David Sedaris’s Calypso. Properly giggle out loud stuff, but also tremendously moving in places. I don’t know anyone else who writes like him.
Having heard him on the radio, I read the book with his voice narrating it in my head.
@Nenya I’ve been doing a bullet journal for about 3 years now, I’ve adapted it to suit me, and find it really helpful. Hope you enjoy it!
I enjoyed 'Let's explore diabetes with owls'. I didn't know there was a new one - I'll have a look. I used to like hearing Alan Bennett reading from his diaries on the radio (even as a youngish man of 30-something as I probably was then), and Sedaris struck me as kind of like an American cousin of that kind of style.
This is one of my favourites, and perhaps pertinent for this forum.
I’m halfway through “A Man Called Ove”, by Fredrik Backman, translated from the Swedish original. It’s about a man who at first meeting appears to be totally unlikeable, grumpy, bad tempered and friendless and totally at odds with the modern world. But you get two stories in parallel, his present life in retirement and his life story from teenage years onward. As the latter unfolds you get to see what has made him the way he is and you gradually warm to him. And it’s also extremely funny as you see him navigate through the modern world which he cannot understand.
I've been reading the Bryant & May books. I love the idea of crime solving eccentrics of pensionable age ... And, frankly, given the state of the world, I'm not looking for improving literature but escapism.
For Black History Month I've been reading through some of the books by black authors that were on my to-read shelves. I've read and enjoyed I Do Not Come to You By Chance, our Ship book club pick for this month, and before that, The Confessions of Frannie Langton, a historical novel about a maid accused of the murder of her master and mistress in early 19th c London. I'm currently listening to the audiobook of activist Desmond Cole's memoir The Skin We're In, and starting the N.K. Jemisin's fantasy novel The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, the first in a trilogy I'll read the rest of if this one grabs my attention. (I read her highly-acclaimed, more recent trilogy The Fifth Season, which for me fell into the category of "obviously well written, but hard to get into." This one seems a little more accessible). Hoping to also get to Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid soon, which I've heard highly recommended.
Our current book group candidate is The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson. I'd be interested to know if any Shipmates have read it?
Our current book group candidate is The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson. I'd be interested to know if any Shipmates have read it?
Yes, I've read it and recommended it to my son. The sheer audacity of his escapades is quite breathtaking, as well as being very funny.
I have just finished Alan Silitoe's Key to the Door Found it rather harder going than Saturday Night, Sunday Morning, its more famous brother. Given my reading tends to be in 20 minutes slots twice a week when I have a child-free commute, it was good that the plot episodes were fairly self-contained and remembering what's going on wasn't too hard.
Have just finished Moomin Valley in November which is much lighter.
May I recommend Kings of the Yukon, Adam Weymouth (978-0-345-81180-6 is the isbn). The "kings" are chinook salmon. The Yukon is a river 3190km long (1982 miles). It's an English man's journey by canoe through the Yukon Territory and Alaska by canoe, following the route of these salmon which can grow over 100lbs. The book won the Sunday Times young writer award in the UK. Part narrative, part stories by the locals along the river, part history. It reads like a Pilgrim's Progress, but the lessons are all in his listening, and word paintings. As it says in the intro, he knows how to listen, which is rare for a white guy.
It's a factual story, also allegory: "the world is good but we ruined it.... Right now I study bible. I study elders' stories too. They're not too far apart. In bible God say I will never do it again. Well, this time we going to do it to ourselves. We're going to destroy our home. " (quoting Percy Henry, of 2 surviving speakers of the Hän dialect of the Tr'ondek [Klondike] Hwëch'in people)
There is a flood story with a helicopter ark but it holds only people and dogs.
Is the cure that we die and God chooses another animal who actually follows God's commandments?
Our current book group candidate is The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson. I'd be interested to know if any Shipmates have read it?
Yes, I read it a long while ago. Weird, but very enjoyable.
Our current book group candidate is The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson. I'd be interested to know if any Shipmates have read it?
Yes, I've read it and recommended it to my son. The sheer audacity of his escapades is quite breathtaking, as well as being very funny.
