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Post by lillielangtry on Aug 2, 2022 0:38:01 GMT -5
It's August!
As always I'll be reading mostly women in translation in August, but all your books - fiction, non-fiction, audio, etc - are welcome here!
I listened to a very short book almost in one sitting yesterday: Olga Ravn's The Employees (translated by Martin Aitken). I have a feeling someone here read this recently (Liisa?) but I can't find it, so maybe I'm getting mixed up. Anyway, it's subtitled "a workplace novel of the 22nd century" and it's presented as a series of witness statements by workers on a spaceship. I don't really want to give much more than that away. It explores some familiar sci-fi themes but in an intriguing way. Very good.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Aug 2, 2022 4:26:08 GMT -5
Thank you Lillie. Bookmarking. I’ll probably finish an audiobook tomorrow.
And that book sounds intriguing.
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Post by Oweena on Aug 2, 2022 14:13:06 GMT -5
Thanks lillie, almost done with my 1st book of August.
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Post by sophie on Aug 2, 2022 16:11:15 GMT -5
Light by Margaret Elphinsone. Set on a tiny island off the Isle of Mann in 1831, this novel does a great job of conveying the sense of that period in history. The lighthouse keeper whose family had minded the lighthouse on this island had drowned. His sister became the de facto keeper (when women didn’t do these jobs) and lived at the lighthouse with her son as well as with the keeper’s widow and her two daughters. Enter a surveyor whose job is to map the island for a new lighthouse. Great dynamics between the characters. Enjoyable, but lots of dialect which may make it more challenging to read for some.
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Post by tzarine on Aug 5, 2022 13:29:34 GMT -5
red carpet- hollywood, china & the global battle for cultural supremacy - erich schwartzel a look how hollywood kissed china's ass. condemns disney & mulan. discusses the notion of the film industry serves as propaganda for a nation fascinating read
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Post by Oweena on Aug 5, 2022 16:45:19 GMT -5
Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
A Pacific Octopus living out his final days at an aquarium in a small town north of Seattle starts a friendship with the nighttime cleaning woman who is grieving the deaths of her son and husband. The plot may revolve around these two but all the characters in this novel are interesting and well-written. Enjoyable story and I ended up rooting for Marcellus, the octopus.
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Post by sophie on Aug 5, 2022 18:08:06 GMT -5
Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Daniel Silva. Good summer mystery read. The main character (Gabriel Allon) has retired to Venice with his wife and children. He is no longer in the spy business but has returned to art restoration. By doing a favour for a friend, he ends up in the world of art forgeries and big money. I enjoyed it.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Aug 5, 2022 18:53:05 GMT -5
49. Bickering Birds, Mildred Abbott. Quite a good cozy mystery revolving around a bird watching group.
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Post by Liiisa on Aug 7, 2022 16:42:06 GMT -5
lillielangtry yep, "The Employees" was me! Glad you liked it. 32) Rebecca Solnit, Orwell's Roses I really loved this - it was sort of a biography of Orwell told from the perspective of his love of nature and gardening, and how that informed his politics. Very good.
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Post by Oweena on Aug 7, 2022 17:45:27 GMT -5
The Only Girl: My Life and Times on the Masthead of Rolling Stone by Robin Green
I used to read Rolling Stone back in my college days, but not much after that. Green was a writer there in the early 1970s, well before I ever picked up the magazine. She tells the story of her time at Rolling Stone along with discussing all the people she slept with, the drugs she took, and her struggle to be taken seriously as a female surrounded by all male writers. She also discusses more current times in her life up to the present, as she's now a writer for television. It was just OK.
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Post by scrubb on Aug 7, 2022 23:01:24 GMT -5
Finally ginished:
Ducks, Newburyport, by Lucy Ellman.
It kept me reading, but I don't think I liked it as much as Liiiiisa did. I felt like it could have been a few hundred pages shorter.
The format takes a while to adjust to, but I soon found myself kind of extracting all the main points/information. There's lots of wordplay which I sometimes liked a lot, but sometimes skipped right over it.
There are interspersed chapters detailing a mountain lion's life that bothered me a bit, because they provided the lion's thoughts, and I don't think these parts at all realistic. It kind of anthropormorphized and presented thoughts and emotions that really just don't apply to wild animals, I don't think.
Anyway, glad I read it, and I did like it a lot, but don't know if I'm convinced it was fantastic.
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Post by sprite on Aug 8, 2022 4:11:36 GMT -5
The Sea, The Sea. Iris Murdoch.
The narrator of this novel, which is sort of in a diary format, briefly muses about writing a cookbook, and for the first 100 pages, I was ready to buy it. His philosophy is that a meal should take 4 minutes to prepare and an hour to eat. A retired actor buys a vaguely miserable home by the English sea, possibly in Cornwall or Devon, and sits down to write his memoirs. He is aware that the locals don't really like him, but he enjoys his solitude and daily swims. All is fairly peaceful until he discovers that his one and only true love from childhood lives in the village with her brutish husband, while his friends from London begin to descend on his home.
The atmosphere is quite oppressive; the summer is hot, the house is across a narrow causeway, has damp, no proper plumbing, no electricity, no telephone. He has no car, and for weeks doesn't realise that the post is being left in a box about 50m from his house. He becomes obsessed with rescuing his love, but she both loves and doesn't love him. When his friends stay over, there aren't actually any proper beds for them so the house is crowded and chaotic.
I enjoyed the book, but I'm finding my endurance for reading is shorter. So I skimmed the last two sections, to be honest, just to tie up the loose ends. The story often goes in directions I didn't expect, partly because the narrator is not especially reliable. Conversations with friends frequently show that his memories have been edited to suit him, or his actions don't match his descriptions of what he believes he is doing.
