What Are We Reading, Page 5

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What Are We Reading, Page 5

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1vwinsloe
Nov. 12, 2015, 11:22 am

I thought it was time to turn the page, here and in RL.

I have not been having a good time with my reading lately. I have been very stressed out at work and on the home front for the past 3 weeks or so, and I think it may be affecting my ability to focus. Whatever the cause, I abandoned by Halloween read (a guy book and I had been warned...) but I also had difficulty getting through The Flamethrowers which I was glad that I stuck with in the end, but it was a struggle. Even the audiobook that I was listening to, which I had been really enjoying, started to feel boring and "done." I started reading Trouble and Her Friends, a bound to be dated, mid-nineties cyberpunk novel, and didn't perk up until about 3/4 of the way through when the author started to use familiar place names. I was delighted to learn that the author lives about 25 miles from me, and that she really must have been talking about the places that I knew. Nice surprise.

So now I am finally moving on to Go Set A Watchman which was pressed upon me by a friend. I hope that I can focus on that, and if I have any comments, I will post them to our thread on that book.

2Gelöscht
Bearbeitet: Nov. 12, 2015, 10:38 pm

Finished the Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy (great opening novels, but my engagement started to ebb somewhat as I progressed through the books), and am on Peter Carey's Theft for monthly reads. Carey's short stories are wonderful, but this particular novel seems interminable.

I just got A Proud Taste for Miniver and Scarlet in the mail from Book Mooch. Hadn't remembered it was on my list or why, but it's about Eleanor of Aquitaine.

Also snagged a cheapie on Kindle: Doris Kearns Goodwin's Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream.

So looks to be a Thanksgiving of biography for me. I wonder if Eleanor and LBJ might have had some things in common. Interesting idea.

3Sakerfalcon
Nov. 13, 2015, 4:26 am

I'm currently enjoying Cecilia with the Virago group. I was initially daunted by the prospect of 900+ pages of C18th prose, but it is a delight to read with characters who spring off the page and a satirical view of London high society.

4sweetiegherkin
Nov. 13, 2015, 8:28 am

>1 vwinsloe: Hopefully you get out of your reading rut soon! I've been there ... but usually then all of a sudden you hit on a great book and it's smooth sailing again...

>2 nohrt4me2: Theft was a bit tough in parts, but we can discuss more in the author group.

>3 Sakerfalcon: I haven't read Cecilia but I loved Evelina by Fanny Burney, so I suspect you have a treat of a read on your hands. :)

5sweetiegherkin
Nov. 13, 2015, 8:29 am

Oh, and I just finished There's Nothing in This Book I Meant to Say by Paula Poundstone. A bit dated in some of its references, but it was nice to have a humorous book as a change of pace to some of the darker stuff I've been reading.

6streamsong
Nov. 13, 2015, 8:47 am

>1 vwinsloe: Have you read the GN Nimona? I swore that I would recommend it to the next person that said they were in a reading funk - and you're it! From the pic on your profile page, I think you would like it!

I just finished Voices From Chernobyl by the recent Nobel winner Svetlana Alexievich. Incredibly tough read, but the author really knew how to get out of the way and let the voices speak for themselves. There was so much more going on than the 31 deaths that the USSR acknowledged.

7vwinsloe
Nov. 13, 2015, 12:34 pm

>6 streamsong:. No, I have not. It looks promising! I will put it on my To Be Acquired list. Thank you.

8overlycriticalelisa
Nov. 13, 2015, 8:12 pm

i've been in a bit of a reading rut, too. taking 2-3 times as long to finish everything for the last 2 months. driving me crazy. reading a man-book right now, but if i ever finish it i'll need to read a lady-book for book group in 4 days so i'll post again then.

9sweetiegherkin
Nov. 14, 2015, 1:31 pm

I neglected to mention I'm also doing an audio read of The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. So far it's very good.

10vwinsloe
Bearbeitet: Nov. 15, 2015, 6:16 am

>9 sweetiegherkin:. Be sure to visit our discussion here https://www.librarything.com/topic/168395n on The Goldfinch when you finish.

It was definitely one of the best books that I have read for many, many years.

11Gelöscht
Bearbeitet: Nov. 15, 2015, 1:39 pm

Caught up in "Amends" (no touchstone) by Eve Tushnet, a speculative novel about six addicts tapped for a reality show to chronicle their recovery. First novel for this author. Some very sharp parody, and so far the characters (and their handlers on the show) are nicely drawn. Will be interesting to see how she pulls it all together.

12overlycriticalelisa
Bearbeitet: Nov. 16, 2015, 11:57 pm

started belshazzar's daughter by barbara nadel. it's a mystery that takes place in turkey (outside istanbul, it seems) so that's a fun change of scenery.

(edited to fix touchstone)

13sweetiegherkin
Nov. 17, 2015, 9:20 am

>10 vwinsloe: Will do. I must admit it's been a little slow going for me so far. It's beautifully written and interesting characters but not much of a page turner. Also, I just haven't had a lot of free time for it.

14vwinsloe
Nov. 17, 2015, 11:22 am

>13 sweetiegherkin:. I found Tartt's style to be really dense at first. The comparison to Dickens is not too far off. But instead of being paid by the word, I think that Tartt wanted tight control of her creation. She doesn't want to allow the reader to use too much imagination, and, in the end, I think you will see why it is worth it. The reading should move more quickly once you are fully immersed. That was my experience anyway!

15sweetiegherkin
Nov. 17, 2015, 11:23 pm

>14 vwinsloe: It's very good and I like it, but I've been with it for 2 weeks now and I'm not even in halfway through. I'm listening to the audiobook version from the library and I keep having to renew it because I'm not getting through it quickly enough.

16CurrerBell
Nov. 18, 2015, 8:33 am

Just finished and 3***-reviewed Mary Taylor's The First Duty of Women, an interesting piece of Bronteana. (Taylor was, along with Ellen Nussey, one of CB's two BFFs from boarding-school days.)

17fikustree
Nov. 19, 2015, 2:36 pm

Just finished The Elegance of the Hedgehog and it really didn't do anything for me and I had to slog through. I think I need something action packed next.

18nancyewhite
Nov. 19, 2015, 3:06 pm

I started Rebecca yesterday. I've tried it multiple times and put it down, but this must be the right time. I want to do nothing but read.

19overlycriticalelisa
Nov. 19, 2015, 8:25 pm

started white is for witching yesterday but haven't gotten far yet. very strange beginning but after a few pages it's starting to grab me.

20Gelöscht
Nov. 20, 2015, 10:40 am

Country of Ice Cream Star. Always love me a good dystopian, so I guess Eleanor of Aquitaine and LBJ bios will have to wait until winter break.

21Sakerfalcon
Nov. 23, 2015, 4:55 am

>20 nohrt4me2: Ice Cream Star is on my Tbr mountain. I look forward to seeing what you think of it.

22lemontwist
Nov. 23, 2015, 6:37 am

I flew through Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl yesterday. I think it's one of the best musician memoir I've ever read. I thought it was very honest and raw. The only thing that disappointed me is that she doesn't talk at all about being in Portlandia in it, only about being a member of Sleater-Kinney. Which is fine... but I love both of her projects!

23Gelöscht
Nov. 23, 2015, 12:01 pm

>21 Sakerfalcon: I was a little distracted by the language, which struck me as gimmicky at first. The NYT reviewer said, "At times, this can sound a bit like Jar Jar Binks narrating an audiobook of Cormac McCarthy’s 'The Road.'"

Whole review is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/books/review/the-country-of-ice-cream-star-by-...

However, about 50 pages in, I got interested enough to start leaving the dishes undone to read.

It's a commitment, though, at 580 pages.

But it's winter, and the time for long rambles.

24CurrerBell
Nov. 23, 2015, 7:06 pm

>20 nohrt4me2: >21 Sakerfalcon: I gave "Ice Cream Star" a 4**** review.

25Gelöscht
Bearbeitet: Nov. 28, 2015, 10:51 am

>24 CurrerBell: I'm enjoying "Ice Cream Star," but it seems like a pastiche of elements from other feminist dystopians. Maybe I've just read too many of these things ...

Also surprised Newman, who appears to be white, didn't get criticized for trying to write in a kind of dystopian future black dialect.

26overlycriticalelisa
Nov. 29, 2015, 4:38 pm

finished the excellent white is for witching and am starting saving fish from drowning. white is for witching is a book that i liked so much on reading it, and am going to only like more and more as it sinks in. and as i reread it, as i know i will.

27krazy4katz
Bearbeitet: Nov. 29, 2015, 4:48 pm

Reading The Memory of Love right now. Fabulous writing but very detailed and requires patience to keep the threads straight. I'm not sure I even knew what country the story took place in for quite some time. At ~39% the threads begin to weave together. I will definitely read more of Aminatta Forna's work.

28rebeccanyc
Nov. 29, 2015, 7:41 pm

Finished Magdalena Tulli's Flaw which, like all her other books I've read, is complex, allegorical, poetic, and metafictional. I didn't like it as much as the others, most of which I loved, but that might have been my mood, not the book.

29nancyewhite
Dez. 1, 2015, 4:31 pm

>27 krazy4katz: The Memory of Love was a five star read for me.

I am gobbling Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters. I've read others of hers and liked them. I don't know why it has taken me so long to get to this one. I feel like I'm living in 1890s London.

30vwinsloe
Bearbeitet: Dez. 21, 2015, 8:58 am

I've been absent for a while: I read 5 books in a row by men and then started blasting through a number of short books that have been in the TBR pile for a while. I was somewhat disappointed in Children of Men. I saw the movie years ago and liked it a lot, so I thought that I would enjoy reading the book even more. For some reason that was not the case, even though it has been so long since I saw the film that I barely remember it.

I listened to we were liars and really liked the author's style, but was a bit let down by the big reveal which I found so overly melodramatic that it lost its punch. As usual, I have mixed reactions to YA.

I enjoyed most of Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen which had some laugh out loud moments, but was more serious and personal than other books on grammar that I have read.

I read The Vegetarian: A Novel for early reviewers. It was an interesting little book; not magical realism, but read something like a mash-up of Murakami and Kafka.

I am now listening to Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter. I am not too far along and am trying to avoid reading the recent articles about it to draw my own conclusions.

I am reading The Dazzle of Day, nicknamed by some "Quakers in Space." I love Molly Gloss and am trying to read everything she's written.

So that's my story for the month. I hope that everyone here enjoys the holiday season, and happy reading in the new year!

31Gelöscht
Dez. 21, 2015, 12:08 pm

"Rosemary" is on my wish list. Let us know what you think.

Saw this fascinating piece about Austen's Emma in the New York Times yesterday. I usually see the novel as a cautionary tale against romance, but Emma as a guide for Alzheimer's patient caregivers was fresh and moving: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/20/opinion/jane-austens-guide-to-alzheimers.html

32rockinrhombus
Dez. 22, 2015, 9:41 pm

Reading The True Memoirs of Little K because I am a sucker for well-written historical fiction set in Russia. This fits the bill.

33SChant
Dez. 24, 2015, 8:57 am

Just started The Girl in the Road by Monica Byrne - a Tiptree winner from 2014.

34rebeccanyc
Dez. 26, 2015, 12:29 pm

I finished The Liar's Wife: Four Novellas by Mary Gordon, an author I was reading for the first time.

35vwinsloe
Bearbeitet: Jan. 1, 2016, 6:43 am

>31 nohrt4me2:. I finished Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter, and I recommend it only if you are not looking for a sensational, muckraking book. This was a well balanced, sensitive book that considered the historical context as well as more contemporary attitudes, and came to an unexpected conclusion.

My only regret was that in listening to the book, I did not see the photographs that were included in the paper book. I'll have to look at a library copy to see them at some point.

36Gelöscht
Bearbeitet: Jan. 1, 2016, 1:46 pm

>35 vwinsloe: No, not looking for muckracking, sensational Kennedy stories. I was interested in the publication of this book because I think a new generation of women is discovering the outrage of lobotomy designed to "control" women in the first part of the 20th century--lobotomies were performed three times more often on women than men--and the Kennedy story seems to be well-documented. Thanks for the info!

When I was reading mid-century women's domestic thrillers, I was struck by the preoccupation with "the men in white coats," which indicated a real (and not unwarranted) fear of the psychiatric profession at that time. In a few novels psychiatrists are the antagonists.

37Gelöscht
Jan. 1, 2016, 1:46 pm

Started A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith as my first book of the new year. Forgotten classic from 1945. Really nicely written. Enjoying it!

