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New year, new discussion thread


I'm poised to start...

The Dispossessed

by

Ursula K. Le Guin

#exciting

Underway with...


And Away... (2021) by Bob Mortimer

It’s hard to imagine there are many people who dislike Bob Mortimer

I have always loved his work with Vic Reeves and so, when I saw this in the library, I grabbed it.

Also started....


Cocaine Nights (1996) by J.G. Ballard

...my latest book group choice

As a teenager I read and seem to recall quite enjoying The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), Crash (1973), and High-Rise (1975), so keen to get stuck into this one.

I finished Angel as my first book of 2022 and first buddy read, and am starting a reread of Learwife, one of my favourite books of 2021. Also starting Sanditon as I'm finally catching up with the TV series.

I've finished our current group read If Beale Street Could Talk, which I found a compelling story, with a lot to think about.

I've also started reading a historical family saga that I think I picked up as a freebie a while ago, The Moon in the Water by Pamela Belle, which is set in my home county of Suffolk during the English Civil War. Enjoying it so far - looks as if it will be perfect comfort reading for bedtime.

I finished Mark Mazower's The Greek Revolution: 1821 and the Making of Modern Europe, it's not an area I'd really thought about before, the attraction was Mazower, I've read a couple of his earlier books and Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430-1950 really stood out. After a slow, slightly dry start, this turned into a gripping read, so many fascinating strands and connections.

Link to my review:

/review/show...

I've just finished one of our Feb buddy reads...


Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty


A really engrossing and important read

I look forward to discussing it with you all in February

See you then


Review here...

/review/show...

I'm currently reading Making Conversation by Christine Longford, which has it's funny moments, but isn't really grabbing me much.

My first book for 2022 is A Little History of Philosophy by Nigel Warburton. It is good but not amazing. In that it covers so many it does not go into each philosopher with great depth. It starts with the ancients and goes up to today.

My review:. /review/show...

I have begunThe Narrows by Ann Pietry. It reads almost like prose poetry--there is a rhythm to the writing. I have not decided if I like it or not.

I've started The Black Opal by Katharine Susannah Prichard. It's about an Opal mining town in Australia, written in the 1920's. I've read very little with this setting, and I'm finding this a very engaging read which evokes a real sense of place.

I am re-reading by John Keegan. I remember being very impressed with it when I first read it in the 1990s and thought it was time to revisit it. The history of military history is intriguing.

Just finished this non-fiction about Tim O'Brien's experiences in Vietnam:
If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home by Tim O'Brien - 4* - My Review

This book vividly describes what it was like to serve in Vietnam as part of the US Army. It was interesting reading this book after I had already read The Things They Carried. One is fiction; one is non-fiction, but there are many obvious parallels. I count myself as a fan of Tim O’Brien’s writing and highly recommend both books.

Not sure if I can say I actually read this, it's a wordless picture book by South Korean illustrator Jihyun Kim The Depth of the Lake and the Height of the Sky full of lovely images, a brief escape from a bleak January.

/review/show...

Nigeyb wrote: "Also started....


Cocaine Nights (1996) by J.G. Ballard

...my latest book group choice"

Now finished

Most interesting and enjoyable

/review/show...

4/5

I've finished Two-Way Mirror: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, a new biography that takes a modern stance on how the biographer chooses, to some extent, what to see in a biographical subject. This was the precursor to starting Barrett Browning's autofictional Aurora Leigh.

Also planning to make a start on this month's group read, If Beale Street Could Talk, my first James Baldwin.

I have been for my Monthly library visit and came away with a good haul:
Library 1: The Bourne Identity; Cockroaches; Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince; Mr Mercedes; The Silmarillion; Susters van Eva

Library 2: The Folks That Live on the Hill; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

And bought these from a clearance sale at Library 1: Death Is my neighbour / Secret of Annex 3 Omnibus edition; Morse's Greatest Mystery/Service Of All The Dead; Bitter Lemons of Cyprus and By the Pricking of My Thumbs

The reading future is looking bright.

I have just finished....


And Away... (2021) by Bob Mortimer

I have always loved his work with Vic Reeves and so, when I saw this in the library, I grabbed it. A good decision. And Away... is a funny, heart warming and interesting read.

