No one here read this?
A Girl If A Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride
It's ok though I won't vote for it.
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 3 December 2021 13:08 (two years ago) link
Ancillary Justice by Ann LeckieThe Flamethrowers by Rachel KushnerWe Are All Completely Besides Ourselves by Karen Joy FowlerThe Goldfinch by Donna TarttThose Who Leave And Those Who Stay by Elena FerranteThe Narrow Road To The Deep North by Richard Flanagan
Ancillary Justice is v good even though she leans a bit hard on the tea and gloves stuff. Nothing against The Flamethrowers but it didn't compel me to read any more by her. We Are All Completely Besides Ourselves was enjoyable, The Goldfinch was an ok shaggy dog story but not a patch on The Secret History. The Narrow Road etc is typical worthy but dull booker stuff. Ferrante great obv.
― namaste darkness my old friend (ledge), Friday, 3 December 2021 13:51 (two years ago) link
Voting Flamethrowers, nice to have a literary novel tackling the Years of Lead to go with my many trashy Italian crime flicks on the subject.
― Daniel_Rf, Friday, 3 December 2021 14:10 (two years ago) link
> MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood
does this mean we skipped Oryx and Crake? 8(
Ancillary Justice didn't grab me enough to read the next one.
and the only other is A Tale For The Time Being by Ruth Ozeki which popped up in facebook reminders a couple of days ago.
"japanese / american writer writes about a japanese / american writer who finds the diary of a japanese girl. takes in the tsunami and kamikaze pilots and japanese attitudes to suicide. was ok."
― koogs, Friday, 3 December 2021 16:56 (two years ago) link
Back to Ferrante for me, easy. I remember basically liking Ancillary Justice but being disappointed by the ending. The whole Oryx and Crake trilogy was really well-done despite being slightly ridiculous from an SF standpoint; have no memory now of which parts of it constituted MadAddam. Americanah was pretty bad. Flamethrowers seemed objectively good but somehow I couldn't make myself read more than 60 pages of it. Doctor Sleep is pretty standard for late-era King; he stuck everything in there that he could think of, some of it definitely works, a lot of it doesn't, you can read it very fast.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Friday, 3 December 2021 18:01 (two years ago) link
Was hoping for something that would tempt me to think,"This Ferrante pulls its weight in the quartet, but, as a stand-alone, this other thing works better." But the only choice I've read is the Karen Joy Fowler, which, by standards she set early on, is not that remarkable, although it is distinctive, and a satisfying read: about a family whose scientist Dad decided that it would be a good idea to adopt a chimp, or that's what his other kids thought he was doing---but at a certain point, she was gone: too much trouble, experiment done. Traumatic for all concerned, incl. parents, esp. as they feel some of the kids' pain and anger and confusion--shared by a number of real life families, as the narrator discovers. She's remembering all this once more, finally determined to find out what happened to her primate sister (still alive, in the States) and reclaim, reconfigure her sense of the family---also goes into what campus life is like in relatively recent past, other aspects of various eras---really good! But not (this time) w the kind of drive that Ferrante continues to provide in volume three of the Neapolitans.
― dow, Friday, 3 December 2021 18:31 (two years ago) link
shared by a number of real life families with scientist Dads who etc.
― dow, Friday, 3 December 2021 18:33 (two years ago) link
Nevada by Imogen Binnie
not a perfect book by any means but lifechanging
― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Friday, 3 December 2021 20:11 (two years ago) link
The only one I've read is "Crazy Rich Asians", which is interesting as a peek into the lives of wealthy Singaporeans.
― o. nate, Friday, 3 December 2021 21:03 (two years ago) link
enjoyed 'I am Pilgrim' a lot in a race through it page turner kinda way. will vote for Karen Joy Fowler over it cos that is one of my favourite books of the decade.
― oscar bravo, Friday, 3 December 2021 22:22 (two years ago) link
if you feel like you want to read a remarkable, true-to-life trans narrative i really recommend nevada; the things i was prepared to not like about it (the bloggy voice mainly) end up being too charming to deny, and it ends in a really unresolved place that feels earned by how densely it explores the identities of its two main characters
― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Friday, 3 December 2021 22:42 (two years ago) link
the second half takes place in my home state (nv of course, but in a nowhere-ass northern nevada town that springs up around a wal-mart, god knows i've driven through that town) and the first takes place in my (not very) new home (nyc), i was helpless
― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Friday, 3 December 2021 22:44 (two years ago) link
I guess my vote would be a write-in for James Salter's "All That Is".
― o. nate, Saturday, 4 December 2021 04:09 (two years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.
― System, Monday, 6 December 2021 00:01 (two years ago) link
‘flamethrowers’ would be a great film adaptation. italian labor struggle, 70s nyc art scene, motorcycle wipe outs on salt flats, cousin-kissing soap opera plot twists. somehow the novel was a bit boring
― flopson, Monday, 6 December 2021 00:13 (two years ago) link
― o. nate, Friday, December 3, 2021 9:03 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink
are they also unhinged, by chance?
― Nedlene Grendel as Basenji Holmo (map), Monday, 6 December 2021 03:19 (two years ago) link
nevada sounds really intriguing
― Nedlene Grendel as Basenji Holmo (map), Monday, 6 December 2021 03:23 (two years ago) link
Not really. I think the "crazy" is an adverb modifying "rich" not an adjective describing the Asians.
― o. nate, Monday, 6 December 2021 16:30 (two years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.
― System, Tuesday, 7 December 2021 00:01 (two years ago) link
Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 2014
― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, 7 December 2021 11:51 (two years ago) link