charbutton's 2011 books

As mentioned in my intro post, I've set myself a couple of reading challenges/tasks for 2011:

1. To read more books by Caribbean authors

2. To not buy any new books (although I will accept new books as birthday presents!)

3. To read less books and to read more deeply

I plan to include other book-related stuff on this year's thread - podcasts, author events etc.

2011 BOOK LIST:

60. The Casino by Margaret Bonham
59. The Cleft by Doris Lessing
58. The Double by Jose Saramago
57. The Dog of the Marriage: Stories by Amy Hempel
56. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
55. A Life in Full and Other Stories - stories shortlisted for the 2010 Caine Prize
54. The Siege by Helen Dunmore
53. Blow Your House Down by Pat Barker
52. The Shadow-Boxing Woman by Inka Parei
51. The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares
50. Blankets by Craig Thompson
49. I Am Not Sidney Poitier by Percival Everett
48. Devoted Ladies by M J Farrell (Molly Keane)
47. The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif
46. Out of this world: science fiction but not as you know it by Mike Ashley
45. Tunnel Vision by Sara Paretsky
44. Who is Ana Mendieta? by Christine Redfern & Caro Caron
43. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
42. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
41. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
40. Special Exits by Joyce Farmer
39. The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
38. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
37. Skyscraper by Faith Baldwin
36. The House of Mr Biswas by V.S. Naipaul
35. Jean Rhys by Carole Angier
34. The Blackbirder by Dorothy B. Hughes
33. The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
32. A Legacy of Liberation: Thabo Mbeki and the Future of the South African Dream by Mark Gevisser
31. The Canal by Lee Rourke
30. The Old Man and Me by Elaine Dundy
29. The Victorian Chaise-Longue by Marghanita Laski
28. The Radsteky March by Joseph Roth
27. Iran, the Green Movement and the USA by Hamid Dabashi
26. Broken Glass by Alain Mabanckou
25. Masks by Fumiko Enchi
24. The Subtle Knife by Philip Pulman
23. The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds
22. Brother, I'm Dying by Edwidge Danticat
21. Nada by Carmen Laforet
20. The Prefect by Alistair Reynolds
19. The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim
18. Marie Antoinette by Stefan Zweig
17. Ranma 1/2, volume 1 by Rumiko Takahashi
16. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
15. White by Marie Darrieussecq
14. South Riding by Winifred Holtby
13. The Story of the Cannibal Woman by Maryse Conde
12. Dilemmas of Deokie by Carol Sammy
11. Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto
10. The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan
9. The Ha-Ha by Jennifer Dawson
8. How to Suppress Women's Writing by Joanna Russ
7. Erasure by Percival Everett
6. Aya of Yop City by Marguerite Abouet and Clement Oubrerie
5. Aya de Yopougon by Marguerite Abouet and Clement Oubrerie
4. Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day by Winifred Watson
3. The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing
2. The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
1. Epitaph of a Small Winner by Machado de Assis

I've been doing an analysis of my 2010 reading:

66% female authors
33% male authors

Not a surprise!

80% fiction
20% non-fiction

I read work by authors from 31 countries (counting Wales and Scotland as separate entities to England) which is higher than I expected. 22 of the books were in translation.

This is the thread for my 2010 reading: http://www.librarything.com/topic/79399

Best books of the year were The Wake by Margo Glantz and Blindness by Jose Saramago.

I read and really enjoyed The Family Tree by Margo Glantz a long time ago, so I will look for The Wake after your recommendation.

>3 rebeccanyc: - The Family Tree is now on my wishlist!

I like your goals for the year. I keep trying to promise myself not to buy any more books, but thus far I have failed.

It helps that my partner's just been made redundant and I need to reduce our spending! Without that I don't think I could be so disciplined.

#2
31 countries - that's impressive!

>7 amandameale: - thanks! I hadn't quite expected it to be that many.

On a different subject...

...Last night I saw a TV interview with the philosopher and writer Alain de Botton during which he said that he discourages his children from reading. Cue much spluttered outrage from our sofa. He then explained that he thinks children who read a lot do so because they are anxious. It was a gimmicky '5 minute only' interview so this wasn't explored further, but it did get me thinking.

An unrepresentative poll of me and Mr Charbutton found that he may have a point. Mr C exprienced little difficult during childhood and read little. Whereas my brother and I, who lost our father when we were very young, read a huge amount as children. Also, my mum had a difficult, anxiety-filled childhood and also read a lot when younger.

So do children read to escape from something horrible? Should they be encouraged to read more or less?

Well, since I belong to the Church of Books, it would be against my religion to discourage anyone from reading, especially in the smart-making years.

I don't think reading makes children anxious; I think it helps anxious children deal with whatever it is that is making them anxious.

>9 citygirl: "I don't think reading makes children anxious; I think it helps anxious children deal with whatever it is that is making them anxious."

I completely agree. I have always had a hard time quieting my mind, whether because of anxiety or just too many ideas at once. Reading has always been enormously helpful in helping me relax.

>8 charbutton:, Just to play devil's advocate here, I can see how reading might make a child anxious if there isn't some care to monitor/contextualize what the kid is reading.

When my nephew was much younger (he's now 13), he was very interested in natural disasters and read a fair amount about the physical science behind tsunamis, earthquakes, etc. (To the point where he became such an annoying little smarty-pants that he corrected his teacher when she didn't thoroughly explain the causes of some natural disaster that had grabbed the headlines at the time, but that's a separate issue.) However, he had such an active imagination and so little context for understanding the likelihood and geographic distribution of certain natural disasters that he was terrified of highly unlikely weather-related events until we could explain to him that tsunamis and hurricanes just don't occur in the landlocked midwest. You'd think the obvious lack of an ocean would have tempered his fears somewhat, but no.

Learning about war, genocide, and other atrocities can also provoke considerable anxiety in children, especially if they are themselves members of historically persecuted groups.

However, like citygirl, it is essentially against my religion to discourage anyone from reading. I think the key is contextualizing and explaining to kids what they are reading. Wow, I sound cheesy. Like I know anything about raising kids! :D

>8 charbutton:, On a separate note, char, it's too bad we can't save this question for Dan's random question and answer thread of the future.

8 - Interesting though I'm not sure I totally agree. My husband and I are the opposite - I'm the reader and had a very conventional childhood. He had a much more difficult home life and barely reads. Both my sisters are big readers as well (I think in our case my mom reading to us every night jump started it). I tend to agree with citygirl that reading can help when you are feeling troubled. I know I still retreat to my favorites when I'm going through a rough period (Jane Eyre in particular).

8 - I can only speak for myself. I did read a lot as a child, and while I had a happy home life, my life at school was fairly tough. I don't think I read for escapism. At the time I only know I enjoyed it. I would have to agree with those saying that books aren't the cause of anxiety in children, but a way for already anxious children to calm down.

The idea of somebody stopping a child from reading just makes me recoil.

Great conversation. I think it's a matter of personality -- social people release their anxieties by creating little dramas during play and conversation; books provide a sort of internal version of that for introverts. Both are effective coping strategies and I don't think forcing the preferences of one personality type on the other works! But offering and encouraging, yes. And intervening if the coping strategy goes past moderation, yes ... like my 300 TBRs I suppose...

My experience as a young voracious reader and then an busy anxious adult is that I cannot read when I am anxious. Stress stops me from focusing and concentrating.

I read as a child as a way to have experiences and explore, perhaps because the more introverted like to create their experiences internally.

De Botton is someone I really respect, so I wonder if that interview was truncated or taken out of context?? It is an odd comment.

>16 kiwidoc:, It was an interview in which A de B had to answer a series of questions within 5 minutes. The other questions were pretty banal so I wonder if he threw this in to make things more interesting.

>11 fannyprice:, a good point about how reading can create anxiety - I hadn't thought about this aspect.

>15 detailmuse:, I'm sure we can stage an intervention if you need us to!

Like others I find the thought of discouraging children from reading very difficult to agree with. I'd be very interested to know how this stance affects A de B's children's reading when they grow up.

Who are you kidding, charbutton? We can't stage an intervention. We have no credibility. Plus, it can be dangerous to try to get between an LTer and her, um, hobby.

>18 citygirl:, all very true!

I had a miserable childhood and I read a lot. However, I think the reason that I read so much was that I was an only child - board games for one tend to be not really all that entertaining even if you do different voices for all the players and try really, really hard to forget what Player A intends to do when it comes time to pretend to be Player B.

