What Are You Reading in July, 2016

I'm reading Against Medical Advice by James Patterson for a book club.

HAPPY CANADA DAY!!!!!

Happy Canada Day!!

I will be reading A Battle Won, by S. Thomas Russell, which is due back at the library tomorrow and has holds on it so I can't renew.

If I have time today, I'll get back into What's Bred in the Bone, by Robertson Davies. There will be *some* CanLit this long weekend...

(edited to fix touchstone on the Russell book)

Happy Canada Day. I am a few hundred pages into my first Stephen King novel- Under the Dome.

Reading Brooklyn by Colm Toibin. Last month I enjoyed Nora Webster by the same author, and this seems to be the same quiet , slow moving , lovely read. Quite enjoyable.

Happy Belated Canada Day!

4 vancouverdeb. I too, enjoyed reading Nora Webster earlier in the year. I saw the film version of Brooklyn and really liked that too.

I seemed to be in the mood for gritty, rather violent thrillers this week: Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter and Ink and Bone by Lisa Unger.

I'm about halfway through Elizabeth Bowen's Death of the Heart. It goes from really wonderful to "what is the point of all this?" back to wonderful. Right now I'm bogged down but I have hope that it will pick up again soon.

I've moved on to The Year of the Flood now.

I've read Levels of Life by Julian Barnes and am about to start Winter by Christopher Nicholson.

I've raided my Doctor Who stockpile for the summer and am reading The Sands of Time, a Fifth Doctor adventure by Justin Richards.

And on to Maddaddam.

reading a bit of " ScandiCrime" Hell Fire by Karin Fossum.

I finished the challenging Death of the Heart (which I both loved and disliked), and am now rewarding myself with the breezy memoir You're Better Than Me by Canadian comedian Bonnie McFarlane.

I've discovered a new Canadian author, Jennifer Manuel and am reading The Heaviness of Things that Float.

Finally finished The Winter Family by Clifford Jackman. Very, very violent but sort of fascinating view of American history.

I'm reading Edward Rutherfurd's New York. Enjoying it so far but it's a humungous book and I hope I can stick with it. It's been in my TBR pile for quite a while.

I've read Yellow Crocus by Laila Ibrahim and The Reluctant Midwife by Patricia Harman.

I'm starting Winter of the World by Ken Follett

Just finished McGarr and the Politician's Wife, by Bartholomew Gill, and will start a reread of No Great Mischief, by Alistair MacLeod.

finished Island of a Thousand Mirrors: A Novel by Nayomi Munaweera, a book about the Sri Lankan civil war.

I'm well into NW by Zadie Smith and really enjoying it.

Finished another novel by my newly realized favourite author: The Wife's Tale by Lori Lansens

>22 ted74ca: I'm thinking of reading that one soon. I'm wondering if it might be a good suggestion for my book club.

I like all of Lori Lansens's books.

>23 Nickelini:. I think it would be a good book club book-though it is written very much from the perspective of a woman. Don't know if male readers could relate very much.

>24 LynnB:. I've read 3 of hers in the last few months and really liked them all.

Just finished Map of the Invisible World by Tash Aw, and while I loved the descriptive writing, I disliked every character in the book!

reading Soft in the Head by Marie - Sabine Roger, translated from the french. I just picked it up on a whim.

>25 ted74ca: I think it would be a good book club book-though it is written very much from the perspective of a woman. Don't know if male readers could relate very much.

Can't express how little I care about the male reader's perspective on A Wife's Tale. My book club is all women so that's never a consideration when we pick books. I will pull it off the shelf soon and give it a test run.

Finishing NW by Zadie Smith. Definitely one of the better books I've read this year.

Current bus book is Twenty-Six, by Leo McKay Jr., which is about a coal mine explosion and which was at least partly inspired by the Westray Mine disaster.

Edit to add link to CBC article about Westray: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/westray-remembered-explosion-killed-26...

After NW I was in the mood for another good book, and so I'm giving The Wife's Tale by Lori Lansens a try. I didn't really like her novel The Girls, so I'm hoping this one will be more my thing.

For this month's book club: The Heart Specialist by Claire Holden Rothman. I'm about halfway through, and it's pretty dismal so far.

Just started When the Moon Is Low: A Novel by Nadia Hashimi a story about Afghan immigrants . Seems very readable so far.