Our current book group candidate is The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson. I'd be interested to know if any Shipmates have read it?
Yes, I read it a long while ago. Weird, but very enjoyable.
That's interesting. Thank you, both. I really struggled with it - it seemed so preposterous and there was no one I was able to like.
For Black History Month I've been reading through some of the books by black authors that were on my to-read shelves. I've read and enjoyed I Do Not Come to You By Chance, our Ship book club pick for this month, and before that, The Confessions of Frannie Langton, a historical novel about a maid accused of the murder of her master and mistress in early 19th c London. I'm currently listening to the audiobook of activist Desmond Cole's memoir The Skin We're In, and starting the N.K. Jemisin's fantasy novel The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, the first in a trilogy I'll read the rest of if this one grabs my attention. (I read her highly-acclaimed, more recent trilogy The Fifth Season, which for me fell into the category of "obviously well written, but hard to get into." This one seems a little more accessible). Hoping to also get to Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid soon, which I've heard highly recommended.
I’ll take this opportunity to plug David Olusoga’s Black and British which I read a couple of months ago, he’s one of my favourite historians and this book is a really well written and accessible history of black people in Britain.
Our current book group candidate is The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson. I'd be interested to know if any Shipmates have read it?
Yes, I've read it and recommended it to my son. The sheer audacity of his escapades is quite breathtaking, as well as being very funny.
Our current book group candidate is The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson. I'd be interested to know if any Shipmates have read it?
Yes, I read it a long while ago. Weird, but very enjoyable.
That's interesting. Thank you, both. I really struggled with it - it seemed so preposterous and there was no one I was able to like.
I think it is preposterous (I while ago I read it and enjoyed it) - reminded me of Baron Munchausen. And the same sort of suspension of belief needed, which is not everyones cup of tea.
I’m halfway through “A Man Called Ove”, by Fredrik Backman, translated from the Swedish original. It’s about a man who at first meeting appears to be totally unlikeable, grumpy, bad tempered and friendless and totally at odds with the modern world. But you get two stories in parallel, his present life in retirement and his life story from teenage years onward. As the latter unfolds you get to see what has made him the way he is and you gradually warm to him. And it’s also extremely funny as you see him navigate through the modern world which he cannot understand.
That sounds very similar to a novel, The Grump, by Tuomas Kyrö. It was made into a film directed by Dome Karukoski. (I highly recommend DK's White Lion.) A Man Called Ove came out in 2012 and The Grump in 2010. Perhaps it's not as suspicious as it looks, and just very similar Nordic themes and attitudes.
A few days ago I bought "The Near Witch" by VE Schwab, an author I've never heard of before. I bought it because a review on the cover called her, "The natural successor to Diana Wynne Jones," an author I loved. Well, I'm roughly halfway through and I've given up. Gloomy and slow, it's the antithesis of Jones. I wonder if the full quote began with the words, "She isn't"....
Yeah, that's odd Robert Armin. I happen to like both authors, but I wouldn't have said they were anything alike except for both being female fantasy writers.
Meanwhile I have just finished the latest Jonathan Kellerman Alex Delaware mystery, the Museum of Desire. Very strange, but as always for that series, a wonderful read. I discovered that I missed the previous one in the series, The Wedding Guest, so I downloaded it to my Nook, and that's my next read.
Our current book group candidate is The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson. I'd be interested to know if any Shipmates have read it?
I have, a few years ago. I remember really enjoying the 'past' bits but being really bored by the 'present' storyline.
I’ll take this opportunity to plug David Olusoga’s Black and British which I read a couple of months ago, he’s one of my favourite historians and this book is a really well written and accessible history of black people in Britain.
(Spoilers for The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane)
I've been reading non-fiction recently, starting with Roger Deakin's wonderful Wildwood, in which he visits areas with different types of trees all round the world. I followed it up with Robert Macfarlane's The Wild Places, not realising initially how well the two books go together. He was a friend of Roger Deakin, and in the early part of the book, they go out walking together. As the book progresses, though, Roger becomes ill, so it's a book about their friendship and Robert Macfarlane's grief as Roger reaches the end of his life as much as a book about discovering the wild places of the British Isles and Ireland.
