The Book Thread 2024

[Blip]

1. Julia by Sandra Newman
2. The Ghost Theatre by Mat Osman
3. Lord Jim at Home by Dinah Brooke
4. The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan
5. The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan
6. The Whale Tattoo by Jon Ransom
7. A Heart Full of Headstones by Ian Rankin
8. Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo translated by Douglas J. Weatherford
9. Wild Houses by Colin Barrett

A tale of feuding gangsters in a small Irish town: debut novel from established short story writer.

[Blip]

1. Julia by Sandra Newman
2. The Ghost Theatre by Mat Osman
3. Lord Jim at Home by Dinah Brooke
4. The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan
5. The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan
6. The Whale Tattoo by Jon Ransom
7. A Heart Full of Headstones by Ian Rankin
8. Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo translated by Douglas J. Weatherford
9. Wild Houses by Colin Barrett
10. The Little Black Book of Artificial Intelligence by Kyle Taylor

From Byline Books, as in the estimable Byline Times: if you haven't discovered them I recommend you do. This is not comfortable reading, but then again...

[Blip]

1. Julia by Sandra Newman
2. The Ghost Theatre by Mat Osman
3. Lord Jim at Home by Dinah Brooke
4. The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan
5. The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan
6. The Whale Tattoo by Jon Ransom
7. A Heart Full of Headstones by Ian Rankin
8. Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo translated by Douglas J. Weatherford
9. Wild Houses by Colin Barrett
10. The Little Black Book of Artificial Intelligence by Kyle Taylor
11. Loot by Tania James

A rather enjoyable mixture of post-colonialism and, it must be said, romance, set around the imagined provenance of a real artefact, Tipu's Tiger.

[NamelessFaceless]

1. The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things - "J.T. LeRoy"
2. The Pepsi-Cola Addict - June-Allison Gibbons

Another book I read just because of the story behind it. Really not bad for a book written by a 16-year-old.

[Blip]

1. Julia by Sandra Newman
2. The Ghost Theatre by Mat Osman
3. Lord Jim at Home by Dinah Brooke
4. The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan
5. The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan
6. The Whale Tattoo by Jon Ransom
7. A Heart Full of Headstones by Ian Rankin
8. Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo translated by Douglas J. Weatherford
9. Wild Houses by Colin Barrett
10. The Little Black Book of Artificial Intelligence by Kyle Taylor
11. Loot by Tania James
12. The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez

A writer recounts her thoughts during lockdown. I do find myself drawn to reading about others' lockdown experiences, probably because that strange time affected me so profoundly.

[The_Metatron]

I stayed up too late last night. I had to finish Andy Weir’s (author of The Martian) book Artemis.

It was loads of fun, and a pretty easy book to read. Crime and intrigue set on the moon.

[NamelessFaceless]

1. The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things - "J.T. LeRoy"
2. The Pepsi-Cola Addict - June-Allison Gibbons
3. 1776 - David McCullough

[Blip]

1. Julia by Sandra Newman
2. The Ghost Theatre by Mat Osman
3. Lord Jim at Home by Dinah Brooke
4. The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan
5. The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan
6. The Whale Tattoo by Jon Ransom
7. A Heart Full of Headstones by Ian Rankin
8. Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo translated by Douglas J. Weatherford
9. Wild Houses by Colin Barrett
10. The Little Black Book of Artificial Intelligence by Kyle Taylor
11. Loot by Tania James
12. The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez
13. House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday

Considered a landmark of native American literature, this classic is fine and challenging writing: I found the accounts of superstition and gratuitous cruelty very hard to read, but the sense of place and terroir is remarkable.

[Blip]

1. Julia by Sandra Newman
2. The Ghost Theatre by Mat Osman
3. Lord Jim at Home by Dinah Brooke
4. The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan
5. The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan
6. The Whale Tattoo by Jon Ransom
7. A Heart Full of Headstones by Ian Rankin
8. Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo translated by Douglas J. Weatherford
9. Wild Houses by Colin Barrett
10. The Little Black Book of Artificial Intelligence by Kyle Taylor
11. Loot by Tania James
12. The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez
13. House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
14. The Shadow Child by Rachel Hancox

Some interesting psychological stuff, and engaging writing, but rather too much about babies for my taste.

