Top Ten Books with Purple, Yellow, or Green Covers

Posted on February 16, 2021 by WordsAndPeace

Top Ten Tuesday:
Top Ten Books with Purple, Yellow, and/or Green Book Covers
(in honor of Mardi Gras, which is today)

TTT for February 16, 2021
#TopTenTuesday

📚📚📚

Today, the prompt is related to Mardi Gras. We don’t have Mardi Gras in my Church tradition. Our Lent always starts on a Monday (with Clean Monday – March 15 this year), and the Sunday before we usually use all our eggs and milk, etc, making blini. It’s actually called Forgiveness Sunday, as on that day, we all ask forgiveness from each other, before launching into the Lenten period.
Anyway, here is my choice for this meme.

The only recent ones with a yellow cover were in French, so I skipped them. And I chose only among books I really enjoyed a lot.

Please click on the image to access my reviews when available

BOOK READ THIS YEAR

BOOKS READ IN 2020

BOOKS READ IN 2019

Have you read any of these?
Any other good book with a green or purple cover?

Sunday Post #32 – 12/6/2020

Posted on December 6, 2020 by WordsAndPeace

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by
Kimba @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer.
It’s a chance to share news.
A post to recap the past week on your blog,
showcase books and things we have received.
Share news about what is coming up
on your blog for the week ahead.
See rules here: Sunday Post Meme

***

This post also counts for

#SundayPost #SundaySalon
#StackingTheShelves #MailboxMonday
#itsmonday #IMWAYR
#WWWWednesday #WWWWednesdays

Click on the logos to join the memes,
and on the book covers to access synopsis or review

I haven’t done a Sunday Post since June, trying to come back.
But things are busy here, with more new French students, and more virtual book tours. I already posted one for January 2021, and will post two more next week!
I also FINALLY created a Patreon page, so you can more easily support Words And Peace and France Book Tours, and receive goodies for it (books for now, merch down the line).

But my reading schedule is going well.

JUST READ

📚 Ichi-F: A Worker’s Graphic Memoir of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, by Kazuto Tatsuta
Published in 2017

I particularly enjoy nonfiction graphic “novels”.
This one by written (text and illustrations) by a manga artist who has also worked at Fukushima. This is not about the 2011 disaster, but about the huge efforts of cleaning up the area.
Ichi-F means 1-F, in other words the Fukushima first nuclear reactor.
The author was amazed by all the wrong rumors about the place, so he set up to show what’s really going on there, with tons of security measures and very careful work.
This is fascinating, with lots of details on the complicated work conditions. For instance, you may need one hour to put on all your protective gear, but if you work in a particularly heavy radiation zone, (some are more or less on the site), you may end up working only thirty minutes a day. Each worker wears a device counting the radiation. They cannot go over a certain limit per day, per month, and per year. So sometimes, you can only work for three months. Hence the slowness of the work and the need for so many workers. Still, the author shows how much has been done within the four years or so he has worked there.
The author only talks about the workers daily life, where they live, what they eat, and talk about.
The book was absolutely fascinating. This is a big book, 561 pages, with a lot to read on each page.

📚 To Hold Up the Sky, by Cixin Liu
Published on October, 20.
Ebook received through Netgalley

I haven’t written my review yet. I’ll just say it’s written by the author of Supernova Era, which I so enjoyed.
So we are staying in Asia, with an awesome collection of Chinese scifi short stories. Great author!

📚 Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot #10), by Agatha Christie
Published in 1934. Audiobook.
For my project to listen to all of Hercule Poirot. Counts for The Classics Club

According to Goodreads, I had read it in 2012. Then I watched the three movie/TV versions (the BBC one is bar far the best, according to me – who can surpass David Suchet??). So I had actually forgotten I had read it.
The narrator of this one was actually also David Suchet. I realized that even though I knew so many details about the story, I still very much enjoyed it, especially by noticing the little clues here and there. Masterful.

CURRENTLY READING/LISTENING TO

📚 The Vexations, by Caitlin Horrocks
Published in 2019
Lent by a friend

I know Judy at Keep the Wisdom has really liked it, but I have to say I’m a bit disappointed. I was expecting much more about Erik Satie himself, but it seems the book actually focuses more on his sister. I have other issues with the book, which I will talk to you about next Sunday hopefully.
Bu there ARE some neat passages on Satie’s music and the ambiance of the time.

