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Your Book Activity - December 2018


Onion Budgie

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I'm currently reading Snow in Love: Four Stories by Melissa de la Cruz, Nic Stone, Aimee Friedman and Kasie West. Today it's 5 December, which is Sinterklaas in the Netherlands. We don't celebrate it anymore, but in honour of it I am planning on reading a Sinterklaas-themed children's book later after I finish reading the first short story in Snow in Love.

 

I hope you enjoy your mystery and your Christmas themed book :).

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Have just finished East West Street by Philippe Sands, an absolutely phenomenal piece of writing/history, one of the most powerful books I've read in a very long while.  It may seem odd, but I hesitate to give it 6 stars, i.e. 'favourite' status, simply because I'm not sure I can regard it as a 'favourite', mainly because I doubt I'll bring myself to read it again; it's not traumatic, just demanding (in a good way!), and I'm not sure it'll carry quite the same weight another time around.  Needs sitting on, as it's not often that a book is almost 'too good' to be a favourite.  Whatever, what a book!

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Finished off Antoine Laurain's shortie, The President's Hat this morning. I've been reading it on the Kindle at bedtime, but got to the point where I wanted a good run at it to finish off.  Lightweight, very easy read, gently inconsequential, a nice counterpoint to my other reading lately.  The reading club questions provided at the back seem a bit pretentious for what seems to be a pretty straightforward tale.  Fun though.  3 stars.

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Picked up Artemis by Andy Weir last night. I never read The Martian but I have seen the movie which I thought was pretty good. Quite a few people I know really enjoyed reading The Martian so I thought id give Weir a go. I'm about 100 pages into it and its ok but nothing special so far.

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9 hours ago, Brian. said:

I never read The Martian but I have seen the movie which I thought was pretty good.

We went to see it with offspring, a physicist, who was quite impressed with the accuracy of the science. Just one dodgy moment, but, even then, possible. Unlike Gravity which he said was good fun, but totally implausible!

 

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I've just finished A Christmas Malice.  The festive atmosphere and the characters were great; the punctuation, not so much.  It needed more commas.  Still, for a self-published work it was a fine read.

 

I'm just about to start Jerusalem Inn by Martha Grimes; the last of my Christmas-themed reads for the year. 

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On 12/7/2018 at 12:04 PM, Brian. said:

Picked up Artemis by Andy Weir last night. I never read The Martian but I have seen the movie which I thought was pretty good. Quite a few people I know really enjoyed reading The Martian so I thought id give Weir a go. I'm about 100 pages into it and its ok but nothing special so far.

 

I haven't read Artemis but from what I've seen, people (the ones I follow/watch online) really liked The Martian but they liked Artemis not as much. I really liked The Martian, both the book and the movie.

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Hi!! I have missed everyone- I have recently adjusted my schedule and have more time in the mornings and afternoons now, I thought I'd see what is going on on BCF and say Hi.

 

I read a modest amount this year, I just finished the 23rd Jack Reacher book, Past Tense. This month I also read Hunger by Roxane Gay. There is a local book club that meets at the library downtown that I want to join, they are reading Love In The Time of Cholera. I've always wanted to read Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but it's slow going and I'm only at 8%. They read The Underground Railroad by Colton Whitehead last month, I read that earlier this year and it was a favorite of mine.

 

On 12/7/2018 at 2:17 PM, Brian. said:

Yeah Gravity was fairly bonkers. I finished Artemis, I'll do a proper review in a few days but to sum it up. Meh! It was a quick read and I got on with it fine but it was pretty unremarkable.

 

I couldn't agree with this more! I LOVED The Martian and Andy Weir has some great free short stories on his website that I liked a lot too. But I gave Artemis a shot twice and I abandoned it. My new thinking on abandoning book, is there are just too many other books I'd like to read :P

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I hadn't read anything for weeks apart from technical books (and just about managing to get through Dark Tower book 8), as I've been preparing for an exam I did this morning, which I'm happy to say I passed! ^_^  So I'm looking forward to being able to get back into reading for pleasure again.

 

I've picked up Ken Follet's A column of fire this evening. Although it's lengthy it will hopefully be a bit addictive and get me back into the reading spirit!

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20 hours ago, Anna Begins said:

 My new thinking on abandoning book, is there are just too many other books I'd like to read :P

 

Agree 100%. I used to struggle through books I wasn't getting on with but now if a book hasn't grabbed me within 50-60 pages it gets abandoned.

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I still struggle through, no matter what.  :lol:  I guess I'm a bit of a masochist.  There haven't been many clunkers this year, though, fortunately. 

 

I'm a third of the way through Jerusalem Inn, and am having fun with it.  It's a slow burn mystery; no idea where it's headed yet.

 

Congrats on your exam success, @More reading time required !

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I decided to abandon Nudge for the time being as I just can’t seem to get in to it right now. I read The Tattooist of Auschwitz in pretty much one sitting today after reading a few pages a couple of days ago. I really enjoyed it and I can see why it has become such a success. As Christmas is not too far away I have started The Long Shadow by Celia Femlin this evening.

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Have just finished Churchill, a biography of the great man by Roy Jenkins.  It's an excellent example of the proverbial tome, just over 900 dense pages, which I started back in September, although there have been quite a few breaks or periods of slow reading.  It's been much more pleasurable and interesting to read than all this might imply, but it is certainly not a light read!  4 stars, review to follow.

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On 12/13/2018 at 11:46 PM, More reading time required said:

I hadn't read anything for weeks apart from technical books (and just about managing to get through Dark Tower book 8), as I've been preparing for an exam I did this morning, which I'm happy to say I passed! ^_^  So I'm looking forward to being able to get back into reading for pleasure again.

 

Congratulations :)!!

 

On 12/13/2018 at 11:46 PM, More reading time required said:

I've picked up Ken Follet's A column of fire this evening. Although it's lengthy it will hopefully be a bit addictive and get me back into the reading spirit!

 

I hope it's good! I really liked the first two in the series but I haven't started the third one yet (I do own it).

 

Yesterday I finished E. J. Copperman and Jeff Cohen - An Asperger's Mystery 3: The Question of the Felonious Friend, which I read together with Sarah. I really liked the book :)!

 

I started reading two YA contemporary fiction books (Dress Codes for Small Towns by Courtney Stevens and American Panda by Gloria Chao), but I'm not sure yet how I'll continue, because I find it hard to read more than one book at once. Yet my brain (my ADD to be more precise) seems to want to do that. But usually I find it hard to tell the books apart then and to divide my focus. We'll see what happens.

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Crashed through 3 books in the past 4 days:  Where The Wild Winds Are by Nick Hunt (4 walks in different European locations following four of the continent's better known winds), The Judge's House by Georges Simenon (a classic Maigret), and The Lighthouse by Alison Moore, a reread for my book group. 4 stars for the first two, and 2 stars for the last, a book which I originally gave 3 stars to, but which now feels like a toss-up for 1!  How it was thought to be worth short-listing for the Man Booker, and how various reviewers could rave about it is beyond me. 

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On 12/20/2018 at 12:00 PM, Onion Budgie said:

 

I'll be interested to know what you think of it!

 

I finished it this morning and although it started slowly I loved it. I'll do a proper post of my thoughts in my book thread shortly.

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