So I have just finished "The Order of Time" by Carlo Rovelli. Which is an amazing (non-fiction) book, that is deceptively simple to read, and will absolutely mess with your mind.
His argument, in a nutshell, is that time does not exist. And he offers evidence for this from physics. And in doing so, makes you doubt everything.
I’ve just finished Broken Greek by Pete Paphides. It’s an autobiographical story of growing up as the son of Greek & Cypriot parents who run chip shops, and the boy’s developing love of pop music. It is a lovely, lovely book. And I have a renewed appreciation of ABBA. Not many books can do that...
Now on to How to Argue with a Racist by Adam Rutherford, a geneticist and radio 4 science programme presenter. It’s basically an introduction to genetics for eejits, and is witty and clearly written. Which is as well as my brain isn’t really capable of engaging with complicated things just at the moment.
I've finished Consider Phlebas and won't be in any hurry to read the next book in the series.
I was reminded earlier today of a book on my shelf I've been meaning to read for a while - Simon Jenkins' A Short History of England so I think that's going to be next. Not a book for reading in bed, though... rather heavy if you nod off and it falls on your face...
I've got a few like that waiting in the TBR pile @Nenya. Currently enjoying David Malouf's Complete Stories while seated for that reason. Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee is my current bedtime reading.
So I have just finished "The Order of Time" by Carlo Rovelli. Which is an amazing (non-fiction) book, that is deceptively simple to read, and will absolutely mess with your mind.
His argument, in a nutshell, is that time does not exist. And he offers evidence for this from physics. And in doing so, makes you doubt everything.
Oooh, I want to read this now. On the list it goes.
@Jemima the 9th : I want to read Broken Greek too, having heard a serialised version on Radio 4 earlier in the year
I've finished Consider Phlebas and won't be in any hurry to read the next book in the series.
I was reminded earlier today of a book on my shelf I've been meaning to read for a while - Simon Jenkins' A Short History of England so I think that's going to be next. Not a book for reading in bed, though... rather heavy if you nod off and it falls on your face...
I never got on with Iain M Banks either Nenya. I can see that he is a skilled writer and understand why others like him but a lot of his imagery is just too unpleasant for me to enjoy (and the better he does it, the worse I find it!)
I never got on with Iain M Banks either Nenya. I can see that he is a skilled writer and understand why others like him but a lot of his imagery is just too unpleasant for me to enjoy (and the better he does it, the worse I find it!)
I'm glad it's not just me. I feel I've given him a fair trial but life's too full of books I really do want to read.
The reasoning behind the history book is that I watched a couple of programmes last night that made me realise how embarrassingly ignorant I am about history. I wish now I'd done the "O" and "A" level at school but we had a rubbish history teacher and a good geography one so I went for that instead.
I'm also rereading Rosemary Sutcliff's The Lantern Bearers, one of my favourites and a regular reread.
Oh yes I do like The Lantern Bearers. The first couple of chapters lead you to expect one sort of plot, and then it turns out to be very different indeed.
@Jemima the 9th : I want to read Broken Greek too, having heard a serialised version on Radio 4 earlier in the year
That’s where it came to my attention too!
We have radio 4 on a lot, so I’m often aware of the books of the week, but it’s rare for something to grab my attention as Broken Greek did.
I really enjoyed The Offing by Benjamin Myers, although I felt the ending was rushed, as if he couldn't sustain the delightfully leisurely pace of the earlier chapters. Then tried his earlier The Gallows Pole, but couldn't stomach it. So I'll be wary of others by him, but none are available at my library and inter-library loans are not permitted at present.
@Pure Sunshine - we clearly both enjoy having our brains messed with. Are you familiar with Berkely - who is probably the person who started me on this existentialist mind-fuck road?
I have read three novels this year -- all fairly recent releases -- that felt in some ways similar, not so much in plot as in ... atmosphere? And the level of fantasy/magic realism introduced in each. As I've just read the third of them, I am thinking of comparisons between the three and wondering if others here have read any of them.
