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Post by HalcyonDaze on Jan 1, 2023 3:14:01 GMT -5
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jan 1, 2023 3:39:50 GMT -5
Bookmarking. Thank you Hal. I have my usual 3 on the go.
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 1, 2023 8:25:49 GMT -5
Happy New Books! Thank you Hal - bookmarking.
I started Hugh Raffles' "Insectopedia" a couple days ago. They're very entertaining essays about insects, but since it's nonfiction it's going slowly, so I probably won't be back to say I've finished it until sometime next week.
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Post by scrubb on Jan 1, 2023 12:53:46 GMT -5
Am reading "The Homecoming" by Yaa Gyasi, a Ghanean-born, Alabama-raised woman. The story starts in the 1700s on the African Gold Coast. After telling about 2 half-sisters who never met and who had very different lives, each following chapter tells the story of one of the sister's descendents. One line stays in Ghana, while one line was shipped to America as slaves.
Although I like it and it has lots to say, some little things seem awkward or wrong. Stuff like a girl having a 10 mile walk from the river to her home and her carrying 1 bucket of water, for her whole family (who were farmers). Immigrants from Ghana to the US in the first half of the 1900s having the money to go back to visit yearly. And I don't think the timeline quite works eieither.
these little things detract, unfortunately, but overall she's telling some really good stories. Lots of tragedy, but some hopeful things too.
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Post by sophie on Jan 1, 2023 15:42:25 GMT -5
Scrubb, her next book is much better with some of those issues. I thought for a first novel Homecoming was very good.
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Post by scrubb on Jan 1, 2023 15:47:38 GMT -5
Scrubb, her next book is much better with some of those issues. I thought for a first novel Homecoming was very good. Yes, it's a good first novel for sure. I just found those clumsy bits distracted me from the whole, but look forward to more from her. Speaking of it, I just finished it. 1. The Homecoming, by Yaa Gyasi
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Post by tucano on Jan 2, 2023 13:38:07 GMT -5
Richard Osman, The Bullet That Missed.
Third in the Thursday Murder Club series. An enjoyable read with a few red herrings.
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Post by Q-pee on Jan 2, 2023 14:17:43 GMT -5
I am reading Carrie Soto is Back. There is a lot of tennis in the book. Heh. Somehow FB can't figure out that I don't want news about a certain obnoxious Aussie tennis player. Meh First read of the year is lovely but sad... so far (about 30%) The Island of Missing Trees, Elif Sharak Writer is a Turkish woman, and it's about Cyprus... I have a coffee date planned with my Turkish Cypriot ex-colleague for a book review chat once I've done.
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 2, 2023 14:41:43 GMT -5
I read the previous book by Elif Shafak (I think, not Sharak?) - the one about the sex worker who was murdered in Istanbul - and yes, it was really good but also, sad. I wasn't sure I wanted to take another one of hers on too soon after that, but if it's endorsed by Q....
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Post by Q-pee on Jan 2, 2023 16:24:17 GMT -5
I read the previous book by Elif Shafak (I think, not Sharak?) - the one about the sex worker who was murdered in Istanbul - and yes, it was really good but also, sad. I wasn't sure I wanted to take another one of hers on too soon after that, but if it's endorsed by Q.... I have that one on my TBR pile… but haven’t started it. This is more poignant sad… not difficult sad, at least so far, I’ll let you know when I get to the end. And yes Shafak, thank you
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Post by scrubb on Jan 3, 2023 0:12:08 GMT -5
I really liked her 10 Minutes and 38 Seconds in this Strange World. Will put another by ger on my list for sure.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jan 3, 2023 3:54:21 GMT -5
1. The Twelve Clues of Christmas, Rhys Bowen. Historical mystery in the Agatha Christie style, but lighter, set in an English country house in the 1930s, over Christmas and New Year.
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Post by lillielangtry on Jan 3, 2023 12:49:21 GMT -5
I have The Island of Missing Trees on my tbr - it was passed on to me by a friend who couldn't get into it, but I'm not put off by that since I've read a couple of her other books.
#1 Susan Cooper, Silver on the Tree I had hoped to finish off this children's fantasy series in 2022, but didn't manage it. This one, the fifth and final in the sequence, is good but not as good as number 4, I felt. On the whole a satisfying reread.
Now starting off some new books.
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Post by Q-pee on Jan 3, 2023 13:21:43 GMT -5
I have The Island of Missing Trees on my tbr - it was passed on to me by a friend who couldn't get into it, but I'm not put off by that since I've read a couple of her other books. I had a small challenge at the beginning, some chapters are narrated by a tree and that irritated me a bit, but now I accept that the Tree is the voice of history and the Tree is very helpful because it gives a lot of historical and cultural context that I would otherwise be fuzzy on... and probably hitting wiki.
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Post by scrubb on Jan 4, 2023 20:51:21 GMT -5
I've started another series of kids books - The Incorrigibles. I think I'd really have liked them as a kid. 3 children are found living among wolves in the woods. A rich Lord takes them in and gets them a young governess who has a mysterious background herself.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jan 4, 2023 22:30:19 GMT -5
2. Deadly Start, Philippa Nefri Clark. An Australian Christmas cozy mystery. Quite good, and as I like to support Australian authors, I may look for more of hers.
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 6, 2023 21:23:09 GMT -5
1. Hugh Raffles, Insectopedia
I really really loved this book. It's by the same person who wrote the book that had all the Scottish geology that I read last year, and follows the same structure of a number of essays around the same general topic. Which this time was all about insects.
