Which books will you be reading in the new year this 2025?

Previous thread:

R1 I've read "Confessions of a Fox." It was well written and enlightening.

Primed for January 2025 reads: Louis Bayard's "The Wildes"; Ernst Junger's "On the Marble Cliffs," an allegory about the rise of fascism: Cynthia Reeves's "The Last Whaler"; Boris Akunin's "The Coronation"; Christopher Bollen's well-reviewed mystery/thriller "Havoc"; Lily Tuck's "The Rest Is Memory".

I want to read the new Hollinghurst novel.

The Celestine Prophecy, The Secret, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Dianetics.

Finishing James and then Greta and Valdin, Tiepolo Blue (thanks to the earlier recommendation, and one due in February, Mutual Interest.

I also added Tiepolo Blue to my list, thanks to the poster in the previous thread.

I hear the new Christopher Bollen novel is superb until the final chapters when it all falls miserably apart.

I'm reading EAST OF EDEN which was one of the first adult books I read as a young teen. I've forgotten most of it (my teens years were over 50 years ago!), and I don't know the film very well. But I'm just loving Steinbeck's prose - what a master storyteller!

I believe there will be a new miniseries of the book which will include all the early family history that the Kazan film left out. I think Mike Faist is playing the James Dean role. It will be sure to bring the novel's popularity back into prominence again.

Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault From Within on Modern Democracy by Tom Nichols

r2, does one need to have read the earlier Boris Akunin Fandorin mysteries in the series to appreciate The Coronation?

R10 No. They are stand-alone.

Havoc by Chris Bollen.

r12, please come back when you finish it and let us know what you think. I hear, after a brilliant start, it doesn't end well.

The new vook coming out about Vivien Leigh from “A Streetcar Named Desire” to her death from tuberculosis in 1965. These were the years when her bi-polarism took over her life.

R14, what's it called? I'm a big Vivien Leigh fan

"Natalie Woods' Fatal Voyage"---Dylan Howard.

Read "What is the Grass: Walt Whitman in My Life" by the poet/scholar Mark Doty.

He explores Whitman's gay inventions, visions, and sensibilities, and how they intertwined with Doty's own history as a gay man and poet growing up in the 70s etc. Highly recommended. Some of it highly erotic.

Want to finish reading 100 years of Solitude , Invisible Man Anna Karenina

"Queer: How a Closeted Homosexual Found Himself Ousted by the World's Richest Man," by Usha Vance.

"Fifty and Fucking Fabulous: Thirst Traps For All Y'all," by Ryan Phillippe.

"Ten Abs and Zero Fucks: Killing an Epic Asshole," by Luigi Mangione.

"Helen Lawson Exposed: Sixty Years of Eschewing Booze & Dope," by Helen Lawson.

Continuing from the last thread:

Douglas Stuart's [italic]Shuggie Bain[/italic] and [italic]Young Mungo[/italic] were not the same book. The former was about a young gay child's parentification while dealing with his alcoholic mother. [italic]Young Mungo[/italic] was a contrast of gay romantic love with man-on-boy sexual abuse, showing how the family conspired to support same-sex abuse by default and how afraid it was of same-sex love. That's why I consider Stuart an excellent gay writer. People who think they are the same book need to get out more to accumulate some discernment to get beyond the Glaswegian backdrop (which deserved representation anyway).

(And yes, that last sentence was a run-on. Deal.)

Tropic of Cancer. Fiona Shaw's weirdo character was reading it in Bad Sisters and now I'm curious.

In the last thread I only suggested that the reason YOUNG MUNGO might not have had more success nor received more attention was because Stuart's second book was not enough of a departure from SHUGGIE BAIN. Same setting, same issues, virtually the same characters with different names, same themes. The main difference was the lead character who is a child in the first book and a teenager in the follow-up. Not a criticism, just an observation.

I never said they were the same book. I read both, enjoyed both, but probably would recommend SHUGGIE over MUNGO if someone wanted to read just one.

We were discussing Douglas Stuart in the context of gay lit/gay authors, not general audiences.

OK, r24, so the reason gay readers might not have clamored for YOUNG MUNGO is....because of the same reasons I cited at r23 (and the in the previous thread).

R23 has made sense about Stuart's two books. I am unclear what R24 is on about. Were they the same book? No, duh. Did they both deal with the same setting, with the same class, with the same sexual identity foci, with the same alcohol and violence... yes. But more importantly to me, the story telling and writing in the second book did not match the first. The whole kidnapping, man/boy thing just didn't seem as authentic as Shuggie Bain's story. We can disagree, certainly.

There are authors who seem to write the same story over and over. F. Scott Fitzgerald has one story. Charlotte Bronte. John Grisham. Robert Heinlein. P.G. Wodehouse. Dan Brown. Barbara Pym. et. al. I think there are some authors whose "first version of his one and only story" is the best (Dan Brown) and others whose each subsequent iteration of their one and only story is just as amusing or impactful.

I look forward to Stuart's next book.

As part of a 2025 reading challenge, I'm starting off with a Victorian novel, [italic]New Grub Street[/italic] by George Gissing. Mixed reviews, but audio narration seems good early on. Doing a modern Japanese read along with it that's working out well: [italic]The North Light[/italic] by Hideo Yokoyama.

YA story [italic]Thirteen Reasons Why[/italic] has me keeping my expectations low, but it's a tough category to fill for me. I'm far more optimistic about Bernice Rubens' [italic]Sunday Best[/italic] and L. P. Hartley's [italic]The Harness Room[/italic].

Finally, I've got [italic]Sapiens[/italic] on my list (as a translated book), if you've read it: approachable ... or geared towards intellectuals?

I loved New Grub Street. Enjoy, r27!

Tried to read a few of Bernice Rubens' books, as her apparent quirkiness seemed right up my alley. But could never quite get into her. But I don't think Sunday Best was one of them - if you finish it, please let us know what you think.

MARTYR! has appeared on virtually every Best list for 2024, but I just couldn't get into it after about 100 pages. Anyone else, yea or nay?

I usually read nonfiction about current events. This year I'm switching to light murder mysteries. I remember reading Dorothy Sayers long ago, so I'll start with those.

I liked Rubens' [italic]A Five Year Sentence[/italic], R28, so decided to try another.

R30: I'm going to go waaaaay out on a limb here regarding light murder mysteries. Consider the Colonel Bainbridge series (set c. 1900) by Evelyn James ([italic]The Gentleman Detective[/italic] being first). In the Wilde-Bosie era of prosecuting sodomy this one strikes me as Don't Ask, Don't Tell: the Colonel's (business) partner was murdered just as the series opened, they shared a house together, Colonel is given condolences due a surviving significant other from those who knew the pair, reader is told he's suffering great grief. His niece has arrived fleeing her insufferable mother, his sister; that snobbish lady and the Colonel have been long estranged.

r27, IIRC the Rubens books I read were The Waiting Game and The Elected Member, neither of which quite did it for me.

I've finished Higginbotham's "Challenger."; it was very good, but not as compelling as "Chernobyl." For all the hundreds of pages of lead-up and background, I would have liked to have more on the disaster itself and the aftermath.

Anyway, I want to try some recent popular fiction next. Should I read "All the Colors of the Dark" or "God of the Woods"? Convince me.

Night Clit

I read Confessions of a Fox when it first came out. It found it insufferable. Too clever by half. You can feel the author's smugness oozing out of every single obnoxiously pretentious footnote.

Pale Fire, it's not.

Fox Fire by Avon

The God of the Woods is truly brilliant modern fiction, a wonderfully complex story told over several decades, that literally grabs you on the first page and engages you to the last unexpected revelation. Not quite a thriller and not quite a whodunnit, but more a generational epic tale with unforgettable characters and complicated relationships caught in the tragedy of life. I also highly recommend Liz Moore's The Unseen World and Heft.

All the Colors of the Dark begins in somewhat the same way, a lost child whose disappearance seems to affect a small, layered community but takes forever to get going. To tell the truth, I bought it after my high with The God of the Woods and read 100 pages before giving up. I just didn't care enough about the characters to find out what happened. The author is not American though the story is set here and his lack of knowledge of certain details occasionally reveals itself. It's about as deep as an old movie of the week. Its popularity baffles me,

I very much enjoyed Whitaker's We Begin at the End..

R37 Thank you. I've downloaded samples of both, and I could tell that something was "off" about the depiction of America in 1975 in "All the Colors.." I thought perhaps the author was simply too young, but his being British makes sense as well.

Brave new world

I bought -- but haven't started yet -- Stendhal's The Red and the Black.

R41 I've been trying to "finish" The Red and the Black for over 50 years.

What about it did you find impenetrable r42?

R43 I am admitting my own ADHD, dilettante nature, and lack of discipline. Short chapters, simple prose. It's me, not Stendhal. It was mom's paperback copy and is old and beat up.... I like to have hard copy. Book poseur.

I also tried reading The Red and the Black a few years ago. Promising start, and I read quite a bit (maybe 150 pages?) but got to a point where I realized I didn't care what happened next. Same with The Way of All Flesh.

Both have great titles if nothing else.

Well, there just isn't much blue in The Red and the Black.

...And Stendahl would ruin the plan of attack.

Hoping to get into Faulkner bthis coming year. Ive started and stopped the following: Absalom! Absalom! , As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, Light In August-- and got to only a few pages before putting it down

I recently placed an order for Snopes and figured I will begin with that instead.