38krazy4katz
Bearbeitet: Jan. 1, 2016, 5:23 pm

The Child Who Never Grew by Pearl Buck. I love Pearl Buck's writing! This is the first time I have read one of her works of nonfiction. So far very beautiful and understanding of both the joy and the sadness that parents must feel under these circumstances.

39vwinsloe
Jan. 6, 2016, 2:00 pm

I'm starting the new year by reading Burial Rites. This is the third year it has appeared in the top ranks of LT's Top Five Books of the Year, so there must be something to it.

I've just started listening to Yes Please, and I hope that I have better luck with it than I did with Bossypants which I didn't finish.

40Sakerfalcon
Jan. 7, 2016, 4:46 am

I'm reading Just kids and finding it a fascinating read.

41Gelöscht
Jan. 7, 2016, 12:02 pm

I have very mixed feelings about Burial Rites, which provoked high anxiety.

However, it did lead me to The Little Book of Icelanders in the Old Days, which is a collection of mini essays about Iceland written by a real Icelander and is absolutely hilarious.

I have followed Alda's FB page since reading it, and seeing the world through the eyes of a homogenous culture on an isolated island is refreshing and interesting!

Just Kids is on my wish list. I've read excerpts that make it sound great!

42vwinsloe
Jan. 19, 2016, 1:16 pm

I finished Burial Rites which I liked quite a bit. The denouement was unsettling to say the least.

I also finished listening to Yes Please!, although I was close to giving up on several occasions when the author was name dropping about people and discussing celebrities and tv shows with which I was unfamiliar. I'm glad that I stuck with it because the parts about her personal life, growing up and experiencing everyday things, was very good. I love the way she calls the phenomenon of women criticizing the choices of other women "women on women crime."

In between there somewhere, I read the delightful A Natural History of Dragons, and have just started listening to The Twelve Tribes of Hattie.

43overlycriticalelisa
Jan. 19, 2016, 6:54 pm

did i forget to say that i read the icarus girl by my new favorite author, helen oyeyemi. this woman is brilliant. and wrote this book when she was finishing high school (or the british equivalent).

44Soupdragon
Jan. 20, 2016, 2:54 am

>43 overlycriticalelisa: I loved The Icarus Girl too and couldn't get over how young Oyeyemi was when she wrote it.

45CurrerBell
Jan. 21, 2016, 12:11 am

I just finished The Mists of Avalon for the ROOT 2016 group as well as a doorstoppers group. For some reason I'd never gotten around to it in years gone by. 4½****

Also, for ROOT 2016 I'm currently reading The Language of the Goddess by Marija Gimbutas and Nicola Griffith's Hild. About fifty pages into Gimbutas but just this minute starting Hild.

46Sakerfalcon
Jan. 21, 2016, 4:57 am

I've been reading Into the whirlwind, Evgenia Ginzburg's memoir of her ordeal as a political "criminal" in Stalin's Russia. Her journey from initial arrest, through various prisons and "trials", to the labour camps of the far East is harrowing but punctuated with the bright points of human kindness and camaraderie. It's a gripping read, and I hope I can get hold of the second part soon.

>45 CurrerBell: I really need to move Hild up my tbr pile. I've been wanting to read it for ages.

47sturlington
Jan. 21, 2016, 9:15 am

Just finished the wonderful novel Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende.

48Gelöscht
Jan. 21, 2016, 10:45 am

Anybody have an author whose voice you "need" to "hear" occasionally? I'm in a mood to read a whole bunch of Sarah Vowell. I like her quirky style, and have a feel for her voice from NPR.

49vwinsloe
Feb. 2, 2016, 7:48 am

I've been trying to read as many of the first 20-30 LT Top Books of 2015 (and 2014 and 2014) as I own.

I read Euphoria and didn't like it as much as I had hoped, and right now I am working on A Spool of Blue Thread.

50krazy4katz
Feb. 9, 2016, 8:56 pm

Just started Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver. It's beautifully written so far. I didn't really care for The Bean Trees that much, but I have loved everything else of hers that I have read.

51Gelöscht
Bearbeitet: Feb. 10, 2016, 12:14 pm

Re-reading Mansfield Park; try to do two Austens a year plus one Eliot. Have not read Middlemarch in quite a long time, so maybe that's next. Have been avoiding it because of all the recent hype about My Life in Middlemarch.

Edited: Touchstones going r-e-a-l slow so they don't show up.

52CurrerBell
Feb. 10, 2016, 9:28 pm

>51 nohrt4me2: There's a problem with both search and touchstones. https://www.librarything.com/topic/218985. Staff's working on it.

53Citizenjoyce
Bearbeitet: Feb. 24, 2016, 6:04 pm

Don't know why I abandoned this group, but I'm back. I've been reading lots of the best books of 2015, garnered from many lists:
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=13108091011

The Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/12/the-best-book-i-read-in....

Autostraddle: http://www.autostraddle.com/215-of-the-best-longreads-of-2015-all-written-by-wom....

Best science fiction/fantasy:
Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/sci-fi-fantasy/25-of-the-best-sff-books-of-20....
The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/books/science-fiction
Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/the-best-science-fiction-and-...

Book riot: http://bookriot.com/2015/12/14/13-of-the-best-books-of-2015-you-might-have-misse....

Buzzfeed Best Fiction 2015: http://www.buzzfeed.com/isaacfitzgerald/books-we-loved-in-2015#.hykgXaMXro
Buzzfeed Best Literary Debuts 2015: http://www.buzzfeed.com/jarrylee/best-literary-debuts-of-2015#.erVo7be7vK
Buzzfeed Most Exciting Books 2015: http://www.buzzfeed.com/jarrylee/new-year-new-reads#.ciD8XnRXbG
Buzzfeed Best YA Books 2015: http://www.buzzfeed.com/ariellecalderon/the-best-ya-books-of-2015#.rdqWNxzN53

Cultured Vultures: http://culturedvultures.com/top-10-books-of-2015/

Entropy Magazine: Best of 2015: Non-Fiction Books: http://entropymag.org/best-of-2015-non-fiction-books/

The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/books/science-fiction

Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/prize-winning-books-2015_565f6bdde4b079b2818....

Librarything http://blog.librarything.com/main/2015/12/top-five-books-of-2015/

NPR: http://www.npr.org/2015/12/07/458461851/maureen-corrigans-best-books-of-2015-sho....
NPR Book Concierge: http://apps.npr.org/best-books-2015/#/_

New YorkTimes:http: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/02/books/review/best-books-of-2015.ht....
NY Times, women: Incredible news: 7 of The New York Times' top 10 books of 2015 are by women: http://www.upworthy.com/incredible-news-7-of-the-new-york-times-top-10-books-of-....

New York Times notable books: 100 Notable Books of 2015: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/06/books/review/100-notable-books-of-2015.html?_r....

Overdrive: OverDrive's Best Books of 2015: https://www.overdrive.com/collections/21495/overdrives-best-books-of-2015

public-radio-market: http://public-radio-market.tumblr.com/post/134497273841/best-books-of-the-year-t....

Publishers Weekly: Best Books of 2015: http://best-books.publishersweekly.com/pw/best-books/2015

Science Friday: http://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/the-best-science-books-of-2015/

Slate: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2015/12/best_books_2015_slate_critic_la....

Time: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/02/books/review/best-books-of-2015.ht....

Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/entertainment/best-books-of-2015/

Washington Post Notable Fiction: https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/the-best-fiction-books-of-201...

xoJane: http://www.xojane.com/entertainment/editors-choice-best-books-2015

Best of 2015: Presses, Magazines, Publishers & Journals: http://entropymag.org/best-of-2015-presses-magazines-publishers-journals/
Edit | More

Let's see if I can remember the ones I liked (or didn't):
Barbara the Slut and Other People - Lauren Holmes a terrible title for a really good book of short stories
The Life and Death of Sophie Stark by Anna North - bizarre and a cautionary tale for anyone who might have a close relationship with someone who uses her friends in her art.
All the Bright Places - Jennifer Niven about mental illness, bullying and suicide. Seems accurate and frustrating
Carry On - Rainbow Rowell - loved it, though I don't know what J. K. Rowling thinks
The Drafter - Kim Harrison - feminist science fiction with a strong woman character
In a dark, dark wood by Ruth Ware - creepy and twisty, couldn't put it down
What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn - again twisty, but I thought the first part of the book detracted from its overall power
Get in Trouble: Stories by Kelly Link - some of these short stories are great, some not so successful
Echo by Pam Muñoz Ryan - magical realism involving WWII, harmonicas and children
Uprooted by Naomi Novik - good fantasy about magic with great strong women characters, but I have no interest in endless accounts of battles no matter who is fighting for what
Dumplin' by Julie Murphy - I almost stopped after the first few pages - not only YA with all the romance that involves, but Southern, as in Texas, YA. Yikes, big hair, basketball and beauty pageants. But she makes it work.
Negroland: A Memoir by Margo Jefferson the memoir of a black feminist, member of the "Talented Tenth" who is raised to represent her race at all times. Very well done.
and some books not on any best of list:

Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology by Leah Remini - I can't help reading first person accounts of Scientology. Remini doesn't let the characterization of herself as a "difficult" (to say the least) person stop her from revealing some of the inner workings of the religion.
The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson - a good look at the relationship between a gay woman and a trans man.
Home Front by Kristin Hannah - this seems to have been a difficult book to write because it's about a woman who loves her status as a soldier. Hannah fairly covers both sides, those who are against war and those who think it honorable to fight for their country.
Me Before You by Jojo Moyes - some would say schmaltzy, but I liked it. I don't know what I'll think about the movie.
Mrs. Roosevelt's Confidante by Susan Elia MacNeal - to me the best book in the series but maybe just because I'm American. This one is more socially "preachy" than the others, very anti racist and anti imperialist.
Mademoiselle Chanel: A Novel by C. W. Gortner - this guy really loves Coco Chanel, but trying to explain away her Nazi sympathy doesn't work. Sounds like she was all for Chanel and no one else.

Well, enough for now. I'll try to be more current on my postings so I don't have to write a book once I get here.
Oh, two more. I started SPQR and stopped after 1/4 of the book. I found it just too tedious to go on. I like a broader picture, and Mary Beard was just too detailed to keep me interested. However, now I'm reading The Witches: Salem, 1692 by Stacy Schiff an account of the Salem witch trials and find the history fascinating. Those Puritans were mighty prickly folk.

54krazy4katz
Feb. 24, 2016, 9:50 pm

Wow!! Welcome back!

Finished Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver. Just wonderful. She is so lyrical yet always seems to insert something biological or ecological into stories of human relations. I just don't know how she does it, but I am going over to her page right now to put her on my favorites list.

55CurrerBell
Feb. 24, 2016, 10:03 pm

Primarily, I'm ROOTing this year and just finished Voodoo Dreams by Jewell Parker Rhodes. I'm also reading another ROOT, The Language of the Goddess by Marija Gimbutas, which also fits in with the first-quarter 2016 Prehistory period for Reading Through Time.

56Gelöscht
Feb. 24, 2016, 10:41 pm

Am on to The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood. The NYT review said that the premise was muddled, but I didn't think so.

Basically middle class people are losing economic stability and become so hard up for jobs and a decent place to live that some bright entrepreneurs offer them a chance to move to a company town where they are paid in scrip. They live one month in nice little homes and have 100 percent employment; at the end of a month they trade places with their "alternates" and spend 30 days in the local prison as generally well-treated slave laborers. (I don't think that's giving away too much.)

There are prisons within prisons within prisons, some literal, some metaphorical.

It makes good reading this election year.

Just finished a re-read of Mansfield Park before taking on Atwood's novel. The theme of imprisonment from Atwood made that aspect of the Austen pop out for me in a new way.

Also recommend The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff. Parallel stories of one of Brigham Young's wives and a wife in a modern day polygamous sect. Nicely and sensitively written. More imprisonment.

57CurrerBell
Feb. 24, 2016, 11:18 pm

>56 nohrt4me2: I read at least some of The Heart Goes Last a couple years ago or more as four Kindle Shorts in some series called "Positron." I guess Atwood expanded these shorts into a full-length novel, and the "Positron" shorts aren't available on Amazon any more.

58Sakerfalcon
Feb. 25, 2016, 5:04 am

>53 Citizenjoyce: I'm looking forward to exploring those links you posted!

I'm currently reading Ursula Le Guin's collection of essays, Dancing at the edge of the world.

59sturlington
Feb. 25, 2016, 7:11 am

I am currently reading and enjoying Margaret Atwood's Negotiating with the Dead, a series of lectures on writing. She writes about writing from an angle I haven't seen before, feels like it's opening new areas of my brain.

60overlycriticalelisa
Feb. 25, 2016, 11:11 am

>59 sturlington: can you say a little more about this?

