What are you reading ? '23.

[Zurdo]

Somewhat late, but that's ok, we are too engrossed in our books to notice.

The mind works in mysterious, and sometimes suspicious ways.

Many years ago I found a book in a 2nd hand shop by Tom Neale, called An Island To Oneself.  It is about the times he spent living alone on deserted Suvarov Island...in the book his 2 times there, but in the real world he went back a 3rd time. It made an impression on me, it resonates with others who crave solitude. When we lived on Waiheke Island there was no Public Library then, just a Community Library of donated books, and we donated a lot of our books, and this must've been one of them. 

On a motorcycle forum I'm on someone started a thread - Hermits, Recluses, Lookouts and lighthouse Keepers, asking if anyone had done it. A few live off the grid, but a true life alone is rare these days.  I mentioned An Island To Oneself, and someone said he had the book, and read it at least once a year.  So that set me on the trail to get my book back...I found a hardback on Amazon - $1,200 US !   Even paperbacks are 2 or 3 hundred.  A local women runs a Book Fair at the community hall, and other places as well....she keeps her books in one of the storage containers at work, and at the moment lives in the back yard in her truck. I had a look for it in the hall but didn't find it, and asked her, that I guess she didn't know every book she had,  but, did she have it. Half an hour later she gives it to me....she has a box labelled Russia and Pacific, I just saw Russia and moved on. She charges $3 per book, I gave her $4 for the prompt service.

So, just by thinking about it, my book has found it's way back to me. I am going to loan it to a friend, well she won't say we are friends, she shuns humans and leads a live of few friends. One of her daughters asked what would be her perfect life, and she just drew a picture...an island with one palm tree, and the stick figure of herself. So, this book is destined for her.

I do have some slight connection to the book too. The company A B Donald had interests in the Cook Islands and others, and they had a boat, or others that traded their products around the islands, and Tom was a friend of the skipper, and used the boat to get to Suvarov....and bought many of his supplies from the Donalds store.  In the mid '80's I worked for one of the Donald's, and he knew all about Tom Neale, and went to the islands aboard the same boat, with the same skipper.  Then on Waiheke I worked with a woman from Raro, and I mentioned Tom Neale - ''Oh, Uncle Tom !  He used to come and visit us in Glenn Innes.''  And she told me he went back a 3rd time, and had married in Raro and had kids, which is not in the book.

[Kenj]

Just downloaded from Kobo and read all 22 books of Nevil Shute. I read some of these many years ago and was happy with the re-reads. Mostly gentle mid 50's style where men were gentlemen and women blushed. "On the Beach" was an eye opener and the succession of events where the world was stuffed by radiation rings a bit like todays nuclear rumbles.

[Oh_hunnihunni]

Finished Hurwitz's The Last Orphan today. Boy he can write.

---

Just downloaded from Kobo and read all 22 books of Nevil Shute. I read some of these many years ago and was happy with the re-reads. Mostly gentle mid 50's style where men were gentlemen and women blushed. "On the Beach" was an eye opener and the succession of events where the world was stuffed by radiation rings a bit like todays nuclear rumbles.

His Pied Piper is a favourite of mine.

[Zurdo]

Trudy got herself famous !

https://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/ne...onnoisseur

Twiddling her fingers at home - she doesn't have a home. Just another case of a pensioner struggling to survive on a pittance that won't cover living costs.

[Lilith7]

Ohhh - I wish she'd come down here!

There was once an excellent secondhand bookshop around the corner, next to the also excellent opshop. And then the sodding mall opened, with a supermarket so they're sadly long gone now.


I think I still have Nevil Shute's Trustee from the toolroom somewhere, & recently re read Helen Forrester's Twopence to cross the Mersey series about dire poverty growing up in Liverpool.

I'm presently re reading Pigs in heaven, sequel to The bean trees, by Barbara Kingsolver an American writer who unlike most, doesn't shy away from some of the uglier aspects of American life & that country's nastier habits of interfering in the affairs of other countries even when Americans are involved, & their past treatment of Native Americans.

[Oh_hunnihunni]

Trudy got herself famous !

https://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/ne...onnoisseur

Twiddling her fingers at home - she doesn't have a home. Just another case of a pensioner struggling to survive on a pittance that won't cover living costs.

I am just about to start a new Koontz... not an Odd one though, I have read all those..

