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Author Topic: What good book have you read lately? (New or old)  (Read 961938 times)

Offline ingmarnicebbmt

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Re: What good book have you read lately? (New or old)
« Reply #4080 on: January 20, 2022, 12:55:04 PM »
It wouldn’t be your favourite key if I sang it!

Will continue in PM as going off topic.

1. LOL 2. OK
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And maybe, he thought, they'd never got much farther than that.

Offline ingmarnicebbmt

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Re: What good book have you read lately? (New or old)
« Reply #4081 on: January 20, 2022, 12:55:24 PM »
Just as an aside, I have always love Benjamin Britten's works. I was introduced to him in high school by our choir mistress. We sang his Ceremony of Carol's as a Christmas concert. I've been hooked ever since.

I'm glad!   :)
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And maybe, he thought, they'd never got much farther than that.

Offline killersmom

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Re: What good book have you read lately? (New or old)
« Reply #4082 on: January 20, 2022, 07:25:14 PM »
I'm glad!   :)

I sang alto in high school. I don't have a voice anymore, but whenever I hear this work, it brings back really great memories.
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Offline michaelflanagansf

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Re: What good book have you read lately? (New or old)
« Reply #4083 on: January 21, 2022, 03:59:49 PM »
For the latest book in the book group I run we read "A Tale For The Time Being" by Ruth Ozeki. The narrative is a dialogue of sorts between two people: Nao, a 16 year old in Japan who has moved there from Sunnyvale after her father has fallen on hard times in high tech, and Ruth: a mid-30s-40s (it never says definitely) writer living on Cortes Island in Canada.

Ruth finds a lunchbox wrapped in freezer bags on the shoreline. Inside are the diaries of Nao and a watch from a Kamikaze pilot who was her great uncle (Haruki #1). There is also a notebook in French and several letters in Japanese.

The story unfolds as Nao is being severely bullied in her Japanese school. Her father (Haruki #2) has not been able to find work and becomes increasingly agoraphobic through the middle of the novel.

After discovering the abuse Nao's parents send her to her Great-Grandmother, a Zen Buddhist nun on the shoreline of Miyagi prefecture - and at that point the novel shifts radically. Old Jiko, the 104 year old nun, is the hero of the novel and helps both Nao and Haruki #2 reclaim their lives.

The novel is told as Ruth reads Nao's journal entries, all the while trying to figure out if the items have washed up on the Canadian shoreline from the 2011 tsunami.

I started out not being too fond of this book (the bullying scenes are disturbing), but when Old Jiko shows up and you start finding out the story of her son (Haruki #1) the novel becomes compelling. Old Jiko really makes the novel.
Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. - Karl R. Popper

Offline ingmarnicebbmt

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Re: What good book have you read lately? (New or old)
« Reply #4084 on: January 23, 2022, 05:23:28 AM »
I sang alto in high school. I don't have a voice anymore, but whenever I hear this work, it brings back really great memories.

I'd love to sing along with you.
Something we haven't done yet (it seems to me).
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And maybe, he thought, they'd never got much farther than that.

Offline killersmom

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Re: What good book have you read lately? (New or old)
« Reply #4085 on: January 23, 2022, 06:35:00 PM »
I'd love to sing along with you.
Something we haven't done yet (it seems to me).

No we haven't. But would love to.
"Life can only be understood backwards. Unfortunately, it must be lived forward."
... Kierkegaard

Offline ingmarnicebbmt

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Re: What good book have you read lately? (New or old)
« Reply #4086 on: January 24, 2022, 11:50:33 AM »

 :-*
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And maybe, he thought, they'd never got much farther than that.

Offline michaelflanagansf

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Re: What good book have you read lately? (New or old)
« Reply #4087 on: January 25, 2022, 11:39:18 AM »
Here is a transcript from the Zen Buddhist priest Ruth Ozeki (whose book I just reviewed) and Ezra Klein, from the New York Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/25/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-ruth-ozeki.html
Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. - Karl R. Popper

Offline tfferg

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Re: What good book have you read lately? (New or old)
« Reply #4088 on: January 25, 2022, 10:44:26 PM »
Here is a transcript from the Zen Buddhist priest Ruth Ozeki (whose book I just reviewed) and Ezra Klein, from the New York Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/25/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-ruth-ozeki.html

Very interesting interview! Thank you, Michael.

Offline tfferg

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Re: What good book have you read lately? (New or old)
« Reply #4089 on: January 26, 2022, 12:19:04 AM »
Memorial, the 2020 novel by Bryan Washington is not a tragedy. It is a multilayered gay love story.

Benson, a young Black child care worker, and Mike, a Japanese-born, American-raised chef about four years older, have been lovers for four years.They share a one-bedroom apartment in the  historically Black now gentrifying Third Ward of Houston, Texas. Their relationship has reached a turning point with Benson shutting down Mike's attempts to talk about their future. Although they love each other, they have serious problems communicating. Their frequent fights end in passionate sex

Often not knowing how they feel, they can't articulate their feelings. They come from similar broken family backgrounds. Both fathers are homophobic.

