Read Any Good Books Lately?

[Great Uncle Bulgaria 1,051]

Precious and Few - Breithaupt - billed as being all about the music of the early 70s, I bought it expecting/hoping to read about his memories of Sweet, Slade, T Rex and maybe even some guy called Glitter but it instead focuses on US acts of the era, of which many of whom I have little knowledge or interest. Some acts (e.g. the Motown big hitters) obviously transcend geographical boundaries but if you are looking for a glam rock nostalgia fest this is the wrong book for you.

 

The Lost Girls - Heather Young. This one of those books where the big event (the disappearance of a 6 year old girl many years ago) is known up front and 99% of the story is spent giving you the history of events which led up to it. This involves  - not all at all coincidentally  - parallel narratives about women 50 years ago and in the present, both of whom spend an inordinate amount of time emoting at great length and making bad life decisions. I guessed the perpetrators at an early stage although there was another rather sordid subplot that I didn't see coming. Unusually for this genre, all the bad things in this book happen to young children.

 

Never have I ever - Joshiliyn Jackson Another domestic thriller, which was a page turner even if the plot was unbelievable at times. The protagonist (seemingly as ever) was an annoying over-emotional woman and I was rooting for the baddie throughout. 

 

Half way through the second Richard Osman Thursday Murder Club book. Unusually, I think it's better than the first one, at least thus far. The dialogue seems sharper, the humour better expressed and the action tauter. We also find out a bit more about the old woman who in book 1 seemed to be able to persuade everybody (including the police) to give her whatever favours she wanted at short notice for no obvious reason, which undermined the credibility of the whole thing somewhat.

 

 

[wannamaker 1,067]

Finished reading Zorba the Greek. I haven't read that many books, but this might be my favorite one. Zorba reminded me of an old friend of mine that I haven't seen in years. Will definitely see the movie when I have the time.

[time 7,968]

I'm currently reading this...

 

Not bad. It's the sort of book I can read a chapter as and when, rather than immerse myself in it, so taking longer than I anticipated.

 

In other book news, the 'to read' pile has broken the 50 title mark!

[Great Uncle Bulgaria 1,051]

 

About 15 years after everyone else (and 10 years after the film which I have also hitherto avoided) the prizewinning 'We need to talk about Kevin' by Lionel Shriver.

 

There is little jeopardy in this book. It reveals in the opening pages  - if you haven't already read the back cover - that Kevin killed a load of his classmates and we spend the rest of the book getting there.
The narrative device used is his mother writing endless, very verbose letters to her former husband. These are extremely tedious, particularly in the first 100 pages before Kevin makes his entrance. For some reason the mother feels the need to go over a lot of events to which her husband was a witness, never failing to use 20 short words when it is possible to use 100 long ones instead. Unfortunately the mother is not sympathetic and her husband is - as far as Kevin is concerned - a wilfully blind doormat. Kevin himself is not at all interesting. He's evil pretty much from birth and this trait just manifests itself in increasingly unlikeable ways as the book progresses. Having nearly given up early on the book, it does at least gather a bit of pace and improve in the second half, but it's still unexciting with no one you can identify with (let alone like). There is no motivation for the mass shooting. It all seems rather pointless really. Perhaps she (yes, Lionel is a woman) should have dug into the motivation behind one of the (many) other contemporaneous US school shootings and written about that rather than making one up herself.

 

SPOILER alert - there is a big reveal in the last chapter, but you will have had to have been either stupid or remarkably unobservant not to have worked it out by then. I won't say what it is just in case one of these two cases applies :-).

 

Given it's 465 pages of fairly small print, not really worth the effort involved. 

[Clorox Bleachman 2,016]

Has anyone read Ultra-Processed People by Chris van Tulleken or similar books? The premise sounds terrifying. However, I'm feart of turning into this French mother who brandished a cucumber in my face and cried « It is not organique ? » at the old job.

[Great Uncle Bulgaria 1,051]

Whatever happened to Peggy Sue - by Peggy Sue Gerron

 

