What Are You Reading Now? - September 2010

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What Are You Reading Now? - September 2010

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1richardderus
Sept. 2, 2010, 1:53 am

I got a copy of Larry Rosen's book Rewired: Understanding the iGeneration and the Way They Learn, which was informative, well-built, and chillingly life-sappingly depressing.

I reviewed it in my thread... post #91.

2urania1
Sept. 2, 2010, 11:09 pm

I am almost finished with Muriel Spark's Aiding and Abetting. It is a delightfully wicked little book.

3bragan
Sept. 2, 2010, 11:23 pm

I'm finishing up my June ER book, Bozo Sapiens: Why to Err is Human. I have slightly mixed feelings about it, but overall I think it's quite worthwhile.

4Mr.Durick
Sept. 3, 2010, 1:02 am

Urania, I have both volumes one and two of The Novels of Muriel Spark. Aiding and Abetting is in neither. Should I take that as an omen?

Robert

5wandering_star
Sept. 3, 2010, 3:09 am

I am reading Your Blue-Eyed Boy by Helen Dunmore, one of my 'controversial books'. I can see why - it's very well-written and well-crafted, but also extremely unsettling (it seems to be about how narrow the border is between a safe, comfortable life and chaos).

6RidgewayGirl
Sept. 3, 2010, 8:24 am

I'm happily reading Michael Gruber's The Forgery of Venus, which is much better than I'd expected it to be.

8rebeccanyc
Sept. 3, 2010, 10:00 am

I'm reading Hitler and Stalin and will be for a while, and also Death in the Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa.

9urania1
Bearbeitet: Sept. 4, 2010, 12:15 am

Mr. Durick,

Do you need to be aided and abetted in some fashion? If so, then I would take the absence of Aiding and Abetting from your collection as an omen. I would lend you mine, but alas it is in kindle format. I have been waiting for Momento Mori to arrive via Kindle.

10Mr.Durick
Sept. 3, 2010, 4:33 pm

Ah! Memento Mori is in volume 1. If I can find it, I'll read it.

Robert

11tros
Sept. 3, 2010, 9:34 pm

"Remember, you're going to die." Sounds hilarious!
One more for the TBR pile.

12urania1
Sept. 4, 2010, 12:19 am

I have begun The Misadventures of the New Satan by Anton Tammsaare (1878-1940), an Estonian writer widely regarded "as Estonia's greatest writer." It is hysterically funny.

13avaland
Sept. 4, 2010, 7:54 am

Not concentrating on reading very easily, but started Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates the other evening...

14timjones
Sept. 4, 2010, 9:06 am

I am reading - or, at least, I'm supposed to be reading - The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini - for my book group which meets on Monday. This is a real "book group book" - the edition even has discussion questions for book groups at the back - which is exactly the sort of book we don't usually read. I suggested it for the group, and I've enjoyed the little I've read.

But I've been so busy over the past couple of weeks that I haven't been able to settle to reading anything more than a few paragraphs long. I've just finished the last task in my backlog, and though there's a "frontlog" which has built up while I've been dealing with the backlog, I might be able to settle to reading again soon.

When I do, and while I finish The Kite Runner, I've got a couple of short story collections to get my teeth into.

The first is A Foreign Country: New Zealand Speculative Fiction, edited by Anna Caro and Juliet Buchanan, which has just been launched and in which I have a story.

Next, there's There Once Lived A Woman Who Tried To Kill Her Neighbor's Baby, by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, which I'm reviewing for Belletrista.

At the rate I'm going, that will be the month's reading pretty much taken care of.

15rebeccanyc
Sept. 4, 2010, 10:22 am

Finished and reviewed (on my thread and on the book page) Death in the Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa.

16tros
Sept. 4, 2010, 11:51 am

Dirt Music A promising beginning. Thanks to wandering_star's review.

