What are you reading right now?

[shovetheholly]

Me: some old feminist stuff. Bubeck's 'Care Gender and Justice' Sara Ruddick's 'Maternal Thinking'. I wouldn't necessarily recommend either of them - but Ruddick in particular was important in opening up the idea that women didn't just mother on autopilot, but thought about their practice.

I'm also reading Dickens's Bleak House for the third or fourth time. I am a bit at how vicious and misogynistic his portrait of Mrs Jellyby is - she's the 'telescopic reformer' whose house and family are a mess while she focuses her attention on the fortunes of Africa.

I deeply disliked The Girl With All The Gifts - It is a YA zombie story about the lovey feelings between a child zombie and her instructor (yes, really) that is full of juvenile truisms like:

• You can't be a child for ever, even if you want to be.
• You can't save people from the world. There's nowhere else to take them.

... and terrible writing such as:

• They're freaked and exhausted and starting at shadows. So is he, except that he does his freaking and starting mostly inside, so it doesn't notice as much.

Sorry slug - please don't hate me I have a profound hatred for YA in general and just been reading sci-fi for too long (over 30 years) to be content with last couple of years' post-apocalyptic YA.

BigChoc - re "I normally read a few books per week"

Come join us fellow bookworms on the 50-Book Challenge. It would be great to have another sci-fi fan on there.

My thoughts on Wool were similar to what I wrote about Station Eleven - first novel, superficial "world-building" that doesn't make much sense, nothing much happening, mediocre prose and improbable dialogues. You really need to suspend your disbelief to get over the glaring inconsistencies and lack of credible detail in both.

I love Jane Austen. And I am not a 'romance' reader in any way. I see her as a deeply political writer - political with a small 'p'. Plots that appear at a superficial glance to be simple love stories or tales of private manners are actually deeply public, because those things have a significance in her work well beyond the domestic. An inability to act in a mannerly way in her works isn't just a personal threat, but damaging to the entire social order; issues of the management of the estate are really about political economy at a national and international level (think about slavery in Mansfield Park); and the presentation of women as subjects with their own interior struggles, played out largely in private, is not only absolutely revolutionary for the entire history of the novel, but also very much a conservative political intervention in debates of the time. In a climate where more radical women writers were stressing openness, transparency, and lives of scandalous authenticity (and writing heroines like Marianne Dashwood), her argument for the preservation of manners and dutiful struggle was very much an intentional contribution to an international debate which included figures like de Stael, Edgeworth, Hays, etc. While I'm not so sympathetic to her politics, I don't like to see her reduced to a 'teller of love stories', and I think there is a tradition of male-dominated criticism that has tended to diminish her complexity in a really patronising way that also fails to understand the extent to which she was really stretching the limits of what the novel could do.

I haven't met anyone who didn't like Life after Life.

Sorry ALass, but Life After Life really didn't work for me. I'm not sure why, because in theory it's the kind of thing I like, so I tried Behind the Scenes at the Museum and that did nothing for me either. Then I gave up on Kate Atkinson!

I think there is a tradition of male-dominated criticism that has tended to diminish her complexity in a really patronising way that also fails to understand the extent to which she was really stretching the limits of what the novel could do.

Absolutely. I love Austen. Periodically I re-read her entire canon and my appreciation increases each time. I agree wholeheartedly with shovetheholly's post.

I didn't like *Behind the Scenes at the Museum but Emotionally Weird^ has the best ever descriptions of life at a Scottish university in the mid to late 70s.

My appreciation for Dickens increases each time I re-read him, particularly for the complex structure of Bleak House.

I read a fair bit (less now I have small ones and fall into bed exhausted at 10).

I'm happy to suspend belief a bit, especially for first books in a series by an author (like pilot episodes) - a book has to be pretty bad before I give in (for instance, the true blood ones.. those are bad, I'm pretty sure she describes outfits just to get the word count up) - I've read so much SF that if I discarded something because I think someone else has done it better I'd have real problems (for example, and people are scandalised, but I really don't rate 1984)

I probably should go back and read some classics - I never have made it through Foundation for instance - but I'm taking notes here and will try some thing else (maybe even Dickens.. it's been a while)

I did re-read Heinlein recently. I adored him when I was a teenager, but now, it's all so distastefully misogynistic that I couldn't even make it re-through one of my previous favourited

Have just finished Remnant Population. Feeling a bit reluctant to start anything else (have Ancillary Mercy waiting!) in case it leaves me feeling sad - Remnant Population left me smiling.

Can't remember who liked the Honor Harrington books, but have you tried Elizabeth Moon's Familias books? I have read a few Honor Harrington books but got tired of the right wing politics. Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan books may also be worth looking at.