There were two chapters that I would warn people about: one on the Nazis and how they used insect terminology to dehumanize their victims. That was very hard to read. There's also one on these pr0n videos for people who fantasize being crushed? That one was just bizarre and would possibly not be to everyone's taste. But the rest of it was delightful, especially the ones about Japan.
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Post by sophie on Jan 8, 2023 1:11:05 GMT -5
We Measure the Earth With Our Bodies by Tsering Yangzom Lama. A novel about the exodus of refugees from Tibet when the Chinese invaded. A very well written first novel, it is full of loss, dreams, family, and connection. It is told through the voices of 4 people over the course of 50 years. It is also a meditation on colonization, displacement, and connections. Recommended.
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 8, 2023 7:57:48 GMT -5
2. Dorothy Sayers, Strong Poison
I realized around page 3 that I'd already read this (and looked it up - yep, 2019), but her books are so entertaining that I decided to read it anyway. One of the Lord Peter Wimsey mystery novels.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jan 8, 2023 17:21:22 GMT -5
Love Dorothy Sayers. I read all of hers years ago.
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 9, 2023 12:19:34 GMT -5
3) Jeff Vandermeer, The Strange Bird
A novella, really. This lives in the same world as his novel "Borne" from a couple years ago - kind of a postapocalyptic hellscape plus animals that have been experimented on or changed in strange ways. In this novel a bird has been given some human memories and the capacity to camouflage its feathers. It's a tough read in parts because of what happens to the bird on the way through the story, but beautiful in parts.
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Post by riverhorse on Jan 9, 2023 13:52:16 GMT -5
I'm reading a biography of Elizabeth Macarthur by Michelle Scott Tucker called "A Life At The Edge of The World". She arrived in the colony of New South Wales in 1790 and together with her husband John played a hugely important role in the development of agriculture in Australia and in particular, the breeding of what today is the famous Australian wool sheep, the merino.
I went to school very close to some of the Macarthurs' farms and the colonial style houses are museums today.
The book is well written and interesting, especially from the point of view of Elizabeth being a remarkably strong and capable woman, during her husband's long absences back in England and his eventual descent into serious mental health incapacity.
Once I've finished hoovering up all the facts, I have already downloaded a historical novel about Elizabeth by acclaimed Aussie author Kate Grenville.
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Post by lillielangtry on Jan 9, 2023 14:41:42 GMT -5
#2 Mercedes Rosende, Crocodile Tears (translated from the Spanish by Tim Gutteridge) Uruguayan crime fiction, it was a bit grittier than I was expecting, but pretty good.
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Post by scrubb on Jan 10, 2023 12:09:00 GMT -5
The Red Power Murders, by Thomas King. He's a Canadian writer, normally a sort of literary humour writer, but he wrote the first couple books of a mystery series with Thumps Dreadfulwater as his detective, back about 20 years ago. They've been reissued more recently. This is the second in the series - I read the first one a few years ago.
The writing is good, the characters are good, but the mystery in this one wasn't as compelling as it could have been. I think he wrote another one in the series a few years ago and I'll read it if I come across it.
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Post by lillielangtry on Jan 10, 2023 14:43:51 GMT -5
Thumps Dreadfulwater is an amazing name!
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Post by scrubb on Jan 10, 2023 21:22:30 GMT -5
Anxious People, by Fredrik Backman. The second of his that I've read (after A Man Called Ove). Both charming and life affirming. Enjoyable, quick reads.
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Post by scrubb on Jan 10, 2023 21:45:38 GMT -5
Thumps Dreadfulwater is an amazing name! Agreed! I just found out that when the author first published the books he used the nom de plume Hartley Goodwater. My old workplace had a lot of great names. One of my favourite was Hector Besskkaystare, but more traditional sounding First Nations names included Moosehunter, Whitedeer, and - my favourite - Ghostkeeper.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jan 11, 2023 2:25:23 GMT -5
3. A Song of Comfortable Cairs, Alexander McCall Smith. Most recent Mma Ramotswe story. I realised how important comfortable chairs are for traditionally built people when I visited a friend today. She is tiny, and lives in a tiny apartment with compact furniture. Her chairs wouldn’t work for me for extended periods of time!
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Post by lillielangtry on Jan 11, 2023 3:50:55 GMT -5
#3 Douglas Stuart, Shuggie Bain (Booker Prizewinner 2020) This is our book club book this month, so I'm not going to update Goodreads til after the meeting. Phew. Well, I was reluctant to read this because I thought it would be depressing, and honestly in many ways I was right. I don't think I've been so upset by a book since A Little Life, and in some ways this is worse because it's based on the author's real life story whereas ALL was not. Briefly, it's the story of Shuggie, growing up in poverty-stricken, high-unemployment Glasgow of the 1980s with an alcoholic mother and a sometimes manipulative, philandering or just absent father. It's extremely well written and draws you right in, I had to finish it fast because I haven't been thinking about much else for the past few days. The wasted life of poor, houseproud Agnes and the devastation she passed on to her children and how they all, eventually, got out but not unscathed. I was grabbed by the details because I, too, was growing up in the 80s but in a comfortable middle class home in rural Yorkshire, and I occasionally remember my father, who for a while had a dental practice in a poorer area of Sheffield, talk about kids who had to have all their teeth removed, and here they are. At the same time it's striking how the book is just Glasgow, the characters never leave, not even as far as Edinburgh - unless they're getting out completely, never to return. There are some chinks of light at the end of the book and also some funny moments. If you're into gritty realism this is an exceptional example and I can see why it won the Booker.
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 11, 2023 6:49:42 GMT -5
Thank you lillie! I've had that book on my tbr list ever since it got longlisted for the Booker, but every time I think I'll look for a copy I put it off, worried that it's going to be another depressing A Little Life situation. It does sound really good.
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