Book lovers, please share your readings and favorites

[markojp]

On another note, I have a small collection of art and architecture books. Every once in a while I look up the current selling prices for the ones that are out of print. All have at a bare minimum doubled in value from the purchase price. Some bought for $40-$60 are now in the high $400's. Too bad skis don't work like that.

 

[mdf]

liked Ken McLeod's "Newton's Wake" and Corporation-wars triology (off-screen) a lot, so I randomly picked something else he wrote. Turns out he is quite prolific.

An update. It was pretty good, but it shares a flaw I've noticed in McLeod's other books. He is no good at endings! He comes up with wild ideas, and elaborates them nicely, but then the last fifth of the book falls apart. It's like he has too many good ideas for set-ups, but then can't figure out where to go with them.

The first 4/5 of each book is good enough that I'm not going to give up on him, but be forewarned.... Maybe he needs to save some of his ideas to use as endings for other books.

 

[Rainbow Jenny]

In the last year, I would call out novels The Overstory by Richard Powers and Winter by Ali Smith. I was a latecomer to The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, but it made such a big impression that I need to mention it.


Finally there is Nabokov's Ada, for when you want to be reminded of civilization.

I’m a total Libby junkie... across 8 library cards, I have 18 books on loan with 8 others on hold. Little Women made fine bedtime listening but definitely not The Underground Railroad.

I lost steam half way through Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now despite all the optimistic statistics. Thanks to Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow for saving me and keeping me in upbeat mood for the past couple weeks. Such a delightful book and classy Count Rostov, it also allowed me to reminisce travels to St Petersburg and Moscow last year. Cannot wait to read his Rules of Civility.

I began reading Peter Mayle’s The French Lessons shortly after a morel foraging outing, they just pair so well together! I think he is the Bill Bryson in food (truffles of Richrenches, frog legs of Vittel, escargot of Martigny-les-Baines) and wine (marathon du Medoc, wine auction of Beaune), brings me plenty of chuckles at least every couple of pages.

Overstory became available around the same time as a hike with @luliski. The first dozen pages didn’t grab me, but upon re-reading, I am now fully immersed in trees and Powers’ storytelling. It’s pretty awesome to ski, ride, hike, and now read a book together with @luliski.

Happy, happy reading.

 

[mdf]

Peter Mayle...Bill Bryson

Hmmm. I find Peter Mayle amusing and Bill Bryson unreadable. Dunno know why.

 

[Erik Timmerman]

@Posaune and I are not the only ones.

The Aubrey-Maturin Series: My Captain Jacks

Patrick O’Brian’s 20-volume sea saga is more than superb genre fiction: It’s a paean to male friendship.

www.wsj.com

 

[luliski]

read a book together with @luliski.

now if we could just get on the same page!

 

[Crank]

I liked Bill Bryson's A walk In the Woods, Since then though, I also find him unreadable.
Read the Auberey Martin series on airplanes and hotel rooms back when I traveled a lot for work.

I tend to read a mix of history and current events, or recent history and also enjoy historical novels.

I have read all of Bernard Cromwell's books and usually pay full price to download his newest installment for airplane reading on a ski trip.

Right now reading a beautifully written novel called The Water Dancer about slavery and escaping slavery.

 

[Erik Timmerman]

Right now I am reading Another Bloody Love Letter by Anthony Loyd. His <y War Gone by I Miss it So was excellent. He is a war correspondent with the Times of London and also a heroin addict.

 

[Rainbow Jenny]

I decided to enter Goodreads 2020 Reading Challenge for 52 books. Am ahead of schedule currently but Anna Karenina (800+ pages) started couple nights ago will take me a while.

“Moonwalking with Eistein: the art and science of remembering everything” by Joshua Foer was entertaining. It overlapped a bit with Anders Ericsson’s book on the science of expertise but from a journalist’s self-experiment and exploration perspective.

Alum book club is reading “The Sixth Extinction: an Unnatural History” by Elizabeth Kolbert. Looks to be a heavy topic which I need to balance with a lighter summer reading. Any suggestion?

 

[SpikeDog]

An update. It was pretty good, but it shares a flaw I've noticed in McLeod's other books. He is no good at endings! He comes up with wild ideas, and elaborates them nicely, but then the last fifth of the book falls apart. It's like he has too many good ideas for set-ups, but then can't figure out where to go with them.

The first 4/5 of each book is good enough that I'm not going to give up on him, but be forewarned.... Maybe he needs to save some of his ideas to use as endings for other books.

