![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Wednesday What Are You Reading
May. 21st, 2014 08:14 pmCurrently Reading
A publication to which I will refer as Watery Atlantean Homes 2012, and which is scaring me so much I can't use its real name. Also The Artist's Way (Julia Cameron) - though I am not so much reading this as doing it, and going wheeee shiny new project, as is my wont.
Recently Finished
Life After Life (Kate Atkinson) - which the world has been raving about, and which I certainly enjoyed. The conceit is that a child (born in 1910) lives her life over and over again, changing certain decisions, wilfully or otherwise. On the hwole, this worked, though I found some of the storylines worked better than others, and when the real historical figures popped up I got very irritated. (I don't mind a cameo from some august personage, and I enjoy fictionalised history à la Anya Seton, but when fictional characters start changing history I start to cringe.) I was most enthralled by the blitz sequence, which managed to be both gruesome and moving, and compared favourably with -
The Piano Teacher (Janice Y. K. Lee) which I read immediately afterwards, and which was clumsy and cardboard by comparison. Set in Hong Kong in the early fifties and the early forties, it also has the Second World War front and centre. It ought to have been a more interesting (because less familiar) story, but the author gave me no reason to care about any of the characters, and so it just went yada yada war misery yada yada death gloom blah. I think, too, that the dual storyline didn't work; the two streams were insuffiently integrated and neither felt finished or satisfying.
Paradise News (David Lodge) was rather sweet, though felt really quite dated. I suppose one could call it a belated coming of age story. In Hawaii. Content note for period appropriate racism, homophobia, etc, the period in question being the 1980s.
The Days of Judy B (Rose Heiney) - I bought this a while ago, before Libby Purves started annoying me - Heiney is Purves' daughter. I'm not sure whether it's brilliant or infuriating or failly or what. It hit close to home, and also didn't. At twenty-something (something early, too) Judy B is a gossipy yuppie columnist and also a complete social failure. I have been a complete social failure and occasionally it felt like what's shown here but mostly this was over the top and ridiculous.
Hide (Lisa Gardner) - thriller picked at random from the box at the top of the pile, and actually pretty good. I thought it was going to be a tedious witness protection slog, but it had a number of satisfying twists. It lost it towards the end, where too much had been witheld earlier, though.
I have a post on nitpicks in most of the above coming separately.
Up Next
The book clubs have chosen The Rosie Project (Graeme Simsion) and The Naming of the Dead (Ian Rankin). I have obtained the former but not the latter.
Need to join the library.
Other media
The new Cosmos, despite the freaky excuse-me-you-have-a-spaceship-in-your-eye credits sequence. Not bad, though I am saddened by the lack of Caroline Herschell. Lots of cycling - the Women's Tour, and now the Tour Series. We don't have a TV here yet, though.
A publication to which I will refer as Watery Atlantean Homes 2012, and which is scaring me so much I can't use its real name. Also The Artist's Way (Julia Cameron) - though I am not so much reading this as doing it, and going wheeee shiny new project, as is my wont.
Recently Finished
Life After Life (Kate Atkinson) - which the world has been raving about, and which I certainly enjoyed. The conceit is that a child (born in 1910) lives her life over and over again, changing certain decisions, wilfully or otherwise. On the hwole, this worked, though I found some of the storylines worked better than others, and when the real historical figures popped up I got very irritated. (I don't mind a cameo from some august personage, and I enjoy fictionalised history à la Anya Seton, but when fictional characters start changing history I start to cringe.) I was most enthralled by the blitz sequence, which managed to be both gruesome and moving, and compared favourably with -
The Piano Teacher (Janice Y. K. Lee) which I read immediately afterwards, and which was clumsy and cardboard by comparison. Set in Hong Kong in the early fifties and the early forties, it also has the Second World War front and centre. It ought to have been a more interesting (because less familiar) story, but the author gave me no reason to care about any of the characters, and so it just went yada yada war misery yada yada death gloom blah. I think, too, that the dual storyline didn't work; the two streams were insuffiently integrated and neither felt finished or satisfying.
Paradise News (David Lodge) was rather sweet, though felt really quite dated. I suppose one could call it a belated coming of age story. In Hawaii. Content note for period appropriate racism, homophobia, etc, the period in question being the 1980s.
The Days of Judy B (Rose Heiney) - I bought this a while ago, before Libby Purves started annoying me - Heiney is Purves' daughter. I'm not sure whether it's brilliant or infuriating or failly or what. It hit close to home, and also didn't. At twenty-something (something early, too) Judy B is a gossipy yuppie columnist and also a complete social failure. I have been a complete social failure and occasionally it felt like what's shown here but mostly this was over the top and ridiculous.
Hide (Lisa Gardner) - thriller picked at random from the box at the top of the pile, and actually pretty good. I thought it was going to be a tedious witness protection slog, but it had a number of satisfying twists. It lost it towards the end, where too much had been witheld earlier, though.
I have a post on nitpicks in most of the above coming separately.
Up Next
The book clubs have chosen The Rosie Project (Graeme Simsion) and The Naming of the Dead (Ian Rankin). I have obtained the former but not the latter.
Need to join the library.
Other media
The new Cosmos, despite the freaky excuse-me-you-have-a-spaceship-in-your-eye credits sequence. Not bad, though I am saddened by the lack of Caroline Herschell. Lots of cycling - the Women's Tour, and now the Tour Series. We don't have a TV here yet, though.
