First of Atkinson's mysteries I've read, first 100 pages well written as always but I'm mystified at the three strands interconnection so far.
"A Jackson Brodie Book" - for the recurring detective at the center of the case.
Talk not with scorn of Authors- it was the chattering of the Geese that saved the Capitol. Coleridge
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First of Atkinson's mysteries I've read, first 100 pages well written as always but I'm mystified at the three strands interconnection so far.
"A Jackson Brodie Book" - for the recurring detective at the center of the case.
Meh. No huge insights afte last year's deep dive. Obsession with Brian Epstein which does not move me. The music is the very last thing considered here.
Marvellously imagined retelling of the story of Agammemnon and Clytemenstra, from the viewpoint of Cassandra's slave.
A 12 year-old girl knows she is different and somewhat exceptional and wants to be a writer. Amazing as usual.
Charming "children's book" that is much more sophisticated than that term implies. A London "town" family has a summer/vacation house in the Lake District, under the Cumbrian fells. They begin a long-lasting relationship with a "country" family. Beautiful landscape after beautiful landscape: abandoned silver mines, fields of icicles, menancing sheep and sympathetic gypsies. Another stunner from Gardam, who never wrote a bad or lesser book.
Novel where one story (the birth and life of the narrator (in mid-20th-century) takes places in the chapters and her relatives' back-story appears in the lengthy footnotes (which are often as long, or longer than the chapters.)
The usual hi-jinks, but at a slower (longer) pace. Malevolent evil old English lord hires a strident ally of the working class, a college professor, to write a tell-all history of the lord's equally evil relatives and ancestors. So far there's been a "suckling pig" entree at dinner that was created out of a normal size pig that was cut into three pieces, two of which were sewn back together to create the shorter meal. Funny but effortful.
Sorta remember reading this when it came out. Unimpressed so far. Too many half-funny jokes dampen the effect of some good sentences.
Loving this so far. My first Atkinson experience. Funny and twist-y.
I am braving my paternal grandmother's favorite author out of utter boredom, having indeed now possibly come to the very last door of literature.
That said, enjoying it so far - 15 year old French schoolgirl full of feeling and audacity. Much unlike my Nana.
Update: only got 30 pages into "Claudine at School" and quit.
Incredibly odd novel, story within a story within a story, essentially about a man and a woman and their two children living in a house with an infinitely expanding hallway on the second floor. Sort of gothic horror story, I guess. Massive appendices, illustrations, kooky diagonal pages and pages where you must rotate the book to read text. All to what end I don't know. So far (100 pages in, 500+ to go) unimpressed with the actual prose style (somehat purple and mundane) but impressed with the scope. And the parody of academia and scholarly citation is funny if overwhelming.
Pretty good one. Eva and the quadruplets visit America, and Wilt goes on a English walking tour with no planning whatsoever. Naturally chaos ensues in both Britain and America.
Re-reading this after seeing it superbly performed by Scena Theatre at the old Source Theatre building at 14 and T Streets NW.
Dusting off my disorganized bookshelves and allowing myself the luxury of reading by alphabetical whim, I stumled on this and am enjoying re-reading it. The vocabulary lexicon is daunting - and one learns to ignore it and just read and comprehend the strange words by context. All leading to an imminent re-watching of the superlative movie.
RIP John Casey. A great novel, reminds me of Thomas McGuane without as much drugging and screwing. Although there's certainly some screwing. Casey's attention to detail - the salt marsh estuaries of Rhode Island, the tidal currents and color of the Atlantic - is meticulous, and the novel is a love letter to a sailor's preoccupation with the sea, how it rises above all human concern.
Great novel about jazz and life and, well, a bear who blows an intense jazz saxophone and screws women and goes to jail and ponders all of life with a delicious, dark, rueful energy.
Thought this was going to be about a redhead, but as the cover shows, a fire hydrant is the only redhead (so far).
Also, predictable Tyler story, comfortable, well-worn, quiet insights. Least amount of plot ever.
Effortless to read. Lesser work.
Okay time travel book, if a little bit overblown prose style. The 1840s-era Arctic exploring ships details are the most vivid.
The Ministry of Time is set in near future UK. A time travel "door" has been discovered time travel, and the Ministry performs experiments on its effects on humans, by taking historical figures from the verge of death and bringing them to the present.
The narrator's voice and POV are a little melodramatic. She falls in love with her historic figure, Graham, Arctic sailor who is hot and also Victorian-repressed.
The two gay characters are most interesting - Maggie from the 1600s who speaks in a delightful Shakespearean patois, and Arthur, rescued from the trenches of WWI (I think).
Crazy sci-fi plot - a woman discovers that she can get a new husband and life by sending her current husband to the attic, where there is a brief glow of light and then a new husband descends - and the pictures in her flat change, the furniture and books and wall paint colors change, and the messages on her phone change, and her relationships change.
Re-reading this in a concentrated effort, rather than how I read it in high school and college, where it might have taken ten days. (We watched most of the film version of WITCHES OF EASTWICK last week, and it got me in an Updike mood.) Updike's descriptive powers are murderously sharp - if often over-done - and I enjoyed the tearing through the first 100 pages on a windy, dull Sunday afternoon.
Slow, sprawling, unusual set piece from Mishima. More of a Henry James/Iris Murdoch exercise in character manipulation and inter-relationship than his usual dark, violent, compact narratives.
Free association and collage details, with a plot of "how life is anxiety-inducing." Reminds me somewhat of Renata Adler and SPEEDBOAT. not impressed thus far.
Probably the fourth time I've read this. Always enjoyable. Murdoch's protagonist (rather late in the game revealed to be a concentration camp survivor) is a puppet-master of his friends, and his malevolent gamesmanship destroys character's lives by setting up clashes of their own vanity with other characters' vanity.
Really dull, really annoying, occasional flashes of wry humor are completely buried in a mass of self-conscious, self important nonsense.
"Dimensions" is first, famous story - about a woman visiting her husband in prison, after he murdered their three children. Graceful, reconciliatory story that takes place sort of miraculous, against all odds.
good, sort of Romeo and Juliet story, poor young fisherman woos the daughter of richest man in fishing village. very pretty, evocative, island and seascape setting, a lighthouse. Mishima's spare concentrated energy is satisfying.
Another winner, stranger, earlier novel by author of PLAYWORLD. Man is questioned by two detectives in the suspicious death of him wife. It is revealed that both detectives also has suspicious dead wives in their past.
Thick, long book - possibly too long - but I'm halfway through and digging it. Great schoolboy wrestling descriptions. NYC in 1980-1981.
"Re-" reading this after forty years. How did I even pretend to understand it at twenty years old? Lowry's prose is dense, elliptical, allusive, often semi-private. A late entry in the great modernist novels. But I'm having real trouble "finishing" it.
Despite her recent cancellation, Alice Munro is a genius. Going back and re-reading her now is stunning and numbing: her men are cruel and selfish, her women are passive and selfish, the northern landscape is bleak and cold, but other setting details are lavishly and lovingly rendered: interiors, trees, flowers, clothes, anything inanimate with color.
Ending up liking this quiet, calm novel about a Jewish Russian refusenik who served 13 years in a Soviet gulag after being betrayed by his Jewish friend and roommate.
Buy the books on Amazon, and watch videos of some readings. Please.