Into the Forest discussion
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What are you reading now?
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For me, listening to people talk about a book and enjoying it often puts me in the mood to read it. Not always, but often.
Chris wrote: "I'll fourth Suitable Boy. I will say that I got the edition where it was split into more than one book, and I think that is the way to go with that book."
A multi-volume set sounds a lot less intimidating and more portable.
My reading is based on what I'm in the mood for at the time too. A nice TBR pile helps with that. Sometimes the group reads line up just right. Planning my reading far ahead would seem like work rather than fun.
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There's a couple of people in the classics group that have agreed to do buddy reads for next YEAR. I don't know if I'm impressed with their organization or appalled at their lack of spontaneity.
I mean, what if they get in the mood to read those January books next week - but they can't because their reading schedule is full of group and buddy reads? Or maybe they'll read something between now and then that makes them not want to read that book anymore?
Currently working on a kind of weird 1970s SF novel, The Mind Benders. The plot turns on sensory deprivation experiments at a lab in England. It started out strong, then got kind of odd with some peculiar POV shifts and confusing prose. But sensory deprivation experiments fascinate me (e.g. Altered States, The Far Side of Evil), so I'm sticking with it in hopes it will pick up again.
Melanti wrote: "I know! There's a couple of people in the classics group that have agreed to do buddy reads for next YEAR. I don't know if I'm impressed with their organization or appalled at their lack of spont..."
Exactly. I don't want to be letting friend after friend down because my mood and interests take a hard left turn for whatever reason. My reading is open to whim and influence.
Melanti wrote: "I know! There's a couple of people in the classics group that have agreed to do buddy reads for next YEAR. I don't know if I'm impressed with their organization or appalled at their lack of spont..."
I know -- I could never do that.
I love "whim" reading. :)
My husband just bought me a copy of To The Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey. Looking forward to reading it soon.
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The Snow Child was an amazing book! I look forward to reading her Bright at the End of the World when there is snow on the ground!
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In the meantime, I've picked up Lagoon. I'm not liking it as much as her Who Fears Death, but I'm not that far into it yet so there's still plenty of time for it to impress me. But I can definitely see why I had trouble understanding the dialogue in audiobook version! Even in print I'm having to read and re-read it multiple times to make sense of the pidgin and even then, there's plenty that I just don't understand.
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Anytime!
I don't have any set reading plans for the near future."
Margaret wrote: "I'm a little more than halfway finished with A Natural History of Dragons, so I could be ready to read Roofwalker this weekend, or I can wait until September, or later in August. Since I loved both..."
Great, I just ordered Roofwalker from my local library!
There is no waiting list so I also could start any time.
As I suspected, I am not enthralled by Natual History of Dragons. Sorry, It's my usual reading quirks that prevent me from enjoying it, not liking to many made up names of countries at the same time the setting being so British etc. I know it's not logical!
I might move on to Sister Mine, then Roofwalker
Melanti wrote: "I know!There's a couple of people in the classics group that have agreed to do buddy reads for next YEAR..."
To each his/her own. That sounds like a chore to me, ugh.
Jalilah wrote: "Because the past few years I've been getting most of my books from the library, I do some planning, but not more than a month or so..."
That seems perfectly reasonable.
Jalilah wrote: Kathy wrote: "My husband just bought me a copy of To The Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey. Looking forward to reading it soon."
The Snow Child was an amazing book! I look forward to reading her Bright at the End of the World when..."
The Snow Child kindle version was recently on sale, so I snapped it up. Looking forward to it.
I'm reading Just One Damned Thing After Another, a humorous, historical, time-travel. It is a hoot!As for Roofwalker, if someone sets the date best for most, I'll adjust and keep up as best I can with my old fashioned copy. ;-)
Finished The Mind Benders; very peculiar. Now halfway through More Than This and am absolutely engrossed. Very different from anything else I've read,
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As for Roofwalker, if someone sets the date best for most, I'll ad..."
I switched to Sister Mine and am loving it!
I can read Roofwalker afterwards. I can set up a thread for it anytime!
Michele wrote: "Finished The Mind Benders; very peculiar. Now halfway through More Than This and am absolutely engrossed. Very different from anything else I've read,"
I'd never heard of Mind Benders. It's looks creepy, but possibly good. I noticed More than This is by the same author as last months group read The Crane Wife. Several people have mentioned his YA fiction is very good.
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I definitely plan on reading more of Patrick Ness. Before the movie, I'm going to check out A Monster Calls, and I also recently found The Knife of Never Letting Go, and plan on reading it eventually.
I saw that Julia liked Sister Mine too. Another TBR for me. Patrick Ness's books also look interesting, he's never been on my radar before.
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Here is the link to the thread for the Buddy Read:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Leann wrote: "I saw that Julia liked Sister Mine too. Another TBR for me. ."
