Tag: book lists

Novellas in November: Planning Post

~ whatmeread ~ 31 Comments

In a month, Novellas in November is starting up again, hosted by Cathy of 746 Books and Beck of Bookish Beck. Last year, I think I just plunged into Novellas in November by reading a bunch of novellas, but this year, I see Beck has already launched a Linky for planning posts. (Maybe they did this last year, too, and I just didn’t notice.) So, here I am throwing together a planning post.

I tend to read well before I publish unless something unexpected comes up, so I have already started reading for this event. Aside from a general post about what novellas I’ve read through the year, I have so far read two novellas that I will review in November, and I plan to read five more.

Here are the ones I have finished with a brief description:

  • The Sweet Dove Died by Barbara Pym: a woman of a certain age becomes a little too close with a much younger man.
  • Seascraper by Benjamin Wood: a young man is the only person left carrying on a traditional way of shrimping when he meets a film maker.

The novellas I haven’t read yet but plan to review in November are

  • The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka: in the early 19th century, a group of women are brought from Japan as “picture brides.”
  • For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on My Little Pain by Victoria Mackenzie: two women meet in 1413 Norwich, one of whom has visions considered heretical.
  • Hex by Jenni Fagan: In 1591, Geillis Duncan, a convicted witch, receives a visit from a mysterious woman.
  • A Pale View of the Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro: a Japanese woman relives the events at the end of World War II.
  • Why Did I Ever by Mary Robinson: a woman is barely keeping it under control in this dark comedy.

WWW Wednesday!

~ whatmeread ~ 12 Comments

It’s the first Wednesday of the month, so it’s time for WWW Wednesday, an idea I borrowed from David Chazan, The Chocolate Lady, who borrowed it from someone else. For this feature, I report

  • What I am reading now
  • What I just finished reading
  • What I intend to read next

This is something you can participate in, too, if you want, by leaving comments about what you’ve been reading or plan to read.

What I am reading now

I got on to Henryk Sienkiewicz quite a few years ago now, when I read his gripping novel With Fire and Sword, the first of a trilogy. When I was reading it, I learned from a friend who is first-generation British/American of Polish descent that his were the books Polish children grew up with, but these aren’t just books for children. He is a late 19th century/early 20th century writer of historical fiction, a Nobel Prize for Literature winner. His best-known book is Quo Vadis, my least favorite of his so far. Sometime back, I noticed that someone was selling a used copy of The Teutonic Knights by him, and it finally made it to the top of my pile. I have since read that he considered it his best book, and I’d say it’s a real page-turner. It’s also very long. All of his books that I’ve read so far are quite long except Quo Vadis. But somehow the time goes quickly. Almost finished!

What I just finished reading

I just finished a book sent to me by NYRB, The Sweet Dove Died by Barbara Pym. It’s about an attractive woman of a certain age, a “fragile” woman, who becomes friends with a much younger man and his uncle. Although friendship with the uncle is more suitable, she prefers the young man and slowly begins drawing him in so that he is dependent on her. At 207 pages, this one squeaks in for Novellas in November.

What I will read next

I usually have written quite a few reviews ahead of time, and I see that I should be reading things I will be reviewing in November, which means two things: Novellas in November and Nonfiction November. Since Nonfiction November tends to be more about the nonfiction people have read during the year, I have a pile of novellas on my bed table that it’s about time to start reading. And Seascraper by Benjamin Wood serves both the purpose of being a novella and of being a book that I’ve read about lately (and also a Booker Prize longlister). So, I’ll start reading my pile with it.

What about you? What have you been reading?

WWW Wednesday

~ whatmeread ~ 4 Comments

It’s the first Wednesday of the month, so it’s time for WWW Wednesday, an idea I borrowed from David Chazan, The Chocolate Lady, who borrowed it from someone else. For this feature, I report

  • What I am reading now
  • What I just finished reading
  • What I intend to read next

This is something you can participate in, too, if you want, by leaving comments about what you’ve been reading or plan to read.

What I am reading now

I just started Long Island, Colm Tóibín’s sequel to Brooklyn, which picks up 20 years later. It’s been a year or so since I read Brooklyn, and I find myself struggling to remember where it left off, but so far I am enjoying it. I just started it yesterday. Eilis is now a mother of two, living on Long Island in the same street as her husband’s Italian family, and right away she finds out something disturbing.

What I just finished reading

I just finished the fourth book in Ellis Peters’ Cadfael series, Saint Peter’s Fair. I am enjoying this series, particularly because of the characters and the time setting, as I have read about this period before. The series is definitely getting more political, but we’ll just see where it goes.

What I will read next

Sometimes I change my mind at the last minute, and this time, when I was looking through my pile of books to read, I picked out The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey, only to realize that I read it some time ago for my Walter Scott project and somehow picked up a copy of it later. So, I went back to the shelf and picked out Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judy Dench. I was in Ashland, Oregon, two years ago for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and picked up this book at the town’s excellent bookstore. It has finally worked its way to the top of the pile, and it’s about time I read it.

So, what about you? What’s going on with your reading?

If I Gave the Award

~ whatmeread ~ 14 Comments

With my review of English Magic, I have completed reading the shortlist of the 2022 James Tait Black Fiction Prize. That means it’s time for my feature, where I decide whether the judges got it right. This year is particularly difficult for me, because none of the books really clicked with me.