17kidzdoc
Sept. 5, 2010, 12:07 pm

I finished two books yesterday, Room by Emma Donoghue from the current Booker Prize longlist, and Closing the Chart: A Dying Physician Examines Family, Faith and Medicine by Steven D. Hsi, MD. I've reviewed both books on their respective LT home pages.

Today I'll finish Yesterday by Maria Dermoût, and The Half-Finished Heaven: The Best Poems of Tomas Tranströmer.

BTW, I read The Elephant's Journey by José Saramago last week, and wrote a review of it yesterday.

18bobmcconnaughey
Sept. 5, 2010, 2:59 pm

Started another Renko, Red Square while not body surfing off Topsail Island and finished it last night. Good, again.

In the midst of great books by David Denby (the film critic). He goes back to Columbia a couple of decades post graduation, and audits the two required "great books/western civ" courses again. His brief essays on each text and discussions about the class discussions are often fascinating.

19Cait86
Sept. 5, 2010, 8:15 pm

Finished the wonderful February by Lisa Moore, and have moved on to Trespass by Rose Tremain.

20rebeccanyc
Sept. 6, 2010, 10:53 am

I finished and reviewed (on my thread and on the book page) Wigs on the Green by Nancy Mitford, a sprightly romantic comedy and satire marred by its joking take on fascism and the Nazis.

21urania1
Sept. 6, 2010, 3:15 pm

>20 rebeccanyc:,

But then some of those Mitfords had interesting relationships with fascists and Nazis.

22urania1
Sept. 6, 2010, 3:24 pm

>20 rebeccanyc:,

But then some of those Mitfords had interesting relationships with fascists and Nazis.

23rebeccanyc
Sept. 6, 2010, 3:57 pm

Yes, one of the characters is modeled on Unity, the one who went to Germany and met Hitler and then tried to kill herself, but while she was still in England, and Nancy apparently (according to the introduction by Diana's daughter, Charlotte) took out most of the material modeled on Mosley, Diana's husband, but it didn't stop Diana from not talking to her. I realize Nancy was trying to poke fun at her relatives, but it's just hard to take Nazism as a laughing matter. Nancy refused to allow the book, originally published in 1935, to be reprinted in her lifetime.

24avaland
Sept. 6, 2010, 7:12 pm

Finished Zombie and now feeling a but unstable...not quite ready to go back to Dreams of Speaking so who knows what I will pick up (for fiction) next. Meanwhile I have found my copy of The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World by Michelle Goldberg and will probably follow Nickelini and nibble away at it.

25kidzdoc
Sept. 6, 2010, 7:45 pm

I finished Yesterday by Maria Dermoût on Sunday, along with The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers. I just bought a copy of Skippy Dies by Paul Murray, which was longlisted for this year's Booker Prize, and I'll start that tonight.

26auntmarge64
Sept. 7, 2010, 8:55 am

My 10-year old niece is consumed with the whittling down my shelves of TBR (about 140 physical books at the moment, + Kindle books), so she's taken to picking out books that look interesting to her (mostly cover art, I think). My current "Caitlin Pick" is Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinksi. It takes place in Thailand, a new venue for my reading. Hmmmm, I may have to change one of my 11 in 11 Challenge categories to be Caitlin Picks.

I'm also meandering through Presidential Doodles, a title I saw on BookMooch. It's pretty entertaining, especially the forward, which describes the difficulty of doodling with a quill-tip pen and (two generations of pen evolution later) the distrust with which ballpoints were met.

27rebeccanyc
Bearbeitet: Sept. 7, 2010, 8:56 am

There was a great review of Skippy Dies in the Sunday NY Times Book Review this week, but it did not sound like it would appeal to me. I passed it up in a bookstore last week too. So I'll be interested in what you think, Darryl.

Edited to fix link.

28richardderus
Sept. 7, 2010, 11:52 pm

I've reviewed and recommended the grim, cold, exciting follow-up to "Child 44"...The Secret Speech is a terrible (in the original sense) thrill ride!

