What book are you reading atm?? CHAPTER TWO

Shipwreck: Gibsons of Scilly by Carl Douglas and Björn Hagberg

This book is centered on photographs, taken by five generations of the Gibson family, of shipwrecks along the shores of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. Shipwrecks include impressive sailing ships, passenger liners, fishing vessels and naval vessels.

The Dublin Railway Murder by Thomas Morris

Fascinating account of a true story murder which took place in Victorian-era Dublin, the constraints of not having modern forensic technology to aid police investigations and backwards laws which could ultimately allow justice to be evaded.

Yep on Apple TV. It's very good.

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My boyfriend buys me a Far Side page-per-day calendar every year. Seeing what each day's cartoon is is a little ritual for us now.

Have loved TFS since I was a kid and my eldest brother had all the books. I didn't get half the jokes, but it didn't matter.

I remember Wordle was APHID one day about two years ago and my dad didn't know what that meant. All I could think of was "Aphids, Henry!".

If you know, you know 🤣

Just finished Breakdown by Cathy Sweeney. Excellent read. I really got immersed in it. Given the age profile of most Boardsies these days (is there anyone under 35?), I’d say a huge proportion, male and female, will relate to this book.

Seems popular with the library crowd anyways! Sounds fun, thanks for the heads up.

Enjoyed that, took me a while to get into it. I also enjoyed The Streets of Laredo which was a sequel.

Coast to Coast - James Morris

Travel book based on the writers travels in USA during the 1950s. Fascinating read so far with a society generally far ahead of anything in war-ravaged Europe in terms of affluence and mod cons.

Was getting absolutely smashed by work commitments, so hadn't read a book from cover to cover for about two months: which is the longest I'd ever gone without reading something since I learned to read. Felt very strange. Never again.

But, anyway, got back into the saddle again with a Colm Toibin double-bill: Brooklyn & Long Island.

I'd seen the adaptation of the former whenever it came out, but I don't mind reading the source sometimes, to contrast and compare. And of course, it is a lot deeper and a lot more ambivalent about things than the film is. So, even though, I knew where the story was going, I still found the psychological insight and tension of the novel riveting. You would at times reading it be forgiven for thinking that it was the form of some memoir of a young Irish female immigrant to the US from the fifties and what she had experienced firsthand. Toibin has the ability to get inside the head of his female protagonist in a way that's uncanny. He can write about men in particular from the perspective of women in a manner that is very rare.

I found Long Island, while still good, to be not as taut or as fully realised a reading experience as Brooklyn. But it is also sadder and a crueller reflection on what the passage of time and the effects of what the roads not taken can do to people's lives.

In Brooklyn, it was kind of amazing how he pulled off writing a book of such piercing insight, but, with the use such simple straight forward language. In Long Island this style is even more to the fore, as the language and prose is more stripped back, even to the point of even deliberate simple-mindedness, but there is a discordance there then that large elements of the plot are sort of the stuff of soap-opera: a bit of a clash IMO. Long Island felt like reading, at times, really high-class chick-lit - albeit chick lit with tons of emotional repression and shrouded in a grey emotional pallor throughout. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t recommend it, but that I didn’t find it as satisfying as Brooklyn.

I finally got around to finishing The Rejects. Really enjoyed it, would definitely recommend for any music trivia fans out there.

I'm currently reading Bodies, by Christine Anne Foley, which I'm feeling a bit ambiguous towards, but it's early enough days, so we'll see.

Then I'll have to read Colm Toibin's Long Island for the book club in my new job. Can't say I'm particularly looking forward to that, as I found Brooklyn boring AF. It is a million years since I read it, though.

Highly recommend his "Things Fell Apart" podcast as well... Everything he outputs tend to be fascinating.

There's a followup bonus episode of it that came out this week.

Yeah, so I really didn't enjoy Bodies. It couldn't decide whether it wanted to be literary fiction or a beach book. Also, the protagonist was a pain in the hole.