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Post by rikita on Sept 5, 2019 20:52:45 GMT
agnes and i are currently reading "the brothers lionheart" by astrid lindgren. agnes is still a bit young for that book, but she really really wanted me to read it to her and seems to follow the story well so far.
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Post by Kimby on Sept 5, 2019 21:00:51 GMT
Good for Agnes to enjoy a challenging read!
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Post by kerouac2 on Sept 6, 2019 18:48:10 GMT
That's great, rikita.
I am reading an old science fiction book that I have owned for 50 years but which was written in the 1940's by Clifford Simak. Naturally I have forgotten absolutely everything about it, so it is like reading it for the first time.
I will talk more about it when I have finished, but one thing that made me smile was the first part that takes place in the 1990's and there are "amazing" machines that mow the lawn all by themselves. There is one amazing detail, though -- these machines have robot arms that can extrude and pick up rocks along the way, so I guess the our devices have not yet progressed that far.
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Oct 2, 2019 19:52:23 GMT
Half way through Margaret Attwood's Testaments it seems to be heavily influenced by the TV show. Ok tho. I preferred the original Handmaid's Tale
Prior to this I had an audiobook 'Got to get Theroux this' by Louis Theroux. Really enjoyed it altho I've never watched any of his documentaries.
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Post by bixaorellana on Oct 2, 2019 19:56:46 GMT
That's kind of a chicken/egg question, though. Margaret Atwood is a consultant on the tv show, so we don't know how much of the show's plot that happens after the end of the original book is her input.
I'm holding off on Testaments since the show is ongoing & I don't want to be comparing the two. Also, I'd like to go back and re-read the Handmaid's Tale before reading Testaments.
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Oct 2, 2019 20:01:47 GMT
I reread the original first...
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Post by bixaorellana on Oct 2, 2019 22:57:40 GMT
Oh good! Did it hold up from your memory of the first time you read it?
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Post by bjd on Oct 3, 2019 5:30:42 GMT
As mentioned in the Tacolandia thread, I am just finishing Heretics by Leonardo Padura, a Cuban writer. I have read several of his other books and I'm surprised that he can have them published in Cuba, given that he is critical of the regime in his descriptions. This book is alright, although one of the threads running through it is a Rembrandt painting owned by a Jewish family who tried to enter Cuba in 1939 on the Saint Louis, a ship turned away from Cuba, the USA, and Canada, and which had to return to Germany. There is a long section about the painting being made in Amsterdam in 1647 which went on a bit too long. I preferred the Cuban parts of the book.
I also bought a posthumous book by Philip Kerr of his Bernie Gunther books -- Metropolis. This final book in the series in fact takes place before all the others, in 1928 Berlin. I regret that there will be no others.
And I just received a book by Naomi Klein, On Fire. She writes well and is extremely topical with her writing about the environment, capitalism, etc.
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Post by rikita on Oct 3, 2019 14:00:16 GMT
a book on media law (but might stop soon, it is kind of technical and boring), another book on laws concerning the internet, a book about content marketing
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Oct 3, 2019 17:07:25 GMT
Oh good! Did it hold up from your memory of the first time you read it? Yes...its one of those books you can read again and again.
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Post by whatagain on Oct 3, 2019 18:23:17 GMT
Must get hold of metropolis. I love Kerr. Tou might like Zygmunt Miloszewski who wrote ´rage ´.
I am reading earthly remains by Donna leon. Page 75 nothing has happened yet and I just love it.
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Post by bixaorellana on Oct 3, 2019 18:23:35 GMT
Thanks, Cheery! I'm looking forward to it.
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Post by bixaorellana on Oct 3, 2019 20:13:32 GMT
I am reading earthly remains by Donna leon. Page 75 nothing has happened yet and I just love it. Extremely happy to hear that. Even though I tried and dismissed her years ago, I have been accumulating the Brunetti books bit by bit as Kindle puts each on special. So far I have eleven, starting with one and going to twenty, but obviously with a bunch of gaps.
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Post by bjd on Oct 4, 2019 4:57:00 GMT
Whatagain, after you mentioned Miloszewski here, I found a book by him at the library and liked it a lot. Don't remember the title -- something with chasing down looted paintings.
I like Donna Leon too and have a bunch of her books.
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Oct 4, 2019 20:36:42 GMT
Got the new Philip Pullman book today, it's the second book in the Book of Dust series so I had to dig out the first one to refresh my memory.
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Post by bjd on Oct 8, 2019 17:07:21 GMT
Recently in a Bayonne book box I found a book by David Attenborough, Life on Air. It's a hardback, in perfect condition, with lots of photographs of his "hunting" expeditions for animals for his tv shows on the BBC. I have never seen any of his shows but the book starts in the early 1950s when TV was just starting in Britain. He talks about the equipment they used, the way he got involved with the animal documentaries, and of course, the trips. So far, to British Guiana (as it was), Indonesia looking for Komodo dragons, to New Guinea trying to film birds of paradise, which were being slaughtered for their feathers for tribal headdresses, and to Paraguay.
He writes well and is amusing. In his descriptions of the more unusual locations (like New Guinea), I am amazed at his descriptions of things that took place in my own lifetime -- cannibals for example.
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Post by bixaorellana on Oct 10, 2019 19:41:32 GMT
Day before yesterday I finished The Piano Tuner, which was a beautifully written disappointment.
Now I'm reading a book I was lent, Island of the Sea Women wherein Lisa See branches out to Korea. It's okay, but seems rather YA. On the bright side, if I decide to become a diving Korean lady, I am now fairly well grounded in that job.
