What Are You Reading in July, 2016

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What Are You Reading in July, 2016

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1LynnB
jul. 1, 2016, 9:18 am

I'm reading Against Medical Advice by James Patterson for a book club.

HAPPY CANADA DAY!!!!!

2rabbitprincess
Editat: jul. 1, 2016, 5:50 pm

Happy Canada Day!!

I will be reading A Battle Won, by S. Thomas Russell, which is due back at the library tomorrow and has holds on it so I can't renew.

If I have time today, I'll get back into What's Bred in the Bone, by Robertson Davies. There will be *some* CanLit this long weekend...

(edited to fix touchstone on the Russell book)

3fmgee
jul. 1, 2016, 11:12 pm

Happy Canada Day. I am a few hundred pages into my first Stephen King novel- Under the Dome.

4vancouverdeb
jul. 2, 2016, 9:38 am

Reading Brooklyn by Colm Toibin. Last month I enjoyed Nora Webster by the same author, and this seems to be the same quiet , slow moving , lovely read. Quite enjoyable.

Happy Belated Canada Day!

5ted74ca
jul. 2, 2016, 3:49 pm

4 vancouverdeb. I too, enjoyed reading Nora Webster earlier in the year. I saw the film version of Brooklyn and really liked that too.

6ted74ca
Editat: jul. 3, 2016, 2:14 pm

I seemed to be in the mood for gritty, rather violent thrillers this week: Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter and Ink and Bone by Lisa Unger.

7Nickelini
jul. 3, 2016, 12:37 pm

I'm about halfway through Elizabeth Bowen's Death of the Heart. It goes from really wonderful to "what is the point of all this?" back to wonderful. Right now I'm bogged down but I have hope that it will pick up again soon.

8SylviaC
jul. 5, 2016, 9:09 am

I've moved on to The Year of the Flood now.

9LynnB
jul. 7, 2016, 1:07 pm

I've read Levels of Life by Julian Barnes and am about to start Winter by Christopher Nicholson.

10rabbitprincess
jul. 7, 2016, 4:36 pm

I've raided my Doctor Who stockpile for the summer and am reading The Sands of Time, a Fifth Doctor adventure by Justin Richards.

11SylviaC
jul. 7, 2016, 10:25 pm

And on to Maddaddam.

12vancouverdeb
jul. 7, 2016, 11:26 pm

reading a bit of " ScandiCrime" Hell Fire by Karin Fossum.

13Nickelini
jul. 8, 2016, 1:45 pm

I finished the challenging Death of the Heart (which I both loved and disliked), and am now rewarding myself with the breezy memoir You're Better Than Me by Canadian comedian Bonnie McFarlane.

14LynnB
Editat: jul. 11, 2016, 8:11 am

I've discovered a new Canadian author, Jennifer Manuel and am reading The Heaviness of Things that Float.

15ted74ca
jul. 10, 2016, 11:47 pm

Finally finished The Winter Family by Clifford Jackman. Very, very violent but sort of fascinating view of American history.

16arcona
jul. 12, 2016, 7:07 pm

I'm reading Edward Rutherfurd's New York. Enjoying it so far but it's a humungous book and I hope I can stick with it. It's been in my TBR pile for quite a while.

17vancouverdeb
jul. 12, 2016, 9:48 pm

I've read Yellow Crocus by Laila Ibrahim and The Reluctant Midwife by Patricia Harman.

18LynnB
jul. 13, 2016, 11:10 am

19rabbitprincess
jul. 13, 2016, 9:39 pm

Just finished McGarr and the Politician's Wife, by Bartholomew Gill, and will start a reread of No Great Mischief, by Alistair MacLeod.

20vancouverdeb
jul. 15, 2016, 12:47 am

finished Island of a Thousand Mirrors: A Novel by Nayomi Munaweera, a book about the Sri Lankan civil war.

21Nickelini
jul. 15, 2016, 12:35 pm

I'm well into NW by Zadie Smith and really enjoying it.

22ted74ca
jul. 15, 2016, 1:13 pm

Finished another novel by my newly realized favourite author: The Wife's Tale by Lori Lansens

23Nickelini
jul. 15, 2016, 1:53 pm

>22 ted74ca: I'm thinking of reading that one soon. I'm wondering if it might be a good suggestion for my book club.