61sturlington
Feb. 25, 2016, 11:21 am

>60 overlycriticalelisa: I'm only 2 chapters in. The second chapter was extremely interesting. Atwood talks about the writer as a double -- there is the person who does the writing and the person who does the living, and they may be in conflict with one another. She talks about how the text is not static but is something that changes in the manner of the reading, that each reader brings fresh meaning to the text. There's a lot to unpack. I'll post a review when I'm finished.

62vwinsloe
Bearbeitet: Feb. 25, 2016, 2:06 pm

>53 Citizenjoyce:. Thank you! I've added a number of books to my wish list based on those best of 2015 lists.

63Citizenjoyce
Feb. 25, 2016, 3:49 pm

I'm a sucker for end of year best lists. That keep me going for months.

64Gelöscht
Feb. 25, 2016, 5:14 pm

>57 CurrerBell: I read the same short "Positron" series. I don't know what her deal was with Kindle, that she would sell these as a serial-in-progress (which petered out)? I felt ripped off after I read them because they were clearly incomplete. Novel is pretty good, though.

>59 sturlington: The Royal Canadian Air Farce comedy troupe once did a sketch in which Margaret Atwood read her essays to insomniacs to put them to sleep. Not trying to bash a great writer; I've read all of Atwood's novels and loved most of them. But while her novels can be wicked, astringent, suprising, and masterful, her prose can sometimes be humorless, overly analytical, and cold.

65overlycriticalelisa
Feb. 25, 2016, 9:03 pm

>61 sturlington: thanks! i'm always interested when someone says that she came at it from an angle they'd never seen before. that, coupled with margaret atwood, really got my attention. =)

66vwinsloe
Bearbeitet: Feb. 29, 2016, 9:55 am

I finished A Spool of Blue Thread and The Twelve Tribes of Hattie both of which were enjoyable but not satisfying reading experiences for me.

I also read the last of Ann Leckie's trilogy, Ancillary Mercy which was a fitting end to a fascinating read. Although military sci-fi is not usually something that attracts me, for those readers here with similar tastes who may be unfamiliar with the trilogy, it is worth reading to take part in Leckie's gender experiment. The protagonist of the Ancillary books is an artificial intelligence who is "gender blind" in a culture that seems to be somewhat androgynous anyway. Carrying out this concept, the book, which is written from the AI's point of view, uses female gender for all of its characters. With one exception, the reader never learns the actual gender of the characters. It is a somewhat mind-bending read in the beginning, until the reader gives up looking for gender cues and just follows the story. A fascinating experience, even for a reader who doesn't believe that gender should matter. It would be unremarkable, I bet, if all of the characters were "he."

China Dolls, Lisa See's most recent book, was interesting, but I think that I enjoy listening to her on audiobook more than reading her. I never fail to learn something though, and this book, about Japanese passing as Chinese during the internment of Japanese during WWII , was no exception.

I'm currently reading The Lowland and enjoying it more than Jumpha Lahiri's previous novel. I love Lahiri's short stories, and The Namesake was a huge letdown for me. Not so The Lowland, at least so far.

Sarah's Key is my current audio book--I borrowed it from the library because the book I have on hold did not come in. It was enormously popular when it came out, and I hope that it was a good choice.

67Citizenjoyce
Bearbeitet: Mrz. 11, 2016, 5:16 pm

It's been a good month so far. I just finished, and reviewed, The Swans of Fifth Avenue by Melanie Benjamin about Truman Capote and his socialite swans headed by Babe Paley. It's a fascinating view of the rich and famous and the snake who lives off them.
I also finished a little novella, The Grownup by Gillian Flynn. The only other thing I've read of hers is Gone Girl, and this is just as good, if you like reading about strong willed cut-throat people. I've always found grifters to be a fascinating subject, as long as I'm not in their sights.
I finished Dearest Friend and was surprised to find Abigail Adams to be such a judgemental pessimist - a feminist who was completely devoted to educating all people, she believed a woman to be as capable and worthy of learning as any man but also thought her place was in the home, the strengthening force behind her man .
I finished a reread of The Girl On the Train for my RL book club and loved its twists and turns just as much as the first time around.
Inside the Kingdom by Carmen Bin Ladin is another book about the rich and powerful, but these trophy wives in Saudi Arabia have only money, no freedom, no intellectual stimulation, no interests at all except acquisition and pleasing their husbands. It's a gentle introduction to Saudi Arabian history.
Right now I'm listening to The Preacher which is my second Camilla Lackberg mystery. I'm not far enough into it to make any judgements.

>66 vwinsloe: We read Sarah's Key for my RL book club. It introduced me to a part of French history I'd had never read before but have encountered several times since. I thought it was very well done.

68Gelöscht
Bearbeitet: Mrz. 13, 2016, 6:18 pm

On to On the Edge of Gone by Corinne Duyvis. The New York Times review promised this novel would be different. But it LIED! All that's different is that the heroine is autistic.

I think I've been patient enough with the YA hijacking of my favorite genre. Too much swashbuckling and not enough commentary. I'm going to have to start vetting these books more carefully.

While Margaret Atwood's latest, The Heart Goes Last, doesn't quite measure up to The Year of the Flood, at least the woes of the feckless Charmaine and Stan are aimed at grown-ups.

69overlycriticalelisa
Mrz. 13, 2016, 7:16 pm

just read the house on mango street again and was mostly impressed. i hadn't remembered much from a reading probably 2 decades ago.

70vwinsloe
Bearbeitet: Mrz. 14, 2016, 3:17 pm

>67 Citizenjoyce:. I did enjoy Sarah's Key. The author took a clever approach to an historical event that needed illumination. I started listening to it on audiobook, and then I switched over to reading it since I had the book in my TBR pile. It was not bad listening, but I thought that I was missing something as the story jumped from present to past when I was listening to it.

I am currently reading The Keepers of the House which was loaned to me by a friend. I had never heard of this Pulitzer winner from the mid-60s. I am finding the style to be poetic and rambling-very Southern--but I am enjoying it more than the stars and reviews would have led me to believe.

71Citizenjoyce
Mrz. 17, 2016, 3:02 am

The Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction long list is out:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/danieldalton/baileys-longlist-2016#.rqzxkOBwX

72vwinsloe
Mrz. 17, 2016, 5:45 am

>71 Citizenjoyce:. They all look so good! Thanks!

73Gelöscht
Mrz. 17, 2016, 5:25 pm

Reading Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy on recommendation of someone here (I think). Will be interested to see what's actually new here as a study of women and mental health in the first part of the 20th century.

74Citizenjoyce
Bearbeitet: Mrz. 18, 2016, 2:07 am

My daughter and I are going to see Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot on Saturday, so I had to quickly read the book on which it's based, The Taliban Shuffle. This woman loved living in Afghanistan, adrenalin junky to the core. Wow, I can't imagine having the nerve. It's a good read, lots of politics and commentary on what women have to go through in the area. In spite of her love of adventure, it didn't make me want to visit. It also didn't make me see an end in sight to the misery of this feudal country.

75vwinsloe
Mrz. 28, 2016, 9:33 am

I love books about elephants, and Elephant Company is no exception. For all of their size, elephants are such incredibly complex and sensitive animals. Unfortunately, reading about them is as close as I'll ever get to interacting with them.

76overlycriticalelisa
Mrz. 28, 2016, 11:11 am

>75 vwinsloe: you might like a memoir by a local (to me) author called love in the elephant tent; kathleen cremonisi wrote it about her time in the circus and some of the proceeds of the book go to elephant conservation. i only heard her read a small bit from it so can't say how much is about the elephants, but it seemed well written.

(touchstones aren't working for some reason.)

just started a memoir called the year of yes. not the one written a few months ago; this one came out about 10 years ago and is by maria dahvana headley and is about her saying yes to anyone who asks her out for a year. not something i'd normally pick up so we'll see.

77Gelöscht
Bearbeitet: Mrz. 28, 2016, 11:24 am

The Transcriptionist first novel by Amy Rowland. Engaging meditation on life, words, the news. Maybe a little pretentious at times, maybe the voice is a little petulant and immature. But those are minor criticisms.

Now I'm re-reading a bunch of Kurt Vonnegut, who gets better with age. My age, anyway. Reading him is like going to a really good funeral. Funny, sad, cathartic.

EDIT: Touchstones are not working.

78vwinsloe
Mrz. 28, 2016, 12:37 pm

Thanks >76 overlycriticalelisa:. That looks interesting. I'm putting it on my wish list.

79SChant
Mrz. 31, 2016, 6:21 am

Reading Maureen F. McHugh's story collection Mothers & Other Monsters and so far finding it rather underwhelming. The stories seem to just peter out rather than come to a conclusion.

80Gelöscht
Mrz. 31, 2016, 11:35 am

>79 SChant: Dang! I love me a good mother-monster story.

81vwinsloe
Bearbeitet: Apr. 1, 2016, 11:28 am

I just finished "Triangle: A novel" by Katherine Weber, and enjoyed it much more than I anticipated. I knew little or nothing about the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire in NYC in 1911 before reading it. The novel had an interesting take on reported history concerning women. The vast majority of the 146 people who died in the fire were young immigrant women, and although official reports chronicled the terrible working conditions in the sweatshop, the author suggests that sexual harassment and abuse were also prevalent, but taboo to mention.

Now I'm reading The Jump-off Creek which is also wonderful.

82Citizenjoyce
Apr. 3, 2016, 3:32 am

>81 vwinsloe: I'll have to check that out.
The list is out for the 2015 Tiptree Award winners, honor's list and long list:
http://tiptree.org/2016/04/2015-winners-and-honor-list-announced

83vwinsloe
Apr. 4, 2016, 9:22 am

>82 Citizenjoyce:. Thanks. Very happy to see that The Gracekeepers made the longlist. I read it for LT Early Reviewers, and found it to be beautiful, strange and haunting all at once.

I'm being entertained by listening to a children's book: The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in A Ship of Her Own Making which is full of wordplay and whimsical ideas.

On the reading side, I've started Saving Baby: How One Woman's Love for a Racehorse Led to her Redemption and it is better than I anticipated.

84CurrerBell
Apr. 4, 2016, 9:50 am

I just started The Invisible Guardian by Dolores Redondo. Spanish-to-English translation. I'm not generally that big a mystery fan, but in this case the setting is the Basque country and the plot involves elements of Basque mythology and folklore, which is a bit of an interest of mine.

85Gelöscht
Apr. 12, 2016, 9:40 pm

The Sister by Poppy Adams finally came up on Bookmooch. Modern domestic thriller. Really good narrative voice, reminiscent of Shirley Jackson. Great set up and characters. Marred by a precipitous and unsatisfying ending.

Started Longbourn this morning. Very nice descriptions and details of servant's lives. Pride and Prejudice is on my three-year Austen rotation this year, so thought I would read "Longbourn" beforehand to see if it changes the way I look at the original.

86LyzzyBee
Apr. 13, 2016, 3:35 am

I'm reading a Jennifer Chiaverini quilting book at the moment, a nice escape, although actually I've been reading nice books recently, just lots for review with the horrible pressure that involves!

87SChant
Apr. 14, 2016, 3:07 am

My name finally came to the top of the list at the library for Mary Beard's SPQR. It's quite a tome, but she writes in a very accessible style so I'm sure I'll get through it.

88southernbooklady
Apr. 15, 2016, 4:17 pm

>87 SChant: If you read her Confronting the Classics it is an extended version of the chapters on politics there. It is very readable, and weirdly relevant if you happen to be living in the US during an election season.

89Citizenjoyce
Apr. 15, 2016, 6:46 pm

>87 SChant:, >88 southernbooklady: Hm, I wonder if I'd like Confronting the Classics. I gave up on SPQR, it seemed so nitpicking and repetitive that I couldn't maintain any interest.
>85 nohrt4me2: I loved Longbourn. One of my difficulties with Austen is that the servants are so taken for granted it's as if they're not even people. This book is a great view from the other side.

90southernbooklady
Apr. 15, 2016, 7:07 pm

>89 Citizenjoyce: Confronting the Classics is only secondarily about classical literature -- it is primarily about our relationship to classical literature. So it falls under "lit crit" -- if that doesn't totally put you off: What the different traditions in scholarship and interpretations say about how we find relevance in these ancient works, and how we tend to find what we are looking for in ancient texts, so much so that much classical scholarship is as much a mirror of the time it was written as it is a window into an ancient era.

Her chapter on Sappho is fantastic, and her section on humor, and the few surviving "joke" collections, really makes you think.

