What books are you reading now? (2024)

[Nigeyb]

Having finished Gut and Blue Ruin I'm going to make a dent in two more of our May 2024 reads....





The Fight (1975) by Norman Mailer


and


Poor Things (1992) by Alasdair Gray

[Alwynne]

Nigeyb wrote: "I’ve just finished The Duke's Children (1880) so, in addition to Hari Kunzru’s Blue Ruin (2024), which continues to delight, I have just embarked upon ..."

Sounds fascinating Nigey. The site for Dr Rupy Aujla is definitely worth checking out, although he's an NHS doctor his approach is totally out of step with their outdated nutritional advice. He's done a number of podcasts on gut health:

https://thedoctorskitchen.com/podcast...

And the recipes are really good, for example:

https://thedoctorskitchen.com/recipes...

https://thedoctorskitchen.com/recipes...

[Roman Clodia]

Mmm, the Vietnamese noodles and sticky tofu looks just my thing.

[Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog]

Having read and re read War and Peace, I have taken up War and Peace: Original Version. Mostly I do not like it.

The better news is that I am just started A Dance to the Music of Time: 2nd Movement. I had been going through these books, The entire sequence is 12 books at 50 pages a day. My first day on book 4 was 50 pages in a sitting. For me a good sign.

[Nigeyb]

Thanks again Alwynne

[Lady Clementina]

Nigeyb wrote: "I've now finished Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body's Most Under-Rated Organ (2014)



Definitely worth a read
This I should probably look up.


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


3/5"

[Nigeyb]

Alwynne, I’m going to make that Sticky Tofu and Sweet Potato Tray Bake with Spinach, Coriander and Miso Pesto tonight 😋

[Alwynne]

Nigeyb wrote: "Alwynne, I’m going to make that Sticky Tofu and Sweet Potato Tray Bake with Spinach, Coriander and Miso Pesto tonight 😋"

Hope you find it suitably yummy!

[Roman Clodia]

I've read Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, Salman Rushdie's moving memoir of the attack that almost killed him and the struggle for rehabilitation: it's more vulnerable and loving than I expected and deals with a harsh experience with much humility and humanity:

www.goodreads.com/review/show/6438761997

[Alwynne]

I finished Harriet Baker's Rural Hours Baker takes three women writers Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Rosamond Lehmann and explores their lives at what she considers pivotal points. Baker's convinced that for each of them a move to the English countryside led to momentous shifts in their lifestyles/creative vision. I wasn't able to share Baker's conviction, her arguments were too few and too thin, but I did enjoy a number of the scenes and anecdotes centred on the writers particularly Woolf and Townsend Warner.

Link to my review:

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

[Roman Clodia]

I'm keen to read that, Alwynne, given the three women chosen, but waiting for it at the library.

[Alwynne]

I haven't read the complete Asheham Diary so I enjoyed reading about that, and I hadn't thought about Woolf's observations of nature and the impact on her later work. But like you I've read a number of books about Woolf and also Rosamond Lehmann and Sylvia Townsend Warner: A Biography so there was a great deal of information that was already familiar - although I liked Baker's handling of Townsend Warner's experiences. But it needs at least a chapter on perceptions/connotations of the country versus the city in relation to each writer's cultural/social context, as well as more on class as well as Englishness and the country - as this is very much rooted in ideas about rural England. Woolf's experiences are very 'Escape to the Country' but it's never clear if that's typical for a woman of her background or unusual, for example. Also the structure is awkward, Lehmann segues into an overview of each woman during WW2 that seems removed from the original concept and so on...

[Roman Clodia]

Thanks, it's good to have your clear reservations ahead of the book. Annoying, though, that a potentially rich topic seems to have been treated in such a lax way. Is it laziness because of not having to go through peer-review, I wonder?

[Roman Clodia]

I've finished an engaged intellectual biography of Frantz Fanon: The Rebel's Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon - not an easy book to write.

It was interesting to see Fanon mixing with Chester Himes and Richard Wright in Paris, given our recent reading of Himes and with the James Baldwin coming up.

www.goodreads.com/review/show/6201505046

[Alwynne]

I finished Sinéad Gleeson’s debut novel Hagstone I liked her imagery when it came to nature and her imagined island setting, as well as the use of Irish folklore, and the references to women artists and women's art, but the story never really came together, lots of promising strands that didn't really lead anywhere.

Link to my review:

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

[Anubha]

I’m rereading the complete Sherlock Holmes collection and boy it never gets old. I still feel the thrill of discovery as I uncover the chain of reasoning with Sherlock.

On a related note I recently the movie Mr. Holmes where Sir Ian McKellen plays a 90 year old Sherlock, retired in the countryside and battling with dementia. It was a touching portrayal and very different from the Sherlock in the books. Really liked the movie.

[Jan C]

I started reading Thirty-Nine Years of Short-Term Memory Loss: The Early Days of SNL from Someone Who Was There by Tom Davis. He was formerly Al Franken's partner in stand-up and they wrote together on SNL. The Foreword is written by Franken.

