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Post by ozziegiraffe on Dec 1, 2022 3:53:04 GMT -5
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Dec 1, 2022 3:59:22 GMT -5
76. Phosphorescence, Julia Baird. A brilliant semi-autobiographical book described as “On awe, wonder and things that sustain you when the world goes dark.” Loved it. Julia Baird is an ABC journalist, who has lived in Sydney and New York.
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Post by Liiisa on Dec 1, 2022 18:42:06 GMT -5
Thank you ozzie!
I'm about halfway through a well-researched but kind of plodding sci-fi novel, but will likely be back to describe it in a day or so.
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Post by scrubb on Dec 1, 2022 19:43:04 GMT -5
Thank you, Ozzie.
I'm ~ 1/3 through Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man". The writing is good, but very long and spun out, and I'm not really feeling drawn in. May end up skimming.
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Post by sophie on Dec 1, 2022 20:36:36 GMT -5
Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn. A wonderful romping novel about an all female group of professional assassins who are about to retire but find out they have been marked for death. They decide to figure out what’s going on and that’s the story which is so much fun to read. Highly recommended if you like mystery/ thrillers/ action novels.
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Post by Liiisa on Dec 2, 2022 21:44:20 GMT -5
64) Clifford D. Simak, Mastodonia
I happened to be browsing the sci-fi shelf of a used bookstore during the first week when people were moving from Twitter to Mastodon, and couldn't resist a book called "Mastodonia" with a mastodon on the cover.
I called it plodding a couple days ago, but it is charming nonetheless. An alien in rural Minnesota living on a retired archaeologist's farm allows him and his girlfriend, a woman who owns a small business, to travel through time, and they end up setting up basically the Abercrombie and Kent of Pleistocene and Cretaceous time travel. A lot of the plot is about them trying to find a tax loophole, and hiring a lawyer to deal with that and other official entitities as the business comes to light. It was pretty well researched, in terms of the flora and fauna located in the past. It's not perfect... there's a little political ickiness near the end, but it kept me amused.
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Post by sophie on Dec 3, 2022 11:24:29 GMT -5
Framed in Fire by Iona Whishaw. Latest in a cute little murder/ detective series set in the area I grew up in (the Kootenays) during the 40’s. Lots of references to local landmarks and a bit of a effort of educate the reader about the First Nations in the area and how they got pushed out into the US. I stayed up late finishing it so it was a decent mystery.
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Post by Liiisa on Dec 3, 2022 12:24:24 GMT -5
Has anyone here read "The Cartographers" yet? I had it on my to read list I guess based on a list or something, but it's kinda dumb... wondering if it continues to be dumb (only on p. 50 at the moment).
What I need to do from now on is not grab stuff I've ordered from the library hold shelf and then leave without looking at them.
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Post by sophie on Dec 3, 2022 20:18:53 GMT -5
Liisa, I read it… well, read the first part then skimmed the rest. Didn’t care for it.
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Post by Liiisa on Dec 3, 2022 21:44:16 GMT -5
Liisa, I read it… well, read the first part then skimmed the rest. Didn’t care for it. Thank you... I keep thinking that this story would be good in the hands of a more careful writer. I keep sticking with it in hope that I'll at least enjoy learning what the secret of whatever this mystery is. But I just find it implausible and not in a fun way. I keep complaining about it and pero keeps saying "so stop reading it!"
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Post by scrubb on Dec 4, 2022 12:05:28 GMT -5
Finally finished Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" last night. A young black man from the South's journey through race issues in the 1950s.
Although the writing is very good, and I understand why the book made a splash when it was written, I just didn't care for the style (very long speeches and long descriptions and many super detailed events presented in a sort of vague way. Characters were undeveloped, jyst vehicles for ideas). I found it hard to stay engaged, and really almost skimmed more than half of it.
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Post by Liiisa on Dec 4, 2022 20:44:04 GMT -5
65) Peng Shepherd, The Cartographers
OK so this novel is kind of cliche and absurd, and yet I had to keep reading it to see how she was going to make the plot work out. So in the end I guess it was kind of good after all? I mean, making you continue to read it is what a novel is all about.
The premise is interesting - it's about how maps sometimes have fake towns printed on them in order to trap copyright violators, and other interesting ideas spin off from that initial idea. But... ok.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Dec 4, 2022 23:08:41 GMT -5
Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn. A wonderful romping novel about an all female group of professional assassins who are about to retire but find out they have been marked for death. They decide to figure out what’s going on and that’s the story which is so much fun to read. Highly recommended if you like mystery/ thrillers/ action novels. I have this on my TBR list as I love her Veronica Speedwell series. That is rollicking good fun.
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Post by sprite on Dec 5, 2022 16:37:51 GMT -5
Cold Earth, Ann CLeeves. The second-last Shetland novel. Exactly what you'd expect from Cleeves. You really get a good feel for the communities that are affected by the murder of an unknown woman. (or, is she....?) But some of the dialogue doesn't always land, Cleeves has a handful of 'shetland' words that she sprinkles through the book. At least in this one, she only uses 'big style' once. Of course, I'll probably re-read the last one, because I can't remember the Jimmy-Willow story. And I get mixed up between the different stories/characters from the TV series. I want to go to Shetland.
