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Readwine

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Posts posted by Readwine

  1. Poppyshake. My recommendation is NOT to get Lacuna in audio if it is read by Barbara Kingsolver herself. I made that mistake thinking it would be great to have the author read it. It is absolutely terrible. She may be a good writer - not a good narrator. Just my two cents

     

    I am actually surprised she won considering the competition. At any rate, worth a read.

  2. I will reread a book when the story particularly strikes me and it becomes memorable or when the writing is so lovely that I want to savour it again. For example, I read Watership Down when I was in my teens. I absolutely loved it so it is on my TBR pile to be picked very soon. It will be interesting to see how I like it after so so many years.

     

    I recently read The Bridge of San Luis Rey. Small book but beautifully written. I will definitely have a reread to savor Wilder's use of language

  3. Since joining BCF, I've discovered historical fiction. For some reason, I always discounted such books as I had it in my mind that they were more like romances. WRONG!! So thank you. For example, I just finished Gone with the Wind and absolutely loved it. I had never picked it up before because the cover had Rhett and Scarlett in a passionate embrace. It was superb and gave the reader great insight to the Civil WAr.

     

    Also, I am reading A LOT more and my pile is probably three times larger since I joined :). I think the reading blogs and challenges make me feel a little more motivated to read

  4. Three come to mind: The Darwin Conspiracy by John Darnton (on my wishlist):

     

    Darwin's theories have been under attack since he first published The Origin of Species in 1859, but this grandly ambitious novel goes a few steps further to intimate that he was a fraud—and a murderer. Told by turns from three perspectives, the story opens in the present on a volcanic outcrop off the coast of Ecuador where Hugh Kellem, a British field researcher, while tracing Darwin's research path, meets Beth Dulcimer, a beautiful scientist rumored to be distantly related to Darwin. A quick shift shows an ambitious young Darwin about to embark on the Beagle. A little further on, Darwin's youngest daughter, Lizzie, enters via her journal entries, written in the 1870s, decades after Darwin's famous five-year voyage. As the three perspectives unfold, Hugh and Beth find themselves trying to solve the same mystery that intrigued Lizzie 130 years earlier: what happened on the "nuit de feu," the night that transformed the confident, robust Darwin into a haunted near-invalid for his remaining years? Stilted dialogue, perfunctory romance and expendable subplots make for a rough voyage, but Darnton (Neanderthal) puts real passion into his historical imaginings and recreations: the revelation of the "true" origin of the theory of evolution is particularly inspired and more than enough to sustain another Darntonian bestseller.

     

    And Labyrinth by Kate Mosse

     

    Mosse's page-turner takes readers on another quest for the Holy Grail, this time with two closely linked female protagonists born 800 years apart. In 2005, Alice Tanner stumbles into a hidden cave while on an archeological dig in southwest France. Her discovery—two skeletons and a labyrinth pattern engraved on the wall and on a ring—triggers visions of the past and propels her into a dangerous race against those who want the mystery of the cave for themselves. Ala

  5. Borrowed these from the library ....

    The Poisonwood Bible - Barbar Kingsolver

    Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

    Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

     

    From the ones you borrowed, I've read three - my favourite being Poisonwood. Excellent book. Also enjoyed BR but absolutely disliked CA. I will be interesting to see how you like them Good reading, Poppyshake

  6. I don't know about the rest of the series, but in Dissolution it all takes place in a monastery on the south coast of England and it is your typical Christie recipe which I love (isolated place, suspects are all there, nobody comes in and out, all gather around for the solution, etc).

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