Books Read 2021

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Hipolito
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Re: Books Read 2021

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Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Dafoe (ebook): Even 300 years after its first publication, this book entertains. Crusoe's cleverness and inventiveness help him survive on the island. His time in isolation him lets him reconnect with his faith and reconsider his wayward morals. The book doesn't have as interesting a beginning or ending, though, and is a bit too colonialist. Rating: 6 out of 8 powder-horns.
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Re: Books Read 2021

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Jeff V wrote: Sat Jan 23, 2021 5:26 pm Camino Winds by John Grisham (A) :binky: :binky: :binky: :binky: :binky: :binky:

This is the second novel set on an island off the coast of Florida. The most implausible part of the book isn't the hurricane that provided for the title, nor the murder that occurred during the storm. Not even the root of the murder plot involving a drug that helps keep comatose dementia patients alive seemingly forever. No, the most implausible part of the book is the main character who runs a thriving book store where authors still conduct major book tours and draw huge crowds. Now that's just crazy talk.
To be fair, Grisham's career peaked in the era of the Borders book tour. He probably read at hundreds of them.
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Re: Books Read 2021

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Holman wrote: Thu Feb 04, 2021 10:57 pm To be fair, Grisham's career peaked in the era of the Borders book tour. He probably read at hundreds of them.
Good point!
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Re: Books Read 2021

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Torfish wrote: Fri Jan 29, 2021 5:58 pm The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey :binky: :binky: :binky:

I wanted a really good Zombie book to read and this turned up in my google research. It's not very good. Begins very well but falls into bad writing and same old zombie situations. Nothing new. I barely finished it.

I've read a few Zombie books, probably the more popular ones. Amazingly I haven't found a golden nugget yet. If you know of any, please recommend!
I particularly enjoyed Zone One, by Colson Whitehead
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Re: Books Read 2021

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Spy School, by Stuart Gibbs (audio book).

Wound up listening to this over the weekend in audio book format while driving around with the kids. It's about a teen who winds up getting conscripted into a CIA "spy school", which turns out to be as part of an operation to catch a mole at the spy school. It's YA-fare, but for what it's worth I enjoyed it - pretty well written, decent characters, some twists. I don't know that it's really in the wheel house for the demographics around here, but for a book to share with young-to-tween kids it's pretty good (and part of a longer series).
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Re: Books Read 2021

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Stephen King - Joyland : middle-aged melancholy? bittersweet? contemplation on memories (and nostalgia) of the past. like his previous book written for the Hard Case Crime imprint, it doesn't ... really fit in to the whole pulp neo-noir seedy urban underbelly scene, like, at all, but because he's STEPHEN KING he does what he wants and the publisher is just glad to have it. which is _not_ to say i didn't get into reading this - guy knows how to craft an absorbing story and i appreciate the 'liberties' he takes with the imprint's themes. once i started, it was really hard to quit. the flow is good, even with some questionable plot elements (and a not very believable eight year old kid - maybe having second sight gives you wise-beyond-your-years gravitas... and it feels like the author puts too much of himself into characters, so the dialog sometimes comes out as a bit uncharacteristic... and yeah, the ending was kinda inexplicable), and it was a slow burn for most of the book, taking its time to establish the place and atmosphere to enjoyable effect. but as i mentioned in another thread, coming off the Milton, Yeats, Poe and Wells i am also reading, the writing and style really did feel like a YA novel (with a few 'adult themes') and it was weirdly disconcerting.

just know this cover scene never occurs in the story - it's just there to visually tie this book into the rest of the publisher's works:
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.....

also, this one is coming out next month:

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Re: Books Read 2021

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Extraction by RR Haywood

This is the first book of trilogy, what isn't nowadays. I think I heard about the series from someone either here or at QT3. I am a sucker for time travel books and this fits the bill. I wouldn't call Haywood a great author, there are some parts of the book where I kinda shook my head wondering what he was trying to convey. He is decent with the action, his characters are developing but he goes a little slap stick sometimes and those parts just don't seem to work. But the story itself is interesting enough that I have ordered books 2-3 off Amazon.
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Re: Books Read 2021

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Iron Curtain : The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956, by Anne Applebaum.