I've read 3 books up to now by Nalo Hopkinson;
Brown Girl in the Ring, The Salt Roadsand The New Moon's Arms. I really enjoyed them all . When I look back I think they might actually be 5, rather than 4 stars. I liked Salt Roads slightly less. At the time I gave it 3, but now I actually have very good memories. I just checked my review and saw your review Melanti. You mentioned your rating was influenced by the fact that you had just read Isabel Allende's Island Beneath the Sea. That's such a coincidence because it was the same for me! I read Salt Roads after Island Beneath the sea, not right after but a few months after. Both books deal with slavery in Haiti, but I think it's hard to compete with Isabel Allende. Looking back I now think Salt Roads deserves a higher rating than I gave it.
I enjoyed Brown Girl in the Ring -- protagonist, setting, plot, all different from what I guess you'd call "mainstream" fantasy. Some good twists, and I liked the main character a lot.
I read two books in a row that were meh to me: The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson and Mr. Splitfoot by Samantha Hunt. I didn't care for the main characters in either book. (The first I read for my RL book group, the second for a library book discussion; none of us liked the book, but we had a good discussion.) Now I'm reading/ rereading Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson by Patricia Briggs, where I know I will like the main characters.
Finished More Than This. Not sure what I think; I have to ponder it a bit. Now working on The Progress of Julius, another du Maurier that I had never even heard of.
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That's one that I haven't read yet, but I keep hearing good things.
Leann wrote: "How is The Progress of Julius? I'm somewhat of a du Maurier fan and hadn't heard of it either."
Neither have I! Though I haven't read as much du Maurier as I would have liked to...
I tried to start Maurice but couldn't get into it, so I picked up The Blue Fairy Book to use as an audiobook while I read Roofwalker.
The classics group I'm a member of is going to be reading The House of the Spirits next month and I'm torn between re-reading it so I can join in on the conversation a bit better, or just reading one of the half dozen of her books I have sitting unread on my Kindle. Decisions, decisions, decisions! Either way, I'm guaranteed a good read.
Leann wrote: "How is The Progress of Julius? I'm somewhat of a du Maurier fan and hadn't heard of it either."I'm not too far in, but thus far it's quite good: a young boy growing up in France, with descriptions of the village market so vivid you can practically fall into them.
A few months back I read her Mary Anne, which was also previously unknown to me. It's along the lines of Forever Amber or Gone with the Wind, though kind of a "lite" version. I felt that it petered out a bit at the end, and I would have liked more time spent on character development, but it certainly kept me reading.
Both of these, along with a third one I'll Never Be Young Again, I got from my husband's aunt's house after she died. We were helping clean it out and my mother-in-law told me to take any books I wanted -- these three jumped out at me because I'm a big du Maurier fan and none of them were known to me!
Well that is neat how they were passed down to you. Maybe we aren't hearing of out-of-print titles, or the ones longer out-of-print. From used bookstores, I have an old copy of The Parasites waiting for me, and Rule Britannia. The latter had some off-putting reviews, so I'm not eager to get to it.ETA: The Progress of Julius was also published as Julius. Interesting. Anyone have No Motive? It looks difficult to find.
Melanit wrote: "...The classics group I'm a member of is going to be reading The House of the Spirits next month and I'm torn between re-reading it so I can join in on the conversation a bit... "I've only read Zorro of her books. I've heard that The House of the Spirits has some books that go before or after it? Daughter of Fortune and Portrait in Sepia. What do you think is the best order to read them?
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I also finished up Why I Wake Early by Mary Oliver, my favorite poet. She writes nature poems, so not folkloric, but they're really wonderful.
Tonight I'll start Roofwalker.
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The House of the Spirits is Isabel Allende very first novel and stand alone.
Daughter of Fortune and Portrait of Sepia both take place in a much earlier time period, 18 hundreds and are somewhat related to each other, but as I recall to House of the Spirits.
Margaret wrote: "I just finished up Bone Swans by C.S.E. Cooney, and there are two fairy tale novellas/novelettes in particular that members of this group would enjoy. One is a real..."oh that looks excellent!
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Yes, confirming with Jalilah, House of Spirits is stand-alone. I have read Daughter of Fortune but not Portrait in Sepia. Daughter of Fortune did not seem to have any connection with House of Spirits. I read Daughter first, and much later Spirits. I enjoyed both, but House of Spirits is special. Very unique.
Michele wrote: "oh that looks excellent!"
It is! Though the last story did leave me scratching my head, the other 4 were great.
Mod
Looks like it's an individual story from The Rendezvous and Other Stories and perhaps in other anthologies as well. That was just the first place I found it. Some of the du Maurier anthologies look to be just re-prints and re-collections of previous collections with one or two extra stories thrown in.
And I third the idea that The House of the Spirits can work as a stand alone. It was written first after all.
I know Brina says to read all three, but you don't need to.
Since there's some disagreement between her and this group, I peeked in Wikipedia. It looks like the protagonist in Daughter of Fortune is the grandmother of the protagonist in Portrait in Sepia, who is either the step-sister or half-sister of Clara (the eldest generation) of The House of the Spirits. (Wikipedia is a bit vague.)
So, they're a series in that it's all the same family - though you might need to examine a family tree to figure out exactly how they're related.
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Wow, I did not know that!
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Tonight I'll start Roofwalker tonight.
