What are you reading the week of January 1, 2022?

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What are you reading the week of January 1, 2022?

1fredbacon
Dez. 31, 2021, 8:55 pm

Happy New Year! (What? It could happen.)

I'm finishing up The Winds of Marble Arch a short story collection by Connie Willis. Really not fond of it. There are a couple of good stories in the book, but many of them are long, treacly slogs to nowhere.

Next up is Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner which will probably require a couple of weeks to complete.

2jwrudn
Jan. 1, 2022, 11:52 am

Just started Three Girls from Bronzeville A Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate and Sisterhood by Dawn Turner. Very good so far. FYI, Bronzeville is a historically black section of Chicago.

3Shrike58
Bearbeitet: Jan. 7, 2022, 3:19 pm

Happy New Year (fingers crossed!).

Just started The Actual Star. Other books this week are likely to include Columns of Vengeance and Patriotism and Profit.

To follow up, I set aside "Patriotism and Profit" (once I got into it I was underwhelmed) and have read Finnish & German Seaplane Colours and Pershing's Tankers instead.

4rocketjk
Jan. 1, 2022, 12:56 pm

Happy New Year, everybody! I'm finishing up (about 40 pages to go) the wonderful novel Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. Lookiing forward to following along with everyone's new year of reading in '22. Cheers!

5enaid
Jan. 1, 2022, 2:58 pm

Happy New Year!

I'm trying to finish up The Wrong Family which was intended to be my palate cleanser but is turning a bit serious for it's task. It's very well written and I'm pulled along even though I'm worried about almost every character.

I started Piranesi, a loan from the library. I've not read anything by Susanna Clarke before. This is certainly interestingly written. It's got some magical realism which isn't something I like very much but I'm tolerating it here. There's a bit of a mystery so that's kept me involved.

Next up will be a well deserved Agatha Christie!

6seitherin
Jan. 1, 2022, 5:06 pm

Happy New Year !!

Still reading Prince Across the Water, Obsidio, and The Thursday Murder Club.

7framboise
Bearbeitet: Jan. 1, 2022, 7:44 pm

Happy new year. Started A Carnival of Snackery by David Sedaris.

I added a bunch of novels to my list for 2022!

9LyndaInOregon
Jan. 1, 2022, 8:44 pm

About half finished with Danielle Steel's Flying Angels, which was a Christmas gift from hubby and is therefore kind of a duty read. Otherwise, I wouldn't have bothered. It's an enduring mystery to me how Steel can sell so much of this crap. The characters are cardboard, the writing style is as emotionally involving as a pot roast recipe, and if the woman ever **showed** rather than **told**, I'd probably fall out of my chair.

At least there's no place to go but UP from this point onward!

10lamplight
Jan. 2, 2022, 7:54 am

I just finished The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris. It was a good way to start the new year...a book that provides realistic but cautious hope.

11hemlokgang
Jan. 2, 2022, 8:47 am

Finished listening to the fantastic The Book Of Form And Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki.

Next up for listening is The Reckoning by Yrsa Sigurdardottir.

12enaid
Jan. 2, 2022, 12:20 pm

I wrapped up Piranesi last night. I enjoyed the writing and the suspense but I'm afraid the point of it all was lost on me.

13ahef1963
Jan. 2, 2022, 12:30 pm

Happy New Year, everyone!

I started two audiobooks in December, but finished them in January, so they count towards this year's total. I listened to Silas Marner, which was a lovely story, and The House of Mirth, which was interesting but ultimately very depressing.

Next up is Artemis by Andy Weir and the audiobook One Hundred Years of Solitude, which I've never managed to read in book form. Maybe listening to it will work!

14seitherin
Jan. 2, 2022, 2:22 pm

Finished Obsidio by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff. Enjoyed the series as a whole. Adding Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir to my rotation.

15Copperskye
Jan. 3, 2022, 2:33 am

Happy New Year, all! (So far, so good)

I’m reading A Necessary Evil by Abir Mukherjee and a fabulous short story collection, The Office Of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans.

16BookConcierge
Jan. 3, 2022, 8:53 am


Northanger Abbey– Jane Austen
Audio book performed by Donada Peters
4****

Catherine Morland, a charming young girl extremely fond of novels, meets the sophisticated Henry and Eleanor Tilney, who invite her to their father’s mysterious estate – Northanger Abbey. There Catherine runs into both real difficulties and imaginary dangers, and learns how to tell the difference between books and real life, between false friends and true ones.

