Reading books in 2022

I’ve been working through ‘To Paradise’, the next book from Hanya Yanagihara (author of A Little Life). I’m enjoying it much more than A Little Life - it appears to be three novels (novellas? Part 3 is 400 pages long) which are thematically linked - all set in the same location, characters with the same name, similar relationships, etc - and each set 100 years apart.

So far I’ve read the first part, a 200 page story set in an alternative past late 1800s - the story itself is familiar (bog standard love triangle), but it’s written beautifully. Part 2 is set in the 1990s, - I’m about a quarter through, and again it’s nothing new (young man-old man relationship, worker-boss relationship), but I’m really enjoying it.

So far it’s avoided degenerating into the misery-fest that was A Little Life. It’s melancholy, for sure, but it’s much easier to stomach.

Have just finished reading a couple of the Costa winners this year, Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller and The Crossing by Manjeet Mann. Both good, both really moving and pretty depressing. Unsettled Ground I could have given it anything from 2 to 5 on GoodReads depending upon my mood, really struggled to make up my mind about it. Gave it a 4 in the end, decided the really good stuff outweighed the other stuff.

Also just read The Lighted Window which @nicholasurfe mentioned a while back. It is about the feeling you get when viewing a window with a light on in the room beyond when out on an evening walk, and then this is a jumping point to talk about paintings (mostly) and literature. Again, really good, but maybe not quite what I was wanting it to be. I think I wanted it to be more walking/psychogeography and less art history but it is worth a read if you are curious about it. Loads of lovely colour prints of the art being talked about, too. Amazing depth of knowledge the writer has to come up with so many examples to fit his theme.

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Hey

I really appreciate that you read my suggestion and checked it out. It sounds like my expectation of The Lighted Window is the same as yours. I will eventually read it, but as I was hoping it would have a bit more focus on the psychogeography, but I guess with a book written about such an extremely niche topic, I guess we can’t complain too much about what the writer focuses on. I guess it at least scratched a bit of an itch. Having just forked out the equivalent of 25 quid on importing a copy of Patricia Highsmith’s diaries and notebooks as a birthday present for myself, I’m reluctant to cough up the same for The Lighted Window right now.

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I guess I kind of liked Nightbitch. I mean, I like ambiguity and I liked the fact that there are three levels of ‘what exactly is going on?’ that the last part presents.

Going back to how I first heard about this book. I can totally imagine Amy Adams reading this book and going ‘OK… movie of this?’ but I can’t imagine how this book would work as a film, unless she can entice Julia Decournau to work through it, and even then I don’t how Hollwyood could get away with including one particular part and get away with it.

We have loads of “little free libraries” and book swap places round here as well as regularly hitting up National Trust book shops, and I’ve formed a habit of picking up every cheap Dan Brown cash in I can. Pure literary junk food. Maybe I should blog my reading of them.

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Nooooooo

Ban on books that have to give you a list of who’s who.

Does not bode well as a light read.

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still on for whale club?

Absolutely! :whale: was going to make an early start tonight but thought I’d dip into something else first.

What about you @hardworking?

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Finished the football book, starting The Slow Regard of Silent Things tonight

They’re very useful for the Malazan books and some other fantasy ones. What book is this?

Came back to this because Wolf Hall definitely had speech marks:
image

However, I did find it hugely confusing because she tends to just say ‘he says’ loads instead of the name and as almost all conversations are between multiple men it’s really confusing. I certainly never reached for any other books in the series.

(Seems that Kindle has fixed a problem with the formatting from when I first bought it whereby the margins left and right were huge so you were reading it in a weird column no matter how narrow you tried to set them.)

EDIT: I am very much team ‘give me speech marks’ though.

Fuck it yeah I’m in! Got the ebook ready to go.

Do we do it as a thread? What’s the schedule plan?

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80 pages into Piranesi and I absolutely love it so far but there is a fairly obvious assumption to be made about what is happening and I think I’ll be quite disappointed if it does go down that road.

Does anyone else get like this about books full of mystery? As soon as the details start getting filled in, you begin to lose interest? Like horror is my favourite film genre but as soon as the monster or threat is shown it kind of loses its power over me. Can’t think of a time I haven’t been disappointed.

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I have absolutely no idea! Looks like last time there was a thread and agreed amount of chapters per day…

Just a bit of plague related trash

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I don’t particularly go for horror films, but I had this exact thought when watching Archive 81 the other week. I really liked it, but the eerie power of it was certainly stronger when the evil was ambiguous and undetermined.

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i’ve definitely had (a lot!) of horrors which i loved all the way through, but you’re right that the ending/reveal is regularly the weakest part. Just need strong characters or set up to make it not matter that much because the rest of the film/mystery was so enjoyable

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Payday binge.

Please don’t judge the trashy ones thank you, comes with the territory when my favourite genre is almost exclusively “99p kindle deals”

The Heavens, Sandra Newman
Luster, Raven Leilani
Earthlings, Sayaka Murata
As I Lay Dying, Faulkner
Carmilla, Sheridan La Fanu
Triple W, Rod Serling
The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, Mariana Enriquez
Things We Lost in the Fire, Enriquez
Pew, Catherine Lacy
The Walker’s Guide to Outdoor Signs and Clues, Tristan Gooley

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Pure trash, might as well go in my Dan Brown rip-off pile :wink:

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Can’t believe I’ve finally bought that after a mere…15 years of it being on my wish list. Probably another 15 before I read it.

(I did leave out some books from this list including The Sex Life of Victorians and some absolute trash thrillers).