brutality.
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Post by Webs on Feb 27, 2023 12:10:20 GMT -5
The Marriage Plot was so very worth it. That there is so little known about Lucrezia de Medici and so much known about her husband's Grandmother, Lucrezia de Borgia, is an interesting contrast and never mentioned in the book, except for that one "gift".
I'm moving on to "The Good Wife of Bath" next.
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Post by riverhorse on Feb 28, 2023 10:01:09 GMT -5
Squeaking in to the end of February with a couple more - my tally is ticking along nicely.
I did find the book based in Haiti I mentioned above, the "Island on the Edge of the World" by Deborah Rodriguez, which introduces the characters of Charlie and Bea who are also in the book about Morocco. Again, lots of strong female characters, a lot of cultural/historic background and an enjoyable read. It posed some tough questions about how "Westerners" (for want of a better word) see poor/developing countries and how often "helping out" does more harm than good (the post-earthquake chaotic NGO situation in Haiti being one of them). There were a few plot holes in this one - like how easily one of the main characters walks away from an abusive relationship. But definitely a recommended read.
I also read "First Position" by Melissa Brayden, about two talented ballet dancers with completely different personalities (the two characters from the film Black Swan sprang to mind) who compete for the plum role in a new ballet production and manage to fall in love at the same time. Lots of insight into how much blood, sweat and tears (literally) goes into being a top ballerina. Some nicely drawn minor characters and a fairly predictable ending but an enjoyable read.
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Post by tucano on Feb 28, 2023 10:15:18 GMT -5
Tour de Force, which is Mark Cavendish's book about his comeback after illness to win another four Tour de France stages equalling the all-time record.
Oddly I didn't enjoy this as much as his first book which he wrote about 15 years ago, although he has definitely mellowed a lot.
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Post by sophie on Feb 28, 2023 10:22:34 GMT -5
Forgiveness by Mark Sakamoto. A book most likely of interest to Canadians, it was the 2018 Canada Reads winner. It tell about the author’s grandparents, one a WW2 veteran who was imprisoned as a POW by the Japanese and the other was expelled from her home in the Vancouver area and sent with her family as farm labourers in southern Alberta because they were Japanese. I found the writing a bit uneven but nonetheless interesting.
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Post by Q-pee on Feb 28, 2023 12:20:02 GMT -5
I'm halfway through about three books... so nothing to add for this month but wow I'm going to have a quite a haul for March.
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Post by scrubb on Feb 28, 2023 12:38:09 GMT -5
22) What Storm, What Thunder, by Myriam J.A. Chancy. The book focuses on the earthquake in Haiti, telling stories from 9 different characters/viewpoints. They were connected - people related to each other, or neighbours, or at least they all knew each other. Some of them are people who lived through it, some are relatives who were living elsewhere at the time. Some of the characters telling their story died at the end (that was a surprise the first time).
They felt like raw, real stories. All were horrific, some were heartbreaking. They were a bit uneven - one of the stories wrapped up too much, too easily, for example.
The author is originally Haitian, now an academic in the US.
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Post by sprite on Feb 28, 2023 17:40:31 GMT -5
Murder and Malpractice.
Meh. A cosy mystery-type. Some of the writing was ok, but there was so much foreshadowing that it was impossible to know what was foreshadowing, and what was just everything being over-explained. One character mentally refers to his girlfriend as 'sweet and innocent' so often that I was expecting her to be the murderer. (it genuinely felt like a relationship between a 35 yr old and a 19 yr old, but was probably more like 28 and 22.) It was also a bit wierd that everyone drives everywhere, and yet the community they're in is supposed to be less than a mile across. Also, it's set in Scotland, and the closest we get to feeling 'Scottish' is an old man who says 'aye' a lot, and a character named James.
The murder bit was well done, lots of red herrings. Probably a generally realistic portrayal of a GP surgery in the UK.
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Post by scrubb on Mar 4, 2023 23:13:56 GMT -5
Oh, I forgot!
"What Storm, What Thunder", about the earthquake in Haiti - one of the characters is an architect and she mentions the famous Italian architect and archeologist, Piranisi, a few times. Apparently he drew and etched Roman ruins, endless ruins, and also did a prison series of underground vaults with stairs and machines in them.
It made me wonder why I hadn't looked up what Piranisi was when I read the book by that title.
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Post by lillielangtry on Mar 5, 2023 5:08:27 GMT -5
Yes, I hadn't heard of him til I read Piranesi, then I googled and his drawings are amazing, they have just the same atmosphere as the book.
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