November Reading Thread

[Elentarri]

Being Human: How Our Biology Shaped World History by Lewis Dartnell

Dartnell explores how our biology has shaped our relationships, our societies, our economies and our wars, and how it continues to challenge and define our progress. This book is similar to Dartnell's previous book: Origins: How Earth's History Shaped Human History. I found the contents interesting but not particularly original. I was already familiar with quite a lot of it (this is a hazard of reading every book on a vaguely similar top that I can get my hands on). The book is clearly written, but a bit disjointed and rather superficial.​

 

[AE35Unit]

I'm still Standing...

 

[Danny McG]

I'm still Standing...

That would make a good title for an Elton John book

 

[Vertigo]

All Out of Leeds by Kim M. Watt
A mildly entertaining urban fantasy that is marred by a overly drawn out story and thin plot. The whole thing just dragged. The narrator was the same as the prequel (What Happened in London) and didn't really appeal to me.

You seem to be having a bad run recently!

 

[Elentarri]

You seem to be having a bad run recently!

I suppose. But they are library books and since they are audio as well, it's not really wasted time since I was doing something else at the same time. Someone recommended them highly, but I don't think our taste in books meshes all that well.

 

[Danny McG]

Book 2 in Jonathan Barnes victoriana series - The Domino Men.

 

[Dave Vicks]

THE NEUROSCIENTIST WHO LOST HER MIND.By Barbra K. Lipska ,Elaine
McArdle.2018.

Doctor with temporary mental illness.

 

[Dave]

The Secret Hours, the new stand alone spy thriller by Mick Herron.

I think I've mentioned before in Chronicles - the Mick Herron book The Secret Hours is actually a Slough House book featuring Jackson Lamb, but it takes a while to realise because he's going under a spy identity

I'm not at all sure why it is advertised as a "stand alone" novel. I read Nobody Walks, also advertised as "stand alone" but which uses some characters, however that was a back-story for just one of the minor characters. The Secret Hours is quite different, as not only does it give a back-story for Jackson Lamb, Molly Doran, Cartwright and others, but it gives you the reasons for everything that was previously obscure. It is the ultimate "Slough House" story and if you read it first you will be totally spoilered on that series. So not a "stand alone" at all!

 

[Ian Fortytwo]

I'm currently reading A Midwinter's Tail, by Lili Hayward.

This is our book group's choice for November.

 

[Dave]

Last night, I began reading the (relatively short) The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole by Stephen King. (So, I'm reading in the suggested order #4.5, rather than the published order #8.)

I've now picked up two of the remaining books second-hand, but I hadn't quite realised how long those are. The final book is in hardback and is huge. I could use it as a doorstop or do weight training with it! So, not sure when I will finish them as I seem to read much more slowly than some other readers here. Also, my wife is asking me how I can read eight books on the same thing, and I admit that I am finding the quest to be interminable, although the older tales of Roland's life have been more interesting than his present circumstances, and so I will certainly be mixing them up with other things. I also bought The Moon is a Harsh Mistress second-hand. That may be next?

 

[Pyan]

I also bought The Moon is a Harsh Mistress second-hand. That may be next?

Excellent choice. Hugo winner, and definitely one of the best RAH novels.

 

[AE35Unit]

Excellent choice. Hugo winner, and definitely one of the best RAH novels.

I couldn't get on with that one, something about the language used. Weird. Writing style. Use of words. Choppy.

 

[Toby Frost]

I finished Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin (what a name!). Overall I really enjoyed it, but it does have obvious problems and wouldn't be to all tastes. It was written as a serial, and has a soapy, unfocussed feel, with multiple episodes from people's lives rather than one plot. A sort-of plot crops up in the last quarter, but it's very loose. Interestingly, it hinges on an anagram of a character's name that hints at her past, which Maupin drops as a sort of game for the reader.

It's also quite rude, as one might expect from a book set in 70's San Francisco, with a lot of drug use and sexual gags (!), although nothing graphic. It's very unprudish and pretty much everyone is the butt of a joke somehow, but it never feels very unkind. The overall sense is of a witty, arch but ultimately quite nice gay man-about-town telling amusing anecdotes. It doesn't outstay its welcome, but I don't think I'll rush to read all the sequels.

