I've been enjoying reading the thread, lots of interesting points made in the Dahl discussion.
Janina great to see that you enjoyed The Godmother. I read it last year, really liked it at the time and keep thinking about it. It was very well done.
Haven't posted for ages so here are my four February reads...
9. Still Life by Louise Penny
The first in the Inspector Gamache series, set in the village of Three Pines in the eastern townships of Quebec, Canada. A retired teacher has been found dead just as a painting of hers was about to go on display at an exhibition for the first time. Gamache is called in to investigate.
I'd heard a lot about this series on the Currently Reading Podcast and was curious to jump in. It's now a long series and the beginning of this didn't grab me as it felt like the author had a lot that she wanted to set up, characters to introduce etc. The plot rumbled on just fine, although I felt like I had to suspend disbelief a bit to accept the way that the police involved members of the public in their investigation. The ending featured a slightly daft dramatic scene before an enjoyable conclusion that pulled the various evidence together, revealing clever plot points that I had missed. As a stand alone novel it was good but didn't blow me away, as the start of a series I liked it enough to read further as I like the setting and I'm interested to see how the author develops the characters and relationships that she has introduced us to.
10. The Address Book by Deirdre Mask
Non-fiction about addresses - why we have them, how we got the ones we have, how they vary internationally and the consequences for people who don't have one.
This was great as a slow read, a chapter at most each day. The writing wasn't heavy but included lots of interesting detail. It's the kind of non-fiction that appears to be about one quite narrow topic but leads in lots of fascinating directions - the Japanese language, the founding of British Colonies in New England, the American Civil War, apartheid in South Africa. I both liked reading it and think it has made me more interested in aspects of the world that I hadn't reflected on before.
11. A Gentleman In Moscow by Amor Towles
In 1922 Moscow, Count Rostov is sentenced to house arrest by a Bolshevik tribunal. For the rest of his life, he must not leave the address at which he has been living for several years - the Metropol Hotel, Moscow. In this amazingly written novel, we follow the Count over several decades as he comes to terms with his situation, makes acquaintances and friendships, ages and lives in a Russia that continues to change.
I've never read anything else quite like this and am holding on to my copy as I already feel like a re-read will be in order in the future. Towles writing is rich and descriptive, vividly drawing both setting and characters that I could picture and fell in love with. His writing is also kind of opaque at times - I found myself reading passages carefully to check that I hadn't missed a key detail, and sometimes it wasn't clear until later which details were key, which direction the plot was going, which characters would become central to the Count's story. It is the story of a life, so there are quiet periods and times of danger, love and sorrow, humour and wit. I loved it...and am now a little obsessed with grand old hotels!
12. Address Unknown by Kathrine Kressmann Taylor
Read in it's entirety this morning, an epistolary 'novel' about 70 pages long plus an afterword but the author's son. Short, but incredibly impactful.
Set in the 1930s, we read a series of letters written between Max Eisenstein, a gallery owner/art dealer in San Francisco, and his friend and business associate Martin Schulse who has just left California to return to live in Germany with his family.
I'm wary to say more about the plot because I wouldn't want to spoil the way the author reveals where it is going - at first we understand that there are gradual changes in the men's relationship and in German politics, but when events turned they did so in a way that I hadn't seen coming and I gasped out loud when I realised what was happening and how the author was wrapping up the story.
The backstory that makes this book more extraordinary is that it was written and first published in 1938. Highly recommended.