This is the life story of the girl who inspired the Buddy Holly classic, although most reader interest is obviously going to centre on its treatment of Buddy rather than the unremarkable eponymous 'heroine'. There are a number of things in this autobiography that aren't in the 'official' version, as brought down to us by the Buddy film and stage musical and official Bios. Neither Jerry/JI (Peggy Sue's husband and the Crickets' drummer) nor Maria Elena ever went into print to refute the content of this book which suggests it is basically true (Peggy Sue died in 2017 so they had plenty of opportunity) although since last year Jerry is no longer with us either.
Peggy Sue contends that Maria Elena was unfriendly, high maintenance and generally a piece of work and Buddy was planning to divorce her. She also claims that Buddy had said the same thing to his mother although the latter is no longer around to corroborate his. She also said that JI didn't treat her well, culminating in his hitting her, which seems to have been the straw which broke the camel's back and made her finally seek a divorce. (One does wonder why, if he was so bad to her, she stuck it for so long but I guess the answer is a combination of religion and 'different times'). Peggy Sue also implies that she and Buddy would both have been happier with each other than their respective spouses; she clearly admired him a lot more than she did her husband, although there is little evidence that Buddy reciprocated..
She is also a lot kinder to the Pettys than the usual version (the Rave On biography, for example), which has them as taking financial advantage of the Crickets.

Part of the book is taken from Peggy Sue's diaries of the time, which portray her as a socially immature simple country girl who wasn't ready for marriage so young, particularly not to someone who was to become a hard living rock star. (Some episodes, notably her going skinny dipping in a hotel swimming pool which leads to the honeymooning couples being asked to leave, don't fit this narrative very well). Despite a ghost writer/co-author It's not brilliantly written in places and I could have done without the bits about hairstyles and dresses, but overall I'm glad i read it.

 

PS It's cheaper on Alibris and Abebooks than Amazon.

[Grim Up North 3,565]

Read this recently - thought it was excellent although I needed a little help from google after finishing it to tie up some of the symbolism and linked parts of the story and the last few chapters - it's hard to keep 530 pages of content in your head so you can link everything whereas when an author is doing that they know the link is going to be there later in the book.

 

 

Also I've been reading all the Mike Craven books which are set locally to me around Carlisle but are all very good reads if you like crime books and very easy to follow. In a couple of them the cleverness almost outdoes itself because to make it possible the explanations are a bit contrived bu they're still great reads anyway.

 

[Toast 14,844]

3 hours ago, Grim Up North said:

530 pages

 

Books never used to be this long. (Talking about light fiction here, not classics like War And Peace.)

I think it started in the 80s with the sex-and-shopping novels that were the size of bricks, and now the publishers expect all novels to be 400-600 pages.  Trouble is a lot of them don't have enough plot to fill that many pages.

[harrymcnallysblueandwhitearmy 1,463]

John Banville’s 1989 novel The Book of Evidence, followed by Mark O’Connell’s investigation into the case that it was loosely based on, A Thread of Violence. Murder and machinations in 1980s Ireland that I was unaware of at the time, both recommended. 

[DCI Frank Burnside 2,688]

On 05/07/2023 at 07:08, harrymcnallysblueandwhitearmy said:

John Banville’s 1989 novel The Book of Evidence, followed by Mark O’Connell’s investigation into the case that it was loosely based on, A Thread of Violence. Murder and machinations in 1980s Ireland that I was unaware of at the time, both recommended. 

Another book about the event itself if you're interested which includes  the political aspect of it too 

 

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Murderer-Taoiseach-Revisiting-Notorious-Macarthur/dp/1399718592

[harrymcnallysblueandwhitearmy 1,463]

I’m all MacArthured out for now.

[maryportfuncity 10,017]

HIGHLY recommended for all those hereabouts who are regularly pulled up by their loved ones for having a perverse sense of humour. Bought this entirely on the back of reviews which are pretty much united on the opinion that Amazon are missing a trick for as long as one star is as low as a review can go. Seriously, this is a cack-handed stinker so bad it's just about plausible that Amazon sourced it from a parallel universe. It only reaches the 45 large type/double spaced pages by repeating some facts and presenting them each time as if they haven't previously appeared, the time line is all over the place to the point the chapter recounting most of her time as PM appears to think she's still in the job. When the mistakes really kick in they're show stoppers, probably the best moment of unintended comedy coming with the claim that Truss was "shot" whilst campaigning to become MP for Calder Valley. Same author has recounted a random selection of careers including Billie Jean King, Melvyn Bragg and Vic n Bob. If you see someone confused and ranting at a bus stop in the next few days they may simply be recovering from an attempt to read the entire output of Natasha Tristan.

 

 

 

[Sly Ronnie 610]

Following Milan Kundera's death, I finally got round to reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which had been kicking around my place for about 10 years.

 

It's a good novel, although at some points it came over like Confessions of a Window Cleaner for dissident intellectuals.

[gcreptile 10,234]

Finally finished Stephen King's IT after, I don't know how many months, 3-4? Guess it can only get better from here on forward, in the sense that there is one fewer brick to go through (and I have read his Dark Tower series and The Stand, so I've managed to get through three of pop culture's thickest bricks, so to say).

