In such August company... the book thread

[Q-pee]

I finished a book.

The House of Fortune, a sequel to the Miniaturist by Jesse Burton

It's fun to read given that it's set in Amsterdam, and a lot of the streets are recognisable still. But there are two big reveals and they're so obvious. There's a very modern moral of the story going on and it's also too obvious. The lead from the older book reappears but seems to have learnt nothing and needs a good slapping. There's a new heroine as well an she needs an even bigger slapping and does something so out of character for a girl of her time... hmmm.

I think the big problem is that the first book was secretive and puzzling and this isn't - partly because it's a sequel.

Oh, almost forgot - link to July's books.

If the mods could do the needful that would be outstanding.

[Liiisa]

Thank you Q! Bookmarking.

[sophie]

The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng. A wonderful book, deserving to be on the Booker list. The rhythm and language of the book pulled me into the story even deeper. It’s a story within a story within a story, set in Penang (mostly) and South Africa. There are several narratives, several points of view, all interwoven. I don’t want to say too much about this book to spoil it, but highly recommend it!

[ozziegiraffe]

Thank you Q. Bookmarking.

[sophie]

The Collector by Daniel Silva. Another spy thriller with Gabriel Allon as the main character. An art heist, murder, the current war involving Russia and hints of using Nuclear weapons are all readings he had to step back from being just an art restorer to his previous profession. Good action. Not a deep book but entertaining if you are into this genre.

[Liiisa]

57) China Miéville, Embassytown

This was absolutely marvelous - a highly imaginative sci-fi novel that touches on colonization and language, and the way that language informs thought. I had read his later stuff and didn't know about this one.

[lillielangtry]

Najwa Bin Shatwan, The Slave Yards (tr. Nancy Roberts)
This was my read for Libya and the most interesting book I've read for a while in my reading the world challenge, now that I'm getting to the point where I don't have much, if any, choice of authors for the remaining countries. It's a well-written, complex story with a frame narrative. Basically a woman in a happy marriage with a much older man has a visit from a man who says he is her cousin and can tell her the true story of her parentage. Then the rest of the book is explaining her childhood in the desperately poor area where slaves and freed slaves live in early 20th century(?) Benghazi and how her father was a wealthy Arab who fell in love with a slave woman.
Compelling but a tough read - I mean from the title you have to expect slavery! But there's a lot of sexual violence in here, including forced abortion, and a lot of other uncomfortable things - a focus on women's virginity, for example. It's also a little hard to tell how much we are supposed to condemn the "romantic" relationship between the powerful Arab and the slave. At the end it is criticised, but for most of the book it is presented rather as a love story in the face of family opposition, despite the obviously skewed power dynamics. Thought-provoking.

[ozziegiraffe]

53. The Clairvoyant Countess, Dorothy Gilman. Interesting fictional account of a very refined clairvoyant helping a police detective, by the author of the Mrs Pollifax books. Not the usual cozy mystery, but we’ll written and fun to read.

[Liiisa]

58) N. K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

Am I the last person to read this? I loved her New York books so much that I figured it was time to read the Broken Earth trilogy; this is the first of those. Obviously impossible to put down, seeing as it took less than 24 hours for me to read this nearly 500-page novel.

It's set in an Earth that has some magical elements and is highly seismically active; since I'm starting to become a bit of a geology nerd, the latter made it very appealing. I don't usually binge-read series, but I may pick up the other two of these sooner than usual (in fact I just put book #2 on library hold).

[lillielangtry]

Aug 6, 2023 11:35:46 GMT -5 Liiisa said:

58) N. K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

Am I the last person to read this? I loved her New York books so much that I figured it was time to read the Broken Earth trilogy; this is the first of those. Obviously impossible to put down, seeing as it took less than 24 hours for me to read this nearly 500-page novel.

It's set in an Earth that has some magical elements and is highly seismically active; since I'm starting to become a bit of a geology nerd, the latter made it very appealing. I don't usually binge-read series, but I may pick up the other two of these sooner than usual (in fact I just put book #2 on library hold).

Nope, I've had her on the (very long) list of authors I'd like to try for ages now, but haven't got round to it yet.

[scrubb]

Lies Sleeping, by Ben Aaronovitch. Rivers of London. A major plot wrapped up. Well done.

