What books are you reading now? (2020) Showing 1,851-1,900 of 2,222

[Susan]

Chrissie wrote: "Young adult books are not usually my thing, bu here is one I like a lot--The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. It is considered a classic. I see it as a book for both adults a..."

I love The Magic Mountain Chrissie. It's one of my favourite novels.

[Judy]

Chrissie wrote: "I have begun The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. The start, describing a train ride through Alpine peaks up to a Swiss sanatorium, is captivating. I have a nice long book ahead of me. :0)..."

I think you have a treat in store with The Magic Mountain, Chrissie - I thought it was brilliant! We had it as a group read here a couple of years ago if you want to look at the thread:

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

[Nigeyb]

I read that one recently Chrissie, and also really enjoyed it

[Roman Clodia]

Was it really two years ago that we read The Magic Mountain? I loved it too.

[Chrissie]

Elizabeth, I usually do not go for YA literature, but The Outsiders is VERY well written. I was surprised how much I liked it.

[Susan]

I finished Agatha Christie: First Lady of Crime
It is a reissue of a collection of essays first published shortly after her death, so contains a lot of her contemporaries, including favourites of mine like Christianna Brand and Celia Fremlin. An enjoyable read for fans of Christie.

[Chrissie]

Thanks, all of you, for the thumbs up in relation to Magic Mountain. I am totally enthralled at the moment. I love the descriptiveness. I love how he contrast beauty and illness, cleanliness and death. What an atmosphere Mann creates!

I am a little worried it might become too didactic. We'll see. In any case the writing is gorgeous.

[Judy]

Roman Clodia wrote: "Was it really two years ago that we read The Magic Mountain? I loved it too."

It was November/December 2018, RC - scary how quickly time passes!

[Chrissie]

Judy, I forgot to thank you for the link to the thread!!

[Judy]

No worries, Chrissie! I really hope you enjoy the book as much as I think we all did during the group read.

[Chrissie]

At the moment, I find The Magic Mountain exceptionally good!

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

I have started Thomas Hardy's Under the Greenwood Tree. It is comparatively short, but I'm finding the writing delicious and want to read some sentences more than once and I'm a slow reader anyway.

His features were invisible; yet when he occasionally looked round, two faint moons of light gleamed for an instant from the precincts of his eyes, denoting that he wore spectacles of a circular form.

[Roman Clodia]

Chrissie wrote: "At the moment, I find The Magic Mountain exceptionally good!"

And here was me thinking it might not be for you, Chrissie! Still, I'm so glad you're enjoying it. That was such a fun buddy read.

[Judy]

I really like Under the Greenwood Tree - glad to hear you are enjoying it, Elizabeth.

[Roman Clodia]

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "I have started Thomas Hardy's Under the Greenwood Tree. It is comparatively short, but I'm finding the writing delicious"

It's surprisingly charming for a Hardy novel, I thought - and I remember loving Dick Dewey.

[Chrissie]

Roman Clodia wrote: "Chrissie wrote: "At the moment, I find The Magic Mountain exceptionally good!"

And here was me thinking it might not be for you, Chrissie! Still, I'm so glad you're enjoying it. That ..."

I like the details. Mann draws with great perception people places and situations. Often with a twist of irony, which has me smiling. I am getting to know the characters. The Russian woman who consistently slams the door is the focus at the moment; this detail shows her temperament. You are not told; you are shown.

Time, as a theme, is played with, giving the reader food for thought. I want to see where Mann takes this. Being on a mountain, secluded and separated from the world "below", is effectively drawn too. The regimented lifestyle, and how patients willingly fall into a pattern is both lulling and creepy at the same time. As is the contrast between sparkling cleanliness and beauty and the threat of death.

On the negative side--I don't know where this is going, although obviously Castorp's planned three-week stay will be lengthened. Perhaps the story could have been more condensed! I want to see if the characters come to be drawn as types rather than as complicated individuals. I hope not the former.

As usual for me, the prose is important and it very very good here, Good prose style cannot not be given one definition; it is the most difficult attribute of writing to pin down and varies widely.

These are my thoughts as I read The Magic Mountain.

[Roman Clodia]

Interesting to hear your thoughts, Chrissie :)

[Chrissie]

Since so many of you recall the book and you were surprised that I was enjoying it, I posted my thoughts here.

[Gregory]

Greetings from a group newbie!
I just completed Magda Szabo's 1970 novel Abigail. So glad to have learned about it from Hugh's recommendation. For my review, visit: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Nigeyb]

Welcome Gregory

[Joy D]

Finished:

How It All Began by Penelope Lively - 4 stars - My Review

[Susan]

Welcome to the group, Gregory.

[Chrissie]

Hi, Gregory. LOTS of interesting book come up for discussion here. Have fun.

[Chrissie]

Finally I finished it--The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann! I didn't love all of it but sections were great. I am gad to have read it.

My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I have begun 24 Hours in Ancient Egypt: A Day in the Life of the People Who Lived There by Donald P. Ryan.

[Roman Clodia]

Interesting review, Chrissie - and I'm glad your liked The Magic Mountain at least in parts. I'd have to say that I loved all the analysing it requires even though I knew there was stuff that I was missing.

Death in Venice is very different in some ways (and not just length!) but also has an intellectual underpinning which readers can engage with or choose to ignore - it has more ostensible plot.

I'm interested that you gave Buddenbrooks 5-stars - I'd like to read that and also Doctor Faustus.