29richardderus
Sept. 8, 2010, 12:01 pm

I've reviewed the last book in a favorite time-travel series, "The Merchant Princes" by Charles Stross. The review is of The Trade of Queens...post #182.

30richardderus
Sept. 8, 2010, 2:20 pm

I've finished and reviewed Bury Your Dead in my thread...post #186.

What else need I say? You've either already drunk from Penny's Kool-Aid and are on the Three Pines Express, or you're a mutant alien from a galaxy where life is silicon-based and therefore don't get it.

31urania1
Sept. 8, 2010, 11:04 pm

I finished Miss Mole and The Misses Mallett, both by E. H. Young. I thoroughly enjoyed Miss Mole. I found The Misses Mallett irritating. I wanted to slap most of the characters. I am currently reading Zero History by William Gibson. What can I say? Reading a William Gibson book is one of my not so secret sins and joys.

32RidgewayGirl
Sept. 9, 2010, 7:39 am

Still reading Wolf Hall, which, especially given my extreme disinterest in that era of English history, is compelling and very difficult to put down.

I'm about to begin The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman and just got my ER book for the month, so will be reading Arctic Chill by Arnaldur Indridason in the near future.

33avaland
Sept. 10, 2010, 9:25 am

I finished Oates's Zombie and Helon Habila's Oil on Water (mesmerizing!), and have now started Gish Jen's forthcoming novel, World and Town.

34bragan
Sept. 10, 2010, 10:10 am

Yesterday I finished I Am Not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells, and I have now started on Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction, which is a horribly unwieldy title, but which seems to have some good stuff in it.

35bobmcconnaughey
Sept. 10, 2010, 3:17 pm

will make headway into zero history once the US Open stops its lovely streaming of all matches.

36rebeccanyc
Sept. 14, 2010, 9:32 am

I've just finished and reviewed (on my reading thread and on the book page) the wonderful The Master and Margarita. What a great book!

37urania1
Sept. 14, 2010, 1:00 pm

I am currently reading The Corset: A Cultural History and grazing in a desultory fashion several other books. Overall, with a few possible exceptions, I would say this has been the year of bad reading for me. Once again I find myself in search of the really good book. In its absence, I wish Mary Novik's Conceit would come out in the US. I know that there once was a Kindle edition somewhere (not available in the US) but that has yet to make an appearance.

38lilisin
Sept. 17, 2010, 10:26 am

Just read the short novella Gibiers d'élevage by Kenzaburo Oe on the plane. I'm currently travelling and changing locations every 4 days though so reading hasn't been very doable. Might stop in a bookstore here in Colombia if I can to having something to read on the plane later.

39avaland
Sept. 17, 2010, 11:42 am

I've finished & left my comments on Gish Jen's forthcoming novel, World and Town. It's an engaging and thoughtful story that I liked very much.

40urania1
Bearbeitet: Sept. 17, 2010, 4:00 pm

I am still reading The Corset: A Cultural History, but the pictures are quite distracting. I finished Spanking Shakespeare last night. It's one of those books that belongs in that category . . . you know the one a certain dominatrix doesn't like. It is a humorous novel about high school as narrated by Shakespeare Shapiro. Highly recommended by people who read "this" kind of book :-)

41dchaikin
Bearbeitet: Sept. 18, 2010, 1:04 am

oh, where will we go next year? See here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/98800

as a person who was very careful to read only one book at a time for all my reading life, I'm now on a very different path, reading four books at once (six if you count the two I haven't picked up in awhile).

Two are on going
1.) Fidel by Néstor Kohan & Nahuel Scherma
2.) Threads from the Web of Life : Stories in Natural History by Stephen Daubert & Chris Daubert

and two I just started...yesterday
3. ) Offloading the Wounded : Poems by Jeffrey C. Alfier - Jeffrey in a online friend who I met through lt. This is his second published collection. He also publishes a poetry review - the San Pedro River Review.
4.) Desert by J. M. G. Le Clézio - I'm looking forward to reading another le clezio

also I just receive Wolf Hall as an Early Reviewer, that will come soon.

