****Favorite Reads for Q2 2015

We are nearing the end of the second quarter, and it is time to think about the books you've read during the past three months.

What were your favorite books during April through June? Did you have any five star reads?

Have you discovered any new authors that you want to share with the group?

Were there any books that you really disliked, or that you were unable to finish?

Well, I don't think I'll finish any other books by the end of the month, so here goes.

Favorite Fiction
(in reverse order of when I read them)
Tyrant Banderas by Ramon del Valle Inclan
The Earth by Emile Zola
The Dead Mountaineer's Inn by Boris Strugatsky and Arkady Strugatsky
The Suitcase by Sergei Dovlatov
The Wrong Side of Paris by Honore de Balzac

Favorite Nonfiction
The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm
Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen by Mary Norris

Fun, Fun, Fun
The Keller series by Lawrence Block
Continuing the Amsterdam detective series by Janwillem van de Wetering

Duds
The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett

Writers Discovered
Boris Strugatsky and Arkady Strugatsky -- they mostly wrote science fiction and I also read their most famous book, Roadside Picnic.
Lawrence Block's Keller series; I had previously loved his Matthew Scudder series.

I've had a really good reading quarter - I've enjoyed everything I've picked up, with the exception of The Secret History which I've tried and failed several times now to get into. It became my first 'abandoned' book this year.

5 star fiction reads were:
Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner
Brooklyn by Colin Toibin
Plainsong by Kent Haruf

Added to my fiction all-time favourites:
Bastard out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison

5 star non-fiction read:
HHhH by Laurent Binet

Authors that were new to me in Q2 that I'll be reading more from in the future:
Karl Ove Knausgaard
Yoko Ogawa
Colin Toibin
Kent Haruf
William Wall

Pogo: Evidence to the Contrary by Walt Kelly

Robert

Laszlo Krasnahorkai's Seiobo There Below is a magical book, and I thoroughly recommend it.
I finally read Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveller which was brilliant.
Nabokov's Letters to Vera (his wife) are eminently worth reading.
Victor Pelevin's charming, creepy stories in A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia is another book I enjoyed.
Marina Lewycka's A Short History of Tractors in Ukraine is dark, funny and sad, and a good read.

No fabulous reads for me, yet again, but these ones were notable:

The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing -- the idea of reading Lessing was daunting, but I found this a very good read. Still, I'm not in any hurry to read more by her at the moment.

Poor Cow -- an unusual look at life in 1960s London

The Children Act -- one of McEwan's better books.

ETA: A five star non-fiction read: What We Talk About When We Talk About the Tube, by John Lanchester.

I read 21 books and listened to 3 audiobooks over the 2nd quarter.

My stand out reads were:
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson
The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin
Independent People by Halldor Laxness
We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

I was disappointed by (but maybe because of too high expectations)
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
Surfacing by Margaret Atwood

Two I really enjoyed:
Vlad by Carlos Fuentes
The Blue Fox by Sjon

Somewhat meh about:
The Greenhouse by Ava Olafsdottir

Couldn't finish, and feel very guilty about this:
Ravensbruck: Life and Death in Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women by Sarah Helm

When I posted yesterday I didn't think I'd read another book this month, but then I picked up the 87 page What We Talk About When We Talk About the Tube, by John Lanchester. Thought it was excellent and wished it was longer. Off to update my post. . . .

Quarter 2 was a bit of a lost cause readingwise, but there were some absolute jewels. I managed to score three five-star books:

Little Kingdoms by Steven Millhauser introduced me to this very imaginative and enjoyable writer. I will be reading more of him in the near future.

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway came embarrassingly late in my reading life. What was I waiting for???

Urbino: The Story of a Renaissance City by June Osborne is by all appearances a coffee table book, full of delicious color photos of this storied city. The text is tremendously interesting and if anyone is planning a trip to northern Italy in the near future, Urbino demands a visit, for sure!

My best reads for the quarter, just based on what I gave 4.5 or 5-star ratings to:

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012 edited by Dave Eggers

So, one non-fiction, one fiction, and one mix of the two. Well, I guess that's nice and tidy.

I'm still on vacation, so doing this on my iPad, which I dislike doing.

Favorite Reads
I did a re-read of the Lord Peter Wimsey series by Dorothy Sayers (always enjoyable)
Life after Life by Kate Atkinson (re-read)

A Month in the Country by J. L. Carr
Troubles by J. G. Farrell
A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson
Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope

Most Disappointing
Loving Without Tears by M. J. Farrell (Molly Keane) (Not awful, but not as good as others I've read by her)

Five Stars

nothing

Four and a Half Stars

Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys. by Viv Albertine
Suttree by Cormac McCarthy
Tar Baby by Toni Morrison

Selective list with Four Stars

Recommended
Outliers : The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell - consider audio
Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell - consider audio

Recommended, but has issues
Zealot : The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan

>8 twogerbils: I saw Ravensbruck at a bookstore and have wondered about it. It must be rough.

I didn't participate in the first quarter favorite reads, so I am going to list my favorites from the first half, all of which happen to be in the first quarter.

All My Puny Sorrows
The Red Notebook
Our Souls at Night
Our Only World

Galveston by Nic Pizzolatto
&
Arcadia by Lauren Groff.

I didn't post in the first quarter thread either, so here are all my book crushes this year (there are not that many)

Iphigénie by Racine
chien blanc by Romain Gary
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

My best read of the second quarter, and of the year so far, was without doubt Phèdre. And in the first quarter, I enjoyed La Philosophie by André Comte-Sponville very much.

Here are the books that I really enjoyed in Q2:

The Fever by Megan Abbott (a disturbing look into the lives of high school girls)
Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum (an American housewife in Sweden has a series of affairs)
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel *my only 5-star read from Q2* (a group of Shakespearean actors travel in a post-epidemic America)
How to Tell Toledo from the Night Sky by Lydia Netzer (scientists find love and make discoveries in Ohio)
The Interstellar Age: Inside the Forty-Year Voyager Mission by Jim Bell (an engaging and informative look at the Voyager satellites)
Diving Belles by Lucy Wood (charming short story collection based on the myths and legends of Cornwall)

I am definitely going to check out more from Megan Abbott, Lydia Netzer, and Lucy Wood!

I suppose the only "disappointing" read I had this quarter was California by Edan Lepucki, only because I thought it would go in a different direction.

Only the one five star read, and that was a revisit of an old friend. The Uncommon reader by Alan Bennett is a gem.

The following were all 4 stars.
Gaudy Night, Busman's Honeymoon & The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L Sayers (all re-reads)
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie (another re-read)
Not my father's son by Alan Cumming (although enjoy is possibly not the word to describe this memoir)
Put me back on my bike by William Fotheringham which was an ideal lead in to the Tour de France.

I had some "meh" and OK reads, but no stinkers.

My favorites for the quarter -

One Came Home by Amy Timberlake. YA, historical fiction. Newbery Honor book.
Life After Life Kate Atkinson
The Underground Girls of Kabul Jenny Nordberg. Non-fiction.
The plight of girls and women in present day Afghanistan.
Mama Makes Up Her Mind Bailey White. Vignettes on life in the South. Quirky, humorous.

All women authors, I just now notice.

>20 Helenliz:
Uncommon Reader one of my all-time favorites too!
If you like that one, have you read Mrs. Queen Takes the Train?

This is a great thread for fattening up the wishlist!

>21 nrmay:

Just read Mrs Queen Takes the Train this week. It was a great vacation read. I love how it referenced Uncommon Reader!

>21 nrmay: & >23 alphaorder: I loved The Uncommon Reader so Mrs Queen Takes the Train goes to the top of my wishlist.