Book Nook Cafe discussion

Share with us what you read in December 2016 !


Please provide:

~ A GoodReads link
~ A few sentences telling us how you felt about the book.
~ How would you rate the book

Guess I'll start. :D

December was a scattered month for reading. I didn't have any plans and just picked up what was available or caught my interest. That lead to a bit of an uneven reading month.

A Great Reckoning (5 star) - this was a touching continuation of the Inspector Gamache series. I recommend reading these in order due to the backstory.

Oh Henry! (3 star) - cute. These are cute stories showing the humor an adult sees in kids antics and fun, while showing Henry mature over the years. If fleshed out, these stories would have been in line with such characters as Tom Sawyer. However, these are short stories with not much to flesh them out. But still fun.

The Barrakee Mystery (4 star) - the first of an Australian series. This is a cozy, historical mystery with solid, enjoyable characters & scenery. Bony seems to be the Hercule Poirot of Australia. He's entertaining, smart and dedicated. If you read mysteries for the mystery itself, this may be a bit light and obvious. It seems to be a character-driven series.

A Spool of Blue Thread (2 star; audio) - I don't get it. I missed the point, I guess. Nothing much happened; no climax, no resolution; just continuation of a family's story.

Pretty Paper (3 star; audio) - an interesting back story to the Willie Nelson song. A story of friendship and lending a helping hand. A lovely story to read, especially in the Holiday season.

The Underwater Welder (5 star; graphic novel) - a story of confusion and guilt at a time of crossroads in a man's life. Very well told and the graphics portrayed his inner turmoil really well.

The Outside Circle: A Graphic Novel (5 star; graphic novel) - Such a powerful story! The heredity of shame, guilt and powerlessness among the Aboriginal people is so acutely shown in this story, through words and graphics. This story shows the importance of breaking the cycle and finding a way to healing.

Ghosts (4 star; graphic novel) - this one is for the younger crowd (10-12). It was a really joyful read. The character Maya is so enthusiastic and loves life that it's contagious. A fun story, too.

You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas (3 star; audio) - A collection of stories of Augusten's Christmases over the years, starting at childhood and ending at the time of writing the book. I preferred the stories of his childhood.

Pictures from Italy (3 star) - a travelogue by Charles Dickens. He's humorous, descriptive, observant. But unlike his novels, where he gets to the core of his characters and they come alive, the people in this book are distant, even when described in detail. It would be interesting to take this book along if/when travelling to Italy to see how much (or little) things have changed.

Testament of Youth (4 star) - wordy. This could have used an editor. But the story that Vera tells is a powerful one of how a war changed civilians and, in ways, the course of society.

Lab Girl (2 star) - a disappointment. This is less about Hope's career and her accomplishments and more about Hope and her friendship with Bill.

My December reads:

by Sy Montgomery
Rating: B
Review: Definitely an interesting take on the life and behaviour of octopses and one I couldn't even imagine. Still, I can make myself think about octopuses the way the author does.

by Jennifer Ashley
Rating: B-
Review: Light and fun read as is the whole series, but not the best in of the whole. After some time and much reading of the genre, there isn't much in it that is different or stands out.

by William Faulkner
Rating: D
Review: I know Faulkner is considered a classic and I'm sure it's for a good reason (for some), but he and I will never see eye to eye. This is my second attempt at his work, slightly more successful than the last one only because I came to the end of this one (admittedly with a lot of skipping).

by Walter Tevis
Rating: C+/B-
Review: A so-so story with a great moral message which constantly falls on deaf ears.

by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Rating: Found this book quite enjoyable, despite having hard time with the style of writing. I plan on reading the rest of the series just to feel the change as Laura grows up.

by Elizabeth Hoyt
Rating: B
Review: A surprisingly good historical romance found by accident in the supermarket. :D

by Jurja Hrženjak (no photo)
Rating: B
Review: A short book about the administration of the City of Zagreb from the Medieval Free Royal City Gradec and Clerical Kaptol to year 2012, just before the formal acceptance of Croatia into EU. For me, the most interesting part was, of course, the Medieval Zagreb and the mayors of Zagreb from the 1850-onward.

by Catherine King (no photo)
Rating: B
Review: An interesting story, mostly because the author wrote about the poor and the middle class and their struggles in the Victorian England.

by Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić
Rating: A
Review: A collection of stories written by a very famous Croatian writer of fairytales, Ivana Brlić - Mažuranić. She took legends and characters from Slavic Mythology and invented beautiful stories around it.

by Mikla Tica (no photo)
Rating: A
Review: A short story on how we, Croatians, came to live where we live today. Very enjoyable.

by Vanja Spirin
Rating: A
Review: This is a story about the old Croatian gods, the ones we believed in before converting to Christianity in the 7th century A.D. The book covers the creation of the world by one main god, Svarog, and the birth of other gods. Slavic Mythology has its own version of the gods of war, spring, death, love, etc. and the whole story is very similar to Greek or Egyptian Mythology. Even though this can be seen as a historical fiction because of the story format, I loved it, because it was my first meeting with the Croatian Mythology and this part of our heritage.

by Tracy Chevalier
Rating: A
Review: A very enjoyable reread for me. Although I didn't quite like all the characters, the author made me have different feelings for them, which I very much appreciate.

by Frane Herenda (no photo)
Rating: A
Review: A pretty solid first novel of a young author from Zadar, Croatia. A fast-paced historical fiction with a lot of action, and a lot of historical background about the topic. Very enjoyable.

Nice month, Petra.

I am disappointed to see you didn't care for Lab Girl as I purchased the eBook when it was on sale.

Thanks for the Dickens title. Even though you only gave it 3 stars, I've put it on my libraries To Read shelf.

Thanks for sharing, Samanta !

I am going to sit on the No Faulkner bench with you. His stream of conscious writing is not for me. Deb and I read As I lay dying and it didn't grab me at all. I think I read a bunch of Faulkner when Oprah selected him.

I also enjoyed The Girl with The Pearl Earring.

I loved the Little House TV series and would like to one day check out the books. What would you rate book 1? What was it about he writing that didn't grab you ?

The short sentences. Like a child writing. I know it was on purpose because she is a 6 year old girl in book one, but I had a hard time digesting it. That's the only reason.

My December reads were few. :(

Animal Farm --- George Orwell
Fiction
Rate 5-/5
This was a library group read for me and we also read it here at BNC. You can read my thoughts on it in the Animal Farm thread.

Embracing Each Moment: A Guide to the Awakened Life ---Anam Thubten
non fiction
rate 4/5
I ended up with quite a few pages of notes on this book on Buddhism. Well done.

Man's Search for Meaning ---Viktor E. Frankl
non fiction
rate 3/5
The first half on the authors memoir on the German concentration camps was interesting. However, the second half on Frankl's theory, known as logotherapy, sounded very dated to me.
Still a worthwhile read.

Samanta wrote: "The short sentences. Like a child writing. I know it was on purpose because she is a 6 year old girl in book one, but I had a hard time digesting it. That's the only reason."

Thanks.

Alias, I'm in the minority about Lab Girl. I think I was expecting more about her career and not so much about her friendship with Bill.
I enjoyed the Dickens travelogue. A three star read is a pleasant, interesting read, well worth reading.

I enjoyed Man's Search For Meaning and also found the second half a bit dry. The first half was really good.

Petra wrote: "Alias, I'm in the minority about Lab Girl. I think I was expecting more about her career and not so much about her friendship with Bill.."

That is what some of the negative reviews have noted, too. I think Amazon had it on sale for $2 or $3 so I figured I would get it for my kindle instead of waiting for the library copy.

Antonia wrote: "I read Outline by Rachel Cusk. Loved it but then, I like this author. She's pretty experimental. She's writing an inverse novel, meaning you have to fill in what is going on with th..."

I really loved the Rachel Cusk book I read. The Country Life

This year at a charity shop I picked up but have not yet read Arlington Park

Antonia, do you have a favorite Cusk book ?

Busy times have lead to another lean reading month.

Blindness by Jose Saramago. I heard this was a bleak book and decided to give it a try. It was, in a way, but mostly because the author made his characters weak and naive, and then made bad thing happen to them. He forgot to make any of them interesting, though. The story: a plague of blindness spreads among people in an unnamed country. Initially, the government interns the blind, but pretty soon the entire population has lost its sight. Saramago tries very hard to convince the reader that he has thought things through, but many times it seems unlikely the the characters (or the government) woud act in the way he describes. Stlll, it's pretty well-written. Three stars.

Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things by Gilbert Sorrentino. There is one thing to say about this book, and that is that it's meta. The author occasionally turns narrator, admits freely that he is making this stuff up, and his editor remarks on his mistakes in footnotes. Overall, it is a delightful poison-pen novel about the literary world, but perhaps a bit too tied to the 70s. Four stars.

The Trouble with Being Born by E. M. Cioran. I admit that I started reading this largely because I spent a few weeks in Dec commuting to Brooklyn every other day, and I needed something suitably off-putting to read on the subway. This is a collection of epigrams that center on how horrible it is to be alive, and how the only honorable thing is to turn one's back on life (Cioran lived to be 84). Apparently Cioran was having a really bad year: one of his translators committed suicide, which leads the the macabre joke that it's surprising more of them didn't - Cioran's books all have rather grim titles (A Short History of Decay, Drawn and Quartered, The Temptation to Exist, etc). Cioran is always fun to dip into, but rather tedious to stick with through completion. Three stars.

Mkfs wrote: "Busy times have lead to another lean reading month.

Blindness by Jose Saramago. I heard this was a bleak book and decided to give it a try. It was, in a way, but mostly because the aut..."

I thought the lack of punctuation was tied to the story. Perhaps the author wanted the reader to experience the same hardship and confusion that the characters did with the blindness.

Anyway I was disabused of this notion when I learned he does this in his other books. LOL So much for my literary prowess.

Alias Reader wrote: ."I thought the lack of punctuation was tied to the story. Perhaps the author wanted the reader to experience the same hardship and confusion that the characters did with the blindness."

Yeah, I think there's a belief among literary authors that you can't be taken seriously as a modern novelist unless you strip out all standard punctuation, paragraph breaks, and proper nouns from your novel.

That's going to be one of those things future people will make fun of late-20th/early-21st century novels for doing.

Petra wrote: "A Spool of Blue Thread (2 star; audio) - I don't get it. I missed the point, I guess. Nothing much happened; no climax, no resolution; just continuation of a family's story...."

Petra, was this your first Anne Tyler novel? I ask because it seems to me that your synopsis covers most of her books. I'm a fan and have read all but the last, which i've postponed reading so i can savor it. I like this glance into modern US families and how she doesn't wrap things up. However, i have heard from many people that they don't care for her books.

You read quite a number of books in December. Congratulations.

Samanta, you had a good reading month, too. (I note this as i had only two books, one a reread, to boot.) I've read the entire Little House series, as well as "extra" books by Laura. For me the first several were more a "how we did things" sort of books. I liked learning about smoking meats, building cabins, etc. The latter ones were mostly telling us how Laura's life progressed. Since you hope to read more, i hope this might help you.

Also, Samanta, i am still torn about Faukner. As Alias noted, she & i read a few of his books together. Heck, i reread As I Lay with her, in hopes she could fill me in on what i was missing. I liked his other works and thought the Oprah pick Light in August was very good. To me, the one you read was more experimental for him & the reader. Just a thought.

Antonia, thanks for the title of Rachel Cusk's book. It sounds like a neat idea. It seems to me that what the narrator does is what we all do, take what we want/remember about conversations, movies, books, etc. Am i misunderstanding something there? Regardless, i've added it to my TBR just because it sounds curious.

Mkfs, i liked Blindness, as well as the "sequel" (loosely, i'd say), Seeing. As Alias mentioned, the lack of punctuation, etc., worked nicely in Blindness for me as a story enhancement. With his other books, less so.

While it is a challenge to read those sort of novels, i rather like it. First of all, i find myself examining sentences more than i might otherwise. As a sometimes lazy reader, i think it's smart. Indeed, i think the many varieties of experimentation we've seen since i've been a reader are fascinating, whether they "work" or not.

As for the story itself, i rather liked that the characters were not the best & brightest. It allowed me further opportunities to imagine what i would do differently. The truth is, i think, that i suspect an author cannot really fully bring a reader into the world of the blind. (This could be changed by listening to an audio, i imagine.) Last year i read The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham and felt the same thing--characters & the government making poor decisions. In both cases, i felt the unexpected aspects of the situation explain away the unfortunate choices.

I thought i read only one book in December. However, when Alias mentioned Animal Farm, i realized i've read two. Party Time!

Animal Farm by George Orwell. I think i've read this three times, once when my son was reading it in high school. It's a clever fable.