And now I think I'll re-read Richard Morgan's bleak, violent and insightful Black Man, which feels pretty appropriate.

 

[Hugh]

I finished Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin (what a name!). Overall I really enjoyed it, but it does have obvious problems and wouldn't be to all tastes. It was written as a serial, and has a soapy, unfocussed feel, with multiple episodes from people's lives rather than one plot. A sort-of plot crops up in the last quarter, but it's very loose. Interestingly, it hinges on an anagram of a character's name that hints at her past, which Maupin drops as a sort of game for the reader.

It's also quite rude, as one might expect from a book set in 70's San Francisco, with a lot of drug use and sexual gags (!), although nothing graphic. It's very unprudish and pretty much everyone is the butt of a joke somehow, but it never feels very unkind. The overall sense is of a witty, arch but ultimately quite nice gay man-about-town telling amusing anecdotes. It doesn't outstay its welcome, but I don't think I'll rush to read all the sequels.

And now I think I'll re-read Richard Morgan's bleak, violent and insightful Black Man, which feels pretty appropriate.

I read it in the 80s and really liked it, but I'm unsure what I'd think today. Given it first appeared (I think) as a weekly column in the San Francisco Chronicle with little thought of further publication beyond the next week or two's instalments, it's been remarkably successful.

 

[Toby Frost]

It's got a carefree feel that seems quite alien now. I don't know enough about the history to comment, but I suspect that being pre-AIDS and the judgmental bigotry that went with that might be significant. Nobody seems worried about much beyond the state of their most recent relationship. With the exception of a suicide and a single villain, the world seems like a friendly place, a bit like Bertie Wooster's 1920s.

And then there's Black Man, in which a artificially-bred caveman beats Nazis to death in a vicious theocracy. Bit of a change.

 

[HareBrain]

I suspect that being pre-AIDS and the judgmental bigotry that went with that might be significant.

I remember watching the 1993 TV adaptation, and it's an interesting question (which I can't remember enough to begin to answer) how the AIDS crisis in the meantime affected its tone.

 

[Dave]

I finished Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin (what a name!). Overall I really enjoyed it, but it does have obvious problems and wouldn't be to all tastes. It was written as a serial, and has a soapy, unfocussed feel, with multiple episodes from people's lives rather than one plot. A sort-of plot crops up in the last quarter, but it's very loose. Interestingly, it hinges on an anagram of a character's name that hints at her past, which Maupin drops as a sort of game for the reader.

It's also quite rude, as one might expect from a book set in 70's San Francisco, with a lot of drug use and sexual gags (!), although nothing graphic. It's very unprudish and pretty much everyone is the butt of a joke somehow, but it never feels very unkind. The overall sense is of a witty, arch but ultimately quite nice gay man-about-town telling amusing anecdotes. It doesn't outstay its welcome, but I don't think I'll rush to read all the sequels.

My son had to read this for school aged about 14-15, so it's still on a bookcase in the house somewhere though I've never read it myself. I didn't realise that it was "quite rude" "with a lot of drug use and sexual gags." It's a little late to tell me this now! He didn't think much of it. However, he didn't like Of Mice and Men either, another school book. He is still not much of a reader.

 

[Toby Frost]

That's kind of a weird book to read at school - rudeness aside, a lot of it is just dialogue, much of the story is people dealing with "grown-up" problems such as divorce and loneliness which wouldn't mean much to most young teenagers, and the plotting is very thin. That said, I found my copy on a shelf at work, along with other "classic" and "improving" books.

 

[Pyan]

If I'd have had to read Of Mice and Men at school, I'd have probably been put off as well. Wuthering Heights and Wordsworth* were quite enough, thank you very much.



*From Wordsworth's The Thorn:

And to the left, three yards beyond,
You see a little muddy Pond
Of water, never dry;
I've measured it from side to side:
'Tis three feet long, and two feet wide.

Genius or what?

 

[HareBrain]

If I'd have had to read Of Mice and Men at school, I'd have probably been put off as well. Wuthering Heights and Wordsworth* were quite enough, thank you very much.

I actually enjoyed WH at school, and all my life I've recommended it to others. I recently tried to reread it and lasted about five pages.

I wonder now if, rather than liking the book, I just fancied Kate Bush.