Current Reading - Books best thread

[Sam]

Just finished Princess Bari. A girl who is born and spends her early childhood in North Korea in the late 1980s and 1990s flees to China, and from there to London, all the while trying to understand her gift for seeing and communicating with the spirits of the dead, including her pet dog from Korea. It'll stay with me.

Next up: Monique Roffey's The Mermaid of Black Conch.

[ale]

The Survivors-Alex Schulman. Tale set in Sweden. Three brothers reunite to scatter mother ashes at holiday home that a cataclysmic event 20 or so earlier years earlier disintegrated their nucleus. The time frame unravels backwards on the day itself & is interspersed with chapters detailing episodic collapse of the family unit. A good read with a denouement at the conclusion that finally makes sense of the doubt previously prevailing throughout the story.

[Sam]

Next up: Monique Roffey's The Mermaid of Black Conch.

About a third of the way into this now, and it is magnificent.

[RobW]

Started reading Piranesi by Susannah Clarke. Likely the only contemporary fiction i've read this year. Enjoying it so far. I say this every year, but I really should read more fiction.

[hobbes]

Piranesi is rather good.

Just finished Leviathan Falls (the final novel in The Expanse series.)
They certainly nailed the landing.

[imp]

Years ago, people on here recommended Roberto Bolano, and finally a couple of years ago I scored a cheap second-hand copy of The Savage Detectives. And the other day, I finally started it and am really enjoying it - though only 60 pages in. Does it stay the course?

[Sam]

Finished The Mermaid of Black Conch today. Wonderful stuff. Highly recommended.

It might be the last book I finish in 2020, for later I shall be starting The Dawn of Everything.

[Incandenza]

Quickly read Why Fish Don't Exist by Lulu Miller, who has worked on Radiolab and now does a science podcast for NPR. It's partly about David Starr Jordan, who attempted to name and classify every single fish before becoming president of Stanford and then later one of America's biggest proponents for eugenics, partly a memoir, and partly about persistence and how to keep going in the face of disaster and an uncaring world.

[RobW]

I remembered why I don't read that much fiction. It's because i'm never that bowled over by books other people think are great. Anyway, started reading Bad Blood; Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup which is good timing as I understand Elizabeth Holmes' trial is near finished. It's a real page turner at the moment but fear i'll lose track of all the individuals involved.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

yes, Bad Blood is a hell of a page-turner. Read it a few years ago. I think there was some brief discussion of it either on here or on the Theranos thread in World.

[San Bernardhinault]

Yeah. It’s a really compelling book.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Anyway, I've just finished Agent Sonya by espionage non-fiction specialist Ben Macintyre, a biography of the Soviet agent Ursula Kuczinsky (born 1907 into a wealthy left wing intellectual German Jewish family, and active in Soviet espionage in China/Manchuria, Poland, Switzerland and - as Klaus Fuchs' handler - rural Oxfordshire, before escaping to live out the rest of her life in East Berlin when Fuchs confessed to MI5). I realise I'm not adding much here by recommending a best-seller by a serial best-seller writer, but it really was a cracking read*. Wonderful true life story told very well by a good writer.

* after a slow start: her childhood and early days in German Communist political circles are not particularly exciting, but it really gets going when she and her husband move to China.

[Sam]

I'm about quarter of the way through. It's one of those works that makes you want to grab everyone you meet by the collar and plead "You really gotta read this, you really do!"

What AdeC said (the book being The Dawn of Everything).

[Amor de Cosmos]

What AdeC said (the book being The Dawn of Everything).

It's my "morning book." Savoured in small doses over coffee, while explaining it's virtues to curious café customers, (the large red type on and orange cover are a masterpiece of marketing.) I'm about half way through. It's hard to pick out particular specifics, but — probably because I live where I do — I found the description of the social and cultural schism between Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest (compared to Mafiosi) and those of California (Puritans.) You have to have the context to see why it makes sense. Overall it does make me realise just how fundamentally Eurocentric a subject anthropology has been, pretty much from it's inception.

[danielmak]

Years ago, people on here recommended Roberto Bolano, and finally a couple of years ago I scored a cheap second-hand copy of The Savage Detectives. And the other day, I finally started it and am really enjoying it - though only 60 pages in. Does it stay the course?

