Soft pick. I probably shouldn't have read this directly after an Agatha Christie. Where she is charming and witty, this was charming but silly. And the plotting and false leads weren't half as fiendish. I also didn't entirely buy the 1925 setting. However, the mystery and the unlikely grandfather & teenage boy detective team grew on me, and I might give the next book a go at some point.

#Eastercrime

Not one of Agatha Christie's best, but great fun nonetheless. It definitely showcases her sense of humour. It's pretty much a spoof spy thriller, with all the characters acting like they're something out of Wodehouse. For a while I was sure I had worked out the solution to the mystery, but of course I hadn't 😂

Did she really, though? First of all, it's "hear, hear", not "here, here", and secondly, this takes place in France so she would be a lot more likely to say "well said" (Bien dit!)

And the book was doing so well up until now.

Time for some classic #Eastercrime
I read (and watched) a lot of Agatha Christie in my teens, and the premise of this one sounds familiar, but I can't remember who the killer is or why. Hopefully it won't come back to me as I read 😅

Very unsettling mystery! And a fast read. I would have done the whole thing in one go if I hadn't made the mistake of starting it just before midnight. As it was I still read half the book before going nervously to bed 😅

I have the sushi cover, and I just have to say that it has absolutely nothing to do with the book. At all. Unlike the other one which features clues from the story.

This book has been described to me as cerebral crime/horror, and I sincerely hope that it's dark and unwholesome and full of fiendish puzzles.

#Eastercrime

How did BOTH of these books make it to the #WomensPrize shortlist? Wasn't one (more than) enough?
They both feature serious broader issues that affect women, but take a tone that is supposed to be funny and have protagonists that nobody can identify with.
They're both about privileged women who implode their lives because rich people have trauma too. That's 1/3 of the #shortlist (maybe more 😵, I haven't read them all yet).
Why?

The Fellowship was a lovely idea with memorable characters, but it seemed like the book had more descriptions of clothes and food than puzzles. (And there were inconsistencies!) It was also terribly wholesome and life-affirming and full of mindfulness-style wisdom. And since I'm a total grouch I found the sum total to be a bit dull.

Easing into #Eastercrime with this book that isn't really crime (I think), but a mystery and a lot of puzzles. It's also one of my #ReadYourKindle picks for April.

Very interesting and informative, but a bit technical at times.

The TL;DR summary:
People are the worst. We destroy everything with our greed and short sightedness. But not all is lost, and some people are doing awesome things. To save the oceans (and our future) we need to work together globally, but also give the local people of each area a say. And we need to cut carbon emissions. By a lot. Immediately.

#WomensPrizeNF #shortlist

Step 1 - Get the governments of poor countries to sell you fishing quotas for a steal
Step 2 - Overfish their waters, wreak their coastline, and destroy the natural habitats of the area
Step 3 - When the impoverished former local fishermen of the area risk their lives getting to Europe in search for work, call them "economic refugees" and "illegal migrants" and deny them entry.

??

My nominations for #CampLitsy25 before I overthink it too much 😅

@squirrelbrain @megabooks @barbarabb

Whether or not you celebrate Easter, you can join in the Norwegian tradition of #Eastercrime
Over the next two weeks, read a crime novel (true crime counts), or anything with a mystery. Bonus for reading outdoors. Watch an Agatha Christie re-run, or a new crime show. Play a board game (bonus if it's Cluedo or other sleuthing game) or do a trivia quiz or a jigsaw puzzle. Go for a walk, then eat all the best foods and treats. Tag me in your reads!

I forgot to post my list, but here are my #ReadYourKindle books. I'm quite eager to read them all, but will I actually do it? Probably not, since my kindle also contains 3 books from this year's #WomensPrize for fiction, 1 from the #InternationalBooker and the #CosmereBuddyRead books 🤷🏻‍♀️ I know it all counts, but damn I really want to read these four as well.

@CBee

Viking poo 💩

One of the most distinctive character voices I have come across. Tibb Ingleby carries this novel on her tiny, pale shoulders. There are some pacing issues, and the plot goes a bit wild. I was in distress for most of the last third 😂 I think this should have been shortlisted, for Tibb, for making the Tudor era come alive, for addressing topics that I shall not reveal here. While not perfect, this is a really strong debut!
#WomensPrize

Description of Bergen, Norway c. 1200. Can confirm that 800 years later, this part is still the same 😂

#WomensPrizeNF

Misleading. At the end one of the women is still unaware that the collision has taken place. So many words saying so little in this book. I didn't connect with the characters at all, as they didn't seem real or realistic. This must be on the #WomensPrize longlist for its #MeToo topic and not for its prose, plot, or characters. The last 3rd had character development and nuance around consent, perception, and self that saved it from the pan.