Both books made me want to get my walking boots out - though Robert Macfarlane camps out in conditions of snow, rain and wind that I would never attempt.
Currently I am rereading "Swiss Family Robinson", which I loved as a child and read many times. It is still fun, and as absurd as I'd remembered. Even when young it seemed unlikely to me that the family would be shipwrecked on an island which had penguins and ostriches; jackals, porcupines, tigers and kangaroos, to mention only a few. And every useful plant ever grown anywhere.
And I've made an important discovery - their surname is not Robinson (in fact, we're never told it). Rather they are a family of Robinson Crusoes, although his island was not so lavishly supplied.
I've been reading the Bryant & May books. I love the idea of crime solving eccentrics of pensionable age ... And, frankly, given the state of the world, I'm not looking for improving literature but escapism.
I had an almost obsessive run of reading those a while ago and then suddenly didn't want to any more.
Currently Mr F and I are revisiting our collection of 'techie Greats - Christie, Hare, Allingham, John Dickson Carr.
Interspersed on my part with Kindle re-issues of 'Golden Age' authors who have fallen into obscurity. Deservedly so for the most part.
I would add Josephine Tey and Edmund Crispin to my list of Golden Age detective novelists -- oddly, although Dorothy Sayers is up there as one of the best, I also find I don't reread her much. I remember Gaudy Night as if I had read it yesterday.
Definitely Crispin - I've not long finished rereading The Moving Toyshop. And Colin Watson.
I've read a lot of Anthony Gilbert (Lucy Malleson) but she has this habit of setting up a really intriguing situation in the first 50 pages or so, and then ruining it with some wild improbability.
Currently reading "There is no Planet B" by Mike Berners-Lee. I have just recently reached my Greenbelt books - 6 months on. Which is worryingly quick (8-9 months is more usual).
I have real concerns that my To Be Read pile might get down to single figures.
Our current book group candidate is The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson. I'd be interested to know if any Shipmates have read it?
Yes, I've read it and recommended it to my son. The sheer audacity of his escapades is quite breathtaking, as well as being very funny.
Our current book group candidate is The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson. I'd be interested to know if any Shipmates have read it?
Yes, I read it a long while ago. Weird, but very enjoyable.
That's interesting. Thank you, both. I really struggled with it - it seemed so preposterous and there was no one I was able to like.
Yes, I have it but can't get into it for the same reasons. I have that problem with picaresque novels across the board.
She didn't write that many, and they are too individually memorable (even with age-assisted memory loss) to qualify for re-reading.
Interesting. I reread her (and others) precisely because they are memorable (in a good way)--that is, because they are great, and I like the repeat experience. But something which I read once and CAN'T remember is most likely not going to get a re-read, because if it were any good, why wouldn't I recall it?
I've been having trouble finding something on my TBR shelf to settle into, and have finally come to Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees by Roger Deakin. It's delightful nature writing, and he knows all sorts of interesting people, like Ronald Blythe, who he visits for a picnic overlooking a bluebell wood. He also talks about renovating his Suffolk timber framed farmhouse, which is fascinating.
Roger Deakin was a teacher at my grammar school, he taught us French composition and introduced us to erotic French poetry, his nickname among the pupils was, 'Freaky Deaky'
I'm finishing the last of my Black History Month reads this weekend -- a fantasy novel called Rage of Dragons, by Canadian writer Evan Winter -- and my next plan is to start a re-read of Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies in preparation for Hilary Mantel's third book in that series, The Mirror and the Light, coming out later this month. Very excited as these are some of my favourite books in my favourite genre, of all time.
She didn't write that many, and they are too individually memorable (even with age-assisted memory loss) to qualify for re-reading.
Interesting. I reread her (and others) precisely because they are memorable (in a good way)--that is, because they are great, and I like the repeat experience. But something which I read once and CAN'T remember is most likely not going to get a re-read, because if it were any good, why wouldn't I recall it?
