What is the last book you read, and your rating?

[Fran]

The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan
Set in an Irish village, post-housing bubble, The Spinning Heart tells the stories of a number of characters and the impact the building boom & subsequent crash has on their lives & relationships. I found the structure of this book quite challenging - it has a chapter assigned to each of the 21 characters, all of whome we meet by first name only & all are linked in varying degrees of relationship. While it is only 160 pages it is not easy to hold the stories of 21 diverse but interlinked individuals in your head and I found myself repeatedly having to check back to see whose story was I reading now and having to consider carefully to figure out what their relationship to the other characters in this web was.
The Spinning Heart was long-listed for the Booker in 2013 & has been heavily promoted & received excellent reviews, consequently I had high expectations for it. But, while I did enjoy the book, for me it did not live up to the exhaustive hype it has received. Some of the writing is beautiful and the characters are very well observed, realistic and of a type easily identifable to anyone living in rural Ireland. My favourite line is "Yerra what about it, sure wasn't I at least the author of my own tale? And if you can say that as you depart this world, you can say a lot".
Nonetheless I was less than satisfied with The Spinning Heart and, unusually for me, I found some of the crude vulgarity excessive & totally unnecessary. I give it a 3/5*
I am currently reading his next book The Thing About December - perhaps I'll enjoy it more.

[Bighuey]

The Colour out of Space by H.P. Lovecraft. What can one say about Lovecraft except great classic horror.

[carolsue]

The last book I read was Mercy by Jodi Picoult. I would rate it a 5 out of 10. I finished it, but it took me a long time to read it because the story was so dragged out and I found it boring. It seemed to have 2 stories going on at the same time and I wanted to see how it ended. I would not recommend the book.

[FNAWrite]

"Alex Cross, Run" by James Patterson. I would rate it "Eh."

A quick read - just a few hours - as are most books in this series. Fans of this series probably will like it, fans of the detective/thriller genre such as I will find it tolerable, IOW "eh".

[prisailurophile]

Where's Sandra by J.C. Peterson. Bumpy but beautiful passages. I gave it 3/5 on goodreads.

[FNAWrite]

So it seems that for the majority of recent responders we've been reading books that don't knock our socks off nor blow our skirts up. A couple of 3 out of 5, 5 out of 10, an 'eh" and a "I wouldn't recommend".

Wow, lucky us.

I'm knocking off a couple of quick Tim Dorsey re-re-reads in the midst of reading "The Music of Pythagoras and "Subversives: The FBI's War on Student radicals and Reagan's Rise to Power" both of which are quite good, so everything I am reading right now is far better than "eh".

For everybody else, hey Christmas is coming. Ask for a book you might like.

[cschaubfalls]

"Funeral Games", third in the "Alexander" series by Mary Renault, was the last book I read. I give the entire series a 4 out of 4. I felt like I was able to really know the main characters and feel what they were feeling. I was there in that time and place. The series is about the life of Alexander the Great. The period detail is exquisite. The story line captured me and I was left wishing that Alexander's life had been longer.

[RadiantColour]

The last book I read was 'Wave Singers' by Echo Fox, the first in the 'Equilibria Series'. I gave it a 5/5 on my Goodreads - it was fun, with some interesting characters and a twist on the usual fantasy/mermaid fiction that usually pops up. I really enjoyed it!

Now to find my next book!

[Mom2Grey]

"The Scarlet Letter".
I would give it 4 out of 5 stars.

[Fran]

Last night I finished The Thing About December by Donal Ryan
Although published after The Spinning Heart, the author, Donal Ryan has said The Thing About December was written before Spinning Heart. IMO it is a much better book than Spinning Heart and I enjoyed reading it a lot more. As with The Spinning Heart it is not a big book and this time the author has divided the book into 12 chapters - one for each month of the year. The hero, Johnsey, is what in rural Ireland would be referred to as a harmless poor devil. Johnsey has inherited the house & small farm from his deceased parents. Unfortunately Johnsey is ill equipped to deal with life on his own & when his small bit of land has the misfortune to be pivotal to the rampant demand for building land he is at the mercy of speculators, developers and even his erstwhile friends give him cause for suspicion and eventually he has no idea who or what he can trust. As his neighbour put it Johnsey's father "...made you soft, mind you ; he never let you out from behind him. That was one great disservice he done you." There is a captivating innocence about Johnsey that makes this book both a dark comedy and a sad indictment of the rampant acquisitiveness of the Celtic Tiger era and the tragic end is inevitable but no less poignant for that. "The world doesn't change, nor any thing in it, when someone dies."
The Thing About December is a darkly beautiful read which some of the most moving writing I have read in a while. A few quotes that really hit me: "There's an awful cruelty in the business of nature, in the brutal sameness of things" and "... and everything was lovely and normal and comfortable and destroyed forever at the same time".
A beautiful book ... 4.5/5*

[A24]

I finished Candle in the Darkness by Lynn Austin.
I just love the way Lynn Austin does Historical Christian fiction! I learned so much about the civil war and how horrible the conditions were for the troops as well as the slaves. The North and South each holding on to what they believed was "right". Thankfully, the North won and slavery was abolished. Very strong lesson woven throughout of trusting God's will and not our own. And, that God is ultimately in charge. 4/5

[Fran]

How To Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsid Hamid
I'm not a fan of the self-help genre and I can say with certainty that if this wasn't written by the author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist it would have offered no interest whatever for me & I would definitely never have picked it up muchless read it.
But despite the title, this book is really a life long love story hiding behind what purport to be a get rich quick manual. I loved the chapter headings (Move to the City, Get an Education, Avoid Idealists etc) but the abiding impression is of a country steeped in corruption, veniality, grinding poverty, desperation & violence. Getting ahead is not just about getting the breaks, being lucky - as our hero is to be born the youngest son & thus get some basic education - but about greasing the right palms. This is a country where a teacher bemoans his failure to secure a job as an electric meter reader, a meter reader having access to greater opportunities for bribes! This is a picture of a country where absolutely everybody is on the take one way or another and nobody gets rich without involving himself in that corruption. Whether it's falsifying the use-by dates on food products, bottling contanimated water with misleading labels or a young and beautiful woman selling herself to build her personal fashion business - all is acceptable & condoned in this headlong rush for wealth and riches.
But through all this mad non-stop search for wealth is the love story of a man and a pretty girl, both unnamed. As with The Reluctant Fundamentalist we are never quite sure who anyone in this story is - all remain nameless merely being identifed by job title or physical attributes as with the pretty girl.
This is a unique, entertaining and captivating read but it does fairly gallop through the years. It does make you wish for more detail and indepth analysis of the country, presumed to be Pakistan, and the circumstances but it's not that kind of book. 4.5/5*

[everafter09]

Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah and I gave it a 5 out of 5!

[Geneen Karstens]

I just read The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout. A very good story about 3 siblings and their families. 5/5

[SarahBearah]

The last book I read was called Dead Beautiful. I'd give it a 4/5. Pretty good actually, it had my attention most of the time.