This Week I are mostly reading (contd)

Xofpod

Due to a mixture of the football and a couple of books I found it hard to get into, I read very little for the past month.
Finally finished Box 9 by Jack O'Connell. Not really worth the effort to be honest.

Similarly struggling with Frog Music by Emma Donoghue

Joe_ Public

Xofpod wrote: »

Due to a mixture of the football and a couple of books I found it hard to get into, I read very little for the past month.
Finally finished Box 9 by Jack O'Connell. Not really worth the effort to be honest.

Similarly struggling with Frog Music by Emma Donoghue

Very rare I quit on a book, no matter how bad, but I gave up on Frog Music after 30 pages. Maybe Room is better, I might try that sometime, but I thought the writing in Frog Music was very ordinary.

Xofpod

Joe_ Public wrote: »

Very rare I quit on a book, no matter how bad, but I gave up on Frog Music after 30 pages. Maybe Room is better, I might try that sometime, but I thought the writing in Frog Music was very ordinary.

Room is an outstanding read and on the strength of what I know she can do, I'm going to stick with the frogs.

It's just one of those books that doesn't grab you.....

Callan57

Xofpod wrote: »

Room is an outstanding read and on the strength of what I know she can do, I'm going to stick with the frogs.

It's just one of those books that doesn't grab you.....

I loved both Room and Frog Music ... Cé la vi

Joe_ Public

Callan57 wrote: »

I loved both Room and Frog Music ... Cé la vi

Room is definitely on my list.....but such a big house and so many Rooms! Could be a while before I get to it. I'm still ploughing my way through A Little Life and finding it a grind. Conversely, I picked up The Green Road last week and read it in a day. It was okay but not earth shattering.

Callan57

Joe_ Public wrote: »

Room is definitely on my list.....but such a big house and so many Rooms! Could be a while before I get to it. I'm still ploughing my way through A Little Life and finding it a grind. Conversely, I picked up The Green Road last week and read it in a day. It was okay but not earth shattering.

Agree with you completly on The Green Road & A Little Life

Joe_ Public

Callan57 wrote: »

Agree with you completly on The Green Road & A Little Life

I'm not in the business of giving authors writing tips but with A Little Life I think a good edit and a tighter sentence structure would have resulted in a much better, less dense novel. It's a decent story, just way too much extraneous detail I think.

Callan57

At The Edge Of The Orchard by Tracy Chevalier

Birneybau

Finished Emma Cline's 'The Girls' which kind of left me a bit cold to be honest.

Currently reading 'War Of The Encyclopaedists' and really loving it so far.

eire4

Finished a re read of Nigel Trantor's The Story of Scotland. Not a history book at all as you would expect given the author but a more relaxed rather then stuffy overview of Scotalnds history up to the begining of the 20th century.

Gremlinertia

Currently halfway through The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingslover
Very dense to read but an interesting view of pre and post independence Congo.

SarahBM

Just read the first Tarzan boom, Tarzan of the Apes. Brilliant!!! I loved it! Cannot wait to read the next one! I am also reading I am pilgrim. It's very good so far

quickbeam

Read Tarzan recently too. Was surprised how good it was. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

makeandcreate

Picked up in a charity shop and devoured in 2 days The Herbalist by Niamh Boyce, perhaps it is because I am not Irish by birth that I found it trite in parts but a great page turner with some wonderful characters and The Traveller by John Twelve Hawks - lauded as the new Da Vinci Code (one book I could never manage to read, I think the too much accolade put me off) - it reminded me of Kill Bill meets Shibumi with a spattering of the Bourne Identity - a great reason to leave the dishes in the sink and ignore the phone. Finished in a late night and up til dinner reading session. The Ending, well I guess there must be several follow ups by now but it wasn't a high point.
And if you ever get the urge to read Mike Tysons autobiography - go do something less boring instead. Not even for die hard fans. Cannot believe I kept reading to the end, it became less a book and more a challenge to see it through.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

Barracuda by Christos Tsiolkas.

It's about a young boy in Australia who is a swimmer and tipped to be a future Olympian. He messes up at his first big competition though and things unravel for him from there. It's alright but it jumps around an awful lot and changes perspective. Like the bits where he's still a kid are written in third person but the bits where it jumps to him as a man are in first person, and then they jump around to random points in time too. It's a bit hard to get it straight in your head how each bit relates to the rest of it but it's alright.

Birneybau

makeandcreate wrote: »

Picked up in a charity shop and devoured in 2 days The Herbalist by Niamh Boyce, perhaps it is because I am not Irish by birth that I found it trite in parts but a great page turner with some wonderful characters and The Traveller by John Twelve Hawks - lauded as the new Da Vinci Code (one book I could never manage to read, I think the too much accolade put me off) - it reminded me of Kill Bill meets Shibumi with a spattering of the Bourne Identity - a great reason to leave the dishes in the sink and ignore the phone. Finished in a late night and up til dinner reading session. The Ending, well I guess there must be several follow ups by now but it wasn't a high point.
And if you ever get the urge to read Mike Tysons autobiography - go do something less boring instead. Not even for die hard fans. Cannot believe I kept reading to the end, it became less a book and more a challenge to see it through.

