As the Page Turns (the Book Thread)

I recently finished Emma Donoghue’s “The Wonder” and can’t really recommend it. It’s set in the mid 1800s and focuses on a Nightingale and Irish nurse/nun overseeing a two week 24/7 watch over an 11 year old girl that claims to have gone four months without food. Nothing of interest happens other than mundane details of the watch until the last 40 or so pages and by that time, I was just trudging along to finish. I was looking forward to reading “Room”
by the same author but this one has given me a pause.

LOVED Elin Hilderbrand’s “Summer of ‘69” that is a family drama set in, you guessed it...1969! The moon landing and Teddy Kennedy’s famous accident are minor subplots as the story focuses on an upper middle class mother sending her only son off to war and her three daughters at various crossroads in their lives. I love most of Elin’s books but I’d say this one is in my upper tier of her catalogue.

I’m close to a third of the way through Liane Moriarty’s “Truly, Madly Guilty” and while I typically enjoy her books, this one feels like work so far.
 
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ryanj07 said:
LOVED Elin Hilderbrand’s “Summer of ‘69” that is a family drama set in, you guessed it...1969!
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I just got this at the library. Funny, reading the synopsis online, they called it historical fiction. I know 1969 is "history", but I think of historical as being Victorian or civil war or something, not something I lived through. ha ha I'll have to put the classic rock t.v station on while I'm reading it.
 
Susan1 said:
I just got this at the library. Funny, reading the synopsis online, they called it historical fiction. I know 1969 is "history", but I think of historical as being Victorian or civil war or something, not something I lived through. ha ha I'll have to put the classic rock t.v station on while I'm reading it.
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Heh, never have I felt so old as I did when my daughter asked me to explain something that had come up in her history class, and not only was it something that happened in my lifetime, it was something that happened when I was an adult :yikes:.
 
Prancer said:
Heh, never have I felt so old as I did when my daughter asked me to explain something that had come up in her history class, and not only was it something that happened in my lifetime, it was something that happened when I was an adult :yikes:.
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I was just in grade school (Catholic) in 1969, but my two best friends in the neighborhood who went to public school had older sisters, and I knew all their friends.

When I got to 9th grade in public school, some girls had POW bracelets from strangers, but I didn't know of anybody who personally knew anybody who was in Vietnam. I'm sure there were. It was probably in the local papers when they left or came home. The closest "link" to Vietnam was when my friend's dad had to pick up her oldest sister, who was a freshman at Kent State, after the shootings. They probably had war protests in Dayton or something, but I was just a kid and wouldn't have paid attention.

I don't remember thinking anything about Vietnam till I was an adult, from movies or t.v. (China Beach?). 1969 was the best year for music though.
 
So I read three Ruth Ware books in a row (Turn of the Key, The Woman in Cabin 10 and The Death of Mrs Westaway) and I think I'm done. Interesting premises, not bad writing, interesting characters - to a point. I did feel that her central inevitably somewhat damaged characters, while quite different on the surface, were in many ways essentially the same person, who somehow continues to obsess on the same point for pages and pages and returns to the same (solvable) obsession over and over. I also found all three endings somewhat drawn out and in the end not worth it. I might read one again in future when I'm in that kind of mood, but for now, no.

Next, a complete change of pace, based on a NY Times Book Review, I started reading Garth Greenwell's Cleanness and :eek:. Excellent writing, gorgeous prose and also paints vivid pictures of a place I know nothing about (Sofia, Bulgaria) and more importantly, expresses emotion in ways that are both beautiful and heartbreaking. It's heavy though - at times very brutal in more ways than one, but definitely worth it.

In fact, having just finished one particularly graphic chapter and then browsing the beach reads table at the bookstore, I picked up another book that turns out to be a YA, which I usually don't read but I know a lot on this thread do so I thought I'd share. It had a cute cover, the premise was fun, what the heck before I go back to the mean streets of Sofia. Sadly, Alex Light's The Upside of Falling was terrible. Some cute moments sure, but the writing was awful, the characters unrealistic, huge plot holes and, while she thanked an editor at the end, I have no idea what that editor actually did.

For example, at one point it's been established that it's a Monday, and yet the characters talk about something that happened in class yesterday. Repeatedly in what is apparently a very small town, a senior student who has lived there her whole life doesn't know the names of her classmates (how big is this school??). Another student, the dreamboat character, has never had a girlfriend because he needs to concentrate on football (um, so that's fall, what about winter, spring and summer?). There was physical stuff too - how is it that when a boy puts his arm around a girl's waist their fingers are entwined at the same time as she is holding her school books? :lol: I actually engaged my husband in trying it out, and we couldn't make it work based on the description of the scene and the apparent sizes of the characters.

Spoiler just in case anyone plans to read this
then by the time they get to the big romantic sex scene, it's so unbelievable that I truly expected the next chapter to begin with the main character saying that's how she'd imagined it based on all the romance novels she reads because, seriously.

