Books you've read in 2023

Although I've finally succumbed to an audiobook for this, which I'm enjoying.

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My reading has been a bit off this year. No 5 stars (yet) for anything. Going to try this one next, only 200 pages and good reviews.

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Just finished Carrie for book club. Was fun to discuss.

Reading the new(ly translated) Jhumpa Lahiri at the minute, Roman Stories. Brilliant as per usual. I just love her and think she's my favourite writer.
 
For those who read and enjoyed ‘the whale tattoo’, Jon Ransom has a new book coming early next year called ‘the gallopers’. It’s available now as a read now title in netgalley if you have an account there.
 
a little tangential but - what is the book you've read recently / last year or two ish that you just really couldn't stand, or couldn't finish?

I saw Matt Haig's name under a review on a back cover recently and it reminded me how much I could not cope with The Midnight Library when forced to read it for a (short lived) book club. genuinely so paper thin and badly written, and it was everywhere for ages.
 
The Paris Apartment was truly diabolical. It’s one of those trash airport novels with 2 pages chapters that each end on a silly cliffhanger.

I was expecting maybe something closer to Gillian Flynn but it was unreadable.
 
Jark said:
a little tangential but - what is the book you've read recently / last year or two ish that you just really couldn't stand, or couldn't finish?

I saw Matt Haig's name under a review on a back cover recently and it reminded me how much I could not cope with The Midnight Library when forced to read it for a (short lived) book club. genuinely so paper thin and badly written, and it was everywhere for ages.
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One of the worst books I have ever read. I hated it so much.
 
In terms of famous/lauded books from the last few years that I didn't like or DNF, I'd say All The Light We Cannot See and Shantaram.
 
Harukami’s The Wind-up Bird Chronicle was a hate crime (towards the reader). It started well but then it soon became obvious that it was leading nowhere, just several plots and lose ends. It’s a fucking scam of a book.

(And yet it had some magical passages that you can’t totally disregard it either, which is all the more infuriating)
 
Actively hated hated HATED :opinion:Bret Easton Ellis’ The Shards. I forced myself to finish it just to see if was as predictable as I thought it was going to be and it WAS!
 
RaspberrySwirl said:
Harukami’s The Wind-up Bird Chronicle was a hate crime (towards the reader). It started well but then it soon became obvious that it was leading nowhere, just several plots and lose ends. It’s a fucking scam of a book.

(And yet it had some magical passages that you can’t totally disregard it either, which is all the more infuriating)
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agreed! I'm not sure I ever finished it despite getting pretty close. I feel Murakami is a bit of as one trick pony, all these ill-defined female characters with cute n' sexy ears, the wells, the missing cats, the missing women, the male hero losing it psychologically... I really liked Norwegian Wood for how it left all the surrealist shit behind and just told a miserable story.
 
Jark said:
agreed! I'm not sure I ever finished it despite getting pretty close. I feel Murakami is a bit of as one trick pony, all these ill-defined female characters with cute n' sexy ears, the wells, the missing cats, the missing women, the male hero losing it psychologically... I really liked Norwegian Wood for how it left all the surrealist shit behind and just told a miserable story.
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Exactly! I absolutely loved Kafka on the Shore, which was the first book I read by him back in 2007. None of the other books I’ve read by him have been as good and they all had the same themes. Now in hindsight I do wonder if I loved Kafka because it was different to everything else I had read or because I was young…
 
Rowan Tree 🌳 said:
Reading the new(ly translated) Jhumpa Lahiri at the minute, Roman Stories. Brilliant as per usual. I just love her and think she's my favourite writer.
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Just confirming that this is stunningly good. The smallest details written so delicately and powerfully.
 
RECENT EVENTS in Moopy have made me remember a couple of books I read this summer that I actually enjoyed very much because they reminded me why I have the political opinions I have, especially after what feels like an ENDGAME of the culture wars approaching from BOTH SIDES. I recommend them in the hope that they'll make little lightbulbs turn on in people's heads the way they did in mine.

The first one is Cancelled: The Left Way Back from Woke from Umut Ozkirimli, which presents the case of a big sector of the left cornering itself more and more in PURITY TESTS that take you nowhere but towards a QUASI-RELIGIOUS AUTHORITARIAN/HYPOCRITICAL way of life. And, of course, and as the author points out repeatedly, there is a danger that by doing that it is LOSING PEOPLE to the IDENTITY POLITICS of the right (nation, religion, etc) rather than recruiting them to the universalistic causes of the left.

I don't necessarily buy into this new MORAL PANIC of the MODERATE (/RICH) LEFT coming from the US with people like Steven Pinker and Jonathan Haidt going boo-hoo because their cosy tenures at prestigious universities have become swamped with corporate diversity and inclusion bullshit, but this book largely sidesteps the whole CAMPUS WARS and has a more grounded (and more European) slant.

Reading it has also made me somewhat more empathetic towards people whose opinions I disagree with, which is a nice added bonus.

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TRIGGER WARNING: The book has a RECOMMENDATION from Julie Bindel on the cover - although she says right there that she doesn't agree with "all of it" so make of that WHAT YOU WILL (ps. reading this book will not make you transphobic).

