A friend has given me Vineland by Thomas Pynchon as a housewarming present. It's not the sort of thing I usually read, but I promised her I would give it a good try.
I've already mentioned on the Ship of Fools Book Club thread but I've recently read The Feast by Margaret Kennedy, and haven't enjoyed a novel so much in ages. I also read Bookworm by Lucy Mangan who is the Guardian's TV critic. Its about the books she read as a child. It was interesting on several levels. She enjoyed very much the same books I did as a child, she grew up in an area of London I know well and finally she is twenty years younger than me so a lot of the books she read as a teenager were the ones I was reading as a school librarian to recommend to my pupils.
Unusually for me I'm reading a non-fiction - Humankind (A Hopeful History) by Rutger Bregman. It was recommended at a retreat I went on recently and is a wholesome and uplifting antidote to all the negative stuff that's around at present.
I ran out of energy for this one and have left it for now, with about a third of it unread.
I've since read Patrick Gale's The Whole Day Through - an author I discovered through my real life book group; I tend to pick up secondhand copies if I see them as they're generally a good read. My bedside comfort reread is Rosemary Sutcliff's The Eagle of the Ninth.
Some of my books-in-waiting: Unruly by David Mitchell; Longitude by Dave Sobel; A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon and Rough Music by Patrick Gale. I won't be reading that last one for a while, having just finished a Patrick Gale. I enjoy his books but have to have a break in between them.
My next real-life book group meeting is next Monday when we'll be discussing Lizzie Pook's Maude Horton's Glorious Revenge - a delayed discussion due to someone in the group having health problems. I expect we'll have forgotten most of the details so the discussion will be short. I think the book after that will be Samantha Harvey's Orbital which I recently reread for the Ship's book group.
Some of my books-in-waiting: Unruly by David Mitchell
I may have said this here before, but this is a book for which I highly recommend listening to the audiobook if at all possible (unless, I guess, you find David Mitchell's voice annoying or something). I loved it and was very glad I had the audio experience. Although I guess if you already have a paper copy this is not very useful advice!
I, personally, found Unruly uninspiring and felt that he tried too hard to be funny. But this may well be just me (and probably not helped by me being a historian).
Some of my books-in-waiting: Unruly by David Mitchell
I may have said this here before, but this is a book for which I highly recommend listening to the audiobook if at all possible (unless, I guess, you find David Mitchell's voice annoying or something). I loved it and was very glad I had the audio experience. Although I guess if you already have a paper copy this is not very useful advice!
I love reading aloud to other people but have an intense dislike of being read to so that wouldn't work for me.
I did wonder how a historian would take to Unruly and intend to find out whether my son in law (a history teacher) has read it. I should have "taken" history at school and didn't, so I daresay I won't find it annoying in the way you did @Heavenlyannie .
I picked up a small but very profusely illustrated pocket-sized book on Georges de la Tour when I was in Paris last month. It’s part of a series that the Gallimard publisher puts out. On the rediscovery of de la Tour and his paintings in the early 20th century - very interesting and an opportunity to make my rather rusty French a bit less so.
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I ran out of energy for this one and have left it for now, with about a third of it unread.
I've since read Patrick Gale's The Whole Day Through - an author I discovered through my real life book group; I tend to pick up secondhand copies if I see them as they're generally a good read. My bedside comfort reread is Rosemary Sutcliff's The Eagle of the Ninth.
Some of my books-in-waiting: Unruly by David Mitchell; Longitude by Dave Sobel; A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon and Rough Music by Patrick Gale. I won't be reading that last one for a while, having just finished a Patrick Gale. I enjoy his books but have to have a break in between them.
My next real-life book group meeting is next Monday when we'll be discussing Lizzie Pook's Maude Horton's Glorious Revenge - a delayed discussion due to someone in the group having health problems. I expect we'll have forgotten most of the details so the discussion will be short. I think the book after that will be Samantha Harvey's Orbital which I recently reread for the Ship's book group.
I may have said this here before, but this is a book for which I highly recommend listening to the audiobook if at all possible (unless, I guess, you find David Mitchell's voice annoying or something). I loved it and was very glad I had the audio experience. Although I guess if you already have a paper copy this is not very useful advice!
I love reading aloud to other people but have an intense dislike of being read to so that wouldn't work for me.
I did wonder how a historian would take to Unruly and intend to find out whether my son in law (a history teacher) has read it. I should have "taken" history at school and didn't, so I daresay I won't find it annoying in the way you did @Heavenlyannie .