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Post by Queen on Feb 1, 2024 8:32:40 GMT -5
It's only the first of February but I finished a book at lunch time (delicious Chicken Tikka thanks for asking) so I'm kicking off February's reading list. A Waiter in Paris, Edward Chisholm It's being hailed as a classic, as this generations Anthony Bourdain but it isn't. For starters the author is a slightly posh Brit who starts waiting tables in Paris because he needs a job, where as Bourdain was an industry insider. It's not about food, whereas Bourdain was all about food. It is a bit of a "dark underbelly" of the business though, and it's kinda fun to see that side of Paris which is usually depicted as the city of light and romance (looking at you Emily in Paris). It's more of a coming of age story, which is fine, but he can't quite decide whether to narrate what he goes through or editorialise on what he knows deep down... that he's not staying in the job forever. The characters around him are interesting enough and depicted well enough that I enjoyed it. Bits of social realism, bits of geopolitics, quite a lot of humour, I could see a netflix series out of it. And I would definitely watch. Here's January's thread figjamnation.proboards.com/thread/10068/year-books-january-2024-bookthreadIf mods could do the needful... ta!
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 1, 2024 9:12:10 GMT -5
Thank you Q! That does sound appealing.
I’m still 100 pages from the end of Elizabeth Rush’s “The Quickening,” about Antarctica, mainly.
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Post by lillielangtry on Feb 2, 2024 1:41:03 GMT -5
Thanks Q! I have four* books on the go, but I'll be back in a few days...
*that's not as silly as it sounds. One fiction, one non-fiction hardback that I don't carry around, one audio, and one on my phone for emergencies ;-)
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Feb 2, 2024 7:38:57 GMT -5
Thank you Q. I’ve finished 2 in the last 2 days. 6. Aunt Bessie Meets, Diana Xarissa. Next in a murder mystery series set about 15 years ago on the Isle of Man. I love aunt Bessie. 7. Last Devil to Die, Richard Osman. Loved it. He deals very sensitively with any number of subjects often considered taboo.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 3, 2024 19:49:35 GMT -5
4) Elizabeth Rush, The Quickening
(Lost a couple days reading and then deciding not to read about the years leading up to the French Revolution)
A record of the author's participation in a scientific ocean expedition to the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica, a massive glacier that when it melts is going to cause a lot of sea level rise. Beautiful science writing but also an introduction to everyone on the ship including workers like the cooks, which is fascinating; it was such a warm community.
Interwoven with the Antarctica stuff is a lot about birth, and her feeling conflicted about her desire to have a child and concern about climate change. I found this a little less fascinating than the parts about Antarctica, but then I am not faced with that decision right now; it might be more significant for a younger person.
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Post by scrubb on Feb 6, 2024 13:50:54 GMT -5
Just finished Georgi Gospodinov's "Time Shelter", which sophie reviewed last month. Won the International Booker in 2023. I liked it a lot, but felt like it sort of lost some steam in the later bits. It stopped telling a kind of story and became more about an individual man losing his memory. Which of course is what much of the book is about - memory and time and people wanting to live in the past, and people who have no option but to live in the past, and recreating the past, and and and.
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Post by scrubb on Feb 6, 2024 15:19:53 GMT -5
I just started "Fingersmith" by Sara Waters, which has been on my list for ages. I LOVE the opening bit! Little girl is terrified by watching Oliver Twist at a play; her guardian tells her it's all okay, Bill Sykes lives over in Clerkenwell and is scared of the gangs where they live so she doesn't have to worry about him. And Nancy is fine, she left Bill and a nice chap from Wapping set her up in a little shop selling sugar mice and tabacco.
What a good start to it!
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 6, 2024 15:52:13 GMT -5
I loved that book! Reminds me to look for more of her stuff — I’ve read a couple, but not all.
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Post by sprite on Feb 6, 2024 16:14:16 GMT -5
Silverview, John le Carre (audio book)
I'm really starting to prefer audio books for trains and planes rather than 'real' books. This one was read by Toby Jones, who was amazing in 'The Detectorists' and most recently was in the Post Office scandal move, Mr Bates vs the Post Office.
This is another of le Carre's retired-spy novels. Julian buys a book store after leaving his high-flyer banking life. An old codger decides they should open a special book club in the shop basement and then all sorts of interesting people start to have interesting conversations with him.