Oh, and charbutton, you seem to have my first name. It is the first time in 5 years that I have run across a fellow Charlotte here on LT and it is kind of weird. I think it is the rule that there is only one Charlotte allowed in every 550 square miles.

>18 citygirl: But you do have the methods :O

I try to use my "methods" for good and not evil. ;-)

>20 Fourpawz2:, yes there's not many of us about!

#8 Interesting question!
In my experience children are either readers or are not, and I don't think it is necessarily an escape, although perhaps that is sometimes the case. I loved reading because my father loved reading, and I loved words. My brother and sister were never readers. Of my own three children, all raised the same way, only one is a reader.

Hi charbutton, I enjoyed lurking on your thread last year and am looking forward to seeing what you read this year.

Just to add my voice to the discussion, I had a very happy and stable childhood (though I much prefer being an adult!) and spent a lot of time reading. I agree with Amanda that people are either inclined to be readers or not. I'm more of an introvert and was often happier reading than being with other children, but I don't think this has done me any harm.

If I had children, I would certainly encourage them to read, while accepting that they may just not be interested.

>25 Rebeki:, thanks for popping in!

So we all seem to disagree with Alain de Botton! I've just found a link to the interview here: http://benatlas.com/2010/11/alain-de-botton-reading-and-writing-is-a-response-to...

I don't know if this will work for people outside of the UK though.

And this is the facebook version of our discussion: http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=2209052640&topic=16867

I just watched the link (outside the UK). I thought he was rather inconsistent. He doesn't want his kids to read because he was a "disturbed" child and teenager (though he doesn't say reading contributed to this) on the one hand, but then says the point of reading (and writing) is to help people understand problems, and to live. Wouldn't this be something you'd want for your kids?

Maybe he's just saying he'd prefer his kids to be extroverts, who I agree have an easier time of it in our society and culture.

BOOK 1: Epitaph of a Small Winner by Machado de Assis

I finished this book a few days ago but still can't decide if I enjoyed it or not. Originally published in 1880, this is an odd book. The narrator, Braz Cubas is dead; he is writing his memoirs from the afterlife (a world about which he tells us nothing). He reviews his life, his loves and his disappointments in a series of very short chapters (there are 160 in only 209 pages).

This book is much admired by such literary luminaries as Salman Rushdie and Louis de Bernieres, lauded for its unique style and humour (postmodern before postmodernism was invented apparently). I have to admit that I was anticipating something funnier, perhaps like Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith. There were certainly some parts that raised a smile, but something about the blurb and the introduction had led me to expect some laugh out loud moments.

But the style of the book is impressive. It feels modern and I think you would be hard pushed to place this in the late 1800s if asked. It's not just the chapter structure, it's how Braz Cubas addresses the reader. For example, chapter 34 is entitled 'To a Sensitive Soul' and starts: 'Among the five or ten readers of this book, there is a sensitive soul who is irritated with me because of the preceeding chapter...' These are the parts I enjoyed most.

I can't decide if this is a book of style over content. I think this I need to read it several more times to get a grasp on it. Not because the story is complicated (essentially its the life story of a man who was pretty ordinary and a bit ego-centric) but because I need to get beyond the idiosyncractic style to see if there is more of a plot there.

>28 charbutton: this is exactly the kind of book I love discovering via your thread! Your conflictedness only increases its appeal :)

>29 detailmuse:, I agree!

#28 Intriguing review.

>8 charbutton: Just to skip back for a moment - perhaps Mr. de Botton is suggesting that stress is why children read to 'escape' ? Speaking only of my own experience, I disagree completely. Personally, I read not because I was running away from something but because I was running to something. Reading opened up new worlds and experience beyond the small and limited world my family lived in. I also read because it was a means of privacy in a tiny house filled with 8 people (I also played alone in the woods quite a bit). I would not call either stress or anxiety.

My children, who all read before they went to school, seemed to read for a variety of reasons. My oldest, I swear, was born with a real 'need to know' and she became the only intense reader, but not an isolated one. The other two read when it suited them, and they all read at bedtime.

> 29, 30 and 31 - thanks!

>32 avaland:, 'running to something' is a really good way of putting it. I was certainly trying to experience something outside of the small town I grew up in and that need to find out about other lives and other ways of living has never gone away.

BOOK 2: The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

Reading this was a bit of an odd experience. I really disliked the first 100 pages, loved the next couple of hundred, then wasn't quite sure about the rest.

The Lacuna is made up of the diary, letters, notebooks of Harrison Shepherd, an American who grows up in Mexico in the 1920s/30s. The story is also told through other people letters and a selection of press cuttings, put together by an 'archivist' who appears as a character in the latter half of the book.

Through Shepherd's story Kingsolver discusses the role of art, politics and the press in 1930s Mexico and 1940s America with clear relevance for today.

Shepherd's story and character are illuminated through his relationships with four important people in his life - his mother, Frida Kahlo, Trotsky and his secretary. Shepherd is an odd fish. In much of his writing he refers to himself only obliquely as if he is peripheral to the action; a childhood lived in the shadow of his glamorous mother seems to have made him deny that he is a person who counts. I don't know if Kingsolver wrote him as a character that the reader should feel sympathy for, but I actually found him arrogant and sly. He's always there, part of the action, observing, and when he becomes well-known later in life I didn't believe in his desire to go unnoticed. He just makes me a bit uneasy. The parts that of the book that focus on Shepherd are my least favourite. I found the beginning particularly jarring. Supposedly excerpts from the diary he kept as a 14 year old, the writing is far too erudite to feel like something a teenager would put together. It's like one of those Dawson's Creek characters that is far too knowing for their age. It just didn't work for me.

The section set in 1930s Mexico was great though. I really felt for Trotsky and his wife Natalya and theneverending grief they suffer as family and friends are destroyed because of his actions. Of course I know very little about what really happened and what Trotsky really believed in, but I liked him as Kingsolver portrays him. She draws parallels between Trotsky and Shepherd's later life - both men whose fates are determined by the whims of powers they can't control. The other part I enjoyed is set in post-war America as anti-Communist fervour starts to take hold. To a non-American the vitriol and absurdity of this period often feels like it must be the product of an author's imagination but I'm sure the crusade against the Reds was as ridiculous and dangerous as Kingsolver describes.

I did, however, feel that some of the plot was overly contrived in places, particularly when Shepherd's writing survives through several incidences of potentially being lost or destroyed.

I see that I gave The Lacuna 4 stars when I finished it and I really did enjoy much of it as I was reading. But after a week or so I have more ambiguous feelings.

ETA: I wish the publishers hadn't used a flowery cover. It makes this seem like a very girly book, which it isn't.

BOOK 3: The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing

My heart sank when The Grass is Singing was chosen for January's book group. I've read two Lessings and have really struggled to find anything I like about her writing. But who am I to argue with the Nobel Prize Committee? I guess her writing just goes over my head. Anyway, I tried to approach this book with an open mind.

The story focuses on Mary, a South African townie who marries Dick, a Rhodesian farmer. Mary has gone through her childhood and twenties doing all the things that were expected - she does her work competently, she socialises - but at a kind of distance. No one ever touched her heart. One day she overhears people talking about her and pitying her; her life changes, her emotional balance is shattered. When Dick comes along she agrees to marry him, I think because she doesn't know what else to do with herself.

It's not a wise decision. Dick is a failed farmer, prone to jump from one grand scheme to another, always in debt and living in little more than an isolated shack. Mary has a shock when she understands what she has let herself in for; she wasn't made to be a farmer's wife. She slides into a deep depression which causes and is exacerbated by her fraught relationships with the 'natives' that work the farm. She despises them but also fears them deeply. Mary's marriage and sanity disintegrate over the years as the poverty, heat, fear and hatred become inescapable. She becomes entangled in a bizarre relationship with Moses, the black cook, in which the usual power structures are confused and corrupted. It doesn't end it well.

Dick and Mary are presented as universal figures (perhaps that's why they have common, plain names); they are products of the white community of Lessing's Rhodesian childhood. The black characters are sketchy, reflecting the fact that white people knew little of the lives of their servants and had no interest in wanting to know about them. The book was published in 1950 and I can imagine that such a stark exposure of the psychology of white power and the fragility of that power must have provoked comment. I certainly found it thought-provoking and am very glad I read it.

BOOK 4: Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day by Winifred Watson

After The Grass Is Singing I needed something light and funny so I reached for Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day a favourite over on the Persephone Books group. It was certainly a contrast. Much of Lessing's book was concerned with Mary's interior turmoil; Winifred Watson ignores the inner life of most of her characters.

