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Post by Liiisa on Jul 4, 2023 5:08:21 GMT -5
I figured I'd skip the cute name for this thread and just cut to the chase.
51. Jenny Erpenbeck, Kairos
Much of this was a frustrating book about a very young woman's affair with a much older writer. It moved into the "absurd" column when the riding crop came out, like this is getting ridiculous. But its setting is in East Germany, partly history as you explore the writer's past, and partly current events in the years before the Wall came down, which kept me from rejecting it entirely.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jul 4, 2023 8:07:52 GMT -5
Thank you, Liiisa. Bookmarking.
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Post by scrubb on Jul 4, 2023 21:43:26 GMT -5
I guess it's nostalgia week - I reread Anne of Avonlea, the second in the Anne of Green Gables series (Lucy Maud Montgomery) and have started the next one.
ETA: and I finished the second one - Anne of the Island. Not sure if I'll keep going, though I did get the 3rd out of the library (Anne of Windy Poplars).
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jul 7, 2023 4:23:02 GMT -5
43. The Consequences of Fear, Jacqueline Winspear. An excellent mystery set during World War II, but dealing with what is happening to people at home, and working behind the scenes. I’m not normally a fan of war books, but I love this series, which spans both World Wars.
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Post by lillielangtry on Jul 8, 2023 12:28:36 GMT -5
Jenny Erpenbeck seems to be very popular in translation. I have read one of her books and I liked it, but not so much that I need to seek out more.
Fauziya Kassindja, Do they hear you when you cry This book, the memoir of a young woman who fled FGM and sought asylum in the USA, was published over 20 years ago yet it was still the only book I could find by a woman from Togo. Her story is definitely worth reading; her case eventually set a precedent that FGM was grounds for asylum (the Kasinga case - the fact they spelled her name wrong just shows you what she was up against). Sadly overall the US immigration system has not, as far as I know, improved since then. The parts about her medical neglect in prison are really shocking. What I do not understand, is why the book is nearly 700 pages long. Someone really should have cut out 250 of those and it would have been the better for it. I spent some of my reading imagining cutting the parts where she puts the time of every phone call and explains the family background of her lawyer. Still, even though I skimmed parts, it was engaging.
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Post by Liiisa on Jul 8, 2023 12:31:19 GMT -5
lillielangtry the thing is that it was very well written, kept my attention! But I kept thinking "girl DUMP him, what are you DOING with your life"
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Post by scrubb on Jul 8, 2023 14:24:03 GMT -5
Searching for Robert Johnson: The Live and Legend of "The King of the Delta Blues Singer", by Peter Guralnick.
It was a bookbub special that I was really excited about, but this very short book (80 pages!) didn't seem to offer much. I hadn't read any kind of biography of him before, so maybe I would be surprised at how little is known, but honestly, after reading this I can't imagine any other biography could possibly have provided less information. It reprises all the rumours about his death and provides some evidence to support one particular version, but the evidence doesn't seem necessarily reliable.
It's got quotes from some of his contemporaries which may make it special? It's been reissued twice since it was originally published, so there must be something people find worthwhile. I mean, it was worthwhile for me because I knew nothing about the subject other than the legend that he sold his soul at the Crossroads, and he turned his back to those listening to him play. But in terms of trying to make him a less mysterious character than he has always been, it doesn't seem to make much progress.
Oh, I also read the 4h Anne of Green Gables book mentioned above - it was boring enough to take me off the nostalgia train and I won't be finishing the series again.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jul 10, 2023 5:18:47 GMT -5
44. Wendy Harmer, Roadside Sisters. A funny story of 3 forty-something women who take a road trip in a giant camper from Melbourne to Byron Bay. My only gripe is there hasn’t been a ferry crossing across the Clarence from Maclean for a vehicle heading to Byron Bay since 1966. 45. The Call, Christian White and Summer de Roche. Audible only mystery, set in an Australian country town with a number of twists. Quite well done.
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Post by sophie on Jul 10, 2023 9:38:58 GMT -5
The Sanctuary by Katrine Engberg. Good murder mystery set on a Danish island during winter. Dark in a good Nordic way.
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Post by Liiisa on Jul 10, 2023 18:59:22 GMT -5
52) Sarah Bakewell, Humanly Possible
A history of the ideas and movements known as Humanism, and the people thinking them up and advocating for them. I really enjoyed her book on Existentialism, so I thought I'd pick this up. I like her writing on philosophy, which is never dry - so much of this book is about the interesting lives of the people in the movement, beginning in the medieval period where writers like Petrarch looked back at ancient Greece and extending to the present. I particularly valued the section on the mid-20th century and the humanist response to fascism - good ideas to remember now that many places are having a bit of an authoritarian moment.
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Post by Q-pee on Jul 11, 2023 13:56:43 GMT -5
Death of a Gossip
Some very unpleasant people learnt to fish and the least pleasant of them dies, a very laconic local police man solves the mystery.
