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Jul 2019
10:52pm, 22 Jul 2019
18,250 posts
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Columba
Back from holiday.
I read:
The Book Thief. Really, really good.
Conversations With Friends. Inevitably suffered by comparison with The Book Thief. But in any case, doubt if I'd have given it more than 5 out of 10. Or maybe 6.
The Time Traveller's Wife. - Have not finished it, though. It was on Youngest Son's bookshelf, and both he and Daughter-in-Law recommended it and said I could borrow it (i.e., bring it home with me to finish it). However, I didn't, but replaced it on the shelf with a bookmark in it, intending to finish it next time I stay with them. Ingenious idea, interested to see how it works out, but don't feel involved with the people at all. Hence, I could bear to leave it.
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Jul 2019
7:13am, 23 Jul 2019
28,665 posts
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LindsD
I absolutely loved TTTW. I found their relationship totally believable, despite the premise.
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Jul 2019
7:19am, 23 Jul 2019
14,983 posts
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Sharkie
And I would rate Conversations with Friends at 8, poss 9. (Nothing gets 10, not read THE prefect novel yet)
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Jul 2019
9:11am, 23 Jul 2019
14,944 posts
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Chrisull
Ah TTTW, nicking its premise from Kurt Vonnegut's "The Sirens of Titan", which is one of Vonnegut's finest...
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Jul 2019
9:14am, 23 Jul 2019
28,667 posts
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LindsD
Ooh. I haven't read that.
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Jul 2019
10:53am, 23 Jul 2019
13,357 posts
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Serendippily
I enjoyed it despite the slight dodginess of ogling your future wife at 8 or whatever
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Jul 2019
11:07am, 23 Jul 2019
40,559 posts
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McGoohan
Ew!
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Jul 2019
11:09am, 23 Jul 2019
14,946 posts
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Chrisull
Just finished reading the Nakano Thrift Shop by Haromi Kawakami. As I've long read male Japanese authors such as Murakami, it was time to redress the balance. It was a light, breezy book, I like the understated nature of a lot of Japanese literature I've read, I don't know if this is coincidental or cultural. It's basically the year in the life of four characters working in a second hand/brocante kind of store, and each episode is vaguely based around an item that comes into the shop. This makes it kind of modernist in that there is no true narrative or plot, but then neither are these short story vignettes quite either, it is recognisably a novel.
There's an on-off romance between the narrator (who works there) and an inscrutable (to the point of autism practically) male who also works there. There is an emotional distance between all the characters (which is probably part of the point of the book) that makes it a little hard to engage with them. It's entertaining, it's a refuge from the office terrain they seem to want to escape, it's evoked excellently, is often drily funny, and is written with a delicate touch but it never really catches fire.
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Jul 2019
11:11am, 23 Jul 2019
38,739 posts
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Diogenes
Beyond Black is good, but in a very uncomfortable way.
The Dud Avocado is not what I expected.
I seem to be struggling to engage with physical books so much these days unless they are real page-turners, even if the quality is not the greatest.
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Jul 2019
11:14am, 23 Jul 2019
14,947 posts
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Chrisull
Onto the next in my 8 book library pile (6 months to read them all as local library shut for refurbishment and wanted to avoid having to mothball half its stock). This is Don Delillo's Zero K. Already 3 chapters in and reminding me why I both love and hate Delillo. Many years ago I wrote a blog that included an overheard conversation on the train between two Plymouth students discussing the unreality of the dialogue in all of Delillo's books. And how they both loved and hated that. Everything they said still stands (if I remember my blog correctly - I'm not going back to find out which one)
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Acts of Minor Dissent
Sep 2024