Great! I started out with Heaven to get a taste of Kawakami’s style. I’ll probably dive into Breasts and Eggs sometime soon now that I know how good she is.
Hold up a minute, do I need to have read Glass Hotel before diving into this one?! In other news, the Women’s Prize winner is announced today! I’ve just started The Bread the Devil Knead, but if Great Circle wins I might have to finally take the plunge.
No, not necessarily. But there are some connections that will help if you read Glass Hotel first I would say.
I'm about a third of the way into Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo as it's on the local LGBT bookclub list. Have to say that I'm really enjoying it.
If I had to recommend Shuggie Bain or Young Mungo, I'd go with the former. But Young Mungo does have its place. It's just ... painfully slow, until about 2/3 of the way through and then everything starts to come together. Also very violent. So be prepared for that.
I bought this following glowing recommendations on this thread - totally swept away by the story, a genuine page turner. Great read.
I've just started Malibu Rising so need to get round to this as well. Young Mungo is tough going, but worth it.
New Brett Easton Ellis is a set in 1980s L.A and features a serial killer targeting a group of teens. I’m looking forward to a bad-taste guilty pleasure.
Highly recommend The School for Good Mothers if you want a book that challenges and provokes you. No spoilers but the ending stabbed me right through the heart. I love a book that doesn't conform to the 'expected agendas'.
I don’t want to scare everyone with the unceasing passage of time, but… the Booker longlist is just over a week away. Preparing my predictions now. I did think Sequoia Nagamatsu’s How High We Go in the Dark might be in with a shot, but although it’s great (fans of Station 11 and George Saunders may want to give it a go) it’s maybe a little too sci-fi at times, and explains itself a little too much at the end.
I don’t know what it is, but once I’ve really gotten into books and understand the ecosystem better, reaching a point where I’ll probably end up reading 30 books this year (which, I know, pales in comparison to some of the averages here, but is well-above average for the normal person), book awards have lost a lot of their luster and feel ultimately very predictable.
I’d never read anything by Virginia Woolf, so I recently read To the Lighthouse and found it really thought-provoking. So, I picked up Mrs. Dalloway to read next, but 30 pages in I’m … just really bored? I feel like I’m missing why this book is so well-regarded.
Some of my favourite authors have also written some of the most boring books I've ever read. Some of them improve (within the book) and others.... do not. Yes I'm talking about you, Zola.
Try Orlando. I adored that book and think about it often. The film too. I've always read a lot but in very recent years I've made an effort to hunt down books (especially new ones) that I might enjoy rather than just picking something at random that was sitting on my shelf and it's made things much more enjoyable for me.
Interesting - I feel like the more I’ve gotten into books and reading, the more exciting I find book awards. But that might just be because I’ve gotten over my anti-hardback stance so I actually read quite a lot of new fiction now. I don’t go nuts on all of the awards, but I’m here for the Booker Prize, Women’s Prize, and National Book Awards. The Pulitzer is fine but the way they announce it removes all hype.