Have you read Thomas Payne’s - Common Sense?

R 15, It’s called WHERE MADNESS LIES, it comes out January 7.

r50, don't put a space between the letter and the number.

R48. I used to teach Faulkner—with As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury, it helps to read it aloud—or get an audiobook. Avoid James Franco’s films of them.

I think “”The Bear,” while challenging, can be a good entry—as is the whole volume, Go Down, Moses. Intruder in the Dust is Faulkner’s murder mystery (he wrote short mystery stories, too, collected as Knight’s Gambit), but it still has some of his thematic and stylistic characteristics. There’s a good film of it. I like The Reivers a lot, but it feels more like Mark Twain than Faulkner.

I’ve been trying to read all the books that everyone else read in high school. I read Martian Chronicles and a couple of Shirley Jackson novels, and I’m now reading Frankenstein.

I’d always heard the movies changed a lot, and it’s easy to see why!

Getting through any Faulkner is a major accomplishment, at least for me. I recently read Middlemarch and Magic Mountain, notoriously difficult reads, and they were as easy as Stephen King next to Absalom! Absalom!

r54 both Middlemarch and The Magic Mountain have long been on my list. I started Middlemarch and made it maybe 100 pages in before getting distracted by something.

Buddenbrooks is one of my favorite novels.

Highly recommended.

Why not read Thomas Payne - Common Sense??

Reading the Reverend Richard Coles's [italic]Murder Under The Mistletoe[/italic] while on a long flight. He's the one who became an out gay Anglican priest after his music career in The Communards, and is a bit of a media personality in the UK. It's very British and churchy, but in a more erudite [italic] Vicar of Dibley[/italic] way. Not sure many of you would like it, but it's cosy murder mystery fun.

I can only do "classics" as audiobooks, print copies seem intimidating. I have a poor memory for plot details, but retain an impression of how I felt about the books ...

"Middlemarch" was one I'm glad I tackled, but could see why others had trouble with it. We read "Light in August" for college lit class, which was enough Faulkner for me.

R53: we read Wharton's [italic]Ethan Frome[/italic] in high school, largely hating it.

I swear Balzac's inspiration for [italic]Cousin Bette[/italic] was, "Let me try a story with those Dataloungers as the target audience!" Lizzie Eustace of Trollope's [italic]The Eustace Diamonds[/italic] would be another DL icon chaezcter; his [italic]The Way We Live Now[/italic] is a huge soap opera, including the trope of "the one woman I ever loved got away, so as a young man it was a lifetime of celibacy ahead." (roll eyes here)

I, for one, LOVED Ethan Frome and The Way We Live Now, two of my favorite reads of my adulthood. Middlemarch was a challenge about 20 years ago, but I got through it. Thinking it'll deserve a re-read before I die when I hope it'll have more emotional resonance (but maybe it's more of a woman's book.

I remember now what I was forgetting earlier Somerset Maugham's [italic]The Painted Veil[/italic] is a must-read, for the "salad" scene alone!

White Rural Rage by Tom Schaller & Paul Waldman. I'm trying to understand how we got to this place and how we might get out of it.

Placed an order for 2 of Chris Hedges' books: America the Farewell Tour and Empire of Illusions. Like R62, Im searching for answers

Ethan Frome: Saddest Story Ever Told (pretty much). It makes The House of Mirth seem like a screwball comedy.

I think I got halfway through Middlemarch in my... twenties? and just stopped with an OK, I GET IT already. I didn't hate it, I'd just had enough (er, sufficient).

THE PAINTED VEIL is indeed excellent, and I hope someday soon to reread OF HUMAN BONDAGE which I read when I was a teenager, most of it probably going over my head). But I couldn't get through THE RAZOR'S EDGE which some say was his masterpiece.

Also, great in that VEIL vein is A HANDFUL OF DUST by Evelyn Waugh, about upper crust Brits brought down by the perils of exotic climes. Never been able to get into uch more of Waugh, though repeatedly tried.

R58,

Richard Coles told people he was HIV positive when he was not. Drama queen.

Harvey Fierstein's autobiography is going to get my second read.

R65, I have a few collections of Waugh short stories. I love them

Coles owned up to it very publicly and got his karmic payback by losing a husband to alcoholism.

Just finished “Kingmaker - Pamela Harriman’s Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue” by Sonia Parnell.

She married Winston Churchill’s son, bore him a son, and fucked an awful lot of Americans in service to her country before and during WW2 before fucking a lot of important Euros when it was over, then marrying again, first to the producer Leland Hayward and finally to her oldest love, Averell Harriman, and then spending his money to revive the Democratic Party and elect Bill Clinton.

And thus did Clinton make a British-born courtesan the American ambassador to our oldest ally, France. Quite a life.

I finished Alan Hollinghurst's "Our Evenings": it was such a disappointment. There was almost no plot to it. YThe mian character grows up to be a mdoerately successful stage actor who mostly does small roles, and the rich boy who used to torment him at public school grows up to be a famous Tory iminster, but they have so little interaction as adults right to the end it made almost no sense to me.

Not R12 but I read Havoc by Chirstopher Bollen. It's great fun and an enjoyable trip to Luxor Egypt. It has a gay couple. Anyone who's into White Lotus or Patricia Highsmith would have fun with it I bet.

Have to fully agree with you on that one, r71. Throughout reading, it felt like the beginnings of about 7 or 8 better novels that never quite got going.

I'm a long-time Hollinghurst fan but I really don't get some of the ecstatic reviews here and elsewhere.

I'm in the middle of The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers by Samuel Burr, a fun sweet mystery about a young British man who was adopted as a foundling into a society/commune of professional puzzle makers and attempts to discover who his birth parents really were after his adopted mother, who founded the society, dies.

It's actually not nearly as twee as it sounds, quite smart, very similar in tone to the Richard Osman Thursday Murder Club books. The mother has left him a series of clues, drawn up as different kinds of cryptic puzzles, that the reader can also attempt to solve before the young man does. Great winter weekend reading.

Agree with r71 and r73 re Our Evenings. Though the writing was good as always it was almost perverse now potential plots and characters were abandoned. The relationship with the rich family was completely undercooked, as were his several love affairs. On the other hand, there were countless and unnecessary trips to his village and wondering around the streets and woods there. As such, the ending left me cold.

Several books by English philosopher Michael Oakeshott.

John Stuart Mill's On Liberty

John Stuart Mill's On Representative Government

Montaigne's Essays.

The Odyssey translate by Fagles.

The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions―and How the World Lost Its Mind by Dan Davies.

Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress―and How to Bring It Back by Marc Dunkelman.

Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson.

Re: Hollinghurst, I just learned he was Knighted in the New Year Honours list. A worthy Knight Bachelor indeed!

My copy of 'Our Evenings' is as yet unopened, but I'll loyally immerse one day despite all noted reservations. A recent interview with AH had him mention that the older he gets, the more he finds to write about. Maybe this amplitude over-filled 'Our Evenings'. At any rate, he's said the Knighthood is an encouragement to keep going, so let's see where that great talent takes him next.

In Our Evenings, from beginning to nearly the end, AH kept introducing interesting new characters to interact with the lead character, who I expected would get a plot or at least a subplot going, but then AH couldn't seem to muster the energy to develop them.

Very odd, maybe he is over it all. Certainly, my most disappointing read this past year.

Vulva Vista

And yet it has been on many Best OF lists and is often predicted for the Booker list.

I've been reading "The Square of Sevens" by Laura Shepherd-Robinson, and it is so much fun. It's basically a sensation novel, like those of Wilkie Collins or Dickens, but set in the mid-eighteenth century.

Perhaps Holinghurst had all these fleeting characters and interactions for a reason. Perhaps he wanted you annoyed and feeling a sense of lost opportunity/FOMO and perhaps some wasted time? Isn't that part of life? Has he said anything about this? It doesn't seem like he'd do it for no reason.

I was one of those praising “Our Evenings” upthread early on, and I certainly enjoyed the first half. But I was ultimately disappointed. He skips his main character’s middle age for the most part, and as some have noted, drops plots and characters I would have liked to see better developed.

I think he bit off more than he could chew during Covid lockdown and the immediate aftermath. That and the dire political situation in the UK and US seems to me to be the inspiration (if you can call it that) for the sudden sad ending to the novel.

Lovely writing as always, but shallow, sketchy, doesn’t hang together. But then maybe some lives are like that. Glad he’s in the honors, maybe it will cheer him up and the next book will be more coherent.

That one's been on my TBR pile for a while, R81. Saving it for when I need something I know I'll probably enjoy.

I'm staring at a pile of best-selling, well-reviewed books I bought in 2024 that I attempted to read but couldn't finish, or barely got into:

MARTYR!

ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK

THE WEDDING

THE ISLAND OF MISSING TREES

ALL FOURS

Well, at least my indie bookstore will get a nice donation this week.

Anyone familiar with [italic]Deliberate Cruelty[/italic] by Roseanne Montillo? Truman Capote becomes involved with a killing (officially self-defense) by a socialite in 1955. On my TBR list.

