This Week I are mostly reading (contd)

Censorsh!t

Been getting through Crime and Punishment for the last 2 months, which is a looong time for me. Granted, a month of that was spent volunteering in South Africa, so I guess I didn't get much read then.

Anyway, I do like it quite a lot when I get into it - he had a way of describing emotions!

Next on the list is The Dark Tower # 4: Wizard and Glass by Stephen King

syngindub

Just started Fatherland by Robert Harris
Heard a few good things about it, aiming to get through a book every week

Busi_Girl08

Reading The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan. Not bad so far. Very true to life. I like the multi-narrative style of writing. Gives you a number of different perspectives. There's some good humour in some parts as well.

Next on the list is Doctor Sleep by Stephen King. Have heard mixed reviews, looking forward to giving it a go.

Wyldwood

Just finished The One Hundred Year Old Man and I'm not quite sure how I feel about it. It started off well and the present day story was an enjoyable bit of nonsense but the parallel description of Allan's past life, as a problem solver for the world's political leaders, was overly long and became quite tedious. It would have worked well as a novelette with the historical bits cut out.

Would probably make a good mindless read for a long journey.

eire4

Finished a re read of John Davies A History of Wales over the holidays.

AnnyHallsal

MARTYRYAN wrote: »

You should read "Junkie", if you haven't already. I

On my list and on my shelf!

Still loving Revolution in the Head, great insights into the period and MacDonald was a wonderful writer.

Aenaes

I finished The Girl Who Played With Fire and I think that will be where my interaction with Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy ends. It's not the worst book I've read by any means but it just seemed to fall a little flat on it's face.

Currently just over half-way through Soldier No More by Anthony Price. It's a spy thriller in the middle of a series which I didn't realise when I picked it up. Intelligently written and set just after the Suez Crisis, a period that usually doesn't have much significance in most stories.

Saorenza

I haven't posted in a few weeks so I hope I remember all I have read since!

I am about half-way through The Plantagenets by Dan Jones. I put aside for a while over Christmas, when the kings began to blend into one. I am still enjoying it but I think maybe someone who knows more about the history of the 13th century might find it too basic.

I read The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibín. It was a Christmas present. I loved it. In one way I wished it was longer, but I think it was the perfect length for the narrative really.

I bought the first in the Department Q series on a whim. They are by Jussi Adler-Olsen, the first one is Mercy and I had avoided it because of the hype. It was a fast read, well-paced and though I guessed the why, I enjoyed it. I'll probably read the next in the series.

I also read Farthing by Jo Walton, which I have wanted to read for ages, since I like alt-history stuff and I loved her Tooth and Claw (Victorian dragons). Farthing is the first in a trilogy and mixes a country house murder with an alt-history setting in which Britain made peace with Hitler in 1941 and stayed out of the European war. I really enjoyed this nd will definitely read the next in the series.

I also read What Matters in Jane Austen: Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved by John Mullen. I enjoyed this a lot, much more than the Daniel Pool book (What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist--the Facts of Daily Life in 19th-Century England) I was reading before Christmas and didn't finish.

I also read two stories from Legends II ed by Robert Silverberg, a collection of fantasy novellas and some stories in Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman. And I started Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier - was not really impressed. It is narrated by different narrators but none of them have believable voices. Shame because it has an interesting setting.

I have really enjoyed my Christmas reading. I am getting lots of college related reading lists now though, back to reality.

Slattsy

syngindub wrote: »

Just started Fatherland by Robert Harris
Heard a few good things about it, aiming to get through a book every week

This disappointed me tbh after all the good reviews i'd heard.

biZrb

Finished The Thing About December, brilliant read. There was an interview with Donal Ryan on the radio this evening, he mentioned his other book got rejected by 47 publishers :eek:

Currently reading The Railway Man by Eric Lomax.

SarahBM

Wyldwood wrote: »

Just finished The One Hundred Year Old Man and I'm not quite sure how I feel about it. It started off well and the present day story was an enjoyable bit of nonsense but the parallel description of Allan's past life, as a problem solver for the world's political leaders, was overly long and became quite tedious. It would have worked well as a novelette with the historical bits cut out.

Would probably make a good mindless read for a long journey.

I have to say I disagree with you about this book. I didnt find the stories from Allan's past tedious, I found them fascinating and compelling. I wanted this book to be longer, I just wanted to keep reading because I was enjoying it so much.
I guess everyone has different opinions though

I have to say I am finding it hard to get into No Country for Old Men (that sounds more like I need a visa), a lot is happening but I find the writing a bit disjointed and hard to follow at times. This may sound silly but I am finding the conversations hard to follow because there are no quotation marks when a person is speaking. Maybe when I sit down to read proper at the wknd I'll get in to it.

useurename

Just finished The Rocky Road by Eamon Dunphy. It was ok.

