Recent Reads - NO MORE DNFS!

Books Mentioned:
Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh
Death Note by Tsugumi Ohba
Oh Sister by Jodie Chapman
Becoming Liz Taylor by Elizabeth Delo
Clear by Carys Davies
Tremor by Teju Cole
Hidden Fires by Sairish Hussain
The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes
The Work by Bri Lee
Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez
Pheasants Nest by Louise Milligan
Hagstone by Sinead Gleeson
A Great Country by Shilpi Somaya Gowda
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[@ameliareads589]

Your number one novel went straight to my library list. Thanks for sharing the background story, never heard about this artist before.

[@MsPixieD]

Clear -- I just heard about a book that deals with rich people trying to push northern Scottish people off their land. It's in a June 10 video from Willow Talks Books, the first of 3 horror novels she talks about in that video. The book is titled Haar, and the plot sounds like a satisfying pushback to colonization. 💙

[@GregHarness]

Thank you, Scott. I'm very much looking forward to "Clear."

[@GunpowderFictionPlot]

Hope you enjoy. :)

[@tyghe_bright]

Pheasants Nest sounds like the kind of thing I love to read. Literary-leaning genre fiction. Stuff that often gets overlooked because it falls between the cracks for marketers and fans. Whether it's fantasy, horror, or thriller.

[@GunpowderFictionPlot]

I really like it when a literary fiction author uses a genre fiction set up to add a nice plot to their novel. Too often marketing wants clean categories, and I think that's to our detriment, it's possible for a novel to be a successful genre and literary fiction books.

[@traceymills5113]

Anita de Monte Laughs Last sounds amazing! Off to discover how I can get my hands on a copy immediately. Thank you.

[@P.Ross192]

For Partition I loved 'The Book of Everlasting Things' - Aanchal Malhotra Thanls for the great reviews! ❤

[@jaimee-kate]

I am SO EXCITED that you started Death Note 😍 one of my favorite series of all time

[@spexi513]

I adore your whole set up and vibe 📚 🪱 💚

[@GunpowderFictionPlot]

Thank you, I always love your comments and support. :)

[@StephanieP1901]

Wow. You've sold me on Anita de Monte Laughs Last. I mean, I was going to read it anyway because I LOVED Olga Dies Dreaming. I pre ordered it, in fact. But now it's moving up the list, thanks to your insight. For anyone who wants to know more about Ana Mendieta, Pushkin has a really excellent podcast series called Death of an Artist, and Ana was the subject of season 1. It's a great listen. Season 2 is about Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner. Train to Pakistan is a book M had when we met, and I just pulled it off the shelf a few weeks ago, because of the partition book we read for Patreon. I'm not in the mood for more partition now, but I will read that one eventually. A Great Country and Hidden Fires (look who's on a South Asia literature binge!) are books I own; glad they got your seal of approval. Now I know I'll like them. And everyone who's not already in the Patreon book club, PLEASE join us. We had so much fun smacking around Teju Cole at that meeting. All of us were already well-aware of the "issues" Teju thought he was bringing to our attention. Fuck, I'd even owned a copy of Ali Farka Touré's Talking Timbuktu album for years. If you like great conversation with very intelligent people and skilled direction of conversation by Scott, join us. The two meetings are usually the highlight of my month.

[@MsPixieD]

I very recently put Anita de Monte on my tbr. Thanks for the further info! I'll add the other book to my tbr and maybe even listen to the podcasts 💙

[@davidleemoveforlife6332]

Much of Midnight's Children is about partition. I think it's the best novel of the 20th Century, judge me if you want. It's also really entertaining.

[@GunpowderFictionPlot]

Rushdie doesn't work for me, he's too heavy on the magical realism which is not my favourite - but I understand that if you're fond of that, he's particularly good at it. :)

[@OliviasCatastrophe]

A shame that the Bri Lee fiction wasn't very good in the end. I'm so glad you liked death note! I have read six volumes of it so far, and really enjoy the game between L and Light, and while it does discuss good and bad to some extent, it's not the entirety of the plot as a whole. I really like how it focuses on the cat and mouse game, and how well it does that.

[@GunpowderFictionPlot]

I think I've read 5 or 6 now, it's very addictive, but yeah it's just Light v L, I hope Misa outsmarts both of them and has a little more depth later on. She's been very easy to like.

[@OliviasCatastrophe]

@@GunpowderFictionPlot this makes me very happy because I do like Misa and she gets undervalued 😌

[@circlesofflame]

"A scenic ride to nowhere" sums up exactly how I felt about Hagstone, too, unfortunately. Glad you read some great stuff as well, though.

[@lorimiller854]

Ugh! You got me with the last four. I want to read all of them.

[@BandysBooks]

No more DNFs? Like ever? That first review made me wonder why you kept reading. 😅 Great reviews as always. I was bummed to have missed Tremor, but it sounds like I haven’t missed much in terms of reading. Going to have to check out Phaesant’s Nest. I enjoy a good thriller once in awhile. A Great Country and Hidden Fires have both been added to the TBR. I have a copy of Anita De Monte, so it looks like I’ll have to bump it up on the list. I really liked Olga and I expect Gonzalez will only get better as she continues to grow as an author.