R86 It kinda sucked. There were some errors of fact that made the rest of the book less credible. The book mentions a shopkeeper placing Mrs. Woodward's purchases in the backseat of her 1955 Thunderbird which would have been a nice thing to do if 1955 T-birds had back seats. But they didn't - Thunderbirds were two seaters until 1958. She got the means of Woodward's suicide wrong. She ID's Sarah Churchill as Consuelo Vanderbilt's daughter, which should have been a whopper to an editor: she was Winston Churchill's daughter. That would be like saying (of a well-known US family) that Caroline Kennedy was Rose Kennedy's child.

Too many glaring mistakes that I caught at once, making me think there are more I did not notice.

"God of the Woods" was a great read; thanks for the recommendation.

The Art of the Deal

I'm desperate for more heavily-plotted smartly written modern fiction like The God of the Woods. All recommendations welcome.

I'm looking for something that resembles early John Grisham. I love legal thrillers. Good, and some great ones, used to be a dime a dozen. Now you can't seem to find a good one.

I have Cher's book on hold at the library.

Gypsies, thieves, and cheap asses. Go fucking buy it.

My Toxic Cunt

I’m going to read Cormac McCarthy‘s border trilogy. I’ve actually cheated and began reading All the Pretty Horses a few days ago.

I'm reading a YA novel, [italic]Thirteen Reasons Why[/italic] by Jay Asher. The life of heterosexual adolescents sounds quite baffling to me, like a tribe in New Guinea or the Amazon.

R93 I have Cher’s book as yet unboxed, bought as a gift if I needed a last minute present for a non-drinker. But I couldn’t think of anyone, so I’ll have to read it myself.

My sister is reading Cher's book. She says it's excellent. She also said she couldn't make it more than 1/2 way past Barbra's book.

Am reading The Sleepwalkers, from Christopher Clark, on the origins on the First World War. It is fascinating and he is a great writer, makes the (to my ignorant self) Balkans seems fascinating. Will follow with the triology of Richard Evans in the Third Reich. Will probably emerge from my house late March.

I overheard a conversation at a NYE party last night between a writer and another guest. He was excitedly recommending a "fantastic sci-fi novel" by TJ Klune, "In The Lives Of Puppets". He said he wasn't usually a big fan of sci-fi. I ordered it as soon as I got home.

r100, please come back and give us a book report when you've read it.

Ulysses

About 100 pages into The Wager by David Grann. I find it riveting.

If ever I needed help from my fellow DL'ers it's now!

I've just finished [italic]Thirteen Reasons Why[/italic], teen girl commits suicide, leaving behind tapes, explaining why. Told from the point of view of the boy who wished he could have rescued her, but now will feel guilt for the rest of his life. I can't identify with any of the characters. It's like reading about some tribe in the Amazon or New Guinea. The str8 boy seems to need to "process" like a stereotypical lesbian. Are there really "in touch" str8 boys like that?

I am reading Earth to Moon by Moon Unit Zappa and I LOVE it.

Next book is The Salt Path by Raynor Winn

I started Long Island Compromise and it’s given me giggling fits. Also reading Earth To Moon and An Abbreviated Life.

Long Island Compromise was among my top 10, or even top 5, best books last year.

Nearly done with Zola's Rougon-Macquart. Next project, a bit lighter, is to zip through as much Agatha Christie as I can.

Ingenious though she may have been, I think I'd find a lot of sameness running through most of Christie's mysteries to be reading one after the other.

The ones that tend to be a bit different have mostly been made into films: And Then There Were None, Murder on the Orient Express, The Mirror Crack'd, then there's Death on the Nile and Evil Under the Sun for exotic locales but so-so plots, the very unique The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. A Murder Is Announced is probably my favorite run-of-the-mill Miss Marple village murder.

I finished Earth To Moon and An Abreviated Life. I can’t read any more terrible mother stories for a while. Moon comes off as quite a dilettante at the end.

If you like the history of the royal family you'll love this book. Very detailed without being boring.

R108, how did the project go? Did you like them? Have started The Fortune of The Rougons this weekend and am enjoying it a lot.

Small Rain by Garth Greenwell

[quote]The new vook coming out about Vivien Leigh from “A Streetcar Named Desire” to her death from tuberculosis in 1965. These were the years when her bi-polarism took over her life.

I've wanted to read "Truly, Madly" about the Brangelina of their day (minus the brood of children): Leigh & Olivier. Anyone read it?

I wanted to read another Dickens novel, probably Bleak House. I like Dickens, but I can take him in small doses

And finally, King: A Life, mostly because he's so widely quoted, but many people have no idea of his actual beliefs (ending poverty - Boring!)

Bleak House is one of my all-time favorite books but can't imagine reading it in small doses as there's so much plot and so many characters, you'd forget a lot. For me it required a deep dive with lots of time to read.

But you do you, r114.

I just finished "The Bee Sting" by Paul Murray, which I quite liked. I'm currently reading "Colored Television" by Danzy Senna. So far nothing much seems to be happening plot-wise, but I'm only a couple of chapters in. Hopefully it will pick up.

I would like to read a few books set in Los Angeles that really give a feel for the city. I've never lived there, but I love LA and the current situation has been heartbreaking. Anyone have any suggestions, either fiction or non-fiction?

R113, does he ever actually write fiction? Every book is some form of auto-fiction (where all the characters have letters for their name and every main character is very obviously Garth himself).

He’s a good writer. I’d just be interested in him extending beyond himself in one of these books. Hasn’t happened yet.

Greenwell writes a lot about sex without ever being arousing. For me at least.

Bleak House is my favorite novel.

[quote]Bleak House is one of my all-time favorite books but can't imagine reading it in small doses as there's so much plot and so many characters, you'd forget a lot. For me it required a deep dive with lots of time to read.

Sorry; by "small doses" I meant I recently read David Copperfield and while I enjoyed it and all the twists and turns, I couldn't have started another Dickens novel after that book.

I enjoy Victorian novels and I've read a lot of them, but one Victorian author whose works I had never read before was Anthony Trollope. I decided to give him a try and now I'm on the last novel in his Chronicles of Barsetshire series. Trollope's writing reminds me quite a bit of Charles Dickens (probably my favorite author), but his plots are not as sprawling, so it's easier and faster to get through the books of his that I've read so far.

Truly Madly was good, R114, in that covered her life evenly, neither salacious or deferential. Mental illness had to be a torment and as imperfect as today’s psych meds are, they had nothing then.

r121, I LOVE Trollope and have written about that love in many DL book threads over the years.

My favorites are actually all stand-alones, not part of his Barsetshire or Palliser series: The Way We Live Now (his masterpiece IMHO), Orley Farm and He Knew He Was Right. Also, the much shorter The Vicar of Belhampton and The Belton Estate - if you or anyone is looking for recommendations.

Love Trollope too, but he's not the master stylist or narrative genius that Dickens is. But there's room for both in the universe, thank goodness.

Just finished the best-selling THE FROZEN RIVER by Ariel Lawhon, about an 18th century midwife in the wilds of Maine during a tumultuous winter, who finds herself in the midst of a murder mystery. Inspired by a real midwife's life, lots of characters and subplots, 415 pages, perhaps a little schlocky, but actually quite riveting and fun reading for a cold winter's night.

R123. I plan to work my way through all of Trollope, so I'll definitely be reading all those books! The reason I started with the Chronicles is because a book YouTuber I watch recommended The Warden, which she did not mention was part of them. Luckily it was the first one in the series, which I later discovered, so I kept reading.

It's also economical since I have a Kindle and almost all of his books (and soooooo many other Victorian novelists') are available for free.

R126 = R121

Just finished Hilary Mantel's The Mirror and the Light, her final Cromwell novel, ahead of the television version appearing on PBS in March. I'd read it when it came out and still find it baggy in sections (I guess after the success of the first two Cromwell books her publisher let her write long, which was a mistake), but a lot of it remains gripping, especially the end.

Now on to Barbara Pym's Civil To Strangers, a collection of her unpublished works that I didn't know existed until I saw it in Powell's Books in Portland, OR.

I just did a rewatch of the 2008 (?) version of Dickens' Little Dorrit and am tempted to reread that as well. Andrew Davies did an excellent job of adapting it for TV.

Perhaps heretical, but I sometimes recommend watching the David Suchet video of [italic]The Way We Live Now[/italic] before reading the novel.

Alan Rickman pwned (as the kids might write) Barchester Chronicles as Slope, although Geraldine MacEwan gave a DL diva performance as Mrs Proudie.

"Transparency: The Material History of an Idea". By Daniel Jütte. 2023

Agree that Mirror and the Light was too long. Can see why the third Booker Prize wasn't coming her way

I read "Truly, Madly": initially interesting, but it became somewhat tiresome as it went on.

I want to tackle a Dickens I haven't read--either "Our Mutual Friend" or "Dombey and Son." Loved "Bleak House." Loved "Oliver Twist" (7th grde), "Great Expectations" (9th grade), and "David Copperfield" (sometime in high school or college). "The Old Curiosity Shop" and "Barnaby Rudge" are considered lesser Dickens, but I enjoyed both. For "Barnaby Rudge," you do well to review the Gordon Riots, but you also get Grip, the raven, as a reward. Quilp in "Shop" is a really fun melodramatic Dickens villain.

I preferred [italic]Our Mutual Friend[/italic] to [italic]Dombey and Son[/italic], the latter seeming grim.

Oh, now see, I much preferred Dombey & Son to Our Mutual Friend (which I've started about 3 times and never finished). Also, could barely finish Barnaby Rudge.

I loved those TV versions of Little Dorrit and The Way We Live Now. Watched them both after reading the novels. Brilliant casts in both.