24LynnB
jul. 15, 2016, 3:54 pm

I like all of Lori Lansens's books.

25ted74ca
Editat: jul. 18, 2016, 1:13 am

>23 Nickelini:. I think it would be a good book club book-though it is written very much from the perspective of a woman. Don't know if male readers could relate very much.

26ted74ca
Editat: jul. 18, 2016, 1:15 am

>24 LynnB:. I've read 3 of hers in the last few months and really liked them all.

27ted74ca
jul. 18, 2016, 1:17 am

Just finished Map of the Invisible World by Tash Aw, and while I loved the descriptive writing, I disliked every character in the book!

28vancouverdeb
jul. 18, 2016, 1:34 am

reading Soft in the Head by Marie - Sabine Roger, translated from the french. I just picked it up on a whim.

29Nickelini
jul. 18, 2016, 11:46 am

>25 ted74ca: I think it would be a good book club book-though it is written very much from the perspective of a woman. Don't know if male readers could relate very much.

Can't express how little I care about the male reader's perspective on A Wife's Tale. My book club is all women so that's never a consideration when we pick books. I will pull it off the shelf soon and give it a test run.

Finishing NW by Zadie Smith. Definitely one of the better books I've read this year.

30rabbitprincess
Editat: jul. 18, 2016, 3:45 pm

Current bus book is Twenty-Six, by Leo McKay Jr., which is about a coal mine explosion and which was at least partly inspired by the Westray Mine disaster.

Edit to add link to CBC article about Westray: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/westray-remembered-explosion-killed-26...

31Nickelini
jul. 19, 2016, 5:10 pm

After NW I was in the mood for another good book, and so I'm giving The Wife's Tale by Lori Lansens a try. I didn't really like her novel The Girls, so I'm hoping this one will be more my thing.

32SylviaC
jul. 19, 2016, 7:49 pm

For this month's book club: The Heart Specialist by Claire Holden Rothman. I'm about halfway through, and it's pretty dismal so far.

33vancouverdeb
jul. 19, 2016, 11:04 pm

Just started When the Moon Is Low: A Novel by Nadia Hashimi a story about Afghan immigrants . Seems very readable so far.

>32 SylviaC: I really enjoyed The Heart Specialist, but it was quite a dry read. Best of luck.

34Nickelini
jul. 20, 2016, 12:00 am

>32 SylviaC: Dismal as in poorly written? Or dismal as in a depressing story? Or something else? I have The Heart Specialist on my TBR but haven't found the time for it yet.

35SylviaC
jul. 20, 2016, 12:24 am

>33 vancouverdeb: I can see what there is to like about it. I just prefer a bit less darkness. I am curious about what the war years will bring, though.

>34 Nickelini: Dismal as in the main character's life if full of tragedy and struggles. It is very well written, and I keep getting drawn into it, even though I'm sure more sad things will happen.

36LynnB
jul. 20, 2016, 6:30 pm

37Nickelini
jul. 20, 2016, 8:53 pm

>36 LynnB: That's been in my TBR since it was first published but I never seem to get to it (story of my life. So many books . . . )

38vancouverdeb
jul. 20, 2016, 10:12 pm

>36 LynnB: I readI am Hutterite earlier this year and really loved it. I hope you enjoy it, LynnB!

39SylviaC
Editat: jul. 20, 2016, 10:59 pm

>36 LynnB: That looks really interesting.

40LynnB
jul. 22, 2016, 2:11 pm

I liked I Am Hutterite but wasn't overly taken with it. Most of the book is about the author's time in the Hutterite colony, with very little about reclaiming her heritage, which (I think) would have been most interesting.

Starting H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald for a book club.

41ted74ca
jul. 23, 2016, 2:30 am

Just finished The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King and I really loved it. I started I Am Hutterite today after reading about it here, but so far I'm not taken with it. Don't know if I'll finish it

42SylviaC
jul. 24, 2016, 12:45 pm

I finished The Heart Specialist. It was bleaker than I really like, but I appreciated the quality of the writing. I found it absorbing while I was reading, but after putting it down would be reluctant to pick it back up. I found the ending very satisfying, am glad that I did finish it.