The first few minutes of this video about how the brain processes/predicts sensory input, really made me think of Mistborn burning Atium 😂
https://youtu.be/wo_e0EvEZn8?si=Z-IGSJ_DFlyBgrqH

#CosmereBuddyRead

It's the zombie apocalypse, but it's also a poetic allegory of grief, loss, depression, issues of memory, consumerism, probably a few things I missed. Somehow it works.
Passed it on to the Spouse and he loved it so much he already wants to read it again (and he almost never re-reads). Once I return it to the library I'm going to have to buy a copy to keep.

Books I had planned on working on this weekend. But we're all down with the flu or covid or some other devilry, and so far I've only managed half of It Lasts Forever. My head feels too heavy for my neck. I might just focus on the #CosmerBuddyRead instead. But I'll try to get started on Solenoid @RaeLovesToRead At least a couple of pages!

Reading the 2024 winner of the Ursula K Le Guin Prize. That's a strong opening!

This was very strange, and so very Russian. It contains almost every Russian trope and is full of allegory, including a modern Christ figure. Most of it is dialogue and digression, and almost every character has episodes of mania, delirium, or hysteria. It wore me out a bit by the end, and I had a lot of "wth is going on?!?" moments, but it's still a pick.

Library haul. All holds that came in at the same time. Because of course they did 😆 It's like requesting Birding and A Little Trickerie set off an avalanche.

For the most part this book has me in a constant state of rage, but this part made me laugh:
"Anyone who has been involved in feminist and left-wing politics will know that uniting anarchist feminists with trade union socialists is no mean feat." ?

Yes, it would take something like the common enemy of undercover cops literally emBEDDED in their homes. ?

#WomensPrize #NF

The downside to reading on Kindle. That's the zoomed in version of the map 🧐 I guess I'll just create my own headcanon map for where everything is in relation to each other, because I can't even make out what places are marked on the map - much less where they are 🤪
#CosmereBuddyRead

(continued from photo)
But Eden also served as a justification, a God-given excuse note for the brutal work. In the seventeenth century, arguments for colonial expansion regularly drew on Genesis, and God's injunction to man to subdue and have dominion over all creation; an attitude, I might add, that is directly responsible for the perilous state of our planet now.

Starting my journey to the Tower.

#FantasyFebruary

I have finally gotten started on the #CosmereBuddyRead but as I read all of Part One in one evening, I should be able to catch up 😅 What can I say, I enjoy a good heist plot and I find the magic system refreshingly different. And it reads a lot faster than Dostoyevsky or my current non-fiction read 😆

😳 Yes, that seems like a good place to draw the line. In fact, it seems to me that the psychiatrists who performed that service, teaching torturers to suppress their feelings of guilt, were doing the exact opposite of what their mental health mandate ought to be!

"The very same people who had it constantly drummed into them that the only language they understood was that of force, now decided to express themselves with force . . . To the expression: 'All natives are the same, the colonized reply: 'All colonists are the same.'"
Given the brutality of colonization, expressions of explosive violence by the oppressed were, in his view, inevitable in the opening phase of a liberation war.

Don't you hate it when you read what you at first think is a four book series, but then it turns out it's supposed to be a seven book series and the last anyone heard book five was due last year? 😣 I binged so hard on this series, and while the romance was starting to feel rather formulaic, the overarching plot was just getting going, and it's rare that books make me LOL this much. I want book 5 damnit!

Starting another Dostoevsky.

My January #ReadYourKindle list comprised of 20 books I meant to read in 2024. Painstakingly put together with lots of fiddling and swearing in pic collage only to discover that the white background was meant for a photo and disappeared when I saved, so I ended up having to screenshot it instead. I need a different editing app. And a pair of glasses 🤦🏻‍♀️
@CBee

Why did I think this book would be dull and difficult? It is full of dark humour and melodrama. So many morally grey characters. Generous villains, women who have fallen morally or socially, fanatics, absurd conversations, drunkards, a hapless side-character hero, romance, obsession, paranoia, high creep factor, Poles & Germans, questions of nihilism and exceptionalism. And Raskolnikov is no Luigi, but aren't we still asking the ❓ from the pic?