/review/show...

4/5

Set in the 1970s in New York City:
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann - My Review

I expected to like this more than I did. I much preferred McCann's Apeirogon and Dancer.

I have only read Apeirogon and Dancer and loved both, Joy. Perhaps I should stop there then, as they were so brilliant.

I finished a reissue of Hannah Arendt's Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewish Woman

Link to my review:

/review/show...

I really like Oliver Burkeman, so when a friend recommended Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals (2021) I need no extra persuading.

Oliver Burkeman's suggetions are fascinating and is well worth reading. I listened to an audio version but have decided to buy a hard copy too. It's that good.

Review here....
/review/show...

5/5

I finished a collection of Zora Neale Hurston's non-fiction You Don't Know Us Negroes and Other Essays

Link to my review:

/review/show...

I just finished Reeling, a hard-hitting book which made me think of the Epstein/Maxwell revelations still in the papers: www.goodreads.com/review/show/4458066501

Definitely not light reading but powerful.

I'm reading a Persephone book, A London Child of the 1870s by Molly Hughes. I'd heard a lot about this one and am enjoying it so far.

The writer was from an "ordinary, suburban Victorian family," (they were upper middle-class I think, but with erratic income, a bit like the families in E Nesbit, I feel). As a girl in that era, she wasn't allowed to do very much outside the home, but had a lot of fun playing with her four older brothers.

I was interested in her description of Christmas - the family opened their presents on Christmas Eve before going to bed, and she says: "We were never fussed up with a Christmas tree or stockings or make-believe about Santa Claus." (Interesting that she was writing in the 1930s yet said Santa and not Father Christmas, which I thought was the traditional term in Britain!)

They had an exciting day all the same, with a service at St Paul's Cathedral, turkey, plum pudding, cards arriving on Christmas morning (poor posties) and their father making punch in the evening.

Autobiography of Katherine Johnson (1918-2019), whose calculations helped in the moon landing, and was one of the subjects of the movie and book Hidden Figures:

My Remarkable Journey: A Memoir by Katherine G. Johnson - My Review

Started You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories About Racism by Amber Ruffin and her sister Lacey Lamar about the racism she has faced in Omaha.

I have just started listening to....


Hanns and Rudolf: The True Story of the German Jew Who Tracked Down and Caught the Kommandant of Auschwitz (2013)

by

Thomas Harding


I nominated it for our January 2022 Crime and Punishment Group Read where it garnered one vote (guess who?)


Anyway, it's superb so far and I am really enjoying it


More info....

SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
WINNER OF THE JQ WINGATE PRIZE 2015
SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD

The true story of the Jewish investigator who pursued and captured one of Nazi Germany's most notorious war criminals.

Hanns Alexander was the son of a prosperous German family who fled Berlin for London in the 1930s.

Rudolf Höss was a farmer and soldier who became the Kommandant of Auschwitz Concentration Camp and oversaw the deaths of over a million men, women and children.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the first British War Crimes Investigation Team is assembled to hunt down the senior Nazi officials responsible for the greatest atrocities the world has ever seen. Lieutenant Hanns Alexander is one of the lead investigators, Rudolf Höss his most elusive target.

In this book Thomas Harding reveals for the very first time the full, exhilarating account of Höss�� capture. Moving from the Middle-Eastern campaigns of the First World War to bohemian Berlin in the 1920s, to the horror of the concentration camps and the trials in Belsen and Nuremberg, it tells the story of two German men whose lives diverged, and intersected, in an astonishing way.

Praise....

"Thomas Harding has shed intriguing new light on the strange poison of Nazism, and one of its most lethal practitioners... Meticulously researched and deeply felt." (Ben Macintyre The Times, Book of the Week)

"Fascinating and moving...This is a remarkable book, which deserves a wide readership." (Max Hastings The Sunday Times)

"A gripping thriller, an unspeakable crime, an essential history." (John Le Carré)

"This is a stunning book...both chilling and deeply disturbing. It is also an utterly compelling and exhilarating account of one man's extraordinary hunt for the Kommandant of the most notorious death camp of all, Auschwitz-Birkenau." (James Holland)

