What are you reading at the moment? Recommendations welcome

Mel L

Question: Best practices for critique partners/beta readers

  • Mel L
  • Replies: 18
AnnieSummerlee

News The news is out!

  • AnnieSummerlee
  • Replies: 29
Jonny said:
Trespasses by Louise Kennedy. Amazing story and spellbinding writing if you grew up in Belfast in the early 70s during The Troubles.
Click to expand...
I didn't, but I guess growing up (in England) in the 90s and hearing about it on the radio all the time I'm really fascinated, if that's the right word, by NI/Troubles fiction. It's deeply interesting (and maybe necessary?) for me to learn about it in terms of actual people's lives (if fictionalised) rather than statistics and politicians' cant. So this is definitely going on my to-read list.
 
Finished Deadly Education by Naomi Novik.
I really enjoyed the last 3 chapters. The rest was quite a slog that I only managed in half-chapter stints. If I hadn't loved her Uprooted and now name Spinning Silver as one of my all-time favourite reads, I would have given up by about chapter 5. Chapter One was pretty much all expositional world building. Chapter two started the story. Chapter three was almost all backstory, and there was a lot more backstory peppered through, so frequently that it kept pulling me out of the actual story. I was getting to the point where I wouldn't have cared if all the characters died in the end; I wasn't invested in any of them. I think, if this had been Naomi's first rodeo, she wouldn't have found either agent or publisher. I don't think I'll bother with book 2.
 
I have just finished Jeoffry The Poet's Cat, a biography by Oliver Soden.

"Jeoffry was a real cat who lived 250 years ago, confined to an asylum with Christopher Smart, one of the most visionary poets of the age. In exchange for love and companionship, Smart rewarded Jeoffry with the greatest tribute to a feline ever written".


screen-shot-2020-08-17-at-17-23-45.png


Jeoffry was the cat of 18th century poet Christopher Smart who was twice sent to a lunatic asylum. Smart wrote a poem about his cat, and the story starts with that poem, SUPERB

The writing is utterly wonderful. This is also a portrait of London starting with an earthquake March 1750. London, stinky, grotty and squalidly sexy. Nancy does a bomb on spanking the gentlemen.

Jeoffry is our city tour guide. Hilarious and heartbreaking. Well, it made me cry when I finished it.

"Jeoffry is the greatest cat in the English language, and here are his life and times, wittily and deftly imagined, entwined with a memoir of Kit Smart, lunatic and poet, and the London he shared with Samuel Johnson and his cat Hodge. An inspired and original tale." -Hilary Mantel
 
Katie-Ellen said:
I have just finished Jeoffry The Poet's Cat, a biography by Oliver Soden.

"Jeoffry was a real cat who lived 250 years ago, confined to an asylum with Christopher Smart, one of the most visionary poets of the age. In exchange for love and companionship, Smart rewarded Jeoffry with the greatest tribute to a feline ever written".


View attachment 13424


Jeoffry was the cat of 18th century poet Christopher Smart who was twice sent to a lunatic asylum. Smart wrote a poem about his cat, and the story starts with that poem, SUPERB

The writing is utterly wonderful. This is also a portrait of London starting with an earthquake March 1750. London, stinky, grotty and squalidly sexy. Nancy does a bomb on spanking the gentlemen.

Jeoffry is our city tour guide. Hilarious and heartbreaking. Well, it made me cry when I finished it.

"Jeoffry is the greatest cat in the English language, and here are his life and times, wittily and deftly imagined, entwined with a memoir of Kit Smart, lunatic and poet, and the London he shared with Samuel Johnson and his cat Hodge. An inspired and original tale." -Hilary Mantel
Click to expand...
Onto my tbr, definitely.
 
Katie-Ellen said:
I have just finished Jeoffry The Poet's Cat, a biography by Oliver Soden.

"Jeoffry was a real cat who lived 250 years ago, confined to an asylum with Christopher Smart, one of the most visionary poets of the age. In exchange for love and companionship, Smart rewarded Jeoffry with the greatest tribute to a feline ever written".


View attachment 13424


Jeoffry was the cat of 18th century poet Christopher Smart who was twice sent to a lunatic asylum. Smart wrote a poem about his cat, and the story starts with that poem, SUPERB

The writing is utterly wonderful. This is also a portrait of London starting with an earthquake March 1750. London, stinky, grotty and squalidly sexy. Nancy does a bomb on spanking the gentlemen.

Jeoffry is our city tour guide. Hilarious and heartbreaking. Well, it made me cry when I finished it.

