What are you reading at the moment? Recommendations welcome

anaximander said:

what I'm reading:
- Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 by Wallace & Burrows (2001)
- Memory, 3rd edition by Baddeley, Eysenck & Anderson (2020)
- Into the Woods - How stories work and why we tell them by John Yorke (2013)

Gotham and Memory are tomes that I can put my car on when I'm exchanging tires, whereas Into the Woods is a bit more accessible as paperback.

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wrightstuff said:

Just finished Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending'. At one point I struggled a bit, wondering if I was grappling with an unreliable narrator, but it's not so simple...

The framing of the story as flashbacks, then current narration, can be trite, but he handles this exceptionally well. I've just started The Blind Assassin by Margaret Attwood, which compounds this by having a story within a story in addition...it seems I have a bit of a theme going.

Anyway, The Sense of an Ending pulls the skeletons out of the closet in a very satisfying way, and although short, feels substantial. I'm glad I read the novel, if only to get it off my 'to read' list, but not sure I can recommend it. It's brilliantly-written, and gathers all the threads in well, but the antagonist is too 'out there' to pull you into her world, which means that the denouement comes out of thin air, generating little sympathy other than conventional reactions to the situation.

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Sedayne said:

I loved The Sense of an Ending.
I've read a few Julian Barnes novels, and although his writing can feel a bit dry sometimes (for me, he lacks the wit of contempories like Tremain and McEwan), there's a lot to learn from it.

And I quite like stories that head to an earlier timeline before bringing us back.

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wrightstuff said:

It will not surprise you that I also appreciate McEwan's novels.

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