Marie-Therese > Recent Status Updates

It's like love at first sight! So far, I just love everything Renouard is saying/doing here. It's swoonworthy. *sigh*

The first story was a bit of a disappointment (great atmosphere and voice but not much of a plot or follow through) but the subsequent three were all excellent in their own unique ways. Very weird, rather sad, and wryly humorous. Looking forward to reading further.

Having recently finished watching season one of "What We Do in the Shadows", I thought what can I read that might be fun and kind of similar and then I remembered I had a copy of this. And it's fun and, in it's vampires adapting to the modern world plot, kind of similar, and, so far, I like it a lot.

*SPOILERS!!!*

The level of animal abuse in contemporary South Korean fiction is just...well, it's high enough that I'm starting to question my desire to read these books. I get what the abuse is portraying about anomie, hopelessness, child abuse, etc. But, for dog's sake, I just don't need to see any more dead kittens!

This a fresh, frequently funny, but slightly dark take on teenage girlhood in the last year of the 1980s. Reminds me just a bit of Mona Awad's 'Bunny' but with a younger, poorer, and more ethnically diverse group of women. The pacing is a little more languid than I'd like but Barry has a great voice and a firm grasp on the period and I'm really curious where she's taking her motley crew.

This is very well-written (which I expected given Lowell's "real life" pedigree) and so far quite suspenseful but there's a curious lack of time/era in this novel. I keep having to remind myself that it's set in the Victorian period as so much of it seems like a Regency romance. Why is the heroine playing a harpsichord? Why does the fashion often seem more early 19th century than Victorian? It's confusing.

While I did not care much for the first story, 'Uironda'', by Luigi Musolino, the following two by Pilar Pedraza and Attila Veres were just superb, and I am very much looking forward to reading 'Angle of Horror' by Cristina Fernández Cubas, the author of the excellent 'Nona's Room'.

Really not enjoying this. This reads like a sulky teen's attempts to be "transgressive"-there's nothing revelatory, nothing especially shocking, and it's all so repetitive. Perhaps something is lost in translation. I'll go on a bit more but if it doesn't improve considerably I'm ditching this.

There does not appear to be any central argument here and that makes the book feel a bit diffuse, but as a cultural/social history this is nicely done, well -organized and referenced so far. Well-written too.

Does anyone know how I might contact a Good Reads librarian to get a book manually entered by someone else fixed? The title is wrong and there's no cover image but the ISBN 10 is correct so I can't add it as a new book or edit what's been entered. This is one of the more frustrating aspects of Good Reads compared to Library Thing (about the only thing I miss about LT).

I have a jpg of the cover of this beautiful exhibition catalogue but am not sure how to get it uploaded here. If any of my friends know to whom I should send the digital photo, please respond!

My favourite Ferrante novels have been her brief, brutal, early works, before the Neapolitan trilogy that brought her fame. This novel, so far, seems too drawn out, too much like the recent work that I don't particularly like. Ferrante does female adolescence exceptionally well but this already feels too lax and drawn out at only 30%.

Leonora Carrington, Angela Carter, Carol Emshwiller, Elizabeth Hand, Antonio Tabbuchi, Ben Okri, David Drake, M. John Harrison, Jane Yolen, Marie Hermanson... the reading is good at the midpoint of this massive anthology. In truth, this is probably my favourite section so far, as there are so many writers I love featured but I haven't always read the stories the VanderMeers have chosen. Just brilliant stuff.

Leonora Carrington, Angela Carter, Carol Emshwiller, Elizabeth Hand, Antonio Tabbuchi, Ben Okri, David Drake, M. John Harrison, Jane Yolen, Marie Hermanson... the reading is good at the midpoint of this massive anthology. In truth, this is probably my favourite section so far, as there are so many writers I love featured but I haven't always read the stories the VanderMeer's have chosen. Just brilliant stuff.

So 'Thirty Hours with a Corpse', a collection of French Grand Guignol vignettes of the most gruesome kind apparently reminds the Good Reads algorithm of 'Once I Ate a Pie', a fluffy dog story described thus: "Gus herds his people like sheep. Abby loves borrowing slippers. And once, Mr. Beefy ate a pie. It's a dog's life. Filled with squeaky toys, mischief, and plenty of naps"

You just can't make this stuff up.

Wish I liked this more :-( The story so far is good but the prose is just so flat and uninteresting and almost amateurish. I feel like I'm trudging through the story rather than flying, despite the inherent interest of the setting. So different than the superb prose of the Dimaline novel I just finished.

Very curious as to why Pushkin Press thought this was worth publishing. Morand's work isn't exactly bad (there are occasionally lovely imagist bits) but it's not especially good either. He was an appalling human being and a writer who now seems quite dated (the Proust intro is by far the best part of this book and even that is not especially good or insightful). Don't really get this *shrug*

I wish I liked this more. I want to like this more. There's much that's clearly admirable but...I just don't know. It's not catching or holding my interest and I have to force myself to read it. I feel like I'm missing something but I don't know precisely what.

So far this is excellent! Varied, thoughtful and well-written selections. Can't wait to read the rest.

Really peeved not to see Natasha Trethewey's 'Memorial Drive' among the finalists for Goodreads Autobiography/Memoir. The fact that the Mariah Carey, Jessica Simpson and Alex Trebek books are included and Trethewey's extraordinary book is not, really tells me just how seriously I should take these awards. What a farce.

Is it just me or is it really unbelievably bizarre that Goodreads suggests I might want to read Felix Salten's 'The Memoirs of Josephine Mutzenbacher', an erotic novel by the author of 'Bambi', because I read and rated 'Luster' by Raven Leilaini. Seriously, Goodreads algorithm, what the everliving f**k are you thinkng?!? So so weird.

Reading Gazdanov is just such a wonderful thing. He is a truly remarkable writer with a distinctive vision and voice. Maybe the best discovery I've made this year.

I'm amazed at how many glowing reviews this has received from people who should know better. Almada is a talented writer but this is just profoundly disrespectful to the murdered women and to the everyone who loved them. Psychics? Half-baked theories based on nothing more than rumour, jealousy, or spite? Ridiculous suppositions about these women's lives that can never be proved? This is appalling. I'm disgusted.

Arrrgghhh! I've read something like 15 books since my last update here and I just have no desire to review but I feel so guility just assigning stars. *First World Problems*

Started this late last night and have been speeding through it. Just a delightful fast-paced amalgam of humour and creepiness that takes the basics of Algernon Blackwood's 'The Willows' and tweaks them into a very modern weird tale.

This is a one and done book (you start it one day and can't bear to leave it until it's finished). Dinner calls, but I'll be picking this up and finishing it later tonight.

This is clearly a rich and meaty book, one brimming with stories to tell, so I can't figure out why it's so dull so far. I can hardly bring myself to come back to it when I put it down (I started it weeks ago) and really only do so out of a kind of duty and a hope that it gets much better.