"Jeoffry is the greatest cat in the English language, and here are his life and times, wittily and deftly imagined, entwined with a memoir of Kit Smart, lunatic and poet, and the London he shared with Samuel Johnson and his cat Hodge. An inspired and original tale." -Hilary Mantel
Click to expand...
Any relation to Ninian Smart? About the book, I did not find it online except overpriced. Is there an open source edition?
 
Peyton Stafford said:
Any relation to Ninian Smart? About the book, I did not find it online except overpriced. Is there an open source edition?
Click to expand...


They may be related, don't see a mention of that connection on Ninian Smart's bio. His family, described as Scottish, Kit Smart described as English. No doubt, somewhere going far enough back....

My ma sent me it as a present, said they found it online much reduced -remaindered.

Bearing in mind, it's hardback, I see £16.99 if bought direct via the author, £10.99 brand new on the Zon, but readily available for less via other sellers.
 
Last edited:
Katie-Ellen said:
I have just finished Jeoffry The Poet's Cat, a biography by Oliver Soden.

"Jeoffry was a real cat who lived 250 years ago, confined to an asylum with Christopher Smart, one of the most visionary poets of the age. In exchange for love and companionship, Smart rewarded Jeoffry with the greatest tribute to a feline ever written".


View attachment 13424


Jeoffry was the cat of 18th century poet Christopher Smart who was twice sent to a lunatic asylum. Smart wrote a poem about his cat, and the story starts with that poem, SUPERB
Click to expand...

I have just found the Kindle version, via Amazon.uk, is FREE.
t has 171 reviews, with an average of very close to 5 stars. WONDERFUL. Thank you, K-E.
 
MattScho said:
...but also I love the research dumps Stephensen gives us in pretty much everything he does.
Click to expand...
I didn't love the lengthy chainlink flaw vs. cog flaw thought experiment in Cryptonomicon. Stephenson could've laid out the concept without pummeling a biologically inert equine into paté.
 
I just finished Lawn Boy by Johathan Evison. I got this solely because of the controversy. Some high and middle school libraries are banning the book. There's no such thing as bad publicity, so I took the plunge.

Firsties...this is not a novel for the kiddos. I just don't think any gradeschoolers or most middleschoolers are ready for this. And no...it's not just the sex. Themes of dysfunctional families, poverty, hopelessness, racism, and responsibility are more prevalent and intense than the occasional non-sexy sex. The overall narrative is just too deep and depressing for most anyone below highschool to process.

Despite what the book burners say, pretty much any highschooler will be able to handle this. The "grooming" accusations are indefensible, hysterical bullshit.

Even so, the sexual encounter the MC describes near the beginning is a bit gratuitous. It does set up an interesting dichotomy between a couple of characters. Unfortunately, half of that dichotomy plays out in a hamfisted and unsatisfying way. This is unfortunate, coz a little finesse could've made it more than a cringey sideshow.

More about cringe...occasionally, the narrative tries too hard to make a point. Class divisions, racism, and gay bashing are real, yet some of the on-the-nose inner thoughts and dialogue feel more like lectures to me.

The plot was over-the-top at times.

Despite occasional excesses, Lawn Boy is an accurate portrait of modern, first-world deprivation. There is a much talked-about gay story here. However, plenty of straight people can relate to this. I sure as hell did.

Anyone who grew up wondering why other kids had more, thought McDonald's was a treat, financially supported their parents, or lost a job because their car broke down, will totally get it. Generational poverty is a thing with many moving parts. It doesn't care what skills you have or how hard you work. Critics who found all the "bad luck" unbelievable either haven't been there, or lack empathy for those who have.

Lawn Boy is both depressing and frustrating. The story doesn't approach Handmaid's Tale levels of gloom, but it will still beat you up.

The ending made me cry.
 
Last edited:
Mel L said:
Just finished Convenience Store Woman, by Sayaka Murata, translated from the Japanese. It is a quirky misfit novel and brilliant if you like the kind of book where not a lot happens. Just my cup of tea!
Click to expand...
Sometimes, "...not a lot happens..." means a lot happens in the subtext. My kind of book. I reserved a copy at a library.
 
Last edited:
Just finished 'Such A Fun Age' by Kiley Reid. Wow. Amazing read.
It's been ages since I couldn't put a book down but this one just kept me turning the page.
Reid managed to write what was for me a hugely entertaining novel while brilliantly dissecting white privilege. Also, her use of omni POV without head hopping is admirable. Highly recommend!
 
Just finished No Country For Old Men. Fabulous. Not conventional writing and I love it for exactly that. Language at its most effective; targeted and sparce.

Characterisation / characters: wow.

Dialogue: a bit like a Eugene ONeil (? Was it him? Whatever.) play and I loved it.

Punctuation: shite (but deliberately so). Does it matter? Nope.

Scores top marks for mood, voice and readability.
 