Miss Pettigrew is the only person who comes with a back story. She is frumpy and middle-aged and finding it harder and harder to gain employment as a governess in 1930s London. One morning she is mistakenly sent to a potential job at the flat of Miss Delysia La Fosse (real name Sarah Grubb), a nightclub singer and 'it girl' who has a very complicated love life. Miss Pettigrew is immediately drawn into Delysia's affairs, preventing one boyfriend from finding out about his rivals and earning the younger woman's eternal gratitude. For the next 24 hours Miss Pettigrew leaves her drab life behind and is caught up in a whirl of the high life.

As I've said, there is no depth to any of the characters save for our eponymous heroine. The story is carried through dialogue and action, not thought and reflection. Which is fine, but wasn't quite enough for me. I wanted to know more about how Delysia got to where she did and whether she was actually as feather-brained as she seemed. So a pleasant read, but probably not something I will go back to.

Good reviews, Char.

Thanks!

I forgot to add to the Miss Pettigrew review that I never fail to be shocked and disappointed by the casual anti-semitism in English novels of the 19th and early 20th century. Is it the same in all 'Western' literature of that time?

Popping in before I get back to work...

Interesting conversations about children and reading. I think you are all more intelligent than A d B, who I think is a ninny (I have yet to have a good experience with anything he's written).

And I agree with your comments on Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. I was disappointed with it, and felt that I should have liked it more but really couldn't.

Wow, some great comments Char - I just cannot decide whether I want to read The Lacuna... every time I think no, someone raves about it, and then every time I think yes, someone doesn't like it.

Your review of The Grass is Singing makes me want to rush out and get it though; I've never read anything by Lessing before. What were the other two novels of hers that you have read?

>40 Nickelini:, I love that you've called one of our foremost thinkers (apparetly) a 'ninny'!!

>41 Cait86:, The other Lessings I've read are The Golden Notebook and A Ripple from the Storm. I found that with both books I had no sympathy or empathy for any of the characters. One of my friends described reading The Golden Notebook as going through someone else's psychiatry notes! I read A Ripple by itself but it's actually part of a four book series about one of the characters, Marth Quest, so I probably couldn't judge it fairly. I have recently purchased the whole series so will give it another go.

42 40, I love that you've called one of our foremost thinkers (apparetly) a 'ninny'!!

Oh, I know. I'm probably just an intellectual philistine, but I've read 2.5 of his books and he sooooooo doesn't impress me. He's so annoying, he makes me dream about giving him a poke and telling him to get a grip.

Great review of Lessing's book! Normally, I want to know as little as possible about a book before I read it, but since I probably won't read The Grass is Singing, I loved how your review was meaty enough for me to start thinking about all sorts of issues. Bet it made for a great discussion. Re: Lacuna, I had similar reactions to the parts that you did, and ended up even more critical of it than you were.

>44 bonniebooks:, thanks!

Now for all the reviews I need to catch up on....

BOOKS 5 & 6: Aya de Yopougon and Aya of Yop City, story by Marguerite Abouet and illustrations by Clement Oubrerie

Aya lives in Yopougon, a working-class area of Abidjan, the capital of Côte d'Ivoire. These two graphic novels are set during the 1970s when the country enjoyed wealth and stability under the rule of Félix Houphouët-Boigny, its first president after independence.

Aya is a young woman experiencing the emotional highs and lows of teenage life and the pressures of family expectations. While her friends sneak out at night for assignations, Aya's sights are set a little higher, on her dream of becoming a doctor. Being a woman brings a specific set of problems - men openly approach Aya on the street and turn nasty when snubbed; her parents are constantly on the look out for a good boy for her to marry.

On paper this sounds like the kind of book I would like. Yet I never really connected with any of the characters. The story is driven by a series of events that happen to the people all around Aya. We get to find out very little about her and her internal life. Even those characters who have something happen to them are not given room to tell us how they feel. For example, one of Aya's friends is betrayed by another of their friends. I can see from the illustrations that this woman is upset, but the incident is dealt with very quickly and is left unexplored so I felt unmoved. Of course with only a handful of words per frame, giving depth to characters in a graphic novel is a difficult trick to pull off. But Persepolis or Fun Home show that it can be done, and done well. Perhaps the problem is that the Aya books seem to be a continuing series so story arcs may be much longer and characters fleshed out later. Unfortunately I'm not interested enough to find out.

BOOK 7: Erasure by Percival Everett

This was always going to be a hard review to write and is now even more so because it's over a week since I finished Erasure.

Thelonious Ellison, aka Monk, is a Black American writer. Except he isn't a 'typical' Black American writer. A Harvard graduate, he produces high-falutin' texts that no one is very interested in. His family all admit they can't understand a word he writes. Basically, his writing isn't black enough. He isn't writing about slavery or life in the ghetto. If only his first book hadn't contained a picture of him, the publishing world would be happy to put out books that they assume are written by some white New England academic.

Monk is seriously pissed off about this. And his ire is only heightened by the runaway success of a novel called 'We's Lives In Da Ghetto' which is hailed as being a true potrayal of Black America. So, compelled partly by financial need, Monk writes his own ghetto book 'Fuck', which is reproduced within Erasure. 'Fuck' tells the story of a young black man with no aspirations or hopes who treats women like dirt and thinks a gun will give him power. Needless to say there is no father figure in his life and while he respects his mother he also hates her. 'Fuck' is an instant bestseller.

Erasure seems to be both a condemnation of the way the literary world operates and of the way Black Americans are complicit in the portrayal of their communities. As the book progressed I tried to work out what Everett was saying about authors such as Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. These women's books are often harrowing depictions of the continuing legacy of slavery in the lives of black people. Is he saying that they are perpetuating a stereotype?

But having flicked through the book again to write this review, I've noticed that on the title page the words Erasure and Fuck are overlaid. So they are one and the same and Erasure, like Fuck, should not be taken as representative of Black America? Is Everett condemning the whole category of 'black literature' because it reduces millions of people's lives and experiences to a single narrative? I really don't know. But I'm enjoying thinking about it!

This review is already far too long and I haven't even touched on the themes of loneliness and family. Suffice to say that this was an intriguing book that I'll be going back to.

ETA: I meant to add that there are lots of literary allusions, written and unwritten, that I didn't understand so that's a whole other part of the book that I'll have to try and get my head around next time.

BOOK 8: How to Suppress Women's Writing by Joanna Russ

A bigger cover picture because these words sum up the book. Russ tells us about how women's writing has been ignored or dismissed as rubbish or dismissed as odd for centuries.

Bloody hell, this made me angry. And in a week in which British football pundits were sacked for misogynistic comments about the capability of a female asistant referee. And every morning I had to stand in front of an ad for a new satirical TV show in which the three male stars are shown in postures of action with furrowed brows that show they have serious things to say; the female star has a perfect, wrinkle-free face and is posed with a clipboard and pen as if she is only there to take minutes. GRRRRRR.

Anyway, back to the book. Russ was writing in the 1980s. Is women's writing taken any more seriously now? Not really, perhaps the sentiments are more subtle than those expressed in the late 19th century.

Nominations for literary prizes and lists of 'classic' texts are still dominated by men. I would love to do a survey of the comments on book covers that describe the text as a 'modern classic' - how many new books by women are determined to be instant classics a la Philip Roth, Jonathan Frantzen etc? Erasure is 'set to become a classic' according to the reviewer Philip Hensher. Which of course raises another question - who are the reviewers?

I'm going to a talk about this very subject next week: http://www.ica.org.uk/27648/Talks/Novel-Women.html

BOOK 9: The Ha-Ha by Jennifer Dawson

Josephine finds that life is a bit more difficult for her than for other people. She never quite gets things right, always laughs at the wrong time. It's like everyone else has been told how to behave in the world and she hasn't - 'I wanted the knack of existing. I did not know the rules'. She also often sees small animals wandering around in the most unlikely places.

After her mother's death Josephine is sectioned. During her time in an asylum she meets Alisdair, a charasmatic fellow patient who she feels finally helps her to feel like a normal person.

Josephine is a sensitive soul and very fragile but sometimes there are little glimpses of something a bit darker in her psyche. Did she really love her mother? Can she be 'normal'?

Jennifer Dawson wrote The Ha-Ha as a response to her experiences of working in the British mental health system in the 1950s. She has some points to make about that system but doesn't use the stroy to ram these down the readers' throats.

BOOK 10: The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan

This book has received some very good reviews on LT, but I'm afraid it didn't do it for me. The main character is Gwenni, a girl living in Wales, who is confronted with the secrets and scary realities of the grown up world. It's a story that I feel like I've read many times before - The Little Friend, Ruby's Spoon etc etc etc.

