Englishbob
Well-Known Member
Oh, and I finished Cold Mountain last night. Enjoyed the imagery and setting but the plot, such as it was, and climax, were as predictable as could be. Maybe I'll watch the the movie. Maybe..
The Reader’s Nook - The N&G Book Thread
- Thread starter Joe Mac
- Start date
BoilerRhapsody
Active Member
I'm a big HDM fan and loved La Belle Sauvage so I'm super keen for this. Waiting until my wife and I finish our read through of The Amber Spyglass though. Glad to hear you liked it.
Dirtbag Auntie
Well-Known Member
I read Ali Wong’s book yesterday. It was funny and great like her.
Teeeee
Well-Known Member
I finished Daisy Jones and The Six in about 3 hours. I didn't know a ton about it. When I started, I was so confused. It's written as an oral history of a band. And I thought it was a real band for about a chapter. Lol. Anyway, very enjoyable, very easy, not a lot of thinking. I also found out that Amazon is making it into a series and I'm intrigued with who they will choose as Daisy.
Dirtbag Auntie
Well-Known Member
I just read that book a couple weeks ago! I didn’t know it was going to be a series.
Teeeee
Well-Known Member
Not a lot of details yet. I'm definitely going to tune in for at least the 1st episode. This series will be made or broken by the casting of the 2 leads.
Exclusive: More Details on Reese Witherspoon and Amazon’s ‘Daisy Jones & The Six’
Info has emerged about the Fleetwood Mac-inspired drama that might be everyone’s next streaming obsession…
observer.com
supahypeag
Well-Known Member
I loved that book. One of my favorites of the year (although I haven't read much this year).
Dirtbag Auntie
Well-Known Member
The Liz Phair book just got checked out to me and I'm tetering on whether to read it all now or actually work or study or something productive.
Selaws
Well-Known Member
There's 3 books that I will re-read each year. I started the on Monday and finished them yesterday, so 1 per day. I just love them. They are:
Kitchen Confidential - Anthony Bourdain
The Rum Diary - Hunter S Thompson
The Old Man And The Sea - Ernest Hemingway
Now I have moved on to a book I picked up on a holiday to Spain a few years ago. I bought the book but only ever read the first couple of chapters, so far its pretty good. Temple - Matthew Reilly
Kitchen Confidential - Anthony Bourdain
The Rum Diary - Hunter S Thompson
The Old Man And The Sea - Ernest Hemingway
Now I have moved on to a book I picked up on a holiday to Spain a few years ago. I bought the book but only ever read the first couple of chapters, so far its pretty good. Temple - Matthew Reilly
BjorgenFjorgen
Well-Known Member
He is one of my favourites but I haven't read Absalom or the Fable yet. Of the five or so that I have read, Sanctuary probably rates near the middle. I've read both As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury several times, and they're both very different from each other and especially from Sanctuary, in that they're a lot more stream of consciousness and imagery-based than plot-based. My favourite, though, and the one I would recommend most to anyone, is Light in August. Longer than the other two but very character-driven and beautiful.
Ericj32
Well-Known Member
Not sure how people feel about e-books, but there’s a great site called BookBub that has customized daily emails alerting you to steeply discounted prices on e-books in genres of your choosing from your favorite e-book stores. I definitely prefer not to read on a screen but if you can get a nice ebook of East of Eden for $1.99 on the Apple store, I’m willing to buy it just because (and I just did haha).
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Teeeee
Well-Known Member
Checking out e-books from the library onto my kindle has saved me so much money! I'm a big fan. So thank you for this!
I also very much like having books in my hand.
I'm an equal opportunity reader.
BjorgenFjorgen
Well-Known Member
I finished The Wagers yesterday and I *loved* it. Highly recommended to anyone.
Bennnnn
Well-Known Member
Oh hey I use that, get those emails every day. I've bought a good chunk of ebooks for $1.99 over the past few months. Mostly I still stick to physical books, but sometimes I just dig into an e-book and rip through it so quickly cause I end up reading way more frequently while I just have my phone on me.
dhodo
Well-Known Member
Yep, my wife and I are reading it out loud. We are a couple days behind though. I suppose it is telling that we are less than halfway through by now. I think for that reason alone, you're right about it not really making sense to do it this way unless you have read it before. We're still interested in it though.