I had to re-listen to a couple of chapters because the story got a bit twisty for a while, but then it straightened out--as far as a le Carre plot can be straight.
it was only 6 hours as an audiobook, which was about right for a weekend train trip to London.
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Post by lillielangtry on Feb 7, 2024 13:51:18 GMT -5
(5) Ann Patchett, Bel Canto I've been meaning to reread this for ages. I think most people here probably know it - it's about a mass hostage-taking in an unnamed South American country (inspired by the actual Japanese embassy hostage situation in Lima). As the hostages and their prisoners spend months together, various relationships spring up. Patchett is a brilliant character writer. It's not like there's much action - in fact, the book just leans towards boredom in the middle, as many of the characters themselves are bored and waiting for something to happen. Beautiful. I really like the way she consistently considers the issue of language, who can speak to whom, who is picking up what language. Many writers skate over that or have really irritating dialogue in which people fall into their native language for the very cliched phrases (why?!) and otherwise achieve complete fluency in a matter of days. Of course, the interpreter character who speaks a dozen or more languages brilliantly is a plot device, but hey, it's understandable. At least she doesn't dare suggest he could speak Quechua ;-) I love Patchett, but I'm starting to think her non-fiction suits me more than her fiction. (6) Gil Ribeiro, Lost in Fuseta A colleague recommended this German crime novel set in Portugal, and I'm glad I read it because I am lazy about reading in German and it was nice to have memories of Portugal. The story idea is fine but the execution wasn't that great. The main character, a German detective on an exchange programme, is supposedly autistic and this is merely an excuse for having someone with a photographic memory who "can't lie". Not a replacement for Montalbano, sadly. (If a mod gets a few minutes, perhaps we could unsticky a few threads up here please?)
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Post by scrubb on Feb 8, 2024 15:33:35 GMT -5
Sarah Waters, Fingersmith. Wow! I thought it was excellent.
I liked, but didn't love, the 2 other of her books that I've read but thus one has me wanting more.
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Post by sprite on Feb 9, 2024 15:23:04 GMT -5
Ink and Shadows, Ellery Adams.
Another cozy-ish mystery about a bookstore owner and her friends, in a small American town. There is a LOT of food in this series. They are always eating! Female friendship is a strong theme in this series; all the friends have overcome some sort of tragedy or challenge.
It gets a bit twee sometimes, like everyone is always so caring and understanding and forgiving... But it is soothing.
In this one, a mother and (adult) daughter move to town and open a CBD/art store. Very soon, they are both dead, and it all seems to revolve around a 400 year old page covered in occult symbols.
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Post by scrubb on Feb 9, 2024 16:14:22 GMT -5
Meet Me at the Lake, by Carley Fortune. Sophie mentioned that she enjoyed this quick romance that is part of the Canada Reads competition on CBC radio this year, so I put it on hold from the library. I do look at the Canada Reads nominations as a bit of a "to read" list. And yeah, it was an easy, fun read, but at the same time, it confirmed that romance is just not my genre!
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 9, 2024 20:36:30 GMT -5
5) Paul Murray, The Bee Sting
A family in rural Ireland that has fallen on hard times, told in a series of chapters in turn from each character's perspective. Some of it is just painful to read; I found myself yelling at Paul Murray, like what did these people do to you to treat them so badly! But at the same time it was quite darkly funny, and very emotionally true. It's nearly 700 pp long, so at first I wondered what I'd got myself into, but at some point I realized that I couldn't put it down. The ending was quite amazing.
From the Booker shortlist
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Feb 11, 2024 7:57:12 GMT -5
8. Force of Nature, Jane Harper. This has just been released as a movie. It is the sequel to The Dry, but works as a stand alone, as the setting and most characters are quite different. If anyone wants to know why outdoor challenges are a bad idea for team building, read this book. I can see why they made it into a movie. I enjoyed it.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Feb 11, 2024 18:57:53 GMT -5
9. A Grave Welcome, Blythe Baker.. Cozy mystery set in the 1920s, which didn’t click. Pedestrian writing, a main character I didn’t warm to, and situations that didn’t ring true. Not recommended.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Feb 11, 2024 22:28:41 GMT -5
Ozzie, do you always finish books that you aren't enjoying, or was this one a set challenge type read?
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Post by scrubb on Feb 11, 2024 23:28:22 GMT -5
No idea about ozzie, but I find it really hard not to finish books once I've got into them, and in particular if they're short and easy I just keep going.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 12, 2024 6:07:19 GMT -5
Oh I am all too happy to quit reading something if I don't think it's what I'm into at the time. I can always pick it up again some other time if the problem wasn't that it was just plain bad.