And, since I'm late here, I've recently finished Within a Budding Grove by Proust, but I'm little spend on Proust and will wait a bit before I pick up the next book. I've also recently read Tinkers by Paul Harding (the last Pulitzer winner), Going after Cacciato by Tim O'Brien (from 1978), and a random volume of the Sulphur River Literary Review : (Autumnal Equinox 2004)...which was a wonderful.

42dchaikin
Sept. 18, 2010, 1:05 am

Darryl - I'm looking forward to your review of Skippy Dies...I'm very interested in the book (even though it didn't make the short list).

43bobmcconnaughey
Sept. 18, 2010, 8:11 am

finished the harvard psychedelic club and countdown - being a kid in the DC metro area during the Cuban missile crisis. A few words about both on my slouch. The first was ..banal, the second, quite wonderful.

44kidzdoc
Sept. 18, 2010, 1:23 pm

#42: Dan, I put aside Skippy Dies temporarily, as I decided to bring C by Tom McCarthy with me to London (I've been here since Wednesday).

I'm also reading The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings by James Baldwin, which is fantastic so far, and the book that contains the transcript of the play Danton's Death by George Büchner, which I saw at the National Theatre earlier this afternoon.

45bragan
Sept. 18, 2010, 2:02 pm

Recently finished The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa. Now reading The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner. Next up: Forge of Heaven by C.J. Cherryh.

46dchaikin
Sept. 18, 2010, 10:04 pm

Bragan - 2 1/2 yrs ago I read geography of bliss and really enjoyed it. This was shortly after it came out (I have an OK, but unread review posted) I'll be interested in your take.

47ncgraham
Sept. 18, 2010, 11:08 pm

I'm making my way through a series of Gothic-toned classics, having recently finished The Woman in White and Wuthering Heights. Dracula is my next planned read, but first I have to finish The Oepidus Plays of Sophocles for school, and Mockingjay is calling me in spite of myself....

Also recently posted a bunch of updates in my thread. Please drop by if you're interested!

48bragan
Sept. 18, 2010, 11:22 pm

>46 dchaikin:: I'm almost finished The Geography of Bliss now, and I am also really enjoying it.

(And I may slip Simon's Cat in before Forge of Heaven, I think...)

>47 ncgraham:: I'll be interested to hear what you think about The Woman in White. I read The Moonstone earlier this year and loved it, so I'm thinking I really must read some more Wilkie Collins soon.

49ncgraham
Sept. 18, 2010, 11:30 pm

I loved The Woman in White! My favorite book so far this year, not counting rereads. I posted a little bit about it in my thread already, and a full review is forthcoming.

The Moonstone is definitely going to happen in 2011.

50charbutton
Sept. 19, 2010, 8:19 am

I'm just about to start Spring Flowers, Spring Frost by Ismail Kadare.

>44 kidzdoc:, I'm off to see Danton's Death on Wednesday afternoon. Did you enjoy it?

51rebeccanyc
Sept. 19, 2010, 9:03 am

Finished and reviewed the entertaining Blue Trout and Black Truffles: The Peregrinations of an Epicure by Joseph Wechsberg for the "read a hard cover book with a dust wrapper in an edition published before 1960" challenge.

52detailmuse
Sept. 19, 2010, 1:58 pm

I'm on my second attempt at Ian McEwan's Saturday on audio, and reading Steve Martin's upcoming novel, An Object of Beauty. Also just got Chip Kidd: Book one from the library and think it's going to be great -- huge, illustrated, memoirish: Chip Kidd's first 20 years designing book covers at Knopf.

53RidgewayGirl
Sept. 19, 2010, 2:15 pm

I've finished Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel and Arctic Chill by Arnaldur Indridason and have turned my attention to The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman.