Well, I think the quality of the book didn't warrant the length. It's not the 10-out-of-ten that quite a few fans say it is, IMO. The Stand also flowed much, much better. The story itself consists of many, many good parts though, but I think the whole book is a little less than the sum of its parts.

[Toast 14,844]

10 minutes ago, gcreptile said:

Finally finished Stephen King's IT after, I don't know how many months, 3-4? Guess it can only get better from here on forward, in the sense that there is one fewer brick to go through (and I have read his Dark Tower series and The Stand, so I've managed to get through three of pop culture's thickest bricks, so to say).

Well, I think the quality of the book didn't warrant the length. It's not the 10-out-of-ten that quite a few fans say it is, IMO. The Stand also flowed much, much better. There itself consists of many, many good parts though, but I think the whole book is a little less than the sum of its parts.

 

Many years ago IT was the first Stephen King book I read, or attempted to read.  It just didn't grab me and I gave up and took it back to the library (I read faster in those days! )

It was quite a while before I picked up another SK book, and annoyingly I can't remember which one it was, but I enjoyed it and have read a lot more since.

I find he's quite uneven.  Some are really good, some are page-turners that I wouldn't read again, others i've abandoned early on.

I like the short stories and novellas best.

[gcreptile 10,234]

9 minutes ago, Toast said:

 

Many years ago IT was the first Stephen King book I read, or attempted to read.  It just didn't grab me and I gave up and took it back to the library (I read faster in those days! )

It was quite a while before I picked up another SK book, and annoyingly I can't remember which one it was, but I enjoyed it and have read a lot more since.

I find he's quite uneven.  Some are really good, some are page-turners that I wouldn't read again, others i've abandoned early on.

I like the short stories and novellas best.

Yes, I've heard that opinion now a couple of times. Never started the short stories, maybe it's time.

[time 7,968]

On 02/06/2023 at 12:08, time said:

I'm currently reading this...

 

Not bad. It's the sort of book I can read a chapter as and when, rather than immerse myself in it, so taking longer than I anticipated.

 

In other book news, the 'to read' pile has broken the 50 title mark!

As I said, taking longer than anticipated, but it is finally read!

 

If you have an interest in death (and let's face it, who doesn't)  it's well worth reading to see how it's celebrated (if that's the right word) around the world.

 

Next up (which I've already started)

in which author Ian Ridley copes with his partner's premature death through the medium of cricket.

[Spade_Cooley 9,022]

 

 

Having been sat on my "to read" list for nearly a year, finally got around to cracking open "In Perfect Harmony - Singalong Pop in '70s Britain" and it's a very, very enjoyable read that I'm sure would appeal to a bunch of DLers. Some great stories and revelations from in there, everything from Middle of the Road drinking Motorhead under the table to Clive Dunn being an avowed socialist and The Foundations nearly scuppering their career by stealing microphones from every recording studio they visited and selling them on.

[Heef 166]

On 14/03/2018 at 11:04, Heef said:

Working my way through the Booker Prize short list nominees at the moment. Some of the nominees are so much better than the winners. e.g the Reluctant Fundamentalist > the Gathering; Morality Play > The Ghost Road. Some great books in the list, but some pap too.

Only 12 books left before I've read every shortlisted Booker Prize nominee from 1969-2009.

 

83 shortlisted books left to read in total. Currently reading Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland.

 

 According to Goodreads, I have given the following books 5 stars:

 

The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

Empire of the Sun - JG Ballard

The Redundancy of Courage - Timothy Mo

Troubles - JG Farrell

English Passengers - Matthew Kneale

Such a Long Journey - Rohinton Mistry

Disgrace - JM Coetzee

Beside the Ocean of Time - George Mackay Brown

The Life and Times of Michael K - JM Coetzee

The True History of the Kelly Gang - Peter Carey

Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood

Morality Play - Barry Unsworth

Good Behaviour - Molly Keane

Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth

A Month in the Country - JL Carr

Rates of Exchange - Malcolm Bradbury

The Narrow Road to the Deep North - Richard Flanagan

His Bloody Project - Graeme Macrae Burnet

Confederates - Thomas Keneally

 

In hindsight, I might have also underrated Goshawk Squadron by Derek Robinson.

[lilham 649]

On 30/12/2023 at 21:04, Heef said:

Only 12 books left before I've read every shortlisted Booker Prize nominee from 1969-2009.

 

83 shortlisted books left to read in total. Currently reading Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland.