I've been reading to read one of Anne Applebaum's work for awhile, and I found this on a good ebook sale. Pretty solid book. It's about the Soviets imposing communism in eastern europe after World War II. The most interesting part is focused on the years 1945 - ~1950. Basically describes how the Soviets immediately worked to take control of key institutions like the radio and security institutions, but left relatively free political institutions for a few years (including free elections which communists often lost), but basically worked to make the elections irrelevant by controlling the security apparatus in each state and building a separate state that ran throug the communist party, and then working to take control of elections and whatnot relatively late in the process.

The second half of the book is basically about how people survived in eastern europe during communism - the choices between collaborating, passive resistance, fleeing the country, and occasional open opposition.

Pretty interesting stuff. Focused on Poland, East Germany, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. I would've appreciated some mention of Austria as well, which is the one country that was mostly occupied by the Soviets but which managed to not wind up within the Soviet sphere of influence. I think that'd be an interesting contrast. Part of what I was wondering while reading this book was whether there was any chance for any of the countries to wind up free countries. Probably not for the most part since the Soviets had the guns, but that's partly why I'd have been interested to read more about Austria / Vienna.
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Re: Books Read 2021

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El Guapo wrote: Sat Feb 13, 2021 6:43 pm Iron Curtain : The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956, by Anne Applebaum.
If you were impressed with ("enjoyed" isn't the word) Iron Curtain, certainly take a look at Applebaum's GULAG: a History, which is basically a prequel.
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Re: Books Read 2021

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Or Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin.
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Re: Books Read 2021

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Scuzz wrote: Sat Feb 13, 2021 4:37 pm Extraction by RR Haywood

This is the first book of trilogy, what isn't nowadays. I think I heard about the series from someone either here or at QT3. I am a sucker for time travel books and this fits the bill. I wouldn't call Haywood a great author, there are some parts of the book where I kinda shook my head wondering what he was trying to convey. He is decent with the action, his characters are developing but he goes a little slap stick sometimes and those parts just don't seem to work. But the story itself is interesting enough that I have ordered books 2-3 off Amazon.
That might have been me. I got the first book as a freebie on Amazon First Reads (or whatever it's called these days) and liked it enough to buy the next two and I enjoyed them. FWIW, I thought the first two books had periods where the author padded things and unnecessarily slowed things down. The last book, though, was wall-to-wall action and was a lot of fun.
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Re: Books Read 2021

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Finished recently:

Up in Honey's Room by Elmore Leonard. Continues the story of Carl Webster, the Hot Kid of the US Marshall's Service, first told in Leonard's "The Hot Kid" book. Set close to the end of the war it follows Carl as he tries to track down escaped Nazi POWs and encounters Honey Deal, ex-wife of Walter Schoen, German-born but now running a butcher shop in Detroit, he's a dead ringer for Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS. I discovered Elmore Leonard after watching the Justified TV series and "The Hot Kid" and "Up in Honey's Room" are the first books of his I have read that are set prior to the "modern day" setting. Don't want to give away much of the plot but the book's appeal is in the banter between the different people and the setting of late 1940's Detroit as well as Leonard's prose.

Ghosts, a YA graphic novel about two sisters and their family after a recent move to a Northern California coastal town. Catrina, the older sister, is upset at having to be uprooted and leaving all her friends and tries to deal with the fact that it was all done because Maya, the younger sister, has cystic fibrosis and will benefit from the cool, salty air that blows in from the sea. The book explores family, tradition (via the Dia de los Muertos festival), and how ghosts are not to be feared but accepted as a way to honor one's ancestors and establish a heritage to one's past.

