What are you currently reading, how do you feel about it, and what's next on the list? Part 2

[IceIceBabyBump]

The original thread is nearly full: Page 40 | What are you currently reading, how do you feel about it, and what's next on the list? | Mumsnet

So, here's another one to keep us going!

I've just finished Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson and although I did like it I'm annoyed that I didn't really follow how the main, but largely absent,.main character, Eliza, met her end. Sort of defeats part of the point in reading it so I'm going to either trawl through it Amazon reviews or, to my shame, resort to asking AI how she died..{ in my defence I've been poorly)

It’s been a while since I read Human Croquet, but I think it’s implied that Eliza was having an affair with the really strict headmaster (Audrey’s dad?), and he kills her in the woods. There’s a line towards the end about the narrator hearing about a body being found in the woods many years after the events of the book. That was my understanding of it, but I think it was left deliberately vague.

Ahah! Thanks @EllieQ I bet you're right . I think it did say she was attacked by a lover that she'd taken but didn't grasp it could have been him. He was clearly violent towards his wife.

This book wasn't like her other books to my mind. I usually find them a bit easier to follow. Nevermind, my brain's struggling with lots of things..Many thanks for your post. I'm very appreciative 😃

I'm reading "Ghana Must Go" by Taiye Selasi.

It's alright but dragging a bit. I'm looking forward to finishing it.

Next up might be "Hekate" by Nikita Gill or "May We Feed The King" by Rebecca Parry - not decided yet.

I’ll join you all if I may.

I'm currently reading Summer Island by Kristin Hannah. It’s just ok. Not her best. I’m approaching 70% but it hasn’t massively gripped me. I will finish it as then I will have completed 10/11 of the summer reading challenges on goodreads and I like the digital bookmark thingy. I love a reading challenge.

Next up is either Firefly Summer by Maeve Binchy or The End of August by Yū Miri. Depends if I finish it today or not.

@MaryasBible I’ll join you all if I may.

Same. There are a few good, current book threads at the moment so here's my contribution. I have started a lot of books and I'm not reading much - but I will and they are very different, so here is one:

The House of Sixty Fathers, Meindert Dejong
Read to me at primary school, many decades ago. A Chinese boy displaced, when the Japanese occupy, is by himself with just his pig. The cover says: could be the story of any child in any war.

I seem to be caught in a rut of reading books that I really don't like. Most recently Irvine Welsh's new one. Can't even remember the name. I only picked it up because I heard it was a departure from his usual style. Maybe it was, but it was pretty terrible - not so much characters as caricatures, and dialogue that made me cringe. Set in the Los Angeles of hard-boiled crime fiction, it felt like cultural appropriation.

I then punished myself further with Michel Houellebecq's 'Serotonin' - creepy, creepy, creepy. (As in lechy man, not as in jump scare.)

I hope that a book of essays by Anne Fadiman 'At Large and at Small - Confessions of a Literary Hedonist' will help to restore equilibrium.

I've just started Theo of Golden, but gave up.

Read Oscar and Lucinda and wished I hadn't. Really didn't get the hype. English Passen g ers did it better.

Wedding people was fun.

I read the sequel to The Party by Elizabeth day first, so I've just read The Party. Considering I knew what happens, it still gripped me, which elevates it really. Like Patricia higjsmith meets Jonathan coe.

Kindle unlimited? I read summer island and just didn't see the point of it. I'm a fan of an easy read at times, but that was just lazy.

Yesterday I finished "Hekate" by Nikita Gill. It's written in verse which I didn't really get but it made it easy to romp through. It's very pedestrian, reads like a book for children. But I got through it in three days and was never bored during reading.

Last night, I started "Ladder of Years" by Anne Tyler. I only managed one chapter - it was absolutely abysmal so I gave up.

Next up, I'm going to try "When I Lived in Modern Times" by Linda Grant. I'm not too hopeful because I hated "The Dark Circle" but we'll see how I get on.

I'm in such a book rut ATM 😩

Can I join? I used to read a lot but have been struggling lately to find something captivating. I have just started Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively, ok so far.

I also recently read a new debut by an indie author, which I don't usually do, but it was fab: fresh, fun, engaging. It's called Mna and is on Kindle U as well as print and ebook. Worth a look!

I’m 90% through The God of the Woods by Liz Moore and I’m loving it - can’t wait to find out what happens!

next up is the new Steve Cavanagh, then Killing Thatcher.

Yes it was on kindle unlimited. I managed to finish it but it’s the first I’ve read of hers I won’t be recommending. Even if it did perk up towards the end.