54avaland
Sept. 19, 2010, 5:36 pm

I have abandoned my 1926 novel and have picked up Not to Disturb by Muriel Spark. It's a comedy, and perhaps I should not have watched the last half of the movie "Airplane!" before beginning this book, because I think I'm reading the lines deadpan like it's Leslie Neilsen, Peter Graves...etc delivering them.

55kidzdoc
Bearbeitet: Sept. 19, 2010, 6:29 pm

#50: I did enjoy "Danton's Death", Char. Fliss (flissp) from the 75 Books group saw it this afternoon; we met for lunch, as I saw "The Habit of Art" at the NT today, which was also good (and hilariously funny!).

I finished "C" by Tom McCarthy today, which was a painful slog of a read. I'll finish Danton's Death tomorrow, along with The Sickness by Alberto Barrera Tyszka, and I'm still reading The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings by James Baldwin.

56stretch
Sept. 19, 2010, 6:57 pm

I've pushed The Historian aside, with just a little over hundred pages to go. I hate being shy a few pages from finishing. For the time being I can no longer take the slow plodding travelogue of a novel.

In the mean time I'm continuing with Maps of Time, which have learned so much about the early formation of societies. The "creation" myth that Christian has formed is a complete synthesis of modern science and an overview of history to tell us how we as species we got here. A well researched if academically dry story I still find it to be a very engaging and worthwhile.

I have also started Fires on the Plain which Lilisin recommended to me earlier this year, and to say the least won't disappoint.

57janemarieprice
Sept. 19, 2010, 7:46 pm

Right now I've diverted to Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy. Trying to decied what is next.

58ncgraham
Sept. 19, 2010, 8:53 pm

#56: Ah, don't say that! The Historian was one of the next books on my list :(

59dchaikin
Sept. 20, 2010, 9:19 am

stretch - I just read lilisin's review and added Fires on the Plain to my wishlist.

60tomcatMurr
Sept. 20, 2010, 12:15 pm

darryl, I'm very interested to hear what you think about Baldwin's essays. Baldwin is one of my heroes.

Woman in White is a masterpiece, Collins's best book, imo.

I am reading a marvellously engrossing history of the Romanov Dynasty: The Romanovs

61RidgewayGirl
Sept. 20, 2010, 1:35 pm

I've just finished The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman, which I read because of positive comments here and which I loved.

I'm still slogging through The March by E.L. Doctorow, which is not a bad book, or a boring one, but it is about war and its aftermath, told in a way that does not sugarcoat anything, so I'm attacking it in stages.

I've picked up The Master of Rain by Tom Bradby and have read the first few pages.

62ncgraham
Sept. 20, 2010, 1:39 pm

Agreed, Murr. A masterpiece. Which is slightly sad, because of course I want to read more of his work, and yet I know that very little if any of it will stack up....

63lilisin
Sept. 20, 2010, 7:42 pm

56, 59 -
Happy to see Fires on the Plain getting much needed recognition. I hope you guys enjoy it as much as I did.

64stretch
Sept. 20, 2010, 7:56 pm

>58 ncgraham:. It's not that it's a bad book. Really doesn't fit my need for a more plot driven novel. And I have few issues with the over all logical progression of clues, but that's just my hang up.

>59 dchaikin: & 63: I'm only eighty or so pages in and loving it. Ooka is able to say so much with far fewer words then any other author I think I've ever come across.

65tomcatMurr
Sept. 20, 2010, 9:27 pm

62> his four best books are:

WiW
Armadale
The Moonstone
No Name

WiW is easily the best, but the others are fun too.

66kidzdoc
Sept. 20, 2010, 11:59 pm

#60: Will do, Murr; I should finish it by the weekend.

67rebeccanyc
Sept. 21, 2010, 6:01 pm

I finished and reviewed a strange collection of stories by Gyula Krúdy, Life Is a Dream, not up to his Sunflower.