91Gelöscht
Apr. 15, 2016, 9:10 pm

>89 Citizenjoyce: Longbourn was a perfect balance of housework and romance. I enjoyed it, but I think that "the heart of the suffering servants" has been done before (thinking of Jane Eyre and anything by Dickens, whose casts of thousands included well-formed domestic characters).

I have no problem with Austen focusing on the "upstairs" people, though I'm interested to see if "Longbourn" changes anything for me in Pride and Prejudice, which I started about 10 minutes after finishing "Longbourn" this afternoon.

92Citizenjoyce
Apr. 16, 2016, 3:16 am

>91 nohrt4me2: The slippers. They meant nothing to me the first time I read Pride and Prejudice, but after Longbourn, well, they're not just a passing fancy for everyone.

93SChant
Apr. 16, 2016, 4:37 am

>88 southernbooklady: Sounds interesting, I'll give it a try. So far her comments on politics in SPQR are very resonant, especially with the current "Panama Papers" scandal showing the rich as happy to weight things to their own advantage in modern times too!

94Citizenjoyce
Apr. 16, 2016, 1:20 pm

>88 southernbooklady: Parts of SPQR were so interesting and so pertinant to today's politics that I thought I'd love it; however it was the overall assessments I loved. I felt too much of the book bogged down in what could be considered an archeologist's text book with her analysis of the smallest incidents and the many proofs for them. If only I could develop the ability to scan well I think I would have liked it.

95Gelöscht
Bearbeitet: Apr. 16, 2016, 2:55 pm

>92 Citizenjoyce: Yes, Baker did a great close reading of Pride and Prejudice in order to make her book mirror events in the original. The report of a private being flogged and the shoe rosettes by proxy was very nicely done!

I'm seeing Mr. Bennet in a more sinister light. His archness at Mrs. Bennet's expense seems less innocent, more like passive-aggessive torment. Baker seems to have really scrutinized Mr. B., and I think she did him up beautifully.

I'm also more aware of Lizzie's prejudices and injured pride, and how credulous she is at times. That wonderful scene at Aunt Phillips' soiree where Wickham says he could never speak ill of young Mr. Darcy in reverence to the memory of old Mr. Darcy--even as he's dishing the dirt on young Mr. Darcy--shows how manipulative he is ... and how ready Lizzie is to swallow it whole because Mr. Darcy has hurt her pride.

The servants in "Longbourn" were not so buffaloed by Mr. W as Miss Elizabeth.

96Citizenjoyce
Apr. 17, 2016, 10:19 pm

>95 nohrt4me2: agreed. The 2 books are great to read together, and Longbourn adds so much to Pride and Prejudice that I didn't get before. Mr. Bennet especially, not the loveable, poor put-upon dad that the original makes him appear to be.

97Gelöscht
Apr. 18, 2016, 6:25 pm

>96 Citizenjoyce: I think Baker shows that Mr. Bennet isn't really the lovable, poor-put-upon dad in the original, either. He gets tipsy in the library every day and would rather bait his wife than look after his daughters' interests. I think the original Mr. Bennet informs her backstory for him, not vice versa.

Almost done with "P&P," and finding it a much darker story with Baker's narrative behind it, though in the 40 years I've been re-reading this novel, I have to say that it's also become darker with my own age.

Austen is able to tell some absolutely awful stories with that cheerful, gossipy, almost glib style. In that vein, I also highly recommend Ada Leverson.

(Thank you for listening to me run on about this.)

98Citizenjoyce
Bearbeitet: Apr. 19, 2016, 3:49 pm

>97 nohrt4me2: right. I guess I was just so blinded by the theatrical presentations of him as the long suffering hen pecked husband of a completely batty wife that I didn't get Austen's original intent. It took Longbourn, and discussions with astute readers to show it to me.

99Gelöscht
Apr. 19, 2016, 7:05 pm

>98 Citizenjoyce: I think that's true! Dramatizations have relegated Mr. and Mrs. Bennet into comic relief, whereas, in reality Mr. Bennet does the girls real and lasting harm (or would have done had Mr. Deus ex Machina Darcy not pulled everyone out of the fire).

Speaking of Mrs. Bennet, I'm thinking it might be interesting to look at the chatterbox characters in Austen--Mrs. Bennet, Mrs. Norris, Miss Bates, Mrs. Jennings, Mrs. Smith in Persuasion, Mrs. Allen--and how their talking (from the inane to the calculating) drives action in the novels. I think it's interesting that there's somebody who talks WAY too much in all those novels.

100Gelöscht
Apr. 21, 2016, 7:25 pm

On to an Ada Leverson jag. Read The Little Ottleys a few years ago, and found a bunch of other Kindle titles in the public domain. Now on Bird of Paradise.

101Sakerfalcon
Apr. 22, 2016, 4:43 am

>100 nohrt4me2: I loved The little Ottleys so will be very interested to hear your thoughts on Leverson's other work.

102Citizenjoyce
Apr. 27, 2016, 2:29 am

I read 2 great books in the past couple of weeks. First I shared a read of Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein. At first I thought it was just a pleasant little YA feminist novel about a girl pilot - OK and diverting, but nothing special. Then she gets to a description of life in Ravensbruk work camp that amazed me. I knew there had been Nazi medical experiments, but I hadn't known about the specialized wound experiments on Polish women, called rabbits. The characters are complicated and real, she did lots of research and manages to present the camp in a way that shows what happened without completely horrifying the reader. It's horrifying but bearable.
A Manual For Cleaning Women is a group of interconnected short stories by Lucia Berlin. I'd never read her before. Her stories all ring true. She lead a challenging life doing lots of different jobs in different places and she writes her stories from herself. Her characters are nurses, ward clerks, construction workers, teachers, damaged children, catholic school girls, bad mothers and abusive fathers. Being an alcoholic herself, alcohol plays a large part in the stories. There's humor, sadness and great tragedy. I've usually found a whole book full of short stories to be too much, but these , wow, I could have just kept reading.

103SChant
Apr. 27, 2016, 2:47 am

>88 southernbooklady:, >89 Citizenjoyce: Finished SPQR and enjoyed it immensely - just in time for Mary Beard's new programme on BBC 2 tonight. Unlike Citizenjoyce I found the detail fascinating - to me it highlighted the many interpretations and painstaking work that understanding historical eras can involve. I've now orderred Confronting the Classics from the library.

104Citizenjoyce
Apr. 27, 2016, 3:27 am

>103 SChant: to me it highlighted the many interpretations and painstaking work that understanding historical eras can involve
It certainly did that.

105SChant
Apr. 27, 2016, 4:31 am

106southernbooklady
Apr. 27, 2016, 8:25 am

>103 SChant: - to me it highlighted the many interpretations and painstaking work that understanding historical eras can involve.

One of the things I really appreciate about Beard is that she never assumes anything is too academic or specialized for the reader. In fact, I'd say she credits her readers with the same kind of intelligence and curiosity that no doubt sent her into the field in the first place. She's never condescending, it's very refreshing.

107rockinrhombus
Apr. 27, 2016, 1:49 pm

>102 Citizenjoyce:: Wein's book Code Name Verity is great as well.

108vwinsloe
Apr. 27, 2016, 3:27 pm

>107 rockinrhombus: and >102 Citizenjoyce: I loved Code Name Verity and have Rose Under Fire on my wish list. I noticed that Elizabeth Wein has a new one coming out in June entitled Black Dove White Raven and I just added that to my wishlist as well.

109Citizenjoyce
Apr. 29, 2016, 2:47 am

I just finished 3 more great books, well 2 great books, one so so.
Because of discussion here I read Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter by Kate Clifford Larson. What an eye opener. I'd heard that Joe Kennedy was a less than spectacular human being, but wow, he put the pig in patriarchy. And mama Rose, I don't think I would have survived. So for Rosemary to have been born defective in this overachieving, super competitive family was tragic for her, but beneficial for the rest of the country. Without the eventual guilt over her treatment , we may never have got the Americans With Disability Act. Good for us, but so sad for her.
On the fiction side, I finished Girl Through Glass by Sari Wilson. More competition and overachievement, self-imposed this time by a young girl striving to express herself through dance. Ballet, what a sport, and then there are the men who prey on these barely sexed bodies. I think everything about this book is perfect.
Then there was Illuminae - space opera with, of course, some teen age romance, but the girl's a hero making impossible choices, so I'll recommend it if you want a little diversion.

110Gelöscht
Bearbeitet: Mai 1, 2016, 3:31 pm

I got side-tracked with The Incarnations. I hope the pay-off at the end is worth the horrors you have to wade through to get there. The overlapping images and events are interesting to track, but the stories are pretty repellent.

Looking forward to The Turner House, by Angela Flournoy, in which a family home becomes a kind of metaphor for Detroit (so say the local reviewers).

But first back to Austen-land with Eligible and Northanger Abbey, Val McDermid version. I wonder if she will make the Tilneys vampires ...

Tax man sent my refund, so downloaded a bunch off my wish list ...

111Gelöscht
Mai 1, 2016, 3:38 pm

About a third into Eligible, the Pride and Prejudice novel in the Austen Project, and so far it's pretty limp.

It follows the the touchstones of the original and adds in some modern-day twists, and it's nicely written. But it lacks any new insights about the Bennet family. So it's kind of, all in all, just predictable chick lit.

While I'm reading this, I'm composing my own hillbilly version of P&P in my head. There are lots of shotguns, corn likker, and mules in it.

112Gelöscht
Mai 1, 2016, 6:41 pm

Oh, and square dancing. Lots and lots of square dancing.

113Citizenjoyce
Mai 2, 2016, 12:41 am

And petticoats, and why we need special lace for them.

114vwinsloe
Mai 2, 2016, 5:17 pm

I finished Remarkable Creatures recommended to me by Citizenjoyce as an alternative to The Signature of All Things. I enjoyed reading it and learning about Mary Anning. The writing was perhaps not so lush as Elizabeth Gilbert's, but for me, it was a more satisfying read.

Now I am working on two books simultaneously: Lila and Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? I hadn't intended to read them both at once, but I picked up the graphic novel to peruse in the bathroom for a few minutes, and haven't been able to completely put it down.

115Citizenjoyce
Mai 3, 2016, 1:34 am

I was pretty disappointed with Lila, I thought it the worst of the trilogy. As I mentioned in my review, I was very interested in the story of Lila, but there was way too much religion for my taste.
I wasn't sure I'd like Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? Or rather, I did think I'd like it because I thought it was a humorous book about aging. As it happened, I liked it very much but found it way to disturbing to be thought of as humorous, at least by me.
Not being a bathroom reader myself, I have a hard time understanding those who are. A bathtub reader, OK, that works, but I can't see reading anywhere else in there.

116Gelöscht
Mai 3, 2016, 7:39 pm

>115 Citizenjoyce: "but I can't see reading anywhere else in there." That's what magazines are for ... hee

As a card-carryin' Catholic, I've got no problem with religion--in fact, I would find it a breath of fresh air to read an intelligent novel in which one of the characters was devout (as opposed to narrow-minded, self-righteous, crazy, or satirically dogmatic).

So I understand why many people are fans of Marilynne Robinson--I read Gilead--but I find her kind of a slog.

117southernbooklady
Mai 3, 2016, 8:10 pm

>116 nohrt4me2: I would find it a breath of fresh air to read an intelligent novel in which one of the characters was devout (as opposed to narrow-minded, self-righteous, crazy, or satirically dogmatic).

Off topic because it isn't by a woman, but Mark Salzman's novel Lying Awake would fit that description. The main character is a nun.

118Citizenjoyce
Mai 4, 2016, 1:00 am

>116 nohrt4me2: I did think that if I were interested in religion, the religion in Lila would be the kind I'd be interested in. It's pretty much Christianity as we used to think Christianity was, though the self-righteous and controlling have always been with us.

119vwinsloe
Mai 4, 2016, 9:35 am

>115 Citizenjoyce: I am something of a compulsive reader. If I am stationary for more than 30 seconds, I reflexively look for something to read, including labels on packaging. As a result, I try to leave decent reading material within reach, knowing that I will read something regardless.

I finished Lila last night. I had read either Gilead or Home, I think maybe both, and they didn't make much impression on me. I found them to be stilted, dull and claustrophobic. I read Lila because I kept looking for something of Robinson's that would be as satisfying a read as Housekeeping was to me. I was attracted toLila as the story of a woman with somewhat similar themes. I am not religious, and I am generally repelled by appeals to a higher power or claims of finding deeper meaning in chaos. I did not find that sort of religiosity or even spirituality in Lila, at least not as a plot resolution. But reasonable minds could differ.

So too about Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? The subject matter is so sad and depressing that it is perfect for sardonic, or stereotypically Jewish, humor. I am one of those people who use humor as a coping mechanism, so I'm finding Roz Chast's book to be laugh out loud funny.