The second book is a collection of essays by Walter Benn Michaels & Adolph Reed Jr called No Politics But Class Politics

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This book has a bit more of an academic slant but it essentially riffs on the same topics as above - inequality, class wars, identity politics and how extreme capitalism has reduced democracy to people pointlessly fighting on Twitter about things they have very little power to change. Luckily the essays are short and some of them take the form of interviews so they're easy to digest. Some are of more interesting than others but I find Walter Benn Michaels musings in particular so PERFECTLY dissect the current economic situation we find ourselves in. I'm paraphrasing but there's a powerful line in the first essay of the book that basically says "you definitely know you live in a neoliberal world when we celebrate one person of color being rich and powerful as a victory for all the people of color who are not rich and powerful". If that lines piques your interest check it out because the book is full of moments like this.
 
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Here's a great review of No Politics but Class Politics by a much more eloquent person than me that also works as a little essay on poverty.
 
Peekaboo said:
the case of a big sector of the left cornering itself more and more in PURITY TESTS that take you nowhere but towards a QUASI-RELIGIOUS AUTHORITARIAN/HYPOCRITICAL way of life. And, of course, and as the author points out repeatedly, there is a danger that by doing that it is LOSING PEOPLE to the IDENTITY POLITICS of the right (nation, religion, etc) rather than recruiting them to the universalistic causes of the left.
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Oh God SING IT SWEETCHEEKS!
 
Peekaboo said:
The first one is Cancelled: The Left Way Back from Woke from Umut Ozkirimli, which presents the case of a big sector of the left cornering itself more and more in PURITY TESTS that take you nowhere but towards a QUASI-RELIGIOUS AUTHORITARIAN/HYPOCRITICAL way of life. And, of course, and as the author points out repeatedly, there is a danger that by doing that it is LOSING PEOPLE to the IDENTITY POLITICS of the right (nation, religion, etc) rather than recruiting them to the universalistic causes of the left.
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Thank you, that’s a great recommendation!
 
Bit random but I've bought a book of poetry that a teacher who taught me when I was 15 wrote, published posthumously (she died of cancer in 2016 and some of the poems are about her last few months). It's very moving and a bit morbid of me but I have really enjoyed them. I have tried to imagine her writing them, and it's always a bit funny to realise your teachers were proper people, even after all this time!

Joanna Seldon - The Bright White Tree

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Just yesterday, I delved into a captivating and beautifully written erotic narrative penned by Stellan Emrys Wild. The story unfolded like a mesmerizing dance of sensuality—an erotic story of a woman running naked in the rain. What surprised me even more was my own genuine appreciation for the story, as it resonated with a level of artistry and eloquence that went beyond mere explicitness.
 
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I just finished The Bee Sting by Paul Murray. I think it's among the best books I ever read. I saw a Tiktok about the books nominated for the Booker Prize and this one interested me the most. It's a fairly long novel about a family thats falling apart after a major financial issue. I don't want to give away too much, but the way it's written, from different perspectives, is unlike anything I've read before.
 
Forgive me Moopy readers for I had sinned!
Remember when I said I DNF'd The Promise? I decided to pick it up again and oh my goodness, what a revelation it is.
Absolutely loving it.
 
RJN said:
I just finished The Bee Sting by Paul Murray. I think it's among the best books I ever read. I saw a Tiktok about the books nominated for the Booker Prize and this one interested me the most. It's a fairly long novel about a family thats falling apart after a major financial issue. I don't want to give away too much, but the way it's written, from different perspectives, is unlike anything I've read before.
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ooh! I have The Bee Sting lined up as my first January read, although I'm a bit scared cos it looks massive. excited to dive in.

if you like the multiple perspectives thing I'd try The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas, which I'm reading again now for what must be the fourth or fifth time... prob my all time fave.

I'm also reading his debut novel Loaded which is quite a slim, first person story about a young, horny and jobless gay Greek in Melbourne - it's a fucking revelation. some of the writing is so good and so funny it makes me scream. main themes - hedonism, boredom and nihilism. :disco:

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Jark said:
ooh! I have The Bee Sting lined up as my first January read, although I'm a bit scared cos it looks massive. excited to dive in.

if you like the multiple perspectives thing I'd try The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas, which I'm reading again now for what must be the fourth or fifth time... prob my all time fave.

I'm also reading his debut novel Loaded which is quite a slim, first person story about a young, horny and jobless gay Greek in Melbourne - it's a fucking revelation. some of the writing is so good and so funny it makes me scream. main themes - hedonism, boredom and nihilism. :disco:

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Filmed as ‘Head On’ and with a gratuitous shot of Alex Dimitriades wanking…. :horny:
 
Jark said:
ooh! I have The Bee Sting lined up as my first January read, although I'm a bit scared cos it looks massive. excited to dive in.

if you like the multiple perspectives thing I'd try The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas, which I'm reading again now for what must be the fourth or fifth time... prob my all time fave.

I'm also reading his debut novel Loaded which is quite a slim, first person story about a young, horny and jobless gay Greek in Melbourne - it's a fucking revelation. some of the writing is so good and so funny it makes me scream. main themes - hedonism, boredom and nihilism. :disco:

image_090e8ceb-3dfd-4104-823e-1d7a912b684e.jpg
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The Bee Sting was long, but really easy to read and engaging. I read it in a week, which I almost never do.

The Slap looks interesting, maybe I’ll read that soon. After the January moopy book club book of course
 
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