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What have you just read? Opinions, recommendations, reviews Part 2
A really good crime thriller with just the female lead I have been looking for
Evil Crimes by Michael Hambling. My spoiler free review can be found at https://sandysbookaday.wordpress.com/... orhttps://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I have finished Wolf Hall. I stuck to it like a mad-woman. My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Petra wrote: "I finished listening to a light, cozy mystery: Eleven Pipers Piping by C.C. Benison. I enjoyed this mystery and am looking to get the other 2 books in the series fr..."
I wasn't much impressed by the first book in that series, Twelve Drummers Drumming, though it has been several years now & I don't remember why.
Leslie, I'm going to give Twelve Drummers Drumming a try. Eleven Pipers Piping started slow and I was on the fence at first. But the characters and their squabbles started to grow on me. It was a quaint village feel. The mystery itself was very downplayed, which made me think of Agatha Christie's books. Father Christmas meandered through the book, talking with everyone and putting the pieces together.
I ended up liking it.
Add me to the long list of fans of Canadian author Louise Penny. I finally started her popular detective series with Still Life. I love Three Pines!
4+★ Link to my review
If we used our brain capacity as well as our ancestors did, the world might be in better shape. Aussie author and scientist Lynne Kelly explains The Memory Code: The Secrets of Stonehenge, Easter Island and Other Ancient Monuments and the memory spaces used since the beginning of time to record oral history. FASCINATING!
5★ Link to my review
I finished Proust's Remembrance of Things Past Volumes 1-3 Box Set!!! There were times that it was a slog but it is a marvelous piece of writing. Well worth the time to read but, at least for me, it takes time to read it. One can't fly through these pages. My review is huge! Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Review of My Ántonia by Willa Cather, it was a splendid readhttps://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I finished The Moor's Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie. 1*I didn't enjoy this book at all. It's a pity because I really loved Midnight Children so I hoped this one would be good to.
First of all it loses with the translation. The author plays a lot with words and the wit is lost with the translation. There were also several words in Maharati (? or Hindi?) that were not translated so I wasn't always able to understand a sentence. There are also too many references and cutting remarks to politicians, Bollywood actors or happenings, that a non-Indian can't always understand.
I also didn't like the writing style. The sentences were too long, too many subordinates, and at the end of a sentence I didn't know what he was talking about.
Only Italian review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Raul wrote: "Review of My Ántonia by Willa Cather, it was a splendid readhttps://www.goodreads.com/review/show..."
Such a great book, Raul!
My latest Harlan Coben read Fade Away
was welcomed but not as good as I'd have hoped. Still love his books though! My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I have finished Rose Under Fire, the sequel to Code Name Verity. Well done but I found the Ravensbruck sections difficult to take at times.As light relief, I read an English mystery, The Open House, the 26th in the Appleby series.
I read The Alphabet of Heart's Desire. 4 stars : My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
A couple of days ago I finished The Life We Bury by Allen Eskens, which I believe was his first book, another great debut, 4.5 stars. My review
Started in March, I finally finished the Complete Tales by Hans Christian Andersen. I still don't know how I will rate it. Some stories are very good, others less, and there were also boring tales. I didn't enjoy it that much though some stories are very moving. It has more than 1000 pages and though I've read it in 10 months, only a few tales at the same time, it started beeing too dragging. I think it will be a 2 stars.
I have definitely enjoyed Victoria: The Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire.My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I have just finished Tis the Season, a Christmas short story for a book club.It was the kind of short story I love: biting social commentary and snarky humour. 5 stars
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
A link to the story (legally) free online
http://socialistreview.org.uk/291/tis...
Read The Face In The Abyss by A Merritt - reviewed - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1649443296.
A recent re-read of Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein.My updated review is at: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
B, can’t like it twice but I do ! :)
I read two short ones this weekend:The Machine Stops, which was an amazing foretelling from 100 years ago, but left me depressed.
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
So I needed an antidote and read Sarah, Plain and Tall. Not too sweet or preachy, just lovely.
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I finished 2 short books over the weekend:Learning to See in Three Dimensions: Poetry by Pamela Spiro Wagner - I won this poetry book in a GR Giveaway. I'm no expert in poetry but I enjoyed reading these. They often hit home somehow and the words & thoughts are touching.