120Citizenjoyce
Mai 4, 2016, 3:57 pm

119> I too liked Housekeeping so much I was hoping for the same draw in her other books, and, alas, didn't find it.

121Gelöscht
Mai 4, 2016, 7:44 pm

>117 southernbooklady: Yes, Salzman's book is wonderful.

Other Catholic literature (not proselytizing, just things I've enjoyed and keeping it to women writers):

Rumer Godden's In This House of Brede and Black Narcissus. OK, this is about Anglican nuns, but I doubt most Catholics would see the difference.

Flannery O'Connor, pretty much anything. Ditto Muriel Spark.

The Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy by Sigrid Undset.

Colleen McCullough's The Thorn Birds.

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather.

Brother Cadfael mysteries by Ellis Peters (Edith Pargeter).

122CurrerBell
Mai 4, 2016, 8:25 pm

>121 nohrt4me2: Don't forget Antonia White! Most especially, of course, Frost in May.

123overlycriticalelisa
Mai 4, 2016, 8:28 pm

Ellis Peters is Edith Pargeter!?! Shut the door!

124LyzzyBee
Mai 5, 2016, 4:07 am

I've just started Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behaviour - she does have a knack of working her message through compulsive reading of a good story.

125vwinsloe
Bearbeitet: Mai 5, 2016, 5:25 am

>120 Citizenjoyce: I agree with you there. Lila was better than the others in the trilogy, but not even close to Housekeeping.

126Gelöscht
Mai 5, 2016, 3:16 pm

>123 overlycriticalelisa: Yupper. It's on Wikipedia and everything.

127Citizenjoyce
Mai 7, 2016, 4:06 am

>124 LyzzyBee: I loved Flight Behavior. Some people think it's too message-oriented, but I think she gets the message across with a darn good story. I guess I was late to the game, but this was the first time I'd heard of the whole Monarch butterfly migration story. Hmm, do you think '''Kingsolver''' had some part in the fact that the situation is improving?

128LyzzyBee
Mai 7, 2016, 7:12 am

>127 Citizenjoyce: I think she treads the line between message and preachy really well, I've loved her books for ages and will keep on doing so, I'm sure. Really upset there's not an audio book of it as my husband would love it! No idea if she's helped but I bet on some level raising that awareness will be doing some good somewhere. And nice one!

129Citizenjoyce
Mai 7, 2016, 11:46 pm

>128 LyzzyBee: My library has it on audiobook, that's how I read it. Can you request it from your library?

130vwinsloe
Mai 16, 2016, 9:48 am

>115 Citizenjoyce:. I must revise my opinion of Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? The first half was very funny. The second half was just sad, and too personal. "Too much information" as they say.

I've moved on to Big Little Lies which is not in my usual wheelhouse at all. So far not enjoying the writing much, but with 4.12 stars on LT, I figure that the book must have some redeeming qualities, so I am letting the plot carry me along.

131overlycriticalelisa
Mai 16, 2016, 11:03 am

reading coal run by tawni o'dell. somehow haven't gotten very far (been reading incredibly slowly the last month or so0 but the beginning of this one has just been fantastic.

132Gelöscht
Mai 16, 2016, 4:29 pm

Stranger than Truth by Vera Caspary. Can't get enough of those mid-century domestic thrillers.

Also downloaded Oronooko, and might actually read it this time ...

133LyzzyBee
Mai 17, 2016, 12:14 pm

>129 Citizenjoyce: Thank you so much for the suggestion - we managed to get the CD audiobook from the library, husband has ripped it to Mp3 and he's ready to start it tomorrow!

134Citizenjoyce
Mai 18, 2016, 4:57 am

>133 LyzzyBee: I'm so addicted to audiobooks that when I recommended one to my daughter yesterday she said, "Mom, I can actually read with my eyes." What a concept.

135Gelöscht
Mai 18, 2016, 7:24 am

Yeah, but you can't read and drive or knit ...

136LyzzyBee
Mai 18, 2016, 7:25 am

Unfortunately, audiobooks are so comforting to me that they make me fall asleep!

137southernbooklady
Mai 18, 2016, 9:28 am

I love reading via audiobooks. I went through Shakespeare's entire canon that way in a year's worth of gardening, and now the association between Shakespeare/garden is so strong for me it is almost visceral. I can't think of Henry V without remembering sowing pole beans.

I'm currently reading Carla Powers If the Oceans Were Ink and while I can see it's strong points, I have very deep reservations about it.

138sturlington
Mai 18, 2016, 9:43 am

>137 southernbooklady: I have recently discovered audiobooks and found them a wonderful way to get to those classics I've always meant to read. I would think that hearing Shakespeare read aloud would be an ideal way to appreciate it.

I am listening to Olive Kitteridge right now. I don't usually listen to newer fiction, but the price was right. I am enjoying the narrator's Maine accent. It is contributing to the book's sense of place. Although this is such a good book, I feel fairly certain I will want to reread it in print at some point. Fortunately, I have it on the Kindle so I have either option available to me.

I usually listen as I am walking the dog. I like to think that a compelling audiobook motivates me to exercise more.

139vwinsloe
Mai 20, 2016, 10:01 am

I finished Big Little Lies, and it certainly was entertaining, despite what I thought was choppy writing and cartoonish characterizations. I felt a little conflicted about the treatment of such serious issues in what was essentially a romantic comedy. But the book didn't make light of the issues themselves, and if it raises awareness, what the hey. I'll pass it on to my mother.

I am just starting Falling from Horses which is the only remaining Molly Gloss novel that I have yet to read. As usual, her writing makes me slow down and absorb the nuance of her descriptions of places and characters. I am going to take my time with this one.

140vwinsloe
Bearbeitet: Jun. 4, 2016, 2:55 pm

I finished KooKooland, a memoir that I bought off a library sale cart on the basis that the little girl on the cover resembled me as a child.

As it turns out, Gloria Norris was born the same year as I was, and her memoir begins in 1963, when we were nine. She grew up in Manchester, NH which about an hour north of where I grew up. There were enough similarities there to keep me reading a book that I had no idea was going anywhere. But it did go somewhere, and the payoff is enough for me to recommend the book to others. Norris can write- she became a professional screenwriter - but she waited until the most of the people she writes about had passed away. Worth a read.

141Gelöscht
Bearbeitet: Jun. 4, 2016, 3:03 pm

Really enjoying The Turner House, about the dynamics of a large Detroit family from the 1940s to 2000s. She does a good job weaving the city and its economic woes into the mix, and she is a keen observer of people, their strengths and weaknesses. In a few places she gets a tad too expositions happy, but very minor flaw. The book is nearly 400 pages, so hoping her ending doesn't just peter out. Doesn't look like it's going to.

142Citizenjoyce
Jun. 9, 2016, 12:35 am

Lab Girl was one of the best books I've read this year. It's a combination autobiography and natural science discourse by Hope Jahren that amazes both in what she has discovered about the world and what she says about herself as a person, as a woman and as a woman in science. I'd recommend it to anyone. Here is an interview with the author:
http://onpoint.wbur.org/2016/04/05/hope-jahren-lab-girl-memoir

143nancyewhite
Jun. 9, 2016, 3:08 pm

>141 nohrt4me2: I just finished The Turner House and loved it.

I am reading A Body, Undone. I am not enjoying it thus far. Although the subject matter is compelling, it is not well-written. It's for a book club so I will finish.

144Citizenjoyce
Jun. 14, 2016, 5:45 pm

I just finished the second book in Elena Ferrante's Neopolitan series, My Brilliant Friend (completely brilliant) followed by The Story of a New Name, and I can't recommend them highly enough. Set in Naples it shows the difficulty of growing up female in a world of accepted and strictly enforced patriarchal dominance. Education is a big theme but also competition (for men, for money, for stature), physical abuse, and the oppression of a strong class system. Usually I read about 4 books at once, but when I'm reading Ferrante I can't force myself to think about anything else. Her world will take over yours if you give it a chance.

145vwinsloe
Jun. 15, 2016, 3:22 pm

>144 Citizenjoyce:. Thanks for the recommendation. I have My Brilliant Friend in the TBR pile, and I will have to keep my eye out for the others.

I recently finished My Name is Lucy Barton and decided that I liked it, but only in the three star range, and I'm not sure why. I also took Amity & Sorrow from the bottom of the pile, and I enjoyed reading it but in the end found something creepy about it. Not quite victim blaming, but Lolita-ish, maybe?

146Gelöscht
Jun. 15, 2016, 11:36 pm

>145 vwinsloe: Was also disappointed by Amity and Sorrow. It seemed superficial to me. Thought David Ebershoff's The 19th Wife was a much deeper look into religious cults and their effects on women and families. I thought he handled the women characters very well.

The plot line of Lucy Barton didn't appeal to me much, and I haven't put it on my wish list.

Not sure why touchstones don't seem to work on here when I use my tablet.

147Citizenjoyce
Bearbeitet: Jun. 16, 2016, 3:44 am

>146 nohrt4me2: I find when I use my tablet I have to post then edit, don't change anything, just wait for the touchstones to appear, then post again, and the touchstones will work - no idea why.
I really like Eliazabeth Strout but also put My Name is Lucy Barton in the 3.5 range. Not my favorite, but good enough.
I liked The 19th Wife very much, but after reading what a mess he made of the history in The Danish Girl I'm wondering how much I should believe of the Mormon history and how much is just dramatization.

148Gelöscht
Bearbeitet: Jun. 16, 2016, 4:33 pm

>147 Citizenjoyce: OK, trying your touchstone trick. I am not familiar with anything else by Ebershoff. My sense is that the history in The 19th Wife is better than most historical fiction. I tried to get through Hild, and it was just dreadful.

149Gelöscht
Jun. 16, 2016, 4:34 pm

Woo hoo, your edit trick worked!

150CurrerBell
Jun. 16, 2016, 7:22 pm

>148 nohrt4me2: Hild seems to be love-it-or-hate-it, and I'm with you in the "hate it" camp. I gave it a 2** review and that's really a shame because I read it expressly for Nicola Griffith.

151Citizenjoyce
Jun. 16, 2016, 7:35 pm

>148 nohrt4me2:, >149 nohrt4me2: I thought I was the only one. I'd heard such good things about Hild, but i couldn't get into it at all. I keep thinking I'll try again one of these days because I love Nicola Griffith.

152Gelöscht
Jun. 16, 2016, 11:26 pm

>151 Citizenjoyce: I might read the last portion of the book to see if the ending is worth the teeth grinding I'll be doing by skimming through the first third again. I have never read anything by Griffith before.

153Citizenjoyce
Jun. 25, 2016, 4:41 pm

I just finished, and am completely made paranoid by, Jane Mayer's Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right . We all know the Koch brothers are scary guys, but the dedication and long range planning that has gone into their successful attempt to create and dominate a third political party in the US hit me like a wall. The book is very well researched and clearly written and gives the reader little hope for the continuance of representative democracy.

154CurrerBell
Jun. 25, 2016, 7:46 pm

I'm currently reading – right now just about a fifth of the way through – Special Topics in Calamity Physics and rather disliking it. I'm going to finish it because it fills June's RTT theme School Days School Days (which was my personal theme selection) and is also a ROOT that's been sitting around quite a while, but I'm finding it way too cutesy so far, in fact tediously so. Still, Marisha Pessl has her admirers, so it may get better and I want to give it a fair chance.

155Citizenjoyce
Jun. 26, 2016, 2:00 am

>154 CurrerBell: This was my review: Five stars for the excellent story. I thought the ending was perfect. Two stars for the obnoxious style - literate, yes, affected and overdone, also yes. Whatever you do, don't listen to this on audio.

156Gelöscht
Jun. 26, 2016, 10:08 am

>153 Citizenjoyce: Yeah, sometimes the conspiracy theorists get it right. I think that's why Sanders got such support from young people. They recognize the system is rigged in favor of money. The fact that Sanders got as far as he did on $15 donations from real people should be heartening to anybody who feels commercial enterprises have too much political clout. The fact that Bernie could not crack that clout, less so.