[ozziegiraffe]

54. Framed in Lace, Monica Ferris. Good cozy mystery set in a needlework and yarn shop in a small town in Minnesota.

[scrubb]

Gilgamesh, by Joan London. Edith leaves her broken mother and sister on their unsuccessful farm in Australia, just before WW2, to find the father of her child who is in his homeland, Armenia.

It's got a bleak feel much of the time, and the reader never really gets into her head, but she finds fascinating people and places. I liked it.

[scrubb]

Also I finished Explorers of the Nile:The Triumph and Tragedy of a Great Victorian Adventure, by Tim Jeal.

Worth reading, and I learned a lot. But the author has such strong biases that he seemed unable to provide objective information. He hated Burton and has nothing good to say about him, while liking Stanley so much that he makes excuses for everything bad that he did. He doesn’t just provide the evidence, he interprets it.

[scrubb]

Knew I forgot something. Also read Wool, by Hugh Howey. We watched the first season of Silo, and they did a good job, overall. The book is really enjoyable.

[Liiisa]

59) John McPhee, The Control of Nature

Oh, I really loved this. McPhee as always describes his subject matter based on great research and interviews. This one, written in 1989, describes the engineering done with the idea of controlling flooding in the Mississippi River; work done to eliminate harm from the 1973 volcanic eruption in Iceland (in contrast with how they handle volcanoes in Hawaii); and engineering to stop debris flows from the San Gabriel Mountains in LA.

It's a little depressing, because he describes how these things don't necessarily work, and we've learned a lot more since then. I really enjoyed it, though, especially the LA part, since I've spent a lot of time in that precise area (Pasadena, Sierra Madre, Pomona, etc.).

[lillielangtry]

Baek Sehee, I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki, translated by Anton Hur
This short book from Korea is primarily made up transcripts (yes, literal transcripts) of the author's therapy sessions. She has dysthymia - persistent mild depression - and spends a lot of time worrying about her job, her friendships, her low self-esteem, etc. The book has been really successful in the translated literature sector.
It is interesting, but it was also difficult to tell how much of what I found strange was cultural and how much was about her individual experience. She was on various types of medication. Most worryingly, she talked about getting drunk in almost every session yet the therapist rarely even asked about that and when he finally did, he just said "don't hang out as much with friends that you drink with". I was very surprised about that.

Asja Bakic, Sweetlust, translated by Jennifer Zoble
A collection of short stories with a bit of a speculative twist. A few of them were inspired by Greek legend, and almost all of them had some sexual theme. I really enjoy Bakic's work but I enjoyed her first collection, Mars, which is more sci-fi-ish, even more so I'd recommend that one over this one.

[ozziegiraffe]

55. Unravelled Sleeve, Monica Ferris. Murder mystery involving a cross-country skiing expedition while at a needlework retreat.

[Q-pee]

The Clothes on their Backs
Linda Grant

A tale of immigrants and fitting in, or not. Told through the eyes of Vivien, whose Hungarian-born Jewish parents want her to be English, but who can't ever fit. There are some big issues woven throughout the story, about identity, family trauma, shame, politics and crime.

Really very excellent up to the crisis point, and then a slightly hurried tying up of loose ends... some of which didn't matter enough to resolve IMHO.

I'll look for more by her though.


PS: Just added this to GoodReads and found I have read something by her before... thank goodness for technology, I no longer remember anything.

[lillielangtry]

Aug 13, 2023 12:04:10 GMT -5 Q-pee said:

The Clothes on their Backs
Linda Grant

A tale of immigrants and fitting in, or not. Told through the eyes of Vivien, whose Hungarian-born Jewish parents want her to be English, but who can't ever fit. There are some big issues woven throughout the story, about identity, family trauma, shame, politics and crime.

Really very excellent up to the crisis point, and then a slightly hurried tying up of loose ends... some of which didn't matter enough to resolve IMHO.

I'll look for more by her though.


PS: Just added this to GoodReads and found I have read something by her before... thank goodness for technology, I no longer remember anything.

Indeed, Goodreads tells me I have also read this and loved it, but I can't remember anything about it! I do however remember enjoying The Dark Circle by her very much. It was set in the early 50s, around the time when Britain was setting up the national health system and tuberculosis was turning from a death sentence into a treatable disease - a fascinating setting to choose.

