ThunderPeel2001

Books, books, books...

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I think when I get back to reading fiction I'll read some more Munro. She's got a new book, doesn't she? Whatever, I'll probably go for Runaways anyway.

 

Although, I think Lives of Girls and Women is a better starting place than Dear Life, just because the first couple stories in the latter aren't great, even though the last few are incredible.

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There's a new collection of previously published short stories out, but Alice Munro is retired from writing (sadly).

 

(Also here is where I went today, because I am a woman obsessed)

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I decided somewhere along the way that I needed to educate myself on my own history. Safe Space: Gay Neighborhood History and the History of Violence is a great book, and so is everything by James Baldwin that I've read.

But.

I need something to read that doesn't just infuriate me, something that doesn't pay any mind at all to gay history. Can anyone recommend something to me along those lines?

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I finished Child of God right, it's good(I think) but I didn't really enjoy it apart from one particular passage that made me chuckle

" The dumpkeeper had spawned nine daughters and named them out of an old medical dictionary gleaned from the rubbish he picked...Urethra, Cerebella, Hernia Sue."

"Hernia sue"

Everytime I read this I wanted to take it in to the shower with me. Typically McCarthy, the descriptions of the landscape are beautiful and I made sure to keep a dictionary handy. The first part of the novel consists of these short stand alone chapters about a page and a half long and the narration seems to come from 2 separate places as Ballard, the maincharacter, wanders about being cold, peeping on a couple having sex in a car, assaulting a woman at the side of the road. But then in part two the narrative is more continuous and it gets reallt grim...

My least favourite McCarthy so far.

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Am example from towards the end.

A woman kicks Ballard out of her Dad's house so he shoots her and sets the house on fire. As the house burns he he rescues her corpse leaving her infant son inside the burning building

Its mythic and weird and at times beautiful, I really like the structure and at times McCarthy managed to make me feel sympathy for Ballard. Ballard the man, at times he shows himself to be just ac normal dude, childlike and crippled by loneliness.

Sorry. Excuse my rambling its 3am, I just finished it

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I started reading Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel after watching a couple of episodes of the Wolf Hall tv-series. I read Wolf Hall back in 2013, and thought that the series would be a good way to recap the plot of the first book. It sort of was, but it also turns out that Mantel does a brilliant, subtle job in going through the events of Wolf Hall as well as the key characters (and most importantly their relationship with Cromwell, Henry, and Anne) in the first part of Bring Up the Bodies.

 

So far the reading process has been much smoother than I remember it being with Wolf Hall. I'm not sure how much of it has to do with me being used to Mantel's style and flow by now and how much of it is the fact that I finished Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow just before this one. I would guess that Mantel's style has not changed dramatically between the two books, although it seems that "he" is now followed by "he Cromwell" more often than in the first book.

 

Oh, and I'm absolutely loving the book so far!

 

 

Also, thanks to Goodreads, I now know which book I'm going to pick up once I'm done with Bring Up the Bodies:

 

Choke Hold by Christa Faust
"Angel Dare went into Witness Protection to escape her past—not as a porn star, but as a killer who took down the sex slavery ring that destroyed her life. But sometimes the past just won’t stay buried. When a former co-star is murdered, it’s up to Angel to get his son, a hotheaded MMA fighter, safely through the unforgiving Arizona desert, shady Mexican bordertowns, and the seductive neon mirage of Las Vegas..."
 
(This is a genuine "Because you are reading Bring Up the Bodies..." recommendation from Goodreads)

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I think Bring Up the Bodies is just generally more straightforward than Wolf Hall.

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Every year I try and make sure I read at least one novel that I feel like as an English major I should have read. This year that novel is Crime and Punishment. So far it's just as good as everyone says it is.

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recently finished!

