Wednesday What Are You Reading
Jan. 14th, 2015 06:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kafjClambering back on the bandwagon. I'm picking up from the beginning of this year, having mostly forgotten what I read in December.
Currently Reading
Maskerade (Terry Pratchett) - continuing the read-through with one of my favourites (the witches and theatre: what more could the heart desire?)
Americanah (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) - is very good indeed, sharp and perceptive. I am particularly enjoying the dissection of academic social justice Olympics.
Twenties Girl (Sophie Kinsella), which I won't say anything about as I'm only ten pages in.
Recently Finished
Fall On Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald) - other than repeatedly giving me an O Holy Night earworm (you're welcome) this was excellent - deliciously, creepily, Gothic and treading gently on the border between the natural and the supernatural. I have to say that the last section felt rather as if it had taken an abrupt tangent into the middle of my id (partly due to one of the characters sharing my first name, which doesn't happen often), but I dare say that wouldn't bother anyone else.
The Borgia Ring (Michael White) - awful; don't bother. The modern-day police procedural plot was boring and the sixteenth century heretic plot plot was unconvincing in the extreme. And I would have expected a book that was so invested in the distinctions between the Church of England and the Church of Rome not to talk about 'crucifixes... Most were unadorned, but a few carried the image of the body of Christ'. This encapsulates the problem with the whole book, really: it wants to be about religion, but the author simply doesn't understand enough about religion to make it work.
Up Next
Sparrow Story (David Rhodes), which was my choice for book club and which I should therefore really re-read before I am called to make intelligent comment thereon. (I wasn't expecting the company to choose this one from the shortlist of three that I'd assembled, and so hadn't actually gone so far as to acquire a copy. I'm waiting for one to be delivered at the moment.)
Poetry
Dipping into Answering Back, ed. Carol Ann Duffy, which is a rather lovely collection of paired poems - in each case, a contemporary poet chooses a poem by someone else (I think all dead) and writes a reply, or a retort, or a remix.
Working my way through Idylls of the King (Alfred, Lord Tennyson) because it's January.
Abandoned
Rogue (Danielle Steele): the story was boring and the writing was insipid.
This year I am going to make more of an effort to get rid of books I don't enjoy, so expect this category to become more populous than of late...
Currently Reading
Maskerade (Terry Pratchett) - continuing the read-through with one of my favourites (the witches and theatre: what more could the heart desire?)
Americanah (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) - is very good indeed, sharp and perceptive. I am particularly enjoying the dissection of academic social justice Olympics.
Twenties Girl (Sophie Kinsella), which I won't say anything about as I'm only ten pages in.
Recently Finished
Fall On Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald) - other than repeatedly giving me an O Holy Night earworm (you're welcome) this was excellent - deliciously, creepily, Gothic and treading gently on the border between the natural and the supernatural. I have to say that the last section felt rather as if it had taken an abrupt tangent into the middle of my id (partly due to one of the characters sharing my first name, which doesn't happen often), but I dare say that wouldn't bother anyone else.
The Borgia Ring (Michael White) - awful; don't bother. The modern-day police procedural plot was boring and the sixteenth century heretic plot plot was unconvincing in the extreme. And I would have expected a book that was so invested in the distinctions between the Church of England and the Church of Rome not to talk about 'crucifixes... Most were unadorned, but a few carried the image of the body of Christ'. This encapsulates the problem with the whole book, really: it wants to be about religion, but the author simply doesn't understand enough about religion to make it work.
Up Next
Sparrow Story (David Rhodes), which was my choice for book club and which I should therefore really re-read before I am called to make intelligent comment thereon. (I wasn't expecting the company to choose this one from the shortlist of three that I'd assembled, and so hadn't actually gone so far as to acquire a copy. I'm waiting for one to be delivered at the moment.)
Poetry
Dipping into Answering Back, ed. Carol Ann Duffy, which is a rather lovely collection of paired poems - in each case, a contemporary poet chooses a poem by someone else (I think all dead) and writes a reply, or a retort, or a remix.
Working my way through Idylls of the King (Alfred, Lord Tennyson) because it's January.
Abandoned
Rogue (Danielle Steele): the story was boring and the writing was insipid.
This year I am going to make more of an effort to get rid of books I don't enjoy, so expect this category to become more populous than of late...
