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Post by OnlyMark on Sept 20, 2012 18:04:58 GMT 2
Buy a Kindle. I'm never short of something to read.
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Post by wikki on Sept 20, 2012 19:12:04 GMT 2
i moved on to the next book. an Iceland crime story from Sigurdadottir (don't ask me how to pronounce this name) you can see i am on vacation: This is the 4th book in hmmm, 3 days
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Post by Baz Faz on Sept 25, 2012 20:04:31 GMT 2
Someone sent me three Romanian crime novels. He thought they were so awful he didn't want to review them. So I am reading Anatomical Clues by Oana Stoica-Mujea. I understand why my friend didn't want to review them. I am three-quarters of the way through and I haven't the least idea what is going on (and nor, I expect, does the author).
The female detective is unusual in that she is agoraphobic and detects from her apartment in Bucharest even though the murder is several hundred kilometres away. The caste of characters contains a lot of writers and I can't keep up to date with whom is sleeping with whom. But the real stumbling block for me is that the fictional detective is sleeping with the author's real life publisher. How does her publisher feel about this? The cover has a painting of the author (and she's quite a dish) in a sort of Gauguin-in-Tahiti style - languorous and naked.
One final bizarre thing is the blurb on the back. It makes the usual idiotic claims of it being exceptional and funny and satirical Then it ends claiming this detective novel "explores some crucial developments in the European future." Eh? It does what? Do not expect it to give clues on how to solve the Euro crisis.
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Post by Scrubb on Sept 26, 2012 19:25:48 GMT 2
Although I'm still in the middle of the book of Julia Child letters, I've taken a little break and read the first book of a series called "The Dark is Rising" by Susan Cooper which is aimed at young adults, and was written in the '60s. I am sure I read one of the books as a kid but nothing in this one was familiar. Anyway, the first one - Over Sea and Under Stone - was really well done. They're about the unending battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil, but told as a very good story. I expect I'll read the whole series right away, in fact.
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Post by Scrubb on Oct 16, 2012 4:03:20 GMT 2
Finally finished the Julia Child letters - really liked the book overall and it made me like Julia even more than I already did.
Also read the whole Susan Cooper 'Dark is Rising' series and really liked it.
And for the creepy stuff, I read John Fowles' "The Collector" - oooogh.
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Post by rikita on Oct 16, 2012 8:21:37 GMT 2
right now, again just the newspaper...
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Post by Baz Faz on Oct 16, 2012 9:12:16 GMT 2
Wilhelm Reich - The Function of The Orgasm. We haven't heard from Pepe since he began reading this book. He must be exhausted with research.
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Post by lumi on Oct 16, 2012 13:29:49 GMT 2
Wilhelm Reich - The Function of The Orgasm. We haven't heard from Pepe since he began reading this book. He must be exhausted with research. ;D
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Post by lumi on Oct 16, 2012 13:30:54 GMT 2
I've just started reading 50 Shades Darker. I haven't gotten too far yet as I'm not really that into it but then again I've tried to read when I had a headache and when I was tired so will see.
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Post by missalaska on Oct 16, 2012 17:07:31 GMT 2
I'm back on The Covenant
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Post by Baz Faz on Oct 16, 2012 18:00:52 GMT 2
I'm struggling with a Romanian crime book. This is what is confusing me: Prologue Vienna December 2010 Ch 1 Vienna August 2010 Ch 2 Bucharest September 1985 Ch 3 Bucharest December 2009 Ch 4 Buzau October 1985 Ch 5 Vienna February 2010 Ch 6 Buzau January 1986 Ch 7 Bucharest March 2010 Ch 8 Buzau May 1986 Ch 9 Bucharest March 2010
That's as far as I've got. 78 footnotes so far. I have not the least idea of what's going on but I have learnt that Siktir means eff you in Romanian.
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Post by princessofpenguins on Oct 16, 2012 19:59:36 GMT 2
I don´t have time to read anything other than professional articles and the such for the time being :-(
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Post by Tilly Star on Oct 16, 2012 22:53:33 GMT 2
Still on the second Game if Thrones book. Slowly, slowly. I might grow a beard and become a wizard or gatekeeper or something.
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Post by lumi on Nov 27, 2012 10:21:27 GMT 2
I have about 50 pages to go of James Patterson's Now You See Her. It's the first book I've read by this author and although a bit far fetched at times I have enjoyed it.
