Reading books in 2023

Finished Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (Zevin) last night and really enjoyed it. Thanks to @paulo13 for the heads up that it was on sale :slight_smile:

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As if the reading pile wasn’t already big enough

£11.50, god bless Oxfam

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I’m enjoying it too apart from all the words I have to look up on my Kindle :grinning:

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Read Our Wives Under the Sea today, and can see the overlap. A real absorbing read, and very claustrophobic. Also love the cover. Will be getting a copy of Slow Salt to read at some point.

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Gaming terminology? I got a bit emotional at one stage I must say

God no, gaming terminology is fine. It’s stuff like this I just got to

Should probably cross post in Scout’s word thread where I’ve posted the others

I think I just completely ignore words like that tbh

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Yeah I often do but they stick out for me here because they are so different from the subject matter, I guess because it’s the world I know to a large degree so it’s kind of at odds with what I’m reading.

That said I’ve just come across what might be the worst piece of sexual prose I’ve ever read in a book I like by an obviously good writer.

She leaned in to kiss him, and he kissed her, and then she put her hand between his legs, wrapping her fingers around the cylindrical chamber of blood sponges that was his (and every) penis. He felt the corpora cavernosa, commanded by nerve messages from his subconscious brain, fill up with blood, and the tunica albuginea membrane, the penis’s straitjacket, trap the blood inside.

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Haha yeah that was the worst bit or the whole book. I believe there are some “awards” for this sort of stuff.

https://literaryreview.co.uk/bad-sex-in-fiction-award

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For me this is still The Virgin Suicides

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Never read that.

It’s great, got totally drawn into the atmosphere - just one sex scene made me basically wince

Would recommend it anyway. Also just properly realised he did Middlesex too and I loved both, so I should read his third novel

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Finishing this off. First Camus I’ve read. Enjoyed it

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His third novel sucks unfortunately, and I think Middlesex is a masterpiece.

I’ve got a big backlog of books, but this is enough of an incentive for me to read this one next!

I’ve just finished Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder.
It kind of reminded me of Chouette, Bunny, and A Ghost In The Throat - unhappy mother’s and/or freaky magical realism. Unfortunately, Chouette is the only one of all of these books that I loved (whilst the author of Chouette wrote two 5 star reviews for Nightbitch and Bunny, so I might need to take future reviews with a pinch of salt for me).

The main character is referred to as “the mother”, along with “the boy” and “the husband”, and it starts off with her thinking that she’s turning into a dog. But I think I’ve had a bit too much of unhappy parents/families in recent books. I saw a couple of reviews say that whilst it’s not a long book (250 pages or so), it would have been better as a short story, which I definitely agree with. I ended up speed reading bits of it just so I could be done with it.

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I enjoyed the marriage plot but yeh no where near the incredible heights of Middlesex.

two down

Florida - Lauren Groff

Definitely got more from this than from Fates and Furies. Think the format means we get proportionally more of her great scene setting and environmental/atmospheric descriptions, and less of her pretty weird attitudes to sex and (mostly female) beauty and bodies. I like her writing on men-women-relationships-sex in small doses too, but the amount of time she writes about gorgeous men or women who find their beauty fading … puts me off tbh, and was a fundamental reason I didn’t engage much with Fates

But anyway, Florida has a cool unifying theme, lots of interesting little stories in there, razor-sharp details, some parts that almost made me smell the swamp and heat and vegetation. I should do more short story collections.

Broken Shore - Peter Temple

One of my favourite present-day noir-style things I’ve read. Dark and twisted but poetic and occasionally even delicate too. Loved how Aussie it was, even if I did have to google a few phrases - Goodreads reviews complaining about something being written too “natively” for them to follow is the stupidest trend. Gonna have to pick up Truth in a bit clearly.

(Ending was a bit abrupt though, literally thought I’d skipped a section)

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Yeah I really loved Florida but this that most frustrating of negative reviews of a book (Fates and Furies): one that makes me think I’d agree and yet I want to waste my time reading it just so I can get in on the negativity :smiley:

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it’s very readable and as I said, well written, so shouldn’t take too long

worth it too, some great moments in there - just also far far too much about what a genius sex god the main guy was. Think she invented a character then developed a crush on him tbh …

Ah, it always takes me ages to read books.