Thanks to those of you who opined that [italic]The Mirror and the Light[/italic] is long-winded. I was being all completist holding off on watching the series until I had read that, but I'm not going to do that now.

R135 It's still well worth reading, though. Cromwell's end is very powerful and isn't nearly as well done in the series.

Any love for Little Dorritt? I think of it as one of CD's underappreciated classics.

Two recent reads: GIANT LOVE, the story of the Edna Ferber's novel GIANT and its transformation into. a classic film. Ferber herself was fascinating and the movie lore is dishy. MUTUAL INTEREST is a Glided Age tale of three queer entrepreneurs (a woman and two male lovers) create a successful business while leading active but closeted sex lives. It reads as if Edith Wharton wrote a comic but decorous gay novel.

R132, Our Mutual Friend is my favorite Dickens novel, but Dombey & Son is my next favorite

R129, I would love to see both of those actors in those roles!

I'm reading Small Rain, thanks to R113. I'm enjoying it so far and the writing is really lovely.

I'm almost 1/2 through a very charming book called Smouldering Fire, first published in the UK in 1935 and now in a new paperback edition. It's by DE Stevenson, a bestselling author of her time, who also happened to be the niece of Robert Louis Stevenson.

The book is about a young Scottish landowner who lets his country estate to a wealthy nouveau riche London businessman for a summer for funds to keep the impoverished estate running. Kind of a slow start but really gets going when you begin to meet the various members of the Londoner's party who come to enjoy the country life with him, all resulting in a murder mystery.

Perfect cold winter night reading.

I'm reading Hollywood Ending: Harvey Weinstein And The Culture Of Silence. I can't believe he made it as far as he did, he's a fucking psychopath. Been raping women since the 70s, when he was a local music promoter.

What I found really disturbing is a lot of these women would continue to work for him after he raped them, because they didn't want to give up working in the business.

I just read the composer Ricky Ian Gordon's "Seeing Through: A Chronicle of Sex, Drugs, and Opera," which someone recommended on a previous thread. I found it easy to get into and hard to put down. He was in his mid-60s when he wrote the book, but started very early in life with sex, drugs, and opera ("I asked for things before I should have had them") , so he has a lot of stories to share and he holds nothing back ("You are only as sick as your secrets"). His original title for the book was "Will You Be My Father?", which is both funny and sad, like a lot of what he lived through.

He shares a lot in the book, including his obsession with semen. He says a shrink told him it was because he wasn't breast fed.

Fingering myself at speeds that make it feel like I’m drunk

Can someone recommend me a crime novel in like those of Gillian Flynn? ie, a good example of the genre like Gone Girl, and not some goofy thing like The Girl On The Train or The Woman In The Window.

[quote] What I found really disturbing is a lot of these women would continue to work for him after he raped them, because they didn't want to give up working in the business.

That’s very normal, behaviour TBH. Disturbing, but children and teens are abused when they get on with things and stay in school with their abusers or still hang around their parents’ friends. Same applies to adults. Most people don’t go to the police or HR so they have to continue to get on with life to make a living.

r142, the most common reaction people have when someone tells them they were sexually abused is "Shut up." They really don't want to know. What are you supposed to do? You go on with your life.

My Hole

R119 Shit Housr is mine

R146, i read a lot of crime fiction and Glllian Flynn was one of a kind though i think Gone Girl wasn’t a perfect book by all means. There is a writer Riley Sager that works on the same territory. Also not perfect reads well. Karin Slaughter is very violent but has some hood books.

If police procedurals are your type can recommend Gytha Loddge.

I keep it simple - first grade style Captain Underpants

My husband’s riveted by Cher’s autobio. He said it’s not a dissertation but that she was there and remembers most of it correctly. And has a lively, relatable style. I don’t have to read it - he’s recapping all the good parts.

First line on the jacket: “There is only one Cher”

I liked Flynn's [italic]Sharp Objects[/italic] more than [italic]Gone Girl[/italic] - talk about a twisted ending!

Right I’m reading Landslide (about LBJ and Reagan), Topaz the spy novel, Whistling In The Dark, The Seance In Apt 10, What She Knew, Ten Days In A Madhouse.

Please come back and tell us which ones you loved (if any), r155. Interesting titles!

OK. If you’re not being snarky.

r155, I'm not being snarky. Why would you think that?

^its ridiculous isn’t it. An actress not wanting to do a romantic slow dancing scene that is a key part of the script decides she’s being sexually assaulted. It’s insanity.

Has anyone read the bestselling and award-winning novel GREAT CIRCLE by Maggie Shipstead? I avoided buying it since it first appeared a few years ago thinking it was chick-lit but I'm now 100 pages in and just loving it. What an effortlessly entertaining writer she is.

The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins

Parliamentary America: The Lead Radical Means of Radically Repairing Our Broken Democracy by Maxwell Stearns. He's a law professor and this is definitely a book for a general audience, but as a political scientist, I'm interested in what he has to say.

After, it's likely going to be The Concubine Who Launched Modern China: Empress Dowager Cixi by Jung Chang. I've read Anchee Min's 2 historical novels about the Dowager Empress, so a more factual overview should be interesting.

And then, I'm going to dive into Chinese literature by starting Volume 1 of Romance of the 3 Kingdoms. It's claimed to be China's greatest novel, and I've always been intrigued by it.

It Is DL after all R158.

Thanks r151, I will check those out.

I liked all of Flynn’s books and have liked none of the TV shows and movies. Her books are quite funny. The lead female characters have a kind of semi-naïeve obliviousness, especially in Dark Places.

The Sharp Objects TV show took itself sooooo seriously. In the book I could see the ending coming a mile off but loved the journey; there was a heightened VC Andrews quality to the gothicness.

Agree, r164, sharp objects was actually my favorite of her novels, couldn’t end the tv series though.

Am intrigued how you find her books funny. They are dark (though camp somehow)

Am finally getting around to Dostoyevsky's [bold]Crime and Punishment[/bold] (translated by Oliver Ready). It's been on my TBR pile for far too long.

I finished Whistling In The Dark and it was good. Reminiscent of To Kill A Mockingbird but different time period. What She Knew was good too. The Seance in Apt. 10 was ordinary. Actually I think it was free from Kindle. Landslide I’m still into. It’s an excellent read and not as hard to plow through as are so many political tomes. 10 days in a Madhouse is the muckraker by Nellie Bly. This is the 19th century so we still had a long long way to go in institutional care. And the Lobotomobile was still to come….

Listening to [italic]The Plantagenets[/italic] by Dan Jones, where he lives up to the glowing reviews of bringing the period to life reading the material himself. Took a break from the Japanese novel [italic]The North Light[/italic], just too long to read straight through even though I am interested in story resolution.

Yawns

It helps everyone reading this thread tremendously if you give the names of the authors as well as the titles, and if you say a sentence or two what the book is about, and whether it's fiction or non-fiction. This is especially true if it's a book that's been out for a while.

I agree ^^^^^^^^^^^

I don’t want to give anything away in mine. If you search the titles on Open Library you can get info even if you can’t read the book there. Poor Open Library has been gutted by copyrights laws. Which seems weird to me because it’s a library.

Paul Mason, How to Stop Fascism. Published in 2021, but still....important.

For those if you with an Audible membership, [italic]The Crazy Kill[/italic] by Chester Himes has awesome narration - perfect for Black History Month! 1959 novel (detective story) set in Harlem.

Maybe this belongs on MSNBC thread, but anybody read Chris Hayes' new book yet?

New mystery WORDHUNTER by Stella Sands. Kidnappings and other crimes investigated by linguistics expert who's also a tattooed, pierced, smartmouth, cleverer and savvier than any of the cops she works with. A speedy, funny. breezy read. A treat.

I'm currently reading [italic]Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV[/italic] by Emily Nussbaum. If you're interested in the history and evolution of reality/unscripted television, it's a good read.

Currently reading Justin Cronin's "The Ferryman." Interesting concept, lackluster prose and execution thus far..

I'm reading "Adventures in Volcanoland" by British earth scientist Tamsin Mather, which includes a chapter about the Greek islands of Santorini, which are currently being evacuated due to earthquakes that may lead to volcanic eruption.

I’m reading Great Circle, which I thought might be frau-y (a “Read with Jenna” pick) but it’s wonderful so far.

Whose Reading Club choices do you abhor/embrace?

"The Ferryman" wound up going completely off the rails about 1/3 of the way in, and I got to the point where I just couldn't wait for it to end. Do not recommend.

Currently reading "Fury Beach" about on of the pre-Franklin Expeditions to the Northwest Passage. I love a good nonfiction book about misery in the Arctic!

Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention--and How to Think Deeply Again, by Johann Hari. I am trying to cut back on doom scrolling and read more books this year...one step at a time.

I'm also working my way through Stephen King's earlier books. Just finished the Dead Zone (very prescient) and now reading IT.

I Might Be in Trouble by Daniel Aleman is a fun read. He doesn’t entirely stick the landing, but it’s an entertaining gay read.

I'm partway through [italic]Wordhunter[/italic], R176. I feel I'm not liking it as much as I should? Probably from the dysfunctional background, and that she's autistic-ish about grammar in a preachy way.

I recently read Behind Closed Doors on reco from a friend. She’s a lot younger.

