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What have you just read? Opinions, recommendations & reviews
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Joy
(last edited Dec 27, 2014 03:33AM)
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Dec 27, 2014 03:33AM
I've just read Fatty O'Leary's Dinner Party by Alexander McCall Smith. It's a very light-hearted comedy of manners - just as described on the cover, 'a literary amuse-bouche'. Great for reading when feeling sleepily full of Christmas pud, without having to concentrate too hard!
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Amber wrote: "I read A Reversible Santa Claus and it was a pretty funny Christmas story."Amber, I just finished reading that story and also found it to be entertaining. Thanks for the suggestion.
Sandy wrote: "Chrissie, thank you for your strong recommendation of Shirley Ann Grau. At present, I am trying to choose a few more books listed in the 500 Great Books by Women to read in 2015 and just added The ..."The Keepers of the House is very good; I gave it four stars. I hope you like it , Sandy.The next one I plan on reading by Grau is The House on Coliseum Street. It will be my fifth. I don't usually read everything I can get my hands on by one author when so many other new authors are begging to be read.
Monica wrote: "Amber wrote: "I read A Reversible Santa Claus and it was a pretty funny Christmas story."Amber, I just finished reading that story and also found it to be entertaining. Thanks for the suggestion."
No Problem Monica. Glad you enjoyed it! :)
Read it too, Amber. Gave you credit in my review. Good fun.
Diane S. wrote: "Read it too, Amber. Gave you credit in my review. Good fun."Awesome! Thank you so much Diane S. I'll go check it out and glad you enjoyed it too.
I've just finished Remember Me: The Charles Morgan Blessing Story, which is about a part of British Columbia I visited a couple of years ago. I enjoyed the description of the town & area and putting it in context with what I saw when I was there.
In all, this is an interesting story of that area, the life & society of a gold-rush town that wanted to be a "real" town one day. There's not much about Charles Blessing that is known so the murder aspect is really a small part of the book but the author manages to keep Charles a big part of this story. This was a fun read.
Here's my review (I'm the first person to comment and review this book! :D)
I absolutely adored EuphoriaGreat to end the year with a five star book! I loved it because it captures the spirit of Margaret Mead, on whom the story is based, but at the same time the author has created a fictional tale of her own.
My review; https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Diane S. wrote: "Very good review Chrissie, many reasons why some people do not read non fiction.Finished A Christmas Carol last night. First Dickens I have read in over 20 yrs. Loved it. Vhttps://www...."
Diane, I've also recently read Dickens' A Christmas Carol and, although a simple story, it was a great reading and also learning experience. Here's my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
A Christmas story is a great one Renato and glad you liked my review of Pennyroyal Academy, if you read it, enjoy! :)
Yesterday finished reading a wonderful novel, a spiritual classic - The Diary of a Country Priest. It is a book that deals with the spiritual struggles of a parish priest and his parishioners. The spiritual reflection that emerge as a result is very sublime.Here is my review of it. Let me also inform you that it is very much Catholic. SO if interested go trough it. The link: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Finished reading a short humorous novella that speaks of the pleasures of reading (The Uncommon Reader). For those interested in my review, here is the link to it: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Finished reading The Little Women and loved it! It was so simple and so beautiful. It's the best book I have read this year.
I've just finished The Rise of Enlightened Sexism: How Pop Culture Took Us from Girl Power to Girls Gone Wild, which was as good as I hoped it would be. My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Just read a thriller / mystery by Val McDermid - A Darker Domain which was fast-paced and kept me wanting to read. I liked the fact that there weren't the graphic descriptions of violence that there are in others of hers, such as the Tony Hill series, but I did work out the solution before the end and was just a bit disappointed that there wasn't a twist.
I finished The Year of the Hare and it was a pretty good read about a man and his hare travelling through Finland. It's my final read for this year.Here's my review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Just finished two awesome books - Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng and The Orphans of Race Point: A Novel by Patry Francis.
Mod
One of my favourite book!
Rahat wrote: "Finished reading The Little Women and loved it! It was so simple and so beautiful. It's the best book I have read this year."This is one of my favorite books ever!
I finished reading Ulysses last night. We are having a wonderful discussion of it in the Read-Along folder. Everyone's participation has truly enhanced my experience of this book.
This is my second reading and I will read it again one day. It's fantastic but that's something I only fleetingly felt was true in the first reading. It wasn't until this time around that I knew it to be true.