The first was Erin Morgenstern's The Starless Sea, her second novel after The Night Circus a few years back. This one has a wonderful structure and set-up and genuinely intrigued me as the main character gets pulled into a mysterious underground world, sort of a house with an ocean inside if it I remember correctly (read this much earlier in the year so it is the vaguest in my memory) - beautifully, vividly described magical scenes, but I felt in the end the plot didn't really pull together -- in the real world outside the magical otherworld, the plot threads that explained why things happened as they did in the magical world were not satisfying in that "Aah, now it makes sense!" kind of way that I expect in that sort of book. Now several months later, nothing about the characters or much of the plot lingers with me, only an overall sense of this beautifully described hidden world.
The one I've just finished is Alix Harrow's The Ten Thousand Doors of January, about a young girl in early 20th century America who discovers hidden doors that lead to other worlds. This one did have characters that I thought were strong and memorable and a plot that came together well and in a satisfying way, and I liked the magical elements a lot.
The one I read in the middle of these two, and the one I think that succeeded best in blending that magical realism/hidden world theme with the "real" world, was Susanna Clarke's Piranesi -- her first novel since Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, and very different from that one (much shorter for starters). A young man lives alone in a vast magical house; he has never been outside or found its boundaries, nor does he know anything about how he got there or any life he might have had before -- but rather than feeling trapped or discontented, he loves the house, loves exploring it and recording his discoveries. Only there is one other man who sometimes appears in the house, who "Piranesi" counts as his only human friend yet is not entirely sure he can trust .... This was the novel that managed, for me, to be everything I hoped for -- magical, poignant, internally credible and consistent as to plot, and even to have something interesting to say about "real life" (which I think the best fantasy should do). It's definitely one of my favourites of the year.
Has anyone here read any of these three? If you have a taste for fantasy or magic realism, all three are interesting, though I'd recommend Piranesi the most heartily of the three.
@Pure Sunshine - we clearly both enjoy having our brains messed with. Are you familiar with Berkely - who is probably the person who started me on this existentialist mind-fuck road?
I'm not - will that make the book harder to understand?
The story of a holocaust survivor , told on his 100th birthday. Eddie was a German schoolboy , living peacefully in Leipzig, when suddenly in 1933 he became "a Jew", and hated as such by many he had grown up with. Under an "Aryan" alias he qualified as a precision toolmaker, only to be taken to Buchenwald when he returned home from his technical college. He escaped to Belgium but was deported from there as a "German" [irony!] and sent to Auschwitz. There he was classified as an "economically important Jew", and used as slave labour, though several times near death by gas or freezing weather. For his survival he thanks his father (who perished at Auschwitz) for drumming into him the importance of an education and of friendship and hope rather than despair. Eventually, he escaped the 1945 death march and migrated to Australia via Belgium as a refugee. In Australia, he has consciously lived a life of generosity, positivity and hope rather than of hatred and despair, thus becoming in his own words "the happiest man on earth".
Nevertheless much of his book is a tale of horrors, in which he wonders how a "civilised" people can be turned into inhuman haters, much as has happened in Trump's Dis-united States of America [though fortunately not yet to the same murderous extent].
I have to confess I'm rather behind the times - I'm sure the rest of you did this years ago - I have finally, after all these years of intending to, actually started reading 'Mere Christianity' by C. S. Lewis. It's all Alister McGrath's fault, for going on about it so much.
I have started reading South by Ernest Shakleton. It's his account of the 1914-7 expedition to Antarctica. I suspect that it will pick up when we get into the famous bit about escaping, but at the moment the narrative is as bogged down in the details of their movement in the ice floes as the Endeavour was in real life.
I have just finished listening to the Radio 4 serialisation of My sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite and think I may have short-changed myself by listening to it whilst cooking rather than reading it.
I have just finished listening to the Radio 4 serialisation of My sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite and think I may have short-changed myself by listening to it whilst cooking rather than reading it.
Has anyone read it?
Yes, my RL book group read it. We didn’t really enjoy it I’m afraid. Personally, I kept feeling it was meant to be funny but I didn’t get the joke.
I have started reading South by Ernest Shakleton. It's his account of the 1914-7 expedition to Antarctica. I suspect that it will pick up when we get into the famous bit about escaping, but at the moment the narrative is as bogged down in the details of their movement in the ice floes as the Endeavour was in real life.