It’s a British psychological thriller from the twenty teens. The subject matter is strictly lifetime tv, but the writing was good.

One issue I had with the book is the structure of switching between past and present in chapters. Now overall, this narrative is key to the suspense in the storytelling, but at the same time it can lead to a *lack* of suspense. I don’t think I’m giving away too much by saying the protag is kept a prisoner, sometimes by psychological threat rather than physical detainment, and she still is in the “present.” So this neuters the long descriptions of her attempts to escape in the “past,” making them anticlimactic for me.

The central conceit of the story, which I won’t reveal, is a bit difficult to swallow as well.

Despite all this, it was guilty fun and I’m glad I read it. I was shocked to learn it was a #1 NYT book. I had never heard of it before the recommendation.

r180, I posted about GREAT CIRCLE at r160 when I had just begun it.

It's a long novel, 650 pages, could have used some judicious cutting...but I ended up loving it. Definitely worth the time spent. Basically, it's the story of an American aviatrix in the 1920s-50s with the parallel story of a contemporary rebellious young movie star (think young Jodie Foster or Kristen Stewart) making a film about the aviatrix and how their lives intersected.

Curiously, I found the aviatrix's story somewhat less compelling than several of the secondary characters. But this is a book you can really dig into and lose yourself. The storytelling reminded me of Michael Chabon's KAVALIER & CLAY and MOONGLOW.

I’m reading “Funny Girl” by Nick Hornby. Despite the bad title (I know titles are not copyrighted but c’mon), it’s quite a fun, witty book.

Now I’d like to watch the adaptation, “Funny Woman”.

I didn't think the TV adaptation was very good, R187, but the clothes were terrific. The second season is currently airing on PBS.

Next up on my nightstand: The Hermit of Peking by Hugh Trevor-Roper, about Sir Edmund Backhouse, celebrated Chinese scholar who claimed he'd had lovers of both sexes including the Dowager Empress of China.

Sorry I missed you, r160. We sound like kindred spirits. Raspberry cordial?

Hey, r180, just know that the last 150 pages of GREAT CIRCLE are the best. Enjoy!

R71 and others, I'm 100 pages in on Our Evenings. So far I'm enjoying it.

[quote]Listening to The Plantagenets by Dan Jones, where he lives up to the glowing reviews of bringing the period to life reading the material himself.

I loved this book - the follow-on book about the War of the Roses is also good. Even though it was a bit hard to keep straight who was who since they all seemed to use the same 5 names, it was an interesting read to learn more about the historical kings & queens

I've been reading Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson. The forward talks about how she was a fan of Henry James and boy can you tell - this story is wordy & slow to get to an actual point

Has anyone read the historical novels of Gareth Russell? There are 2 that interest me - one on King James and his gay court and one on young Catherine Howard the 5th wife of Henry VIII. Sorry, I'm not remembering the titles, they may even be more non-fiction than novels.

Over the holidays, I read a ton of M.R. James ghost stories. So creepy and good. They can still keep you up at night.

I read "Churchill, Walking with Destiny" by Andrew Roberts earlier this year. It's exhaustive, but certainly not exhausting.

I followed it with "Mr. Churchill in the White House: The Untold Story of a Prime Minister and Two Presidents" by Robert Schmul. Shorter, breezy, even gossipy, and fun to read.

I just received Master of the Senate by Robert Caro and I am hooked already. This is the first Robert Caro book I've read and it's fucking incredible. I was afraid I would struggle with the book due to its length but that's not the case. He goes on a lot of tangents but the tangents loop back to the main topics at hand. Caro is a very gifted writer. And what's crazy about the book is that I've highlighted so many great quotes, facts and statements and that's just the first 30 pages!! So many interesting about the Senate that have been talked about a lot in the past few years (filibuster, state representation vs population, the intended significance of the institution, etc.). I highly recommend the book.

R194, I love MR James. I'm a ghost story fan, I also like the ones by E.F. Benson

R193: I have his nonfiction [italic]The Palace: 500 Years at Hampton Court[/italic] on my TBR pile.

I finally read "My Search for Warren Harding" by Robert Plunket.

It has received a lot of critical buildup lately for a rediscovered novel from forty+ years ago, and I was surprised I did not like it more. it's basically a re-writing of Henry James's "The Aspern Papers" with a repressed gay bitchy narrator (who closets himself to even his readers, but we can see right through him) who is a history professor out East moving to California for a summer to see if he can find the lost love letters of Warren Harding to his mistress, and romancing the extremely elderly mistress's fat granddaughter to get better access to the letters. It's supposedly a favorite of Amy Sedaris's and Larry David's and Madonna's, and it's supposed to be fall-down hilarious, but I just found it only mildly amusing and nothing more. It would be appreciated by Amy Sedaris's most ardent fans though--it's very much along the lines of her sense of humor (which is always a little too broad for me).

Have you read Plunket's Love Junkie?

Also tried reading that recently, r199 and found it very disappointing after all the hype. Perhaps when it was first published it seemed outrageously funny....but certainly not now.

[quote] Have you read Plunket's Love Junkie?

No, and I don't think I will after reading My Search for Warren Harding.

R193 Young and Damned and Fair is Russell's book about Catherine Howard. I read it a few years back and thought it quite good.

I'm about 50 pages into MERCURY PICTURES PRESENTS by Anthony Marra and quite enjoying it.

I've come to remember I got about this far into the book when I borrowed it from my library when it first came out about 3 years ago. Back then I think I gave up because it was bit lighter weight than I was hoping for but now, with the world in the condition it's in, a bit light weight is just fine.

It's about a smart and pretty Italian immigrant woman who assists the studio head at a movie studio during WWII.

My library has agreed to purchase a copy of Gareth Russell's [italic]Do Let's Have Another Drink[/italic] which looks like great fun!

I finally read Hollinghurst's 'Our Evenings.' Having immersed in so much of the main character's life, I found the ending powerful, to my surprise.

It's true though I wanted more depth to complement the breadth of the novel. The hero's affairs are nicely teasingly reported, but I felt too much was withheld.

As to many characters being introduced quite vividly, only to be set aside. This seemed to me true to life, in all its headlong haphazard way. Also true is the evocation of so much social tension in English life, heightened by the hero's outsider status.

All in all though, 'Our Evenings' is a rewarding novel: parts made me laugh aloud, and some passages are as good as anything I've ever read anywhere.

I want to read "The World of Yesterday" (subtitled "Memories of a European)" by Stefan Zweig. He has a wonderful way with words, i love and know too little by Zweig. He wrote this book at the start of the 20th century and I'm also curious how contemporary or transferable his descriptions of his time will be.

For the record, I have finished [italic]Wordhunter[/italic]. Premise with main character promising, liked her developing relationship with the cop. The dysfunctional environment was a drag for me, though the settings themselves were done well. I'd be interested in reading a (likely) sequel.

Agree with many others that OUR EVENINGS was a bit of a disappointment. I enjoyed the first half well enough-- the boarding school stuff was fine, and in particular I felt like the mom was a unique and interesting character. The long vacation sequence at the seaside resort was actually fairly stunning. But I didn't get the second half at all. All the stuff about the world of experimental theater was really dull. Even duller were all the various lovers he takes up with. (I almost felt like Hollinghurst was trying to make some perverse eldergay point by making all the boyfriends so boring and unappealing.) But really what I ended up scratching my head over is that the book seems to promise it's building to something with the rich benefactor family and the bullying Brexit son, and then it really amounts to just about nothing. (Sorry, the ripped from the headlines Covid hate crime does not count as any kind of payoff.) Anyway, Hollinghurst is always worth reading but I couldn't really tell what he was up to with this one.

r116, I'm chiming in quite late here, but I was kind of blown away by Bret Easton Ellis's THE SHARDS. It's violent and silly and ridiculous in that Ellis kind of way, but it's also sexy and vibrant and totally engrossing-- and because it's Ellis, the early 80s LA milieu is pretty key to the whole thing. I was also pretty surprised to find that it had what I thought were some fairly profound (or at least personally resonant) things to say about gay identity, which is not what I expected from Ellis, who has always made a such point of keeping his distance from the gay lit label. Incidentally, I read this one not too long after The Bee Sting, and while they don't have a ton in common other than their length and sense of high drama, they're probably the two books I was most taken in by over the last year or so. Anyway, you can't find a more LA book than this...

“Why the Hindenburg Had a Smoking Lounge - Essays on Unintended Consequences” by Edward Tenner

“Why the Hindenburg Had a Smoking Lounge - Essays on Unintended Consequences” by Edward Tenner

The author of Wordhunter has sold a sequel , as well as a film version.

R209- I’m in complete agreement about The Shards. I was rather blown away by how compulsively engrossing it was. It reminded me of a bestseller of yore where the pages just flew. It was deliciously smutty too. I absolutely loved it. It was so evocative of the early 80s, a period I was too young to properly register.

Thanks, R209! I just placed The Shards on my TBR list in my library account.

For Audible Listeners, Stephen Fry narrates a collection of ghost stories (Sleepy Hollow, MR James stories, that kind of thing). Despite what a hot mess he is in real life, he's an excellent narrator and these are good stories for a local car trip as they're entertaining but don't require much brain power.

R213 and R209, yes about The Shards. I couldn’t wait to pick it up every night. And it’s a good size book too so I got really into. Not for the faint of heart but riveting.

I just started reading “Endless Love” based on posts from years past of how good the book is and how bad the film adaptation is. The opening description of the fire is quite good.