Ulysses is like that: the first time will be work, but it's definitely worth it. The second time is when the pleasure starts and I suspect the pleasure of the story will increase with each subsequent reading. Not the usual writing tactic used by authors. :D
Here's my review, if interested:
Ulysses review
Petra wrote: "I finished reading Ulysses last night. Congrats, Petra; you have my bookworm respect, for sure.
Just read Land of Enchantment, 4 stars , a moving story of three women artists . My review : https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
I finished listening to the Librivox recording of E. Nesbit's The Story of the Treasure Seekers a few days ago. Karen Savage did a great narration of this charming children's book. 4 stars.
my review of my first read of 2015 Three Graves Full, enjoy!https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Here is the review of my 2015's first book, Fai bei sogni. A simple straight forward fiction which would have been better if it was written as an autobiography. It was a Christmas gift from a GR friend. It was a good present.The link to the review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Started the new year with an incredibly sad story Sweet Hearts. My review :https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I just finished reading Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline. I thoroughly enjoyed it. A great choice to start off my 2015 reading challenge. Up next is The Book Thief.
I read Going the Extra Smile and it was a pretty good inspirational book.Here's my review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Amy wrote: "I just finished reading Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline. I thoroughly enjoyed it. A great choice to start off my 2015 reading challenge. Up next is The Book Thief."I liked Orphan Train a lot, so glad that you enjoyed it too!
I started Still Life with Bread Crumbs last night and am already 30% of the way through it. So far it is good - not great, but good. I love A.Q.'s writing so to me she could write a trashy romance novel and I would probably like it.
Amy wrote: "I just finished reading Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline. I thoroughly enjoyed it. A great choice to start off my 2015 reading challenge. Up next is The Book Thief."HI Amy,
I hope you enjoy the Book THief, I found it to be a great novel set in the very said time of WW2 but with a human feel good aspect.
I finished The Weight Of The Evidence yesterday -- #9 in the Inspector Appleby series by Michael Innes. I gave this 3½ stars -- I liked the fact that Innes had returned to fairly "regular" police procedural style after the last few which were bizarre.
Mod
They're so different it looks almost as if they were written by two different authirs. But they're both incredibly good. I gave them 5 stars, and I rarelly give the maximum, especially to poetry books
LauraT wrote: "Read two books by T.S. Eliot : The Waste Land and Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.They're so different it looks almost as if they were written by two ..."
Yes, I was surprised by that too...
Leslie wrote: "I finished listening to the Librivox recording of E. Nesbit's The Story of the Treasure Seekers a few days ago. Karen Savage did a great narration of this charming children's book. ..."I love E Nesbit. Have you read The House of Arden and Harding's Luck ? It's so clever the way they interlock.
@Joy -- No, I have only read The Five Children and It (starting as a child) and then a few years ago I read The Railway Children. I will look for those you mentioned :)
@Leslie - E. Nesbit is an interesting character, way ahead of her time in her philosophy and lifestyle. I read a non-fiction book by her last year which put forward the idea that children should have time and space to develop their thinking through imaginative play - an advanced notion for the early 20th century. Just looked it up - Wings and the Child: Or the Building of Magic Cities or the Building of Magic Cities
I really enjoyed The Fortunate Pilgrim, but it took me awhile to feel empathy for Lucia Santa, the central character of the story. This book is based on the author's own mother. He thought it was his best book. It is a good book to start with if you want to try the author. My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Chrissie wrote: "I really enjoyed The Fortunate Pilgrim, but it took me awhile to feel empathy for Lucia Santa, the central character of the story. This book is based on the author's own mother. He tho..."I really enjoyed your review of this Chrissie. I've seen this in the library a couple of times and have passed it over. I'll be checking it out @ my next stop.
Julia, I liked it but it wasn't until the end that I felt it worthy of four stars. Somehow only then did I begin to feel emotionally attached to the characters. Don't give up too soon. Right from the beginning you get a really good view of life in Hell's Kitchen. That is another reason to read the book.
I've finished my first book of the year, Cassandra by Christa Wolf. It was my first book by her and at the beginning I've struggled a lot to get into her writing style. But it was worth reading it and I'm glad I didn't give up because it's a very deep and powerful book. 4*
Finished Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite a book about the teaching of the sons of the elite in North Korea. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Just read The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August. It's a sort of time travel thriller and I enjoyed its fast pace and tension. However I was also irritated by the way scientific endeavour and accelerated technological progress is linked in the story with huge increases in pollution, warfare and ultimately, if our hero doesn't succeed, the end of the world. The 'villain' is ruthless and his use of torture is shocking, but I felt he needed to have a more selfish aim than simply wanting complete knowledge of how the universe works.
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