They Can't Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement by Wesley Lowery. I thought this book played on two levels. The first is the story about racial tensions in the US and how they have changed since Ferguson, even though it wasn't the worst. I learned some history about the problem, as well. The second story is how a journalist today relies on the social media. I should have realized it previously but didn't. Lowrey, btw, writes for The Washington Post.

Mkfs wrote: Yeah, I think there's a belief among literary authors that you can't be taken seriously as a modern novelist unless you strip out all standard punctuation, paragraph breaks, and proper nouns from your novel."

It's an affectation I can totally do without. I am NOT a fan.

madrano wrote: "Petra wrote: "A Spool of Blue Thread (2 star; audio) - I don't get it. I missed the point, I guess. Nothing much happened; no climax, no resolution; just continuation of a family's story...."

Petr..."

Thanks for the heads up. I want to read the rest of the series just to see what happens to her. Luckily, my library has (I think!) all the books in English.

As to Faulkner, I don't think I'm going to try anymore. Not every author is for everybody. I tried to read The Sound and the Fury a few years ago, and it just didn't work for me. I guess train of thought novels are just not my cup of tea.

Alias Reader wrote: "It's an affectation I can totally do without. I am NOT a fan."

That makes two of us.

Madrano, yes, it's my first book by Anne Tyler. I may try another of her books but in print form. Sometimes these quieter books don't take well to the audio format and need to be savored in the written word. Is there a particular one you would recommend for me to try again?

I've only read 2 books by Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying. I'm a fan. The Sound & The Fury is terrific. It may stay my favorite; it would take a lot for Faulkner to knock this book off it's pedestal in my eyes.

I'm also a fan of John Wyndham's books. My favorites are The Chrysalids and Chocky.

Petra, my favorite Tyler novel is Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant but every time i suggest it, the person reads it & isn't a fan. For me, it fit, as do most of her works. The Accidental Tourist, her best known novel might be a good place to start. It's where i began.

I haven't read any other Wyndham than Triffids, so welcome the title you shared.

Samanta wrote: "Alias Reader wrote: "It's an affectation I can totally do without. I am NOT a fan."

That makes two of us."

The question I always ask myself is, "would a straightforward writing style detract from the novel?" Same goes for dialog misspelled to convey an accent, excepting a one-off for comic effect.

For Blindness, as for As I Lay Dying, I'm afraid the answer is "nope".

Good way to evaluate it, Mkfs. I'm not a fan of dialects and misspelling to convey accents but can appreciate why an author today might chose to do so. For me, it's tough to read until i try reading a few lines aloud. Then i seem to get into the rhythm and have no further problems just reading it.

In December I read:

Últimas Notícias do Sul, by Luis Sepúlveda - The thoughts, adventures, short stories, stories inside Chile and Argentina's Histories, while the author travelled around these countries with his friend Daniel Mordzinski. (4 stars)

Ponto Pé de Flor, by Clara Pinto Correia - The love stories and love disappointments of a group of friends. Full of sarcasm, humour, compassion... (3 stars)

O Homem que Plantava Árvores, by Jean Giono - A little tale about a man who decided to plant trees. It's just wonderful! It makes us think why (the hell) it is so difficult to go out and "make" a forest! (4 stars)

A Vida Tranquila, by Marguerite Duras - A compilation of the author's texts about everything: relationships, the house, her alcohol dependency... Really tough and rough writing. Still my favourite author... (4 stars)

Emma, by Jane Austen - Another great novel... It's a bit different from the others I've read (P&P, S&S, Persuasion, Lady Susan, Catherine) because Emma is a rich woman that could make a great marriage, however, she tries to match her friends and doesn't want to marry. I could keep writing about this one... (4 stars)

Homem na Escuridão, by Paul Auster - A really dark book, with more than one story, some real, others fiction (inside fiction). It's a bit violent, and it lacks of hope, but yet, it's about the war, and it's survivors... (4 stars)

Íntimas suculências: Tratrado filosófico de cozinha, by Laura Esquivel - A compilation of articles and short stories. The author's thoughts about culinary, the changes in women roles in the society and its consequences, about literature, and so on. (3 stars)

Thanks for posting your reads, Andreia. I enjoyed reading your comments.

Andreia, that first book sounds very good. The history buff in me likes the premise. Thanks for the title.

The first time i read Emma, i liked it very much and felt satisfied. That was when i was in my 20s. The next time i was in my 40s and found myself impatient with the title character. Honestly! Sometimes it doesn't pay to reread good books.

Glad you shared with us.