[Blip]

1. Julia by Sandra Newman
2. The Ghost Theatre by Mat Osman
3. Lord Jim at Home by Dinah Brooke
4. The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan
5. The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan
6. The Whale Tattoo by Jon Ransom
7. A Heart Full of Headstones by Ian Rankin
8. Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo translated by Douglas J. Weatherford
9. Wild Houses by Colin Barrett
10. The Little Black Book of Artificial Intelligence by Kyle Taylor
11. Loot by Tania James
12. The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez
13. House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
14. The Shadow Child by Rachel Hancox
15. And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini

Superb novel by the author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. My favourite so far this year.

[The_Metatron]

I was up late again last night, finished re-reading Battlefield Earth by none other than L. Ron Hubbard.

It’s as good as when I first read it nearly forty years ago. My wife at the time sent me a used copy while I was posted abroad. I left it on my shelf for a couple years, my form of a boycott of Hubbard after seeing a documentary on Scientology, the cult he founded. I ran out of books to read, and got this one from my shelf.

Yeah, L. Ron Hubbard is full of shit. But make no mistake, he wrote a good SF book in this one. I recommend getting a used copy, so his cult gets no profit from its sale, though.

[sean_w]

1. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
2. An American Dream, Norman Mailer
3. Living with the Genie: Essays On Technology And The Quest For Human Mastery
4. Unequal Gains: American Growth and Inequality since 1700, Jeffrey G. Williamson and Peter Lindert

--definitely written for other serious researchers

[Blip]

1. Julia by Sandra Newman
2. The Ghost Theatre by Mat Osman
3. Lord Jim at Home by Dinah Brooke
4. The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan
5. The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan
6. The Whale Tattoo by Jon Ransom
7. A Heart Full of Headstones by Ian Rankin
8. Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo translated by Douglas J. Weatherford
9. Wild Houses by Colin Barrett
10. The Little Black Book of Artificial Intelligence by Kyle Taylor
11. Loot by Tania James
12. The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez
13. House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
14. The Shadow Child by Rachel Hancox
15. And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
16. The Long Hangover: Putin's New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past by Shaun Walker

The clue is in the name. I learnt quite a lot. The author is The Guardian's central and eastern Europe correspondent.

[don't get me started]

1. The Seven Day Circle: The History and Meaning of the Week - Eviatar Zerubavel 206 pp.
2. A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster - Rebecca Solint 368 pp.
3. The Language Game: How Improvisation Cteated Language and Changed the World -Morten H. Christiansen and Nick Chater 349 pp.

4. One Day - David Nichols 480 pp.

A bit of a change for me. I recently came across this on Netflix and really got hooked on it and binge watched the whole thing.Saw this in a bookshop and impulse bought it. Although love stories are not usually a thing for me, I liked this immensely. It might be in part because the time period of the narrative is closely aligned with mine- graduation in the late 1980's, the shit jobs, low pay and good times with friends of the 90's, the emergence of something like a serious attitude to career and relationships as my thirties progressed. The book has references aplenty to the books, movies, video games, music and cultural themes that were the texture of my life from the 1980's to the 2000's. A great dollop of recognition and nostalgia. It is also laugh out loud funny in places. Especially the female lead, Emma, who has a wicked sense of humour and a predilection for sarcastic put-downs, wry one-liners and ironic understatement. That and the subtle indicators of class, region, accent and snobbery were very familiar to me, despite my 30 years absence from the UK.

[sean_w]

1. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
2. An American Dream, Norman Mailer
3. Living with the Genie: Essays On Technology And The Quest For Human Mastery
4. Unequal Gains: American Growth and Inequality since 1700, Jeffrey G. Williamson and Peter Lindert
5. The African Experience, Roland Oliver

[Blip]

1. Julia by Sandra Newman
2. The Ghost Theatre by Mat Osman
3. Lord Jim at Home by Dinah Brooke
4. The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan
5. The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan
6. The Whale Tattoo by Jon Ransom
7. A Heart Full of Headstones by Ian Rankin
8. Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo translated by Douglas J. Weatherford
9. Wild Houses by Colin Barrett
10. The Little Black Book of Artificial Intelligence by Kyle Taylor
11. Loot by Tania James
12. The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez
13. House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
14. The Shadow Child by Rachel Hancox
15. And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
16. The Long Hangover: Putin's New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past by Shaun Walker
17. Fourteen Days edited by Margaret Atwood and Douglas Preston

This is a fascinating project: a collaborative work by 36 writers describing a group of New Yorkers sharing a tenement during the first lockdown who gather each evening to tell stories. Different writers wrote different stories: my favourite turned out to have been written by Atwood (there's an appendix revealing who wrote what). Recommended.