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Post by sprite on Feb 12, 2024 6:33:20 GMT -5
I've just realised that I've been mixing up 'The Dry' with another Australian outback novel that I read last year, about the rancher who is found dead of exposure next to a monument. oops.
I always finish books, but if I'm not enjoying it, I'll jump to the last 2-3 chapters and just start skimming.
Angel Catbird, Margaret Atwood (and others). A comic, which I don't normally read, but I needed something quickly. Absolutely bonkers. An evil genius plans to take over the world with genetically modified rats, but one of his employees accidentally gets spliced with a cat and and owl. Then he discovers he's not the only one like himself. Interspecies chaos ensues.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Feb 12, 2024 7:48:48 GMT -5
Ozzie, do you always finish books that you aren't enjoying, or was this one a set challenge type read? It was the last book needed to complete a Goodreads challenge, on my Kindle app, so probably a freebie acquired some time ago. And relatively short. I did refuse to finish an Ayn Rand book I borrowed from the library, because I refused to pay for anything she wrote, but wanted to know what they were like. I’m currently struggling through a hardback copy of JK Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy, but I do want to finish it.
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Post by Queen on Feb 12, 2024 9:26:37 GMT -5
I'm reading Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead and it's not going well.
Today I realised why - 2 reasons - (1) it feels more like a series of loosely strung together short stories, so although the writing is good I'm struggling to follow what's going on and if the threads all come together in some magnificent denouement I won't get it and (2) there are barely any women in the book and they only show up as somebody's wife/daughter/lover or a hooker. Except one movie star and she's just disappeared.
I think I'm going to keep going ... probably. I have some train trips in the next two days I might speed read it during that.
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Post by sophie on Feb 12, 2024 13:25:17 GMT -5
Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. A fun novel to read. Two separate groups of characters which eventually weave together to a satisfying ending. One of the main characters is an octopus who helps sold a mystery.
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Post by tzarine on Feb 12, 2024 18:45:04 GMT -5
taran wanderer from my childhood a boy who would be king & the princess whod rather fight than wear a crown
stories - somerset maugham
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Post by scrubb on Feb 14, 2024 18:00:54 GMT -5
Ann Patchett, Tom Lake.
It's a very gentle book. A woman tells her grown daughters the story of the summer she was an actress, dating an actor who turned into a movie star, and how it all ended up with their family having a cherry farm.
Not that all the events talked about are gentle, or that there's not plenty of really interesting characters and emotional events - but the story is being told from a place of real contentment and even joy in the life she has. I think that while it's an accomplishment to portray the character so well, it may have made the book feel a bit too easy. Knowing she turns out ok and happy and not broken takes away all the tension, I guess.
Still, I'll read whatever Ann Patchet writes!
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Post by lillielangtry on Feb 14, 2024 23:58:19 GMT -5
Ann Patchett, Tom Lake. Knowing she turns out ok and happy and not broken takes away all the tension, I guess. Still, I'll read whatever Ann Patchet writes! I noticed this about Bel Canto in my recent reread. She tells you right at the start that the hostages survive but the captors don't, so you read the whole book with that awareness. I have heard such mixed things about Tom Lake, from people saying she's off her game to others loving it. I'd like to read it, but I'm going to read some more of her essays first, I think.
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Post by scrubb on Feb 15, 2024 23:01:42 GMT -5
That's interesting - when I read Bel Canto I didn't find that knowing took away the tension. Maybe knowing that the ending wasn't necessarily so happy makes it different from this new book
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 16, 2024 6:36:13 GMT -5
Books that aren't tense are also good, of course; I just don't read them as quickly because there's not that pressure of omg I have to find out what happens to these people.
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Post by sprite on Feb 16, 2024 17:12:44 GMT -5
I found Bel Canto tense, wondering when, how, and why the hostages would leave and the captors die. And it was interesting to wonder which relationships would last.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 17, 2024 17:05:48 GMT -5
6) Zadie Smith, The Fraud
Historical fiction, mainly about an abolitionist white woman in a literary circle in Victorian England. The fraud in the title refers most obviously to a trial of a man claiming to be a vanished aristocrat, but as the book progresses you realize that the theme of "fraud" keeps repeating itself throughout, individually and societally. Very good.
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