[Chrissie]

RC, I will be reading Death in Venice next month, but what I really wish I could get my hands on are Professor Unrat by Thomas' brother and his son's books, for example Der Wendepunkt.

[Chrissie]

I have completed 24 Hours in Ancient Egypt: A Day in the Life of the People Who Lived There and did like it, but it is just for beginners like me.

My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Now I have begun The Big Green Tent by Lyudmila Ulitskaya, an acclaimed contemporary Russian author. I am liking it right from the start.

[Susan]

I have started The Bell Jar another book (like Gorky Park) that I have meant to read forever.

[Roman Clodia]

Ah, wonderful Plath! Are you reading or listening, Susan? Just because the audio read by Maggie Gyllenhaal is fantastic.

[Susan]

Reading, RC. I saw the audible version, but there was a suggestion it was unabridged? I want to read the new biography of Plath, so thought I would read this first.

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

Susan wrote: "Reading, RC. I saw the audible version, but there was a suggestion it was unabridged? I want to read the new biography of Plath, so thought I would read this first."

I think unabridged is what you want.

[Susan]

Absolutely, Elizabeth. The Audible version is listed as unabridged, but reviews suggest it is not, so I gave it a miss.

[Chrissie]

Re: Plath

I think I will pick up The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath. Years ago, when my eyes were better, I read the paper book The Bell Jar. It is time for more Plath!

Susan, do you have a link to the new biography? Sorry, I just now saw the link in the other thread, here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

[Alwynne]

I've just finished some Halloween reading Melissa Edmundson's collection Women's Weird: Strange Stories by Women, 1890-1940. The majority of the entries were written after 1900, and it includes work by writers out of print elsewhere like Margery Lawrence who wrote supernatural and mystery novels and stories. I was particularly intrigued by what is/isn't considered 'weird' fiction and how or if it changes when it's written by women, one of the things that stood out here was the way in which many stories masked real anxieties or social issues affecting women, death in childbirth, domestic violence, power within conventional families even an early example of the frustrations of dealing with 'mansplaining' but presented under the pretext of exploring the strange or unexplained...

Link to my review:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

I have made a start on Nana. Only a start but far enough to observe the new Oxford World's Classics translation by Helen Constantine is quite good.

[Nigeyb]

Jan C wrote: "I started Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland the other day. Having difficulty putting it down."

Snap Jan.

I've just started Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe - next month's Moderators Choice

[Chrissie]

Nigeyb wrote: "Jan C wrote: "I started Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland the other day. Having difficulty putting it down."

Snap Jan.

I've just started [book:Say..."

I hope, and I think you will, consider this a very good book. I read it a while ago and gave it four stars.

[Nigeyb]

That's encouraging Chrissie - do join in next month when we start our discussion

[Roman Clodia]

Yes, I agree with Chrissie - I'll have a flip through my annotations so I can join the discussion next month. I remember I found this as gripping as any novel.

[Roman Clodia]

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "I have made a start on Nana. Only a start but far enough to observe the new Oxford World's Classics translation by Helen Constantine is quite good."

Thanks for the prompt, Elizabeth. I've just pulled out my old Penguin Nana - translated by George Holden.

[Pamela]

Roman Clodia wrote: "Pamela wrote: "I’m currently reading The War of the End of the World, which fits this month’s theme."

Really looking forward to your review of this ..."

I’ve finished this now and thoroughly enjoyed it.

My review is here https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Roman Clodia]

Thanks, Pamela, it sounds just my sort of thing!

[Pamela]

Roman Clodia wrote: "Thanks, Pamela, it sounds just my sort of thing!"

Great, another one for the tbr then :)

[Susan]

I am reading, and really enjoying, Sybille Bedford: A Life by Selina Hastings. I have loved other biographies by Selina Hastings and, though I will admit that I haven't read much by Bedford before, I am loving this and liking Sybille Bedford very much. Interestingly, she got her English name when she married Walter Bedford; paying him £100 for marrying her, so she could obtain a British passport and never seeing him again after the wedding day.

[Susan]

I have also added The War of the End of the World to my TBR pile, Pamela. Sounds enticing, thanks.

[Roman Clodia]

I've only read Sybille Bedford's Jigsaw: An Unsentimental Education: A Biographical Novel which I remember as being wildly eccentric, in a good way :)

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

Susan wrote: "I am reading, and really enjoying, Sybille Bedford: A Life by Selina Hastings. I have loved other biographies by Selin..."

I have Bedford's A Legacy marked as wish list. I've never read anything by her. Her GR profile says "Many of her works are partly autobiographical".

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

Roman Clodia wrote: "I've only read Sybille Bedford's Jigsaw: An Unsentimental Education: A Biographical Novel which I remember as being wildly eccentric, in a good way :)"

I would most certainly be open to others by Bedford should people be interested in choosing one for a buddy read sometime next year.

[Susan]

I have ordered, As It Was: Pleasures, Landscapes, and Justice but this is a second hand book, not available on kindle. I think a few books are available on kindle and, indeed, I think we read The Trial of Lady Chatterley's Lover some time ago. Bedford wrote a lot of non-fiction; including travel and crime, as well as fiction.

[Tania]

Square Haunting: Five Women, Freedom and London Between the Wars has finally turned up from the library, so I've started that. I'm also reading An Unsuitable Attachment by Barbara Pym and enjoying spotting the characters from previous novels popping up briefly.