Current Reading - Books best thread

[Uncle Ethan]

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

[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?

[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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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).

[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.

[San Bernardhinault]

Yeah. It’s a really compelling book.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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?

[hobbes]

Piranesi is rather good.

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

[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.

[Sam]

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

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

[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]

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]

How I Learned To Hate In Ohio-David Stuart Maclean. A debut novel and from the author blurb could well include a fair amount of biography. Set in mid 1980s rust belt community that straddles the cultural divide between the academic college and the redneck industry. With a name like Baruch the narrator of this coming of age novel is clearly in the former part of town. He wants to be recognised as Barry. Instead he is bequeathed the sobriquet Yo Yo Faggot. He manages to steer clear of more overt bullying by withdrawal from his contemporaries although this all changes with the introduction of the Singh family into his family life. This triggers a chain of events which see Barry foster unlikely friendships with both the Sikh boy of his age and the hillbilly boy who is repeatedly kept back year after year. It also leads to betrayal from the few people he holds dear in his life. The tale is mainly told in a series of short sharp chapters though when the author extends this rhythm to longer set pieces the results are the most impressive in the book being both challenging & laugh out loud-in particular a scene which uses the countdown to the Challenger shuttle as its backdrop. Prejudices abound-AIDS is just around the corner but by the conclusion set in 1991 the Gulf War is upon the country and the racism is no longer so casual. Tender & intelligent throughout the last chapter is a genuine jolt & causes a re-evaluation of all the previous compassion previously demonstrated. As well as explaining the title. A provocative story well handled. Recommended

[Sam]

Thanks, ursus!

[ursus arctos]

Janet Nelson's King and Emperor: a new life of Charlemagne is widely considered the best of the recent biographies

[Sam]

My girlfriend likes me to read to her as she's dropping off to sleep, and for the last few months we've been going through the Wikipedia pages of the Holy Roman Emperors, starting with Charlemagne. I've gone from having absolutely no idea what a Holy Roman Emperor really was when it was at home to having ... well, something of a grasp, at least. So if anyone has any recommendations they were going to give Levin for proper books on the subject, do throw them my way as well, please.

[Levin]

That seems very Gaiman-y.

I'd like to read about Charlemagne I think. I know so little about Europe in that period.