I seem to remember hearing or reading somewhere that Shackleton's Boat Journey by Frank Worsley, the captain of the Endurance, was a better or more readable book than South. I certainly remember finding it very good when I read it many years ago, but I haven't read South, so I can't comment on the comparison.
I have just finished listening to the Radio 4 serialisation of My sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite and think I may have short-changed myself by listening to it whilst cooking rather than reading it.
Has anyone read it?
Yes, my RL book group read it. We didn’t really enjoy it I’m afraid. Personally, I kept feeling it was meant to be funny but I didn’t get the joke.
That's how I felt for the first two-thirds, but then it seemed to intensify and get more gripping. I wondered if I had missed out on something by listening to it whilst pottering round the kitchen.
I'm now listening to Hilary Mantel's Revelation which I've already read in book form.
Oh yes I do like The Lantern Bearers. The first couple of chapters lead you to expect one sort of plot, and then it turns out to be very different indeed.
Yes. I've finished my re-read of it and was reminded again of how I enjoy Aquila's encounters with Brother Ninnias.
I have my ongoing dilemma about my real life book group, for which I have read and enjoyed Ian McEwan's Machines Like Me. The dilemma is all to do with some people in the group who don't give books that are not in their preferred genre a chance; plus an awareness that on occasions I'm also reluctant to spend time finishing a book I'm not enjoying because there are so many on my "Want To Read" list, and time is not unlimited. I guess I'm questioning the validity of continuing with the group, really. And just because someone has enjoyed a book it doesn't necessarily make good book group material - there has to be plenty to talk about.
I gave up an everyone reads the same book kind of book club because
life is definitely too short to read a non-fiction book by an ex All Black. and I found people were too defensive of their choices. Now I belong to one where people discus their own reading, and it's fascinating.
I am currently reading Breath: The New Science of A lost Art by James Nestor.. I'm finding it fascinating. Nestor is a Science Journalist who had breathing problems himself and became interested when he found himself overheating while doing some of the breathing exercises in a cold room. He later goes on to discuss an ancient breathing technique used my Buddhist Monks to keep themselves warm and even melt snow around where they are sitting and it's modern practitioners.
He is a firm believer in that dangers of mouth breathing too and as an experiment he an a colleague had their noses plugged so they were forced to mouth breathe for days while they measured the effects on their bodies.
Has anyone else read the book or watched his on-line interviews?
I recently finished a reread of The Riddle of the Wren, which I think is Charles de Lint's first published novel. It's as wonderful as I remembered it. Now I'm working on The left-handed-booksellers of London, by Garth Nix, which is also wonderful in a very different way. An alternate 1983 London, with a young woman in search of her supernatural father, aided by booksellers who act as magical peacekeepers.
Now I belong to one where people discus their own reading, and it's fascinating.
Now, that is an excellent idea and I might suggest it to my group after our next meeting. Months ago we had an online meeting where we said what we felt about the current book and then said a bit about what else we were reading, which seemed to go well.
I haven't come across James Nestor; it sounds interesting though.
So I have just finished "The Order of Time" by Carlo Rovelli. Which is an amazing (non-fiction) book, that is deceptively simple to read, and will absolutely mess with your mind.
His argument, in a nutshell, is that time does not exist. And he offers evidence for this from physics. And in doing so, makes you doubt everything.
Slightly weirdly*, I am currently reading the final part of the Daughter of Time Trilogy - SF, that a) Quotes Rovelli and b) draws on some of the same ideas, of a being who can traverse time like they can traverse the other three dimensions. It is very good, if exceptionally odd. In many ways.
* Given the somewhat random ordering of my reading, that these two should occur at a similar time, is interesting. However, it is the same interests that have drawn me to both, so not completely surprising.
Currently enjoying 'The Gate of Angels' by Penelope Fitzgerald. It is set in a fictional Cambridge college, in 1912. Full of quiet and delightful humour - very tongue in cheek - and also an interesting examination of how science and faith interact - or don't.
Isn't that the one where the village Sunday School in the afternoon is the only time the parents can have sex?