This is a wonderful parody of the late 18th-centry Gothic style, with fainting heroines, haunted medieval buildings, unrequited love, misunderstandings, secret engagements, and parental disapproval. Our main character, Catherine, has a rampant imagination fueled by over-the-top romantic suspense novels. It is the first novel Austen completed, though one of the last to be published. It clearly shows the writer she will become. The dialogue is witty and clever. The reader must know that the lovers will triumph in the end; still, the intrigues and obstacles make for a fun journey. Catherine may not be quite so well drawn as Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice or the Dashwood sisters of Sense and Sensibility, but she is still delightful.

Donada Peters does a great job performing the audio version. She has great pacing and sufficient skill as a voice artist to differentiate the characters. I particularly liked how she voiced Catherine.

Update: 2021
What a delight to listen to this again. Having done so previously, and also having watched the PBS miniseries, I have an even greater appreciation for Austen's send-up of gothic novels. It's just a charming story and so well told! And, of course, we have a romantic HEA ending! What's not to like?

17JulieLill
Jan. 3, 2022, 11:16 am

>7 framboise: I loved that book. I was so sorry to have finished it because I always get a chuckle out of his writings.

18JulieLill
Jan. 3, 2022, 11:17 am

Zelda: A Biography
by Nancy Milford
2.5/5 stars
This is the story of Zelda Fitzgerald, her life, her marriage to Scott Fitzgerald and her fight against mental illness. This was an awfully long book not helped by the extremely small print. It seemed to me that a lot of the information was repeated but the author was thorough in her research.

19rocketjk
Jan. 3, 2022, 2:24 pm

I finished up Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, which I enjoyed immensely. I posted my review as my last entry in my 2021 50-Book Challenge thread.

I've now begun the 7th Travis McGee mystery, Darker than Amber.

20LyndaInOregon
Jan. 3, 2022, 4:29 pm

>19 rocketjk: I've got a stack of Travis McGee waiting for me this year. Looking forward to revisiting MacDonald's world.

21rocketjk
Jan. 3, 2022, 4:44 pm

>20 LyndaInOregon: The books are not exactly au courant in terms of gender issues, but if you can slip around that drawback, they're lots of fun.

23LyndaInOregon
Jan. 3, 2022, 11:32 pm

Just finished Cat-A-Lyst, a fun fantasy by Alan Dean Foster. Weather here has been crappy, roads impassible, so the best thing to do is settle in for the duration with a big kettle of homemade soup and a stack of books!

24LyndaInOregon
Jan. 5, 2022, 12:51 am

I'm telling you people -- the weather is crappy, the roads are impassible, and I'm not going anywhere! This is book-a-day weather, and I'm pretty close to that mark.

Just finished Liar's Bench, by Kim Michele Richardson, which was a quick read and a not-bad debut novel with a few rough spots. (It was nice of the bad guys to leave incriminating notes lying around, complete with names, dates, and signatures.)

Tomorrow I'll pick up this month's F2F book club selection, A Good Neighborhood, by Therese Anne Fowler.

25Molly3028
Bearbeitet: Jan. 5, 2022, 9:16 am

Enjoying this Kindle Christmas eBook via OverDrive ~

God Rest Ye, Royal Gentlemen (A Royal Spyness Mystery)
by Rhys Bowen
(the latest novel features The Royals and Mrs. Simpson)

26rocketjk
Jan. 5, 2022, 6:45 pm

I've finished Darker than Amber, the 7th Travis McGee novel. A lot of fun, if one can swallow the unfortunately persistent 60s sexism.

Next up will Satan in Goray by Isaac Singer. Last year I completed my tradition of starting each calendar year with the reading of a Joseph Conrad until I'd read (or, mostly, reread) them all. I've chosen Singer as my new "First book of the year" author. Satan in Goray is Singer's first novel, originally published in Yiddish in 1933

27framboise
Jan. 5, 2022, 8:05 pm

>17 JulieLill: Yes, he's hilarious. Laugh out loud funny. The only writer I've laughed out loud in public over.

28hemlokgang
Bearbeitet: Jan. 6, 2022, 5:17 am

Finished listening to book 2 of the Children's House series, The Reckoning.

Next up for listening is The Anomaly, a Prix Goncourt Winner, by Hervé Le Tellier.

29BookConcierge
Jan. 6, 2022, 8:07 pm


Girl, Woman, Other – Bernardine Evaristo
Book on CD performed by Anna-Maria Nabirye
4****

Evaristo’s collection of short stories earned her the 2019 Booker Prize, the first black woman to be so honored. As the title implies, the stories all focus on women and girls from childhood to old age and are primarily set in current-day Britain.

Evaristo populates the book with a wide variety of unforgettable characters: a jaded teacher, a lesbian playwright, a nonbinary social media influencer, an ancient matriarch still living on her family’s farm. The stories are loosely interconnected, and the structure reminds me a little of Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, though there is no central character that is in every tale.