I'd recommend it, but maybe not while staying in a remote house on the coast?
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Post by Liiisa on Aug 8, 2022 4:46:44 GMT -5
lol sorry to put you through all that then, scrubb! Well, I'm happy you're glad you read it. I know what you mean by the mountain lion, but for some reason I was totally mesmerized. And sprite that sounds interesting, but only for when one is in the mood for it. I've resisted Murdoch so far because I assumed all of her stuff would be depressing.
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Post by scrubb on Aug 8, 2022 20:40:31 GMT -5
The Sea, The Sea, was the last Murdoch I read. As in, I read it, I recognized it was very good, and I decided I wasn't going to read more of her work because I just don't enjoy it.
Today I finished Saving Ruby King by Catharine Adel West. Set in Chicago, a story of intergenerational family, friends, trauma, violence, secrets. It was very good. Not great, but the author is worth watching.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Aug 9, 2022 6:53:23 GMT -5
Book related. Was reading something and saw that Jasper Fforde has long covid. So the second Shades of Grey book will be delayed (again). Apparently it is 95%. written now.
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Post by lillielangtry on Aug 9, 2022 7:11:18 GMT -5
Book related. Was reading something and saw that Jasper Fforde has long covid. So the second Shades of Grey book will be delayed (again). Apparently it is 95%. written now. That's sad. Apparently Susanna Clarke, who wrote "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell", has a chronic illness (ME/CFS) and was unable to write a sequel to that hugely long, complex novel. So she turned to Piranesi, which is much shorter and has a more limited group of characters (for most of it, only one). And she produced an incredible work that won the Women's Prize. (Which, by the way, is not to say that her illness is some kind of good thing, I'm sure she'd much rather be without it! I'm just interested by how she turned to a different way of working under these circumstances and how successful it was).
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Post by tzarine on Aug 9, 2022 15:02:03 GMT -5
has anyone read the sexual life of catherine m? found in giveaway box
do i need to read bout swingers clubs or alfresco gang bangs? (from the cover)
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Post by Liiisa on Aug 9, 2022 16:34:55 GMT -5
Sounds kinda boring to me tzarine, but then I lived through the 70s once already
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Post by Oweena on Aug 9, 2022 19:43:47 GMT -5
The Shore by Katie Runde
Set on the Jersey shore the narrative is told from 3 viewpoints. A wife, a 17 year old daughter, and a 16 year old daughter who are all dealing with the decline of the husband/father as he dies of a brain tumor. I'd say it's probably about 2 steps up from being a full-blown beach read, even with the heavy topic.
It was the right book at the right time for me. Enjoyable read, but I'm guessing if I read it in the middle of winter I wouldn't have liked it this much, if that makes sense?
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Post by sophie on Aug 9, 2022 22:02:25 GMT -5
The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd. A meticulously researched novel set in Galilee, Nazareth, Jerusalem and Egypt, it tells the story of a talented and rebellious young woman from a wealthy family who has a chance encounter with an 18 year old Jesus, and ends up marrying him. Excellent novel giving voice to the unheard women of that era. Recommended.
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Post by scrubb on Aug 9, 2022 22:54:06 GMT -5
Hamnet, by Maggie O'Farrell. Loved it.
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Post by Oweena on Aug 10, 2022 9:16:02 GMT -5
Hamnet, by Maggie O'Farrell. Loved it. Just recommended Hamnet to someone yesterday.
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Post by lillielangtry on Aug 10, 2022 10:00:14 GMT -5
Such a great book, even if it did make me cry on the train twice!
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Post by Liiisa on Aug 10, 2022 11:10:30 GMT -5
I have it on my list but haven't gotten there yet! Thank you for the warning re train-crying lillie.
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Post by tzarine on Aug 10, 2022 16:55:34 GMT -5
The Shore by Katie Runde Set on the Jersey shore the narrative is told from 3 viewpoints. A wife, a 17 year old daughter, and a 16 year old daughter who are all dealing with the decline of the husband/father as he dies of a brain tumor. I'd say it's probably about 2 steps up from being a full-blown beach read, even with the heavy topic. It was the right book at the right time for me. Enjoyable read, but I'm guessing if I read it in the middle of winter I wouldn't have liked it this much, if that makes sense? yes, oweena, there are gloomy winter books & cheery all season ones tzar & i used to go to the jersey shore all the time once @ bookstore i asked do you anna karenina? & the person responded, what genre does she write in?
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Post by Liiisa on Aug 10, 2022 17:34:08 GMT -5
lol at Anna Karenina, Novelist
On the other hand, my mom once went into a bookstore in Amherst looking for a mass-market thriller and was told "I'm sorry, we only have literature here," which she still laughs about.
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Post by Liiisa on Aug 10, 2022 20:22:14 GMT -5
33) Masatsugu Ono, At the Edge of the Woods
I like short unnerving Japanese novels, but this one was somehow too disjointed to really grab me. Part might be that I was reading it mostly while out of town with lots going on, so I read it in little bits. So maybe it takes a little more focus to really get into.
Anyway, it's about a man and his son, who are living by themselves in their house at the edge of some woods that are surreally unnerving while the son's mom is visiting with her parents.
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Post by sophie on Aug 11, 2022 0:34:09 GMT -5
Before I Met You by Lisa Jewell. Chick Lit novel, has it all: a murky and romantic family mystery, a young woman moving to London, a rock star…and so on. Sort of readable.
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Post by Liiisa on Aug 11, 2022 11:15:15 GMT -5
"sort of readable," lol
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Post by lillielangtry on Aug 11, 2022 14:14:51 GMT -5
That's definitely a recommendation! :-)
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