[Roman Clodia]

I finished an ARC of the new Joyce Carol Oates, Butcher, a bloody look at misogyny and medical history as a monstrous doctor experiments on the female inmates of a asylum: www.goodreads.com/review/show/6441699991

[Alwynne]

Roman Clodia wrote: "I finished an ARC of the new Joyce Carol Oates, Butcher, a bloody look at misogyny and medical history as a monstrous doctor experiments on the female inmates of a asylum: www.good..."

Think that might be a bit too bloodcurdling for me!

I was utterly glued to Seichō Matsumoto’s Inspector Imanishi Investigates an excellent mix of detective and socially-conscious crime fiction, as well as an unusual snapshot of Tokyo's experimental art scene in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Link to my review:

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

[Alwynne]

I finished Swiss artist/playwright Ariane Koch's debut novel Overstaying which won a Swiss lit prize and the Aspect Literature Award for best debut in German. I thought it was absorbing, shifting between mordant wit and sinister, unsettling scenes. Koch delves into issues around refugees, gender and power, and broader philosophical debates in her story of the shifting interactions between a solitary woman and her mysterious 'foreign' guest.

Link to my review:

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

[Tania]

I finished A Touch of Mistletoe by Barbara Comyns. I had started it last year but didn't get very far, then picked it up this week and flew through it. Just bad timing I suppose. She really is such an interesting writer. I'd like to get hold of the new biography at some point.

[Jan C]

Just started Shaggy Muses: The Dogs Who Inspired Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edith Wharton, and Emily Brontë by Maureen Adams.

[Martin]

Rapidly working my way through

This is classed as an Expressionist novel, quite understandably as Kubin was an artist and member of Der Blaue Reiter (and the mysterious, dark storyline). I looked at wikipedia to see what else can be classed as an Expressionist novel - not surprised to find Kafka and Döblin among the authors, but unsure about some of the others.
Does anyone reading this have suggestions/thoughts/opinions?

[Nigeyb]

Not come across it Martin but the reviews make it sound very interesting and enticing

Thanks 👌🏻

[Lady Clementina]

A graphic bio of van Gogh; learnt a lot from it
Vincent: A Graphic Biography
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Lady Clementina]

Jan C wrote: "Just started Shaggy Muses: The Dogs Who Inspired Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edith Wharton, and Emily Brontë by Maureen Adams."

This sounds like something I'd enjoy; I loved Flush!

[Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog]

I am within pages of finishing:
A Dance to the Music of Time: 2nd Movement
American Happiness and Discontents: The Unruly Torrent, 2008-2020
And
American Gods, Vol. 1: Shadows
Only about half way and struggling
Landscapes of War: From Sarajevo to Chechnya


In retrospect this may a rare instance where my reading is all 20th century

[Nigeyb]

Next up for me is my real world book group choice...



The Vegetarian (2007)

by

Han Kang


No idea what to expect - which is always a good way to start a book




Yeong-hye and her husband are ordinary people. He is an office worker with moderate ambitions and mild manners; she is an uninspired but dutiful wife. The acceptable flatline of their marriage is interrupted when Yeong-hye, seeking a more 'plant-like' existence, decides to become a vegetarian, prompted by grotesque recurring nightmares. In South Korea, where vegetarianism is almost unheard-of and societal mores are strictly obeyed, Yeong-hye's decision is a shocking act of subversion. Her passive rebellion manifests in ever more bizarre and frightening forms, leading her bland husband to self-justified acts of sexual sadism. His cruelties drive her towards attempted suicide and hospitalisation. She unknowingly captivates her sister's husband, a video artist. She becomes the focus of his increasingly erotic and unhinged artworks, while spiralling further and further into her fantasies of abandoning her fleshly prison and becoming - impossibly, ecstatically - a tree.

Fraught, disturbing and beautiful, The Vegetarian is a novel about modern day South Korea, but also a novel about shame, desire and our faltering attempts to understand others, from one imprisoned body to another.

[Roman Clodia]

Oh, I loved The Vegetarian! Interesting choice for a book group and may be a bit polarizing - do report back.

[Nigeyb]

Will do RC

[Stephen]

I read this a few years back. Really interesting read. I passed to my 25 year old son and he loved it. Enjoy!

[Nigeyb]

Thanks Stephen


Only about 15 pages in but really enjoying it so far

[Roman Clodia]

So glad this is working for you, Nigeyb - it reminded me in places of bits of Plath's 'Ariel', appropriately enough.

(I haven't been able to read this afternoon watching the London mayor results come in... getting a bit tearful with pride in Londoners, even though it's not over yet)

[Alwynne]

I finished Mourning a Breast by renowned Hong Kong author Xi Xi, an intriguing mix of fiction and non-fiction - or autofiction avant la lettre - and fascinating exploration of how women's experience of illness is inflected by context and culture. And a vivid portrait of 1990s Hong Kong.

Link to my review:

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

[Roman Clodia]

That looks interesting, Alwynne - your review made me think of Audrey Lorde's The Cancer Journals a bit.