It's a well written book and I didn't hate reading it. I particularly liked the constant mentions of the grime and slime of a child's life. As someone who can't bare to tought the insides of tomatoes and egg white (or egg snot as it should be called), I identified with some of Gwenni's aversions. But it wasn't enough to keep this one away from my pile of books to take to the charity shop.

BOOK 11: Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

My thoughts about this one will appear in a future issue of Belletrista.



BOOK 12: Dilemmas of Deokie by Carol Sammy

Another read for a Belletrista review.

All caught up now.

I thought this would be a good point to review progress against the stated goals in post #1 (Jeez, I've been writing too many business plans recently - progress against goals, tracking outcome delivery etc!).

1. Caribbean authors - one read, 3 to pick up from the library today
2. No new books purchased - achieved!
3. Less books, more thinking - partly achieved. Same amount of books but more thinking going on I think.

#48 Sad (and infuriating) to see how little has changed since the 1980s with women's writing!

Books 7 & 8 - great reviews. (I have Erasure on TBR and How To Suppress... on my wishlist.)

Would love to hear about the ICA talk!

Erasure sounds great; I'll get it ASAP.

47 & 48 - Both sound great and were added to the wishlist.

>55 kidzdoc:, I was hoping you'd already read Erasure - I'd love to know what you think of it.

>56 janemarieprice:, always happy to add to others' lists!

Very interesting reviews.

Waiting to read your reviews of books by Caribbean authors.

>59 arubabookwoman:, You can see what I've read so far on the Belletrista blog...http://blog.belletrista.com/

I've got books by Merle Collins and Edwidge Danticat coming up.

On a non-book subject, Mr charbutton has found gainful employment so I'm booking us a holiday, either Vancouver or San Francisco to meet up with friends who are travelling.

We've had negative views of both places from friends who have visited. Vancouver because there's nothing to do when it rains and it's very outdoorsy. Mr C is not at all outdoorsy, so would there be enough cultural stuff in and around the city to keep us occupied?

The friend who went to San Francisco thought it wasn't very lively. My thoughts of SF are entirely shaped by Tales of the City - isn't it like that any more??

We can't decide which to go to, so I'm hoping LTers can tell me what they like about the two cities and what there is to see and do. Recommendations for bookshops will be very welcome of course!

Char -- you're coming to Vancouver? !!! Hello, . . . tour guide here. Nothing to do when it's raining?! (okay, . . . it rains a lot, depending on what time of year you're talkin' about) . . . nothing to do when it rains? What do you think we do all the time? Just stop living because it's raining? Vancouver has the same rainfall as Paris and New York, I think (it's just that they get it over a few days and we get it over, well, a lot of days), so, well, maybe that could be true, depending on exactly how cultured Mr. C is exactly. But one doesn't come to Vancouver for cultural events that equal London or Paris or New York (if we had THAT level, why would we EVER leave? Come on, we need holidays too). Let's talk, and I'll help you figure out if Vancouver is for you, or not.

By the way, San Francisco is an awesome, extremely lively city. The person who told you otherwise just got him or herself steered in the wrong direction. I LOVE San Fransisco. Other than Manhattan, it's the only place I'd agree to live in the US.

(Edited to say: that may have sounded a bit snotty, but hey, I live in Vancouver, the city that the Economist again deemed "most livable". Why would I want to move, exactly? http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2009/06/liveable_vancouver)

BTW - you can let Mr. C know that the Economist rated Vancouver 109 on the Culture and Environment scale, with New York City as the standard of 100. (I don't think this is quite what he means, but . . . )

San Francisco is my favorite city, too: great bookstores in the city and nearby Berkeley (especially City Lights and Green Apple Books), superb restaurants, ethnic diversity (North Beach, Chinatown, Japantown, the Sunset, Richmond and Mission Districts), gorgeous mountain and ocean views, and plenty of cultural amenities (music, fine arts, etc.). I can think of two reasons why your friend may have found SF to be less than lively: there is much less to do in SF in the summer months, especially August, than during the spring or fall; and the areas of SF that are most frequented by first time visitors, namely Union Square and Fisherman's Wharf, are overcommercialized and not very unique or interesting. It's easy to get to these other neighborhoods or to other interesting cities in the Bay Area (Berkeley, Sausalito, Napa Valley) by public transit.

Wow, has it really been more than a month since I was last here?? Work is really tough at the moment and while I still have time for reading (thank goodness), I don't have any brain power left by the time I get home.

Joyce and Darryl, thanks for the big ups for Vancouver and San Francisco! The other half's job situation has changed and his unemployed again so all plans are on hold :-(

Anyway, enough, whinging. Here's an overview of what I read in late February/March:



BOOK 13: The Story of the Cannibal Woman by Maryse Conde

An exploration of love, identity, race, and place. It took a little while to get into but then I really enjoyed it. I'll look for other works by Conde.



BOOK 14: South Riding by Winifred Holtby

This has been sitting on my shelf for ages - the upcoming screening of a BBC adaptation prompted me to read the book before seeing it on TV. South Riding is an area in the north of England, a place that is probably pretty uninteresting to an outside but which tems with a whole host of characters, all with their own hopes, fears and intrigues. Holtby set out to write a story about local government and many of the people she depicts are councillors and school governors. There is always a lot of scope to satirise English social and political quirks and I was disappointed that there wasn't much of this in South Riding - I think I was expecting a 1930s version of Anthony Trollope's Barchester Tales. The inclusion of so many characters (167 of them apparently) means that, for me, there wasn't enough depth to any of them to keep me interested.



BOOK 15: White by Marie Darrieussecq

In 2015 a group of scientists, engineers and radio operators travel to the first permanent European base on Antarctica. Edmee, radio operator, is the only woman in the expedition; Peter is in charge of keeping the power generator working. They seem to be destined to come together, in the unseen company of the ghosts of their past troubles and traumas and of past visitors to the south pole. This really wasn't my kind of book. Nothing really happens for much of the story and of course the characters are stuck in the middle of a huge piece of white nothingness. And it did nothing for me.



BOOK 16: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

I absolutely loved this! Josef Kavalier, newly arrived from Prague, and his New York cousin Sam Clay create a new comic book superhero. The Escapist fights facism and oppression and captures the imagination of 1930s American boyhood. These amazing adventures tell the story of the two cousins lives, particularly the continuing impact on Joe's life of his flight from central Europe. It's moving, funny, thoughtful.



BOOK 17: Ranma 1/2 Vol. 1 by Rumiko Takahashi

Ranma 1/2 is the first manga book I have read. It's cute, funny and fantastical. Ranma is a boy with a secret. After falling into a cursed pool, he turns into a girl when he gets wet. And his dad often changes into a panda. Ranma's father promises his hand in mariage to the daughter of an old friend. The daughter has other ideas though. She has a vehment dislike of boys and is particularly disgusted by Ranma. Or is she?

There are some really nice touches in both the art work and text that made me chuckle; a marital arts venue is called the 'School of Discriminate Grappling', for example. Ranma might be a bit childish for some people's taste but I really enjoyed it and will seeking out volume 2 and beyond.

BOOK 18: Marie Antoinette by Stefan Zweig

Zweig's seminal biograpy of the notorious queen of France is subtitled 'The Portrait of an Average Woman'. He took great pains to drive home to the reader that Marie Antoinette had no particular gifts and no deep intelligence. Despite the example set by her regal mother, Marie was a spoilt young woman who gave no thought to the country which was paying for extravagances and excesses. There's one striking passage where Zweig explains the tiny area of France that Marie knew, essentially the palace of Versailles and the route through Paris to the theatre; she never visited any other part of her realm or met anyone who wasn't part of the court circle.

Reading about Marie Antoinette's rural folly at Trianon, her love of expensive jewellery and her complete ignorance of the troubles facing her adopted country, it's easy to understand why she attracted such hatred from the populace during the Revolution. It was inevitable that she should lose her head. But I felt a lot of sympathy for her. Her situation reminds me a modern day celebrities and premier league footballers. Give almost any young person a shedload of money and universal adoration and I'm sure they wouldn't be concerning themselves about the plight of the poor. As Zweig says, she was an average woman, like most others.

A note on Zweig's style...he wrote very emotively about Marie Antoinette's thoughts and feelings with few direct quotes from primary sources and added an afterword about the difficulty of determining authentic documents written by the queen. So how did he know her innermost thoughts?? I don't need pages of footnotes but would like to know that the emotions he attributes to her are drawn either from the primary sources or Zweig's interpretation Marie Antoinette's psychology. That said, this was a very readable account of her life.