The re-reads are specifically detective novels, especially the locked-room mysteries of John Dickson Carr. As is often the case the explanation leaves less impression that the initial problem. I have in hand at the moment The Ten Teacups and I am as delightfully baffled by it as I was 20 years ago. Not least because JDC is very good at dressing the set as it were, and interests you as much in the teacups, and the house hopping solicitor as in the actual murder.
Same reason I can re-read the Fr Brown stories, though there I can remember the denouncement, because the scene setting seems to belong to an even more interesting story than the one which follows.
I finished The Wedding Guest some time. Then I got the preordered download of the latest Ben Aaronovitch Rivers of London book, False Value. Been reading that over the last few days, and loving it.
I keep a book diary that runs from the beginning of March to the end of February so have just finished my 'book year'. Totals go up and down as only completed books get an entry (and are dependent on the state of my mental health - possibly the topic of a different thread). Next year I'm going to attempt a personal best.
Highlights from this year have included: several Vonneguts, the Goth Girl books by Chris Riddell, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, a couple of the diaries of Naomi Mitchison including her Mass Observations of WWII and lastly This is How You Lose the time War by Amal el-Mohtar & Max Gladstone. The list runs about 50:50 fiction to non-fiction.
Incidentally, why has Naomi Mitchison fallen out of fashion? She gets a name check in the Time War book and a ½ hour Radio 4 doc several years ago, book given her influence and prominence when she was alive it's very hard to track down her books now. Maybe this is different in Scotland?
Facebook The Inside Story by Steven Levy.
A disturbing read. Given that Mr Zuckerberg gave permission for it (so really could be described as "authorised") it makes you wonder what isn't in it.
Quite dry at times, the book focuses on the people and the hoovering up of rivals. Sheryl Sandberg doesn't come out of it well but what could (should?) give you sleepless nights is the picture of MZ and his take on life. Keeping in mind this book is a view of MZ, his companies and business practices with which the subject is happy, it raises deeply troubling questions as to what has been left out.
Did I start to read it with already prejudiced against MZ, the Book of Face and all his works? Yes. Did it lay to rest my fears about the company, the man and their hegemony over press, democracy and social justice? Absolutely not.
I'm really going for non-fiction this year, it seems - my latest read is Mike Pitts' Digging Up Britain, a round up of some of the most important archaeological digs of the last few years. The structure is unusual, because it starts with the most recent and works back to the earliest - just like an archaeological site does.
It includes some of my favourite sites, like the London Mithraeum and Star Carr, and some recent digs I hadn't been aware of, like the Viking mass grave that starts the book, and which I probably shouldn't have read just before I tried to go to sleep!
Having romped through assorted Moomin titles, I am now starting to work on the collected works of Anselm. (Eclectic is certainly one way to describe our bookshelves!) He's easier to understand than I thought he might be, but definitely not a book for tired eyes.
I'm really going for non-fiction this year, it seems - my latest read is Mike Pitts' Digging Up Britain, a round up of some of the most important archaeological digs of the last few years. The structure is unusual, because it starts with the most recent and works back to the earliest - just like an archaeological site does.
It includes some of my favourite sites, like the London Mithraeum and Star Carr, and some recent digs I hadn't been aware of, like the Viking mass grave that starts the book, and which I probably shouldn't have read just before I tried to go to sleep!
Oh yes, I love anything by Mike Pitts, Cunliffe, Parker-Pearson or Michael Wood for archaeology.
... and my next plan is to start a re-read of Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies in preparation for Hilary Mantel's third book in that series, The Mirror and the Light, coming out later this month. Very excited as these are some of my favourite books in my favourite genre, of all time.
OMG OMG OMG! I didn't know the third one was coming out! Thank you! Off to pre-order! Yes, I'm excited!!!
Also, I don't know if I ever thanked you for saying something about Joshilyn Jackson -- don't remember if it was on the Ship or your blog -- but I absolutely love her books, and I only know about her because of you. So -- thank you!