Just tore my way through (2 days)John Wyndham’s Day of the Triffids. We did this in school but it was a dim and distant memory.

But I loved it. A tour de force of first person old fashioned storytelling. The ratio of tell to show was extraordinary by today’s accepted standards. But despite this cardinal ‘error’ I was hooked all the way from page 1.

It’s 71 years old and still gripping, horrifying and masterful stuff.
 
Jonny said:
Just tore my way through (2 days)John Wyndham’s Day of the Triffids. We did this in school but it was a dim and distant memory.

But I loved it. A tour de force of first person old fashioned storytelling. The ratio of tell to show was extraordinary by today’s accepted standards. But despite this cardinal ‘error’ I was hooked all the way from page 1.

It’s 71 years old and still gripping, horrifying and masterful stuff.
Click to expand...
Ah, but are you going to publically admit to your other and newest book obsession? Hmmm?
 
I can recommend Freezing Order By Bill Browder- he was once a major investor in Putin's Russia, but then it turned ugly and got uglier.
A fascinating insight into the workings of Putin's plutocracy.

1665835808806.png
 
E G Logan said:
Yes, but didn't you find the actual end-solution (no spoilers) a bit of a cop-out?
It's even more obviously lame in the film.
Click to expand...

To be fair, yes absolutely in the context of an adventure story. I think the way Wyndham developed the plot left him with no option but to do what he did.

Well actually, thinking about it perhaps he had two options. Make the book considerably longer and introduce a strand that led to a more rounded resolution, or... how about?

"The ringing of the bedside alarm wakened Bill. Drenched in sweat, he breathed a massive sigh. Thank God! It had all just been a terrible dream. :)

Although joking aside, I was surprised at just how much commentary there was on the mode of living in the immediate post WW2 period; the construction /operation of political systems and the perceived need for hierarchical structures in society. Even to the point of exploring gender politics to a certain extent too.

So I guess given these fairly prominent socio-political themes, then the ending is fair enough, inasmuch as it asks the reader to make up their own mind if things could work that way.
 
Katie-Ellen said:
I can recommend Freezing Order By Bill Browder- he was once a major investor in Putin's Russia, but then it turned ugly and got uglier.
A fascinating insight into the workings of Putin's plutocracy.

View attachment 13753
Click to expand...

That sounds fascinating! On my TBR now.

I'm currently listening to this month's freebie with Australian Audible: The Other Side of Beautiful by Kim Lock. Very Australian, very damaged protag, lovely voice. I'm enjoying it. It even has a Scottish honey :)
 
Shrines of Gaiety, Kate Atkinson
I've just finished, and happily recommend, Shrines of Gaiety, by Kate Atkinson. Interestingly, it's neither a Jackson Brodie detective story nor one of her more experimental books, but smack in-between. Set in the mid 1920s, in the racier of London's West End nightspots, it captures the slightly frenetic atmosphere that followed the First World War, though it's not exactly steeped in period detail. (No indigestible info dumps of 'I did this research so here it is...')

Plot pretty much perfect, well-paced, with interestingly mixed characters. I worried at the start that there might be too many, but Atkinson pulls that off, and the way she ties up the final loose ends seems a little like a parody of the classic creative writing 'Resolution'. It works, though; anything cosier would be wrong.


Madly Deeply, The Alan Rickman Diaries
I'm struggling with Alan Rickman’s Madly Deeply. Struggling, that is, with the impression it conveys of him, whom I've loved in everything I've seen him in. I suppose that's the measure of how good an actor he was.
It's also not very readable, because it's in true diary format, i.e. cryptic (yes, maybe I should have thought of that), but also because I simply don't 'get' a lot of it. (Who??)
Maybe one for the 'thesps'.
 
E G Logan said:
Shrines of Gaiety, Kate Atkinson
I've just finished, and happily recommend, Shrines of Gaiety, by Kate Atkinson. Interestingly, it's neither a Jackson Brodie detective story nor one of her more experimental books, but smack in-between. Set in the mid 1920s, in the racier of London's West End nightspots, it captures the slightly frenetic atmosphere that followed the First World War, though it's not exactly steeped in period detail. (No indigestible info dumps of 'I did this research so here it is...')

Plot pretty much perfect, well-paced, with interestingly mixed characters. I worried at the start that there might be too many, but Atkinson pulls that off, and the way she ties up the final loose ends seems a little like a parody of the classic creative writing 'Resolution'. It works, though; anything cosier would be wrong.
Click to expand...
Ooh I've been wanting to read this one. Waiting for my local library to get it in!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Mel L

Question: Best practices for critique partners/beta readers

  • Mel L
  • Replies: 18
AnnieSummerlee

News The news is out!

  • AnnieSummerlee
  • Replies: 29
Back
Top