[sophie]

The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh. A great book, beginning in the late 1800s to almost modern times, set in Burma, Malaysia, and India. A story of colonialism, relationships, cultures…it had it all, in a story which I found engrossing. How have I not read anything by this author previously? Need to remedy.

[Q-pee]

I've read that, and a few of his other books, Sea of Poppies got the highest rating from me....about a ship sailing from India to China to fight China's Opium wars.

[scrubb]

Aug 13, 2023 19:09:10 GMT -5 sophie said:

The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh. A great book, beginning in the late 1800s to almost modern times, set in Burma, Malaysia, and India. A story of colonialism, relationships, cultures…it had it all, in a story which I found engrossing. How have I not read anything by this author previously? Need to remedy.

Apparently I really liked that too, but I don't remember it!

I do remember another of his books that I loved - The Hungry Tide.

Last night I finished The Love Songs of W.E.B. Dubois, by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers. I think a few people on here really liked it, and I did too. Great characters, great story telling.

[Liiisa]

60) Anna Metcalfe, Chrysalis

A book in three parts, each describing a difficult, charismatic woman from three different people's perspectives. The chrysalis in the title refers to the woman's single-minded metamorphosis that she undergoes, which you hear about from these three angles. It's a very interesting book, written in that very personal, detailed way that I think of in some modern Japanese writing.

I hadn't heard of this writer before - saw her listed in the Granta Best Young British Writers list.

[Webs]

Aug 6, 2023 11:35:46 GMT -5 Liiisa said:

58) N. K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

Am I the last person to read this? I loved her New York books so much that I figured it was time to read the Broken Earth trilogy; this is the first of those. Obviously impossible to put down, seeing as it took less than 24 hours for me to read this nearly 500-page novel.

It's set in an Earth that has some magical elements and is highly seismically active; since I'm starting to become a bit of a geology nerd, the latter made it very appealing. I don't usually binge-read series, but I may pick up the other two of these sooner than usual (in fact I just put book #2 on library hold).

I read the series. The first book is the best. They get kind of convoluted as they go on.


I'm reading "The Lost Bookshop". It's full of tropes and cliche's but the over arching story seems really interesting and it's got rave reviews all over so I'm sticking with it.

[Liiisa]

Thanks for that Webs... noted

[ozziegiraffe]

56. Mystery on Hidden Lane, Claire Chase. An English cozy mystery that should have had all the right elements, but didn’t grab me.

[scrubb]

70. Irma Voth, by Miriam Toews. In the past couple years Toews has become one of my favourite authors. She has a way of making characters who stay optimistic and kind and believable when they are going through terrible things. Even when her books are terribly sad, they still leave me feeling hopeful.

[scrubb]

When I searched for "David Mitchell" in the library ebook selection, in case he's published something new, a couple books where he wrote introductions came up. So I ended up reading:

"Fall Down 7 Times; Stand Up 8" by Naoki Higashida. The author is Japanese and was diagnosed with autism when he was 5. David Mitchell has a Japanese wife and an autistic son, and discovered an earlier book by this author which he found life-changing and incredibly helpful for helping him figure out how to help his son. He and his wife were instrumental in getting the books published in English.

The author is non-verbal for the most part, but his mother developed a keyboard picture where he points to the letters/symbols he needs to spell out his thoughts. the book is a fascinating view of life from inside his head. He explains lots about how his thinking works, which explains a lot of his behaviours. He also puts in some poetry and a bit of short fiction (at one point he talks about how writing short stories helps him to remember certain things better and order his thinking to incorporate things he's learned).

I immediately borrowed and read his first book too: "The Reason I Jump". He wrote this one when he was only 13.

They are both really good books. The more recent one follows his life story a bit - he started in "normal" school but eventually transferred to a school for kids with special needs. He liked the people there and it helped him a lot, but he says that he constantly felt infantilized and also that while at that school, he felt like his life was being mapped out for him:
- finish grade school at the special needs school
- take high school in a special needs school
- find work oriented for special needs adults or at a special needs facility

and he wanted to decide for himself what his life would be. He wanted to be a writer. He took high school on-line and started writing, and has published several books. These ones that were translated became best sellers all over the world.

I would recommend both books for anyone with any interest in the area.

[ozziegiraffe]

Thank you Scrubb. They sound fascinating.