68charbutton
Sept. 21, 2010, 6:05 pm

I finished Spring Flowers, Spring Frost today and I'm not quite sure what to make of it. I also started and finished A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid, a critique of British colonial rule in Antigua and the governments that have followed independence. And I've just started The Kingdom of the this World by Alejo Carpentier.

Oh, and I bought 5 new books.

I love being on holiday!!

69bobmcconnaughey
Bearbeitet: Sept. 25, 2010, 8:04 am

Dipping in and out of the art of the sonnet. 100 sonnets - starting with Thomas Wyatt, 1557 and ending with D.A. Powell 2009 with terrifyingly erudite, yet literate and well written commentaries on each. The two authors explicate each sonnet on its own, but also tie in the sometimes amazingly complex skein of allusions that each sonnet invokes. I certainly need to reread the Old Testament, in particular, to listen in more clearly on the discussions between the sonnets/poets/and authors.

The name of one of the authors, Stephen Burt, struck a bell after several dips..and while he's now at Harvard, he had been a teacher in the Macalester English dept while Adam was there.
When i mentioned the book and Burt to Adam, having made the connection, Adam's response: "he's probably the smartest person i've ever met." Before I'd made the link, I'd thought, while reading, "THIS is the reason why Adam ditched maths and music composition." There's nothing arcane or obscure about the 2-3 pages essays - but the depth of learning and understanding they display is like nothing i've read before.

70dchaikin
Sept. 22, 2010, 10:47 am

#69 Bob - it's on my wishlist now.

71tomcatMurr
Sept. 22, 2010, 11:15 am

And on mine too.

72bobmcconnaughey
Sept. 22, 2010, 11:26 am

70-71: i'm about to order a copy for Adam.
We're REALLY lucky in terms of the quality of books we have available in a small town library.

73avaland
Sept. 22, 2010, 8:31 pm

>69 bobmcconnaughey: I saw that in the bookstore, Bob. I have another small volume called American Sonnets.

74timjones
Sept. 24, 2010, 12:52 am

It's been a mixed bag for me lately - as usual! I've read and enjoyed an anthology of cricket poetry, A Tingling Catch; failed to get engaged with The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini; really enjoyed, of all things, the Lonely Planet Guide to Greenland and the Arctic; and also enjoyed poetry chapbook Heading North, by Helen Rickerby.

I read the Greenland guide at a time when I was extremely busy & didn't have the concentration for lengthy narratives; one to two pages each about villages I'll never visit and paths I'll never walk was just the ticket!

At the moment, I'm reading two short story collections, A Foreign Country: New Zealand Speculative Fiction, and There Once Lived A Woman Who Tried To Kill Her Neighbor's Baby by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, which I'm reviewing for Belletrista.

Having (almost, almost) finished the latest round of revisions on my novel manuscript, I want to get back into writing short stories, so it's a good time to remind myself of how it's done.

75kidzdoc
Bearbeitet: Sept. 24, 2010, 8:54 am

Yesterday I finished two books: The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings by James Baldwin, a new collection of essays, speeches, lectures, book reviews, and a short story that were all previously unpublished in book form, which was superb; and A Country Doctor's Notebook by Mikhail Bulgakov, a collection of short stories based on the author's experiences as a newly minted doctor in an isolated Russian village just before the Revolution, which was very good.

Earlier in the week I read The Sickness by Alberto Barrera Tyszka, a superb novel about a doctor whose father is dying of cancer, while a patient of his is obsessed with a mysterious illness; the transcript of the play Danton's Death by Georg Büchner that I saw at the National Theatre in London on Saturday, which dealt with the friendship of and rivalry between Georges Danton and Maximilien Robespierre during the French Revolution; and C by Tom McCarthy, a novel that is on the Booker Prize shortlist that I didn't enjoy at all (my least favorite of the eight or nine longlisted books I've read so far).

I'm currently reading Blindness by José Saramago for a group read, and I'll start Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire by Iain Sinclair today or tomorrow.