#67 Your last paragraph points to a real difficulty in determining how much is historical fact and how much is historical fiction. I get the impression from your review that you felt that the book was historically accurate up to the point where primary sources exist, but that the author filled in quite large gaps with his own interpretations. History or fiction then or something in between? Sounds worth reading though and I will put it on my wish list.

Yeah, I accept that there's always interpretation and 'filling in the gaps', I'd just like to know how he arrived at his statements about her.

BOOK 19: The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

I picked this book up at exactly the right time. It set in the April sunshine of Italy; I read it sitting in the London sunshine in April.

Four women, previously unknown to each other, take a villa in Italy for a month. Mrs Wilkins and Mrs Arbuthnot both have unhappy marriages. Lady Caroline Dester wants a respite from men and family. Mrs Fisher, an older woman, well, I don't really know what she wants to get away from.

The magic of the sunshine and the beautiful setting works a magic on all of the women, opening them up to life and love. Von Arnim's writing is amusing and enjoyable. If I'd read this in a different frame of mind it might have seemed too light and twee, but it fitted perfectly with my mood this week.

A couple of other reading stuff to note...

I started Old Gringo by Carlos Fuentes for my real-life book group. I stopped at page 93. I just didn't get it. I couldn't get a grasp of the story and kept forgetting who was who. From the reactions of others in the group, I don't think I'm missing much if i don't finish it!

I did a quick re-read of The Waitress Was New by Dominique Fabre, my choice for the book group. this was one of my favourite books from last year and I'm glad to say that it didn't disappoint me on a second reading.

With reference to point number 2 of post number one, I have fallen off the wagon and I have fallen hard! A trip to Hay on Wye has resulted in me buying 12 new books. This pushes my TBR list back past 270 I think. Grrr. But they are lovely, lovely books.

The most interesting find is I Am A Cat by Soseki Natsume, a story that was originally written as a ten-part serialisation published in 1905/6 in Japan. The tale is told from the point of view of a cat who 'spends all his time observing human nature'. It should be interesting!

Had a great time catching up on your thread--how did I miss you at the beginning of the year?! No, wait, there I am up at the top. Darn, my iPad! I'm always accidentally x-ing out threads when I want to star them (fat fingers, I guess). Don't know how you got unstarred, but I'm glad you're back--or, technically, I guess I'm back. Maybe Mrs. Fisher isn't trying to get away "from" anything, but is trying to get "to" something? But maybe I'm just projecting. I'll have to read it to see, huh? Looking forward to your comments on Kitchen and I am a Cat.

Another month has slipped by. I'm not quite sure how that happened. Anyway, here's what I've read since I last posted....



BOOK 20: The Prefect by Alistair Reynolds

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that I don't enjoy many of Reynold's books. I loved his Revelation Space trilogy (or at least I loved the most of that story apart from the very disappointing ending), but the three others that I've read have been a disappointment and I'm not sure I'll try any more.

The Prefect is a space opera cum political consipracy thriller. A malevolent force takes over the voting system of the Glitter Band, a grouping of thousands of planets. The ability to vote keep everyone in order. The problem is investigated by Panoply, the Glitter Band's police force. There are various twists and turns as an insider attempts to thwart the efforts of the good guys, who win in the end. I guess that's a bit of a spoiler, but with a book like this you know that everything will turn out OK. It's shame that I didn't find the story of getting to that point more enjoyable.



BOOK 21: Nada by Carmen Laforet

Such an unsettling and bleak book. Andrea moves to Barcelona to start university. She moves in with relatives who she has rarely seen over the years only to discover that her grandmother, aunt and uncles live claustrophobically violent lives. Their relationships are disturbing and strange, full of hatred. Their behaviour would make most people get out of there very, very quickly, but Andrea seems to accept all of this as, if not normal, then bearable, perhaps desirable. Even when her aunt tells her 'If I'd got hold of you when you were younger, I'd have beaten you to death!', she does not react. It felt to me like for some reason (the civil war and her parents' deaths?) Andrea needed this weirdness, this violence to move on in life.

I think there are many allusions to the civil war that I didn't pick up. Nada's a book I want to read with a tutor who can take me through it bit by bit and help me understand it better. Any volunteers??

BOOK 22: Brother, I'm Dying by Edwidge Danticat

This is the story of Danticat's uncle Joseph, a preacher in Haiti. Early in Danticat’s life her father and mother left Haiti for a new life in New York. She and her brother were left in the care of Joseph and his wife. While this was a bewildering situation for a young child, it’s obvious that she came to love her uncle nearly as much as she loved her father; her affection and respect for him is palpable.

Through the book Danticat skillfully interweaves incidents in Haiti’s turbulent political life with family stories both on the island and in New York. She doesn’t go overboard on this – she lets the reader come to their own understanding of what life must have been like in such unsettling circumstances. She does the same when she recounts the end of Joseph’s life. He died alone, at the mercy of an inhumane and bureaucratic system. But Danticat doesn’t tell us that explicitly. She just quotes from the official records that relate to his death, a cold list of facts that underline the sadness of an old man dying without his family around him. It’s an incredibly powerful way of conveying both her grief and her anger at what happened to Joseph, which moved me to tears.



BOOK 23: The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds

High Beach Private Asylum in Epping, Essex, was once home to the poet John Clare and the brother of Alfred Tennyson. Adam Foulds uses this as the basis of The Quickening Maze, the story of those two literary men (factual fiction, I guess you could call it) and of the Allen family whose patriarch Matthew runs the asylum. The action focuses on Matthew, his daughter Hannah (who falls in love with Tennyson), John Clare and Mary, another inmate who hears the voice of God. All four are desperate, in their own way, and I always felt that each was doomed to unhappiness and their individual madnesses. But in the end I didn't really care that much about any of them. The book has been described as atmospheric and beautiful but I couldn't get to the heart of it. Perhaps this wasn't helped by the fact that I was reading it at my in-laws so couldn't give it the peace and quiet it might have needed. Perhaps I should give it another try.

BOOK 24: The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman

At the end of last year I read Northern Lights by Philip Pullman and though I enjoyed it, didn't feel the need to immediately read the next book in the trilogy, The Subtle Knife. However, as mentioned above, I was at my in-laws for a few days and needed something I could pick up and put down easily. What I got was a bit more than that, a book that I was enjoying enough to stay up until the early hours to finish.

The action in this second book switches from the Oxford of Lyra Belacqua to the Oxford of Will Parry, a 12 year old who's in quite a lot of trouble. Will stumbles upon an entry to another world which seems to be a meeting point for many different universes. Lyra also finds this other world; she and Will meet and become allies in their individual quests - Will's to find out more about his father, Lyra's to find out more about Dust. It soon becomes clear that their quests and their two universes are linked. The evil Mrs Coulter continues to be evil and when she tortures a witch we find out that Lyra has a destiny that Mrs C is determined to prevent.

I think the introduction of Will and his world made this volume more interesting than the previous one. More emotion and sci-fi-type stuff, less large talking bears!



BOOK 25: Masks by Fumiko Enchi

Even if I had written this review immediately after reading Masks when the story was still fresh in my mind, I don't think I would be able to write much about it. According to the blurb, Masks plays on elements of the Japanese classic The Tale of Genji and the tradition of No theatre but having no knowledge about either of these I wonder how much I could ever get from this book. I found it a bit unbelievable but perhaps I needed to view it as a fantastical tale or play rather than a straight work of fiction.

Meiko Togano is a gentle, educated and cultured woman who lives with Yasuko, the wife of her dead son. She is mostly in the background of the story but we eventually realise that she has played an important and sinister role in the lives of Yasuko and the two men who love her.

For book written by a woman it seemed pretty anti-women. Initially I thought was done deliberately by the author but now I’ve realised the book was published in 1958 so perhaps it is of its time. I think I need to know more about the women's movement in Japan to understand how to interpret the constant assertions about women’s secretive nature and their other flaws. However, looking at the Wikipedia entry for Enchi, it seems that she wrote other stories about women’s position in Japanese society that were forward-thinking, which suggests that Enchi was playing on current stereotypes?

> 75 - I agree with you about The Quickening Maze, Char. I found the writing beautiful, but beautiful writing still needs a solid plot and interesting characters, and that is where Foulds is lacking, I think. He is also a poet, and I think that comes through in his novel - it's all about style and language.

looks like you enjoy variety in your reading. An interesting selection of books and I appreciate your reviews. I have just read a selection of John Clare's poetry and so I was very interested in your comments on The quickening maze. I think I will give it a shot as I know what to expect now after reading your review.

