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

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

I wonder whether Maggie O'Farrell is like Ann Patchett for me in that I have to be in a certain mood to read their books.

I might reorder The Marriage Portrait for when I'm off work at Christmas ... I tend to love books I read around that time of year, even ones I've previously put down 🤷🏻‍♀️

Off work sick, so have been burning through some books in the last few days...

Into A Golden Era (Timeless 7) by Gabrielle Meyer and Under The Same Stars by Libba Bray. Definitely preferred Under The Same Stars, but they were both good. I love watching the Timeless world develop through every book...

I’m very late to it, but have recently finished ‘The Midnight Library’ by Matt Haig and it’s one that resonated with me on so many levels. Definitely going to investigate his other novels now.

Dipping into ‘What I Ate in One Year’ by Stanley Tucci. Before starting it, I liked him. Now mid way through, I just see him as a Diva with an over inflated sense of worth. Doubt I’d finish reading it.

Just finished Two Women in Rome by Elizabeth Buchan. A reasonable plot and setting but very clunky writing. Some sentences barely made sense.

Of Maggie O'farrell's books, I've enjoyed both Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait but I do find that all her heroines are basically the same woman- (and probably how M O'F sees herself).

Next - not sure , maybe The Little Friend

I really enjoyed 'The Agatha Christie Cure' by Cathy Rentzenbrink. It's a memoir interlaced with biography and criticism of Agatha Christie. Made me go straight out to buy some Christies that I haven't yet read.

I then read 'Quaint Folk' by Bitter Karella, 'a thrillingly subversive take on folk horror'. Hmmm... It stole its setting and plot largely from 'The Wicker Man', except the island here is English, not Scottish, We know this because they drink tea and say 'ello guvnor'. Author is, I assume, American. In spite of this, it wasn't completely terrible. The characters who are allowed personalities are quite convincingly drawn but there was too much that was self-congratulatory and irritating, and I gave up before the end. I liked its cover though, thus proving that one should not judge a book by its cover.

Next up is 'Danse Macabre - Strange Stories from France', part of the British Library's Tales of the Weird series.

@pippistrelle I listened to Cathy Rentzenbrink talk about The Agatha Christie cure at Cheltenham literature festival recently, Iits on my list to read. I’ve read her other books I like her style.

I read the other Stanley Tucci book, 'Taste' and had similar feelings. Started out with generally quite benign feelings towards him, but by the mid-point had decided he was the smuggest man in Christendom. I can't remember the specifics but it'd be stuff like 'and then George Clooney showed up bringing the best and most expensive wine ever, which was nice.' Reading to the end revealed that he'd really been through some things so maybe his smugness is just some sort of appreciation for the good things in his life. But he does seem to have an unfortunate way of conveying that.

I like her style too. There was just one thing about this book that made me a little uncomfortable, and that was the amount she reveals about her teenage child. Even if he said he was okay with it, is that really all right to do? Memoir/autofiction is a tricky area.

Yes good point, she talks a lot about all her family in her books but a child is different, hope he doesn’t resent it in the future.

To be fair to her, he's an older teenager but she reveals that he's had certain difficulties and I do just wonder that, even if he said it was okay for her to talk about them, he might regret that in the future. I don't think I'd do that if it were my family but then, she's the writer, not me.

Stanley Tucci was rude about Jack Lowden in one of his books. I suspect he was aiming for humour but it was a total miss.

@Monolithique I'm planning to read the little friend soon too, I was talking to my mum about it this morning and she said it was really good 😊
The marriage portrait is probably my favourite of all the books I've read this year!
Im almost done with my cousin Rachel. I've enjoyed it but it's very slow paced! I think i prefer Rebecca and Jamaica inn. I've asked for some of daphne du mauriers short stories for Xmas.
I picked up Affinity by Sarah Waters from the library last week. It's her only book that I haven't read yet and loved all her others so looking foward to starting that one next.
I have a huuuge pile of books at home to read but keep finding more books to add to my collection. I have 2 toddlers so reading time is quite scarce 😬 love seeing what everyone else is reading!

@Bobbieiris Im almost done with my cousin Rachel. I've enjoyed it but it's very slow paced! I think i prefer Rebecca and Jamaica inn. I've asked for some of daphne du mauriers short stories for Xmas.