157Citizenjoyce
Bearbeitet: Jul. 12, 2016, 3:42 am

I finished a few good and two great books this month.
The good books:
The Kitchen House - Kathleen Grissom interesting in that you see how a normally moral white woman could become the dreaded white plantation matron
The Sergeant's Lady - Susanna Fraser a Regency (I think) romance. I do not like romances, but this is by an LT author who is in one of my groups so I gave it a try. It starts with a good childbirth scene - can't get enough of them - and goes on to some interesting war time situations, if only there weren't romance
The Ritual Bath -Faye Kellerman an interesting police procedural with a strong woman character and fairly extensive Jewish backstory.
Lazaretto - Diane McKinney-Whetstone - African Americans in post-reconstruction Philadelphia, some interesting medical history, another good childbirth scene, pretty good characterization and alas, romance
and the great books:
Salt To the Sea - Ruta Sepetys a WWII story about Non-Jewish Eastern Europeans. I was afraid to read this because I thought it was going to be one of those lifeboat stories, who do we throw out - but it's not. There's another childbirth scene, plus the whole rest of the story of trying to get away from the Russians and into Germany.
and the best - LaRose: A Novel - Louise Erdrich a story about American Indians on a Western reservation and what happens after the dad of one family accidentally kills the only son of another. The characterization is great, the mix of modern and ancestral religion is well done, there are pretty intense mental health issues and situations are strange and mind opening. The ending might be a little distraction, but the rest is wonderful.

158vwinsloe
Jul. 12, 2016, 1:35 pm

>157 Citizenjoyce:. Thanks. I've looked at LaRose: A Novel a few times now, and I will probably pick it up the next time based on your recommendation.

159Citizenjoyce
Jul. 12, 2016, 5:42 pm

Right now I'm reading, or rather listening to, A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy written and read by Sue Klebold. So far there's not a lot about what lead up to the Columbine tragedy, that's kind of her point. She thought Dylan was her sunshine boy and that everything was fine. In fact she mentions that the night he went to the prom she was rather congratulating herself on having raised such a successful and promising child. For those of us who have children it's pretty frightening.

160Gelöscht
Jul. 12, 2016, 8:10 pm

>159 Citizenjoyce: Thought about reading that after I finish We Need to Talk About Kevin for the monthly read. But I don't know if I can take it.

161SChant
Jul. 13, 2016, 2:50 am

Just finished The Geek Feminist Revolution by Kameron Hurley - a series of essays from her blog about being a science-fiction writer. No great insights, but it's OK. Have started Following On: A Memoir of Teenage Obsession and Terrible Cricket by Emma John - there's only 1 other person on LT with this book, so I'm guessing not a lot of cricket fans here! Also, Digital Dreams: A Decade of Science Fiction by Women - the first 3 stories are underwhelming.

162Citizenjoyce
Jul. 13, 2016, 3:56 am

>160 nohrt4me2: I could barely take We Need To Talk About Kevin. I'm still amazed that I can continue to read her, and am about to read her latest, The Mandibles. She's rough. But A Mother's Reckoning is more bearable, maybe because it's true so the author doesn't need to elicit strong emotions, or maybe because Klebold is a very controlled person. She talks about how devastated the whole family was, but, perhaps because she's not a writer at heart, she doesn't put the emotion in a form that requires the reader to empathize. It's a strong book, but I think the connection is more intellectual and less visceral.
I just finished my first Jo Walton, Farthing. It's a murder - political mystery set in an alternate universe in which the Chamberlain-like appeasement of Germany worked. The world is a different place, and antisemitism abounds, as does homophobia. At first the novel starts off rather flippant. I don't think I would have finished it if it hadn't been for the alternate history, but I'm very glad I did. Now I've requested the follow-up, Ha'penny.

163Gelöscht
Jul. 13, 2016, 9:48 am

162> I honestly don't know if I can finish Kevin. I can see that it's good writing, but I'm not sure that I want Eva in my head. She's a fright, and a quarter of the way in, she's just getting' worse.

164overlycriticalelisa
Jul. 13, 2016, 5:09 pm

i just finished at the bottom of the river by jamaica kincaid. i so want to like her but this is the second book of hers i've read and i just can't stand her writing. although two of the stories in this very small volume were pretty good. anyone a kincaid fan and can convince me? (i want to be convinced!)

165Citizenjoyce
Jul. 13, 2016, 7:49 pm

>164 overlycriticalelisa: Well shoot. I was going to say that I also did not like her writing, then I checked my books and didn't find anything by her. What other Caribbean writer could I have been thinking of, I wonder?
>163 nohrt4me2: Everything and everyone in the book is infuriating, but I think it's well worth reading. I probably had more sympathy for the mom than you do, I could see her concerns. Combining that with A Mother's Reckoning it's so easy to see the things these moms did wrong. I had lunch with my sisters today, one is very concerned about her grandson and they both place great value on tough love. Not being a tough love proponent, I was cautioning more along the lines of family counseling, but it's just very difficult to find what to do to raise a person to become a compassionate, successful happy adult. I couldn't figure out what could be done about Kevin. It's very difficult when you see a parent reject her child, but children are humans and some can be psychopathic. I guess that's the whole point of the book, what do you do?

166overlycriticalelisa
Jul. 13, 2016, 8:09 pm

>165 Citizenjoyce:

paulee marshall? she wrote praise song for a widow which i thought was fantastic and so very different from kincaid's writing.

(touchstones not working.)

167Gelöscht
Bearbeitet: Jul. 14, 2016, 10:35 am

>165 Citizenjoyce: I don't dislike Eva because she rejects her child; many of us are not "natural mothers" and those of us who have postpartum whammies are doubly burdened. But most of us figure out we need help and manage to do OK.

I just find the story completely farfetched, if Eva's version can be believed: Kevin is pure evil, irredeemable, and no one sees it except for Eva, a deeply disturbed character herself. I don't believe any person is irredeemable.

If Eva is an unreliable narrator, then her version of events is the (very long) chronicle of a narcissistic personality who construes reality to match her own perceptions. That makes it another "blame mommy" book.

Perhaps there is a third construction, that is more feminist/political allegory.

I have no faith in any parenting "method," whether it's attachment parenting, tough love, or whatever. I had two goals: to raise a child who would live a life of service to others by discovering and sharing his talents; and to provide a stable home in which there was no drunkenness, screaming, drama, and insanity. The method used on any given day varied with circumstances. I tend toward being a hands-off parent who encourages experimentation. Guide, suggest, insist where you have to. Otherwise, let the kid figure himself out.

168Citizenjoyce
Jul. 14, 2016, 5:13 pm

>167 nohrt4me2: Sounds like reasonable parenting advice. I have no idea if Sue Klebold's description of Eric Harris is correct, but if so, he sounds like the Kevin character. I don't want to think that anyone is irredeemable, but looking at the world, it seems possible.
By the way, I finished the book and it really is inciteful and well written.

169sturlington
Bearbeitet: Jul. 15, 2016, 9:25 am

What's the opposite of a book bullet? This conversation has convinced me to take We Need to Talk about Kevin off my reading list.

170vwinsloe
Bearbeitet: Jul. 15, 2016, 9:43 am

>167 nohrt4me2: & >168 Citizenjoyce: I am following your discussion with interest. We know so little, really, about personality disorders and mental illness. Most of what I know comes from experience, and is admittedly anecdotal.

It seems as though there is a strong relationship between mental illness and personality disorders and that one, if not both are connected and probably genetic in some cases. This is compounded by environmental factors because the child is raised in an abnormal/irrational environment when the parent is not quite right mentally or emotionally. Additionally, those children are vulnerable to bullying, abuse and other traumatic forces outside of the family because predators seem to sense that they are not quite right. So it seems that PTSD is a contributing factor.

Mental illness can be treated fairly successfully these days with medication. Personality disorders, however, are intractable.

Much of my experience comes from a family whose children I grew up with. There were 6 children- two who have suffered from disabling clinical depression. The unreliable narrators of the family history tell tales of child abuse in the family, although it was not publicly recognized. The child in my class in school committed suicide 10 years ago after many attempts. The other depressive is hospitalized frequently and truly lives on the edge. At least one of the others in the family appears to have a narcissistic personality disorder to the extent that he cannot hold a job, and after his divorce, lost custody of one child due to abuse. That child, his daughter, my godchild, showed signs of depression as a pre-teen. As an adult, she has engaged in repeated patterns of behavior that lead to acting out, humiliation, her own victimization and, ultimately, depression. Up until recently, she has held jobs and functioned in society but lived well below her seeming potential.

I know her mother very well. It is incredibly difficult for her to cope and to know when she is enabling and when she is supporting, what is true and what is fiction. She sees a therapist herself for support and guidance. Her daughter's depression is treated--the personality disorder is who she is at the core and seems unchangeable.

I would not blame any parent of a child with these sorts of mental problems. Certainly not the parent with his own mental illness, nor the mentally "normal" parent who has to deal with this impossible situation.

I really don't think that there is much that a parent can do--other than call law enforcement when there is clear evidence that the child is committing harm or about to harm someone else.

171Gelöscht
Bearbeitet: Jul. 15, 2016, 10:32 am

>170 vwinsloe: My heart goes out to the friends in the family of your acquaimtance. My mother's family is full of people like that. It made for a pretty wild time as a child. Jeanette Walls' The Glass Castle, which I sorta liked, seems to be about a couple with personality disorders.

Calling law enforcement often means someone ends up in the court system, which provides no treatment and endangers pother prisoners. I know families struggling with mental health issues that do not respond to meds often think twice before calling the cops.

In some ways, Eva does the right thing by calling out Kevin's weird behavior. The problem is that no one listens to her because of the way she does it.

>169 sturlington: This book is like a train wreck you can't look away from. At times it strains credulity. It's 400 pages long. I've come close to ditching it, but Shriver is a keen observer and good writer. II think there may be mayhem and greater horrors to come, and if she pulls out all the stops, I may bail.

172sturlington
Jul. 15, 2016, 10:38 am

>171 nohrt4me2: Maybe I'll look for another one of her books to try.

173vwinsloe
Jul. 15, 2016, 4:56 pm

>171 nohrt4me2:. Yes, I liked The Glass Castle as well, but I think that Jeannette Walls' glasses were slightly rose-coloured as she talked about her parents. Perhaps they were "Cluster A" eccentric personalities and not the "Cluster B or C" types who can be down right destructive to themselves or others.

>172 sturlington:. The only other Shriver that I have read is The Post-Birthday World which is a sort of thought experiment about the road not taken. As nohrt4me2 said above, she is a keen observer and a good writer, but I think that she is emotionally challenging to read. Not a "fun" read by any stretch.

174Citizenjoyce
Bearbeitet: Jul. 21, 2016, 3:26 pm

I'm about half way through Lionel Shriver's newest, The Mandibles. She still is far from a harbinger of joy. This novel is about the economic collapse of the US. The tone is very different from Kevin, less personally disastrous and more disaster in general. On the bright side, the son has been redeemed from the sociopathic Kevin to the practical, economic wiz Willing. Having a deeper understanding of economics would probably make it more meaningful, but it is eye opening and engrossing. No political or economic system goes unscathed, because she has never shown herself to be partial to one specific guide to living. As the economy spirals further and further down the drain I keep hoping that there will be some hook at the end pulling this family out, but it's Shriver, so that's a pretty unfounded hope.

175Citizenjoyce
Jul. 23, 2016, 4:03 pm

Well, I finished The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047, and Shriver leaves the reader just as angry as she did in Kevin but for different reasons. The US economy does collapse and one of the large causes is the amount of the economy that goes toward supporting old people. Lots of Boomer talk. Being a boomer, it's like getting slapped in the face over and over. Shriver is not a cuddle up by the fire kind of read.
I also finished The Tropic of Serpents by Marie Brennan, the second in the Lady Trent's Memoirs series. I don't know what to say. By the time it ended I was glad to have read it, but regretted the undertaking many times throughout. This is the second in a series, the dreaded bridge novel, and bridge it does, endlessly. I'll probably read the next one but sincerely hope we can move through that novel without all the ground laying.
In the car I'm listening to Die for You by Lisa Unger because I just happened to see it in the library while I was waiting for my next audiobook to come in. I have to say, unlike the main character, if my husband betrayed me on this grand level laying waste to everything behind him, I would think the reasonable thing to do would be to let the police handle the situation instead of relying on my talents as a mystery writer and trying to find the culprit myself. The premise is just very difficult to buy, but I'm still listening, so I guess I like it well enough. I do like the characterization and the little twists and turns.
On my phone I'm listening to Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady, nonfiction by Kate Summerscale about one of the first cases to be handled by the newly created divorce court in London in the mid 19th century. You know, that time when the woman was owned by her husband, including everything that one would think to be hers such as her children, her money, her papers and even her clothing.
On my iPad I've just begun Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets by the recent Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexijevitsj. It's oral history about the end of the Soviet Union in the same vein as her oral history, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster and seems that it's going to be just as fascinating.

176Gelöscht
Bearbeitet: Jul. 23, 2016, 11:04 pm

I read about the Alexijevitsj book, and it sounds interesting.

