Becky's Books –

The Narrow Road to the Deep North
by Richard Flanagan
2014 /334 pages (Kindle)
rating: 9.5 / historical fiction

I was warned this is a hard book to read due to the violence.  I’m allergic to graphic violence in war – it’s really just highly organized murder and that’s not good for me (or other living things!) –  And violence in film or books,  even supposedly anti-war films or books,  elicits the same response as films and books which glorify it.  – No thanks.

Turns out this is as much a love story as it is a war story – >>>>MORE>>>>

Neuromancer
by William Gibson
1984 / 288 pages
read by Robertson Dean 10h 30m
rating 8.5 / classic sci-fi (cyberpunk)

I have had this book on my TBR (to be read) shelf for ages and ages.  Now that Gibson’s new book, Peripheral, is being released (Oct. 28, 2014) I thought I should read his classic.

At first I was really disappointed because,  first,  I’ve only followed Gibson since Pattern Recognition and I’m used to his books being set in a contemporary world with cutting edge techno/cyber stuff.  When a book was written 30 years ago it’s just not going to be that.

Neuromancer is set in a world decades in the future – 2030? – >>>>MORE>>>>

Buddhism For Busy People: Finding Happiness In An Uncertain World
by David Michie
2008 / 240 pages
read by Nicholas Bell 6h 49m
rating 6.5 / nonfiction/self-help-religion

General principals of Tibetan Buddhism with the objective of being happy – I agree with some, not with all and I’m not crazy about the current trend to use it as an adjunct to psychology.  Just do it.  The reader is quite good.  Tibetan meditation is wonderful but there’s only a little guidance here – a starter maybe but that’s all any guidebook can really give,  I suppose.  >>>>MORE>>>>

The Secret Place
by Tana French  (Ireland)
2014/529 pages
read by  Stephen Hogan, Lara Hutchinson / 20h 34m
rating A- / crime
#5 in Dublin Murder Squad series

Another trashy crime novel – not too trashy (I just say that)  – very suspenseful.   A spell of relistening was necessary because  the accent is pretty stong and my attention was weak.  Second time it was very good and I enjoyed  the book.

There’s really a tad too much silly teenage girl angst, especially at first,  every other chapter is about the concerns of a small group of exceptionally close girlfriends who attend an elite girl’s school in Ireland.  This is the backstory of the relationship between the girls and their male friends at a nearby boy’s school.  It’s the lead up to the murder but
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Age of Ambition:  Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China
by Evan Osnos
2014 / 417 pages
rating: 9 / nonfiction

Remember the China of Mao as allied with Khrushchev’s USSR and total paranoid state control of peasants in massive poverty overturned by the Cultural Revolution etc. and so on ad nauseum?  Well I don’t recognize it – What Osnos presents is not my father’s  People’s Republic of China.

And Osnos’ book doesn’t quite “read like a novel,” either, but it’s an excellent overview of the various aspects of the changed China over the last 3 decades and through its people – as the author says in the Prologue:  “I have tried, above all, to describe Chinese lives on their own terms.” (p. 7)

>>>>REVIEW>>>>

>>>>NOTES Part 1>>>>
>>>>NOTES Part 2>>>>
>>>>NOTES Part 3+ >>>>

Let’s try this –  I read  19 books in September, 2014 –  10  fiction +  7 crime +  2  non-fiction  with 6 women writers and 0 translated  😦  

Lovers at the Chameleon Club: Paris 1932
by Francine Prose
read by Edoardo Ballerini, Rosalind Ashford, Geoffrey Cantor, Nicola Barber, Suzanne Toren, Maggi-Meg Reed
2014 / 448 pages
rating: 8  / contemp lit/historical fiction

I wasn’t going to read this because I thought it sounded kind of creepy.  Well,  it’s not creepy although there’s a tad  too much sexual talk for my comfort.  There’s also a lot of material which piques my historical interests and Prose’s story  has a very compelling story-line,  an interesting structure and it’s nicely written.  I’m glad I didn’t pass!  >>>>MORE>>>>

Mother
by Maxim Gorky
1907 / 400 pages
rating  8.5 / Russian classic (socialist realism)
(but I got about 1/2 way)

Before I started reading this I looked up some information about Gorky.  I know it’s not always appropriate to do this sort of thing and I rarely do it with contemporary authors,  but with the classics I think it’s different.

I knew Gorky was a prominent writer and as such a vital part of the Russian Revolution; he knew and was honored by Lenin.  Beyond that, although I’d read about him before, I remembered nothing.  So I refreshed my memory >>>>MORE>>>>

The Quincunx: The Inheritance of John Huffam
by Charles Palliser
1989 / 781 pages (Kindle)
rating 9 / 20th century fiction

Omg – I finished it!  Long, complex and puzzle-oriented, Quincunx is the much lauded debut novel by Charles Palliser which was published first in 1989 but has maintained some of its popularity.  I read it because I very much enjoyed Palliser’s 2013 novel, Rustication in January of this year.

Quincunx is basically a Dickens parody informed by the post-modern interests of Palliser’s own day. >>>>MORE>>>>

The Emperor Far Away: Travels at the Edge of China
by David Eimer
2014 / 336 pages
read by Cory Snow – 10h 42m
rating 7.5 / travel

China is ruled by the Han descendants on the east coast, but what is going on in the far west, north and south? This is the area with huge growth potential in terms of oil and tourism. Eimer visited these places and more, from southern Yunan to Tibet and Xinjiang in the west and across to Heilongjiang in the far north. China maintains it’s grip on these territories while the ethnicities who live there react in different ways. This is his eye-opening account of his journeys. >>>>MORE>>>>

Enough already – time to get back to my regularly scheduled text novels and non-fiction. I have to lay off the audio for awhile – I’m all caught up and more! I’ve listened to 11 (eleven) audio books this month already – yikes.

So – in the iPad/Kindle I have Quincunx (Charles Palliser) to finish – it’s so good – as well as Mother (Maxim Gorky) which is okay. Then I have some reading group books coming for October – The Age of Ambition (Evan Osnos) The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Richard Flanagan) and Nightwoods (Charles Frazier). I’d like to get those read in the next 10 days or so. (The Frazier is available in audio and I might … eeks) Oh, I’ll get it done – labor of love, and who cares – I’m retired. – Um, yeah but that’s about 1500 pages- what, 150 pages a day? I can do 150 for a few days in a row but for 10 days? Watch this space. – lol

Big Little Lies
by Liane Moriarity (Australia)
2014/ 462 pages
read by Caroline Lee 16 h
rating:  A-  8/ crime (literary)

I’m really no good at trying to guess the outcome of  books in which some kind of mystery is present.  I’ll have something in mind and in the very next chapter that’s eliminated as a possibility so then I’m adrift again.  Oh well – I enjoy watching them unfold.

So even with all the issues getting tangled and untangled in Big Little Lies I was pretty sure I knew the answer but too bad, so sad.  Because we know that there is a serious uproar (a drunken brawl really) among the parents at the school function, Trivia Night and someone actually dies – it’s a murder. >>>>MORE>>>>