floremolla's bfbs 2018

Managed to read 10 chunksters in 2017 - aiming for at least eight this year.

1. The Wind Up Bird Chronicle 21.01.18 4.5*
2. Gillespie and I 13.02.18 4*
3. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell 31.03.18 4.5*
4. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy 30.04.18 5*
5. Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang 30.05.18 5*
6. The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair by Joël Dicker 28.09.18 4*

Still reading Maps of Time and adding Buddenbrooks and Wolf Hall to the list

Hi Donna, glad you found us and welcome aboard again my dear and I would like to wish you a Very Happy New Year and hope that 2018 is a good one. Sorry I didn't get back to you but I have been unwell the last few days.

>2 johnsimpson: thank you! sorry to hear you’ve been unwell, John, trust you’re on the mend now.

Hello Donna!

Hi Birgit! It's taken me a while to get round to this thread!

Hi Donna, yes, BFBs don't come along so often, so I do not visit here daily myself.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle completed - my third Murakami book and I think I'm getting to like him, 4.5*

I love Murakami! I seem to have a thing for weird books.

It’s interesting that the translator edited it down dramatically - can’t help wondering whether I’m missing out or whether he ‘improved’ it! I part-read/part-listened to audio and was always keen to find out what was happening next.

Hunh, interesting. It was such a fat (and fulfilling book) so I wonder what got chopped?

Here's what Wikipedia says:

"Some chapters and paragraphs of the Japanese paperback edition were not included in the English translation. Translator Jay Rubin cut about 61 of 1,379 pages, including three chapters (Book 2 Chapters 15, 18, and part of 17; and Book 3 Chapter 26). Combining the original three-volumes (Japanese) would have been too long, and so the publisher requested that ~25,000 words be cut for the English translation.

These chapters contain plot elements not found elsewhere in the book. For example, the two missing chapters from the second volume of the original three-volume elaborate on the relationship between Toru Okada and Creta Kano, and a "hearing" of the wind-up bird as Toru burns a box of Kumiko's belongings (Book 2 Chapter 15). In the third volume, the computer conversation between Toru and Noboru Wataya (Book 3 Chapter 26) and Toru's encounter with Ushikawa at the train station are also omitted.

In addition to reducing the word count, some chapters were moved ahead of others, taking them out of the context of the original order. At the start of Book 3 the chapters have been rearranged. Rubin combined two chapters called “May Kasahara’s POV” and moved the “Hanging House” chapter to make the chronology of events consistent."

For some reason I thought more had been excised - 61 pages out of 1379 isn't too dramatic a proportion. Well done to Jay Ruben for his part in it then!

Having fallen off the acquisitions-in-moderation wagon this month I realised I needed to focus on removing some fat tomes from my shelves to make way for the new (to me). A couple of these fat old tomes turned out to be 600+ pages - the first completed was Gillespie and I an enjoyable psychological thriller set around my own home patch in Victorian times 4*.

Finished Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell which had been on the shelves for about a decade. It was much more entertaining than I anticipated.

Focusing now on finishing War and Peace this month as I'm halfway through.

>13 floremolla: There is a rather interesting mini-series of JSaMN. I only watched the first part as it was due back at the library but it was well done. I still have the book on the shelf so figured I should read that before watching the rest.

>14 Yells: yes, I'd read the book before I found out there was a mini-series. I'll probably seek it out sometime - the book has a very wintry feel to it so it's maybe one to enjoy next winter - we've had a long snowy winter and I can only think of warmer days just now!

I've completed Blood Sisters by Barbara Keating and Stephanie Keating, the first book in the Langani trilogy.

Glad to have read War and Peace but relieved to be finished!

Completed Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China - fascinating and harrowing in equal measure.

Completed The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair a surprisingly engrossing crime thriller that required some suspension of disbelief and sticking with it to the very end.