"Endless Love" is the quintessential novel of the 70's. A great read and a very wise one.

How to pleasure yourself at home

The main character's of Wilkie Collins' [italic]Armadale[/italic] squabble like a gay couple. His [italic]No Name[/italic] is another one I could recommend.

Filippo Bologna's [italic]The Parrots[/italic] I found a well-done satire. Jane Harris' [italic]The Observations[/italic] solid historical fiction.

Finally, if you want gay content consider [italic]The Chaperone[/italic] by Laura Moriarty. Not the main focus, but you'll understand why I recommend it.

I love those two Wilkie Collins titles. Both are so much fun, such page-turners and so much more engaging than his better known The Moonstone and The Woman in White. I've never understood why they've not been more widely read and better known, r220. Both would make incredible mini-series.

I also enjoyed The Chaperone which I read when it was first published. IIRC at first it seemed a bit chick-lit at first but then really surprised me with its depth of emotion and intelligence. Loved the way it used young Louise Brooks in its storytelling. There was a film done of it that really missed the mark.

A friend loaned me a copy of the recently published novel THE SAFEKEEP by Yael van der Wouden and told me not to read anything about it first. I'm LOVING it. Have no idea where it's going.

Am working my way through Volume 1 of Peter Parker's "Some Men in London: Queer Life," published last year. The first volume of this anthology covers the period 1945-1959, when homosexuality was still illegal in Britain. It was decriminalized only in 1967, which means it took a decade for the recommendations made in the 1957 Wolfenden Report (which proposed decriminalization) to be implemented. I learned that even several of the parties arguing in favor of decriminalization nevertheless stated that they considered homosexuality "unnatural" and an "abomination," but believed it should be decriminalized for pragmatic/legal reasons, for example to prevent blackmail of powerful and highly competent and talented people who were otherwise of great value to British society. Others also condemned sex between men, but argued it should not be singled out over other "immoral" practices such as heterosexual fornication, which were not punishable by law.

The book contains a famous quote by Noël Coward I first read here on DL, commenting on the film title "The Sea Shall Not Have Them" and its two male stars (Dirk Bogarde and Michael Redgrave): "I don't see why not. Everyone else has."

I plan to follow it up with Volume 2. Both anthologies include diary entries, letters, extracts from novels, poems, and plays; along with police reports (including that of John Gielgud, who was famously arrested in 1953 (at the height of his career) by an undercover police officer for "persistently importuning for an immoral purpose").

I'm looking forward greatly to the 'Some Men In London' books, bought last year at Gay's The Word bookshop as a festive treat. They've been highly praised. Incidentally their devoted compiler Peter Parker was at school with Alan Hollinghurst.

Re: The Safekeep (R222)

A very important look at how the Dutch saw the Holocaust at the time, one quote was downright shocking. As for the story itself, I recognized its quality afterwards, finding the beginning a bit plodding. The use of diary entries later (sorry, if that's a spoiler) was downright brilliant to provide information rather than "dumping" it towards a resolution.

Interesting to see if the author writes other quality novels, or is this a one-off for the subject matter?

Midway into SAFEKEEP right now. Riveting.

I also read Volume 1 of Some Men in London. Loved it.

R141: Have you read Stevenson's 'Mrs Tim' series? They remind me of Delafield's 'Provincial Lady' books - anyone here who liked those might be interested in Mrs Tim also. I read Stevenson's Miss Buncle books a while ago.

R109: I found Christie's [italic]They Came to Baghdad[/italic] enough of a thriller, but that could have been the excellent audio narration.

r228, I haven't read any more of Stevenson's novels. Frankly, by the time I got to the end of Smouldering Fires, I was a bit disappointed.

I've just discovered Brit author Tessa Hadley, reading her 2022 novel FREE LOVE about a middle-aged married woman in suburban London having an affair with a 20-something young man. Just loving it. As a writer in her late 60s she gets all the period details just right. What begins seemingly as satire seems to be getting more serious.

Is anyone here familiar with her?

Meant to add the cover blurbs are from everyone from Hilary Mantel to Colm Toibin to Kate Atkinson, proclaiming her their favorite author. How had I never heard of her before?

Currently reading/listening to (I go back and forth) [bold]The New Life[/bold] by Tom Crewe. I'm enjoying it so far. The audiobook narration by actor Freddie Fox is superb and really adds to the experience.

I wouldn't have thought of Freddie Fox to narrate Crewe's book; glad to hear he's good. I've said it here before, but I SO wish Merchant Ivory was still around to film it. (Yes, I know Mr. Ivory is still with us.)

Thanks for the "Mercury Pictures Presents" nod.

Halfway through and it's terrific.

I'm almost to the end of "Mercury Pictures Presents", R234. Overall, I've mostly enjoyed it. I think it has some interesting characters and some intriguing storylines. But after a point it just becomes too much. Just when I'm really getting into a particular character's story, he suddenly jumps to another character's arc. And the time jumps. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it just makes the overall narrative feel choppy. I mean, he even introduces a new character in the last quarter of the book, complete with his backstory, but it isn't necessary for the overall story. The whole thing's a bit too sprawling and could have been scaled down a bit. Of course, I've been listening to the audiobook, so maybe it would be easier to keep track of all the characters/storylines if I was reading instead of listening.

I agree with your assessment, r235. At the end, I was glad I read it, didn't feel by any means that it was a waste of time. But it really needed a smarter editor.

I mostly disliked the Hollywood scenes, especially with the 2 Feldman brothers, didn't think Marra wrote comedic scenes well. I thought Maria Lagana would be a more interesting character, have a better story line. The photographer (Nino?) was my fave character, and he had the strongest arc.

But all said, I'll look forward to Marra's next novel.

Just finished a fantastic novel called THREE BURIALS by Anders Lustgarten. Highly recommended smart comic thriller with a sharp satiric tone about modern Britain.

I don't know why this book isn't more well-known. It was written just a couple of years ago.

I'm looking forward to Jonathan Parks-Ramage's "It's Not The End Of The World".

I finished Topaz, a good spy novel which may be true. I’m reading The Little Bride which is good. A mail-order Jewish bride in the Wild West. Also The Eighty Dollar Champion for happy relief, Ava’s Man, The Rothschilds, Marlene Dietrich by her daughter (she doesn’t like her much), A Charmed Life by Mary McCarthy. I finished Landslide which was good. Also starting the first Prime Suspect novel by Lynda LaPlante.

You have good taste, r239!

The one which I'm currently writing

The Guest List by Lucy Foley. Agatha Christie-esque murderer at a wedding weekend. Fun so far.

Currently reading GREEN DOT by Madeleine Gray about a younger woman having an affair with an older married man in Australia. Very "Fleabag" kind of wry, dry and funny.

Stephen King has a new novel in May.

Has anyone read any Richard Ford - any recommendations?

Ava’s Man is terrific. This is the book asshat JD Vance wished he wrote.

Tomorrow I'm going to start reading Ione Skye's memoir Say Everything. Can't wait for some juicy gossip.

R246 Canada was engaging. Better than his series of novels about the sportswriter/etc.

Just purchased PLAYWORLD by Adam Ross which several friends have recommended. Can't wait to start it.

I've been reading "Stories of Your Life and Others" by Ted Chiang, which was just fantastic. Best sci-fi/fantasy I've read in years. The stories were more like Borges than anything else.

R239, I highly recommend the movie "Topaz."

"Mein Kampf: The Comic Book"

r15, if someone hasn't answered you, the book I believe r14 is referring to is Lindsay Spence's "Vivien Leigh: Where Madness Lies". It's not all that great. It's an odd concept in that it Diana the last fifteen or so years of her life but still flashes back to tell her whole life story--or, rather, the bits that conveniently support the writer's narrative. It reads more as a biography by an armchair psychiatrist of Leigh's mental health than a proper biography and, despite claiming her intent is to humanize Leigh, the writer instead makes her sound completely crazy.

^ I have that book on my Amazon wishlist

'The Velvet Mafia' - the gay men who ran the swinging sixties.

Just finished it. Datalounge catnip aplenty. Bristling with lurid gossip on every page. A time of incredible social overlap with not many degrees of separation. Business deals and fallouts, rough trade, pub beatings, organised crime, court cases, overdoses, car crashes, all-male parties, the genius of The Beatles, the last days of Jayne Mansfield and Judy Garland...you get the idea. Fascinating evocation of a unique time.

The Velvet Mafia sounds really good.

Trying to remember the title of a newish gay book about a male-male romance set in Puritan America. Can anyone help?

I want to read Pretty Living by Helen Madden

For those of you nonfiction people, with a particular eye towards style, decorating, art, etc., consider [italic]The Secret Lives of Color[/italic] by Kassia St. Clair.

R257 - All the World Beside?

I prefer he short stories, r245, so would recommend A Multitude of Sins.

I've got quite a stack of books sitting on my table waiting to be read:

Nicholas Nickelby (recommended by someone on DL)

Castle Rackrent

Tristram Shandy

A Shropshire Lad

The Brideshead Generation

The Loom of Youth

An Edwardian Daughter (by one of Queen Camilla's grandmothers)

And I've been reading through all of the Adrian Mole diaries (on book four now).

R262 all British

We read that book ALL THE WORLD BESIDE by Garrard Conley for our gay book club. Most of us, including me, did not care for it. It was a slog.