My younger daughter read this one first and I was worried that the book might have ended on a sad note (due to the cystic fibrosis in the younger sister) so I read it afterward in case she wanted to talk about it. I liked how the book ended with an uplifting message about the bonds that hold family together and living life in the moment, and she did too.

Also would like to give thanks to my local library system, which has a pretty good interface for finding and holding books via the online website, as well as the online system for scheduling a pickup of books held. My family and I have been making a lot of use of the library system during the Pandemic and it's an excellent way for us to find and read new books.
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Re: Books Read 2021

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Holman wrote: Sat Feb 13, 2021 10:48 pm
El Guapo wrote: Sat Feb 13, 2021 6:43 pm Iron Curtain : The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956, by Anne Applebaum.
If you were impressed with ("enjoyed" isn't the word) Iron Curtain, certainly take a look at Applebaum's GULAG: a History, which is basically a prequel.
Yeah, Gulag is on my list of books to read, though I have like half a dozen books ahead of it on my reading list, so it'll probably be awhile.
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Re: Books Read 2021

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Allies, by Alan Gratz

My daughter's been asking me to read a couple books that she loves for awhile, and since I was between books I grabbed this one to read. It's a novelized version of D-Day, focused on half a dozen interlocking characters (a U.S. solder in the D-Day landing, a mother and daughter with the french resistance, a medic, a british tank officer, etc.). History themed. The writing was definitely YA-book style, so occasionally lacked a little depth, but it was an entertaining and quick read.
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Re: Books Read 2021

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Just finished The Black Song by Anthony Ryan, second book, and allegedly last in this series.
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Already read the previous trilogy about Al Sorna, and it keeps me coming back. He is still roaming the earth so the door is open for more. If you like gritty fantasy this is good stuff. 6/8 curved swords.
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Jaymann wrote: Mon Feb 15, 2021 6:05 pm Just finished The Black Song by Anthony Ryan, second book, and allegedly last in this series.
Image

Already read the previous trilogy about Al Sorna, and it keeps me coming back. He is still roaming the earth so the door is open for more. If you like gritty fantasy this is good stuff. 6/8 curved swords.
I need to try Anthony again. Blood Song is one of the best books I've ever read. Hit Tower Lord and I really hated it. I persevered through Tower Lord then waited too long to read Queen of Fire.

I've read that the new series has good reviews.
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Re: Books Read 2021

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Yeah, it was a couple years later that I picked this up, I remembered the main characters, but glad there was a dramatis personae. I can tell you this much, his song changed.
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Re: Books Read 2021

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AFTER HITLER Recivilizing Germans, 1945–1995

A lighthearted romp through the post-WWII landscape of Germany through denazification, the creation of a new society, the unrest of the 60s, problems of immigration, dealing with the world powers, and reunification.

It fills some holes in my historical studies in terms of post-WWII activity. I may need to find something a bit more time-bound to focus more on specific timeframes to sate the need completely.
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Re: Books Read 2021

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I actually WROTE my first book this year! It's called "Leaving the Tower," and it's all about why the Jehovah's Witnesses are so horribly wrong. I just wanted to crow about it a little bit.
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Re: Books Read 2021

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The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic, by Mike Duncan.

This is a book by the guy who does the Revolutions and the History of Rome podcasts. This is sort of an offshoot of History of Rome, focused on the decline of the institutions of the Roman Republic in the period before Julius and Augustus Caesar finished it off and transformed it into the Empire. I'd been wanting to read this for awhile, but it was too depressing and anxiety inducing a subject while Trump was still in office. Still pretty anxiety inducing even now, though, since as malchior will tell you we are far, far from out of the woods. And there are indeed a fair number of general parallels - a lot of troubles stemmed from the decline and increasing irrelevance of norms of behavior among Roman leaders, to the point where armed mobs became an increasingly important part of Roman politics, disrupting votes, elections, and other normal functions of government.