📚 And in audiobook, Atom[ka], by Franck Thilliez
Published in 2012
French audiobook

As mentioned above, I just read this book on Fukushima, so staying somewhat in the same field with this amazing thriller around Chernobyl (I think one of the three threads is about that). There are riveting descriptions in a mental hospital, and tons of suspense as usual with Thilliez.
The narrator is spectacular, Michel Raimbault, like for most of the books in this series.

BOOK UP NEXT

📚The Letter Killers Club (1926), by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
Published in 1926.
This is the book I got for Classics Spin #25.
I presented it in my December titles post.

LAST 2 BOOKS ADDED TO MY GOODREADS TBR

📚 Dojoji, by Yukio Mishima
Japanese play, published in 1957
I’m planning to read it in January, for the Japanese Literature Challenge, and for The Classics Club

“Mishima’s play is called Dojoji, and takes place in a secondhand furniture shop. The Dealer has organized a private auction for some very rich customers. He is selling a giant wardrobe, big enough to fit a double bed in. The Dealer explains that the wardrobe is up for auction because it belonged to one of the rich families who “has gone down a bit in the world” since the end of WWII, so they must sell their furniture. The wardrobe is very impressive, and soon the bidding hits three million Yen.
However, just as the bidding reaches a climax, a woman enters the scene, bidding only three thousand Yen for the wardrobe.”

📚 Knos and Crosses, by Ian Rankin
Published in 1987
I have heard about this author twice this past week, so that’s a good sign!

“Detective John Rebus: His city is being terrorized by a baffling series of murders…and he’s tied to a maniac by an invisible knot of blood. Once John Rebus served in Britain’s elite SAS. Now he’s an Edinburgh cop who hides from his memories, misses promotions and ignores a series of crank letters. But as the ghoulish killings mount and the tabloid headlines scream, Rebus cannot stop the feverish shrieks from within his own mind. Because he isn’t just one cop trying to catch a killer, he’s the man who’s got all the pieces to the puzzle…
Knots and Crosses introduces a gifted mystery novelist, a fascinating locale and the most compellingly complex detective hero at work today..”

BOOK RECEIVED THIS PAST WEEK

📚 L’Origine, by Lilianne Milgrom
Published on July 28
Historical novel set in France. Received for France Book Tours

We still have a couple of spots on the tour!!

“‘L’Origine‘ traces the extraordinary, clandestine odyssey of an iconic 19th century painting that shook up the author’s world and continues to scandalize all who set eyes upon it.
Gustave Courbet’s portrait of a woman’s exposed torso and sex – audaciously entitled ‘L’Origine du monde’ (The Origin of the World) – was so shocking it was kept hidden for a century and a half, surviving revolution, Nazi plunder and the foibles of its eccentric owners.
Today it draws millions of visitors to Paris’ Orsay Museum. Lilianne Milgrom brings a fresh, feminine perspective to an iconic work of art created specifically for the male gaze.
‘L’Origine‘ offers readers more than a riveting romp through history–it also reflects society’s complex attitude towards female nudity.

NB: this is a historical novel, no explicit scenes

BOOK JOURNAL

📚 Wow, I forgot I has been doing this! Will try to restart this. Maybe for my exclusive Newsletter!

THIS PAST WEEK ON
WORDS AND PEACE
MYRTLE SKETE
and FRANCE BOOK TOURS

November wrap-up
Top 8 books to read in December
Throwback Thursday
Six degrees of Separation
The Education of Delhomme tour quotations
The Education of Delhomme tour winners
November book of the month winner

📚 Book of the month giveaway

COMING UP ON
WORDS AND PEACE
MYRTLE SKETE
FRANCE BOOK TOURS

Late reviews?
More Orthodox book notes?
Two new tours will be posted on Monday and Tuesday

HOW WAS YOUR WEEK?

The top 8 books to read in December 2020

Posted on December 2, 2020 by WordsAndPeace

Here are

The top 8 books
I plan to read in December 2020

Click on the covers to know more

CURRENTLY READING

📚 The Vexations, (2019) by Caitlin Horrocks
A historical novel on Erik Satie! Loving it so far

📚 La Grande escapade (2019), by Jean-Philippe Blondel
Received for review in 2019
By a French author I really like. Not too sure where this is going, and I’m a quarter done.

READING NEXT

📚 The Red Notebook (2014), by Antoine Laurain
I have read several books by this author, and especially enjoyed his most recent one, but I have never read this famous one. This is the latest book my Online French Book Club has chosen, so actually I’ll be reading the original French text.
Let me know if you want to join us, on Discord.