[Zurdo]

I recently read Operation Mincemeat, a story about a British deception operation in WWII, and it reads like some over the top novel of espionage...and um, that's because the whole thing was done by authors...Ian Fleming being one. There is a series on TVNZ called Rogue Hero's about the formation of the SAS, and it says everything is mostly true...but it looks all far fetched. It wasn't, that's what happened, a bunch of upper class British doing stuff that seems made up. Cross dressers, racing drivers, spies that don't exist, a corpse of a nobody given an existence dreamed up on paper,just play acting on a grand scale. They need to do a movie or TV series on Operation Mincemeat, it will come across as over the top and not believable, but it really did happen.

[Lilith7]

I recently read Operation Mincemeat, a story about a British deception operation in WWII, and it reads like some over the top novel of espionage...and um, that's because the whole thing was done by authors...Ian Fleming being one.  There is a series on TVNZ called Rogue Hero's about the formation of the SAS, and it says everything is mostly true...but it looks all far fetched. It wasn't, that's what happened, a bunch of upper class British doing stuff that seems made up. Cross dressers, racing drivers, spies that don't exist, a corpse of a nobody given an existence dreamed up on paper,just play acting on a grand scale. They need to do a movie or TV series on Operation Mincemeat, it will come across as over the top and not believable, but it really did happen.

That sounds like something which someone will actually do, sooner or later. It might be nice if they'd do it before our generation exits stage left so we get to see it.

[piroska]

Latest reads:
All of K. J. Parker, except the new one releasing shortly.

All the Riyria books by Michael J. Sullivan, but stopped after the Hadrian and Royce ones. The others not quite as good.


The Wise Mans Fear, The Lightning Tree, The Slow Regard of Silent Things, The Name of the Wind Patrick Rothfuss.

Flanders Patrica Anthony, and older one but I'd missed that too earlier.

Best British SF 2022 anthology

Familiar Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Swordheart, Nettle and Bone T. Kingfisher

Age of Ash Daniel Abraham, awaiting book 2

The Incredible Exploding Man Dave Hutchinson

Ian Harris Hippocrasy

[zqwerty]

If the secret services of the world are so good at their (I think mostly fictional) jobs then why is Putin still around.

[Lilith7]

The midnight library, Matt Haig & now reading Here & now & then, Mike Chen.


https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-re...w-and-then

[Lilith7]

A song for Rosaleen, Pip Desmond. About a family's attempts to cope with their mother's dementia. Well written but the subject makes it hard to read at some points. She wrote an earlier book about women in gangs which was also excellent.


https://www.masseypress.ac.nz/books/song-for-rosaleen/


https://www.wheelers.co.nz/browse/author...p-desmond/

[Lilith7]

Now reading my way through a book of sci fi short stories by various authors including Nancy Kress, Ken Liu, Greg Egan, Elizabeth Bear & Kristine Kathryn Busch & others, The final frontier.

[Zurdo]

I am revisiting Donna Leon, I haven't read about Commissario Guido Brunetti for a few years. An American living in Venice, she writes for an English reading audience, so a good look at Italian culture without a mashed up translation.

[Oh_hunnihunni]

Kevin J Anderso, last chapters of the last book in the Dragon trilogy...

As I watch The Summit, which is proving fascinating. I already have some much loathed characters, and some I am supporting. Gods, young people can be so brutally selfish...

[Olive]

I am revisiting Donna Leon, I haven't read about Commissario Guido Brunetti for a few years. An American living in Venice, she writes for an English reading audience, so a good look at Italian culture without a mashed up translation.

I used to love her novels, but a few years ago got a bit bored with the formula.   I do intend to pick up the series again at some point, but last time I looked they were a bit pricey on Kindle.  I try to keep below NZ$12.

[Zurdo]

I guess that was the case for me too...and enjoying the revisit. I could'nt afford to buy books at the rate I read, so it's only the library for many years now. I've got a house full of books if the library blows up.

[R2x1]

What am I reading? A thread on "What are you reading ?"
But at least my belly-button is lint-free at the moment.

[Lilith7]

What am I reading? A thread on "What are you reading ?"
But at least my belly-button is lint-free at the moment.

[Lilith7]

Now reading Did I ever tell you this? Sam Neil
Who doesn't look even slightly like a Nigel & who as it turns out, writes a seriously good book. Really enjoyable & very funny, no wonder the hold at the library took so long.


https://www.betterreading.com.au/review/...sam-neill/



Update, 1st August.
Still reading Sam's excellent book & have some across a bit of a coincidence, in that we apparently both frequently went to the place with the best music at that time (Kingbee/Stage Door/ Ramjam) & he remained in touch with one of the musicians, now living in Melbourne. So who knows, I might have danced with Sam Neil back in the day when we were far younger & less wrinkly!