What are you reading at the moment? Recommendations welcome

Sedayne · Jun 8, 2025

Almost a decade late to the party, but I've recently finished Autumn and Winter by Ali Smith. I really loved them both. Compelling and slightly odd characters who despite (or maybe because of) a sense of distance, I really warmed to. I listened to them both on Borrowbox, wonderfully narrated by Melody Grove. Spring and Summer are next in the series, but have a different narrator which is a shame. I will get to them eventually.

Meanwhile, on recommendation from @Rachael Burnett, I'm reading Fun Home by Alison Bechdel and concurrently (though not simultaneously) listening to Orlando read by Clare Higgins.

I've read Orlando before - as a teenager - and re-read parts of it more recently as research for my first novel. I have mixed feelings about it which are born out in the argument between my main characters. As I listen to it now, I can feel Neil getting excited about the nature of writing and change, and Hannah feeling exasperated by the too-detailed description of the opulence of Orlando refurnishing his stately home. 'It's not the gender swap I have a problem with, it's the aristocracy,' says Hannah.
I'm enjoying the re-listen, though. There's more fun in it than I remember.

wrightstuff · Jun 8, 2025

I just finished reading Magpie Murders...only to realise that it was a re-read...and apart from some key moments (that I didn't even connect with each other), I had completely forgotten the book! Am I losing it, or was it that forgettable?! Answers on a postcard to...

A.Morgan · Jun 8, 2025

I have to admit that currently I do not have very much time for leisure reading. I am working full time and researching and writing a third book on fanatical religious ideologies and how they have harmed societal mores. I will make an attempt to instill some time management to focus on of interest.

Claire G · Jun 29, 2025

I've just started We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. I kept seeing it recommended and I thought I'd give it a go, having read and enjoyed her acclaimed short story, The Lottery. So far, so good! I'm intrigued by the set up, the village and the villagers' attitudes to the family. The style's quite rambling but this reflects the character's unusual mind and I got used to it after the first page or two.

E G Logan · Jul 1, 2025

Claire G said:
her acclaimed short story, The Lottery.

I know Jackson is much acclaimed, but for me, she always undercooks her ending, where one more short, pointed sentence would make it clearer but no less chilling. I think The Lottery is her best, with the gradually dawning awful realisation.
I had to read Hangsaman twice, and the ending three times, to realise the menace was there, just not clearly enough, IMO. Four or five words would have done it. And although the most frightening sequence of Hill House is as good those moments in Dark Matter and The Woman in Black, maybe even better, the very end isn't tight enough. Again IMO, but I had to read it twice. Slowly. I don't want any spoilers, but for me, there were a couple of things that needed to be pointed up better.
I always found We Have Always Lived in the Castle interesting, ambiguous; it was her final book, a bit different perhaps, written when she was already in ill health, including mentally. I hope you enjoy it.

(BTW, the reason I was researching Jackson's books in such detail is, I write ghost stories, too. I'm afraid I normally tend to skim.)

E G Logan · Jul 1, 2025

Saltwater Mansions and Other Untold Stories by David Whitehouse has had rave reviews and, for once, perhaps justifiably. I certainly enjoyed it. I didn't go along with the reviewer who raved about the quality of the author's prose, though. It was fine, OK, told the story, but I was far from enraptured.

It's an interesting format he's come up with, and the cynical old journalist in me couldn't help suspecting that it wasn't what he'd originally intended at all. But, that said, if Whitehouse felt he had to 'pull the chestnuts out of the fire' – i.e. he couldn't do what he set out to do – the result he came up with worked out very well.

This book must have been a joy to find a genre description for, NOT. Broadly, it's narrative non-fiction, peppered with genuine reminiscences (via interviews) from several people who appear in what might be called the book's 'origin' story: the mysterious, unexplained disappearance of a resident from a flat in Saltwater Mansions, Margate. There is also a partial memoir of Whitehouse's own life, and the changes, over the years, to that town.