Cider with Rosie. I've read it before but thought I'd read it again after the TV adaptation last weekend. Laurie Lee was bought up by his Mother and Sisters, his Dad wasn't present in his life.

"I haven't met anyone who didn't like Life after Life"

Seriously? I didn't like Life After Life. With tumble, that makes two of us just among the, what, 12 people on this thread.

The first third (half?) was terribly boring, with multiple ends as a child that don't advance the plot at all. Even when she gets to an adult age, she is the absolute most boring person ever to have featured in a novel. Nothing happens to her in any of her myriad lives nor does she do anything remotely interesting or important until the Blitz. (Those Blitz parts were OK, though).

The entire book feels like Groundhog Day, and that's not good for anybody. Tom Cruise's recent film Edge Of Tomorrow did this sort of thing well, but there was a good explanation there. One that actually made sense. Life After Life didn't make sense at all. If she is reincarnated, she should come back as someone else. If this is about parallel universes, she shouldn't be remembering what happened in a previous life. So what is going on? We don't know, except that this woman keeps coming back, getting only slightly less clueless and slightly less boring each time.

Funny enough, nobody I spoke to about this book shared my understanding of the moral of the story: That we are who we are because of a million chance events. If something happened in a split second in your past, you could have been that teacher or that 'spinster' or that alcoholic who committed suicide.

"I did re-read Heinlein recently. I adored him when I was a teenager, but now, it's all so distastefully misogynistic that I couldn't even make it re-through one of my previous favourited"

My sentiments exactly. I adored him as a teenager, too. Stranger In A Strange Land, Time Enough For Love, etc I read them all at least 10 times. I don't dare re-read them now for fear of ruining my memories of them, but I did recently read one of the few Heinlein books I had not previously read and found it badly written, clunky, and as you said, terribly misogynistic.

I'm reading Elephant Moon ATM. I can't remember exactly what it's about because I tend to gather large swathes of books I want to read at a time and then pick one at random so it's a bit of a surprise.

Currently it's set in WW2 Burma where a teacher of a school for mixed race and disabled children is trying to get the DC out of Burma to India but it's all very last minute and she has to keep averting disaster. I think it's based on a true story but I can't remember. It's good, though :)

Chunky - When I read them both as a teenager, I thought Brave New World was brilliant and 1984 was dry & uninspired. Then last year I read them both in quick succession for the first time in 25 years and was to see that BNW was badly written, lacked depth & character development, and was even slightly ridiculous. Its writing style had dated badly. 1984, on the other hand, could have been written today. I now realise that much of it has gone over my head when I read it as a teenager. It is a great book on many levels.

Yes Cote in real life discussion of this book I haven't come across any one who didn't like Life after Life.

It was one of the few which met with universal approval at my book group, which if it is relevant, is a mixture of men, straight and gay and women.

I didn't like Life after Life.

My mum recommended it and we are usually on the same page with fiction, so I wanted to like it. But...I got bored about a third of the way in and abandoned.

I find myself abandoning books more and more frequently, actually .

I'd love to join a book club, but fear I would always be the grumpy one, saying I didn't like the book. I never seem to enjoy the modern novels that other people love (Wolf Hall? Snooze etc).

I can't stand Dickens .

If the '50 Novels' thread is still running next year, I'll definitely join. I read a novel a week and usually have a non-fiction book on the go, too. Be nice to waffle on about it a bit with you lot.

I find myself abandoning books more and more frequently, actually

Me too. I used to feel guilty about it but life really is too short to waste time on books I'm not enjoying.

As I read mostly on the Kindle app on my phone nowadays, the option to download a free sample is really useful. I often get turned off by writing style so books that seem promising in every other aspect can be unreadable for me.

Kindle is a great boon wrt not wasting time - I always get a sample chapter if I don't know the author, so I delete it if that doesn't grab me.
Also, Kindle saved me having to move to a bigger house, because even with frequent loads to charity, I still have 12 bookcases, 1m x 2m.
No more dead trees now.

I'm the one who likes Honor Harrington.
I'm indifferent to his far future party politics, because that society has already achieved sexual & racial equality, plus good basic standard of living.
I skip the boring politics in any book, anway.

I can tolerate a few by Heinlein, but none of his ridiculous Randian crap.
I like Miles Vorkosigan too, but not Moon's Remnant Population - her Paksenarrion trio was remarkable and the Paladin successors are good.

My daily work is leading edge science, but my leisure reading is basically junk brain binges : tough women warriors fighting battles on equal terms < bloodthirsty bitch emoticon >

Elizabeth Jane Howard - Marking Time.

Oh and ITIL v3 (2011) Service Operations. Thrilling read I tell you. Thrilling.

Another one who hates Dickens but likes Austen.