What are you reading this month?

[EverySongbirdSays]

At the moment I'm reading A Spool Of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler

I've also read The Last Act Of Love by Cathy Rentzenbrink

Take Six Girls by Laura Thompson

and

The Circle by Dave Eggers

All really different

I am partway through The Year of the Runaways and enjoying it although struggling with the realsity of poverty in India.

I found a Spool of Blue Thread quite relaxing as nothing really happens! I enjoyed it.
Just finished The Invention of Wings which was fabulous I thought.
Glad to see someone recommend We Have Always Lived in the Castle as I have that just waiting to be started!

What I want to be reading is Today Will be Different but it's still £8 on my kindle and not in the library yet!

Reading the girl on the train for book group.
Just finished the latest Shetland book by Anne Cleeve and wading my way through several textbooks at the same time.

Reading Olive Kitteridge at the moment - about another 50 pages to go.
Really well written and comprised of several interlinking story lines which gradually reveal Olive with all her disappointments, strength of character and faults. Have enjoyed it so far.

I've just finished This Thing of Darkness after many recommendations on here. Bit of a whopper!

I really enjoyed the first two thirds but felt the last section dragged. The ending was very moving though.

I started 'Maestra' last night. It's not normally the sort of book I'd go for, but I thought I'd give it a go for a change.

I love Anne Tyler but though a spool of blue thread was her weakest book so far.
I'm reading the last runaway . Have had a run of starting a load of books I can't get into (unlike me) but good ones I've read recently:
Asking for it - Louise o Neil (v topical)
The incendiary- Chris cleave
Moving- jenny eclair
A man called ove
In the unlikely event - judy Blume

I've just finished Little Victim by Harry Keeble (he's a detective with Hackney child protection squad and the book is a year in his life, the calls he takes along with social services) and I'm about to finish Murder in the Kitchen by Alice B Toklas (part cookbook, part memoir about Alice's life with Gertrude Stein in Paris). Both were/are good, although Murder in the Kitchen wasn't quite what I expected and I've read Little Victim before.

I'm moving onto Sex and the Citadel by Shereen el Feki (I think, don't quote me on the spelling) for my book club this month.

I have a question about Spool Of Blue Thread? Can I PM someone who has read it?

I am reading Ben Elton's Time After Time, after seeing it recommended on here, and really enjoying it.
Stephen King is my mate too, Satsuki: he invented my MN name for me.

EverySongbird you can PM me but although I liked it I don't remember many details

Feel free to pm me too if you want Every

PMd you both with my Festive name (it's my default)

Interested to see if you answer differently

I'm reading All That Man Is by David Szalay at the moment, it's a collection of 9 short stories of a day or two in the life of very different, unconnected, journeying men of different ages. It's very readable, I'm enjoying spotting subtle themes that connect the stories as I work my way through! I'll be reading Serious Sweet by A.L.Kennedy and Wonder by Emma Donaghue next.

missanneshirley I read your post and thought for a minute I'd written it - I also have the Shirley Jackson waiting, and I too am desperate for the new Maria Semple but 7.99 is too much for me on the Kindle.

@ dannyglick. Good ol' Steve.

I am 100 pages into The Son by Phillipp Meyer, really good so far.

Started Life Class by Pat Barker this morning and am about to start We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson.

I read the whole trilogy back-to-back last spring Mermaid for the MN webchat. Listened to To my Bones by Wallis Bird throughout and now when I listen to it, I'm transported back to that world!

tobee I was fascinated and obsessed with Good morning Midnight when I read it. What do you think of it?

This month I read The Mitford Girls by Mary Lovell. I picked this up at a holiday cottage a few years ago and had never got round to reading it. It was very interesting from both from a historical perspective and in terms of the family relationships, and has made me want to read more by Nancy and Jessica.

I've just started reading Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer.

Hygellig

I am OBSESSED with them.

The book you want is Letters Between Six Sisters ed by Charlotte Mosley (diana's DIL) It's them in their own words

I read The Mitford Girls by Mary Lovell last year. Was fascinating, although sometimes I found myself disliking them.

I have the Mitford Letters on Kindle, need to start dipping into it.

Oh Nancy was a bitch, and Diana a Hitler apologist, Unity despite her Naziness I felt like there were maybe underlying issues that made it not entirely her own fault. As a collective group they are quite unique, looking at the sheer scope of people they were friends of or related to alone!

Yes, although I found the sisters fascinating I did find myself disliking even Jessica at times. The book suggested that Unity perhaps became so obsessed by Hitler because she wanted to carve out her own niche and shock her parents rather than just being a middle Mitford girl. How different it could have been if she could have used her status to warn people about Nazi Germany instead. And Pamela mainly remembered the delicious new potatoes she had when she met Hitler. Anyway, I'll have to get Letters Between Six Sisters; I wonder if we'll ever get books of people's emails/tweets/messages to each other.

We may one day get a book of the emails between Natalie Portman and Jonathan Safran Foer. It's a thing apparently. I wondered if Unity was ASD.

The Mary Lovell book is very biased against Jessica, as the only living ssiters Lovell dealt with were Diana and Debo who had issues with her and resentments, for example, it's very contradictory in its approach to Diana/Jessica. Diana who rarely saw her children "was typical of her class" Jessic who rarely saw her children "a bad mother"

Diana and Debo were angry about past portrayals of their mother and she is almost beatified by Lovell, I wondered if it were the price of their cooperation?

Would you say it's worth reading Take Six Girls as well? Does it offer quite a different perspective?