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Has anyone read this.... ?

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LalaithUrwen
Post subject: Re: Has anyone read this.... ?
Posted: Sat 16 Nov , 2013 7:53 pm
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I haven't heard of it.

How about Gone Girl? I started it reading it the other day. It's good, but I have to say that I figured it out by about page 175. :neutral: I think I will keep reading because I don't know how the story goes from point A to point B, and it might be interesting.

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Jude
Post subject: Re: Has anyone read this.... ?
Posted: Sat 01 Mar , 2014 5:32 pm
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I haven't been taking advantage of my GoodReads membership, but I do get regular emails from them. Which is lucky, because today I learned that there's an upcoming posthumous book of essays from Muriel Spark, possibly my very favourite author.

If you haven't checked her out, her first novel "The Comforters" is a good place to start.

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Jude
Post subject: Re: Has anyone read this.... ?
Posted: Mon 13 Oct , 2014 11:50 pm
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Anyone else read "The Cuckoo's Calling" by Robert Galbraith?

I can barely put it down...

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LalaithUrwen
Post subject: Re: Has anyone read this.... ?
Posted: Tue 14 Oct , 2014 2:40 pm
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No, I've never heard of it.

And I didn't finish Gone Girl. Once I figured it out, it lost my interest. Of course, now it's a major motion picture! ;)

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aninkling
Post subject: Re: Has anyone read this.... ?
Posted: Thu 16 Oct , 2014 9:57 pm
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Temples, Tombs and Heiroglyphs, by Barbara Mertz, is pretty interesting. Basically a casual, non-stuffy sort of archeology book that tells you the interesting bits about the history and artifacts of ancient Egypt.

Barbara Mertz is the woman who wrote the Amelia Peabody mysteries, under the name Elizabeth Peters.

I picked up a Muriel Spark book (Reality and Dreams) a while back, but I'm having a hard time getting into it. Maybe I should try The Comforters.
Lali wrote:
Once I figured it out, it lost my interest.
Doesn't sound like the sign of a good book.

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Frelga
Post subject: Re: Has anyone read this.... ?
Posted: Thu 16 Oct , 2014 11:27 pm
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I realized recently that most of my reading is either fantasy/SF/historical fiction or non-fiction. Plus some thriller-type stories that might as well be fantasy. I don't seem to do well with contemporary literary fiction.

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Jude
Post subject: Re: Has anyone read this.... ?
Posted: Thu 16 Oct , 2014 11:41 pm
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Frelga, I think you would like Robertson Davies. Maybe start with the Francis Cornish trilogy (the Rebel Angels, What's Bred in the Bone, The Lyre of Orpheus).

You could call it contemporary literary fiction, but there's just enough fantasy to help you make the transition :D

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aninkling
Post subject: Re: Has anyone read this.... ?
Posted: Fri 17 Oct , 2014 4:39 pm
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I have a hard time finding contemporary literary fiction I like, too. So much of it seems either depressing (I get tired of wading through people's dysfunctional personal lives) or bizarre to the point where it's tough to follow.
I do like Robertson Davies a lot, but I'm not sure he'd be considered contemporary any more. :) I've hooked people on him by lending them "High Spirits" his collection of humorous "literary" ghost stories.
http://www.amazon.com/High-Spirits-Coll ... 0142002461

He had a pretty varied and interesting life. Actor, playwright, public speaker, editor, professor....

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LalaithUrwen
Post subject: Re: Has anyone read this.... ?
Posted: Sat 18 Oct , 2014 2:49 pm
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I also struggle to find contemporary fiction I like. I stopped reading This Is Where I Leave You (soon to be another major motion picture!). It was so depressing and neurotic and bleah. (<--I don't know. My caffeine intake isn't sufficient yet to find the right adjective.) I just kind of thought the people were crappy in it, though it's supposed to be funny. (Oh, okay, then it's "funny" like Patch Adams was funny because Robin Williams was in it. <sarcasm> )

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aninkling
Post subject: Re: Has anyone read this.... ?
Posted: Mon 26 Oct , 2015 1:11 pm
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If anyone is interested in nonfiction, I thought Meeting the Devil, a book of memoir from the London Review of Books, was excellent. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but almost all of them were interesting. They range from personal stories to political observations.

