What are you reading 2022 ?

[Lilith7]

Just finished Noor, Nnedi Okorafor. Really enjoyed it, sci fi & very different to anything else I've come across.


https://locusmag.com/2021/12/gary-k-wolf...-okorafor/

[harm_less]

The Meaning of Trees by Robert Vennell. Very interesting text on the history and use of NZ native plants. Some intriguing uses both dietary and medicinally that Maori had for our native flora. Excellent coffee table book which is where I discovered it and it has elicited numerous comments since we've had it.

[Lilith7]

I'm about halfway through Proxima, Stephen Baxter. Very interesting sci fi about people dumped on another planet with little in the way of support & left to fend for themselves which is the basic storyline but there's far more to this.
Its apparently been made into a movie; hope they haven't ruined a good book again.

[Lilith7]

Presently reading Lost letters from Vienna, Sue Course. Its about a Jewish Austrian family affected by the holocaust & how some managed to emigrate to Australia, America & other countries.

It started with the discovery of letters dating back to WW2.

https://www.wilddingopress.com.au/shop/p/9781925893052

"In 1977, Sue Course discovered a box of airmail letters in the dark recesses of a cupboard, written in German.

Her German was rusty, but she could see that most were from her parents and grandparents and were written from the time of the Nazi invasion of Vienna in 1938. The letters revealed a gripping tale of their war and that of their extended family, the stories of those who escaped and eventually resettled across the globe, and their experiences in that process."

[Oh_hunnihunni]

If you can find it The Ghost Moths by Harry Farthing is an absolute stunner. I have recommended to two rather picky readers and both cannot put it down.

https://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Moths-Novel...1538469235

[Lilith7]

If you can find it The Ghost Moths by Harry Farthing is an absolute stunner. I have recommended to two rather picky readers and both cannot put it down.

https://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Moths-Novel...1538469235

That sounds intriguing, will look out for it.
Which reminds me, found a secondhand bookshop online which has some interesting ones. Their aim is to prevent books going into landfill.

https://bookworms.co.nz/

[Olive]

Thanks hunni. I do enjoy a good meaty crime series, and having exhausted Ian Rankin and Denise Mina I'll make a start on Linda Castillo (provided her prices on Kindle don't exceed my self-imposed
limit of $12).

I recently exceeded my limit by getting Rev. Richard Coles's first crime novel, and so far am not really very impressed as he seems to be mining the lucrative seam of cosy UK village murders recently exploited more expertly by Richard Osman. But let's see. Richard Coles seems like a very good chap.

[Lilith7]

I seldom read crime but a a while ago came across Roslund & Hellstrom & really enjoyed the ones of theirs I read; one in particular had a very unexpected twist at the end. I think one of them is a retired cop, not sure.

[Lilith7]

Reading Anomaly, Herve le Tellier. I found it a wee bit slow to start with, with lots of different characters, but then suddenly that all changes dramatically & its now difficult to put down.
Definitely different & really interesting.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/j...pt-thrills

"It has been a bravura 100 pages of introductions and emotional or comedic complications before the conceptual inciting event happens. Air France flight AF006 from Paris to New York emerges from the turbulence of an unexpected storm to the bafflement of air traffic control, and is redirected to a secret military base. Why? Because itÔÇÖs exactly the same flight as one that already landed at JFK after emerging from a storm three months ago. Not just the same flight number but the same plane, with the same people on it."

[Lilith7]

Almost finished The modern Singhs, about a Scots woman & Indian man here in NZ who fell in love & eventually overcame opposition from his family, & married.
Written by both of them alternating each point of view which works really well.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programme...ern-singhs

[Praktica]

I've just read about plague epidemics in London, up to the Great Plague in 1665. The whinging about government actions to to try to stop spread, from merchants and others, looks remarkable familiar...

[Lilith7]

I've just read about plague epidemics in London, up to the Great Plague in 1665. The whinging about government actions to to try to stop spread, from merchants and others, looks remarkable familiar...

Ah - 'nothing changes' rings true then...

[Lilith7]

Now reading Driving to Treblinka, Diana Wichtel. Non fiction which is somewhat harrowing in parts & tissues may be needed but plenty of non tissue parts too. Over all, an extremely interesting & well written book.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/bo...na-wichtel

[Olive]

I was riveted and moved by Driving to Treblinka, I think she's a great writer. I'm presently reading Grand, Noelle McCarthy's memoir of alcohol and Ireland, also well written if more fragmented.

[Lilith7]

It was really good, ( despite the tears) & definitely an interesting book.

[Lilith7]

Now reading Code name Suzette, Anne Nelson which is about Suzanne Spaak, who with other women 'kidnapped' hundreds of Jewish children to save them from the gas chambers.

https://www.womensbookshop.co.nz/p/biogr...i-paris--3

[Lilith7]

Now reading A history of loneliness, John Boyne. About the disintegration of the hold Catholicism has had on Ireland, & the damage done by predator priests.
Very well written if a little harrowing in places when it deals with the widespread misogyny & the child abuse.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/o...lacerating.

" Ireland is rotten. Rotten to the core. I'm sorry, but you priests destroyed it." These words are spoken by a young man who was sexually attacked in his childhood by an Irish priest, a friend of the family. They go to the heart of this novel's passionate denunciation of the role played by the Catholic church in the scandal over child abuse by the clergy. It is a study of the corrupting effects of power in an Ireland that came close to being a theocracy. Sexuality was strictly governed; contraception, abortion and divorce were forbidden; and yet the abuse of children went unpunished and was deliberately concealed by the church hierarchy for fear of damage to the institution."

[Lilith7]

I'm slogging my way through ' A people's history of the United states', Howard Zinn ( had I known it was 800 odd pages, I might not have reserved it at the library) & its really excellent, but very hard going when reading how Native Americans, women & slaves were treated.
There's something very wrong with our species, that we can be so very cruel sometimes.

[Lilith7]

Finished this today; had to keep stopping when i got too angry/sad/incredulous at human stupidity so it took a while. But well worth reading, & I'd recommend it - definitely an eye opener.

I'd been under the impression that JFK & Jimmy Carter were relatively decent presidents; not so much it seems.

ÔÇ£I wonder now how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, & thought of all children everywhere as our own. Then we could never drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima or napalm on Vietnam, or wage war anywhere, because wars, especially in our time, are always wars against children, indeed our children.ÔÇØ
Howard Zinn, A people's history of the United States.

[Oh_hunnihunni]

Just finished the second book of the Seven Devils, Seven Mercies duology by Elizabeth May and Laura Lam. Feminist space opera science fiction, and quite a rollicking ride in the reading. The sort of books that would make good tv series with lots of special effects, and some intetesting ideas about AI and the way it could take over. Worth the reading I think...