[Alwynne]

Roman Clodia wrote: "That looks interesting, Alwynne - your review made me think of Audrey Lorde's The Cancer Journals a bit."

It's a lot more restrained in tone/approach, and arranged more as a series of brief reflections that can be read in sequence but equally out of order, it also functions partly as memoir/autofiction but also as public information/exhortation to women to do things like self examination, screening was almost non-existent. There's also a lot more about the relationship between the embodied and the wider physical environment of the city.

[Roman Clodia]

I've just finished The Cursed Friend by Beatrice Salvioni, a slightly clunky translation of the original title La Malnata: an engrossing read of female friendship and rebellion set in the 1930s under Mussolini:

www.goodreads.com/review/show/6463564528

[Anubha]

Hi everyone,
I'm planning to pick a book by Patricia Highsmith next. I realize this group has many people who have read a lot of Patricia Highsmith. Can you please recommend which of her titles would make a good first read?

Thanks

[Nigeyb]

I’d go Strangers On a Train or The Talented Mr Ripley for the start of your PH journey


Lots more PH chat and ideas here Anubha…..

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

[Roman Clodia]

I'd second Talented Mr Ripley.

[Hester]

Just to share a book IChild of All Nations by Irmgard Keun. Maddie in True Grit is my all time favourite child character but she now has a rival in the form of Kuddy, the nine year old narrator in this 1938 gem about the fruitless scramble for work and security in Europe for those who Hitler persecuted . Kuddy and her mother move from first class hotel to first class hotel , where credit is most easily extended and where they remain as hostages to payment ,while the father scrabble about between publishers, friends , lovers and bars trying to secure some sort of funds . Her voice is extraordinary : vivid and true and the book is very fresh but with a terrible poignancy . Has anyone read it ?

[Roman Clodia]

Hester wrote: "Just to share a book IChild of All Nations by Irmgard Keun."

Thanks, Hester: I have this on my list after reading Keun's The Artificial Silk Girl. We did that as a buddy here so the thread will still be available if you're interested.

[Hester]

Thanks RomanC. i'll have a look . Definitely want to read more by her .

[Alwynne]

Hester wrote: "Just to share a book IChild of All Nations by Irmgard Keun. Maddie in True Grit is my all time favourite child character but she now has a rival in the ..."

I have, she's an author I'm particularly keen on and I think I've read four of her novels now, this and Gilgi are probably my favourites. I loved the imagery in Child of All Nations, the rather dissolute father is supposedly based on Keun's then lover the novelist Joseph Roth - which would make sense as his issues with alcohol were well established at this point.

[Alwynne]

Have you read The Member of the Wedding Hester? Frankie in that is probably the child character I've found most memorable.

[Hester]

Alwynne wrote: "Hester wrote: "Just to share a book IChild of All Nations by Irmgard Keun. Maddie in True Grit is my all time favourite child character but she now has ..."

Yes . I'd read that too . And her career is another tragedy , of course .

What i find amazing is that its so fresh and is dealing with her own very difficult and uncertain experiences almost as they happen . Kully is able to escape reality by transforming situations into her own fantasy, atavars or play . Keun , by creating a child with an outsider's keen observation, is doing the same as she writes this fiction . The text is full of play and constant restitution to inventiveness . While many writers would escape into another world entirely and draw parallels with the horrible present through abstraction or history she faces reality square in the eye. I'm reminded in the prose of Craig Raine and his poetry A Martian Sends a Postcard Home and of Eloise at The Plaza. And there's something of Scout Finch here too.

[Alwynne]

Hester wrote: "Alwynne wrote: "Hester wrote: "Just to share a book IChild of All Nations by Irmgard Keun. Maddie in True Grit is my all time favourite child character ..."

Totally agree with you on the Keun, I can see what you mean about Scout although I'm not a fan of that novel. I was reminded of it recently after seeing the film based on 'Where the Crawdads Sing' which borrows from the Lee at various points: for me they both smack of a certain kind of portentous sentimentality that I find hard to relate to and feels very alien/very American to me, with the Lee there's the added annoyance of the 'white saviour' storyline.

[Hester]

Alwynne wrote: "Hester wrote: "Alwynne wrote: "Hester wrote: "Just to share a book IChild of All Nations by Irmgard Keun. Maddie in True Grit is my all time favourite c..."

I know what you mean.... on both counts . I was raised on Molesworth , altogether more acerbic and subversive I haven't read Where the Crawdads Sing and am not tempted , although i know many friends who loved it

[Roman Clodia]

Alwynne wrote: "... with the Lee there's the added annoyance of the 'white saviour' storyline."

Line me up with the anti-Mockingbird brigade! I loathed that book for all the reasons Awynne mentions. And I tried Crawdads and abandoned it within the opening pages.

[Nigeyb]

Roman Clodia wrote:



"Oh, I loved The Vegetarian! Interesting choice for a book group and may be a bit polarizing - do report back."




I loved it RC...

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

4/5