Missed this earlier:
Lalaith wrote:
I just kind of thought the people were crappy in it, though it's supposed to be funny
I've had that problem with some books, too. The Nanny Diaries were supposed to be funny, but I wanted to slap just about every adult in it, including the protagonist supposedly writing it.

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MariaHobbit
Post subject: Re: Has anyone read this.... ?
Posted: Tue 10 Nov , 2015 4:18 pm
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I'm pretty specialized into fantasy and science fiction.

Piers Anthony was mentioned on the previous page.... I like his Incarnations of Immortality series best. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarnati ... mmortality

And the first Xanth book was really good. "A Spell for Chameleon". I've read a lot of the Xanth books, but they got pretty tedious after a while.


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LalaithUrwen
Post subject: Re: Has anyone read this.... ?
Posted: Tue 10 Nov , 2015 5:35 pm
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I did so love Piers Anthony back in the day! :) I should reread some of his books.

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Post subject: Re: Has anyone read this.... ?
Posted: Tue 10 Nov , 2015 7:15 pm
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LalaithUrwen wrote:
No, I've never heard of it.

And I didn't finish Gone Girl. Once I figured it out, it lost my interest. Of course, now it's a major motion picture! ;)

I've actually read it since then, and honestly, you should finish it. Its not a one trick pony. Incredibly clever book.

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LalaithUrwen
Post subject: Re: Has anyone read this.... ?
Posted: Wed 11 Nov , 2015 4:02 am
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Really? But I figured the twists out. :scratch:

Did you watch the movie?

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Post subject: Re: Has anyone read this.... ?
Posted: Wed 11 Nov , 2015 8:59 am
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No. But the book is a very clever character study and is far more about the flawed characters than it is about the twists. I've very rarely seen characterisation as well constructed and then deconstructed. That's the real skill in the piece, not the twists. Its a study in manipulation. Not just in how the characters manipulate each other, but in how the author manipulates the reader. Very intelligent writing.

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LalaithUrwen
Post subject: Re: Has anyone read this.... ?
Posted: Wed 11 Nov , 2015 12:48 pm
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Okay, that makes sense to me now.

I'll keep it in mind. :)

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Jude
Post subject: Re: Has anyone read this.... ?
Posted: Wed 11 Nov , 2015 3:12 pm
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A while ago, I asked in some thread if anyone had read the Inspector MacLean series by James Oswald, and nobody had. I just finished the first one ("Natural Causes") and can recommend it. It takes place in Edinburgh (bonus!) and has a touch of the supernatural around it, which made sense when I read on the cover blurb that he was a fantasy author before he decided to tackle the crime/mystery genre.

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aninkling
Post subject: Re: Has anyone read this.... ?
Posted: Wed 17 Feb , 2016 2:58 pm
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I've considered reading the Inspector Morse series (not the same, I know, but I originally misread your post), but I've sometimes found that a mystery book is disappointing, compared to a series I liked on TV. Completely opposite to my normal experiences with books and movies.

I'm reading "Who is Mark Twain?" - short personal pieces he wrote, not originally for publication. I'm enjoying it, and tend to agree with him a lot. (Though I don't dislike Jane Austen books as much as he did. :) Actually, I find them mildly entertaining, though I find it hard to shake the feeling I'm reading a socially acceptable version of a Harlequin romance.)

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LalaithUrwen
Post subject: Re: Has anyone read this.... ?
Posted: Sun 08 May , 2016 4:17 pm
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The Mark Twain book sounds intriguing, inky.

I just finished Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Wow! That was a such a good, little book! I read it in two short sittings, and it's been a very long time since a book captivated me that way. It's also technically the first book by Gaiman I've read. (I've seen Stardust and really enjoyed that.) Anyone else read it?

Spoilers below:
[SHOW]
Do you think the 3 main female characters represent the Crone, Mother, and Maiden? Who do you think Ursula represents? I have some ideas. And I had a glorious, magical moment whilst reading it where I remembered something from my own childhood. When the little boy is immersed in the ocean and breathes in the water to find that he does not choke and then knows all things, I remembered thinking the same thing as a child! I thought that if I could get it just right, I could do the same thing.

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Jude
Post subject: Re: Has anyone read this.... ?
Posted: Sun 08 May , 2016 6:05 pm
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Stardust is also an excellent book - you should read it anyway because the ending is totally different from the movie.

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