What are you currently reading, how do you feel about it, and what's next on the list?

The most recent I've read the spiral stair case by Karen Armstrong is great for people who struggle to find anything in religion

I've abandoned all idea of remaining unspoiled with the Slow Horses books vs TV series and am now galloping through them. Currently on book 7. They're fantastic.

I'm in a bit of a slump so I've just downloaded some 'not my usual type' books from KU, hoping I'll find something I enjoy.

Really loved Crossroads. Only downsides for me were that the longest chapter (100 pages) focused on the character I liked the least but it was still totally absorbing. The writing was superb and a great story with complex characters. I will read Corrections soon.

I‘ve moved on to a bit of a filler I borrowed from the library while waiting for a delivery of books I ordered online so currently reading Violeta by Isabel Allende. I do enjoy her books as she is a good storytellers and this book has an interesting backdrop (early 20th century Argentina), it’s an easy light read.

My delivery of books is exciting. I was given a gift voucher worth £££ from work. It was originally for something I’m not interested in buying at all (craft beer!) so my manager changed it to a voucher from a bookshop instead and I’ve spent some of it on 10 books so that should keep me occupied for a while!

@mrstea301 I read Memory Police earlier this year and it’s great.

Currently reading 1Q84 by Murakami, the one I haven't read before. Enjoying it but maybe not as much as The wind up bird chronicles or Kafka on the shore.
Next: probably some classic which I either haven't read or something read long ago and interested how they would feel now.

Currently reading the Christmas gingerbread village

It's nice to read a book where a woman in her 60s is the main character.

Depends on what the works or charity has.

I'm just reading the Dare Game in the Tracy Beaker trilogy we will finish it tonight and then we are planning to read my mum Tracy Beaker and A Christmas Carol before Xmas.

Can I join in?

Currently Reading

Alexei Navalnys memoir.

Feeling About It

Gripping, compelling and really enjoying it (if that's not the wrong word!) it's a really funny book, which I wasn't expecting.

Next

Was reading about Janey Godley's memoir in her obituary, so am going to give that a go. It's called 'Handstands in the Dark'.

Here's one I like:

World of Books | Buy cheap second-hand books online | Wob

I use Abe Books, too.

Someone posted about a site which compares secondhand book prices. I’m trying to find the pair without success. Can anyone help?
Im currently reading My Brilliant Friend. Loved it for the first third but now I’m over halfway through I’m getting a bit wearied. Hope it picks up.

I had the same, I don’t think I was in the right mood for it. I’ll come back to it another time.

What actually happened instead is that Ferrante’s quartet dominated my life for about five weeks. I loved them!

I’ve also since read The Borrowed Hills by Scott Preston (excellent) and Fingersmith by Sarah Waters (v good).

Thinking of starting Beartown by Fredrick Backman next, I’ve heard great things about it.

Reading Oryx and Crake by Margaret Attwood, it’s giving great dystopia. Next is Tom Lake by Ann Patchet or a Murakami.

Currently: The Bookbinder of Jericho by Pip Williams. It’s one of the books my book group didn’t choose, but it’s the one I voted for so I decided to read it anyway. It’s set in Oxford during WW1.

Feeling: It’s very good - I’m struggling to summarise because there’s a lot in it - the effects of war, feminism, class divide, bookbinding, canal boat dwelling, Oxford. I really like the narrator. I have about 100 pages to go so will finish it in the next couple of days. I recommend this.

Next: Possibly the next Elly Griffiths that I haven’t read. That will take me up to the next book group meeting.

Currently: My Friend Matt and Hena the Whore. Quite an old book about 4 childhood friends living in a village in an un-named (fictional?) African country beset by war and famine. It’s taken me a few chapters to get into it but it’s intriguing

The Porpoise by Mark Haddon

I started Red Rising but it didn't grip me, so I have given up on it, at least for now. I might come back to it later.

Have you read Girl A by Abigail Dean? It's not a whodunit kind of thriller but it's certainly psychological and I was totally gripped by it.

Currently reading Wicked Autumn by G M Malliet. It's the first in a cosy murder mystery series set in a fictional English seaside village.