I, eh, think you may have gotten mixed up with that.

Birneybau

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

Barracuda by Christos Tsiolkas.

It's about a young boy in Australia who is a swimmer and tipped to be a future Olympian. He messes up at his first big competition though and things unravel for him from there. It's alright but it jumps around an awful lot and changes perspective. Like the bits where he's still a kid are written in third person but the bits where it jumps to him as a man are in first person, and then they jump around to random points in time too. It's a bit hard to get it straight in your head how each bit relates to the rest of it but it's alright.

I thought it was pretty good, stick with it.

Xofpod

Gremlinertia wrote: »

Currently halfway through The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingslover
Very dense to read but an interesting view of pre and post independence Congo.

I recently read the Lacuna by the same author - absolutely brilliant.

Decuc500

Currently struggling through Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk. It's overwritten and very hard to get interested in. Easy to see it's a debut novel.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

Birneybau wrote: »

I thought it was pretty good, stick with it.

It just got a bit weird in prison :eek:

Birneybau

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

It just got a bit weird in prison :eek:

Oh yeah, there's a weird thing with tissue...

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

Birneybau wrote: »

Oh yeah, there's a weird thing with tissue...

Yep.

holy guacamole

makeandcreate wrote: »

.
And if you ever get the urge to read Mike Tysons autobiography - go do something less boring instead. Not even for die hard fans. Cannot believe I kept reading to the end, it became less a book and more a challenge to see it through.

Thought it was one of the best sports autobiographies of recent years myself. Unlike most books of its ilk it didn't resort to cliches and platitudes and pretty much told Tyson's life as it is, and to me that life was insanely entertaining. Each to their own though.

Wyldwood

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

Barracuda by Christos Tsiolkas.

It's about a young boy in Australia who is a swimmer and tipped to be a future Olympian. He messes up at his first big competition though and things unravel for him from there. It's alright but it jumps around an awful lot and changes perspective. Like the bits where he's still a kid are written in third person but the bits where it jumps to him as a man are in first person, and then they jump around to random points in time too. It's a bit hard to get it straight in your head how each bit relates to the rest of it but it's alright.

Think I'll be giving this one a miss, absolutely hated The Slap, a total waste of good reading time.

Reading Simon Mawer's Tightrope, the sequel to The Girl who fell from the Sky. Not grabbing me as much but readable. The Glass Room is his best book.

Callan57

The Heart of Everything by Henriette McKervey

Gonzovision

Finished 'The Romanovs' by Sebastien Sebag Montefiore, a great read, my first foray into Russian history.

I picked up 'Stalin: The Court of the Court of the Red Tsar' by the same author, thoroughly enjoying it at the moment also.

Xofpod

Gonzovision wrote: »

Finished 'The Romanovs' by Sebastien Sebag Montefiore, a great read, my first foray into Russian history.

I picked up 'Stalin: The Court of the Court of the Red Tsar' by the same author, thoroughly enjoying it at the moment also.

His "Young Stalin" is also a great read.

Swiper the fox

I'm not exactly flying through 'all the light we cannot see', have heard great reports from here and elsewhere, if I'm not loving it after 100 pages am I in trouble?

Callan57

Swiper the fox wrote: »

I'm not exactly flying through 'all the light we cannot see', have heard great reports from here and elsewhere, if I'm not loving it after 100 pages am I in trouble?

I thought it brilliant but each to their own. Obviously I'd say keep going

Aenaes

Been a while since I posted in here. I finished 1984 by George Orwell, found it scary, funny and sweet in places.

I read My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk and Attila The Hun: Barbarian Terror and the Fall of the Roman Empire by Christopher Kelly on holidays.
Such a vast difference in terms of enjoyment.

I was excited to start My Name is Red but it turned out to be dull and drawn out. Set in 1590's Istanbul a miniaturist is murdered. It deals less with the murder and the city than with the styles of painting and the encroachment of the "European style" upon the miniaturists.

Attila the Hun was a fantastic book. It sets to tell the story of a person we've all heard about but actually know very little of. The author explores how much of we "know" is actually derived from Roman prejudice and propaganda.
The conflicts, intrigues and power shifts of the time are told but it doesn't read just like a "history" book. Definitely a book I'd recommend checking out.

I just finished The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth who is apparently a famous author but I'd never heard of before. The books deals with three generations of the Trotta family and the decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Anyway, I'm currently reading Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott. It seemed to start of slowly and the language is a bit of a slog sometimes but it's picking up pace now.