Friday 17 April 2020

Weekend Blog Hops - 17 April 2020

Hi all! It's time for those weekend blog hops once again!
http://www.coffeeaddictedwriter.com/2017/01/book-blogger-hop-january-13th-19th.html 
 

How do you decide the order of reading your books?
Sometimes I have to choose based on outside timings, if I need to have the review up by a certain date or have a NetGalley ARC finished before it expires. But aside from those restrictions, I tend to follow my mood. I have 10-30 books in my TBR at any given time and I read across many genres, so I like to shift and change between them for variety. Sometimes I fancy a classic, other times I feel like reading something light and/or short...

http://www.rosecityreader.com/
http://www.fredasvoice.com/

Opening sentence:
So here I was, home again after all those years.






From page 56:
Little by little I grew used to the idea that my life had lost its continuity, that it had been taken out of my hands, and that it only remained for me finally to begin to exist, even in my heart of hearts, in the reality in which I inescapably found myself.


My Current Read
The Joke
Milan Kundera

In this new English-language version of Kundera's classic first novel, completely revised by the author to incorporate the most accurate portions of two previous translations plus his own corrections, the narrator Ludvik wonders, "What if History plays jokes?" This politically charged question, coupled with Ludvik's fate as an unintentional dissident, struck a chord in Czech readers; the novel's 1967 publication was a key literary event of the Prague Spring. Looking back on the tense, McCarthy-like atmosphere of the late 1940s, it chronicles the disastrous results of Ludvik's prankish postcard to a girlfriend criticizing the Czech communist regime. He is expelled from the Communist Party, forced to leave the university and join a special army unit with other enemies of the state. Years later, after he has resumed his studies and become a successful scientist, his lingering anger at the man who engineered his expulsion culminates in an act of destructive sexual revenge that serves only to show Ludvik he has never really understood any woman and is indeed the butt of one of history's many cruel jokes. The fresh descriptions and masterful employment of several narrators testify to Kundera's power as a novelist, unmistakable even in this early work.

12 comments:

  1. Love those snippets!! I added you to the linky. Happy weekend, stay safe!

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  2. I haven't heard of the original of this book but I am intrigued. My quotes and review

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    1. Kundera is one of my favourite authors. I can highly recommend his novels.

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  3. This is one of the books that I always say that I want to read! Now that I've started with the classics, maybe it's time to actually pick it up :)
    Konna @ The Reading Armchair

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  4. Great excerpts! I like the Czech reference, since my eldest son has lived in Prague for many years.

    Thanks for sharing, and for visiting my blog.

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  5. This sounds really interesting! The snippets have me curious for more. Thanks for sharing! :)

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  6. I hope you're enjoying it. Thanks for sharing.

    Check out my Friday spotlight and my review of Shorefall

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  7. Ooof, that 56 snippet is so powerful! I absolutely love it. I hadn't heard of this, but it sounds interesting!

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