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Post by Baz Faz on Nov 27, 2012 12:27:55 GMT 2
I am reading another of the Romania crime books that were sent to me. It is really strange as it was published in 1983 when there was strict censorship in Romania. So there are no references to the dire state of the economy (for instance, when I went in 1988 it was so awful that I witnessed afood riot, fist flying, old ladies knocked to the ground as people tried to get some lumps of frozen chicken) and people drive round in cars and there is no mention of the police or Securitate.
With all 3 Romanian books there is no linear plot. They are seriously weird.
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Post by rikita on Nov 27, 2012 14:56:40 GMT 2
right now just the newspaper again, and some magazines...
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Post by quixote on Nov 27, 2012 15:16:03 GMT 2
I'm Your Man, A biography of Leonard Cohen, Sylvie Simmons. (highly recomended if you're a Cohen fan)
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Post by Scrubb on Nov 27, 2012 17:16:21 GMT 2
Just finished the second book of "The Raj Quartet" yesterday - set in Indian in the 1940s. I'm really liking them.
ANd I'm 1/2 way through Patrick Leigh Fermor's "Between the Woods and the Water" which is volume 2 of his walk from France to Constantinople in the 1930s. I really liked the first one, but am bogging down in this one quite a bit. He's very wordy, and right now he's in Transylvania which I know nothing about so place names and history is all sort of a bewildering mass of facts. He writes really evocatively, but gets a bit too dense sometimes.
So I switched over and started "Wonder Boys" by Michael Chabon. I saw a movie based on it several years ago and think I'll like the book, too.
And when I woke up at 2 a.m. and tried to read myself back to sleep, I started EB Nesbitt's "The Railway CHildren" which I am sure I read as a kid, and was also a movie.
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Post by auntieannie on Nov 27, 2012 21:49:52 GMT 2
research papers on ulcerative colitis...
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Post by lumi on Dec 15, 2012 6:54:44 GMT 2
I've just started Mayada by Jean Sasson. It's a true story of a women born into a powerful Iraqi family who ended up in Saddam Hussein's torture jail. I've read quite a few books by this author (perhaps you've heard of the Princess trilogy) and enjoyed them so am looking forward to getting stuck into this one tomorrow. I've also bought another of Sasson's books yesterday so will read that one next.
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Post by Baz Faz on Dec 15, 2012 10:02:59 GMT 2
I'm reading some short stories by H.E.Bates. It is a very battered paperback published in 1975. We picked it up somewhere along our travels as it has various squiggly bits of writing in it and I cannot make out what language it is. The stories are well written but don't really grab you. I'm on the last story now set in Tahiti.
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Post by Hedonista on Dec 15, 2012 10:24:25 GMT 2
Having read the 50 Shades trilogy (and just ordered the newly released and somewhat controversial porn parody movie) I am nor reading The Girl with the dragon tatoo and enjoying it
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Post by Scrubb on Dec 15, 2012 19:59:00 GMT 2
I'm in the middle of "The Wonder Boys" by Michael Chabon - saw the movie years ago but don't remember much about it.
It's the second book by him that I've read and although he's a good writer, and the first one I read inspired me to try another of his books, I think I'm deciding that I'm just not that into him.
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Post by Scrubb on Dec 17, 2012 17:57:08 GMT 2
Last night I started a Kate Atkinson book (can't remember the name right now). I really like her stuff.
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Post by rikita on Dec 18, 2012 16:26:04 GMT 2
as always, just the newspaper and magazines... some öko-test magazines about various baby stuff my mum brought me...
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Post by missalaska on Dec 18, 2012 16:30:34 GMT 2
Keith Richards' autobiography Life
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quailia
Pot Head
Must you touch everything?
Posts: 308
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Post by quailia on Dec 23, 2012 10:12:36 GMT 2
Hurrah! Somewhere to talk about books!
I am currently reading "The Storyteller of Marrakesh", by Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya, which is poetical and disturbing - but very good. It has the feel of 1001 nights to it, with stories circling each other, and not always completely resolving.
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Post by Kate_R on Dec 23, 2012 12:17:08 GMT 2
Currently reading The Perfume Garden by Kate Lord Brown - one of those family sagas set in two different times and feels a bit like a Kate Morton novel. The story takes place in modern day (well, 2001) Valencia and the Spanish Civil War.
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Post by Baz Faz on Dec 23, 2012 12:28:43 GMT 2
Somebody lent us 50 Shades of Grey, which is obviously an essential part of everyone's education. Now I know Hedon is impressed (why else would he read the next two volumes?). But I have reached page 61 - AND THEY HAVEN'T EVEN HAD A KISS. This is taking literary foreplay too far.
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Post by katcalls on Dec 23, 2012 12:31:19 GMT 2
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