43rabbitprincess
Editat: jul. 24, 2016, 3:44 pm

Continuing my Canadian reading with The Game, by Ken Dryden.

Edit to comment that the right book took a while to find in the list of touchstones!

44ted74ca
jul. 24, 2016, 11:12 pm

Too hot for serious reading, so gave up on I am Hutterite for now and went for some crime fiction; Blindsighted by Karin Slaughter which passed the time, but didn't overly impress me.

45Nickelini
jul. 25, 2016, 12:14 pm

Just finished The Wife's Tale by Lori Lansens and liked it very much. Some really good writing on both the structural and sentence level. I think there's lots to discuss here, so I'm going to recommend it to my book club in September.

It wasn't perfect, and some things bugged me (when a parking lot in Toronto basically steals your truck, you call the police. You don't get on a plane for Los Angeles). But then those mars and quibbles were made up by other things, so in the balance I deem it a hit. I really enjoyed the Southern California location because it's the area of California I know really well, and it was fun spotting all the places and things that I knew (such as the corner where she meets the Mexican men). I like verisimilitude in books.

46LynnB
jul. 25, 2016, 3:27 pm

I'm reading the only John Irving novel I've not yet read, Setting Free the Bears.

47Nickelini
jul. 25, 2016, 5:16 pm

>46 LynnB: John Irving and his bears!

48Nickelini
jul. 26, 2016, 11:44 am

After hearing two recommendations yesterday for We Should All Be Feminists by Chimanmanda Ngozi Adichie, I found a copy and read it last night. It's based on her famous TED Talk, and I'd say it's mainly directed to people who think feminism is a negative word, and people who think it's a dated concept. Lovely writing, very readable, and it's short.

Last winter, every 16 year old in Sweden received a copy of We Should All Be Feminists. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/04/every-16-year-old-in-sweden-to-rec...

49ted74ca
jul. 28, 2016, 12:18 am

Hot weather reading, when it's just too hot to get to sleep: Pretty Baby by Mary Kubica. Pretty good, albeit with rather unlikeable and stereotypical characters.

50LynnB
jul. 28, 2016, 8:20 am

I'm reading You Are One of Them by Elliott Holt.

51Nickelini
jul. 28, 2016, 12:18 pm

Starting Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell. I really enjoyed her The Vanishing of Esme Lennox so I have high hopes for this one.

52LynnB
jul. 29, 2016, 8:20 am

I'm reading They Left Us Everything by Plum Johnson for a book club.

53SylviaC
jul. 29, 2016, 11:04 am

>52 LynnB: I read that a couple of months ago. My book club is going to discuss the Forest of Reading books in September. I'll be interested to see what you think of it.

54LynnB
jul. 30, 2016, 5:08 pm

I'm re-reading Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky for a book club discussion.

55rabbitprincess
jul. 30, 2016, 5:33 pm

Just finished An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, by Chris Hadfield. For me a quick and consistently interesting read.

56vancouverdeb
jul. 31, 2016, 9:41 am

Just finished Third Girl by Agatha Christie. Just starting What Lies Between Us by Nayomi Munaweera. What Lies Between Us seems excellent so far.

57fmgee
jul. 31, 2016, 9:44 pm

I just finished Below Stairs and after being dragged to Chapters at midnight last night I find myself with a copy of the latest Harry Potter and a daughter who was too tired to read it much today. She has her hands on it now and I doubt I'll get it back until she is done.

58SylviaC
jul. 31, 2016, 11:19 pm

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. It's enormous.

59ted74ca
jul. 31, 2016, 11:54 pm

I finished Brooklyn by Colm Toibin today, and, though I love the author's beautiful, lyrical writing, I was disappointed in this book. I can't remember another time when I loved the movie more than the book. I think the main character in this novel ruined it for me-she was alternatively very passive and then almost conniving.

60JenMDB
Editat: ag. 5, 2016, 1:00 pm

>>45 Nickelini: I found that such a satisfying read and yet it seems to be the least well known of Lansens' books.

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