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Post by rikita on Nov 2, 2019 12:39:37 GMT
with a., we are currently reading the neverending story.
by myself, a book on parenting - it is a workbook, though, so there are a lot of parts where i have to write down my thoughts ...
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Post by Kimby on Nov 2, 2019 13:01:48 GMT
Just finished FALL AND RISE: The Story of 9/11 by Mitchell Zuckoff. It’s a fascinating minute-by-minute accounting of the people who died or survived as the 4 planes piloted by terrorists made their historical impacts.
It also details the architectural weaknesses of the Twin Towers, the confusion and inadequacies of the rescue efforts, all while highlighting some of the everyday heroes who emerged in the chaos. And follows survivors into the present. A big book but very well written.
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Post by bjd on Nov 2, 2019 15:07:16 GMT
Funny that when I read "4 planes" I realized that I had totally forgotten the two that didn't hit the towers in New York.
I'm reading a book of short stories by Alice Munro, as well as a crime story by Zygmunt Miloszewski (thanks, Whatagain!) called Rage.
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Post by kerouac2 on Nov 2, 2019 15:08:15 GMT
I was quite perplexed by the last book I read L'absence du ciel by Adrien Blouet. It's about a young German film student who gets hired, because of some short YouTube films he made, by a German author exiled in Denmark. He basically wants him to spy on another author living in some isolated village in Germany and make a film about what he is doing, but without ever contacting him directly. The author pays for the trip to Denmark and then pays the expenses of the new mission. The book concentrates on every little detail, the train and bus trips, the nights in a youth hostel or drinking beer in the local village pizzeria, tramping around in the freezing mud to see the other author's house, buying sandwich materials for the stakeout... This is the sort of stuff that would normally bore the shit out of me, but something kept me interested and I don't know why. I still didn't like the book when I finally finished it, but there is definitely some sort of literary talent here.
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Post by bjd on Jan 15, 2020 19:58:28 GMT
Bixa -- stop reading right here. I had a gift voucher for a store where I rarely find good books, so I ended up getting volume 4 of Elena Ferrante's My Wonderful Friend, or whatever it's called in English. I have had this book since October and started the other day. I just can't get into it, the narrator is still a completely unappealing character, feeling sorry for herself.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 16, 2020 1:55:07 GMT
Ha, Bjd ~ if they gave a prize for perseverance in the face of constant disappointment, you would win! I'm sort of grumpy about my own perseverance with the book I finished last night, Moonlight Downs. I think I got this book free & its sequel, even now breathlessly awaiting me, for two bucks. I wanted to read it because I thought it would give insight into the Aboriginal Australians' culture in the same way that Tony Hillerman's books did for the Navaho and Hopi cultures. But no. The author does have talent, but he doesn't have the ability to rein himself in. That means many of his descriptive or expository paragraphs wind up sounding like showing off. The plot also has somewhat of a scattered aspect to it. But the most disturbing thing is that the Aboriginals come off sounding deeply dysfunctional, making his final fillip of a token respectful nod towards their beliefs seem hollow.
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Post by bjd on Jan 16, 2020 7:19:47 GMT
Yeah, Bixa -- in this case it seems so although I generally think that life is too short to continue reading bad books.
If you want different approaches to Australia, there are the very old-fashioned books by Arthur Upfield, with his métis police inspector Napoleon Bonaparte. It gives an interesting picture of colonial Australia, with bits about the Aborigines.
And The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin is also an approach to nomadism and Aboriginal culture. For what these are worth.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 16, 2020 17:25:47 GMT
Oh, I loved The Songlines & have read it two or three times. It's an intensely subjective book, with that "crush" oddly embedded in it, but Chatwin's theory about nomadism is compelling as are all the parts about Aboriginal culture.
I'm pretty sure the Upfield books have been mentioned before on anyport, but I'd forgotten so appreciate the reminder.
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Post by Kimby on Jan 16, 2020 18:26:12 GMT
I have just started reading Richard Powers’ THE OVERSTORY, a collection of essays, short stories actually, all tangentially related to trees.
Each essay is a gem, and almost every sentence has facets that must be turned over in your mind to be examined more thoroughly.
It’s over 500 pages, and takes a long time to read in a thoughtful way, but I am enjoying it very much.
It’s divided into 4 sections: Roots, Trunk, Crown and Seeds, and Roots has 8 chapters, each named after a person whose story (their roots) is being told. I’ve only read two, and was sad to leave the characters and their story behind when I finished each essay and moved on to the next.
Mr. Kimby discovered this book and passed it on to me. Unfortunately, the library needs it back before Ill be done with it...
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Post by patricklondon on Jan 17, 2020 15:56:52 GMT
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Post by whatagain on Jan 18, 2020 10:29:27 GMT
I read metropolis- very good. Then a Chris Ryan (strike back author you can read it eyes half shit and brain disengaged). Now into Barbarossa by french authors (very good at explaining the mad philosophy behind the need to invade ussr based in judéo Christian plot - Russian revolution leading to Marxism plotted by Jews in order to install capitalism .. you have to read that I had never understood this duality always thought you had to be crazy to believe that and I wasn't wrong). Now starting a book on rudolf Hess. The guy who was close to hitler and landed in U.K. To apparently secure a deal. He died without saying more. So WW2 for me these days.
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Post by Kimby on Jan 20, 2020 5:06:58 GMT
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Post by mickthecactus on Jan 26, 2020 17:42:38 GMT
Nothing so grand for me. Mine is Bonsai Succulents by Philippe de Vosjoli and Rudy Lime. Excellent book!
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