Has anyone who’s read At Danceteria read his follow-up to that book, Better Davis? I liked Danceteria and was hoping not to be let down. The two collections look to have the same theme and conceit.

All the World Beside! Thanks, guys!!

Just finished reading the recently published novel, “The Persians.” It’s dark, at times hysterically funny, at times deeply disturbing.. (One hot mess character seems like an amalgam of every personality disorder that ever surfaced in the DL universe. My favorite quote from her: “Darling, I might like the silly words they use but a therapist isn’t going to help you. Your problems aren’t because Mindy and the girls stopped sharing their potato chips with you when you were ten. They are deeper than that. You are like a thousand-year old sick tree. You need a miracle.”

I posted upthread about the new novel PLAYWORLD by Adam Ross which a few trusted friends had highly recommended. But after 2 pages (out of 503!) I had to give up.

While the upper Westside NYC 1980 setting is highly detailed, the book simply has no heart. And not much of a plot. Sort of like reading a 14-year-old (straight) boy's diary.

But I'll be curious to hear if other posters here read and what you think.

I just bought the ebook Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.

r268, quitting after 2 pages doesn't seem entirely fair to the book. But I'm less inclined to seek out the book that I was eager to read.

Oh no, I just realized in my post I wrote 2 pages, and I intended to write 200 pages, quite a difference. Thanks for bringing that up to my attention, r270.

200 pages seems fair to me.

Leon Edel’s condensed version (five volumes edited into one) of his Henry James biography. Proving, at least so far that reading about Henry James isn’t nearly as rewarding as reading Henry James.

And 1965’s “A Chair for Wayne Lonergan” about a sensation 1943 cafe society murder in wartime NYC, the details of which Dominic Dunne said he used to sneak out of school to read about in the NY Post and Daily News. The alleged (OK, convicted, but the author seems to have some doubts) bisexual murderer was supposedly first sexually involved with the father who introduced him to his daughter who Lonergan then married. Thus far the story is considerably more engaging than anything Henry James wrote or did.

"Fight: Inside The Wildest Battle For The White House."

Trump, Biden, Kamala.

I'm just finishing Maggie Shipstead's ASTONISH ME which I've enjoyed very much.

I posted upthread about her latest book GREAT CIRCLE, which I loved, but this is an earlier book about a so-so ballerina who longs for fame but only finds it when she helps a star Russian ballet dancer in the 1970s defect to America. Ultimately her son becomes a ballet star.

Great family dynamics with some surprise plot twists and lots of beautifully evoked passages about art and dance and the ballet world from the 1970s to the early 2000s.

three body problem

I’m currently in the middle of Iris Murdoch’s “The Book and the Brotherhood” (1987) and, wow, it is just fantastic. I always forget just how good she is. Her prose really is unequaled. She had an extensive oeuvre that can seem overwhelming to even attempt to conquer but I’m looking forward to starting another one of hers after this one.

One of my favorite books of all time is her novel “The Message to the Planet” (1989).

Finished [bold]The New Life[/bold] by Tom Crewe (which I thought was excellent).

Going now from a novel set in the 1890s to one actually written in the 1890s: [bold]Dracula[/bold] by Bram Stoker.

I'm a couple of hours into the audio edition of Gareth Russell's [italic]The Palace[/italic], 500 years of Hampton Court. If you're familiar with the Great Courses video/audio lecture series, it reminds me of some of the best of those presentations. Narrator is perfect fit for the material!

I'm currently reading [italic]All the King's Men[/italic] by Robert Penn Warren. And I'm also listening the audiobook version of [italic]The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932 - 1972[/italic] by William Manchester.

What can I say? I'm a history nerd.

Is nobody reading anymore??

Just finished a diverting and intricately plotted British novel (came out a couple of years ago I think) called The Square of Sevens, a very Wilkie Collins-ish tale of a young orphan girl who discovers she's the heiress to a huge fortune and must conquer all sorts of obstacles. Very entertaining, though perhaps a bit too long at 500 pages.

Now I'm going back to Adam Ross' Playworld which I abandoned last month after 200 pages. Too many friends have told me how brilliant it is, so I feel I have to keep going and give it some more time.

I decided to try All Fours after not finishing Miranda July's early work. In about 100 pages and really enjoying it.

I started but couldn't finish "I Cheerfully Refuse." It was both too twee and too plodding.

I also started but quickly gave up on Alfred Lansing's "Endurance" about the Shackleford Antarctic Expedition after it became obvious that they would end up killing and eating their sled dogs (after exposing them to horrendous conditions.) I'm still getting over my dog's death; I am NOT in the mood for tales exulting in the vainglorious incompetence and hubris of a pack of straight white men who cause suffering and death.

Despite the great reviews, I could not get into All Fours. But it might have been a case of another book in my TBR pile that kept calling me. If you love it, please come back and change my mind, r281.

Has anyone read any of Lucy Foley's best-selling mysteries - The Guest List, The Hunting Party, etc.? Great reader reviews on Amazon but I can't quite tell if they're just more schlocky chick-lit.

Just published, a debut novel by poet Sean Hewitt: Open, Heaven. I read an advance copy and think it's a modern classic, a gorgeous gay coming=of-age story.

I recently finished The Book and the Brotherhood (1987) by Iris Murdoch and it’s definitely one of her best. So rich and satisfying in so many ways. Her characterizations and the complexities of human emotion are just impeccable. I was enthralled.

She is one of the best writers of the English language bar-none and this novel is in the top tier of her oeuvre.

I always prefer Murdoch's 50s and 60s novels to her later novels.

My favorite by far is The Bell, which I regularly teach (I'm a college English professor), but I also love A Severed Head, The Unicorn, An Unofficial Rose, The Italian Girl, The Time of the Angels, and The Nice and the Good.

I’m enjoying an audio edition of The Remains of the Day.

R287, have you read The Book and the Brotherhood?

Thanks for your list of favorite Murdoch novels. I have only read The Bell, The Sea, the Sea, and The Message to the Planet. I’m so excited that I have so much of her work in front of me.

"Appointment in Samarra" by John O'Hara. Written in 1934, set over three days at Christmas 1930, when the economic and psychological effects of the Depression mark a brutal end to the dwindling roar of the 1920s. A hard-edged expose of all manner of secrets and corruption in a small Pennsylvania city, it owes something to "The Great Gatsby" and maybe paved the way for "Peyton Place." It is a very compelling story in spite of the dearth of likable characters.

I've had [italic]Square of Sevens[/italic] on my TBR list for a while, R280.

Finished [italic]The Palace[/italic] the other day, highly recommended. Russell deals with some gay historical issues as they arise. Also completed the essay collection [italic]Don't Try This at Home[/italic], chefs recalling culinary disasters. A bit uneven, but most entries worked for me.

I seem to remember that Murdoch's later novels suffer from her advancing dementia; her editors were powerless to make them 100 percent coherent.

[quote]Has anyone read any of Lucy Foley's best-selling mysteries - The Guest List, The Hunting Party, etc.?

I've read [bold]The Guest List[/bold] and [bold]The Paris Apartment[/bold], R284. They're both mystery/suspense novels, featuring female protagonists and told via multiple POVs. Easily digestible; perfect beach or airplane reads. Though the publishers love to invoke the late, great Agatha Christie, the books are not very similar to hers at all. (Unless you consider setting a wedding party on a remote island to be inherently Christie-esque.)

I tried Square of Sevens but at least the beginning feels like YA romantasy. Does it get better?

Well........I can definitely see that, r294. I enjoyed it and felt the period details and prose were very authentic, at least to a novel of that time, like the best of Wilkie Collins, which might also be described as YA romantasies. But my problem was more with the intricacies of the complex family relationships which could be daunting. And lots of characters to keep in order, even of servants, inn keepers, barristers, et. al. But the author does provide a family tree about 120 pages in which was hugely helpful.

I kind of just let those details wash over me and still kept up with the major plot points and by the end, I felt like I got it all. It's not for everybody but I liked it and might read another of this author's novels.

I know what I WON'T be reading in 2025...

Queer gender bending novels!

"Twenty Years: Hope, War, and the Betrayal of an Afghan Generation,” by Sune Engel Rasmussen. The failed two-decade war told through the perspectives of "ordinary" Afghans:

Anne Tyler’s latest was a treat. I thought she was retired.

I can remember how much I loved Anne Tyler's first big hit novel Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. Then I quite liked the next one, Searching for Caleb. But every single one after that all seemed the same to me.

I finally thought I'd give her another chance with A Spool of Blue Thread a few years ago, but once again, it just seemed like the same old stuff.

I've always found Anne Tyler boring.

R298- I adore Anne Tyler. Her books make the best comfort reads IMHO. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is my all time favorite.

I love The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler.

The LA Times's list of "The 30 Best Books of the Last 30 Years":

I just started reading Tim Matheson's memoir Damn Glad To Meet You-My Seven Decades In The Hollywood Trenches.

I also have the memoirs of Peter Wolf and Christie Brinkley on hold at the library.

Ok, well, I've read of those L A Times books.

R303- Thank you for linking that list- There are a few of those I need to read. How this list can have the brilliant Never Let Me Go alongside that overrated, BORING, bullshit The Goldfinch did piss me off though.