76avaland
Sept. 24, 2010, 8:40 am

I'm reading Buddha's Orphans by Nepalese author Samrat Upadhyay. Engaging story, comfy prose thus far... (I enjoyed his first novel, The Guru of Love back in 2002 or 03. He had a collection in between that and this, I think.

77bobmcconnaughey
Sept. 24, 2010, 2:33 pm

i couldn't finish the kite runner. I anticipate renewing the art of the sonnet until someone puts a hold on it as 2-4 sonnets at a time is pretty much the amount i can absorb in my dotage. Reading a friend's screenplay about Alexander the Great in India. He's had a couple sold but no movie yet, so we'll see. At least i'm learning more about classical Greek military techniques/strategy than i've ever known (but then i am starting w/ no knowledge). I've also put aside Prospero in Hell and Ophelia unfinished.

So i need to find a few good books @ the P'boro library book sale tomorrow.

78timjones
Sept. 24, 2010, 10:54 pm

>77 bobmcconnaughey:, bobmcconaughey: The main problem I had with The Kite Runner was simply that I was too busy and distracted to concentrate on it, but I also found that the author's heavy-handed foreshadowing, especially at the end of each chapter, got on my nerves. There were some wonderful scenes, but they didn't add up to a great narrative. I've been told that his next book is better paced and organised.

79bobmcconnaughey
Sept. 26, 2010, 1:22 pm

call for the dead - le Carre's introduction (1961) of George Smiley to the world. I'm quite sure i've never read this one - starts off with a charming biography of Smiley's life up to this point. As much a police procedural/mystery as it is a spy novel. Terse and very well written (128 pages!).

80RidgewayGirl
Sept. 26, 2010, 1:39 pm

I'm reading The Master of Rain by Tom Bradby, set in the Shanghai of 1926 and I'm rereading The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen.

81Cait86
Sept. 26, 2010, 1:59 pm

I'm reading The Line by Olga Grushin, and loving it so far.

82charbutton
Sept. 26, 2010, 2:14 pm

>81 Cait86:, I must add that to my wishlist. I really enjoyed The Dream Life of Sukhanov.

I'm reading The Black Jacobins by CLR James, a history of the slave revolt that led to the founding of an independent Haiti.

83stretch
Sept. 27, 2010, 9:33 pm

Just finished Fires on the Plain by Ooka Shohei, which is both beautiful and horrific in it's account of Japanese soldier losing his sanity. I believe that it deserves a bigger following then it has.

Any way back to Maps of Time for me. I might even finish The Historian now.

84richardderus
Sept. 28, 2010, 4:42 pm

I've finished and reviewed The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri, the first of the internationally successful Inspector Montalbano series, in my thread...post #244. Excellent! Really well-done!

85rebeccanyc
Sept. 28, 2010, 7:20 pm

I've finished and reviewed (on my thread and on the book page) the strange and intriguing The Queue by Vladimir Sorokin, which I read for the Reading Globally theme read on 20th century Russian fiction.

86lilisin
Sept. 29, 2010, 12:49 pm

83 - Glad to hear you really liked it! :)

87bobmcconnaughey
Sept. 29, 2010, 9:46 pm

bad monkeys - very weird.

88RidgewayGirl
Sept. 30, 2010, 10:09 am

After a satisfying reread of The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, I continue with The Master of Rain by Tom Bradby and The Roaring Girl by Greg Hollingshead, a book of short stories by a Canadian author who lives in Edmonton, the city I grew up in. Also, due to the wonders of the Interlibrary Loan, I can now read Hav by Jan Morris, courtesy of the University of Tennessee and the recommendation of TomcatMurr. How on earth am I supposed to accomplish things and tasks with good books to read?

89detailmuse
Sept. 30, 2010, 1:51 pm

Had intentions for more, but I'll likely only get to Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye during this year's Banned Books Week (ends Oct 2).