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Post by scrubb on Dec 6, 2022 13:48:32 GMT -5
Kirk Wallace Johnson, The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century.
It was a fascinating book - it outlines the history of Alfred Wallace, the guy who came up with the theory of evolution at the same time as Darwin and his specimen collection trips. And then talks about the history of using birds and bird feathers commercially including the current field of fish fly tieing that use them. And then onto the specific crime in 2010 of an American student breaking into the collection in England where most of Wallace's birds are (were) and stealing nearly 300 of them.
The last part of the book is a bit depressing as there's no real resolution, but that is just reflecting reality.
I found it compellingly written.
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Post by lillielangtry on Dec 7, 2022 1:24:59 GMT -5
Josh Widdicombe, Watching Neighbours twice a day: How 90s TV (almost) prepared me for life This was a present; honestly I'm a bit of a reading snob about books like this, and yet... it was fun. If you were watching British TV in the 90s (including that most famous Australian import, Neighbours, of course!), and especially if you were a teenager at that time, there is a lot to remember and laugh at here. And, he deals openly with some of the parts that have not aged so well, racism and sexism and so on.
I have 2 books on the go to complete my 20 books for this year by women from countries new to me, so pleased about that. I've also worked my way through quite a few of the books that have been piling up for a while, although I must say the pile has also been added to at the same time...
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Post by sprite on Dec 7, 2022 11:09:18 GMT -5
An Unkindness of Ghosts. Rivers Solomon. Did someone here recommend this?
Aster is a slave on a spaceship sailing to a new home, after the destruction of Earth. Her mother died near the time of her birth, probably a suicide. She works as a healer amongst the other slaves who work on the plantations, with the support and training of the ship's Surgeon General. The novel centers around trying to find out what killed her mother, and what her mother was investigating at the time of her death. This is hampered by the racist structure of the ship, which is right out of Antebellum Georgia, and by her own neurodivergence and non-binary gender identity.
which all sounds like it will be quite preachy, but is actually very human. You don't need to be a sci-fi fan to go for it, but if you are, it's fascinating to imagine the tech used to keep the ship going. Part of the story arc is her moving from trying to exist in spite of what might be autism, to her deciding that it's a part of her, and people can deal with it or she'll push them out of her way.
I suspect a black American would read this very differently from me, or even someone who lives in an area/situation where they regularly see microagressions against people who don't conform to the majority in some way.
Various people in this book suffer a range of violent acts. Some are alluded to, and some are very clearly described. I'd still recommend it.
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Post by Liiisa on Dec 7, 2022 17:43:00 GMT -5
66) Kevin Wilson, Now is Not the Time to Panic
WOW I really LOVED this book. I'm not sure if it's because of his writing, or because there was something about the protagonist that I really related to, but I think it will be my favorite of the year.
It's a short novel about a pair of teenagers who make a weird piece of art that upends a small Tennessee town, and what happens next. Really marvelous. Written by the guy who wrote the book about the children who would spontaneously catch fire last year. I have Kevin Wilson on my "I will read anything by this person" list.
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Post by scrubb on Dec 8, 2022 18:03:29 GMT -5
I will have to put Kevin Wilson on my list.
Today I finished "State of Terror" by Hilary Clinton and Louise Penney.
It was a decent thriller. Some of the Louise Penney style tics that irritate me were ironed out. But really, it was Hilary's revenge porn. She savaged the orange menace (not even thinly disguised as Eric Dunn). Which I have to admit I enjoyed, but at the same time I didn't think it was very classy.
Oh, on the thriller end of things, there was one plot point I thought was stupid. SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT (although I suspect that those who want to read this already have, I don't want to ruin anything for anyone, so if you might read it you can stop here): they know there's a nuclear bomb in the Whitehouse, but the President decides to stay there instead of leaving, because he thinks it would be worse for the bad guys to know they'd chased the President away, than to kill him. That struck me as kind of ridiculous. IMO "the bad guys" would be most likely to think he was an idiot who didn't know enough to save himself, while celebrating that their plan to kill him worked, rather than admire him for not leaving. Also, I suspect that since neither author has written a thriller before, and possibly haven't read many, they were following some of the devices used in movies, and they don't always work as well in written form. Having the heroine watching the bomb timer count down - I dunno, it felt a bit cheap and not that effective.
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Post by Liiisa on Dec 9, 2022 6:22:48 GMT -5
Yeah, that sounds kinda dumb.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Dec 9, 2022 7:10:53 GMT -5
77. The Boy from the Mish, Gary Lonesborough. I’m hoping this becomes recommended reading in high schools in towns with a community that used to be an Aboriginal mission. I’ve met several young men who could tell a story like this. A young man in one of these communities comes to the realisation he is gay. Sensitively told YA novel by a man with similar lived experience.