[@GunpowderFictionPlot]

There's more DNFs coming ;)

[@kartik3719]

I was obsessed with Death Note as a 12 year old but now I'm scared to go back to it because I'm unsure if it'll hold up or not 😂

[@kimswhims8435]

Oh no, it's a shame about Bri Lee's book, I might put The Work on the backburner. Clear was great, some of my ancestors were cleared from the Western Hebrides Islands of Scotland in 1854 and three generations were transported to Australia on the one ship. No one lives on their island anymore, some of my cousins have visited it by boat. I expect that my ancestors only spoke a Gaelic dialect. On the ship's manifest it listed that they did not speak English. It was really interesting to read about the loss of land and language that happened to my own ancestors after I've read quite a bit about the loss of Indigenous people's land and language. Glad to see that you rated Louise Milligan's novel highly, her nonfiction Witness is excellent. Pheasants Nest is on the Hume Hwy between Sydney and Goulburn, I wonder if she set it there or in a fiction PN? Just reserved your top ones at the library, thanks Scott! Happy Reading! Oh and I wondered what that sound was 😀

[@BookishTexan]

That last book😳Wow!

[@janethansen9612]

I'm not a Bri Lee fan, so won't be going near her fiction either. Pheasants Nest sounds good, though. Louise Milligan is both a lawyer and investigative journalist so I imagine a lot of insight going into the characters. I liked Clear, I think of it as a cross between The Colony and Claire Keegan which is probably unfair to Carys Davies but it has that brevity of writing that contains so much. And the Gonzalez sounds ...wow...

[@GunpowderFictionPlot]

I thought about you when I finished Lee's novel, knowing your dislike for her, I thought you might enjoy knowing her books wasn't very good. Didn't know Milligan was also a lawyer, that's very interesting.

[@TKTalksBooks]

I enjoyed Clear . 4 stars

[@sarahs7763]

Interested in what you think about the discussion around Anita de Monte's book and the family not being supportive of this book and whether that in turn is actually perpetuating the problem the book is exploring?

[@GunpowderFictionPlot]

This is really interesting and not something I knew until I read your comment. I think a lot depends on the specifics, when in the creative process they were asked about this book and what their objections were and how easy it would have been to address them. I don't think that the family's voice is necessarily that one of the artists, but I do think they're uniquely positioned to have insight and understanding into her wishes. It's very hard to judge this one, and I can't find the details with a quick google search, it's just flooded with reviews of the book. It certainly doesn't feel nice, but I want to reserve judgement until I know more.

[@leeh4343]

I read my fair share of smut but the first few pages of The Work just really turned me off this book immediately - sounds if I had continued I would have been disappointed with the execution of this book - great review though! 😊

[@reflectiverambling1148]

Well color me surprised. I saw 'death note' and went: NO WAY. I'm am really surprised you dove into it like that. I will say that while it doesn't make the commentary you were expecting, in its own way I think it's more half brain game half a commentary on what ego does in combination with power and prowess. I don't know how big you are on watching things but do yourself a favor and NEEEEEEEEEEEVER watch any of the live action adaptations. The first original Japanese movie is... tolerable. The second is what the heck, and whatever netflix put out for that series was a total and utter mess. I confess that Anita De Monte Laughs Last was actually a middle of the road for me mostly because i was really torn. I appreciated what it was doing, though I do think I would have mentally approached it differently if I had known it wasn't a completely metaphorical artist but had inspiration. I think my biggest problem was that by the end the messaging started to feel so blatant and heavy handed. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm all for righteously angry women. But I will say I do still occasionally think of it. Same with her first work. I think she's going to be an author who hits a fair amount of points for me, but just hasn't yet stuck a landing. Still shocked it worked so well with you with the magical realism. Ironically I remember when I was reading it thinking until objects started being controlled that it seemed like a middle ground use of the subgenre that might appeal. And when said acts happened wrote that off. Guess I was wrong. ((though I will say while maybe not as poignant, "Song of a Captive Bird" also did the imagine a person - poet- who's life we don't quite know thing in a way that I don't think needed that distinction))

[@savagereads]

Anita de Monte Laughs Last is going on my TBR. I really thought Olga Dies Dreaming was well done so I am interested in more of Xóchitl Gonzalez's work.

[@GunpowderFictionPlot]

Enjoy!

[@curioushmm9027]

Thanks Scott.😅

[@bevo98506]

I would have appreciated Anita more if I read it after watching your video.

[@judybrown1624]

I didn't love Open City, so glad I skipped Tremor.

[@GunpowderFictionPlot]

That was the correct choice!

[@joana_jj_8]

I had similar problems with The Alternatives as with Tremor. It struck me as overly 'intellectual' while actually being quite superficial, hiding beginner concepts behind an avalanche of big words. Irish people would say these women have 'notions' and at times I wasn't sure how satirical it's all meant to be. I think in the end we are meant to identify with the characters but there's this random self-awareness of how pretentious they are. Also all those really weird similes started to get annoying after a while and always took me out of the story. Would have loved a deeper exploration of the sisters' relationships rather than all those lectures they throw around 🥲