NOVELS - What are you reading this year?

[Joana]

I just finished The Garden of Letters by Alyson Richman. Found it while browsing the fiction shelves at my library. It's a beautifully written novel set in Italy during WWII. Main locations are Verona, Venice and Positano, but it is the characters and plot that were most compelling for me. The young woman is a cello student in the Verona Conservatory in the early days of the story, so I enjoyed learning details about playing the cello. The author's notes at the back of the book indicate she did extensive research on this time period in Italy. Having read Iris Origo's writing, this really resonated with me.

 

[Lisa in Ottawa]

This novel sounds worth checking out.

 

[Cameron]

I'm reading my third Tana French novel, Faithful Place.

 

[Karen Frerichs]

Nice idea, Pauline... I've just added The Nix and Dragon Springs Road to my Amazon wish list.... and think
that maybe going back to Still Life isn't a bad idea, though I still wait for the next Louise Penny, just because it's so soothing to read of the characters and the village of Three Pines.
Also added Garden of Letters, per Joanna, and that review made me remember Natalia Ginzburg... does anyone know her work? She wrote of Italy during the WWII era, sometimes novels, sometimes essays; always well written. AND she was one of the first female members of the Italian Parliament.

 

[Karen Frerichs]

... meant to add this:

https://smile.amazon.com/dp/1883642...UTF8&colid=F2U0MYZZSF65&coliid=I1A079PBJDHMZR

as it looks interesting... found it in a search for Natalia Ginzburg titles... some of the best Italian writers, writing in post-war Rome. Might be worth checking into...

 

[Roz]

I'm about halfway through, and very much enjoying, White Truffles in Winter by N. M. Kelby, a novel about the master chef Escoffier. It's a fascinating story, beautifully written, and makes me hungry with the wonderful descriptions of the food he prepares.

There is also some very interesting trivia. For example, did you know that the number of pleats in a chef's toque is supposed to indicate the number of ways he knows how to prepare an egg? But the most the hat would hold is 100 pleats, and Escoffier claimed to know 600 ways to cook an egg, so he didn't like to wear a toque.

 

[DDTraveler]

I am listening -- through Audible -- to A Gentleman In Moscow by Amor Towles. Beautifully written. It is amazing how a good writer can make being exiled in a grand hotel interesting for so many pages (in my case, so many hours).

I'm also a big fan of Louise Penney. For those of you who like mysteries and London, I've recently devoured the Mick Herron Slough House series -- funny and fun. The first in the series is Slow Horses.

DD

 

[Sophia Delago]

A year's a long time, but I'm planning on getting through a lot of the beat poets' stuff. Currently busy with Naked Lunch by Burroughs.

 

[Pauline]

I just finished "I am No One" by Patrick Flanery and I did not like it. It was written like a diary with the author going on and on and it really got tiresome. I picked it because it was set in Oxford and NYC which I thought I would enjoy.

 

[Chris]

I'm just starting "The Ministry of Utmost Happiness" by Arundhati Roy. I loved her first novel, "The God of Small Things," and it's been a very long wait for the second. I just finished "Cork Dork: A Wine-Fueled Adventure Among the Obsessive Sommeliers, Big Bottle Hunters, and Rogue Scientists Who Taught Me to Live for Taste" by Bianca Bosker. It's a better-than-I-expected-it-t0-be nonfiction piece about winetasting. And I'm trying to get through "Someday, Someday, Maybe" by Lauren Graham for my book club. I would not read another word of this if it weren't for the book club...

"A Gentleman in Moscow" is already on my Kindle waiting its turn.