I much prefer the others to Rachel, also. It is of its time but I really like The House on the Strand. Some of the short stories are disturbing - the sort that Hitchcock based films on anyway!

I wonder if the fundamental problem is that he's an actor, not a writer. We've had to make allowances and guess at what he means. And let's face it, these books wouldn't have been published if he weren't a celebrity.

I get annoyed at myself when I fall for a celebrity author. Are there any whose work speaks for itself and would likely have been published anyway? I'm sure there must be, but none are springing to mind.

I loved The Marriage Portrait and Hamnet, but really disliked Land. I bought it full price too from Wave of Nostalgia Bookshop in Haworth. I always like to support an independent bookshop, but I was angry at the price I had paid for such a cr** book!
Currently reading Date with Malice by Julia Chapman, the second in a cosy crime series set in Yorkshire. It is a very gentle read and much needed after finishing The Crooked Cross by Sally Carson, which was traumatic and sob inducing!
I heard You Tuber Miranda Mills talk about Cathy Rentzenbrink on her channel and it sounds interesting.

I find the variety in her work really fascinating. It's interesting that some authors are really just writing the same sorts of things over and over (and that's not necssarily a bad thing, if they're producing excellent works) while others veer from subject to subject and genre to genre.

I have also just finished Anne Boleyn and Elizabeth l, by Tracy Boorman, which was wonderful. I never knew the influence that Anne’s life and death had over Elizabeth and how she fought to uphold her memory her whole life.

A couple of people have said this to me about the Tucci book.

I've just bought Life Out Of Order by Audrey Nifenegger so I'm going back to re-read The Time Travellers Wife to remind me. TTTW is one of my favourite books so I'm looking forward to the sequel.

I’m reading Crooked Cross, a Persephone book by Sally Carson. Found it a little boring at first but it’s getting more absorbing, albeit in a horrible way. It’s about the rise of Hitler and its effect on an average German family- average except for the fact that the daughter is engaged to a half Jewish man. I was surprised that terms such as “ concentration camp” and “ extermination of the Jews” are already being used as it was written in 1934- I did not realise such concepts were already known to the outside world.

@TheGander I have just finished The Crooked Cross and really enjoyed it. It was a great piece of social history albeit written by an English woman. There are two more in the series and the second has recently been published by Persephone Books.

Just read A Town Called Solace which I enjoyed. One of those really easy reads that somehow is much more than the sum of it's parts.

Currently reading As A Lover by Hilary McCollum which is set in 1928 and centres around the publication of The Well Of Loneliness. There's two parallel narratives - Maggie, a young Irish woman in London who is realising she's a lesbian, in first person, and Radclyffe Hall's which is in third person. So we have followed her celebrating the publication of the novel and hoping it will change how "inverts" are perceived, only for the Daily Express to declare it an abomination and try to get the Home Secretary to ban it. Of course Maggie ends up reading it...

Normally the switch from first to third person would do my head in - it jarred when I noticed it but it's fine. Maybe because that part is more based on a real person?

I'm absolutely loving this but then I very clearly rember seeking out and reading Well Of Loneliness as a questioning teenager after learning what a fuss there was at the time. In amongst the Bell Jar and tons of Irvine Welsh 😆

Maggie is a trainee firefighter in a dry cleaning factory and all the social history side is fascinating too. I hope it gets in mainstream shops because I think it's maybenot a big publisher and maybe won't have much promotion.

Next up maybe Lady Hale's book about the law but it will depend what mood As A Lover leaves me in.

Thank you @IlovetoKnitandRead i didn’t realise sally Carson had written other books afterCC. She died so young. I’m reading on with an increasing sense of foreboding.
@Scout2016 a few years ago the BBC did a radio play based around Radcliffe Hall’s obscenity trial. She had to sell her Kensington house to pay her fees. I often go past that house on my way to the public library and think of her. I have managed to hold on to my RBKC library card ( best public library in London) having been in halls of residence nearby.

Thanks @TheGander I will look it up. In the novel customs have just seized copies of the book as obscene material but eventually released them after legal intervention and some media scrutiny. Lots of other "names" popping up such as Noel Coward and Tullulah Bankhead, meanwhile Maggie is dancing round her living room to Ma Rainey Prove It On Me.