Wellington Reads discussion

Hooray for Spring! Anyone got a good book at the moment?

I'm in the unenviable position of having had two of my reserves come in today, so I'm currently deciding which one to read first. The first one is The Hundred-Year House, which I was attracted to because of the mysterious element. The other is Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which a workmate read recently and described as being "like Harry Potter for adults". Pretty hard to turn down a description like that! However, this book is fairly massive (1006 pages) so I might have to clear the decks before committing to a book that size...

Harry Potter for adults?...might have to tell my sisters about that one, they were big fans.

I just spent the weekend out on my sunny balcony getting into The Goldfinch which I'm enjoying. The writer is really good at evoking your emotions, and I'm only about 200pages in.

However, that book is over 700 pages long and weighs about 2kilos I'm sure so I've got a much smaller book on the go for my morning bus commutes. That one is The Five People you meet in Heaven. I read the book Tuesdays with Morrie by the same author a few years back and really enjoyed it. So when a friend leant this one to me I got straight into it.

I've just finished Half Bad by Sally Green and it was incredible! It's about black and white witches (based on abilities, not skin colour) and the main character is a boy called Nathan who is half black and half white witch. Black witches are absolutely despised by most white witches, and strict and specific rules are placed upon him for his half-and-half blood, including interrogation by the witch council each birthday to find out if they can yet classify him as white or black.

There are some truly horrific scenes in there, but Nathan's unreliable narration makes these strangely easy to gloss over until you stop to think about them later. I highly, highly recommend this book.

I've also just started Love and Other Foreign Words which I started because it was described as "a cross between John Green and Rainbow Rowell" and so far I see where that description comes from, but it is not yet as captivating as either of those two authors. The thing that's puzzling me most is why it has been catalogued as a "mystery" when as far as I can tell it's a fairly straightforward romance...

I went to the library on Saturday and got a stash of books.
I've already finished When we were the Kennedys by Monica Wood.
Now I'm about to read Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín. After that I've got Novel about my wife by kiwi author Emily Perkins to read.

I'm reading Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson the sequel to The Way of Kings. I'm enjoying it a lot but disappointed that I will have to wait for the next one to be written.

Fans of fantasy will definitely enjoy the series, it has a unique fresh feel and a lot of thought seems to have gone into the direction of the plot.

Erica wrote: "I went to the library on Saturday and got a stash of books.
I've already finished When we were the Kennedys by Monica Wood.
Now I'm about to read Brooklyn by Colm Tó..."
I adored Novel about my wife - it's on my "read again" list for sure. Hope you enjoy it too. Colm Toibin is great too, but I haven't come across Brooklyn yet.
I'm reading The Sea Inside - slowly as I'm finding it not to my taste (but I am one of those 'completionists' who can't help but finish something she's not enjoying - silly, I know!) I am enjoying the subject and there is a chapter on NZ which I haven't got to yet but am interested to read. Some of the content is a real snooze though and I find the writing style quite irritating.
So to avoid that one I picked up The Cider House Rules by John Irving and I'm loving it. I've read a few of his others - so well written and great characters. Especially loved A Prayer for Owen Meany, but found The 158-Pound Marriage really sad.