I'm rediscovering on Kindle the works of Tanith Lee, which I read 40 years ago, and am having a blast. Imagine if F. Scott Fitzgerald and Edith Wharton had a baby who decided to write R-rated heroic fantasy, and you get the gist.
(Though Lee was British; someone familiar with her work may come up with a better analogy.)
I have just started re-reading Michael Ende's The Neverending Story. The proper edition, with the green and red ink. Although classified as a children's book, it really is not. It is a book about the joys of book reading, about the pleasure of getting lost in the written word and reveling in imagination.
I have just started re-reading Michael Ende's The Neverending Story. The proper edition, with the green and red ink. Although classified as a children's book, it really is not.
Oooh, I have one of those too, so beautifully printed. In German, which meant I had to read it very slowly. I should read it again sometime, as I don't remember much about it.
I have just re-read C.S. Lewis's "Cosmic Trilogy". This time, as advised on the Charles Williams thread, I read the unabridged version of That Hideous Strength. I agree it is a better, more humorous book than you would guess from the abridged version but nevertheless I still much prefer Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra (although those two books are also very different from each other).
Now I have started re-reading Barchester Towers. My father tried to enthuse me about Barsetshire about 10 years ago but I never really got into the novels. I'm enjoying them a lot more this time round though. Maybe it's because I am older and more cynical!
BTW, Jane R, I found this in an Amazon review of TWP:
I'm not sure why it's tagged as a children's story, except to signal that children could safely read it. There's plenty to think about no matter your age, and the writing is wonderful.
[quote="TurquoiseTastic;c-365902"Now I have started re-reading Barchester Towers. My father tried to enthuse me about Barsetshire about 10 years ago but I never really got into the novels. I'm enjoying them a lot more this time round though. Maybe it's because I am older and more cynical![/quote]
Just along a broadly related line, if anyone would like the full set of Susan Howach Starbridge Novels, I have a set to give away to anyone I can get them to. They are clearly inspired by Barchester.
Oh yes indeed and she fully acknowledges that. One slightly surprising thing is that the late-20th century writer is much more interested in God than the mid-19th century one!
So I have just finished book 1 of the Her Instruments series (4 in the series - I have the whole lot). It is really superb if you like some space-SF-drama. Very much in the Firefly genre/style - proper drama, but humour as well.
A pretty easy read. And yet - deeply fulfilling at the same time.
@Belisarius : some of Diana Wynne Jones's books are like that. I think part of the reason is that it's easier to get a publisher interested in your work if you have something that can be passed off as children's/YA. Younger people and children are less wedded to established writers, and there's a new generation of readers along every minute.
Strange comment for a review, though - I thought TWP sat comfortably beside Le Guin's Earthsea trilogy (literally, on my bookshelves) and noone ever seems to think that should be reclassified as adult fiction... (at least, not until she did the retrofitting).
I am about halfway through The Anarchy by William Dalrymple as recommended by @TurquoiseTastic several weeks ago. It is, as described, a most readable history of the East India Company. An armchair read, rather than a bedtime read, where I have just finished The Somme Stations a murder mystery by Andrew Martin, part of a series based around the WW1-era railway detective Jim Stringer. For those with an interest in railways, the technical details are very accurate. I think I'll be exploring more of the series.
Our next book group book The Two Lives of Louis and Louise by Julie Cohen. The library gets the books for us and this was the next one they got. I have no recollection of who wanted it on the list but we're going with it.
I also received in the post today an unexpected gift from an old (in both senses of the word) friend: Candles in the Dark by Rowan Williams.
I've asked for Landmarks by Margaret Silf and Finding Joy by Gary Andrews for Christmas.
I rescued a lot of 1940s-50s books from my aunt’s house last year before it was very thoroughly cleared and renovated, so am happily working my way through them, alongside other novels.
At the moment I’m reading “Fame is the Spur” by Howard Spring, the biography of a fictional Labour politician from Manchester. Much of the book is set in Bradford (where my husband’s family are from) and I’ve just got to the South Wales section (where we live).
Comments
His argument, in a nutshell, is that time does not exist. And he offers evidence for this from physics. And in doing so, makes you doubt everything.