Interesting response to Fumiko Enchi. I've read her The Waiting Years but have not read the book you have just read although I've heard of it. But she is definitely not anti-women but she does write what the role of the woman was as it was so that her reader can see why someone should fight for female independence! If what I wrote makes sense? (I don't seem to be typing the most understandable of entries tonight. As if I've forgotten how to speak English.)

>77 Cait86:, I was expecting more substance from a Booker-shortlisted novel.

>78 baswood:, I'll be interested to hear if Foulds' imagining of Clare fits with the image of the man you might have after reading his poems.

>79 lilisin:, Yes that makes sense! Perhaps in Masks she was using the men's comments about women's secrecy to hint at the reveal that comes at the end. If so, it's very heavy-handed.

Right, two more reviews then I'm caught up and can go and see what everyone else has ben up to over the past few weeks.



BOOK 26: Broken Glass by Alain Mabanckou

I bought this book after seeing Alain Mabanckou at a World Literature Weekend event (run by the London Review Bookshop). He actually spoke very little; the event was all about the translation of a section of one of his novels by two different people to ilustrate how an original text can be turned into very different versions. It was fascinating to understand the translation process and how the experiences of the translator influences their choice of words.

Anyway, Broken Glass is the eponymous narrator, who writes down the stories of the men he encounters in the bar he frequents in a notebook. These great (in their eyes) men tell tales of being brought low, of failure and humiliation. Lurking in the background is Broken Glass's own story of destruction, degradation and grief which slowly unfolds into tragedy.

While the stories are interesting by themselves, Mabanckou adds another level to the book. Broken Glass writes in one single sentence - no full stops anywhere - full of slang and the brutal and messy parts of human existence. Yet he makes constant reference to the great works of African and 'Western' literature, referencing Ben Okri, J D Salinger, Chateaubriand and Maya Angelou among many others. It became a kind of game as I kept trying to spot novel titles slipped into the text.
I'm still trying to work out why Mabanckou makes these references. Perhaps it's a comment on story-telling and what makes a 'great' story?



BOOK 27: Iran, the Green Movement and the USA by Hamid Dabashi
LT Early Reviewers book

I requested this book because I'm interested by Iran and wanted to learn more about its history and politics. Which I kind of did from this book, but it was a slog.

Dabashi's rejects the portrayal of Iranian history as a series of unconnected phases, instead linking the rise of the civil rights (Green) movement in 2009 with the protests that in 1906 led to the founding of an Iranian parliament. I would have liked to know much more about how the Green movement started and spread , who is involved and where it is now, but Dabashi assumes an amount of knowledge about this that I don't have.

Perhaps the target audience is 'Middle East watchers' and those who have a deeper knowledge of political theory and philosophy. Much of the book was lost on me as Dabashi discusses 'anarchic versus erotic bodies' (in reference to public, openly loving letters that women write to their jailed husbands) and 'presumed mimetic absolutism'.

In the end this felt like an unnecessarily extended essay in which what could have been interesting ended up being inaccessible to a casual reader.

75/77 - I thought the main problem with The Quickening Maze was that Foulds didn't know how to filter his material/research into a working dramatic form. He wanted to discuss everything and so leapt about too much, dissipating any storyline - keeping it simpler may have produced a better novel.

I read Botchan by Natsume Sōseki a number of years ago. It is a book that is apparently read in Japanese schools. While good, I think I was a bit underwhelmed. But it was early days in my exploration of Asian lit.

83, I have to say that my very limited forays into Japanese literature haven't been very succesful so far. I don't know why not - perhaps a tone or style that hasn't quite clicked with me yet?

84-
That's how I feel about the Russians. I keep re-trying but it still does nothing for me. The Japanese however I adore!

I see also that you are reading The Radetzsky March. The influence of the Author Theme Reads group spreads! How exciting. I should actually finish that book someday.

>85 lilisin:, I've just finished it - it was sad but wonderful.

I loved The Radetzky March too. It got me started on reading more Roth, although a lot of it doesn't measure up.

76 - Glad to find someone else who agrees with me on the His Dark Materials trilogy. I find most people love Lyra and the first book. I thought they got better as you went along in large part because Will is such a great character.

BOOK 28: The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth

This is one of those books that I find hard to review because I can't put my finger on why I enjoyed it so much. The writing (and the translation) worked for me, and reading The Radetzky March was a real pleasure. I've started a 'lifetime favourite' list and this book is on it.

The story is set in the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the build up to and outbreak of the First World War and we follow the fortunes of three generations of the Trotta family, grandfather, father and son. The grandfather saves the life of the Emperor, earning his family an enoblement to the name of 'von Trotta' and ensuring that his son and grandson have a bit of a helping hand from the Emperor during their civil service and military careers.

As the period of the book might suggest, there is a sense of impending change throughout the story, particularly in the relationships between the father and son. It's not a case of the son acting out and upbraiding his father for being old-fashioned. It's more subtle than that, a sense of disconnect between the old and the new ways of being. This is particularly symbolised by the figure of Franz Josef, the Emperor, who lives through the succeeding generations of Trottas, getting older and growing more remote from the life of his empire.

This is a very 'male' book with few women intruding in the lives of the four men (Trottas and Emperor). I enjoyed the examination of the father/son relationship and the familial and societal constraints and expectations (met and unmet), although I found it deeply sad. So much is left unsaid.

BOOK 29: The Victorian Chaise-Longue by Marghanita Laski

Melanie is recuperating from a severe bout of tuberculosis following the birth of her child. After six months of illness she is finally allowed out of bed but must lie quietly, not exciting herself, on a Victorian chaise-longue, an ugly item of furniture that she was unaccountably drawn to buy from an antiques shop. Safely ensconced in the chair, Melanie experiences a deep moment of ecstasy before drifting off to sleep...

...only to wake up in a strange body, in a strange room and in a time that is not her own. First she is convinced that she is in some sort of nightmare that she can wake from but it becomes clear that there is something else going on and that finding the way back to her own life won't be easy.

It's an odd little story, that's a bit terrifying as the reader experiences Melanie's efforts to make sense of what is happening. It also raises some interesting points about women's position in society. Melanie seems very girly and passive (I'm assuming her life is set in the mid-20th century), her doctor and her husband treat her like a child; the woman who's body she inhabits is equally treated dismissively by the male characters. Is Laski saying that the situation of women has changed little over the decades?

BOOK 30: The Old Man and Me by Elaine Dundy

Another book with a chilling edge.

Young American Betsy sets out to London to track down C D McKee, a middle-aged Englishman of some renown (although I was never really sure why he was famous). At first it seems like Betsy is a gold-digger, looking for a celebrity marriage but then we find out that she has something much more sinister in mind.

She's a cool customer, a consumate liar and has few qualms about her dastardly plan, but I quite liked Besty and her acidic comments about life in drab little Britain in the last 50s/early 60s. It's not the most sophisticated story and the ending was tied up a bit too neatly for my liking, but it was still an enjoyable read.

BOOK 31: The Canal by Lee Rourke
(read for book group)

This is a book that could easily divide opinion. Is it too knowing, too hip, overhyped book beloved of the Guardian? Or is it an effectively portrayal of one man's breakdown and retreat from the normal patterns of life?

On the face of it, I should hate The Canal. It's set in one the newest trendy parts of London where the achingly fashionable and really annoying hipsters live and that's the kind of thing that can annoy me - references, locations and consumer goods that jump out of a story shouting 'LOOK. You know this is a story of now because it mentions i-phones'. Luckily The Canal felt a bit more subtle than, say, Justin Cartwright's The Promise of Happiness which rammed Islington references down the readers' throats even other page.

The unnamed protagonist of The Canal decides one day that he isn't going to work. He's going to sit on a bench by the canal instead (a decision helped, no doubt, by the fact that he's been left some money so doesn't have to worry about those troublesome things like paying the mortgage).

He says he goes to the canal because he's bored. Day after day he sits, observing the people, the wildlife and the goings on in the office on the opposite bank. But is he really bored? He thinks a lot about his family, his childhood and his observations lead him to discourse on life. By doing that can he still be bored? Or is the problem that has he reached the point where he just can't continue with the normal routines of life? His memories suggest that he has always been a bit remote and that he has recently been drawing further back from friends.

Over time a woman comes and shares the same bench with him and they eventually strike a kind of companionship. She is equally remote and a bit odd, unburdening herself by telling him her greatest, darkest secret. He develops on obsession with her that borders on disturbing. One night he follows her and is on the verge of barging his way into her house - it feels like he could pose a real danger to her.