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Post by sophie on Dec 10, 2022 0:32:40 GMT -5
The Boys from Biloxi by John Grisham. A good legal thriller, smart dialogue and good action .. a typical Grisham novel. The novel traces the lives of two boys from Biloxi who played baseball together on the same team and event in two totally opposite directions. One became a lawyer, the other a criminal kingpin.
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Post by scrubb on Dec 10, 2022 13:43:51 GMT -5
A Trick of he Light, by Louise Penney - another one in the Armand Gamache mystery series. I found a bunch of the series available in the library so got the ones I hadn't read yet. I get sick of her style after reading a couple, I find, so am not sure if I'll finish all those that I borrowed.
Anyway, I liked this one a fair bit.
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Post by sprite on Dec 11, 2022 11:12:20 GMT -5
When will there be Good News? Kate Aktinson
Another really well written mystery, set in Edinburgh which is always fun. it's a bit spooky, because the first one was set in Cambridge--is Kate Aktinson stalking me? Part of the mystery is what the mystery is. It's like her other stories; a series of coincidences spin a web between several people, pulling them into each other's stories.
A doctor and her baby seem to have disappeared, but the husband claims they've gone to visit an aunt. The nanny is suspicious, and in between visiting the unconscious man she rescued from a train wreck and looking after the doctor's dog and avoiding thugs intent on getting revenge on her slimy brother, she harasses a detective to investigate the doctor.
I really enjoyed it. If you've read previous Jackson Brodie stories, the story is a bit fuller, but it stands alone.
the only bit I really didn't get was that in the final pages, there's a suggestion that a murder has been committed, in London, by one of the characters in Edinburgh. But I couldn't work out when they were supposed to have been able to do it.
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Post by Liiisa on Dec 11, 2022 16:29:28 GMT -5
67) Natasha Pulley, The Kingdoms
A time-slip novel that is also a love story. There's a time anomaly in the Hebrides that causes people to slip back and forth between the Napoleonic Wars and the late Victorian Age, and havoc is wreaked because of it. This book takes the approach that there's only one timeline, so any change made when you go to the past irrevocably changes the future. This is what creates the plot, and the way she addresses it is very inventive and interesting. Plus once you realize what the love part of the plot is, you really want things to work out for them. Good book!
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Post by scrubb on Dec 11, 2022 20:33:33 GMT -5
The Beautiful Mystery, by Louise Penney. Another in the series. I enjoyed this one partly because it wasn't set in the little village where so many of them are - the characters are fun but it gets kind of claustrophobic and I just finished one set there with all of them.
this one is set in a monastery of little known/lost sect, the Gilbertians, who are all about the Gregorian chants.
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Post by scrubb on Dec 13, 2022 17:11:47 GMT -5
Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators, by Ronan Farrow. The author's book about his attempts to report on Harvey Weinstein, and NBC's efforts to shut it down.
It's all interesting and very condemning of the management at NBC (as well as Weinstein), but the writing wasn't, IMO, great. Some of it's good, but it spends a fair bit of time justifying Farrow's kowtowing to NBC (he didn't want to lose his job - and after he'd lost it, he was hoping they'd rehire him). It's also organized a bit oddly. Most of it is chronological, but then he tells the Matt Lauer story all at once later on, after mentioning him only in terms of day to day interactions at the office before that.
A lot of what was written is important to have out there, so it's a worthwhile book, but - as is so often the case, IMO - the journalist who's great at writing shorter pieces of investigative journalism isn't necessarily great at writing a book.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Dec 14, 2022 5:36:44 GMT -5
78. Twelve Slays of Christmas, Jacqueline Frost. A formulaic, Christmas themed cozy mystery. Meh!
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Post by lillielangtry on Dec 15, 2022 1:15:59 GMT -5
Samar Yazbek, A Woman in the Crossfire The diaries of a female journalist during the beginning of the Syrian revolution in 2011. Difficult to read and all the more so in the knowledge of the even worse bloodshed that was coming. Also makes me very fearful for the future of Iran (although being aware that they are very different countries).
Amanat: Women's Writing from Kazakhstan A new anthology from the Central Asian country. I haven't quite finished it but I already know it's an excellently curated collection. Some stories are very short - one is just a page about a woman whose husband can't find the sugar even though it's in the cupboard in a container labelled "sugar"! Others are much more substantial and deal with subjects like urbanisation, the memory of the Soviet period, etc. Honestly I don't know how it is financially worthwhile for small publishers to produce these translated anthologies that are pretty niche, but I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in the region.
Abi Dare, The Girl with the Louding Voice This debut novel from Nigeria was quite big a couple of years ago. It follows 14-year-old Adunni who is forcibly married after the death of her mother and later ends up as a housemaid in Lagos. Tough themes, obviously, but a wonderfully engaging central character and a hopeful ending. Recommended.
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Post by scrubb on Dec 16, 2022 17:47:23 GMT -5
Read another in Louise Penney's detective series - The Nature of the Beast.
There was a ridiculous part of the plot that nearly ruined it, and in fact the whole thing gad lots of unlikely bits. But it did keep my interest.
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