What Books Are You Reading In 2025? Part 2

Stories to be Whispered: The Collected Short Fiction of Cornell Woolrich

Halfway through PLAYGROUND, Richard Powers. He's very progressive in his political/environmental values (Overstory, Bewilderment et. al.)... but something about the way he writes feels like "old style heroic"... novels. More Leon Uris than Thomas Pynchon.

Reading "Angel Down" by Daniel Kraus, a kind-of stream of consciousness novel about soldiers during WWI who discover a fallen agent on the battlefield. Beautifully written and intense.

Bringing over from the last thread:

We Were the Mulvaneys is really good JCO. Such a slow burn of one family’s complete downfall. And I loved how it’s narrated by the youngest son of the family (“We were the Mulvaneys. Remember us?” I always remember that opening line of the novel).

Why did you abandon it, [R593]?

Also from old thread:

Yesterday, I finished the YA classic Bridge to Terabithia, which honestly I found a bit dated and underwhelming. My question: was the boy implied to be gay (possibly girl as well)? His rednecky parents were openly concerned about his artistic interests indicating so. The main message about fitting in when you're "different" came through loud and clear.

Anyone looking for something to read, consider *The Chaperone* by Laura Moriarty, engaging main character with a gay sub-plot.

Apocalypsh Ashashin by JJ Thorn.

r4, I read We Were the Mulvaneys coming off the high of Oates' latest novel Fox, which I absolutely loved, one of my faves of the past several years.

Long ago I'd read a few of her other books, The Gravedigger's Daughter, The Falls, Because It Is Bitter, Because It Is My Heart, and liked them all but there was a melancholy sameness to them. Fox, OTOH, was sharp, satiric, lethally witty and utterly contemporary....qualities I hadn't ever seen in her writing and so I was intrigued to search for something else of hers.

I realized I owned Mulvaneys but never read it and heard many considered it among her best. Unfortunately, I just found it so sad and depressing and halfway through I could see the characters were only in for more and worse of the same. And there was no sense of humor whatsoever....not that I expected it to be funny per se but it was all just too gloomy. Do the family fortunes ever change? Ever improve? All that inevitable tragedy...

I also bought Blonde and now I'm looking forward to eventually reading it. Hoping that a book based on Marilyn Monroe's life will be provocative, funny, poignant if also sad.

"Night and the City," Gerald Kersh's atmospheric novel of London's Underworld just before WW2. Brilliantly captures the stink and sleaze of Soho.

La Chartreuse de Parme / Stendhal

Tramps Like Us - recommended here - great flashback to 1970s-80s gay life of freedom

Marriage at Sea - interesting description of a straight British couple stranded on a raft in the 1970s and how opposite personality traits can create a stronger whole

Bee Sting - the lauded Irish book by Paul Murray. Throughly enjoying it. Told form the perspective of each member of a family - including a surly teenager, nerdy boy, kind father and striving mother. Much better than Skippy Dies

The Doorman - fiction that gives a snapshot of the extreme affluent in 2024 NYC and the current social/economic culture of NYC.

If you're prone to audiobooks, r10, The Bee Sting is one of the best. It's a great companion to the written book.

Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. It's the first book in the series Cemetery of Forgotten Books.

So far, I'm intrigued. I lived in Barcelona for three months and I like that I'm familiar with a lot of the places.

I have two more Tana French books to read, so I will read those after I finish Shadow of the Wind, and then return to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books series.

Good luck with Martin Chuzzlewit, r12. I love Dickens but that one eluded me. Same with Barnaby Rudge.

I just downloaded the Baldwin biography. Also reading 'The Leopard' by Lampedusa but find myself wishing I hadn't seen the movie first. It makes the book feel a little dry, but it's still good.

[quote] I have two more Tana French books to read

I was disappointed by In The Woods and The Likeness and gave up on her.

Tramps Like Us - taking it with me on a trip overseas this Thursday.

late to the party but Garrett Graff's history of Watergate is unbelievably good.

The History of Sound (and other short stories), in anticipation of the upcoming film. Really enjoying it.

[quote] reading 'The Leopard' by Lampedusa but find myself wishing I hadn't seen the movie first. It makes the book feel a little dry, but it's still good.

My experience exactly, R15. Twice I made at shot at the book, being assured by what I'd read and heard it was great, great novel. But I'd seen the movie long ago (a couple times) and the movie just filtered anything I was trying to read.

It's an interesting topic for this group of readers: has seeing movies before you read a novel affected your ability to read it? How? Give examples. Due Friday.

Well, I had seen the movie of “The Leopard” a few times before tackling the book but I was still completely blown away by the it. Though I remember it took a few minutes of adjustment for me to get into that fly-on-the-wall, moment to moment sense of tactile detail that starts the book off. but once I got the rhythm of it, I loved it. Started reading it again as soon as I finished it, it’s entirely unique.

r13, I loved "The Shadow of the Wind" but I didn't like any of the other books in the series.

The Emperor of Gladness: stunning second novel from Ocean Vuong.

[quote]has seeing movies before you read a novel affected your ability to read it?