It's written by an American author for the American market and who seems to only have a fairly sketchy idea of what life in rural England is like. There are many things that wouldn't be said or done here but wouldn't look out of place in America. If you can put all that to one side, and I have, then it's actually quite an entertaining read, reasonably well written and with some dry humour. Providing it has a good ending, I might be tempted to read more of the series.

Currently reading :

Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell

and The Janus Stone by Elly Griffiths

Cranford is a bit hard work

I am getting into the Griffiths as a series and like the protagonist Ruth Galloway

Currently towards the end of The Mirror and the Light with the Footnotes & Tangents read a long. Dreading the end.

Also getting into Ghostwritten by David Mitchell, his first book but like an early Cliud Atlas which he wrote (perfected?) later - multiple narratives, with mysterious links between them. Loving it, I’m trying to balance savour and impatience.

Next, considering Sisters of Sword and Shadow by Laura Bates.

Current
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and a fluffy romance Kindle unlimited

Feeling
Intrigued as to which direction the story is going to take - devoured half of it on a plane journey in 3hrs so will finish it in the next day or so.

Next
A little life

Can I also recommend All the colours of the dark ? I adored this book

I love The Road. It depicts one of the most hopeless landscapes US literature has ever encountered - with the possible exception of Eliot's The Waste Land - all that grey ash and dust calls to mind the line from that poem 'I will show you fear in a handful of dust'. It's a harrowing book, showing the worst of what human beings are capable of doing to one another when our social laws, systems and regulations are removed, but there's also a strong theme of redemptive love. And his prose is beautiful.

No Country for Old Men is currently sitting on my shelves waiting to be read. I'm interested to see why its title is taken from Yeats: not unlike the Beat poets McCarthy seems to have quite an affinity with the modernists.

I've also just begun Jack Kerouac's On the Road but have had to put this to one side while I focus on finishing a work project. I'm developing more and more of an interest in contemporary American literature (and film) of late! Interested in hearing other people's recommendations, too.

Butler is simply magnificent. Lauren Olamina is one of my favourite heroines.

I've just finished reading Thomas Tyron's Harvest Home. This was a book I stumbled across almost by accident, having an interest in acounts of pagan ritual in US literature and noting its influence on King's Children of the Corn.

I can find points of interest and positive aspects of most books. Nor am I a prude by any description. It's a very slow-burner: this I do not mind, I like my characters, plots and situations drawn in detail, albeit in this novel there's not much of a sense that anything is building. When the action did ramp up, however, this novel wound up being so disturbing, offensive and straight-up sick that I wanted brain bleach by the time I got to the end. I couldn't get it out of my head for days.

Ordinarily I'd read a description like the one I've written above and reach straight for the novel out of pure curiosity and intrigue. On this occasion I can fairly safely say that this book won't deliver that. Particularly if you're a pagan. Or a feminist. Women, basically, are the most evil creatures in existence on the planet . Was Tyron an incel?

Other books I've just finished reading for the first time include Shirley Jackson's wonderful Haunting of Hill House, a book supposed to be in the same vein as Tyrons (but better. Albeit anything would be better). I've re-read some of Poe's short stories, and have just put down a beautiful little epistolary book - 84 Charing Cross Road - the story of a transatlantic relationship between an American writer and a London bookseller. She writes to him and he helps her track down the titles she wants, and eventually a warm, deep and loving relationship develops between them even though they've never met. It's by Helene Hanff and I liked it so much that I ordered her follow-up, The Duchess of Bloomsbury. Looking forward to getting stuck into that one when it arrives.

I'm in a mood now for books about books (and films about books) so have rewatched Dead Poet's Society and am reading May Sinclair's The Divine Fire, a 1906 book about a cockney bookseller who ends up buying a library and also falls for a woman through their love of reading.

Any similar recommendations welcome!

I've just finished Piranisi by Susanna Clarke.

It took me about 50 pages to work out what was going on, but then I loved it. I keep thinking about it.

Just started Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson and loving it already.

I had to give up on Annie Bot. It's so repetitive, and if I never read the word "autodidactic" again, it'll be too soon.