It's definitely an interesting read about an era of history that I didn't know a lot about. The writing is solid but not the best I've ever read. The cut-off of the book is (maybe necessarily) a little arbitary - it runs for about 40 years, from ~ 110 BC to ~70 BC, then has a concluding chapter that does a 5 minute overview of the final collapse of the Republic, then just sort of ends without much summary or concluding thoughts or analysis. But I still enjoyed it quite a bit.

Spy Camp, by Stuart Gibbs (audiobook).

This is another YA type audiobook that we've been listening to as a family on drives, focused in a middle school kid who gets recruited by the CIA and becomes targeted by a rival evil spy organization. This is focused on the evil spy organization's efforts to target the main character and his ultimate thwarting of their grand evil plan. It's definitely YA fair, but as these go it was actually pretty well written and fun to listen to.
Last edited by El Guapo on Mon Feb 22, 2021 11:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Books Read 2021

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Eel Snave wrote: Sat Feb 20, 2021 9:41 pm I actually WROTE my first book this year! It's called "Leaving the Tower," and it's all about why the Jehovah's Witnesses are so horribly wrong. I just wanted to crow about it a little bit.
Congrats! Are you getting it published?
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Re: Books Read 2021

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El Guapo wrote: Mon Feb 22, 2021 11:39 am
Eel Snave wrote: Sat Feb 20, 2021 9:41 pm I actually WROTE my first book this year! It's called "Leaving the Tower," and it's all about why the Jehovah's Witnesses are so horribly wrong. I just wanted to crow about it a little bit.
Congrats! Are you getting it published?
It's actually on Amazon! I self-published since it's such a niche title.
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Re: Books Read 2021

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Eel Snave wrote: Mon Feb 22, 2021 2:28 pm
El Guapo wrote: Mon Feb 22, 2021 11:39 am
Eel Snave wrote: Sat Feb 20, 2021 9:41 pm I actually WROTE my first book this year! It's called "Leaving the Tower," and it's all about why the Jehovah's Witnesses are so horribly wrong. I just wanted to crow about it a little bit.
Congrats! Are you getting it published?
It's actually on Amazon! I self-published since it's such a niche title.
Hmmm, very suspicious. This says that it's by HJ Evans, not Eel Snave. Nice try.
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Re: Books Read 2021

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Eel Snave wrote: Mon Feb 22, 2021 2:28 pm
El Guapo wrote: Mon Feb 22, 2021 11:39 am
Eel Snave wrote: Sat Feb 20, 2021 9:41 pm I actually WROTE my first book this year! It's called "Leaving the Tower," and it's all about why the Jehovah's Witnesses are so horribly wrong. I just wanted to crow about it a little bit.
Congrats! Are you getting it published?
It's actually on Amazon! I self-published since it's such a niche title.
I noticed my library has an audiobook written by someone not you on the exact same subject. So it seems to be a burgeoning subject matter!
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Re: Books Read 2021

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El Guapo wrote: Mon Feb 22, 2021 2:51 pm
Eel Snave wrote: Mon Feb 22, 2021 2:28 pm
El Guapo wrote: Mon Feb 22, 2021 11:39 am
Eel Snave wrote: Sat Feb 20, 2021 9:41 pm I actually WROTE my first book this year! It's called "Leaving the Tower," and it's all about why the Jehovah's Witnesses are so horribly wrong. I just wanted to crow about it a little bit.
Congrats! Are you getting it published?
It's actually on Amazon! I self-published since it's such a niche title.
Hmmm, very suspicious. This says that it's by HJ Evans, not Eel Snave. Nice try.
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Re: Books Read 2021