It does and doesn't. The first third (roughly) is narrative. Then it shifts to an interview format, with each chapter featuring an interview with a character and those interviews are mostly about characters in the first third. Then the last third returns to a more standard fictional narrative. I really enjoyed this book a lot. I also read one of his collections of short stories (Last Evenings on Earth) that was also really good. 2666 has been sitting on the shelf for a while. I've been focused on football and music books, so I can't say when I will get around to this one. I think I posted before but I was thinking in advance and purchased the paperback version of this since it's busted into 3 different books. Much better for a commute than lugging around a weighty hardback.

[Felicity, I guess so]

Just finished Three Hours by Rosamund Lupton. Think I got it in a 99p kindle sale and well worth full price.

Labelled 'literary thriller' which is sometimes off-putting but it certainly works as a page turner and has quite a punch in terms of contemporary social relevance.

[WOM]

yes, Bad Blood is a hell of a page-turner. Read it a few years ago. I think there was some brief discussion of it either on here or on the Theranos thread in World.

It's probably the page-turnerest book I've ever read. It and Going Clear, the Scientology exposé. Just flew through them both.

[Incandenza]

yes, Bad Blood is a hell of a page-turner. Read it a few years ago. I think there was some brief discussion of it either on here or on the Theranos thread in World.

Yes, some talk of it here:
https://www.onetouchfootball.com/for...s-thread/page2

[jameswba]

I've just finished the debut novel of Dutch author Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Discomfort of Evening. It's about a lot of things, but mostly the disintegration of a strictly protestant dairy-farming family following the tragic death of the oldest son and, later, the onset of foot and mouth disease.

The first-person narrator is 10 as the story starts and is identified as female, though she is based on the author, who now identifies as non-binary.

A really powerful, distinctive, highly disturbing novel, which I suspect will occupy a space in my head for quite some time. Has anyone else come across it?

[Uncle Ethan]

Just finished Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam. Really good.

[ale]

Was kind of undecided about this one but at end gave it benefit of doubt. The menace is understated and is never made explicit however much it affects the main characters. Sort of ventured into Magnus Mills territory at times-driving around disorientated and aimless which at times extended to the whole plot. Where it worked best was how this was reflected in the relationship between the two families.

[Slightly Brown]

It does and doesn't. The first third (roughly) is narrative. Then it shifts to an interview format, with each chapter featuring an interview with a character and those interviews are mostly about characters in the first third. Then the last third returns to a more standard fictional narrative. I really enjoyed this book a lot. I also read one of his collections of short stories (Last Evenings on Earth) that was also really good. 2666 has been sitting on the shelf for a while. I've been focused on football and music books, so I can't say when I will get around to this one. I think I posted before but I was thinking in advance and purchased the paperback version of this since it's busted into 3 different books. Much better for a commute than lugging around a weighty hardback.

I enjoyed 2666 until I didn’t. Reading your post, I now realise it was because it was just too much book to be carrying around. The Third Reich is great. It’s about the world’s war-game champion on holiday in Spain with his girlfriend. It’s an odd mix, but works because of it.

[Discordant Resonance]

Just finished The Pawnbroker's Reward, the debut novel by Declan O'Rourke (yes, the singer of Galileo, among other musical works). He has recently completed an album focused on the Great Famine, and the book effectively acts as a novelistic extension of this endeavour, highlighting the impact of that historical episode on varying elements of Irish society, not only emphasising the inertia of Westminster and landlordism, but demonstrating the class interests of the bourgeoisie against common labourers. Our two main protagonists are Cornelius Creed, who seeks to act as an intermediary across social divides, but is undone by the hypocrisy of his titular occupation, and Pádraig Ó Buachalla, whose status as a monoglot Gaeilgeoir acts as a literary metaphor for his individual powerlessness. The novel takes a while to get into its stride, as the early use of meeting reportage suggests O'Rourke undertook extensive research of newspaper archive, but once the author lets his individual characters tell their own stories, he finds a unique writing style, reminiscent of Joseph O'Connor and Sebastian Barry - heartily recommended.

[Etienne]

I re-read Terry Pratchett's Soul Music having read all his books in my late teens then discarded them I was interested in whether I'd still enjoy it. It's an absolute cavalcade of puns, some good, most not especially good. I found it quite exhausting. It's a bit like if Duncan Gardener's posts were all as long as Berbaslug's.

[Sporting]

It's a bit like if Duncan Gardener's posts were all as long as Berbaslug's.

I like both styles.