Read Cannery Row by Steinbeck over xmas.It's my third time reading it. Love this book so much.

Currently reading World War 2 by Anthony Beevor. It's a big book but it is fascinating and mindblowing. It's only seventy years ago. It's horrific but i am enthralled by it.Won't be finished for a good while though.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

useurename wrote: »

Read Cannery Row by Steinbeck over xmas.It's my third time reading it. Love this book so much.

Have you read Sweet Thursday? It's somewhat of a sequel to Cannery Row.

useurename

Yeah i sure have.It was a very good book.Much longer.But i prefer Cannery Row.

Monkeybonkers

Forgot that I'd read Cannery Row this year and had to go and edit my list in my log. Thanks for reminding me.
I've just finished Uncle Tom's Cabin and now I'm starting The Picture of Dorian Gray by Wilde

Aenaes

I started The Great Gatsby last night. Only read one chapter but I'm looking forward to it.

kirk buttercup

Aenaes wrote: »

I started The Great Gatsby last night. Only read one chapter but I'm looking forward to it.

Read it last year, had never seen the movies or didn't really know anything about it and loved it. would not be the type of book I would usually read but really good.

Callan57

Aenaes wrote: »

I started The Great Gatsby last night. Only read one chapter but I'm looking forward to it.

Watched the new version (with DiCaprio) - my expectations were low because I'm no fan of Leonardo & suffice it to say it met my expectaions.
I love the book & Robert Redford remains my Gatsby

Busi_Girl08

Just started the Body Thief by Ann Rice (4th installment of the Lestat series. Not bad so far, I really like her style of language.

Birneybau

Finished "Stoner" by John Williams, a lost classic, loved it.

Now reading "The Circle" by Dave Eggers and it is amazing.

Callan57

Finished A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - really, really loved it but didn't want it to end.

Now it's on to The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Tom Joad

Callan57 wrote: »

Now it's on to The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

You're in for a real treat - absolutely loving this at the minute - I thought I loved The Secret History but loving this even more.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

^ I bought that yesterday. It's as heavy as a phone book!

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

Finished reading Serena by Ron Rash last night.

Pemberton owns a lumber company in depression era Carolina. He goes off to Boston for a few months and returns with new wife Serena in tow. She's ambitious and ruthless and not looking to share with their partners so they set out to take over the entire valley themselves. Very Lady MacBeth-ish.

It's a funny one. It's a very slow burn for a while and then when you get an idea of where things are headed you're told things have already happened but "off screen", so to speak. It works quite well though because the things that are happening are mainly

murders

and there's so many of them you don't need to read about them all in great detail. Plus, it adds a little bit more suspense because you think someone is still an active player and might come out on top only to discover you're very wrong.

On to The Book Thief next.

ankles

Finally finished War and Peace. Glad I read it, the military, political and social history of Russia angles all interested me, engaging characters. That said, a big commitment. Then flew through The Harvest, Fergusons new autobiography (Christmas present) and am now reading Richard Ford's Canada, which is good so far. I have made myself promise not to do any more 1,000 page books for a while after three in last few years (Infinite Jest, Clive James's Cultural Amnesia and W&P). I just don't have the time to get through them!

loveacca

Working through Game of Thrones. Great way to spend Christmas

Monkeybonkers

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressel. Just like parts of Uncle Tom's Cabin it shows human nature at its worst. I promise to read something lighter after I'm finished this. January is depressing enough as it is.

Saorenza

Finished The Plantagenets by Dan Jones.

Also read Family Secrets: Living With Shame From The Victorians to the Present Day by Deborah Cohen. I read this quite fast, really enjoyed it.

I also started Capital by John Lanchester but put it down, not that I was not liking it but it was a bit near the bone for me at the moment.

Also picking through Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman.

Don't really know what to read next. Feel I should take a break from non-fiction but not sure what fiction to read.

Started Brooklyn by Colm Toibin - great so far. Obviously picked it up somewhere secondhand, found it on one of the bookshelves last night.

Birneybau

Saorenza wrote: »

I also started Capital by John Lanchester but put it down, not that I was not liking it but it was a bit near the bone for me at the moment.

Enjoyed "Capital" myself.

Finished "The Circle" by Dave Eggers last night, felt it lost a bit of pace towards the end.

Started reading "The Naming of The Dead" by Ian Rankin last night, a Rebus book, 16th of (as of this moment) 19.

Saorenza

Lanchester's Family Romance is one of my favourite books. My mother died from a brain tumour earlier this year and I thought I could handle reading about a character in the same situation but maybe I can't.

I am looking forward to the latest Rebus book, didn't like the ones w/o him at all.