Thank you, Ruth! Few things make me happier than sharing my love of books I love with someone else. Joshilyn Jackson is still a favourite of mine ... I think it must have been here I mentioned it because I believe I led a discussion on one of her books in the Ship's Book Club several years ago.
As for Hilary Mantel and Thomas Cromwell, I'm about 2/3 way through my reread of Wolf Hall and again just amazed at what a good writer she is, and how engaging the story is.
Poor Man's Wealth by Rod Usher.
An amusing tale - almost a fable and certainly a satire - about a sleepy village in the back-blocks of an [un-named] Latin American country. The mayor comes up with an idea to make its very sleepiness into something that will bring tourists and their money to the village. But this is strongly discouraged by the national government as inconsistent with the "modern" image the Junta is trying to project internationally. Nevertheless the love story embedded in the enterprise works out well. As for the rest
Thank you, Ruth! Few things make me happier than sharing my love of books I love with someone else. Joshilyn Jackson is still a favourite of mine ... I think it must have been here I mentioned it because I believe I led a discussion on one of her books in the Ship's Book Club several years ago.
As for Hilary Mantel and Thomas Cromwell, I'm about 2/3 way through my reread of Wolf Hall and again just amazed at what a good writer she is, and how engaging the story is.
Another Hilary Mantel fan here, I can't wait for The Mirror and the Light, read the Guardian extract avidly. I got to know Mantel's work through her chilling and brilliant Beyond Black and memoir Giving Up The Ghost, then moved on to Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies.
I don’t know if you can access it through iPlayer or something, but there was a really good documentary / interview with her on BBC 2 last evening - an absolutely intriguing woman, as well as a first class author!
I've been catching up on some reading lately. Edith Wharton is one of my favourite American writers, and I'd been meaning to pick up and read Summer, one of her short novels set in rural New England (apparently sometimes called the warm-weather version of Ethan Frome). It's vintage Wharton, the writing apparently effortless and both evocative and compelling. Not a happy ending (do any Wharton novels have happy endings?), but some sense of redemption at the end even if a highly equivocal one.
I also started Ethan Frome a while ago but put it aside as having just too much unrelieved darkness. Will come back to it at some point.
Was re-reading my cheap dog-eared second-hand copy of Walker Percy's The Moviegoer over the last few days. A strangely compelling novel that I keep coming back to from time to time.
Moving into the 21st century, around Christmas time I picked up Immigrant City, David Bezmozgis's collection of stories set in Toronto. The title suggests a focus on the immigrant experience generally, though I don't think the title story is actually one of the stronger pieces in the book. I think he is at his best when he is drawing specifically on his own Baltic-Russian-Jewish roots.
I picked up Anita Brookner's Hotel du Lac a while ago as a remainder. Unfortunately I hated the characters so much I couldn't finish it. That was my first experience of Brookner - it had won a Booker, so I thought I would give it a try - so I'm not sure whether I'm allergic to the author or just that book.
Has anyone mentioned Diane Setterfield? Her three books, each in different settings, are intriguing, mysterious, complex and intelligent. I liked Once upon a River best, but Bellman & Black comes close.
Reading a duology by Phyllis Ann Karr from back in the 80s, Frostflower and Thorn, and Frostflower and Windbourne. Rather untypical swords-and-sorcery books. I read them when they were new, and never forgot them.
I have advised my wife that if and when they finally lock me up somewhere, I want my boxed set of the original Moomin books to stay with me (along with the Highland Railway books).
Comments
I enjoyed 'Let's explore diabetes with owls'. I didn't know there was a new one - I'll have a look. I used to like hearing Alan Bennett reading from his diaries on the radio (even as a youngish man of 30-something as I probably was then), and Sedaris struck me as kind of like an American cousin of that kind of style.
This is one of my favourites, and perhaps pertinent for this forum.
I’m halfway through “A Man Called Ove”, by Fredrik Backman, translated from the Swedish original. It’s about a man who at first meeting appears to be totally unlikeable, grumpy, bad tempered and friendless and totally at odds with the modern world. But you get two stories in parallel, his present life in retirement and his life story from teenage years onward. As the latter unfolds you get to see what has made him the way he is and you gradually warm to him. And it’s also extremely funny as you see him navigate through the modern world which he cannot understand.