The mystery is kinda stupid and the writing is terrible - every time a body of water is mentioned it's described as either oily or greasy, adverbs about plentifully, and local bobby's hazel eyes feature heavily. Blech. One redeeming feature that the author could not have predicted - the local drunken poacher in the series has the same name as one of my cousins so I laughed every time I read that.
After I read it I realised I'd read something by the same author from a different series (English setting rather than Scottish) and hated that. Wish I'd figure that out earlier.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jul 11, 2023 18:57:01 GMT -5
46. A Beach House to Die For, K.C. Ames.Reasonable cozy mystery, set in Costa Rica, a country I knew little about, so I’ve learnt something.
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Post by scrubb on Jul 12, 2023 20:38:56 GMT -5
Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens.
I think I remember divided opinions on it from people here. I'm in the middle somewhere - I enjoyed it, but didn't think it was very well written overall - or at least, it was inconsistently written. A fascinating set up, setting, and main character, but there were parts that felt unbelievable and/or poorly handled, and the dialogue was sometimes poorly done. And plot holes in the mystery part of it. I enjoyed the biology/nature parts of it a lot, and they felt very well done (makes since as the author is a biologist).
I read some of her non-fiction co-written with her husband, which I enjoyed quite a lot, but this didn't meet that standard IMO.
ETA: Although I sound pretty critical, I did really enjoy reading it. It certainly had lots of good points, and I LOVED the setting and the nature stuff.
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Post by Liiisa on Jul 13, 2023 18:21:11 GMT -5
53) Yellowface, R. F. Kuang
A celebrated young Asian author dies and her white friend finds an unknown, unfinished manuscript in the author's apartment, takes it, and passes it off as her own.
The result is a great book about the publishing industry, diversity, and social media, with a protagonist who feels very human while also being pretty terrible.
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Post by lillielangtry on Jul 14, 2023 2:53:53 GMT -5
Liiisa, I have to read that for book club in September. I am wary because I was not a fan of Babel, but it's been getting pretty good reviews.
Jane Gardam, Old Filth Wow, a beautiful novel about an elderly man, a retired judge, woven in with memories of his childhood. He was a "Raj Orphan" - sent from the Empire (Malaya, as it was, in this case) back "Home" to England at the age of 4 or 5, not to see his father again for years, his mother already having died. He went from a horribly abusive foster home to boarding school at the age of 8. It really made me think a lot about how the British "stiff upper lip" was often just the result of trauma and a hideously neglected childhood. Why would you show your emotions if no one has ever comforted you and you've been trained not to since you were an infant?! I can imagine people saying "but why do we want to read about a privileged white man", and, yeah, sure, but I think if you can't empathise with the pain of an individual child who had no choice in the matter, you've lost all compassion really. It was beautiful and awful.
Balli Kaur Jaswal, Now You See Us Balli Kaur Jaswal is one of the authors I discovered from my reading the world project and is best known for "Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows", which I also really enjoyed. Her books are more "commercial women's fiction" than I typically read but I was pleased to discover I really enjoy them. This one is set in Singapore, where the author spent part of her childhood, and centres around a group of Filipino maids and their struggles. She has such a light touch but also clearly shows the discrimination and mistreatment they often experience, along with things I'd never thought about, such as compulsory pregnancy tests... There is a murder, which the maids sort of solve, but it's not the main point of the book and if you read it for a murder mystery, you'd be disappointed. The book is about women's friendship in the face of adversity and the rich lives of people who are often ignored by wider society even as they keep it running smoothly.
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Post by Liiisa on Jul 14, 2023 4:46:08 GMT -5
lillie it's pretty different from her fantasy stuff, so hopefully you'll enjoy it? (And "Old Filth" was SO good.)
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Post by lillielangtry on Jul 14, 2023 5:11:06 GMT -5
lillie it's pretty different from her fantasy stuff, so hopefully you'll enjoy it? (And "Old Filth" was SO good.) Yeah, my problem was not with the fantasy element itself. One of my issues was the anachronisms of the language; I just didn't feel like it worked as a historical novel. This book is not historical so that shouldn't matter. The other problem I had was with a plot point, which might be similar in this book, we'll see.
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Post by sophie on Jul 15, 2023 21:52:26 GMT -5
Foster by Claire Keegan. Novella, sparse writing but oh so beautiful. 1981 a poor girl goes to a foster home while her mother deals with a difficult pregnancy and birth. It’s an easy read but has so much depth. Recommended.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jul 15, 2023 23:00:36 GMT -5
47. Euphoria, Lily King. It left me wondering how much the author actually knew about the Pacific. It was an audiobook, and Fen, the Australian character was read horribly. I didn’t like him anyhow, but no Australian sounds like that! Meanwhile, the author had shifted the actual Margaret Mead research on coming of age in Samoa to Solomon Islands, a country which is Melanesian, not Polynesian like Samoa. I’m wondering if she knew that the name she gave the tribe, the KiraKira, is actually the name of one of the smaller provincial capitals in Solomon Islands. The story reinforced my view of the history of Europeans in Oceania. A few “got” the indigenous people, but most exploited them. We’re going through that currently in Australia, with a referendum coming up on the indigenous Voice to parliament. Our study group will be discussing this over the next few weeks, and I’m expecting some diverse views. 48. A Vow of Penance, Veronica Black. A mystery with a British nun as sleuth. Definitely not Sister Boniface. This author understands the religious life in a way that most cozy mystery authors don’t.