Birneybau

Saorenza wrote: »

Lanchester's Family Romance is one of my favourite books. My mother died from a brain tumour earlier this year and I thought I could handle reading about a character in the same situation but maybe I can't.

I am looking forward to the latest Rebus book, didn't like the ones w/o him at all.

I'm sorry to hear it. Thanks for the Rebus spoiler

Aenaes

So The Great Gatsby is another one I can cross off my list. I liked it but would choose Tender Is The Night if it came to a choice.

Gatsby as a character was fascinating at the start,

the whispered rumours about him and his wealth, his flair and the company he kept all led you to believe this is some fabled Don Quixote, a Count of Monte Cristo, perhaps a shade darker like Billy the Kid or a John Dillinger but towards the end he's seen as a fake. He doesn't say much, his origins are common, he was a soldier (nothing special there) and his shady business is never fully revealed but seems to nothing more sinister than some stolen/counterfeit bonds.

I was going to say I felt sorry for Jay Gatsby but I realised I felt bad for him and at the end I just felt for him. A man who falls in love with a woman, thinks himself undeserving of her, heads off to war (one wonders was his bravery and honours for her benefit?) comes back and is determined to claim his fortune even by illegal means just so he can't be considered her inferior and safely claim her hand in marriage. He loves her for years even as she weds another, he buys the house across the water from hers so he can see her lights at night, he opens his home to strangers night after night as he hosts lavish parties hoping they or his distinguished "guests" will impress her and as she never turns up resorts to beseeching her friends to re-introduce them. He covers up her role in the hit-and-run collision only to be killed as a consequence of her actions.

He fooled himself into some fairytale, where Daisy never loved her husband even requiring her say it aloud for him to hear with his own already deceived ears. She is forced to recant her admission and declare that she does indeed, at least once, loved Tom. The readers already know or can guess at this since she is so readily available to ingore/forgive his extra-marital affairs.

I think there's something in Gatsby that we like to think is in all of us, at least in small doses. His romanticism, his passionate almost obsessive love for Daisy, his ability to stay aloof and be talked about are qualities of an intriguing person.

So yeah, it was enjoyable. A nice little "love story" that is short enough to re-visit in a few years perhaps and I generally never re-read books.

I started Leningrad: State of Siege by Michael Jones last night. It's looking at the siege of Leningrad during World War Two but not just from the military aspect. A specialist in battle psychology and the vital role of morale in desperate circumstances, Michael Jones seems to want to tell the human and also truths that were suppressed by the Soviets for so long such as the looting, criminal gangs and cannibalism that ran through the city.

Huzzah!

The New York Trilogy - Paul Auster. It was recommended to me by a friend. I started it last night, and it's a bit different to what I'd usually read, but not in a bad way

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

The Book Thief

Started this earlier in the week. It's okay so far but it's not really gripping me. I don't find myself wanting to pick it up during the day or go to bed early to read more of it. Only about a quarter of the way in though, if even.

paddyh117

Read Grapes of Wrath over Christmas - good book, was expecting more & preferred East of Eden

Then flew through (no pun intended!) Bill Bryson's 1927 - easy to read - enjoyable

Have started The Goldfinch in the last few days - will take a while this one, but loving it so far

Gamayun

I haven't posted here in a while. Recent reads:

Unnatural Creatures by Various Authors (Stories selected by Neil Gaiman)
A collection of similarly themed short stories involving supernatural creatures. There's no duds here but a couple of the stories didn't grab me, the ones that did were great though.

The Joy of x: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity by Steven Strogatz
Compiled from a series of columns written by the author, each chapter is a short story or description of a different branch of maths. Given the short length of each chapter these are really only introductions to the topics. A maths aficionado would probably find this far too slight, and a complete novice may find a lot of the items baffling but for someone with a basic grasp of maths and a keen interest then it's quite good. I would still recommend Alex's Adventures in Numberland as a popular maths book ahead of it though, even though Joy of x covers more topics, Alex's... is just more engaging.

The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy With Autism by Naoki Higashida
The Author David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas, Ghostwritten) and his wife K.A. Yoshida have son with autism, they found this book helped them to understand, and feel, what was going on in their child's mind. They started to translate parts for friends who also had children on the autistic spectrum and then decided to translate the entire book so that it might help others as it has them.
Naoki Higashida used an alphabet grid to answer common questions posed to him such as “Why do people with autism talk so loudly and weirdly?” and “Why don't you make eye contact when you're talking?”, the book also contains some short stories written by Naoki.
Mitchell has been criticized for embellishing the translation, he says himself that he "provided the stylistic icing on the cake", even with this in mind I still found the book an interesting insight into how someone with autism perceives the world.

I'm one-third the way into Harvest by Jim Crace. So far I'm enjoying it, I love the setting, an anonymous agrarian society.