There are 2 books that I fucking HATED and those are The Goldfinch and A Little Life (the most manipulative and derivative piece of shit EVER)

The only interesting part of The Goldfinch was Las Vegas, and I stand by that. I have never read a book where every 50 pages I am like "THIS HAS TO GET BETTER" and it never does.

But that list is solid.

r306, I agree with all you said about A Little Life but for me the Las Vegas section of The Goldfinch was, by far, the most boring part of the book.

Just purchased Eric Puchner's DREAM STATE, an Oprah's Book Club 2025 pick. I hope I love it. I've heard good things.

R307- HA! I always bring Las Vegas up when I bring up The Goldfinch to see what others felt.

That book really disappointed me. (and I knew nothing about it other than its stellar reviews)

I meant to say I've read one of the books: [italic]Interpreter of Maladies[/italic]. Most of the others just didn't interest me.

I greatly enjoyed Square of Sevens, and recommend it very much.

The LA Times suggested PG Wodehouse today for these troubled times.

R306: I liked the Vegas section of the *inTERMinable* Goldfinch, too. I cannot figure out why I felt compelled to finish it. It was clearly never going to get better. I do love the painting, though.

R313- I thought Las Vegas was the turning point!! I really did. I vaguely remember it very suspenseful and it held my interest- and then very quickly, it just got worse and worse. This book was HUGE. I could not believe I wasted so much time. I read it during the summer of 2018. Good god.

I kinda took a break from my kindle books. Reading easy, happy, comforting, old favorites, cheap or free books on Open Library (what they have left).

R303- The LA Times paywall is no joke. Can anyone post the list?

I will probably get Goon Squad next. Its right up my alley. I read so-so reviews but someone here said to read it a while back on a similar thread-

Then definitely Wolf Hall, possibly The Sellout, and maybe Salvage The Bones- that one sounds utterly depressing.

A Visit from the Goon Squad is one of the only books that I’ve read multiple times. One of my favorites and so deserving of the Pulitzer. The story “Out of Body” about a closeted young man haunts me to this day (and figures prominently in Egan’s follow-up, The Candy House).

Highly recommend.

R318; Thank you! Well its official I am getting A Visit From The Goon Squad now on Amazon- (I like PHYSICAL books)

I am checking out Out of Body now...

And of the books I mentioned, in terms of "reader reviews" Salvage The Bones has far and away the best reviews..

I may order that as well-

Better Davis and Other Stories by Philip Dean Walker.

There is a gripping story that takes place the night Natalie Wood drowned in Catalina called “Brainstorm” - told from Natalie’s point of view - that heavily implies that Robert Wagner was gay and that he killed her. Also suggests that Christopher Walken was fucking someone in the cast of “The Boys in the Band.” It’s like gay Hollywood dish in one moment and then profound musings on death the next. Very original.

R318- What is this Out of Body that you are referring to? I think I misinterpreted your post... Is Candy House short stories? I just tried to find Out of Body/Jennifer Egan and I am coming up with nothing-

R320- That sounds awesome!

R321, A Visit from the Good Squad (and Egan’s follow-up The Candy House) are both linked short story collections. Out of Body” is one of the stories in Goon Squad.

The Candy House puts front and center characters that were only peripheral or side characters in Goon Squad. It has a different theme as well.

No way! Okay-I had no idea.

I'm a few years late but finally getting around to Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. A great quirky read so far, very macabre British humor.

Dream State, Oprah's Book Club latest pick, was so disappointing. Gave it 125 pages but found the 3 lead characters thoroughly unengaging. Really annoying, having spent $26 on it. I found Eleanor in my library for free, along with 3 other novels I'm looking forward to reading.

R325: I liked Eleanor. However, I guessed the big reveal (secret) early on, which rarely happens. Consider [italic]Miss Benson's Beetle[/italic] if your library's has a copy.

I’m reading The House Of Mirth. Loving it.

Edith Wharton is like if Jane Austen was tragic and sexual.

I'm reading The House of Doors. Picked it up after some people recommended it here. I'm enjoying it so far

I very much enjoyed House of Doors at first but became rather disenchanted at least half-way through. I did finish it, however. It made me want to go back and watch Bette Davis in The Letter.

Currently reading "Under the Eye of the Big Bird" by Hiromi Kawakami, from the Booker shortlist.

Which drugs will you be using this year? I already know this thread.

Tan Twan Eng’s first novel, The Gift of Rain, was marvelous. But the subsequent two run out of steam long before they’re over, as r329 suggests.

Nearing the end of ALL FOURS. Absorbing, witty, original. But like so many things today, too long.

Reading LIKE PEOPLE IN HISTORY since Felice Picano passed recently and I had never read one of his novels. It’s fun to read but not very deep. Sort of like a gay Forrest Gump hitting all the historical moments (Woodstock! ACT-UP! Etc.)

@327 Edith Wharton is basically a mean old queen and it's the greatest. I'm not sure people realize exactly how funny and bitchy she can be. (Maybe in part because of film adaptations that didn't capture this aspect.) The House of Mirth and The Custom of the Country are particularly gossipy and vicious.

If you really want to read Edith Wharton at her funniest (and bitchiest), check out her autobiography “A Backward Glance.” It’s quite funny and gossipy at moments (she drops some gay-ish tea about Henry James). My favorite part is her complete bafflement at the runaway success of an interior design book she co-wrote. She found it hysterical that it became a bestseller and some kind of must-have for interior designers.

Her memories of growing up in Gilded Age NYC are also priceless. Great read, especially for Wharton fans who feel like they have gone through her entire oeuvre.

If you’re looking for something different from her, I would suggest “Bunner Sisters”, a 1892 early novella of hers that not many have read. It was rejected when she initially wrote it and has been generally overlooked through the years. It might be because the title characters are so poor. It’s a very interesting change of pace for her.

My senior seminar at Middlebury was on Edith Wharton and we did a fairly extensive deep-dive at the time. Why “The Custom of the Country” hasn’t gotten miniseries treatment at this point is beyond me. Undine Spragg is one of her best creations and a small screen treatment of it would be delicious.

Nothing beats The House of Mirth. Gillian Anderson should have been nominated the year she starred in the Terrence Davies film adaptation.

R334, I read it many years ago, and I agree with your opinion. Enjoyable though.

Meanwhile still slogging through Our Evenings Together.

R336: I'm neither a fan of Wharton, nor short stories, but The Bunner Sisters was dead brilliant (as our British friends would say)!

I love Edith Wharton's ghost stories

LOVE Custom of the Country and as I read it imagined it as an MGM extravaganza made in the early 1940s with Lana Turner as Undine with a starry cast of contract players supporting her. Lana would have brought the perfect vapid prettiness to the character in her youth.

r336 Sofia Coppola was all set up to make a Custom of the Country miniseries at Apple. It sounded very promising, but my understanding Apple eventually shut it down because they discovered that Undine Spragg is "not likable." You don't say!

I thought there was a Meryl as Undine rumor once upon a time. Now she's too old.

Michelle Pfeiffer was going to proude a version of it in the 1990s, when I think Uma Thurman might have been a great choice for Undine. She's too old now.

You need someone spectacularly beautiful who can also be completely ruthless.

I don’t think even a young Meryl would have been attractive enough to play Undine.

r343 I believe the Coppola/Apple project had Florence Pugh cast as Undine. That works for me. While Undine is certainly meant to be beautiful, I've never read her as a spectacular beauty. It always seemed to me her real power is in her combination of confidence, greed, and shamelessness. She's a spectacular hussy!

I also don't think Undine has to be spectacularly beautiful nor utterly ruthless. I don't think she's smart enough to be ruthless or conniving. She's impetuous, though, that's for sure.

I always wondered what to make of Edith Wharton calling her Undine Spragg. Surely, even way back then, that couldn't have been considered a pretty name.

I have never understood why people need fictional characters to be likeable. Unless they mean engaging, which is a whole other thing.

I've started the mystery novel [italic]10 Marchfield Square[/italic]. Not completely sure about the plot, but audio narration rocks.

I’m really liking the audio edition of Remains of the Day.

I have Vita Sackville-West's "The Edwardians" lined up as my next book.

Currently reading "The Boys", a 2021 memoir by director Ron Howard and his brother Clint. It tells not only their history but the history of their parents and what they went through. Also gives information about how things were accomplished behind the camera. Information is given about famous actors they have worked with. For example, when Ron worked with Bert Lahr for a 1959 pilot, the "Cowardly Lion" sweated profusely and the sweat was cigarette-scented from his chain-smoking.

There was at least one thing that was not accurate: He described Aunt Bea as being a spinster. In the first episode (the pilot was an ep. of The Danny Thomas Show) there was some brief talk about how she had raised her own family and they were grown up now. I seem to remember a brief mention of how Andy and Barney were cousins. This was never pursued further. The text is not a continuous story. In each chapter, before a paragraph there is either a "Ron" or "Clint" flush-right above the story. They each tell their version of what happened.

Trying to decide whether I'll reread The Hobbit and The LOTR trilogy. It's literally been over 40 years since I last read them as a boy. I just bought them, because I thought they were something I should have on my shelf.

R352. I’m contemplating reading the Tolkien again, too—I last read them 40 years ago. I’m thinking of doing the same with Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia and Joan Aiken’s Wolves sequence. In the meantime, I’m alternating between Conrad’s Nostromo (I reread Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness, and The Secret Agent a few years ago—I still have Victory, of the major novels, ahead of me) and Louise Penny’s Three Pines mysteries.