But by far my biggest beef was the repeated use of the word "grab." Every character was constantly grabbing - their books, their laptops, cupcakes, you name it, and literally as many as three times on one short page. No one ever calmly picked something up, gently took another's hand, or apparently ate anything without an accompanying shoving action. And it's not like we're writing by hand or on typewriters any more - it's called "Find" Ms Light, and the other function you need to acquaint yourself with is the Thesaurus. And get a new editor while you're at it.
 
Finished Isabel Allende's newest, A Long Petal of the Sea. The story goes from the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s to the 1990s in Chile. Story was mostly interesting, but the tone throughout was super monotone. With 100 pages left to go I couldn't imagine what was left to tell, and toward the very end I noticed more and more how the author doesn't seem to like women much, or maybe just buys into a lot of tedious tropes about women.

I am now interested in learning more about 20th century politics in Spain, Chile and Venezuela, but have no desire to read another Allende book.
 
Susan1 said:
I don't remember thinking anything about Vietnam till I was an adult, from movies or t.v. (China Beach?). 1969 was the best year for music though.
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I thought about it a lot after seeing a film showing or depicting Kent State (The Strawberry Statement or another film). I was 12 or 13 at the time. The army jacket with a peace symbol made on the side with studs, and the ripped jeans (fashion sure is about what goes around, comes around) were seen to follow. And the hitchhiking. And of course :smokin:and :nopryde:.
 
I remember the Vietnam War and protests against it quite well. Also, Kent State and the assassination of MLK. I was 11 for that one so I think I benefited from a mom who kept up with current events including watching the evening news.
 
I have read just a few pages of 'Girl, Woman, Other' and am not sure I'm going to be able to read it. :slinkaway The lack of punctuation/poetic style annoys me (If I want poetry, I'll read poetry) and seems pretentious, at least at this point.

Add to that the fact that there are so many different characters, which might or might not bother/distract me.

But I'll keep going for a bit since so many have raved about this book.

ETA: Nope, can't read this book. Disappointed.
 
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So I've read so much depressing stuff lately, I picked up The Time for Murder is Meow by TC Lotempio. It's one of those quirky small-town murder mysteries with cats. I liked it, even though I figured out the murderer early on. My only snark would be how the protagonist didn't figure it out or maybe what I thought was a clue wasn't really a clue. I dunno.
 
In preparation for the temporary apocalypse (aka flu quarantine) I picked up a bunch of books from the library yesterday. Started with Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, had previously requested Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake (never read it!) and then got 2 others I'm not familiar with. I'm ready!
 
I HATED Oryx and Crake. HATED. I was just hate reading it after about three chapters.

But, um, maybe you'll like it. :shuffle:
 
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PrincessLeppard said:
I HATED Oryx and Crake. HATED. I was just hate reading it after about three chapters.

But, um, maybe you'll like it. :shuffle:
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I loved it so much that I read it two times - and I rarely read books a second time. And the ending was for me a stroke of mastery or sheer genius.
 
nlloyd said:
For readers of dystopian literature, ABEbooks has published a list of the 60 best dystopian books. The list was compiled by Jessica Doyle and includes images of book covers and summaries.
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Thank you so much for this; your timing is perfect. My husband loves dystopian literature and he's sick. I found several new titles on that list for him and he's now curled up in bed with American War and has a couple of others in reserve.
 
You're welcome @Prancer and @PrincessLeppard. I don't read much dystopian literature myself, but I knew there was an interest on this forum. ABEbooks publishes a these kinds of list each year, and I enjoy the responses of readers as much as the lists themselves. Comments can be found at the bottom of the page.

On a different note, bibliophiles might be interested in a documentary on the New York rare book trade, The Booksellers. It was released in the US today, I believe, and has had some good reviews. The trailer can be viewed from the Guardian article linked to above.

Hope your husband is better soon, Prancer.
 
I'm reading The Summer Book, by Tove Jannsson, and finding it very calming but also moving. It's pretty much just the day-to-day adventures of a grandmother and her granddaughter on an island during the summer; it's very peaceful but also very funny and not at all mawkish or false - the granddaughter is sort of a brat, but in a way I like, and the grandmother is obviously quite ill but in an understated way. I'm probably doing a terrible job of describing it but I really think people here might like it!
 
Michalle said:
I'm reading The Summer Book, by Tove Jannsson, and finding it very calming but also moving. It's pretty much just the day-to-day adventures of a grandmother and her granddaughter on an island during the summer; it's very peaceful but also very funny and not at all mawkish or false - the granddaughter is sort of a brat, but in a way I like, and the grandmother is obviously quite ill but in an understated way. I'm probably doing a terrible job of describing it but I really think people here might like it!
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I can second the recommedation! Hope the translation to English is good.
 
Jenny said:
So I read three Ruth Ware books in a row (Turn of the Key, The Woman in Cabin 10 and The Death of Mrs Westaway) and I think I'm done. Interesting premises, not bad writing, interesting characters - to a point. I did feel that her central inevitably somewhat damaged characters, while quite different on the surface, were in many ways essentially the same person, who somehow continues to obsess on the same point for pages and pages and returns to the same (solvable) obsession over and over. I also found all three endings somewhat drawn out and in the end not worth it. I might read one again in future when I'm in that kind of mood, but for now, no.
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I just finished Turn of the Key and read The Death of Mrs. Westaway in the fall, and I agree, especially about the central characters and the drawn out endings. I was very heavily skimming Turn of the Key and I found that I also just didn't care. So that's not a good sign, nor encouragement to read her books any further.