>32 SylviaC: I really enjoyed The Heart Specialist, but it was quite a dry read. Best of luck.

>32 SylviaC: Dismal as in poorly written? Or dismal as in a depressing story? Or something else? I have The Heart Specialist on my TBR but haven't found the time for it yet.

>33 vancouverdeb: I can see what there is to like about it. I just prefer a bit less darkness. I am curious about what the war years will bring, though.

>34 Nickelini: Dismal as in the main character's life if full of tragedy and struggles. It is very well written, and I keep getting drawn into it, even though I'm sure more sad things will happen.

I'm reading I Am Hutterite by Mary-Ann Kirkby.

>36 LynnB: That's been in my TBR since it was first published but I never seem to get to it (story of my life. So many books . . . )

>36 LynnB: I readI am Hutterite earlier this year and really loved it. I hope you enjoy it, LynnB!

>36 LynnB: That looks really interesting.

I liked I Am Hutterite but wasn't overly taken with it. Most of the book is about the author's time in the Hutterite colony, with very little about reclaiming her heritage, which (I think) would have been most interesting.

Starting H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald for a book club.

Just finished The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King and I really loved it. I started I Am Hutterite today after reading about it here, but so far I'm not taken with it. Don't know if I'll finish it

I finished The Heart Specialist. It was bleaker than I really like, but I appreciated the quality of the writing. I found it absorbing while I was reading, but after putting it down would be reluctant to pick it back up. I found the ending very satisfying, am glad that I did finish it.

Continuing my Canadian reading with The Game, by Ken Dryden.

Edit to comment that the right book took a while to find in the list of touchstones!

Too hot for serious reading, so gave up on I am Hutterite for now and went for some crime fiction; Blindsighted by Karin Slaughter which passed the time, but didn't overly impress me.

Just finished The Wife's Tale by Lori Lansens and liked it very much. Some really good writing on both the structural and sentence level. I think there's lots to discuss here, so I'm going to recommend it to my book club in September.

It wasn't perfect, and some things bugged me (when a parking lot in Toronto basically steals your truck, you call the police. You don't get on a plane for Los Angeles). But then those mars and quibbles were made up by other things, so in the balance I deem it a hit. I really enjoyed the Southern California location because it's the area of California I know really well, and it was fun spotting all the places and things that I knew (such as the corner where she meets the Mexican men). I like verisimilitude in books.

I'm reading the only John Irving novel I've not yet read, Setting Free the Bears.

>46 LynnB: John Irving and his bears!

After hearing two recommendations yesterday for We Should All Be Feminists by Chimanmanda Ngozi Adichie, I found a copy and read it last night. It's based on her famous TED Talk, and I'd say it's mainly directed to people who think feminism is a negative word, and people who think it's a dated concept. Lovely writing, very readable, and it's short.

Last winter, every 16 year old in Sweden received a copy of We Should All Be Feminists. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/04/every-16-year-old-in-sweden-to-rec...

Hot weather reading, when it's just too hot to get to sleep: Pretty Baby by Mary Kubica. Pretty good, albeit with rather unlikeable and stereotypical characters.

I'm reading You Are One of Them by Elliott Holt.

Starting Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell. I really enjoyed her The Vanishing of Esme Lennox so I have high hopes for this one.

I'm reading They Left Us Everything by Plum Johnson for a book club.

>52 LynnB: I read that a couple of months ago. My book club is going to discuss the Forest of Reading books in September. I'll be interested to see what you think of it.

I'm re-reading Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky for a book club discussion.

Just finished An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, by Chris Hadfield. For me a quick and consistently interesting read.

Just finished Third Girl by Agatha Christie. Just starting What Lies Between Us by Nayomi Munaweera. What Lies Between Us seems excellent so far.

I just finished Below Stairs and after being dragged to Chapters at midnight last night I find myself with a copy of the latest Harry Potter and a daughter who was too tired to read it much today. She has her hands on it now and I doubt I'll get it back until she is done.

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. It's enormous.

I finished Brooklyn by Colm Toibin today, and, though I love the author's beautiful, lyrical writing, I was disappointed in this book. I can't remember another time when I loved the movie more than the book. I think the main character in this novel ruined it for me-she was alternatively very passive and then almost conniving.

>>45 Nickelini: I found that such a satisfying read and yet it seems to be the least well known of Lansens' books.