Now on to How to Argue with a Racist by Adam Rutherford, a geneticist and radio 4 science programme presenter. It’s basically an introduction to genetics for eejits, and is witty and clearly written. Which is as well as my brain isn’t really capable of engaging with complicated things just at the moment.
I was reminded earlier today of a book on my shelf I've been meaning to read for a while - Simon Jenkins' A Short History of England so I think that's going to be next. Not a book for reading in bed, though... rather heavy if you nod off and it falls on your face...
Oooh, I want to read this now. On the list it goes.
@Jemima the 9th : I want to read Broken Greek too, having heard a serialised version on Radio 4 earlier in the year
I never got on with Iain M Banks either Nenya. I can see that he is a skilled writer and understand why others like him but a lot of his imagery is just too unpleasant for me to enjoy (and the better he does it, the worse I find it!)
I'm glad it's not just me. I feel I've given him a fair trial but life's too full of books I really do want to read.
The reasoning behind the history book is that I watched a couple of programmes last night that made me realise how embarrassingly ignorant I am about history. I wish now I'd done the "O" and "A" level at school but we had a rubbish history teacher and a good geography one so I went for that instead.
I'm also rereading Rosemary Sutcliff's The Lantern Bearers, one of my favourites and a regular reread.
That’s where it came to my attention too!
We have radio 4 on a lot, so I’m often aware of the books of the week, but it’s rare for something to grab my attention as Broken Greek did.
The first was Erin Morgenstern's The Starless Sea, her second novel after The Night Circus a few years back. This one has a wonderful structure and set-up and genuinely intrigued me as the main character gets pulled into a mysterious underground world, sort of a house with an ocean inside if it I remember correctly (read this much earlier in the year so it is the vaguest in my memory) - beautifully, vividly described magical scenes, but I felt in the end the plot didn't really pull together -- in the real world outside the magical otherworld, the plot threads that explained why things happened as they did in the magical world were not satisfying in that "Aah, now it makes sense!" kind of way that I expect in that sort of book. Now several months later, nothing about the characters or much of the plot lingers with me, only an overall sense of this beautifully described hidden world.
The one I've just finished is Alix Harrow's The Ten Thousand Doors of January, about a young girl in early 20th century America who discovers hidden doors that lead to other worlds. This one did have characters that I thought were strong and memorable and a plot that came together well and in a satisfying way, and I liked the magical elements a lot.
The one I read in the middle of these two, and the one I think that succeeded best in blending that magical realism/hidden world theme with the "real" world, was Susanna Clarke's Piranesi -- her first novel since Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, and very different from that one (much shorter for starters). A young man lives alone in a vast magical house; he has never been outside or found its boundaries, nor does he know anything about how he got there or any life he might have had before -- but rather than feeling trapped or discontented, he loves the house, loves exploring it and recording his discoveries. Only there is one other man who sometimes appears in the house, who "Piranesi" counts as his only human friend yet is not entirely sure he can trust .... This was the novel that managed, for me, to be everything I hoped for -- magical, poignant, internally credible and consistent as to plot, and even to have something interesting to say about "real life" (which I think the best fantasy should do). It's definitely one of my favourites of the year.
Has anyone here read any of these three? If you have a taste for fantasy or magic realism, all three are interesting, though I'd recommend Piranesi the most heartily of the three.
I'm not - will that make the book harder to understand?
The story of a holocaust survivor , told on his 100th birthday. Eddie was a German schoolboy , living peacefully in Leipzig, when suddenly in 1933 he became "a Jew", and hated as such by many he had grown up with. Under an "Aryan" alias he qualified as a precision toolmaker, only to be taken to Buchenwald when he returned home from his technical college. He escaped to Belgium but was deported from there as a "German" [irony!] and sent to Auschwitz. There he was classified as an "economically important Jew", and used as slave labour, though several times near death by gas or freezing weather. For his survival he thanks his father (who perished at Auschwitz) for drumming into him the importance of an education and of friendship and hope rather than despair. Eventually, he escaped the 1945 death march and migrated to Australia via Belgium as a refugee. In Australia, he has consciously lived a life of generosity, positivity and hope rather than of hatred and despair, thus becoming in his own words "the happiest man on earth".