Current Margate resident and journalist Whitehouse set out initially to discover what had happened to Caroline Lane, whose utility bills and mortgage continued to be paid for 13 years despite her disappearance, but his real-life investigation turned into something more interesting here.

James Charles · Jul 1, 2025

Well, here is what I am beginning tonight:

From our very own Litopian, Eva. It arrived in the mail today!

Geoff · Jul 22, 2025

Nearly finished Deeper Water by Robert Whitlow - an Amazon Prime book of the month. Not being of a religious, bent there are a little too many religion references for me , but that is deflected by the style of writing. It easy to read, so I will carry on to the end.

E G Logan · Aug 4, 2025

I think this is an important book, revealing things more people should know about Facebook (or Meta). Everyone, in fact.
Careless People: A Story of Where I Used to Work
by Facebook's former global public-policy director Sarah Wynn-Williams, accuses Facebook executives, including founder Mark Zuckerberg, of a range of pretty heinous things. W-W (writing of 2011 to 2017) says – and I am paraphrasing here – the company enabled some very bad people to do some very bad things. Breathtakingly bad. Specifically, the governments of China and Myanmar. The many internal documents she quotes on Facebook's proposals for co-operating with China make troubling reading. Hanging on to those after she was sent them as part of the company's demotion plan was one of Wynn-Williams' less naive moves.

No one comes out of this well: I can see that Wynn-Williams' own bouncy and naive idealism, coupled as it was with complete certainty and considerable determination, might easily grate on more fully (entirely) business-focused colleagues. She doesn't ever have seem to have realised when to shut up and back off, or even recognised that as an option.

Sheryl Sandberg appears as a complete Queen Bee, anything but supportive to women, totally contrary to the ideas in her book (and how much of it did she herself write?) Lean In. More than one senior man is shown as a well-known and outrageous lecher. Nobody cares, apparently, and no one does anything.

I can absolutely see why Mark Zuckerberg did not want Wynn-Williams' memoir to see the light of day, since her revelations regarding his character, behaviour and (surprising lack of) business savvy are jaw-dropping stuff.
Do read it.

Hannah Faoileán · Aug 4, 2025

Rebel Skies by Ann Sei Lin (YA SFF): Brilliant! Great concept grippingly written. Kurara can craft paper into anything just using her mind. She wants to hone her skills so that she can join the Imperial Crafters and hunt Shikigami (paper creatures enslaved by humans who have now "gone mad" and retaliated) to extinction. But a disaster, a mentor's slave, and a revelation about her best friend lead her to question everything she thought she knew. Plenty of spine and heart here. Themes of oppression and identity. (I might use it as a comparative title).

Sedayne · Aug 7, 2025

I've been listening to the audiobook of The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker. Marvelous narration from Arthur Morey.

Totally engaging from beginning to end, it mainly uses examples from non-fiction, but most of it applies to fiction too. If you want clarity in your writing at sentence level this is brilliant.

I'd rate it alongside First You Write a Sentence by Joe Moran and Artful Sentences by Virginia Tufte as essentials to get that OPS.

wrightstuff · Saturday at 8:02 AM

I have recently finished Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck. It won last year's International Booker prize. I can sort of understand why, but it frustrated me.

The basic allegory is clear enough: the power imbalance of the protagonists' relationship degenerates over time from mutual love and dependence into cruel accusation, manipulation, control and punishment, just as it does between East Germany's government and people, and...well, that's about it.

This is where I probably part company with literary critics.

I feel that the book is 'saved' from simplicity by cultural, historical, musical, and literary references. The trouble is, most are heavy-handed, shoehorned in, sometimes misrepresented (by the protagonist or the author? it's not clear), and some just appear out of nowhere, to vanish as quickly.

Some of the clumsiness of the writing may be due to the difficulty of translation, but at times it feels as though a number of authors, with very different ideas of what the novel should be, have been locked in a room, and not allowed out until they produce a manuscript.

Not a bad book, but I suspect it won the Booker for its ambition rather than execution.

E G Logan · Sunday at 3:48 PM

KateESal said:
Frenchman's Creek.