[Blip]

1. Julia by Sandra Newman
2. The Ghost Theatre by Mat Osman
3. Lord Jim at Home by Dinah Brooke
4. The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan
5. The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan
6. The Whale Tattoo by Jon Ransom
7. A Heart Full of Headstones by Ian Rankin
8. Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo translated by Douglas J. Weatherford
9. Wild Houses by Colin Barrett
10. The Little Black Book of Artificial Intelligence by Kyle Taylor
11. Loot by Tania James
12. The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez
13. House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
14. The Shadow Child by Rachel Hancox
15. And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
16. The Long Hangover: Putin's New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past by Shaun Walker
17. Fourteen Days edited by Margaret Atwood and Douglas Preston
18. The Nix by Nathan Hill

This guy is pretty good, weaving the Chicago Protests, Scandinavian ghost stories, and a son's search for the truth about his mother - among many other strands - into a most readable whole.

[Blip]

1. Julia by Sandra Newman
2. The Ghost Theatre by Mat Osman
3. Lord Jim at Home by Dinah Brooke
4. The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan
5. The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan
6. The Whale Tattoo by Jon Ransom
7. A Heart Full of Headstones by Ian Rankin
8. Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo translated by Douglas J. Weatherford
9. Wild Houses by Colin Barrett
10. The Little Black Book of Artificial Intelligence by Kyle Taylor
11. Loot by Tania James
12. The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez
13. House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
14. The Shadow Child by Rachel Hancox
15. And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
16. The Long Hangover: Putin's New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past by Shaun Walker
17. Fourteen Days edited by Margaret Atwood and Douglas Preston
18. The Nix by Nathan Hill
19. One Day by David Nicholls

This has been cropping up in various contexts, not least in the recent log here by don't get me started, so I surrendered and read it. I enjoyed it, the more so because it didn't pan out as I expected.

[don't get me started]

1. The Seven Day Circle: The History and Meaning of the Week - Eviatar Zerubavel 206 pp.
2. A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster - Rebecca Solint 368 pp.
3. The Language Game: How Improvisation Cteated Language and Changed the World -Morten H. Christiansen and Nick Chater 349 pp.
4. One Day - David Nichols 480 pp.
5. The Greatest Invention: A history of the World in Nine Mysterious Scripts - Silvia Ferarra (Translated by Todd Portnowitz) 289.pp

The author is a professor specializing in ancient Aegean civilization and her book tracks both the emergence of writing in various locations across the world and also looks at some notoriously tricky and undeciphered writing systems that still challenge scholars and enthusiasts - such as the mysterious Indus script, the writing system of the Eater Islanders, Linear A from Crete and others. Also investigated are one-off oddities such as the Phaistos Disk and the enigmatic Voynich Manuscript. There is something magical and compelling about these mysterious scripts that appeals to our innate curiosity. The writer writes in a playful conversational style. She admits that we "are made for dialogue, not for monologue" (p.268) and as such writing fulfills a strange place in our psyche. When we read we are, in a very particular sense, engaging in a silent 'dialogue' with another who is non-co-present. Such is the centrality of dialogism in our mental world that we recreate it when we engage in the solitary act of reading. An interesting and wide-ranging discourse on a compelling subject.

[NamelessFaceless]

1. The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things - "J.T. LeRoy"
2. The Pepsi-Cola Addict - June-Allison Gibbons
3. 1776 - David McCullough
4. Amazon Stories (1. Scheme, 2. There's a Bear in the House!, 3. Her Second Death, 4. Same Time Next Year) - Various Authors (Audiobook)
5. Amazon Stories (1. If The Fates Allow, 2. The Marriage Test, 3. Two Women Walk Into a Bar, 4. How to Accidentally Settle Down With Your Highschool Boyfriend) - Various Authors (Audiobook)
6. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
7. The Improbable Meet-Cute Collection (1. Royal Valentine; 2. With Any Luck; 3. Drop, cover, and Hold On; 4. Rosie and the Dreamboat; 5. Worst Wingman Ever; 6. The Exception to the Rule) - Various Authors (Audiobook)