Monkeybonkers

Just finished The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists which pretty much perfectly describes what our 'betters' are doing to us at the moment in this country.
Next up is The Man Who Knew Too Much by GK Chesterton while also taking large, knowledge-filled bites out of a years worth of Focus magazine, the excellent BBC Science and Technology magazine.

Aenaes

I finished Michael Jones' Leningrad: State of Siege and really glad I read it. I knew the general story of the siege of Leningrad during WW2 but this book went into specifics with details and quotes from important people on the Russian and German sides.

It's similiar to Anthony Beevor's Stalingrad by not only giving general outlines but detailed accounts of the German offensive, Russian defence and finally the Russian break-through then backed up by personal accounts from soldiers and civilians in and around the city. Harrowing accounts of how the population not only had to survive the German blockade, bombing and shelling but also their own authorities sheer incompetence, indifference or profiteering by hoarding food.

Next to read is Charlotte Brontë's The Professor. Apparently it's her first novel but was only published after her death. It will be my first attempt at any Brontë work.

Tom Joad

Finished Watership Down which was good and also just finished Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.

I know a few people following this thread are reading Goldfinch so won't give too much away. But quite simply put it is one of the best books I've ever read. It's an amazing story and really well told. I've deliberately taken my time to read it and at nearly 800 pages it's a long book as I found myself reading it for the sheer pleasure of reading maybe twenty pages at a time and then thinking about what was written. The ending is really strong too. A real pleasure of a reading experience.

Without going too over the top about it, this is as close to the definitive american novel as I've read - that's including Steinbeck too by the way.

Starting on Vanity Fair next for something completely different.

Swiper the fox

Tom Joad wrote: »

Finished Watership Down which was good and also just finished Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.

I know a few people following this thread are reading Goldfinch so won't give too much away. But quite simply put it is one of the best books I've ever read. It's an amazing story and really well told. I've deliberately taken my time to read it and at nearly 800 pages it's a long book as I found myself reading it for the sheer pleasure of reading maybe twenty pages at a time and then thinking about what was written. The ending is really strong too. A real pleasure of a reading experience.

Without going too over the top about it, this is as close to the definitive american novel as I've read - that's including Steinbeck too by the way.

Starting on Vanity Fair next for something completely different.

Bloody hell, a review like that will stick in my head anyway, I'll almost certainly end up buying the book on the strength of it. On the flip side the last two books I read on the strength of fantastic reviews from here were both very disappointing(Revolutionary road and the 100 year old man who went out the window blah, blah, blah)

AnnyHallsal

I'm enjoying two books at the moment. Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch. And the totally magical Bestiary, The Book of Barely Imagined Beings :eek:

IvyTheTerrible

I finished "A Long Road to Freedom", Nelson Mandela's autobiography. Really excellent read, I learned so much about how his politics developed. A must-read.

Now I'm about a third of the way through "Dominion" by CS Samson, it's great so far.

Call Me Jimmy

AnnyHallsal wrote: »

I'm enjoying two books at the moment. Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch. And the totally magical Bestiary, The Book of Barely Imagined Beings :eek:

I like the title, a good description of humans, but what could I expect from it? Can you give a bit more info, opinion?

emeraldstar

Recently finished Jeremy Paxman's The English: A Portrait of a People.

Now on to Lady's Chatterley's Lover. Just over a third of the way through this one and really enjoying it so far.

Wyldwood

Finished Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and really enjoyed it. An insight into the lives of a family trying to survive in the tenements of Brooklyn in the early 20th century and their determination not to let it define them.

Now reading Stoner by John Williams. Almost half way through and it's a very good read although Stoner is quite a sad, lonely character.

SarahBM

Just finished No Country for Old Men. Can't say I liked it. Lack of quotation marks is extremely annoying and frustrating.
On to the Contractors. And maybe Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.

Jijsaw

Currently on part 2 of 'A Clockwork Orange' by Anthony Burgess. The slang at the beginning was slightly off-putting but now I'm finding it brilliant

Callan57

Finished The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt ... disappointing, not at all in the same league as The Secret History or The Little Friend. IMO it could have done with being edited to about 500 pages.

Next for me is Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

Finished The Book Thief last night.

It took a while to get into it but once the character of Max arrived I was hooked. The last 60 or so pages broke my heart though It may have been the late hour I was reading or the fact I've been sick for a few days but yeah.... so sad

Huzzah!

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

Finished The Book Thief last night.

It took a while to get into it but once the character of Max arrived I was hooked. The last 60 or so pages broke my heart though It may have been the late hour I was reading or the fact I've been sick for a few days but yeah.... so sad

I loved this book, too, but it certainly is a tearjerker. For that reason, I'm a bit trepidatious about the film release next month.