I’ll start with the winner, A Shock by Keith Ridgway. In my review, I quoted its pretentious back cover: “a rondel of interlocking stories . . . both deracinated and potent with place, druggy but shot through with a terrifying penetration of reality.” I reviewed this book two years ago, and frankly, I can’t remember a thing about it. It is a collection of short stories that I did not find engaging, centered around a pub.

English Magic by Uschi Gatward is another collection of short stories. I found it a mixed bag, although all of its details are minutely observed. Again, I didn’t connect with many of the stories, several of which were about political activism. Unlike A Shock, they didn’t seem to have any common themes or settings.

Libertie by Kaitlyn Greenidge would seem to be more my style, about a black young woman in pre-Civil War Brooklyn whose mother wants her to become a doctor. However, Libertie behaves like a spoiled modern young woman, and one of my pet peeves is a historical novel that has its characters behave out of their time. Libertie makes one bad decision after another, wasting her opportunities.

That leaves Memorial by Bryan Washington, about the relationship between two gay young men, one a black American and one Japanese, and their relationships to their families. Although its humor went over my head and I don’t like explicit sex, I found it perceptive and sometimes touching.

I am winding up this project, and I think I only have three books to read for the 2021 shortlist. My library hasn’t had any of them.

WWW Wednesday!

~ whatmeread ~ 5 Comments

It’s the first Wednesday of the month, so it’s time for WWW Wednesday, an idea I borrowed from David Chazan, The Chocolate Lady, who borrowed it from someone else. For this feature, I report

  • What I am reading now
  • What I just finished reading
  • What I intend to read next

This is something you can participate in, too, if you want, by leaving comments about what you’ve been reading or plan to read.

What I am reading now

Right now, I’m reading the second book in the Department Q series: The Absent One by Jussi Adler-Olsen. It’s pretty grim so far, but that doesn’t usually bother me with crime novels. The second season of Department Q is supposed to be uploaded to Britbox this month, so I’m right on time. FictionFan pointed out to me that the TV series has inexplicably moved the mysteries to Scotland. I didn’t even notice that! Maybe it’s because I saw the TV series first.

What I just finished reading

I have to thank Nonfiction November for this one, because I have seldom enjoyed a nonfiction book as much. It’s the beautiful Pocket Atlas of Remote Islands by Judith Schalansky. If you like maps and stories about remote places, even if you don’t have an affinity for islands like I do, you’ll find this one fascinating.

What I will read next

I think it’s going to be The Darlings of the Asylum by Noel O’Reilly. I have no idea how this book got on my list or what it’s about, but it’s almost time to find out!

How about you? What have you been reading?

If I Gave the Award

~ whatmeread ~ 6 Comments

With my review of Absolutely & Forever, I have finished the shortlisted books for the 2024 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. That means it’s time for my feature, where I decide whether the judges got it right.

This year was quite an international event, with books set in England, Trinidad, Italy, Malaysia, and Canada making the shortlist. As has become my usual approach, I’ll start with the books I liked least.

It’s almost a toss-up between two books as to which I should start with, but I think that will be Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein, which for this year was the winning novel. Although I was interested in the setting, the brutality in the book made me comment that if I wasn’t reading it for the prize, I wouldn’t read it at all. This was a novel about a young boy growing up in 1940s Trinidad, his feud with town boys and his father’s affair with a rich woman.

The other book I didn’t like as well was The New Life by Tom Crewe. I thought the subject matter was interesting, loosely based on the lives of two collaborators on a book about sexuality, but I don’t really like explicit sex scenes, and this book had lots of them.

In the Upper Country by Kai Thomas is about Canada’s history with slavery and treatment of indigenous peoples. I commented that Thomas’s approach of telling stories to fit in as much information as possible didn’t work very well for me. I thought there were too many characters, and he was trying to fit in so much in that it got confusing.

My Father’s House by Joseph O’Connor is about a real group of people in Rome during World War II who helped Allied soldiers escape from Nazi-occupied Italy. Although the subject matter was interesting and I enjoyed the book, I commented that as the first of a trilogy, I wondered where the material was going to come from for two more books.

Now, I have got to my two favorites, and I am having a hard time deciding which one to pick. Absolutely & Forever by Rose Tremain is a coming-of-age story, sort of, set in 1960s England. I just loved the voice of its narrator and was captivated by it (although since the 15-year-old heroine was the same age as Tremain in the 1960s, it doesn’t really fit my definition of a historical novel). However, I think I’m going to pick The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng about, among other things, Somerset Maugham’s visit to Malaysia in the 1920s.

Six in Six

~ whatmeread ~ 6 Comments

I think I paid attention to the Six in Six post on She Reads Novels for the first time and decided to give it a try. It’s a sort of review of reading for the last six months, in which you pick six categories with six books. I see I have read 80 books, so it’s not going to cover mine very well. You can make up your own categories if you want. I have plagiarized from Helen for most of mine and from Annelies of In Another Era. Oh, I see I have the logo, so I must have done this at least once before.

If the title isn’t linked, I haven’t posted my review yet.

Six Set in a Different Century

Six Originally Written in Another Language

Six about Real People

Six with a Mystery

Six with Elements of Fantasy or Supernatural

Six Favorites

What about you? Have you read any of these books? Which books stand out from your first six months of reading this year?