“Heroic bookseller Laurent Letellier comes across an abandoned handbag on a Parisian street. There’s nothing in the bag to indicate who it belongs to, although there’s all sorts of other things in it. Laurent feels a strong impulse to find the owner and tries to puzzle together who she might be from the contents of the bag. Especially a red notebook with her jottings, which really makes him want to meet her. Without even a name to go on, and only a few of her possessions to help him, how is he to find one woman in a city of millions?”

📚 Flood, (2008) by Stephen Baxter
This one was more recently offered to me by one of my French students. He loves this author, and knowing that I like scifi, he thought I should definitely read it!

“It begins in 2016. Another wet summer, another year of storm surges and high tides. But this time the Thames Barrier is breached and central London is swamped. The waters recede, life goes on, the economy begins to recover, people watch the news reports of other floods around the world. And then the waters rise again. And again.
Lily, Helen, Gary and Piers, hostages released from five years captivity at the hands of Christian Extremists in Spain, return to England and the first rumours of a flood of positively Biblical proportions…
Sea levels have begun to rise, at catastrophic speed. Within two years London and New York will be under water. The Pope will give his last address from the Vatican before Rome is swallowed by the rising water. Mecca too will vanish beneath the waves.
The world is drowning. A desperate race to find out what is happening begins. The popular theory is that we are paying the price for our profligacy and that climate change is about to redress Gaia’s balance. But there are dissenting views. And all the time the waters continue to rise and mankind begins the great retreat to higher ground. Millions will die, billions will become migrants. Wars will be fought over mountains.”

📚 The Letter Killers Club (1926), by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
This is the book I got for Classics Spin #25.

“Original Writers are professional killers of conceptions. The logic of the Letter Killers Club, a secret society of “conceivers” who commit nothing to paper on principle, is strict and uncompromising. Every Saturday they meet in a fire-lit room hung with blank black bookshelves to present their “pure and unsubstantiated” conceptions: a rehearsal of Hamlet hijacked by an actor who vanishes with the role; the double life of a medieval merry cleric derailed by a costume change; a machine-run world that imprisons men’s minds while conscripting their bodies; a dead Roman scribe stranded this side of the River Acheron. The overarching scene of this short novel is set in Soviet Moscow, in the ominous 1920s. Known only by pseudonym, like Chesterton’s anarchists in fin-de-siècle London, the Letter Killers are as mistrustful of one another as they are mesmerized by their despotic president. Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky is at his philosophical and fantastical best in this extended meditation on madness.”

📚 Upstream: Selected Essays (2016), by Mary Oliver
I have been trying to drastically reduce my TBR, by stopping as much as possible requesting books through Netgalley and Edelweiss, but my public library started a special recommendation service, and I couldn’t resist. (And I’m going to get another book to read chosen by the staff, for the usual Winter Reading Challenge!)
Among the five titles they suggested, I chose this one.

“Comprising a selection of essays, Upstream finds beloved poet Mary Oliver reflecting on her astonishment and admiration for the natural world and the craft of writing.
As she contemplates the pleasure of artistic labor, finding solace and safety within the woods, and the joyful and rhythmic beating of wings, Oliver intimately shares with her readers her quiet discoveries, boundless curiosity, and exuberance for the grandeur of our world.
This radiant collection of her work, with some pieces published here for the first time, reaffirms Oliver as a passionate and prolific observer whose thoughtful meditations on spiders, writing a poem, blue fin tuna, and Ralph Waldo Emerson inspire us all to discover wonder and awe in life’s smallest corners.

CURRENT AND NEXT AUDIOBOOKS

📚 Atom[ka] (2012) by Franck Thilliez
Did I say I was going to stop reading this author?
Well, I couldn’t resist. His books often contain some horrific details, BUT they are always so smart as well. This time, looks like there are three threads together, one of them having to do with Chernobyl – incidentally, I just read a fabulous nonfiction graphic “novel” on Fukushima!

📚 Three Act Tragedy, (Hercule Poirot #11, 1934) by Agatha Christie
Part of my project to listen to all of HP, for The Classics Club
I don’t think I have ever read this one.

“At an apparently respectable dinner party, a vicar is the first to die…Thirteen guests arrived at dinner at the actor’s house. It was to be a particularly unlucky evening for the mild-mannered Reverend Stephen Babbington, who choked on his cocktail, went into convulsions and died. But when his martini glass was sent for chemical analysis, there was no trace of poison — just as Poirot had predicted. Even more troubling for the great detective, there was absolutely no motive!”