Seeing the movie and then reading the book just makes it easier for me to visualize what I'm reading.

On the other hand, reading a book before seeing the movie usually leaves me disappointed in the movie. The movie in my head is rarely the movie on the screen.

[Italic]The Elegance of the Hedgehog[/italic] worked better for me as a movie than the dense book.

With Trollope's [italic]The Way We Live Now[/italic], I liked the book after seeing the video, later appreciating the material left out of the film rather than a thousand page slog first.

THE WAY WE LIVE NOW is one of my favorite novels and I found the BBC version, which I watched a few years later, excellent. Ben Kingsley, Shirley Henderson, Cheryl Campbell, Matthew McFadyen, Douglas Hodge, Cillian Murphy.....OMG.

The BBC version of LITTLE DORRIT is also spectacular, making a rather dense and inscrutable novel far more exciting. Claire Foy, Tom Courtenay, Judy Parfitt, Russell Tovey, among so many others - you just can't beat these British casts.

"ASK NOT: The Kennedys and the Women they Destroyed."

Based on Benjamin Woods' recent Booker longlist inclusion for SEASCRAPER, I bought his first novel THE BELLWETHER REVIVALS. Just started it, but it so far seems an absorbing read. (Lots of hints of THE SECRET HISTORY from its reviewers.)

I was referring to the one with David Suchet (Poirot) as Melmotte, R24.

R16 - I enjoy her books. I used to be a big reader. About 20 years ago, after coming out, I fell out of the habit. I moved to a different city, started a job and a new life basically, and didn't have much time. When I tried reading books again a few years later, I couldn't seem to concentrate and finish them. I hadn't read a book in forever. Earlier this year, my daughter-in-law sent me one of her books, and I just devoured it. I've now read seven of her nine books. They are easy reads for me, and that's what I needed to start reading again.

I'm so happy - I thought that age had fried my brain and I couldn't really read anymore. That is true to some degree. I did try to start a very dense novel, and had to put it aside. For now, I'll content myself with easy reads.

The first time I read EM Forster's "Howard's End" I didn't quite get it. I understood it, but so many of the characters seemed rather amorphous. Then the Redgrave-Thompson-Hopkins movie came out, and it all seemed much clearer. I went back and reread the book (and have several times since) and loved it. With some authors a visual crutch may help, at least initially.

I'm with you R29, I enjoy a movie-book relationship either way, and sometimes it's very helpful.

Mark Merlis -read 3 of his books so far this year. All gay themed - 1960-1990s - with great details of gay life in those eras. But most importantly, I absolutely loved his writing and storytelling. I’ve been recommending him to all my gay friends - he seems to be an underappreciated gay writer about whom I knew nothing until I read his first book, American Studies. Love them all - especially An Arrows Flight which I resisted because of the pseudo-Greek mythology element but was a brilliant gay AIDS-era update of Philoctetes that requires no knowledge of Greek mythology or appreciation of fantasy/mythology novels.

In a reverse order, I finally got myself reading much of the classic Victorian canon in my elder years, beginning with The Way We Live Now, by telling myself: just imagine Maggie Smith and Judi Dench and John Gielgud and how they'd play the characters and it really helped me get into the world of Trollope, Dickens, George Eliot, et. al. It made it less intimidating, and of course, so much of the plotting is no more than soap opera, albeit brilliantly written.

‘Suddenly Something Clicked,’ by Walter Murch

r27, my poor memory...thanks! I was confusing Ben Kingsley with David Suchet, who was indeed the brilliant Melmotte in that BBC The Way We Live Now.

100 Years of Solitude

Murderland

Everybody's Fool, by Richard Russo.

Merlis is underappreciated. Didn't realized he died some years ago. I hope there's a period of rediscovery in his excellent books. Especially Arrow's Floght and American Studies. Are they still in print?

The Six: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters by Laura Thompson.

I liked Outrageous, but I didn’t love it. I’ve been hearing or reading about the sisters for years now and I wanted something more thorough.

Diana especially has always fascinated me and I don’t mean in a good way.

Also want to second a recommendation for THE CHAPERONE by Laura Moriarty, mentioned upthread, a surprisingly good read.

And the newly published THE CORRESPONDENT by first time author Virginia Evans is excellent.

Both novels start in seemingly simple, unassuming ways but ultimately go very deep,

What do you think of it, R36? I'm finding it at times gripping, but at other times in need of editing with a machete. And I'm not sold on the author's thesis.

I’m reading Helen Garner for the first time since reading Monkey Grip and The First Stone in my teens.

Yes, it’s because of Dua Lipa!

I'm reading my first Mitford now, R39: [italic]Christmas Pudding[/italic].

The Merlis book that interests me most seems to be [italic]Man About Town[/italic].

Man About Town is good - and the most mild and relatable Merlis. Elements that are dated/problematic to non-elder gays - but describes issues of growing old as a gay man and relationships after breakup of a LT partnership/“marriage”. As with all his stuff, it hits home based on my experiences as a gay man in late 20th century/early 21st urban gay metropolis. (DC in most of his books)