"Only at his great uncle’s funeral in 2006 did Thomas Harding discover that Hanns Alexander, whose Jewish family fled to Britain from Nazi Germany in the 1930s, hunted down and captured Rudolf Höss, the ruthless commandant of Auschwitz, at the end of World War Two. By tracing the lives of these two men in parallel until their dramatic convergence in 1946, Harding puts the monstrous evil of the Final Solution in two specific but very different human contexts. The result is a compelling book full of unexpected revelations and insights, an authentic addition to our knowledge and understanding of this dark chapter in European history. No-one who starts reading it can fail to go on to the end." (David Lodge)

"In this electrifying account, Thomas Harding commemorates (and, for the tired, revivifies) a ringing Biblical injunction: Justice, justice, shalt thou pursue." (Cynthia Ozick)

"Its climax as thrilling as any wartime adventure story, Hanns and Rudolf is also a moral inquiry into an eternal question: what makes a man turn to evil? Closely researched and tautly written, this book sheds light on a remarkable and previously unknown aspect of the Holocaust - the moment when a Jew and one of the highest-ranking Nazis came face to face and history held its breath." (Jonathan Freedland)

"Absorbing ... Thomas Harding narrates, in careful, understated prose, the story of how his great uncle Hanns Alexander hunted down the man who vaingloriously identified himself as ‘the world’s greatest destroyer��: Rudolf Höss, the Bavarian-born Kommandant of Auschwitz.Harding balances with scrupulous care the stories of the pursuer and the pursued �� Le Carré is quite correct. The last section of Harding’s book does indeed read like a gripping thriller." (Miranda Seymour Spectator)

"An extraordinary tale deriving from meticulous research �� the story of how a young Jew after 1945 almost single-handedly hunted down the Kommandant of Auschwitz." (Frederick Forsyth)

"A highly readable detective story �� This is really a book about the world of Hanns Alexander…[and it is] well worth reading ... Harding has researched it thoroughly." (Richard Overy Sunday Telegraph)

‘Fascinating. As awareness of the full horror of these dark years continues to advance, this book fills a unique and vital role.�� Lyn Smith

‘A remarkable book: thoughtful, compelling and quite devastating in its humanity. Thomas Harding’s account of these two extraordinary men goes straight to the dark heart of Nazi Germany.�� Keith Lowe

‘A fascinating, well-crafted book, entwining two biographies for an unusual and illuminating approach to the history of the Third Reich, its most heinous crime and its aftermath.�� Roger Moorhouse

I started Loch Down Abbey the other day as I’ve been in a funk and needed something fun and easy. I’m about halfway and really enjoying it. It’s a little bit Downton Abbey, a mystery, and pandemic related. It’s better than I expected. I was thinking more of a romance novel mystery, if that makes sense (and no slight to romance novels), but it’s actually really good so far.

I just finished Loch Down Abbey and loved it. It’s more than I expected, but still fairly light and fun. It was really enjoyable and what I needed. :)

I finished Dana Spiotta's Wayward an interesting novel, and refreshing to have a middle-aged female protagonist, but not for me a particularly satisfying book.

Link to my review:

/review/show...

This book is a creative mix of non-fiction and fiction that portrays various scientists of the 20th century and the complexities of attempting to describe the world using mathematics, chemistry, and physics. I can't give it more than 4 stars because someone might ask me to explain it (haha).

When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut - 4* - My Review

I finished David Joiner's Kanazawa not technically a great novel but a surprisingly compelling one because of all the added details of the setting, the city's history, and the references to Japanese authors and classic Japanese literature.

Link to my review:

/review/show...

I've been reading The Christie Affair, a fictional interpretation of the missing days. I'm enjoying the writing and the story but do have some reservations on the fact and fiction mix as well as the backstory she's given Nan O'Dea, the fictional version of Archie Christie's mistress/second wife. While the issues are relevant and well told, I feel this isn't the right vehicle for them. But let's see how it turns out overall

Lady Clementina wrote: "I've been reading The Christie Affair, a fictional interpretation of the missing days. I'm enjoying the writing and the story but do have some reservations on the fact and fiction mix as well as th..."

Look forward to your review of this one. I also have it so should start it soon.

That’s why I rarely read fiction about real people. I really dislike when liberties are taken; just be inspired by someone’s story, don’t actually make it about them.