The ending is tragic and somewhat unresolved, leading to some debate when we discussed this at book group.

I don't think I've ever read a book in which the geography is so familiar. I've been to the theatre at the Rosemary Branch pub, I've walked the streets mentioned, I know the canal. Perhaps that's one of the reasons that I did enjoy this book. Also, at the moment work is the last thing I want to be doing and the thought of giving that up on an apparent whim is very attractive. And the book made me think, about boredom and responsibility.

BOOK 32: A Legacy of Liberation: Thabo Mbeki and the Future of the South African Dream by Mark Gevisser

I attended a talk a couple of years ago given by Mark Gevisser about this book. It was when I was doing a lot of African reading so I thought I'd go along. Gevisser was a good speaker and so I bought the book (the international version of a much larger biography) without having a real interest in Thabo Mbeki.

It's an odd kind of biography because the subject is elusive. Mbeki comes across as a controlled man who showed little emotion throughout his colourful life and so there is little detail here of his personal life. Gevisser was granted a series of interviews with Mbeki but it feels like he never got to the heart of the man. In a way that doesn't matter. Mbeki lived through such interesting times that I was content to read South Africa's recent history through the prism of his life and didn't need to know that much about the man.

I learnt a lot that I didn't know about South African history, Mbeki's exile life in the UK, the extent of the ANC's international links and the years after the end of apartheid. I suppose the over-arching story is the Mbeki failed in many respects to see South Africa through the difficult post-Liberation period but really could anyone have lived up to the expectations of a nation and a world? Mbeki could not call on the goodwill accorded to Mandela (inside and outside of the country) and Gevisser is keen to highlight that his personality did not invite that kind of devotion.

Of course Mbeki's premiership will always be remembered for his stance on HIV/AIDS. Gevisser attributes Mbeki's refusal to accept conventional wisdom on the disease partly to his perception of international racism towards himself. He felt that linking the increasing prevalence of HIV/AIDS in South Africa to male promiscuity was part of the continuing white fear about the black man's uncontrollable sexuality. And he objected to being told what he should and shouldn't think about the issue by predominantly white outsiders. However, there can be little sympathy for a man whose stubbornness on health policy has been said to have lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands people.

Following on from reading this, I want to know more about Communism in Africa and the links with the USSR and China. Can anyone recommend a book on this subject? It will need to be accessible to a beginner - I don't know much about Communist philosophy.

I loved The Radetzky March too, and enjoyed thinking about it again by reading your review. Have you read Dundy's The Dud Avocado? I read (and loved) that before I read The Old Man and Me and so found the Old Man disappointing because it didn't live up to The Dud Avocado.

Interesting thoughts about Mbeki, and I too need to know more about African history and the links with Communist (and western) countries.

BOOK 33: The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman

The final book in the His Dark Materials trilogy telling the last stage of Lyra and Will's fight against evil. Enjoyable and the easy read that I needed but the ending was a bit too neat and some things didn't quite add up. But I really admire Pullman's writing - he doesn't patronise his younger readers or shy away from those two big subjects, death and sex.

>88 janemarieprice:, I agree that these books got more interesting when the action wasn't just focused on Lyra. She's a great character but it was good to get a rest from her by reading about Will and Mary.

BOOK 34: The Blackbirder by Dorothy B. Hughes

I love the Feminist Press's Femme Fatales series. They have republished women's pulp writing of the 1930s - 1950s. That's how I first discovered Dorothy B. Hughes, generally held to be one of the best crime fiction writers of the time.

The Blackbirder is a thriller set in 1940s America. Julie Guille is a French refugee living in New York. One night she bumps into Maxl, an old aquaintance, whose mysterious death leads Julie to go on the run, afraid that the investigating authorities will discover that she's in the US illegally. She heads to Santa Fe where she thinks the Blackbirder lives, someone who conducts secret flights to Mexico, for the right price.

Julie's no stranger to running. She escaped France through guile and determination; she's street smart and clever. However, she may have both the FBI and the Gestapo on her tail and it turns out that the person who has kept her going through her escape across the Atlantic and her flight to Santa Fe is not what he seems at all.

The Blackbirder is a gripping story of espionage and Nazis and Julie's a great heroine.

Interesting selection of books you have reviewed charbutton. I have put The Canal, Lee Rourke and The victorian Chaise Longue on my to buy list

a man who might know a decent book on South African history is our very own dmsteyn - catch his thread http://www.librarything.com/topic/117208

The Victorian Chaise-Longue (reminds me of The Yellow Wallpaper?) and maybe The Canal for me, too. I looked at your "lifetime favourites" and am inspired to update mine.

Hmmmm, two months since I was last here. This is going to be an epic LT session to catch up with my reviews and everyone else's reading.

Work has taken over my life and energy this year. I hate that I haven't been able to face turning on the laptop of an evening; I've missed being here.

Luckily I do still have time to read. Without books I really would have struggled over the past few months!

Anyway, this is what I've been reading....

BOOK 36: Jean Rhys by Carole Angier

As you may know, Jean Rhys is one of my favourite authors. Her novels and short stories are stark, her heroines frustratingly passive, but I love them.

Angier's book is part-biography, part critical assessment of Rhys's four novels. Rhys wrote very much about what she knew. Her stories reflected her own experiences and her protagonists were all versions of Rhys herself. Their unattractive characteristics were hers, their flaws were hers. Angier shows us that Rhys was an unhappy and selfish woman, full of paranoia and fear, an alcoholic with delicate mental health who made a misery of the lives of those closest to her. But people still cared for her deeply and tried to help her however much she pushed them away. They were attracted to her despite her often dreadful behaviour and that's how I feel about her.

She sounds appalling but I find her and the women she writes about compelling. It's hard to describe why I feel like that; I think it's because the real Rhys and the Rhys in fiction let go of responsibility. I find that fascinating and am a little envious of being able to stumble through life as people pick up the pieces for you.

I enjoyed reading Angier's biography but sometimes found it as frustrating as its subject. She makes statements about Jean's character - 'That's what Jean was like' - that left me wondering what evidence she had for these assertions. It's not until quite late on that it becomes clear that Angier had met Rhys.

There is another Jean Rhys biography out there, The Blue Hour: A Life of Jean Rhys by Lilian Pizzichini, which is on my wishlist. It will be interesting to see if there is an alternative reading of Jean Rhys's character.

BOOK 37: The House of Mr Biswas by V. S. Naipaul

This is going to be short review because I don't remember much about this book and don't have it here to refer to. I know I came to it with some trepidation. I read The Mystic Masseur a long time ago and didn't enjoy it, and Naipaul's recent comments about women writers had done nothing to endear me to him. However, I tried to approach The House of Mr Biswas with an open mind.

I struggled to get into it but after about 200 pages it started to click, kind of. It didn't help that the front cover proclaimed the book to be a work of comic genius. I wasn't laughing, I don't think I even smiled much. By the end of more than 500 pages what I had read was a saga of Mr Biswas's doomed efforts to become greater than the sum of his parts. I was reminded of the writing of Salman Rushdie and Rohinton Mistry, Indian writers who came after Naipaul. All three of these men's writing makes me feel a bit, well, underwhelmed and that's my over-riding impression of The House of Mr Biswas. I didn't hate it, but I can't rave about it.

BOOK 38: Skyscraper by Faith Baldwin

This book in the Feminist Press Femme Fatales series is different to the others I've read so far as it's a romance rather than a thriller.

The story was published as a serial in Cosmopolitan in 1931 and it discusses the issues that you might expect a Cosmo girl to be concerned with at that time - having a career, the threat of losing her job when she gets married, choosing between the keen young beau and the successful older man, and how far a good girl should go. It's the dilemma of whether a modern woman can have it all, apparently something we still haven't resolved in 2011 (see Sarah Jessica Parker's latest film, I Don't Know How She Does It). The story is a little bit preachy. One of the women becomes a kept woman but is unhappy, another gets close to having an affair but ultimately is reunited with her husband. The message is that if a young woman sticks to her morals and doesn't have her head turned by bad influences, she'll be fine.

Skyscraper is an entertaining read but not like the other great books I've read in the series.

BOOK 39: The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Another book that I don't have to hand so will have to rely on my unreliable memory.

From what I understand, The Help has been a much talked about book. There are 763 reviews on Librarything alone.