Part Five - High drama in every chapter!
Raskolnikov is full of paranoid rage but also determined to confess, Luzhin is even more dastardly than expected, Katerina Ivanova is even madder than Raskolnikov, and Sonya is in a constant state of terror. We get the most overwrought death bed scene ever.

All of you slackers who were supposed to join in the #CAPbuddyread are missing out 😂

Crime & Punishment part 4
Dunya has way too many admirers, most of whom are creeps.
Raskolnikov decides that misery loves company and messes with the head of a woman who seriously has enough on her plate already. Then presents himself for the most absurd police interview.

#CaPBuddyRead

Since I'm doing the #CaPBuddyread (although it seems to have become a solo project) and Crime & Punishment should count as Crime In Translation, I figured I might as well join @RaeLovesToRead in her #ChristmasCrimeChallenge. I'm using the tagged book for Seasonal. (Murder takes place shortly after Hogmanay). I have an Agatha Christie and a Supernatural lined up, so if I can get a Recommendation I'll manage max no. of books without a Tic-Tac-Toe 😂

I'm having trouble getting into this book. I expected it to be about a mother trying to get to her baby after the Berlin Wall went up overnight and separated them. But the narrative not only jumps between the mother and her teenaged older child, it also keeps jumping back in time to the war as we get the mother's (increasingly traumatic) backstory. It might be a case of "not the right book for now", but I'm just not keen on the writing style.

#CAPBuddyRead update
Part 3.
Raskolnikov is still utterly unhinged, but now calm enough to fool people.
His sister is potentially in a budding triangle drama involving the tropes "age-gap" and "brother's best friend".
I keep mistaking Zamyotov for Zossimov.
Two new players make a mysterious appearance.
I'm at the 50% mark!

'Excited, afraid, homeless, fat, dying, but at least if we made that first step we had somewhere to go, we had a purpose. And we really didn't have anything better to do at half past three on a Thursday afternoon than to start a 630-mile walk.'

'Although Pulcheria Alexandrova was already forty-three years old, her face still kept the remnants of its former beauty, and besides, she looked much younger than her age, as almost always happens with women who keep their clarity of spirit, the freshness of their impressions, and the honest, pure ardor of their hearts into old age.'

🙄 43. Old age. 🤨

#CAPBuddyRead

How are you all doing with the #CAPBuddyRead ?
I have read Part One, in which Raskolnikov is increasingly desperate and a thought experiment becomes a fixed idea. But the best laid plans etc
And Part Two, in which Raskolnikov suffers a nervous breakdown and delirium that would have had any English character of the era carted off to a private institution to die off page.
Now starting Part Three to discover if Raskolnikov gets a grip.

I did it!
As in, I finished this absolute tome of a history book and with it I reached my yearly goal of 12 non-fiction books. And there's even a month and a half left for me to add a couple more (much shorter and faster reads).
#NonFictionNovember #WomensPrize #NonFiction

I don't have the will or the energy to make a video, so here's my #Booker winner prediction and shortlist ranking:

Personal faves: James and Stone Yard Devotional
Quite liked: Orbital and The Safekeep
Don't think succeeded in what it set out to do: Creation Lake
Actively disliked: Held

Book I think will win: James or Held.
Sure hope it is James.

My #tbr this 24-hour #readathon
Plus the tagged book, which is on my kindle.
I'm halfway through 'Salem's Lot and would like to finish it this weekend, but I'll probably take breaks to read some of the other books.

'We imagine we would've been that person, the one who would've written the letter, who would've spoken out, would've hidden the Jews, would've provided the stop on the Underground Railroad.
We say this to ourselves as the world literally burns, as militarized police forces murder citizens, as children are held in camps at our own borders.'

I almost bailed 20 pages in. Glad I didn't. Is the prose excessively elaborate? Definitely. But once you settle into the narrative it works. The stories are so uncomfortable and brutal in content that plain language would render them too stark to bear. And the magical realism/SF combo allows for each idea to be followed to its extreme, but it also allows for hope. This book is female pain/love/rage/friendship/vengeance. But never despair.

And so, this politician of petulance and infant spite, this Grande Toddler King, had stamped his small feet until the whole world rippled around him. He closed all the borders to the country, and at first the algorithmic majority cheered, waving flags of tabloid front pages. It was too late by the time we realised that it meant we could not leave either.

"Gangs are a kind of grief. They begin as friendships and end as funerals. (...) Where there is poverty and cruelty, there will rise a gang. But they are chiefly cannibals, who target their own and eat their families, their girlfriends, their neighbours, their old classmates. They rarely attack those who are the cause of their sorrow."