You just described most of Stephen King's books. "It" and "Tommyknockers" are glaring examples. The gunslinger/Dark Tower series too, but at least he has a good excuse since it took him 20+ years to finish it. Great at describing the journey, sometimes ends up lost at the destination. I still love all his books tho. "The Stand" is one of the few books I will reread from time to time; that and "Lord of the Rings".

I love all of Wilbur Smith's books after "River God". Everything before that is meh, but he found his mojo after that book.

All of the Gary Jennings' "Aztec" series is engrossing. Historical fiction at it's finest.

John Grisham and Michael Critchton - I'll read anything they ever put out. Perfect for summertime at the beach.

 

[SpikeDog]

Alum book club is reading “The Sixth Extinction: an Unnatural History” by Elizabeth Kolbert. Looks to be a heavy topic which I need to balance with a lighter summer reading. Any suggestion?

Yeah, that sounds pretty heavy. Another Pulitzer prize winner along the same lines "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond. The first couple of chapters are top-notch.

 

[Rainbow Jenny]

Yeah, that sounds pretty heavy. Another Pulitzer prize winner along the same lines "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond. The first couple of chapters are top-notch.

I read most of Guns, probably due to finally finish it. It was one of the most eye-opening books I've ever read, similar to books by Yuval Noah Harari. Diamond's recent "Upheavel: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis" was a much lighter reading than Guns. He used 12 success factors and 6 countries as case studies on how nations managed their challenges, more impressionistic than heavily referenced like Guns. I was already familiar with Japan and Germany, but I found Finland and its tenuous relationship with
Russia most fascinating (having traveled to both last year). Australia (vs. US) as former British colony was worthwhile comparison. Chile and Indonesia chapters are good, two countries high up on my travel radar.

 

[Posaune]

I just finished a book I'd never heard of that I found in our neighborhood sharing library called "River Thieves" by Michael Crummey. It is set in Newfoundland at the beginning of the 19th century. It combines a wilderness type setting with deep interpersonal relationships; quite a different read. It's not easy, and not always nice, but it really makes the people real, both men and women. I may read it a second time in a bit because it contains so much. The author does not take time to explain terms, you just have to get them by context, which makes it a bit tough for a literal person like me, but it was well worth the time.

 

[MarkP]

 

[Monique]

Damn, you guys read a lot of highbrow books! Me, not so much, even during the best of times.

I'm having trouble focusing on books right now, but I absolutely inhaled Sea Wife, which I read in one (long) afternoon. I think I would have loved it even if it hadn't been about a recently widowed woman who had a difficult relationship with her husband. It's also sort of not really a murder mystery - you know from the start that he died, but not how. My two quibbles: 1. The unnecessary and jarring descriptions of political arguments with her husband, which to me seemed utterly beside the point and certainly alienating to some readers and 2. The last few pages are entirely different from the rest of the book (you'll know when you get there) and can be safely skipped. IMO.


Can I pretend to be highbrow by reading a book in another language? It's Schneewittchen Muss Sterben, which is a German crime novel. I had been looking for something that was written pretty simply (no patience for a literary work right now, let alone in a language I don't read much these days) and would keep my attention. So far, so good, about 100 pages into 600 since yesterday afternoon. The setting and the dialect bring back powerful memories of living in a small German village.

 

[Rainbow Jenny]

@Monique, thank you for sharing your reading. Every reason for book reading is perfectly legitimate, leisure, escape, learning, whatever you fancy! Are you bilingual in German, very cool

I didn't read enough classics when younger but decided to catch up during SiP: Little Women, To Kill A Mockingbird, Fahrenheit 451, Age of Innocence, etc. Russian lit intimidates me, and I perseverated over which book and which translation to read for YEARS. I favored starting one with relatively few characters so I can keep track of the Russian names, hence Anna Karenina. Wanted to avoid Garnett, Pevear and Volokhonsky translation was readily available. Knowing the plot moves rather slowly, I'm savoring phrasing like,"flicking off with her small, black-gloved hand the needles of hoar-frost that had fallen on her muff." Any novel with "hoar-frost" in it already earns bonus points in my book!

Then the nitty gritty detail of a meal with oysters from Flensburg (Germany) (not Ostend (Belgium)) before turbot sauce Beaumarchais, served with Chablis, really tip me over the edge with delight. Actually, made me think of @Tony S with all his wine and foodie photos...

 

[Jerez]

Hyeonseo Lee's Girl with Seven Names was amazing. Like Sea Wife for @Monique
I too am having a hard time reading in these times. So I have taken to listening to my books. Somehow calming so I can concentrate.