I am a fan of the short story format and loved the way Evaristo managed to give us a complete picture of these women’s lives using this form. The novel is structured in chapters, with each chapter having three characters’ stories, though all three characters appear in each other’s narratives. I cheered for most of these women (as in real life, there are some stinkers here that I was happy to see go), and found the epilogue, which ties up one story arc beautifully, very satisfying.

I can hardly wait for my F2F book club discussion!

I listened to the audio performed by Anna-Maria Nabirye, who does a marvelous job. She has a lot of characters to deal with, virtually all of them women, and she managed it quite well. Her narration was seamless, and I was never confused about who was speaking. I did have a copy of the text handy, and it is written in a style that eliminates capitalization and punctuation; it has an appearance of poetry on some pages. I don’t think this would have bothered me at all had I read the text, but for those who find non-traditional styles problematic, try the audio. You won’t regret it.

30LyndaInOregon
Jan. 7, 2022, 12:53 pm

Finished My Cat's Life, which is one of the "Chicken Soup" collections, after dipping into it for several days. Since I'm owned by a cat, I found it enjoyable.

And am currently working through A Good Neighborhood for the F2F group meeting next week. Interesting framework, as the narration is done by an almost-Greek-chorus persona of "the neighbors".

31LyndaInOregon
Jan. 8, 2022, 12:42 am

Finished A Good Neighborhood and will be starting The Mismeasure of Woman, which will definitely not be a one-day read.

32mnleona
Jan. 8, 2022, 7:42 am

33JulieLill
Jan. 8, 2022, 12:33 pm

Call the Nurse: True Stories of a Country Nurse on a Scottish Isle
Mary J. MacLeod
5/5 stars
This was a wonderful recollection of a nurse’s time working on a Scottish Isle in the late sixties. There are two more books in this collection and I look forward to them. This reminds me of the writings of James Herriot’s books.

34aussieh
Jan. 8, 2022, 3:45 pm

>19 rocketjk:
I am sure you would enjoy Home by Marlynne Robinson, it continues with the same
characters from Gilead.

35rocketjk
Jan. 8, 2022, 4:16 pm

>34 aussieh: Thanks. And, yes, I'm aware of Home and its relation to Gilead. I may get to it this year or next. Cheers!

37Cariola
Jan. 8, 2022, 6:12 pm

A belated Happy New Year to everyone!

>12 enaid: Piranisi didn't do a thing for me either.

>28 hemlokgang: That's one I've been putting off, but after reading your comments, I think I need to read Girl, Woman, Other sooner rather than later.

I just finished Hour of the Witch by Chris Bohjalian, which earned only 3stars out of 5 for me. I've been listening to the audio version of Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth and the Trials of American Democracy by Jamie Raskin and am reading The Sentence by Louise Erdrich.

38PaperbackPirate
Bearbeitet: Jan. 9, 2022, 10:08 am

Happy New Year!

I started reading Wild Women and the Blues by Denny S. Bryce for my book club.

39PaperbackPirate
Jan. 9, 2022, 10:10 am

The new thread can be found here.

40BookConcierge
Jan. 9, 2022, 11:05 am


Jack Maggs – Peter Carey
3***

From the book jacket: A novel of Dickensian London .. the 1830s. Jack Maggs, a foundling trained in the fine arts of thievery, cruelly betrayed and deported to Australia, has now reversed his fortune – and seeks to fulfill his well-concealed, innermost desire. Returning “home” under threat of execution, he inveigles his way into a household in Great Queen Street, where he’s quickly embroiled in various emotional entanglements – and where he falls under the hypnotic scrutiny of Tobias Oates, a celebrated young writer fascinated by the process of mesmerism and obsessed with the criminal mind.

My reactions
I had heard that this was inspired by and perhaps even a retelling of Dickens’ Great Expectations. I can see similarities, though there is no Miss Havisham, and the focus is not on Pip but on Magwitch.

I did get quite caught up in Jack Maggs’s story and wondered a few times how Carey was going to wrap this up. The plot is definitely convoluted in places, with many twists and turns, though Maggs’s goal remains the same. I enjoyed the relationship between Maggs and Mercy, and the complication of Mercy’s relationship with her employer, Mr Buckle. But I felt Carey took a wrong turn by relying on Tobias Oates and his efforts at hypnotism / magnetism. And the subplot of Toby’s romantic entanglements did little to advance the story (other than providing some motivation for his final journey with Maggs).

Carey’s writing is very atmospheric, and the city of London is explored in some detail, especially the impoverished slums and criminal underbelly.

41aussieh
Jan. 10, 2022, 2:53 pm

>40 BookConcierge:

Jack Maggs is my very favorite from Peter Carey