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Jeff V wrote: Mon Feb 22, 2021 3:08 pm
Eel Snave wrote: Mon Feb 22, 2021 2:28 pm
El Guapo wrote: Mon Feb 22, 2021 11:39 am
Eel Snave wrote: Sat Feb 20, 2021 9:41 pm I actually WROTE my first book this year! It's called "Leaving the Tower," and it's all about why the Jehovah's Witnesses are so horribly wrong. I just wanted to crow about it a little bit.
Congrats! Are you getting it published?
It's actually on Amazon! I self-published since it's such a niche title.
I noticed my library has an audiobook written by someone not you on the exact same subject. So it seems to be a burgeoning subject matter!
More and more people are saying it!
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Re: Books Read 2021

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Arden Moore - Understanding Your Cat: Practical Answers to All Your Behavior Questions : a random grab from a Little Free Library. i do not own a cat, but i figure i could stand to better learn their ways. this one is mostly fluff (literally) but i did learn a few things. did you know up to 40% of domestic feline owners do not administer the full course of vet prescribed pills to their cat because it's 'too hard to do'??

V. C. Andrews - Flowers in the Attic : another choice LFL find. a very, very 1970's take on the Gothic novel, i guess. i honestly could not figure out what audience this was meant for - this might well be the most lurid Y.A. book i have ever read. and, oh god, the writing. how did this ever get published?? but i have to find out what happens next in the first sequel (of nine....)
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Re: Books Read 2021

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hitbyambulance wrote: Fri Feb 26, 2021 5:07 am V. C. Andrews - Flowers in the Attic : another choice LFL find. a very, very 1970's take on the Gothic novel, i guess. i honestly could not figure out what audience this was meant for - this might well be the most lurid Y.A. book i have ever read. and, oh god, the writing. how did this ever get published?? but i have to find out what happens next in the first sequel (of nine....)
I remember the paperback of that floating around the house as a kid because my mom read it, but I never had any desire to pick it up beyond looking at the cool cutouts in the cover.
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Re: Books Read 2021

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Eel Snave wrote: Mon Feb 22, 2021 2:28 pm
El Guapo wrote: Mon Feb 22, 2021 11:39 am
Eel Snave wrote: Sat Feb 20, 2021 9:41 pm I actually WROTE my first book this year! It's called "Leaving the Tower," and it's all about why the Jehovah's Witnesses are so horribly wrong. I just wanted to crow about it a little bit.
Congrats! Are you getting it published?
It's actually on Amazon! I self-published since it's such a niche title.
I'm a bit curious. Bought.
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Re: Books Read 2021

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Image

Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty (audiobook). The crew of a colony spaceship awaken as clones, their previous incarnations having been murdered. They struggle to figure out who killed them and sabotaged the ship.

I was drawn to this book because the author/narrator is a host/narrator on the sci-fi short story podcast Escape Pod. By exploring the characters' backstories, the book raises troubling questions about what society, psychology, and technology would be like if people could be reincarnated as synthetic human beings, their personalities preserved in digital mindmaps. The crew's distinct personalities clash as they wonder who they can trust, and I like the challenges against the commanding officers' bullying and gaslighting. But the plot twists and resolutions are largely technobabble, and the big reveals in the end aren't as plausible or satisfying as I'd hoped they would be.

Also, in narrating her book, Ms. Lafferty doesn't change her voice for any of the characters at all. I guess that's just her narration style. This never bothered me before, but I guess I've been spoiled by other audiobooks that gave characters distinct voices.

Rating: 4 out of 8 coquitos acaramelados.
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Re: Books Read 2021

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Haruki Murakami Goes to Meet Hayao Kawai : a partial transcript of a two-night conversation between the author and Jungian psychoanalyst/former Japan's Minister of Culture. very short, but some insights presented here that i will be thinking more about.