That is one of my favourite bits of radio EVER.
We have a new theology book for our book group, and my reading rate has slowed accordingly....
Yes, I've read it and recommended it to my son. The sheer audacity of his escapades is quite breathtaking, as well as being very funny.
Have just finished Moomin Valley in November which is much lighter.
It's a factual story, also allegory: "the world is good but we ruined it.... Right now I study bible. I study elders' stories too. They're not too far apart. In bible God say I will never do it again. Well, this time we going to do it to ourselves. We're going to destroy our home. " (quoting Percy Henry, of 2 surviving speakers of the Hän dialect of the Tr'ondek [Klondike] Hwëch'in people)
There is a flood story with a helicopter ark but it holds only people and dogs.
Is the cure that we die and God chooses another animal who actually follows God's commandments?
Yes, I read it a long while ago. Weird, but very enjoyable.
That's interesting. Thank you, both. I really struggled with it - it seemed so preposterous and there was no one I was able to like.
I think it is preposterous (I while ago I read it and enjoyed it) - reminded me of Baron Munchausen. And the same sort of suspension of belief needed, which is not everyones cup of tea.
That sounds very similar to a novel, The Grump, by Tuomas Kyrö. It was made into a film directed by Dome Karukoski. (I highly recommend DK's White Lion.) A Man Called Ove came out in 2012 and The Grump in 2010. Perhaps it's not as suspicious as it looks, and just very similar Nordic themes and attitudes.
Meanwhile I have just finished the latest Jonathan Kellerman Alex Delaware mystery, the Museum of Desire. Very strange, but as always for that series, a wonderful read. I discovered that I missed the previous one in the series, The Wedding Guest, so I downloaded it to my Nook, and that's my next read.
I have, a few years ago. I remember really enjoying the 'past' bits but being really bored by the 'present' storyline.
Agreed.
I've been reading non-fiction recently, starting with Roger Deakin's wonderful Wildwood, in which he visits areas with different types of trees all round the world. I followed it up with Robert Macfarlane's The Wild Places, not realising initially how well the two books go together. He was a friend of Roger Deakin, and in the early part of the book, they go out walking together. As the book progresses, though, Roger becomes ill, so it's a book about their friendship and Robert Macfarlane's grief as Roger reaches the end of his life as much as a book about discovering the wild places of the British Isles and Ireland.
Both books made me want to get my walking boots out - though Robert Macfarlane camps out in conditions of snow, rain and wind that I would never attempt.
And I've made an important discovery - their surname is not Robinson (in fact, we're never told it). Rather they are a family of Robinson Crusoes, although his island was not so lavishly supplied.
I had an almost obsessive run of reading those a while ago and then suddenly didn't want to any more.
Currently Mr F and I are revisiting our collection of 'techie Greats - Christie, Hare, Allingham, John Dickson Carr.
Interspersed on my part with Kindle re-issues of 'Golden Age' authors who have fallen into obscurity. Deservedly so for the most part.
She didn't write that many, and they are too individually memorable (even with age-assisted memory loss) to qualify for re-reading.
I've read a lot of Anthony Gilbert (Lucy Malleson) but she has this habit of setting up a really intriguing situation in the first 50 pages or so, and then ruining it with some wild improbability.
I have real concerns that my To Be Read pile might get down to single figures.
Yes, I have it but can't get into it for the same reasons. I have that problem with picaresque novels across the board.
Interesting. I reread her (and others) precisely because they are memorable (in a good way)--that is, because they are great, and I like the repeat experience. But something which I read once and CAN'T remember is most likely not going to get a re-read, because if it were any good, why wouldn't I recall it?
