Beyond Brontëmania - the literary fiction wire
40 watchers
Jan 2017
3:41pm, 5 Jan 2017
19,767 posts
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Diogenes
Recent bookclub choice Beside The Ocean Of Time by George McKay Brown comes to mind immediately. I'll have a browse and see what else fits the bill. An elderly man on the train is reading Northanger Abbey and underlining certain passages. He just asked of his wife "when did they stop constructing sentences like this?" |
Jan 2017
3:44pm, 5 Jan 2017
88,932 posts
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GregP
Oh that's a really nice second para. Splendid.
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Jan 2017
4:02pm, 5 Jan 2017
19,712 posts
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Red Squirrel
No Longer at Ease wasn't lauded but I really like it as a moral fable. I suppose some may think the message is clunky, but I'm a simple soul. Yes splendid indeed Dio/Greppers. I'm peeved by Guardian article headers regularly due to stupid wording that doesn't work at all without punctuation. I really liked the ending of Iain Banks's The Business. |
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Jan 2017
4:02pm, 5 Jan 2017
19,713 posts
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Red Squirrel
That last para was to Ruth. Engaging with a well-rounded finish.
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Jan 2017
4:06pm, 5 Jan 2017
27,430 posts
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McGoohan
... like a nice hand-pulled dark mild
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Jan 2017
4:56pm, 5 Jan 2017
10,466 posts
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Chrisull
Oh now here's a challenge, find an engaging book that leaves you feeling good about the world... I'm reading two excellent books at the moment, but can't tell if either will leave me feeling uplifted about the world (unlikely!), Orhan Pamuk's "A strangeness in my mind", Istanbul of the last 40 years seen through the eyes of a yoghurt seller, or Benjamin Myer's "Beastings", a young mute girl takes a baby and runs off into the Cumbria fells pursued by an over zealous (and probably sexually motivated) priest and a poacher looking to atone for past crimes. The best book I read last year was Graham Swift's Waterland, but without spoilers, it won't leave you feeling uplifted. The last uplifting book I recall being Ali Smith's How to be both, but the second book had to be the modern section. Oh actually now I think of it .... Nicole Krauss's "The history of love", or Olga Grushin's "The dream life of Sukhanov", the endings of both are wondrous, enchanting, life enhancing, the first is about the friendship between a young girl and an old man who is still hung up on a childhood love he left behind when fleeing the holocaust, and the second (which is one of my all time favourite books) is about an art critic in 1985 Soviet Russia just as perestoika is coming in, and he's cleaved to the party line and is beginning to wonder if his whole life was a mistake. Yeah that's the one I'd recommend the most. And now I see Grushin has just written a new book 40 rooms, which I must check out... |
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Jan 2017
5:02pm, 5 Jan 2017
19,768 posts
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Diogenes
Other suggestions for Ruth: Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer Cloudstreet by Tim Winton |
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Jan 2017
5:05pm, 5 Jan 2017
10,467 posts
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Chrisull
Thumbs up for both of them Dio (Safran Foer is of course Krauss's ex-husband too).
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Jan 2017
5:13pm, 5 Jan 2017
19,770 posts
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Diogenes
I didn't know that, Chris. I loved Waterland, first read it 30 years ago (hard to believe). Also loved How To Be Both, but my copy had the modern story first and, without having read it the other way round, I prefer it my way. The Foer is touching, funny, heartbreaking at times, but ultimately uplifting. Cloudstreet is full of life and energy and joy in the extraordinariness of the ordinary. |
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Jan 2017
7:02pm, 5 Jan 2017
19,715 posts
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Red Squirrel
The Blood of Flowers - Anita Amirrezvani The Scorcerer's Apprentice - Tahir Shah Armistead Maupin writes joyfully - Tales of the City etc |
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