Am finally taking on The Hemingses of Monticello. On the section now in which she's doping out French laws that governed enslaved people and free people of color. Pretty good.

177Citizenjoyce
Jul. 24, 2016, 3:39 am

>176 nohrt4me2: Quite an eye opening book. I knew nothing about the Hemingses before reading it and really not all that much about Jefferson except his writing. There's a line, I think, in the book that quotes some foreign people saying no one admires freedom as much as a slaveholder. It seems to be true.

178Citizenjoyce
Bearbeitet: Aug. 14, 2016, 2:55 pm

It's a great month for reading since it's too hot to do anything else, except stay inside and watch the Olympics.
I've had four 5 star reads this month.
All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation by Rebecca Traister. Well, actually I gave it 4.5 because of the way she shaded some statistics, but close enough. It's fascinating to find what a threat to society single women have been throughout the ages and how society has and continues to encourage and or force them from that state. Lots of good information about employment, sexual expression, reproduction and life choices.
Barkskins by Annie Proulx, whom I had vowed never again to read because she's so depressing. The trick to reading her is never to expect anything good to happen to anyone, so if someone actually manages to scrape a small particle of joy from life you won't be disappointed when it's snatched away. This time Mother Earth even has to suffer, since the book is about generations of a logging family. It's 700 pages long but worth the investment.
Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly follows four women throughout WWII, two of whom are real people. There's the actual New York socialite and French charity worker, Caroline Ferriday and the real German doctor, Gerta Oberheuser. Then there are two characters who are sort of based on real Polish Catholic villagers: Kaisa and Zuzanna. The action is divided between New York, Paris, Lublin and Ravensbruck with the characters and ambiance of each being accurately, lovingly and painfully detailed. This is historical fiction at its best.
And last, Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War by Mary Roach who loves the sexual and scatological and presents areas of her subject the reader never would have thought of, as usual. A little tip: sharks are usually shy and unlikely to attack humans and not attracted by menstrual blood, but polar bears are - plan your vacation accordingly.

179Citizenjoyce
Aug. 15, 2016, 2:40 am

I've started Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi - a novel of both the slave trade in Africa and the slave life in the US. Here's a review I just found on The Nation
https://www.thenation.com/article/yaa-gyasi-homegoing-review/

180vwinsloe
Bearbeitet: Aug. 19, 2016, 4:11 pm

Thank you >174 Citizenjoyce:, >175 Citizenjoyce: and >178 Citizenjoyce: for carrying the ball for a bit here. I have added several things to my wish list as a result.

I have been kind of stuck in my reading. I chose to read two tomes by men on which I had a hard time focusing, so they took forever. I'm not blaming the books; lots going on at work and other fronts at the moment that is dividing my attention.

I read Nimona which someone here suggested and liked it, particularly the first part of it, then it sort of seemed to peter out.

I'm listening to My Life on the Road, and it is different than I expected and is surpassing my expectations.

I've also just started reading The Nightingale, and though I am not appreciative of the writing style, it does seem to be holding my attention.

So maybe these girlybooks have got me back on track.

181Citizenjoyce
Aug. 20, 2016, 12:34 am

>180 vwinsloe: I agree about My Life On the Road. I'm not a big memoir or autobiography reader, but this one inspired me. Imagine having the courage to do all she has done.
I loved The Nightingale, again, courage and determination with a good story.

182krazy4katz
Aug. 20, 2016, 12:45 am

>180 vwinsloe:
I haven't read her latest work but Steinem's Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions was excellent.

183vwinsloe
Bearbeitet: Sept. 5, 2016, 6:33 am

>182 krazy4katz:. Thanks, she mentions it in My Life On The Road and I wondered about it. I'll put it on my wish list now. Thanks.

184vwinsloe
Sept. 4, 2016, 3:01 pm

I finished The Nightingale which I ended up liking a lot. Yeah, it was emotionally manipulative, but with subject matter as sweepingly horrific as WWII, I didn't mind.

I also read The Parable of the Sower which for some reason I missed when it came out. Although over 20 years old, it was still highly relevant to current events. I love Octavia Butler's writing, and will read the sequel and more.

I started The Warmth of Other Suns on audiobook, and the reader is terrific. It is such a big book though, and I borrowed it from the library, so I am going to try to read it in tandem with listening to it. I hope that it works out because I have some more tomes that it would make sense to read/listen to that way. Has anyone else done that?

185Citizenjoyce
Sept. 4, 2016, 11:19 pm

>184 vwinsloe: On occasion I've both read and listened to a book, especially if they're complicated. It's very helpful. The Warmth of Other Suns is a great book.

186LyzzyBee
Sept. 5, 2016, 1:53 am

I'm greatly enjoying A.S. Byatt's Ragnarok, an amazing read.

187vwinsloe
Sept. 5, 2016, 6:32 am

188Sakerfalcon
Sept. 5, 2016, 7:48 am

>184 vwinsloe: I read Parable of the sower last year and thought it was excellent. The sequel is on my tbr pile.

189vwinsloe
Sept. 6, 2016, 10:04 am

My plan to read and listen to The Warmth of Other Suns has been postponed for now. I'll keep listening, but I picked up Fun Home last night, and I can't put it down!

190krazy4katz
Sept. 6, 2016, 3:30 pm

I am relaxing with a murder mystery written by a friend of mine: Death By Pumpkin

191vwinsloe
Sept. 6, 2016, 3:35 pm

>190 krazy4katz:. Well, that's seasonal! :>)

192krazy4katz
Sept. 6, 2016, 3:43 pm

>191 vwinsloe: Yes! I think released on purpose at the end of the summer. ;-)

193Citizenjoyce
Bearbeitet: Sept. 7, 2016, 3:10 am

>189 vwinsloe: There are some books that have been recommended to me and then I have recommended to others and have found them universally loved. Fun Home is one, Lonesome Dove is the other. Enjoy. ETA The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For is the third.

194vwinsloe
Sept. 7, 2016, 5:48 am

>193 Citizenjoyce:. You know, you are not the first person to recommend Lonesome Dove to me. You are the first person whose recommendations are reliable though. I will definitely put it on my wish list, and I'll be on the lookout for The Essential Dykes. Thanks.

195CurrerBell
Sept. 7, 2016, 8:53 pm

>184 vwinsloe:, >188 Sakerfalcon: The "Parable" series is among the Octavia Butlers that I've really got get around to. Personally, I think Fledgling is the best vampire novel ever (although I haven't read anything by Sheridan LeFanu), and "Bloodchild" is one of my all-time favorite short stories (not just favorite sci-fi, but favorite short stories period).

196vwinsloe
Sept. 8, 2016, 5:54 am

>195 CurrerBell:. I haven't read either of those, but I am putting them on my WL. She is such a great writer!

197Citizenjoyce
Sept. 10, 2016, 1:53 am

>194 vwinsloe: Lonesome Dove is very long and will take over your life, be warned. I'm reading his Buffalo Girls right now, it's about Calamity Jane. I started it because of the movie and because I just read a couple of books about prostitution in the old west and wanted to read more. The movie, meh. Angelica Houston doesn't really cut it as Calamity Jane, it's a little too Doris Dayish. Jane's life, was much more depressing, but McMurtry's manages to take tragic stories and find a little bit of occasional hope - no Doris Day, but at least something to live for.
Speaking of depressing, I'm finally finishing Secondhand Time, Svetlana Alexijevitsj's interviews with people in post-Soviet Russia. If you're ever feeling ebullient, so full of joy that you could just float away, this is the book that will bring you back to earth. People LOVED Stalin in spite of the oppression which is detailed to a nauseating degree. The misogyny is beyond belief. Frequently people say how much Russians need life to be bad, to experience pain so that their souls can be free. So misogyny, severe gender roles, a strict class system, racism, evil for the sake of being evil, evil as just part of a day's work, betrayal by everyone from one's family to the state - the book does not make the reader long for a trip to Russia or inspire great faith in Putin. I'll probably finish tomorrow, and it will be a long time before I read another one of her books. Here I was thinking Octavia Butler was too depressing; at least she writes fiction.
Rounding out the depression chronicles, I also just finished Necessary Lies about the eugenics program in 1960's North Carolina. I guess a Russian reading that would be thinking much about my country that I'm thinking about theirs right now.
Oh, no, I lied. One more depressing book, which you would never guess from looking at the cover. True Sisters sounds and looks like a kind of romantic light story about siblings. Instead it's a fact based novel about the doomed Martin Handcart company and their disastrous walk across the US in 1856. I'd read something about this in The 19th Wife, so I was prepared for many unhappy endings, and they were certainly there.
Right now I'm about half way through The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II by Denise Kiernan, and I have to say this book about the making of the weapon that may help to end the world is the most pleasant thing on my palette for a while.

198Citizenjoyce
Sept. 10, 2016, 2:08 am

Yay, I just thought of a light book I recently finished, Night Shift by Charlaine Harris. You can always count on Harris to show people who are actually good to each other, plus it has a wowzer of an ending - needed fluff for the month.

199overlycriticalelisa
Sept. 10, 2016, 2:33 pm

>197 Citizenjoyce:

a great book about calamity jane's time period (she's in it but not the main) is pete dexter's deadwood. not by a woman, but an excellent read about that era, place, and those people. (i'm not even interested in that period of history and still thought it was great.)

200Citizenjoyce
Sept. 10, 2016, 4:06 pm

>199 overlycriticalelisa: Thanks. I'll check it out.

201Citizenjoyce
Bearbeitet: Sept. 11, 2016, 2:57 pm

>194 vwinsloe: I've recommended Essential Dykes To Watch Out For to both gay and straight women, and everyone loves it. Even people who had never even considered reading a graphic novel are hooked. In fact you get so involved in the lives of these characters that it's rather heart wrenching to come to the end and know that the stories won't continue.

202vwinsloe
Bearbeitet: Sept. 11, 2016, 5:18 pm

>201 Citizenjoyce:. I'll definitely pick that one up. I was totally surprised by Fun Home. I'll read graphic novels, but I am a very verbal person, so the graphics don't really add anything for me. But I was delighted to find that the graphics in Fun Home often contained more words which enhanced the depth of the experience for me. Bechdel is amazing.

Sounds like Lonesome Dove might be the one to go for the next time I take a cross country flight. It's in mass market paperback, so that's a plus!

I am continuing on with my read/listen to The Warmth of Other Suns. It is a bit of a nuisance to find my place in the audiobook after I have read for several hours, but worth it because the reader has such a wonderful voice.

203Citizenjoyce
Sept. 12, 2016, 9:02 pm

>202 vwinsloe: I was amazed that after reading The Warmth of Other Suns I've kept seeing references to it everywhere. It's a great addition to US History.

204krazy4katz
Sept. 12, 2016, 9:08 pm

>202 vwinsloe:, >203 Citizenjoyce: I added The Warmth of Other Suns to my TBR list as well. Thank you.

205Citizenjoyce
Sept. 13, 2016, 3:41 am

>204 krazy4katz: You'll be glad you read it.

206Citizenjoyce
Sept. 13, 2016, 4:38 pm

I just finished The Girls, Emma Cline's fictitious account of an adolescent girl drawn to the Manson cult, then I had to spend all day reading about the cult, the murders, and the women involved. The more I read, the more impressed I became with Cline's ability to illuminate the psyches of these women through the character of 14-year-old Evie. Nickelini posted a quote from Laura Miller in Slate magazine: "the queasy exploration of how young women with crippled egos can become accessories to their own degradation", that perfectly expresses what happened. Evie who, with her adolescent partially formed brain, wanted to be noticed, wanted to be important, wanted to love and be loved, wanted to save the world and to know she saved the world was a lump of clay just waiting to be formed by someone - as it seemed were the women who flocked to the schmaltzy, deranged, charismatic Manson. The twist in the book that has Evie drawn to one of Manson's (Russel's) followers rather than to the man himself works to make her perhaps more sympathetic than the real Manson followers. In spite of the determinedly artistic descriptions, this is a book well worth reading and fearing. Adolescents, such potential to go in so many different directions.

207sturlington
Sept. 13, 2016, 5:21 pm

>206 Citizenjoyce: Thanks for the review. I definitely have that one on my TBR.

208CurrerBell
Sept. 25, 2016, 2:33 am

Just couldn't resist getting the new Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin. I think it has a September 27 release date according to Amazon but I found it on a B&N shelf just a couple days ago! The first thing I did was check the index for "Afternoon in Linen" and did find a couple paragraphs on the story, which I completely disagree with since I side with Harriet and not the grandmother.... More of which when I've finished the book and gotten my review posted.