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You can ask, but it's been 3 years, so I'm not sure if I'd remember much without a bit of prompting.
Let me see... Finished Bel Canto (*snif*) a few days ago. Then just last night finished Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight -- a real delight. Now starting her next book, Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness.
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It wasn't really what I was expecting.
It used a lot of surrealistic fairy tale imagery, but it wasn't really a fairy tale. It was about Ketzia's failing marriage.
I'm still trying to decide if I liked it or not... It's one of the odd ones where some aspects I liked very much, but other aspects somewhat bored me - and often I was liking it and being bored by it at the same time.
I recently read The Bat-Poet and The Animal Family by Randall Jarrell. I highly recommend them both, especially The Animal Family.
Katie wrote: "Perhaps a short break from reading is in order..."Is that allowed?
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I know how that feels! I spent an hour yesterday afternoon looking for a book to read; a couple of paragraphs of a dozen different books but nothing caught my attention
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That happened to me a few months ago. I had a string of books that were just amazing, really enjoyable reads, so when I had something that was kind of meh for me it was such a let down. As I said in the other thread, I no longer feel obliged to finish a book if you don't really like it. If I have a book that I think might be questionable, I always have a back up, something I can read instead.
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It wasn't really what I was expecting.
It used a lot of surrealistic fairy tale imagery, but it wasn't really a..."
That entire trilogy is one of the weirdest fairytale novels I've read. I read your review, and it's interesting that you compare her to Catherynne Valente, because I wrote my thesis on comparing both of their usage of fairy tales--with Bernheimer, The Complete Tales of Lucy Gold (the last in that series), and with Valente, In the Night Garden. I was exploring the different ways fiction writers can use fairy tales, and wanted 1 contemporary fantasy, and 1 contemporary surrealist.
I think Bernheimer's approach is interesting, but I tend to feel like I don't understand all her metaphors, or the connections she's trying to make. Her writing approach to fairy tales is to maintain the flatness of characters from the original fairy tales. So in classic tales you never get why a character does what they do, they just do it. You can infer reasons (although that's not always possible), but the characters don't have any real depth. Here's her article talking about it: http://www.katebernheimer.com/images/...
But, I prefer fairytale novels that provide more character depth, and you just get a lot of weirdness with Bernheimer! It's still interesting to read her work, I think.
Katie wrote: "I've been spoiled for good reads with my last few books, so perhaps I'm afraid to break my streak with something bad..."Jalilah wrote: "That happened to me a few months ago. I had a string of books that were just amazing, really enjoyable reads, so when I had something that was kind of meh for me it was such a let down...."
That happened to me at the beginning of the year. I wanted to choose a great book for my first book of the 2016 Reading Challenge. Well, I didn't like it at all and the second book I read I liked even less. After that, I played it safe and chose an author I know I like to break the bad streak.
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That makes a lot of sense and probably explains part of why I wasn't thrilled for it... If characters are flat, even deliberately so, it's kind of hard to get interested in their marital problems.
For Valente, I was thinking The Melancholy of Mechagirl. Several of the stories were written when she was having marital issues herself
Margaret wrote: "But, I prefer fairytale novels that provide more character depth, and you just get a lot of weirdness with Bernheimer! It's still interesting to read her work, I think...."
I agree- I prefer more character depth too .... And yet, there's just something about Bernheimer that doesn't let me dismiss her entirely. I can't really say I LIKE it very much, but it's compelling all the same. I was sitting this morning trying to decide if I liked it, but at the same time was shopping to find out how much the next book was going for.
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Before I left I read a few stories from Roofwalker, but it didn't feel like a book to read on vacation. They are good, but I didn't enjoy them neatly as her novels The Grass Dancer or Sacred Wilderness. I will continue it once I've finished Lost lake. I have not had much time to read lately.
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I completely agree! I like the third one--Lucy--best. But it's still....weird. But it's stuck with me.
Jalilah wrote: "Before I left I read a few stories from Roofwalker, but it didn't feel like a book to read on vacation."
No, it's not a good one for vacation, I think. Though on last year's vacation one of the books I read was American Indian Stories by Zitkala-Ša!
Melanti wrote: "I spent an hour yesterday afternoon looking for a book to read; a couple of paragraphs of a dozen different books but nothing caught my attention."I hate getting into that mode. So frustrating. Like being hungry for something but not knowing what it is.
Finished Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness, then spent a nice long rainy Sunday afternoon with The Best Short Stories of J.G. Ballard -- weird and wonderful. Now halfway through a re-read of Duncton Wood -- it's been years and I'd forgotten how good it is.
Into the Forest
Books mentioned in this topic
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Majestica (other topics)
The Tiger at Midnight (other topics)
Malinalli (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
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Lin Yi-Han (other topics)
Annette Giesecke (other topics)
Zoe Persico (other topics)
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I could plan my reading out, but it would take away one of the major joys of my life and one of the few things over I which I have total control. I participate in group reads when the stars align and I change up probably ten reads a year to conform to group schedules, but even that takes real work to subjugate my id. As it were.