Mr Moore
Well-Known Member
Struggled because of the daily intake, don't feel like I'm getting enough out of it. I stopped after day 3 or 4 I think with the aim of picking it back up towards the end of the month and reading in a few longer sittings.
Englishbob
Well-Known Member
Thanks for the tip Eric. I'm equal opportunity. I love the paperwhite for reading in bed when 'er indoors is sleeping. Can't read on a phone or tablet though. Eyeburn!
Bull Shannon
Well-Known Member
Finished Ling Ma's Severance the other night. I thought it was fairly good, though I'm surprised by the effusive praise; people seem to find it to be rather deep and emotional, while I found it removed and numb. I think that was the point, as the author's depicting a numb apocalypse; society fizzles out rather than dies violently. I just found the protagonist to be very disaffected and unmotivated, both before the fever and after. I think people walk through bad decisions (or avoid making any decisions) every day, but it's very hard to depict in fiction without being infuriating. I'm very curious about how literature from today will fare in the long run, as disaffected protagonists who eschew their agency are rather common these days.
I also found it odd that the nature of the apocalypse is being noted in reviews as novel or interesting; when people become "zombies" in this book, they just become fixed in their routines and lose all autonomy. It's a comment on habitual consumerism, but that's been an aspect of zombie fiction since Dawn of the Dead. Again, it's commentary, but also kind of removed and sad. The logistics of this zombie-ism are rather vague as well, as it's never quite explained whether the fevered are undead or on their way to death (at one point it's implied you'd just naturally starve and die when fevered, at another it seems more like zombie-ism, with people actively decaying while remaining at their day jobs).
All in all, it was a fine book, though I'd say that if you're looking for the story of an early-20s woman living off her dead parents' inheritance and smothering her feelings as an apocalyptic event shakes our greater status quo, Otessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a lot more incisive, satirical, and emotional.
I also found it odd that the nature of the apocalypse is being noted in reviews as novel or interesting; when people become "zombies" in this book, they just become fixed in their routines and lose all autonomy. It's a comment on habitual consumerism, but that's been an aspect of zombie fiction since Dawn of the Dead. Again, it's commentary, but also kind of removed and sad. The logistics of this zombie-ism are rather vague as well, as it's never quite explained whether the fevered are undead or on their way to death (at one point it's implied you'd just naturally starve and die when fevered, at another it seems more like zombie-ism, with people actively decaying while remaining at their day jobs).
All in all, it was a fine book, though I'd say that if you're looking for the story of an early-20s woman living off her dead parents' inheritance and smothering her feelings as an apocalyptic event shakes our greater status quo, Otessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a lot more incisive, satirical, and emotional.
bfly
Well-Known Member
"The Deep", a new book from Rivers Solomon, is available for pre-order on hardcover, paperback, and e-book here
The Deep
Winner of the 2021 Audie AwardONE OF NPR’S BEST BOOKS OF 2019 The water-breathing descendants of African slave women tossed overboard have built th...www.simonandschuster.com
View attachment 20419
"Yetu holds the memories for her people—water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave owners—who live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly, is forgotten by everyone, save one—the historian. This demanding role has been bestowed on Yetu.
Yetu remembers for everyone, and the memories, painful and wonderful, traumatic and terrible and miraculous, are destroying her. And so, she flees to the surface, escaping the memories, the expectations, and the responsibilities—and discovers a world her people left behind long ago.
Yetu will learn more than she ever expected to about her own past—and about the future of her people. If they are all to survive, they’ll need to reclaim the memories, reclaim their identity—and own who they really are.
Inspired by a song produced by the rap group Clipping for the This American Life episode 'We Are In The Future,' The Deep is vividly original and uniquely affecting. "
It currently has a 4.2/5 on GoodReads with 157 ratings. Releases on November 5th. 176 pages.
This is the song that the book is based on
I remember that episode of TAL and love clipping. very interesting.