Nevertheless much of his book is a tale of horrors, in which he wonders how a "civilised" people can be turned into inhuman haters, much as has happened in Trump's Dis-united States of America [though fortunately not yet to the same murderous extent].
Has anyone read it?
I seem to remember hearing or reading somewhere that Shackleton's Boat Journey by Frank Worsley, the captain of the Endurance, was a better or more readable book than South. I certainly remember finding it very good when I read it many years ago, but I haven't read South, so I can't comment on the comparison.
That's how I felt for the first two-thirds, but then it seemed to intensify and get more gripping. I wondered if I had missed out on something by listening to it whilst pottering round the kitchen.
I'm now listening to Hilary Mantel's Revelation which I've already read in book form.
I have my ongoing dilemma about my real life book group, for which I have read and enjoyed Ian McEwan's Machines Like Me. The dilemma is all to do with some people in the group who don't give books that are not in their preferred genre a chance; plus an awareness that on occasions I'm also reluctant to spend time finishing a book I'm not enjoying because there are so many on my "Want To Read" list, and time is not unlimited. I guess I'm questioning the validity of continuing with the group, really. And just because someone has enjoyed a book it doesn't necessarily make good book group material - there has to be plenty to talk about.
life is definitely too short to read a non-fiction book by an ex All Black. and I found people were too defensive of their choices. Now I belong to one where people discus their own reading, and it's fascinating.
I am currently reading Breath: The New Science of A lost Art by James Nestor.. I'm finding it fascinating. Nestor is a Science Journalist who had breathing problems himself and became interested when he found himself overheating while doing some of the breathing exercises in a cold room. He later goes on to discuss an ancient breathing technique used my Buddhist Monks to keep themselves warm and even melt snow around where they are sitting and it's modern practitioners.
He is a firm believer in that dangers of mouth breathing too and as an experiment he an a colleague had their noses plugged so they were forced to mouth breathe for days while they measured the effects on their bodies.
Has anyone else read the book or watched his on-line interviews?
I haven't come across James Nestor; it sounds interesting though.
Slightly weirdly*, I am currently reading the final part of the Daughter of Time Trilogy - SF, that a) Quotes Rovelli and b) draws on some of the same ideas, of a being who can traverse time like they can traverse the other three dimensions. It is very good, if exceptionally odd. In many ways.
* Given the somewhat random ordering of my reading, that these two should occur at a similar time, is interesting. However, it is the same interests that have drawn me to both, so not completely surprising.
Isn't that the one where the village Sunday School in the afternoon is the only time the parents can have sex?
(Though Lee was British; someone familiar with her work may come up with a better analogy.)
Oooh, I have one of those too, so beautifully printed. In German, which meant I had to read it very slowly. I should read it again sometime, as I don't remember much about it.
I tried to estimate my library collection, and it is probably between 1600 and 2000 books.
Now I have started re-reading Barchester Towers. My father tried to enthuse me about Barsetshire about 10 years ago but I never really got into the novels. I'm enjoying them a lot more this time round though. Maybe it's because I am older and more cynical!
Yay!
Just along a broadly related line, if anyone would like the full set of Susan Howach Starbridge Novels, I have a set to give away to anyone I can get them to. They are clearly inspired by Barchester.
A pretty easy read. And yet - deeply fulfilling at the same time.
Strange comment for a review, though - I thought TWP sat comfortably beside Le Guin's Earthsea trilogy (literally, on my bookshelves) and noone ever seems to think that should be reclassified as adult fiction... (at least, not until she did the retrofitting).
I also received in the post today an unexpected gift from an old (in both senses of the word) friend: Candles in the Dark by Rowan Williams.
I've asked for Landmarks by Margaret Silf and Finding Joy by Gary Andrews for Christmas.
At the moment I’m reading “Fame is the Spur” by Howard Spring, the biography of a fictional Labour politician from Manchester. Much of the book is set in Bradford (where my husband’s family are from) and I’ve just got to the South Wales section (where we live).
I'd be interested in comments from anyone else who's read this.