I do hope it’s enjoyable though.

I'm with you there Bronwyn plus have to keep checking the facts!

I am so very busy. Tell me when life will calm down! My second book of the year is The Narrows by Ann Petry I have given it 3 stars. I explain why in my review:
/review/show...

I will soon start The Gingerbread Woman by Jennifer Johnston. When I start her books I hesitate; I usually wonder if I will like it. Most often I do. I think the titles and the covers put me off. The audiobook is free for Audible-UK-Plius members.

I finished a disappointing novella by Polis Loizou which didn’t live up to the description, A Good Year

Link to my review:

/review/show...

And a collection of supernatural tales by neglected writer Helen Simpson The Outcast and the Rite: Stories of Landscape and Fear, 1925-1938

Link to my review:

/review/show...

I've read the new Ottessa Moshfegh, Lapvona which wasn't completely satisfying for me: www.goodreads.com/review/show/4467807897

I'm starting Doctor Faustus, a January buddy read, and also Love in a Fallen City, a collection of novellas and stories by Eileen Chang.

Look forward to hearing about the Chang R C, I've been wanting to read something of hers for a while.

Alwynne wrote: "Look forward to hearing about the Chang R C, I've been wanting to read something of hers for a while."

She's a gorgeous writer: I'd read her Lust, Caution and love her style (review here for a taster: www.goodreads.com/book/show/2055380). I really need to read something about China or at least Shanghai in the first part of the twentieth century as background as I know so little.

Great. I've read a number of books about Mao pre-and post-leadership, but I'd really love to read a cultural/social history of Shanghai in the 20s/30s, so if you come across something that sounds promising let me know.

Alwynne, check out Shanghai Diary by Ursula Bacon. (My review: /review/show...)

Not exactly what you are looking for but worth mentioning is The Distant Land of My Father by Bo Caldwell. (My review: /review/show...) I recommend it.

Thanks, Chrissie, for the recommendations - and hoping 2022 will be a better year for you.

I think I need to read a narrative history of modern China as context, so from the Opium Wars forwards. I found this: The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams, and the Making of Modern China which has given rise to some controversies in the reviews, but it's quite focused on the mid-nineteeth century.

In fiction, this looks good: The Sing-Song Girls of Shanghai, albeit written by a man. Expensive, too. But it was translated by Eileen Chang, where this chat originated. I'm intrigued by the blurb and that concept of 'the traditional genre of courtesan fiction'.

Chrissie wrote: "Alwynne, check out Shanghai Diary by Ursula Bacon. (My review: /review/show...)

Not exactly what you are looking for but worth mentioni..."

Thanks Chrissie : )

I finished The Light Years! I started it initially four years ago, restarted about a year ago, and then stalled out in April with about 100 pages left. It took me about two days to finish. 🤦‍♀��

I really enjoyed it and will definitely be continuing the series. Its very quiet and not a lot happens, which I think is why I struggled. I love those kinds of books, but it’s very long, and I need to mix things up with pacier books sometimes.

It was really beautifully written though and I look forward to the rest of the series.

Finished this book that covers a good portion of the 20th century in a compact manner:
A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler - 4* - My Review

Alwynne wrote: "And a collection of supernatural tales by neglected writer Helen Simpson The Outcast and the Rite: Stories of Landscape and Fear, 1925-1938 ..."

I'm interested to hear more about Simpson as she featured in The Golden Age of Murder by Martin Edwards, which I recently finished. Not many of her crime stories seem to be in print, interesting to hear that she wrote supernatural tales too.

She seems like a fascinating woman, she also won a major literary award for her novel 'Boomerang' and her book 'Under Capricorn' was made into a film by Hitchcock. Quite a few of her novels are free to borrow via archive. org including a novel she wrote with Clemence Dane "Printer's Devil' which may well be crime, as they collaborated on a few crime stories apparently.

That's really interesting. I've seen a good classic film based on a play by Clemence Dane, A Bill of Divorcement - I believe it was one of Katharine Hepburn's first roles and also starred John Barrymore. I see from Wikipedia that the play was written in the 1920s but set a few years in the future, with a theme of mental illness and whether a spouse should be allowed to divorce their partner on these grounds.