At least I did get through that one, unlike Alice McDermott's The Ninth Hour. I made it through the first chapter, which was 10% of the book, found I had no interest in what happened in the rest of the book nor did I like the writing style, so back to the library it went. I get annoyed when that happens with a book that has sat on my hold list for a long time because it has been taking up valuable room for a book I could actually enjoy.

Non-fiction reading was more successful. Ronan Farrow's Catch and Kill, mostly about his pursuit of the Harvey Weinstein story, was very good. I thought She Said was a stronger book, but both are worth reading. I've noticed that I really like books about the journalistic process. Both books were better in the first section, where they stuck to the pursuit of the story, and weaker in the last 25-30%, talking about related MeToo topics. I think they could have stopped at the impact of the Weinstein stories, but it was like their publisher said to them "This book isn't long enough", so they padded it at the end.

I also recently read Educated by Tara Westover, her memoir about growing up being "home-schooled" by what I would call religious nutjobs and eventually going to BYU at 17 and on to higher education at Cambridge and Harvard. It's very much in the vein of The Glass Castle and, to a lesser extent, Hillbilly Elegy - growing up poor (in more ways than one) and getting out. Like The Glass Castle, it was very hard to read about the child abuse that happened in her life and the mental illness that was at least partially to blame for it. But well-written and hard to put down.
 
Erin said:
I just finished Turn of the Key and read The Death of Mrs. Westaway in the fall, and I agree, especially about the central characters and the drawn out endings. I was very heavily skimming Turn of the Key and I found that I also just didn't care. So that's not a good sign, nor encouragement to read her books any further.
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I enjoyed all three, although they were just good IMO, not memorable. I will probably read more Ruth Ware books in future.

As mentioned above, very disappointed that I was quickly put off of Girl, Woman, Other. :( Someone mentioned that it was really an anthology, and if I'd not been put off by the writing style, I think I might not have continued because I like a story with central characters and character development.
 
Just finished another contemporary British thriller by an author I'd never heard of (it was on the discount table at the bookstore) but she actually has quite a few books, including three Poirot novels authorized by the Christie estate. It was pretty good! Perfect Little Children by Sophie Hannah, which in Britain was published as Haven't They Grown. That's the opening premise - the narrator spots a friend she hasn't seen in 12 years, only she's with her two children who have apparently not aged at all.

The writing was good - those little moments where something or someone is described in an unusual but somehow precise way that I enjoy immensely - the plot had me turning the pages, and the payoff, while not totally blowing my mind, made sense given everything we'd been told leading up to it.

The thing that was quite different from Ruth Ware is that this narrator was not damaged, more just a normal person with their own quirks and insecurities and a secret or two, but otherwise had her head on straight. Unusually, at least in this particular genre from what I've read, is that the narrator was open about the mystery she was trying to solve - talking about it, asking people, enlisting help. So different from other stories where you want to scream at the page "why don't you just tell him!!!"

Anyway, I liked it :) Interested to hear if others have read her and recommend other titles.
 
I just finished The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11. I really enjoyed it -- lots of different perspectives from each of the events and from around the US.

One thing I didn't know: After Osama bin Laden was killed, before Obama had his press conference, he called W to let him know, and then sent an advisor down to Texas to give him the details. So much respect there. :)
 
I am on chapter 6 of Case Histories by Kate Atkinson. And that’s it, I’m out. I will not make it to chapter 7. The writing is okay but what a bunch of disagreeable characters. It’s supposed to be a mystery but 95% of it is dysfunctional family drama. Meh.
 
Next up is Lovely War. I had go check the jacket notes because I couldn’t remember what it was about and was worried I am about to walk into another dud. But whew, this is a young adult novel. I’m usually good with those.
 
snoopy said:
Next up is Lovely War. I had go check the jacket notes because I couldn’t remember what it was about and was worried I am about to walk into another dud. But whew, this is a young adult novel. I’m usually good with those.
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I read it back in the summer. It took me a little while to get into and had a framing device that I didn’t care for. But those things aside, I really enjoyed it. I mention the things I didn’t like only because I was nearly put off by the framing device at the beginning, but I ended up being really glad I stuck with it.
 
I finished the final book of the Illuminae series, and was pleased that it held up, and that all three books were excellent. It's a sci-fi/dystopian YA series, and if you decide to read it, I would read all three in a row because there are A LOT of characters (new characters in books 1 and 2 who all meet up in three), and it took me awhile to figure out who was who. Oh, there's also a psychotic HAL-like computer. :watch: It's a good time.
 
Somebody's doing what I'm doing again. This is the second old (2007) James Grippando Jack Swyteck book in a row that I reserved that already has a reserve on it. The one I have now was overdue when I checked on it after a month. I "asked a librarian" where it might be, because it always says you can't renew a book if there is a hold on it somewhere. You don't have to pay fines anymore, so I guess people don't care. She wrote back that she contacted them and let them know. It was back in the library in a couple days.
 
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