The author is also an artist and her artwork is found throughout the book. She's very talented. I liked her use of colour & shape.
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum - a delightful take on Santa's past.
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Don't miss reading this book!"... the entire history of human spirituality can be viewed as one long, interconnected, ever-evolving, and remarkably cohesive effort to make sense of the divine by giving it our emotions and our personalities, by ascribing to it our traits and our desires, by providing it with our strengths and our weaknesses, even our own bodies—in short, by making God us."
"I have no interest in trying to prove the existence or nonexistence of God for the simple reason that no proof exists either way. Faith is a choice; anyone who says otherwise is trying to convert you."
"Whether we remain believers is, once again, nothing more or less than a choice. One can choose to view humanity’s universal belief in the soul as born of confusion or faulty reasoning: a trick of the mind or an accident of evolution. Indeed, one can believe that everything—the Big Bang, the distribution of space and time, the balance between mass and energy, and so on—is all just an accident of atoms. Creation may very well have originated purely through physical processes that reflect nothing more than the articulation of the most basic properties of matter and energy—without cause, value, or purpose. That is a perfectly plausible explanation for the existence of the universe and everything in it. It is, in fact, just as plausible—and just as impossible to prove—as the existence of an animating spirit that underlies the universe, that binds together the souls of you and me and everyone else—perhaps everything else—that is or was or has ever been. So then, make your choice."
God: A Human History
4 stars for me, first of this author. The Girl In The Ice by Robert Bryndza
My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Courageous. Moving. Georgia Blain wrote The Museum of Words: a memoir of language, writing, and mortality not long after being diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer. 5 stars. My review
I spent most of the weekend curled up on the sofa with my duvet, a cup of tea and a book. I finished 2 books both of which I enjoyed the reading experience thoroughly although one I liked more than the other. Both were very atmospheric, creepy reads which seemed to fit the snowy weather outside.
Thin Air https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Loney https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Thin Air https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Loney https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I like realism in literature so it is not so strange I enjoyed The Rise of Silas Lapham.My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Finished
by Frances Hodgson Burnett-- 4 Stars.I thought I had read this one before... alas, I had not...
My Review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
My review of Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas by James Patterson
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Recently finished a detective story set in 1942.
Somebody at the Door by Raymond Postgate. My spoiler free review can be found at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... orhttps://sandysbookaday.wordpress.com/...
Sorry, take two, my previous review link didn't work. Georgia Blain wrote The Museum of Words: a memoir of language, writing, and mortality not long after being diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer. 5 stars. My review
I have finished Io non mi chiamo Miriam by Majgull Axelsson ★★★★☆There isn't an English edition and it is a pity because I think a lot of people would like this book. The translated title could be "My name is not Miriam".
It talks about the holocaust, but this time we don't have the point of view of a Jew, but that of a gypsy girl. Reading this book I could learn also about their holocaust. For them it was even worse because they were considered bad people by everyone, also by Jews, so they had to be left separated from Jews. Also after the war, they didn't receive a reimbursement as it happened with Jews and they couldn't talk about their experience with everyone because considered bad and unwanted people by a lot of countries. Maybe someone was also glad that a lot of them had beed sterminated.
Well, Miriam was that gypsy girl that, by a fortuitous fate, while deported from Auschwitz to Ravensbrück, wore the dress of a dead Jewish girl because her dress was totally lacerated, so she was since then always with the Jews. For her whole life she decided to hide her real name and her origin because she knew she would have never been accepted or helped even when the war was over and she had been brought to Sweden. Racism against gypsies was also there.
This book doesn't lessen what Jews have gone through, absolutely not (also because Miriam, the main character, is among Jews in Ravensbrück). But the author wanted to talk also about other ethnic groups that had to endure the holocaust but no one knows about it.
It's a very interesting and moving book though some parts were repetitive (for ex. that Miriam had to hide her secret if she wanted to survive and to be accepted and helped after the war is repeated a zillion times).
I have completed two very short audiobooks today, Letter From An Unknown Woman and The Driver's Seat.My reviews:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... and
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
God Help the Child by Toni Morrison
5 stars. Here is my review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
All About Books
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