209southernbooklady
Sept. 25, 2016, 2:16 pm

I've been on a binge reading a series of graphic novels and comic books by Sabrina Jones in preparation for writing up a profile and review for her newest book, Our Lady of Birth Control. I've got to say, I'm impressed. Not just with her feminist-anarchist-humanist politics, though of course that appeals to me. But with how complex and personal her books are. I'm not really a big graphic novel reader, and have never been into comic books, but Jones is simultaneously irresistibly in your face about a lot of uncomfortable facts, and incredibly compassionate about her subjects.

Our Lady of Birth Control, which was just released, is her tribute to Margaret Sanger, in whose life Jones has clearly found parallels with her own as a radical in the Reagan era. And Sanger - whose life was defined by defiance -- is now on my list of people who I would have liked to know in person.

210Sakerfalcon
Sept. 27, 2016, 4:22 am

>208 CurrerBell: That is high on my want list! I will look out for your review.

211fikustree
Sept. 27, 2016, 10:59 am

I just finished Hour of the Bees which was a sweet coming of age YA magical realism story about a girl discovering her roots upon meeting her grandpa who is suffering from dementia.

Also The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet which was a fun little story exploring a spaceship crew and their different cultures and genders.

212LyzzyBee
Sept. 27, 2016, 12:36 pm

I'm reading Belinda by Rhoda Broughton which is all about a shy young woman who comes across as cold and horrible, published in 1885 but very modern sounding!

213vwinsloe
Sept. 27, 2016, 12:52 pm

I finished The Warmth of Other Suns and was looking for something light, so I picked up The Golem and the Jinni which is a fairy tale about two fantastical characters: a woman made of clay and a genie. It took me much longer than it should have to get into this book, and now it seems to be more of a romance novel than I expected. Although reading about the ethnic immigrant communities of New York City early in the 20th century is somewhat interesting, I had hoped for more substance. Oh well, 100 pages to go, perhaps there will be something.

214Citizenjoyce
Sept. 29, 2016, 4:39 pm

>213 vwinsloe: I liked The Golem and the Jinni lots, but I agree about the romance. I can't understand why novelists seem to think it necessary to insert romance into every story.
I've read several good books this month, many can't help but continue with the inclusion of romance.
I just finished The Gilded Years about the first African American woman, Anita Hemmings (maybe related to Sally, but it can't be proven), at Vassar. All she had to do besides being an excellent scholar and exemplary student was to pass as white, while her brother was able to be himself at MIT. The writing is pretty simplistic, but the history is so good I had to give it 4 stars. Vassar was a wonderful place instilling in the women, mostly society elites, superb education in the classics, languages, math, science and sports. Then these intelligent, independent women graduates were expected to serve their communities by becoming wives and mothers. The ending of the book is so far fetched that I would have discounted it, if it hadn't been true.
I also read Woman In Charge, written by a man, Carl Bernstein and accurately reflecting all Hillary's challenges throughout her political career. It's a tough but fair look at a fighter.
I'm Just A Person is Tig Notaro's autobiography. She's an understated kind of comedian and writes in an understated way about her life of one tragedy after another. Very interesting, and it has me watching her Amazon series, One Mississippi.
I had to get Ann Patchett's newest, Commonwealth, because I've loved everything else she's written. I loved it to begin with and through most of the story but found the ending just dribbled off - like life I guess. Characterization wins hands down over plot.
Work Like Any Other was long-listed for the Man Booker prize. It's by a woman, Virginia Reeves but about a man trying to follow his dream in the south. Tragic and well written.
And of course Oprah's pick, The Underground Railroad by a man, Colson Whitehead about a woman. It's tagged magical realism and alternate history and is kind of shocking in the way fantasy mixes with reality. At first I didn't think I'd continue reading due to the Mandingo like detailing of the horrors of slavery, but by the time we get to the railroad it takes off. In Whitehead's world the underground railroad is an actual railroad underground and one of the cities visited in the antebellum south is in South Carolina where there are 10 story buildings with elevators and a governmental sponsored eugenics program along with the Tuskegee syphilis study. All of history swirls around with fantasy and is both revealing and entertaining.

215vwinsloe
Okt. 5, 2016, 10:02 am

I have begun my Halloween read a little early this year. Last year I got so side tracked trying to choose the best version of Frankenstein that I didn't end up reading it. I ultimately chose the Norton Critical Edition and started reading it this morning. Shelley's slow and deliberate tension building is masterful for one so young and green!

216sturlington
Okt. 5, 2016, 11:22 am

I haven't posted in a while. I just finished The Vegetarian by Han Kan, which I think this group would find of interest--a really chilling book about the effacement of women.

For my Halloween read, I chose White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi. I'm really enjoying her writing style.

217vwinsloe
Bearbeitet: Okt. 5, 2016, 1:26 pm

>216 sturlington:. I read The Vegetarian for Early Reviewers at the end of last year. It was very worthwhile reading, and I liked it, but didn't love it. I think that the book spoke primarily to the strong Asian cultural value of conformity. While the book dealt with expectations for women that are also prevalent in western European culture, I don't think that many modern western European women could truly identify with the protagonist. But your mileage may differ...

218sturlington
Okt. 5, 2016, 1:36 pm

>217 vwinsloe: I wouldn't say that I identified with her per se, but I think I understood her and her need to assert control over herself in the only way that she could. Lately, though, I have preferred reading books with an "outside" cultural perspective.

I also recently read Confessions by Kinae Minato, who is Japanese. Another disturbing book, but I didn't like it as well because I think it took a "mother-blaming" approach that may or may not have been rooted in the Japanese culture.

219overlycriticalelisa
Okt. 5, 2016, 4:31 pm

rereading the haunting of hill house in preparation for a rereading of white is for witching for a book group. loved both of these before and am excited to read them together, since oyeyeymi's book is (at least partly) a response to (or answers the questions in, or is in conversation with) jackson's.

220sturlington
Okt. 5, 2016, 5:28 pm

>219 overlycriticalelisa: It hadn't occurred to me until you mentioned it, but now I do see the parallels between the characters in both books. Interesting!

221overlycriticalelisa
Okt. 5, 2016, 8:34 pm

oh, i feel like white is for witching is oyeyemi's answer to all the questions raised in the haunting of hill house. i mean, obviously it stands tall on its own, but it felt to me like an interpretation or a way for her to answer all the outstanding unresolved things in jackson's book. (it's hard to talk about with no details in case others haven't read it!) i disagree with the oyeyemi interpretation, but think it's brilliant anyway. (and rereading hill house now, am seeing more ... stuff with the house ... than i did before.)

222sturlington
Okt. 5, 2016, 9:14 pm

I am still reading it. More thoughts when I've finished...

223CurrerBell
Okt. 6, 2016, 12:01 am

>221 overlycriticalelisa: Thanks for your review of White. Looks like I'm going to have to get hold of it considering your comparison of it to Hill House, which I'm going to be rereading in conjunction with Ruth Franklin's newly published Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, which I started a few days ago (but which will probably be a slow read since I'll be accompanying it with readings/rereadings of Jackson).

224SChant
Okt. 6, 2016, 6:53 am

BBC Radio 4 Extra's serialization of Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook has reminded me how good it is. My copy went walkabout years ago so I've bought it and her "Children of Violence" series from a well-know second-hand book website and will binge on re-reads this weekend.

225Citizenjoyce
Bearbeitet: Okt. 6, 2016, 2:51 pm

>216 sturlington: I thought the themes of The Vegetarian were both universal and specific to Korean culture. Well worth reading.
>219 overlycriticalelisa: I'll be reading The Haunting of Hill House some time this month. Now it looks like I have to get White is for Witching to go with it.
I've finished a couple of good books this month and one meh.
I read Amy Schumer's The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo even though I'm so frequently disappointed with comedian's autobiographies. Some of it was pretty wonderful, when she speaks about rape and abuse and also when she talks about body acceptance. But then she has to throw in her "just to be shocking" humor, and I'm not shocked, just bored and disappointed. In my book club last month someone just kind of threw out the statement that it takes a certain kind of woman to get herself into an abusive relationship. Maybe I should give the book to her just for that.
Lady Cop Makes Trouble by Amy Stewart is a delight. I loved her Girl Waits With Gun and this is the next in her series about the Kopp sisters, three distinct women in the early 20th century who live life on their own terms. I love that she takes real events and builds them up, delving into the characters and the times to make entertaining and enlightening stories.
Borderline was a surprise. It's one of Barnes and Nobel's best science fiction/fantasy of 2016, and it certainly lives up to the honor. Mishell Baker writes about the Arcadia project which is a liaison between the two factions of the fey and humans. Carol, the head of the local project, recruits new members from mental institutions, and Millie, post dramatic suicide attempt has borderline personality disorder. Baker doesn't romanticize mental illnesses, she shows how they work and the difficulties of people interacting with each other with their unique perspectives. She also has some views about death, love attraction and sexuality that are worth reading. I came very close to not reading this book, thinking it would be fluff. I'm glad I gave it a chance and am very much looking forward to the next in the series.

226vwinsloe
Okt. 6, 2016, 3:32 pm

>225 Citizenjoyce:. Oooo, I hadn't heard about Borderline. Thanks for mentioning it; I'm putting it on my wish list.

227Citizenjoyce
Okt. 6, 2016, 3:49 pm

>226 vwinsloe: It's surprisingly good.

228Sakerfalcon
Okt. 7, 2016, 5:03 am

>219 overlycriticalelisa: I'm going to have to read White is for witching as I love Haunting of Hill House.

>225 Citizenjoyce: I thought Borderline was excellent too - very far from being fluff!

229Citizenjoyce
Okt. 8, 2016, 12:20 am

> Just recently I've heard people decrying the designation of fantasy as fluff, but I have to admit, I have a tendency to think that way. I'm so glad I was wrong about this one.

230vwinsloe
Okt. 11, 2016, 8:38 am

I've finished Frankenstein and I particularly enjoyed reading and thinking about the modern criticism in the back of the Norton edition. But I needed to read something much lighter next, so I've started Elizabeth is Missing which is delightful so far.

I've also been listening to The Daily Coyote which I am really enjoying, but I am reserving judgment in case it ends badly.

231Citizenjoyce
Okt. 11, 2016, 11:49 pm

>230 vwinsloe: I loved Elizabeth Is Missing. The Daily Coyote looks good, let us know.

232Sakerfalcon
Okt. 12, 2016, 6:57 am

I'm enjoying The peach keeper. It's light as a soufflé but I like that female friendship is as important as romance in the story.

233overlycriticalelisa
Okt. 12, 2016, 6:13 pm

had a totally different reading of the haunting of hill house this time around and am getting into white is for witching; maybe i won't think it's so much a response since i had such a different interpretation of hill house this time. we'll see!

for everyone above thread i'll also add - there's a line in hill house that i almost feel like specifically sparks white is for witching, but there is also a lot in this book that isn't even remotely related to hill house. (she adds in things like immigration and folklore and racism, etc so is about "more" than hill house is.) i'm excited to be rereading it!

234sturlington
Okt. 12, 2016, 6:20 pm

>233 overlycriticalelisa: Curious, what is the line?

235overlycriticalelisa
Bearbeitet: Okt. 12, 2016, 6:26 pm

>234 sturlington:

luckily, i put it in my review so i can tell you: "The sense was that {the house} wanted to consume us, take us into itself, make us a part of the house, maybe..."

(edited to get rid of the touchstone that came with my brackets in the quote. actual text, i believe, is "it")

236sturlington
Bearbeitet: Okt. 12, 2016, 6:30 pm

>235 overlycriticalelisa: Thanks. One thing I loved about White Is for Witching was the house's point of view.

237overlycriticalelisa
Okt. 12, 2016, 7:33 pm

>236 sturlington:

super creepy, right??!!?

238vwinsloe
Okt. 17, 2016, 4:39 pm

I finished listening to The Daily Coyote and I can recommend it to anyone interested in animals or rural living. I understand that there are photos in the physical book, but you can see lots of photos at www.dailycoyote.net and for me, seeing the photos enhanced my enjoyment.

I've started reading Bad Feminist.

239krazy4katz
Bearbeitet: Okt. 17, 2016, 7:55 pm

I am in the middle of The Forever Fix about the history of gene therapy. Much of gene therapy is used to treat rare, or "orphan", diseases that pharmaceutical companies are historically not interested in because there is not much of a market for any drugs. Many of these diseases show up at birth and are horribly damaging if not lethal, so you can imagine how terrible it is for parents. The book is very interesting to me, but without some science background I am not sure I could stay with it enough to get to the human aspect of the story. The author has a PhD in genetics.

240Citizenjoyce
Nov. 1, 2016, 1:38 am

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