On 29/12/24 11:15, William Hyde wrote:

Default User wrote:

Lynn McGuire wrote:

On 12/24/2024 8:11 PM, Default User wrote:

 

200 rejected books? You need a better pre-filter, especially as you
are buying books. That's a significant waste of money. I'm not sure
I would consider books you won't read to be a strategic book
reserve.

My tastes have changed over the last 30+ years. For instance, I have
given up on Clive Custler and there are 2 or 3 of his in my SBR.

Why aren't you reading your books when you get them? Keeping them so
long your tastes change isn't very effective.

Which leads to the question, what is your longest time between acquiring
a book and reading it?

In my case it would be fifty two years.  My uncle gave my mother a copy
of Frank Yerby's deeply footnoted "Judas, my Brother".  It soon wound up
in my collection and last year I finally read it.

But the longest gap between buying a book and reading it would be in my
case 24 years, the book being De Camp's "The Ancient Engineers", which I devoured on a Halifax-Fairbanks trip, cursing myself for not having read
it earlier.

I acquired a whole stack of books perhaps in 1999, perhaps later, most
of which I will never read but this month thoroughly enjoyed "The Book
of Lies" by Agota Kristov translated from French. A brilliant four stars
for me. Also known as "The Notebook Trilogy", it comprises three books.
The Notebook. The Proof. The Third Lie.
Highly recommended.
"With all the stark simplicity of a fractured fairy tale, the trilogy
tells the story of twin brothers, Claus and Lucas, locked in an
agonising bond that becomes a gripping allegory of the forces that have
divided "brothers" in much of Europe since World War II. Kristof's
postmodern saga begins with The Notebook, in which the brothers are
children, lost in a country torn apart by conflict, who must learn every
trick of evil and cruelty merely to survive. In The Proof, Lucas is
challenging to prove his own identity and the existence of his missing
brother, a defector to the "other side." The Third Lie, which closes the trilogy, is a biting parable of Eastern and Western Europe today and a
deep exploration into the nature of identity, storytelling, and the
truths and untruths that lie at the heart of them all. "Stark and
haunting." – The San Francisco Chronicle;

I will probably read it again in January.

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