By popular request, here is a book club post, for you to tell us about what you’ve been reading, and which boxes it ticks. I don’t think I have anything to report, not having read very much in the last week, and certainly not having opened anything new.
Here’s The List.
Which items are you most looking forward to ticking off?
I am immersed in the fabulous Luminaries. I packed it for my half-term jaunt to the inlaws, aware it was >800 pages and expecting to get my head down and power through it. I had underestimated its density and the impossibility of reading something that requires concentration when bombarded with Very Loud Telly and Constant Wittering. I was glad, last night, at page 342, to come across a plot summary. Without researching the author and so forth it will tick numbers 1, 9, 12, 40 and 41. The item I am most looking forward to ticking, or the one I think I will find tricky (is that what you mean?), is the one published the year I was born. I did a little research and I think 1974 was not a good literary year.
I have finished This is Where I leave You by Jonathan Tropper, which just might become a singular entry for my own Book Club Tick list, since it only ticks No3. That’s it. Nothing else.
My review?
I knew I had finished a book in the past two weeks and so could list it here. For the life of me I couldn’t remember what I’d read and had to look it up on my Goodreads page.
It’s not bad. It made the NYT Bestseller list, for whatever that’s worth these days. It was made into a movie.But it’s obviously——– not memorable.
1974 not a good year??
Carrie, The Diviners, The Chocolate War,
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier,Spy
and
Fear of Flying and The Other Side of Midnight as perfect reflections of the time.
I don’t know about the item I’m most looking forward to ticking off, but the one I look forward to the least is the book started but never finished (49). I culled paperbacks a while ago and disposed of most of the unfinished ones then, largely because they were awful. I think I still have a couple, one of which was impenetrable at my first attempt (Three Goat Songs by Michael Brodsky) and the other just didn’t give me any pleasure at all, although it is both famous and (I believe) required reading in some places (and has a local connection) – The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell. I might go for the Brodsky, as that would tick off both 49 and 5.
Just finished the luminaries; googling around it I see I can also tick off number 30 http://www.theomnivore.com/david-sexton-on-the-luminaries-by-eleanor-catton/