The novel opens with Benson's first person account of how Mike's mother Mitsuko is about to arrive from Japan to stay with him. She has told him his estranged father Eiju is dying of Stage 4 pancreatic cancer in Osaka. Mike announces that he is going to Osaka to reunite with him after sixteen years, leaving the shocked Benson with the prospect of living with a Japanese woman he has never met.

Memorial follows the couple as they work out their complicated shifting feelings for each other and their families. The first half of the book is Benson's account of living with the acerbic Mitsuko whose one liners can be very funny. The second part is Mike's first person account of his experience with his father who owns a bar in a red light district of Osaka and he thinks of his memories,  The third section of the book is Benson's point of view of what happens when Mike returns ro Houston. We can empathise with both young men.

Being who they are, Benson and Mike and all the characters in the book face multiple challenges based on historical and present treatment of their communities, social class differences, cultural differences. They have no wise elders to look to for advice or guidance

Benson and Mike and their families and friends are complex, nuanced characters. They are flawed, but often kind. None of them is unforgivable. They grow in many ways and seem to develop ways of repairing their relationships. One of the ways some of them do this is by sharing food and cooking for and with each other.

By the end of the book, there were hopeful developments, but I was left with questions about Benson and Mike's future. The author has admitted, "the ending is not quite clear". It is as if he didn't know how to resolve it.
« Last Edit: January 26, 2022, 12:57:42 AM by tfferg »

Offline michaelflanagansf

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Re: What good book have you read lately? (New or old)
« Reply #4090 on: January 26, 2022, 09:05:57 PM »
Very interesting interview! Thank you, Michael.

Thanks Tony! She's a very interesting author, and "A Tale for the Time Being" may be the first novel I've read by a Zen Buddhist priest.
Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. - Karl R. Popper

Offline Flyboy

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Re: What good book have you read lately? (New or old)
« Reply #4091 on: February 03, 2022, 05:41:30 PM »
When I find a new fiction author I like, I read ALL of their published works, if I can find them in my local public library. Right now, for many weeks now, I've been reading all of Michael Connelly's books. I'm not quite done, but I love his writing. Most of his stories are based in LA. I'm in the middle of his series on Detective Harry Bosch right now. All of Michael's books might last me till Spring!  ;D ;D ;D

Offline gattaca

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Re: What good book have you read lately? (New or old)
« Reply #4092 on: February 04, 2022, 04:28:15 AM »
^^^ What's the premise and storyline of the books... what draws you to them a/o the author?  V?

Offline michaelflanagansf

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Re: What good book have you read lately? (New or old)
« Reply #4093 on: February 04, 2022, 06:57:29 PM »
I'm halfway through Jenny Erpenbeck's book "Go, Went, Gone" for my book group next Tuesday. It's about a retired professor from the former East Germany who becomes interested in several refugees from West Africa (Mali, Ghana, Nigeria and Niger) and interviews them to find out about their lives. It's interesting, but I have to say feels a bit exploitative. If I were a refugee and a professor emeritus came around and started asking me questions I would clam up.

We'll see if she pulls it together by the end of the book.

Here's a review:

https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2017/september/go-went-gone-jenny-erpenbeck
Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. - Karl R. Popper

Offline tfferg

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Re: What good book have you read lately? (New or old)
« Reply #4094 on: February 06, 2022, 10:53:56 PM »
I'm halfway through Jenny Erpenbeck's book "Go, Went, Gone" for my book group next Tuesday. It's about a retired professor from the former East Germany who becomes interested in several refugees from West Africa (Mali, Ghana, Nigeria and Niger) and interviews them to find out about their lives. It's interesting, but I have to say feels a bit exploitative. If I were a refugee and a professor emeritus came around and started asking me questions I would clam up.

We'll see if she pulls it together by the end of the book.

Here's a review:

https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2017/september/go-went-gone-jenny-erpenbeck

I'm reading Christos Tsiolkas' latest novel published last year, 7 1/2. The narrator has rented a house near the beach on the south coast of New South Wales to work on a new novel. He rejects his usual themes. In a fierce late night argument with an old friend, he says,

'I know that there is so much happening in the world that should concern me....Crisis and revolution, war and bushfires, the pandemic and the shifts in the superpowers. All that and more.

[I'm sure "more" would include the egregious treatment of refugees and asylum seekers.]

'But there is nothing I can offer anymore to illuminate any of that. And these days, when I read novels that are all crisis and revolution, war and bushfires, I am nauseated by their arrogance and their naivety. Every bloody novelist sounds the same now, whether they are American or Austrian or Angolan or Andalusian or Australian. All the same cant, all the same desire to shape the world to their academic whims and aspirations. All this compassion and all this outrage and all this empathy and all this sorrow and all this fear and all this moralising and not one sentence of surprise in any of it... Not one moment of beauty. I don't want to write that fucking novel.'