 

All the Light We Cannot See: I quite enjoyed this, and it was the sort of sweet WW2 love story I thought I was getting with Narrow Road to the Deep North. It will make a great Oscar bait movie in that it it heavily features the triumph of spirit, and is comfortably, but not cloyingly middle brow. You're spared the ugliest aspects of WW2, given that one of the 2 main characters is a Hitler Youth achiever, though they are often alluded to. I suppose children were probably less aware, and the girls father deliberately shields her from the worst of it.

 

The Peripheral: Man, I love William Gibson, and I think this is his best sci-fi work since Neuromancer. A feel good story of a kind of class rebellion in two different dystopic futures, one further out. It takes one of his signature moves to an extreme, where people often speak in their own vernacular and he doesn't bother to explain it, as one wouldn't bother to explain what a cell phone is to contemporary. Anyway, sections of it are practically in another language, but it's still really trim, and fast. I also loved Pattern Recognition, Distrust that Particular Flavor, and Zero History, but they're a bit different. 

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YES. More to the Ferrante circle. I'm so close to starting an individual thread where we can all just gush about those books.

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Welp, I read The Sense of an Ending and Mysterious Skin back to back. So I guess I'm on a roll of reading melancholic meditations on the toll time takes on one's life and memory. I'm up for any suggestions of titles to continue the theme.

 

I'm considering going back and reading Norwegian Wood again.

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I didn't realise Mysterious Skin was a novel first! Have you seen the film? JGL is great in it.

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I didn't realise Mysterious Skin was a novel first! Have you seen the film? JGL is great in it.

 

I haven't, but I've heard good things and it's definitely high up on my watch list now. The novel has a very interesting structure, jumping in and out of the lives of 5 intertwining characters, some whose connection to the two leads is fairly limited, and I'm curious to see how much of that remains in the film.

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If you are ever thinking of buying deluxe quality books as a gift or for yourself, you should probably check out Folio Society. I received my books today and they are gorgeous!

 

(Quite expensive, though.)

 

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Another photo.

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After a search for A House for Mister Biswas by V. S. Naipaul and a brief consideration of buying Barracuda by Christos Tsiolkas I decided to ask instead for a recommendation for novels that sit between Lorrie Moore and Alice Munro styles of writing.

 

I ended up with recommendations for Kamila Shamsie, Jess Walter, Alice Walker, and Jennifer Egan. After some heartwrenching decisions, including a brief interlude where I considered Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch I decided to grab A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. It's been hard to put down.

 

 

EVER THING WRITTEN BY ALICE MUNRO. (Start with Dear Life and work your way back.)

 
Yesssssss

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Read this harry potter fan fic with his aunt being a good mother and his cousin a good brother that I liked.

 

Also bbc4 are broadcasting the left hand of darkness and a wizard of earthesea starting next week and have a half hour interview with le guin that includes her talking about omelas and a of  reading of parts of it that reminded me how brutal that story is.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05pkmyg

 

Also started reading about ancient Greece between the death Alexander and the roman take over and  I now want to read a book focused solely on the relationship between the various kings and a city states cause it is fascinating. The kings on one hand proclaim they support the polis indpendence and semi-democratic system to be seen as proper hellenes while also trying to keep them from being so independent they form a league strong enough to be a threat or ally with one of the rival successors.

 

Bob of History according to Bob podcast is going to over the time period as well. Also the Gauls make an appearance and reading about roman actually got involved in Greece through dealing with pirates and Epicurus leading to allying against Macedonia is a part of ancient history I had little knowledge of.

 

If you are looking for some interesting sci-fi stories that don't involve white people you should check out the apex world of sci-fi series cause it has some really good stuff.

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I have no time to read books these days but am trying to get into audiobooks now.

Anyone here like Haruki Murakami?

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I liked Haruki Murakami a lot when I read a ton of his books about a decade ago, but I think I might feel differently about them now. Not necessarily that I'd dislike them, I just think my tastes have changed a bit judging from how I've felt about Colorless Tsukuru and 1Q84.

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