This Week I are mostly reading (contd)

The Given Day by Dennis Lehane

The Chemist
by Stephenie Meyer

Wyldwood

The Uncommon Life of Alfred Warner in Six Days, a quick read but quite heartwarming.

Next The Throwaway Children by Diney Costeloe, expecting a bit of an emotional rollercoaster.

LionelNashe

LionelNashe wrote: »

...

I'm listening to 'Touch' by the same author now, which has a similar premise to that Denzel Washington film where a demon could jump from body to body and take over the person.

'Touch' by Claire North is not as good as the Harry August book by a long shot. I'm listening on Audible, and have found myself missing bits of the story and mixing up minor characters and not caring, because the story is taking a long time to go anywhere anyway, so I feel I'm not missing much.

[Deleted User]

LionelNashe wrote: »

'Touch' by Claire North is not as good as the Harry August book by a long shot. I'm listening on Audible, and have found myself missing bits of the story and mixing up minor characters and not caring, because the story is taking a long time to go anywhere anyway, so I feel I'm not missing much.

yeah, true..the sudden appearance of hope is very good too though..

marienbad

Solar Bones - Mike McCormack

In Praise of Forgetting: Historical Memory and its Ironies - David Rieff

Joyce In Court :James Joyce and the Law - Adrian Hardiman

Finished the excellent The Given Day - loved it
Now it's on to Boston Noir also edited by Dennis Lehane

Forgotten 500
by G Freeman

Callan57 wrote: »

Finished the excellent The Given Day - loved it
Now it's on to Boston Noir also edited by Dennis Lehane

The other two books in Lehane's trilogy are even better IMHO.

Xofpod wrote: »

The other two books in Lehane's trilogy are even better IMHO.

Thank you, I added them to my list

marienbad

Mend The Living - Maylis De Kerangal

Ariel - Marina Carr

The Wartime Broadcasts of Francis Stuart - edited by Brendan Barrington

The Reich's Orchestra: The Berlin Philharmonic 1933-1945 - Misha Aster

The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti

Callan57 wrote: »

The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti

Very enjoyable read if you suspend belief ... central character as difficult to kill as Rasputin but I did enjoyed it.

Next is a tiny little book Such Small Hands by Andrés Barba (translated from Spanish) and hopefully nothing to do with Mr Trump

and on a larger scale Ken Follett's A Column of Fire

LionelNashe

The Time Traveller's Wife - listening to it on Audible. About 25% of the way through. So far, it's just relationship stuff, and the time-travel mechanism being explained (which is original). It's the kind of time travel that requires suspending your disbelief. It's not how time travel really works.

LionelNashe wrote: »

The Time Traveller's Wife - listening to it on Audible. About 25% of the way through. So far, it's just relationship stuff, and the time-travel mechanism being explained (which is original). It's the kind of time travel that requires suspending your disbelief. It's not how time travel really works.

Trying hard to resist but... - how does time travel really work?

Hardcore Twenty-Four
by Janet Evanovich

Oops69

Primo levi 'If this is a man' , a jolting counter brace to the impending consumerism of christmas and without sounding like a priest , a moment for reflection on the real meaning of the season.

[Deleted User]

Oops69 wrote: »

Primo levi 'If this is a man' , a jolting counter brace to the impending consumerism of christmas and without sounding like a priest , a moment for reflection on the real meaning of the season.

Yeah, harrowing, but profound..

State of the Union by Douglas Kennedy

Paddy Samurai

Started it today and read about 50 pages .Liked what i read so far .:)
Looking forward to finishing this great series.

The Red Knight's final battle lies ahead . . . but there's a whole war still to fight first.
He began with a small company, fighting the dangerous semi-mythical creatures which threatened villages, nunneries and cities. But as his power - and his forces - grew, so the power of the enemy he stood against became ever more clear. Not the power of men . . . but that of gods, with thousands of mortal allies.

marienbad

The Girl Fom Venice - Martin Cruz Smith.

The Blue Estuaries - Louise Bogan

Even The Dogs - Jon Mcgregor

Smile by Roddy Doyle

eire4

Finished Naoml Klein's No Logo an excellent critique of the increasing influence and power of major transnational corporations and the issues that brings up.

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

45, Bill Drummond

Wyldwood

Callan57 wrote: »

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

Just finished it will be interested in your verdict.

The Whistler
by John Grisham

Wyldwood wrote: »

Just finished it will be interested in your verdict.

Loving it ... still reading at 4am this morning

Arghus

The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham - Another classic that left me feeling a bit, "Is that it? Bill Murray wanted to make a movie of this?"

One character seeks transcendent meaning in his life, as all around him his acquaintances face dissolution and ruin from their pursuit of earthly delights or balms to their vanity. Ah yeah; the poor things don't even know they are in a cage.

I appreciate the influence of the novel: it's explorations of Hinduistic thought must have seemed pretty damn out there at the time - even if they feel a bit dated and vaguely new-agey now. But there is a core of sincerity to the novel: he clearly wanted to right about something meaningful. But it's a more didactic experience than something you can really love as a reader - the characters are reminiscent of plot-points rather than living and breathing fleshed out human beings. No doubting it's influence though

I did enjoy some of the prose; Somerset Maugham has a bitchy perceptiveness about him and he has a style of great clarity and ease. Pity that this novel lacks it in the plotting and characterisation stakes - but it's rare you get everything.