 

[Monique]

@Monique, thank you for sharing your reading. Every reason for book reading is perfectly legitimate, leisure, escape, learning, whatever you fancy! Are you bilingual in German, very cool

I didn't read enough classics when younger but decided to catch up during SiP: Little Women, To Kill A Mockingbird, Fahrenheit 451, Age of Innocence, etc. Russian lit intimidates me, and I perseverated over which book and which translation to read for YEARS. I favored starting one with relatively few characters so I can keep track of the Russian names, hence Anna Karenina. Wanted to avoid Garnett, Pevear and Volokhonsky translation was readily available. Knowing the plot moves rather slowly, I'm savoring phrasing like,"flicking off with her small, black-gloved hand the needles of hoar-frost that had fallen on her muff." Any novel with "hoar-frost" in it already earns bonus points in my book!

Then the nitty gritty detail of a meal with oysters from Flensburg (Germany) (not Ostend (Belgium)) before turbot sauce Beaumarchais, served with Chablis, really tip me over the edge with delight. Actually, made me think of @Tony S with all his wine and foodie photos...

Maybe I read too many classics when I was younger ;-)

Speaking of Russian lit, have you read The Idiot? Haven't read it in years, but I remember liking it.

I would say I *was* fluently bilingual when I was younger. By now I would say I am haltingly bilingual. I tend to flee into English at the first opportunity. Reading helps keep me fresh, but it can be hard to come by material that I actually want to read. (Long explanation elided unless you really care.) BUT I just discovered that I can get this detective series, in German, in the Amazon US Kindle store, so that's exciting!

Reading in German is definitely refreshing my skills. In a recent English conversation, a German word came to mind first, and I had to think for a moment to come up with the English one.

Hyeonseo Lee's Girl with Seven Names was amazing. Like Sea Wife for @Monique
I too am having a hard time reading in these times. So I have taken to listening to my books. Somehow calming so I can concentrate.

Heyyyy apparently I can read that one on Kindle for free via Prime! I'll check it out. I am somehow already halfway through that German novel.

I listen to a ton of podcasts, but listening to people talking tends to put me to sleep unless I'm keeping myself busy at the same time, which doesn't work well when I actually want to focus. BUT have you listened to The Handmaid's Tale on Audible? It is read by Claire Dains. I read the book years ago, but Claire really breathed life into it.

By the way, if you have fond memories of Reading Rainbow - the podcast Levar Burton Reads is just as wonderful as you might imagine. He reads his favorite short stories to you and then explains what he likes about them. I swear I would enjoy listening to him read the phone book, and he'd give it emotional resonance.

 

[Rainbow Jenny]

Speaking of Russian lit, have you read The Idiot? Haven't read it in years, but I remember liking it.

I would say I *was* fluently bilingual when I was younger. By now I would say I am haltingly bilingual. I tend to flee into English at the first opportunity. Reading helps keep me fresh, but it can be hard to come by material that I actually want to read. (Long explanation elided unless you really care.) BUT I just discovered that I can get this detective series, in German, in the Amazon US Kindle store, so that's exciting!

Reading in German is definitely refreshing my skills. In a recent English conversation, a German word came to mind first, and I had to think for a moment to come up with the English one.

BUT have you listened to The Handmaid's Tale on Audible? It is read by Claire Dains. I read the book years ago, but Claire really breathed life into it.

Only Russian reading for me was Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita in college but I don't remember anything except the title. Spent two weeks in St. Petersburg and Moscow last autumn, figure I should pay proper respect to at least one of its literary figures.

I have that Claire Dane's reading on CDs! Two years ago books of dystopia didn't interest me much, so I only got through the first 2 CDs. Now we're living in it... I should qualify that I listened to several books instead of read them. Little Women was THE BEST bedtime book listening!!! I also started listening to Jeremy Irons read Lolita, but he dramatized it too much when I rather use my own imagination, so that one goes back on the to-"read" list.

Your German and my Chinese... last year I watched the classic Japanese film "The Tale of Ugetsu," then stumbled upon the book translated into Chinese. I figure it would be a closer translation from Japanese to Chinese than into English. Since I probably haven't read an entire book in Chinese in over 20 years...I imagine it being so taxing that... I rather tackle an 800+ page Russian novel in English!

 

[mdf]

Russian lit...

The only one I've read is "War and Peace." Years ago (pre-ebook) I was travelling for work and kept running out of airplane reading. So I decided to try something that would last.

It takes about 100 pages to get into it, but after that, it is a page turner. Sadly, I think it only lasted me one trip, maybe two.

On the other hand, so far I have failed to get hooked by Moby Dick. It might be time to try again.