 

 According to Goodreads, I have given the following books 5 stars:

 

The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

Empire of the Sun - JG Ballard

The Redundancy of Courage - Timothy Mo

Troubles - JG Farrell

English Passengers - Matthew Kneale

Such a Long Journey - Rohinton Mistry

Disgrace - JM Coetzee

Beside the Ocean of Time - George Mackay Brown

The Life and Times of Michael K - JM Coetzee

The True History of the Kelly Gang - Peter Carey

Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood

Morality Play - Barry Unsworth

Good Behaviour - Molly Keane

Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth

A Month in the Country - JL Carr

Rates of Exchange - Malcolm Bradbury

The Narrow Road to the Deep North - Richard Flanagan

His Bloody Project - Graeme Macrae Burnet

Confederates - Thomas Keneally

 

In hindsight, I might have also underrated Goshawk Squadron by Derek Robinson.

What did you think of the Master by Colm Toibin?

[Toast 14,844]

I'm reading the Slough House series by Mick Herron, currently a show on Apple TV.  On the fourth one now, Spook Street. 

 

Really enjoying these, but I gave up on the TV series.  It's very popular so it might just be me.  Even though I'd read the book, I found the first episode confusing and if I hadn't read the book I wouldn't have understood wtf was going on.  Poor diction as so often, so I couldn't make out most of the dialogue and the subtitles were only on screen for microseconds giving no time to read them.  Just that one tiny adjustment might have made all the difference.

 

Anyway the books are great: absorbing plots, well drawn characters and plenty of dry humour.

[Heef 166]

17 hours ago, lilham said:

What did you think of the Master by Colm Toibin?

 

One of my regrets in this process was in not making a few small notes as to what I liked or disliked about each book. I've been trying recently to reflect back on each year's shortlist to see what I can remember about each one and sadly some of the ones I read a fair while back I only have vague memories of (I started in 2016). With The Master, I'm not a fan of fictualising around real people and I'm not an expert in Henry James able to distill the complete fabrications from the fanciful from the reality or enhanced reality. The delivery of the novel conveys a real sense of the internal workings of the narrator's mind (whether it's a reasonable representation of Henry James or not). I recall some reasonably amusing moments - particularly with the narrator's aversion to conflict and his inability to fire his two house-staff who have become - shall we say - not fit for purpose due to alcohol consumption. I see on Goodreads, I give it a 3/5 score, but there's no finesse in that!

[lilham 649]

3 hours ago, Heef said:

 

One of my regrets in this process was in not making a few small notes as to what I liked or disliked about each book. I've been trying recently to reflect back on each year's shortlist to see what I can remember about each one and sadly some of the ones I read a fair while back I only have vague memories of (I started in 2016). With The Master, I'm not a fan of fictualising around real people and I'm not an expert in Henry James able to distill the complete fabrications from the fanciful from the reality or enhanced reality. The delivery of the novel conveys a real sense of the internal workings of the narrator's mind (whether it's a reasonable representation of Henry James or not). I recall some reasonably amusing moments - particularly with the narrator's aversion to conflict and his inability to fire his two house-staff who have become - shall we say - not fit for purpose due to alcohol consumption. I see on Goodreads, I give it a 3/5 score, but there's no finesse in that!

I gave it a 4.

From what I recall was that it shed some light on his ghostly characters and what those inspirations may be.

I visited Henry James's grave in January 2020, and it had quite the energy. It was an unseasonable 70 degrees out. He's buried in Cambridge, Massachusetts, across from the much nicer cemetery, Mt. Auburn.

[Toast 14,844]

5 hours ago, Heef said:

One of my regrets in this process was in not making a few small notes as to what I liked or disliked about each book.

 

These are useful - can be used as a bookmark as well as a place to make notes. I bought a set as a gift for a friend who is in a book group.

Reader's Notes

 

I often buy cards from these nice people.  https://www.rathergoodart.co.uk/ 

They regularly have sales with 30% off, and if you sign up for their newsletter you get a permanent 10% discount.

[Great Uncle Bulgaria 1,051]

The Last Devil to Die - the 4th in Richard Osman's series about 4 nearly-80 year olds who go round solving murders that the police can't. Found the previous 3 a mixed bunch and wasn't entirely convinced that a 4th helping was the way to go, but I found this possibly the best to date. This is a bit darker than previous ones and the gear changes between light comedy and serious murders are a bit less clunky than previously.

 

You still need to suspend belief about a couple of central conceits (why don't the hardened criminals just shoot all the annoying geriatrics on initially encountering them rather than engaging with them, why are some of these supposedly masters of evil essentially comic characters rather than objects of fear, etc) but, once you've accepted this, if you enjoyed the first three there's no reason not to buy the 4th instalment (or have someone give it to you for a birthday present, as I did).