I have finished the most recent Kingsbridge from Ken Follett, The Armour of Light which I liked a lot.

Currently storming through Firefly Summer, but it’s not for everyone I’m sure. It’s one of Maeve Binchy’s 80s books, I’m in the mood for twee so it suits me.

Next I will read The Castilians or The End of August.

I loved Moon Tiger!

oh ladder of years is one of my favourite books of all time! Love Anne Tyler.
I’ve just finished ‘The Book of Guilt’ which was pretty good and hard to put down - based on a children’s home in a world where world war two ended in a truce.
Before that I read a brilliant thriller called ‘Five’, five characters, five separate stories and from the start it’s clear that one of them will die by the end of the book.
Now to try and get back to Atmosphere which hasn’t grabbed me yet.

I’ve just finished my first “non-fiction thriller” Midnight in Chernobyl- riveting read.

not usual holiday reading but bloody marvellous telling of the whole Chernobyl disaster in a very readable book. I won’t pretend to fully understand all the physics/science behind the disaster but it doest diminish the read at all.

recommended.

Currently reading Our evenings by Alan Hollinghurst. I wasn’t too sure what to make of it at first but I’ve really grown into it as I’ve got through the book. It’s a series of vignettes about a life rather than one continuous narrative and that’s what threw me at first. I shall be quite sorry to finish it. I shall be back to non fiction for my next book, either The Templars or Summer of blood by Dan Jones. Rather like his style of history writing

Yes I think Ladder of Years is one of Tyler's better ones although ISTR I was a bit disappointed by the ending.

I have recently finished Still Life (Sarah Winman) which I loved, The Burial Plot (Elizabeth Macneal) which I was a bit disappointed by (first one of hers I have read) and Perfume (Patrick Suskind) which I thought was very weird.

Currently re-reading Alan Clark's Diaries in Power which are quite interesting if you can get past all the sexualisation of almost every woman he ever worked with.

Ladder of Years and A Patchwork Planet are my two favourite Anne Tylers. I do find too much Anne Tyler can get quite depressing though, she captures the sadness in everyday life so well.

Currently on holiday and reading 100 Years of Solitude. It’s been on my To Read list for about 20 years😅 I picked it up from a free book exchange trolley in a local cafe. Really enjoying it and the dreamlike/surreal passages remind me of Toni Morrison’s writing.

Another of my current novels is one that I have been meaning to get around to for decades - Moonfleet by J Meade Falkner - there is a sense of foreboding in this tale of smuggling along the Dorset coast.

A lighter tale of the same is The Distracted Preacher by Thomas Hardy, a long, short story. It was tough eking out a living in those days!

It's a long time since I read 100 Years of Solitude, @Eastie77Returns , but your review is making me consider revisiting it. I can't really remember specific details but I do remember loving it.

I've been on a run of books I haven't enjoyed. My usual sort of book is what might be called literary fiction, but I think I just don't like the sort of thing that seems to be fashionable currently. So, I've taken a lateral step and read, 'The Burial Tide' by Neil Sharpson, a work of folk horror by an Irish author, and based on Irish folklore. It's a cracking read. Pacy, some great characters, touches of humour to relieve tension. The only thing I didn't like was the cover (all red and black and making it look more juvenile and gory than it actually was). Will look for more like that.

Also enjoying a book of essays by Anne Fadiman. The good thing about essays is that if a particular topic doesn't interest you, you can just move on, but she writes beautifully on a wide range of topics with grace and humour. I particularly enjoyed essays on Charles and Mary Lamb, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Norwegian Arctic Explorer Vilhjamur Stefansson. Will look for more by her too.

I feel your pain. I also love literary fiction but I've been stuck in a bit of a rut recently too. I'm reading Linda Grant's "When I Lived in Modern Times" at the moment. It won thr Women's Prize in 2000. It's good but not particularly literary, some of it is very clunky.

It's making me feel old and a bit sad@IceIceBabyBump, like literary fiction has moved on and left me without a backward glance, after I've been faithful to it for all these years, the heartless bastard. (But I feel like it will be back when sales of the emperor's new clothes decline...)

On the upside, literary folk horror, which I'm now exploring, seems to be quite a rich seam! Today, I've bought 'Starve Acre' by Andrew Michael Hurley, best known for 'The Loney', I think, and 'Netherwood' by Jake Arnott which is about a couple who move from London to a house in Hastings with links to Aleister Crowley. And they both (the books, not the couple in Hastings) have lovely covers which is always a bonus! I think the key thing is I want a story, not just nice writing, and these seem to provide that more than straight literary fiction at the moment.