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Post by lillielangtry on Jul 16, 2023 1:45:59 GMT -5
Foster by Claire Keegan. Novella, sparse writing but oh so beautiful. 1981 a poor girl goes to a foster home while her mother deals with a difficult pregnancy and birth. It’s an easy read but has so much depth. Recommended. I must read this sometime, I found Small Things like These so beautiful. A tiny, perfectly formed book. Ozzie, very interesting to hear your perspective as someone who knows much more about the region than I do.
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Post by sophie on Jul 17, 2023 15:29:37 GMT -5
Independence Square by Martin Cruz Smith. A good mystery/ thriller set in both Moscow and Ukraine and Crimea in the very recent past. Backstabbing politics (literally), muzzled press, convenient scapegoats and political uncertainty are all reflected. One other bit of note is that the author has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s and he had his main character (Arkady Renko) also be diagnosed with the same.
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Post by scrubb on Jul 18, 2023 14:12:22 GMT -5
Moon Tiger, by Penelope Lively. She won the Booker for this book, and was nominated 2 other times in the '80s (or maybe '70s). I knew nothing about the author or her books but this came on sale through BookBub. And it was very good. Claudia is dying in her '70s in the hospital and looking back on her life, including as a journalist in WW2 in Egypt.
For the first bit, I didn't like Claudia much - she seemed like kind of a bitch, really. But as the book goes on she becomes a little more complex and much more sympathetic. I liked it a lot.
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Post by scrubb on Jul 19, 2023 0:39:42 GMT -5
Everything I Never Told You, by Celeste Ng. In the 1980s, a mixed race family in small town America. The middle child is found drowned in the local lake. The book tells the story of each member of the family, and how their family evolved. It was very readable and all the characters were well drawn. The family dynamics are heartbreaking.
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Post by lillielangtry on Jul 20, 2023 5:51:46 GMT -5
I read Moon Tiger a very long time ago, I can see the cover but I can't remember much about it...
Monica Ali, Love Marriage By the author of Brick Lane. The title makes this sound a bit like a romance novel, but it's not. It's the story of Yasmin, a British Bengali trainee doctor, who is engaged to another doctor, Joe. She's still living with her mum and dad and Joe is also living with his mum. But it turns out that everyone - Yasmin, Joe, Yasmin's brother Arif, and their parents - all have secrets. I found this really entertaining with interesting characters.
Agatha Christie, Peril at End House Another Poirot audiobook. I was amused at the end to note that the relatively small cast of characters includes a murderer (obviously), at least one drug dealer, a forger and several other swindlers. Poor Hastings, how does he keep his faith in the class system.
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Post by Q-pee on Jul 21, 2023 10:19:59 GMT -5
Lessons in Chemistry Bonnie Garmus
Candidate for best fiction of the year.
I liked it so much I deliberately read it slowly.
The plot is the life of Elizabeth Zott, but it's also about change and chemistry and women getting to do what they want, the politics of a workplace, and the oddness of love.
It's set in 1950s USA when women are entering the workforce but face stupid attitudes still. There are lots of little jokes throughout like Harriet Sloane (child carer) is trying to get Madeleine (child) to o her homework
HS You have just enough time before your mum's show M I don't feel like it HS Well, sometimes we have to do things we don't feel like doing M What do you do that you don't feel like doing?
Harriet closed her eyes. She pictured Mr Sloane.
I liked all the sciency bits, but you can skim read them an still enjoy the book.
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Post by scicaro on Jul 21, 2023 15:21:04 GMT -5
Oo that's on my to read pile. Must read it.
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Post by lillielangtry on Jul 21, 2023 15:48:53 GMT -5
Yes I've actually bought that as a gift for someone but not read it myself, it does sound good.
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Post by Q-pee on Jul 21, 2023 15:57:24 GMT -5
Oo that's on my to read pile. Must read it. I think it will make your geek heart very happy... in so many ways!
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Post by scicaro on Jul 21, 2023 16:00:00 GMT -5
Oo that's on my to read pile. Must read it. I think it will make your geek heart very happy... in so many ways! I'll take it with me to Sicily to read when we are hiding from the crazy heat next week 🥵.
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Post by Liiisa on Jul 21, 2023 16:03:08 GMT -5
Yeah, the heat there is scary.
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