@AlmostThere2018 Your take on Normal People is interesting. I have not been able to get into the book and I’m about halfway through. I read one review that said the author stripped down all the prose and that’s how it feels to me. Very spare.
I don’t dislike it, I just don’t find enough character development. Maybe it’s just me ?
@surfcity i had the same thoughts about Normal People. I didn’t dislike it either, but didn’t find it that compelling that I’d go out of my way to recommend it to anyone. I thought the main female character was never fully developed - there were certain things hinted at in her past. I wish these particular themes had been explored more as I didn’t really understand some of her behavior. I also felt the plot meandered a bit too much.
Interesting – I can what both of you are saying, but I guess felt like the sparseness was intentional. The female character in particular didn’t really have the capacity to understand how her family’s treatment affected her, and the author didn’t lay it out for us either. I felt like as a reader (and an, ahem, older person) I had to pull together the pieces more than most books. Def. a different writing style, but it worked for me.
Has anyone read “Saint X”? I just read it and thought it was great. Beautifully written.
Saint X was our bookstore’s last book club pick. The author joined us for a visit!
@surfcity That’s so great! Did you like the book? And how was it meeting her?
I’m re-reading “Lonesome Dove” by Larry McMurtry. I hadn’t read it in 30 years. It’s a very good yarn full of humor and action.
I really enjoyed Lonesome Dove when the CC Book Club read it. As I recall it was a pretty good discussion too.
June’s Cc book club selection. …”and then there were none” Agatha Christie classic, a page turner. Escape to Soldier Island.
Here is the CC Book Club discussion of Lonesome Dove: http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1658247-lonesome-dove-august-cc-book-club-selection-p1.html
Don’t read the discussion till through with the book: Spoilers aplenty.
I loved Lonesome Dove and the Streets of Laredo. If you enjoy that place and time period you might like Philipp Meyer’s The Son.
@nyclondon I confess that I hadn’t finished the book so I didn’t sit in on all the virtual meeting. But she was really, really intelligent and well spoken and I was very impressed with her discussion of how she structured the book, comparisons to actual events, etc.
One of the best perks of co-owning a bookstore is getting to meet all these authors!
Reading Lolita. Don’t ask why.
Chesapeake Requiem: A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island. Quite a good non-fiction book. If you love getting down into the culture and day to day life of a place unfamiliar to you, you would like this. I admit it’s very “wordy” but I really did enjoy it. Sad, poignant, and yes, even maddening but I recommend it.
Agree…Chesapeake Requiem was very good, better than I had expected. I was hoping to visit after reading it last year, but was in the process of moving so it didn’t happen. Not sure if/how I might visit this summer…
I just finished Geraldine Brooks’ Year of Wonders (2001). It’s timely because it’s about the plague year 1666 in England, told from the perspective of a young widow in a rural English village who loses her children to the disease. It’s about how people are transformed by loss and suffering. Some improve, some implode. A very good read. Beautifully written.
I am teaching an online literature course in late summer. I asked some students of mine whether they would be interested in a course on plague literature (this book was a possibility, along with the Decameron, Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year, Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis, and others). The answer was a resounding NO. They don’t want to dwell on this topic!
I loved Year of Wonders. I read it long before the current situation. I think of it often now.
“House of Trump/House of Putin”, by Craig Unger, 2018. Incredible information on every page.
Excellent plague/pandemic books are Year of Wonder, Station Eleven, and The Last Town on Earth. I read all of these many years ago, I can understand students not wanting to read them right now.
I just bought The Glass Hotel—same author (Emily St John Mandel) as Stations Eleven. I just finished My Dark Vanessa by Kate Eluzabeth Russell. Russell’s story was deeply disturbing—about a boarding school student who is sexually abused by her English teacher. It’s a compelling read written in the first person, but especially depressing.