Ken Kesey - Sometimes a Great Notion : a shaggy tale of inherited patriarchal trauma (literally and symbolically) in several generations of a backwoods Oregonian homestead. i would not be surprised to find if Kesey was an influence on Stephen King's method of storytelling.
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Re: Books Read 2021

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Isgrimnur wrote:Sniper on the Eastern Front: The Memoirs of Sepp Allerberger, Knight's Cross

The story of an Austrian enlisted in the service of the Wehrmacht. It's a very unvarnished look at the war with graphic descriptions of wounds and atrocities committed during the war.
This was somehow showing as unread on my Kindle, so I read it again.
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Re: Books Read 2021

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just found out Nicole Galland released a sequel to her (and Neal Stephenson's) novel The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. - that book didn't exactly do much for me, as it was pretty liberal with its use of magic and time travel (the sorts of plot elements that are, and can do, whatever the plot requires them to be), but the ending seemed open to continuation, so i'm interested to see what she does with this series

https://bookshop.org/books/master-of-th ... 0062844873
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Re: Books Read 2021

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Finished Boy's Life by Robert R. McCammon on Kindle. My reading is slowing down again, but I still finished this. I'd seen it mentioned somewhere here before and it sounded interesting, so I picked it up on a sale. Published in the early 1990s, it covers more or less a year in the life of a 12 year old boy in rural Alabama in the 1960s. It mixes supernatural and unexplained phenomena with the daily trials of growing up quite effectively, and McCammon doesn't seem to have any issues with writing from a child's voice (which can be awkward from some authors). The only other thing I remember reading from McCammon previously was a more traditional horror story called Stinger, but that was probably 30+ years ago. This was a lot of fun, and I recommend it.

Up next on Kindle is Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. This is Clarke's follow-up to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, a fun (albeit long) tale of magicians. This is much shorter and is apparently set in a house which also happens to be the entire world and is populated by two people, Piranesi and the Other.
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Re: Books Read 2021

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finished Carrie Brownstein's memoir Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl - it was a LFL impulse read, as i'm not much of a Sleater-Kinney fan. it was alright
ImLawBoy wrote: Tue Mar 16, 2021 2:12 pm Piranesi by Susanna Clarke.
somehow i didn't know she had a new one out - added to the queue
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Re: Books Read 2021

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Just finished listening to the audio book:
Image

I think this is the first book set in the Culture universe. Banks is a fantastic author, but I was a little underwhelmed by this entry. The plot and characters mostly keep you engaged, but I found the conclusion a bit unsatisfying. 5/8 drones.
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Re: Books Read 2021

Post by Scuzz »

I just saw a youtube reviewer mention how much they liked that series. It is now on my list of things to look for.
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Jaymann
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Re: Books Read 2021

Post by Jaymann »

Scuzz wrote: Wed Mar 17, 2021 2:36 pm I just saw a youtube reviewer mention how much they liked that series. It is now on my list of things to look for.
You could read them in order, but many essentially stand alone. My favorite is The Player of Games.
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Re: Books Read 2021

Post by Zarathud »

The endings of 2 of the 3 Culture books were so infuriating and heavy handed that I almost threw my kindle across the room — twice.

He’s like Philip K Dick — great ideas but frequently flawed writing. But Dick never was an asshole about the characters in his stories being meaningless.
"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts." - Albert Einstein
"I don't stand by anything." - Trump
“Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” - John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St Andrews, 2/1/1867
“It is the impractical things in this tumultuous hell-scape of a world that matter most. A book, a name, chicken soup. They help us remember that, even in our darkest hour, life is still to be savored.” - Poe, Altered Carbon
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Re: Books Read 2021

Post by Jaymann »

Isgrimnur wrote: Tue Mar 09, 2021 12:31 am
Isgrimnur wrote:Sniper on the Eastern Front: The Memoirs of Sepp Allerberger, Knight's Cross

The story of an Austrian enlisted in the service of the Wehrmacht. It's a very unvarnished look at the war with graphic descriptions of wounds and atrocities committed during the war.
This was somehow showing as unread on my Kindle, so I read it again.
The OO Effect got me. Received my copy today and it is next up on my TBR list. I need a break from fantasy and sci-fi.
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