Me, too. I once wrote about it in school, aged about 15-6, and got torn off a strip for not realising it was 'tosh' and 'not literature'.
If my English teacher (of mature years then) was not already deceased, I'm sure sure some of the stuff now published would have seen him off. (Mrs Hinch, I am thinking of you.)

E G Logan · Sunday at 4:41 PM

Just finished Alice Carver Manifests Her Perfect Life by Hannah Lake.
Recommended, but not for anyone who takes manifesting seriously.

I read it because it is told supposedly as Alice's entries in her Christmas-present 'manifesting Journal'. I wanted, for research purposes, to see how Lake did that, and the answer is: "Very well. Cleverly." I laughed out loud a couple of times. The formal 'manifesting' text develops from Goop-ish woo-woo at the start through more neutral and more credible to a tone of comforting homily at the end.

I was surprised by how good the book was – it's a debut novel – how well put together, and how neatly the references played in. Bridget Jones is a touch over-emphasised, but there is Darcy, too – and the plot turns entirely on the trope of 'Be careful for what you wish for'.

Just before that, I waded through Gwyneth by Amy Odell, so I am more of an authority on Goop than anyone might need to be. (As Odell preceded G by an equally forensically detailed biography of Anna Wintour, I fear for her psychological wellbeing, though her bank balance is probably AOK.)
Both seem to be people you wouldn't want to find yourself trapped in a lift with. For Gwynnie, I was reminded of the old Scots comment: "Daft? Aye, mebbe. But daft the richt way."

wrightstuff · Tuesday at 10:56 AM

James Charles said:
Well, here is what I am beginning tonight:

From our very own Litopian, Eva. It arrived in the mail today!

View attachment 20791

Update please

E G Logan · Tuesday at 3:07 PM

Beautiful People by Amanda Jennings, a psychological thriller.

I bought this partly because it has amazing reviews and the kind of cover-line comments you couldn't wring out of your best friends. Also partly for psychological thriller research. BUT I am not going to finish it because I'm pretty sure I know the killer now, and I reached that certainty before page 100. (Also the slow start and long-drawn-out backgrounding was getting to me.)

Does that mean it's obvious? Well, given my poor track record in psychological thriller villain guessing, perhaps, but I'd like to think not.
Let's look at the positives: I believe the book is very timely, promoted as 'for fans of Saltburn", (which I didn't see, so can't comment). The characters are a more well-rounded than in the average top-selling psy thrill, though still a touch stereotypical, with dialogue that does sound like people rather than I-speak-your-weight machines. The writing is good and the plotting is tight. The pace thunders on, mostly, (except for that background bit), and if the murderer and victim are as I expect, that will be a deft twist, and there may be more.
The Intro (or brief Prologue) with the murder from, presumably, the end is clever, revealing only the gender of the killer and the motive, revenge, which together offer pointers to someone else, more obvious...

Maybe a bit oversold, but not ridiculously so.

LJ Beck · 2025-08-21T20:47:12+0100

Hannah Faoileán said:
Rebel Skies by Ann Sei Lin (YA SFF): Brilliant! Great concept grippingly written. Kurara can craft paper into anything just using her mind. She wants to hone her skills so that she can join the Imperial Crafters and hunt Shikigami (paper creatures enslaved by humans who have now "gone mad" and retaliated) to extinction. But a disaster, a mentor's slave, and a revelation about her best friend lead her to question everything she thought she knew. Plenty of spine and heart here. Themes of oppression and identity. (I might use it as a comparative title).

Thanks for the rec. I looked for it on Audible, but alas, it's only in German. I'll get the paperback. I'm starting to buy more actual books again... I need more bookshelf space!

What are you reading at the moment? Recommendations welcome

Sedayne

wrightstuff

A.Morgan

Claire G

E G Logan

E G Logan

James Charles

A quantum entangled quark.

Geoff

E G Logan

Hannah Faoileán

Sedayne

wrightstuff

E G Logan

E G Logan

wrightstuff

E G Logan

LJ Beck

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