Roger Deakin was a teacher at my grammar school, he taught us French composition and introduced us to erotic French poetry, his nickname among the pupils was, 'Freaky Deaky'
The re-reads are specifically detective novels, especially the locked-room mysteries of John Dickson Carr. As is often the case the explanation leaves less impression that the initial problem. I have in hand at the moment The Ten Teacups and I am as delightfully baffled by it as I was 20 years ago. Not least because JDC is very good at dressing the set as it were, and interests you as much in the teacups, and the house hopping solicitor as in the actual murder.
Same reason I can re-read the Fr Brown stories, though there I can remember the denouncement, because the scene setting seems to belong to an even more interesting story than the one which follows.
Highlights from this year have included: several Vonneguts, the Goth Girl books by Chris Riddell, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, a couple of the diaries of Naomi Mitchison including her Mass Observations of WWII and lastly This is How You Lose the time War by Amal el-Mohtar & Max Gladstone. The list runs about 50:50 fiction to non-fiction.
Incidentally, why has Naomi Mitchison fallen out of fashion? She gets a name check in the Time War book and a ½ hour Radio 4 doc several years ago, book given her influence and prominence when she was alive it's very hard to track down her books now. Maybe this is different in Scotland?
A disturbing read. Given that Mr Zuckerberg gave permission for it (so really could be described as "authorised") it makes you wonder what isn't in it.
Quite dry at times, the book focuses on the people and the hoovering up of rivals. Sheryl Sandberg doesn't come out of it well but what could (should?) give you sleepless nights is the picture of MZ and his take on life. Keeping in mind this book is a view of MZ, his companies and business practices with which the subject is happy, it raises deeply troubling questions as to what has been left out.
Did I start to read it with already prejudiced against MZ, the Book of Face and all his works? Yes. Did it lay to rest my fears about the company, the man and their hegemony over press, democracy and social justice? Absolutely not.
English and French, although he didn't take our class for English.
It includes some of my favourite sites, like the London Mithraeum and Star Carr, and some recent digs I hadn't been aware of, like the Viking mass grave that starts the book, and which I probably shouldn't have read just before I tried to go to sleep!
Oh yes, I love anything by Mike Pitts, Cunliffe, Parker-Pearson or Michael Wood for archaeology.
OMG OMG OMG! I didn't know the third one was coming out! Thank you! Off to pre-order! Yes, I'm excited!!!
Also, I don't know if I ever thanked you for saying something about Joshilyn Jackson -- don't remember if it was on the Ship or your blog -- but I absolutely love her books, and I only know about her because of you. So -- thank you!
As for Hilary Mantel and Thomas Cromwell, I'm about 2/3 way through my reread of Wolf Hall and again just amazed at what a good writer she is, and how engaging the story is.
An amusing tale - almost a fable and certainly a satire - about a sleepy village in the back-blocks of an [un-named] Latin American country. The mayor comes up with an idea to make its very sleepiness into something that will bring tourists and their money to the village. But this is strongly discouraged by the national government as inconsistent with the "modern" image the Junta is trying to project internationally. Nevertheless the love story embedded in the enterprise works out well. As for the rest
Another Hilary Mantel fan here, I can't wait for The Mirror and the Light, read the Guardian extract avidly. I got to know Mantel's work through her chilling and brilliant Beyond Black and memoir Giving Up The Ghost, then moved on to Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies.
I also started Ethan Frome a while ago but put it aside as having just too much unrelieved darkness. Will come back to it at some point.
Was re-reading my cheap dog-eared second-hand copy of Walker Percy's The Moviegoer over the last few days. A strangely compelling novel that I keep coming back to from time to time.
Moving into the 21st century, around Christmas time I picked up Immigrant City, David Bezmozgis's collection of stories set in Toronto. The title suggests a focus on the immigrant experience generally, though I don't think the title story is actually one of the stronger pieces in the book. I think he is at his best when he is drawing specifically on his own Baltic-Russian-Jewish roots.
I picked up Anita Brookner's Hotel du Lac a while ago as a remainder. Unfortunately I hated the characters so much I couldn't finish it. That was my first experience of Brookner - it had won a Booker, so I thought I would give it a try - so I'm not sure whether I'm allergic to the author or just that book.