So I won't go on about the story. It's basically about a lonely young white woman, Skeeter, who is growing up in the 1960s American South and who aspires to be a writer. She's a bit different from her friends who are concerned with affluence, appearances and following the herd. Skeeter decides to write about the help, the African American women who serve the white families and bring up their children. Two of these women narrate the story, with Skeeter, and we learn about the tensions they experience, always trying to ensure not to upset their employers and get a reputation for a difficult worker, and the difficulties of growing attached to the white children they look after.

I felt torn reading The Help. One the one hand, I become completely immersed in the story every time I picked the book up and I was interested to find out what happened next. On the other, as soon as I stopped reading I had a lot of questions about the plot, such as the likelihood of the black women telling their stories to Skeeter and the unlikely publishing opportunity she secures. I think that the writing was unsubtle and Stockett was telling me what to feel, not allowing me to come to my own conclusions. It's no To Kill A Mockingbird.

BOOK 40: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Damn, I wish I could remember more about this one. I gave it 4 stars, so obviously enjoyed it.

What I can recall is that Oscar Wao is an overweight geek from a Dominican-American family. An idiosyncratic narrator tells about his life and that of his rebel sister and his mother's childhood in the Dominican Republic. The narrator interjects his opinions into the story and I really liked that voice.

BOOK 41: Special Exits by Joyce Farmer

This graphic novel was lent to me by a colleague who raved about it. I'm less enthusiastic about it, but it was still a good read.

Special Exits is Joyce Farmer's memoir of her father and stepmother's lives as they grew older and decline. It touches on the difficult subjects of how to get older people the best care and the responsibility/guilt of their children. Lars and Rachel's obstinately refuse to seek medical treatment and as their health gets worse, their home becomes increasingly unsanitary. Their daughter finds it more and more difficult to cope with caring for them while holding down a full time job.

It's a very moving subject and close to a lot of people's hearts. My grandfather is now 86, ignores his obvious health problems and is starting to take less care of the house. I think I had to distance myself from the story emotionally because of this and perhaps then couldn't engage with it fully.

BOOK 42: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

I have an edition of this book that was published in the late 1960s. The back cover promises that some of the characters 'fight their loneliness with violence and depravity, some with sex or drink...' The Heart is a Lonely Hunter didn't turn out to be quite the book I was expecting!

The main characters are all lonely. Mick, a teenager, is growing into her new body and new emotions; Biff Banner, cafe owner and newly widowed; Blount, drunken union agitator; Copeland, the black doctor who feels alienated from his own family. These people gravitate towards Singer, a deaf mute, who they all feel has a preternatural understanding of their isolation. They are all wrapped up in their own lives, never guessing that Singer himself is deeply lonely.

I can't remember if the story ends on a note of hope. I just remember feeling sad when I read it and a strong sensation of wanting to shake many of the characters until their teeth rattle for their selfish assumption that Singer is there solely for their own comfort.

Welcome back charbutton. It is unpleasant to feel that you are being manipulated by an author as you may have felt when reading The Help. You may have felt similarly about the Jean Rhys biography.

It is a bit disquieting to read that our literary heroes were not very nice people, still I think we can forgive them everything if we love their work.

Interesting collection of reading and reviews, Char -- I had a very similar reaction to The Help.

>108 baswood:, I don't think I felt manipulated by the Rhys biography, I just like to know from where the biographer is drawing their opinions.

>109 janeajones:, I just read your review of The Help and like your thought that it's a book that enables people to feel superior to Skeeter's contemporaries. I wonder how people from the south felt about it.

BOOK 43: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Hmmm, another hugely hyped book that didn't quite do it for me. Looking back I only gave this 2.5 starts and I think that's because I didn't get emotionally engaged with the writing.

Henrietta Lacks died of cancer in the 1950s. Her tumour cells were removed and have since been used by scientists to help them make significant advances in medicine. People have made a lot of money out of growing the HeLa cells but Henrietta's family have not benefited in any way. Instead they have been misled by the medical world and have developed a severe mistrust of the healthcare system.

This should have been a really great book. However, I think I would have liked to read a wider discussion of how the black community is treated by the medical system in the US. I also felt a bit uncomfortable when reading about Henrietta's daughter, Deborah, who had some mental health problems. I don't think Rebecca Skloot deliberately exploited Deborah but I did feel a bit like a voyeur looking at her deep pain about the lose of her mother.

Now The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks has had some rave reviews and Rebecca Skloot has sold a boat load of books, but I also had my reservations. I couldn't decide whether Skloot had done an outstanding job in producing a book of non-fiction that is an expose of important medical/social issues, or if she had just found a good story, invested it with a mass of human interest, added a hint of conspiracy theory and made herself the knight in shining armour. The answer probably lies somewhere in between.

BOOK 44: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

I really enjoyed David Mitchell's latest book set in the late 1700s when the Dutch East Indies Company had a trading post in the harbour of Nagasaki. At that time Japan was a closed society, no foreign influences were allowed. When Jacob de Zoet arrives to begin his tenure as a clerk he conceals a bible, running a great risk of being accused of trying to convert the Japanese to Christianity.

The book starts as a familiar story of a stranger in a strange land. We see the Japanese through de Zoet's eyes, noting the rituals and hierarchy that accompany their interaction with the Europeans. We also see the other Dutchmen as 'alien' to de Zoet. They are hardened Company men who have endured many years in the foreign lands of the East Indies and who perhaps live by a different set of rules to those who are newly arrived from the home country.

De Zoet is promised to a young woman at home. He's acutely aware that he is beneath her and hopes to make his fortune during the next few years in order to be in a position to marry her. But then he falls in love with a Japanese woman and the story changes into a tale of forbidden romance.

Without wanting to give away too much of the plot, the novel then goes through another transformation in pace and location and becomes something like action thriller/historical fiction. Then we go back to the trading post and Nagasaki and the arrival of a threatening enemy.

I had no idea where the story was going for much of the book; although Jacob de Zoet starts out as a somewhat prim clerk, he finishes up as something quite different. I liked accompanying him on that journey.

BOOK 44: Who is Ana Mendieta? by Christine Redfern and illustrated by Caro Caron

A graphic novel about the life, work and death of Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta. I reviewed this for Belletrista: http://www.belletrista.com/2011/Issue%2013/reviews_7.php

BOOK 45: Tunnel Vision by Sara Paretsky

Chicago-based private investigator VI Warshawski once again gets involved in a case that pays nothing and nearly gets her killed. It's the same pattern as the others in this series of novels but I've had a bit of a break between Paretsky books so don't mind that too much. VI is great heroine - she's always disorganised and messy and doubts herself but has a clear moral purpose. Lightweight but enjoyable.

Only five more reviews to write and I will have caught up with everything!

Great catching up with all your reviews.

>100 charbutton:, char, I think you and I are in the same boat. :)

Another brief round up of my recent reading...

BOOK 46: Out of This World: Science Fiction but not as you know it by Mike Ashley

The guide to the recent exhibition at the British Library, which was ace. The guide is similarly ace! It gives a good overview of SF/fantasy/steampunk/cyberpunk/dystopia/utopia and gives the names of lots of authors for me to find out more about.

BOOK 47: The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif

I've seen Soueif speak at a few events and have always found her to be interesting. Unfortunately, I find her writing less so. The Map of Love weaves together of three linked stories - Lady Anna Winterbourne who travels to Egypt in the early 1900s and finds love, a present-day American woman called Isabel who is the descendant of Anna, and an Egyptian woman who is translating Anna's story for Isabel (the book's narrator). It's very readable but it didn't really hold my attention. And the coincidental meeting and its consequences that enable the story seemed very contrived.

BOOK 48: Devoted Ladies by Molly Keane (aka M J Farrell)

Sometimes reading about dislikable people is as enjoyable as a book in which one feels sympathy for the characters. The people in Devoted Ladies are horrible, manipulative and self-centred and I loved them! The plot is essentially a tug of love between Jessica and George for the affections of sozzled Jane. Like the epic struggle between Olive Chancellor and Basil Ransom for the heart and mind of Verena in Henry James' The Bostonians but funnier, more cruel and using fewer words.

BOOK 49: I Am Not Sidney Poitier by Percival Everett

I loved Everett's Erasure earlier this year and was keen to read more by him. This book is an absurd coming-of-age tale about a young man called Not Sidney Poitier who becomes the protege of Ted Turner. With that premise I think you'll either love it or hate it. I loved it, but didn't understand lots of it. I'll definitely go back to this one.

BOOK 50: Blankets by Craig Thompson

Thompson's graphic novel is an account of his childhood and teenage years. He takes us through his relationship with his younger brother, his difficult family life and his first love. I must have been feeling particularly uncharitable when I read this because I didn't really care that much about his experiences, particuarly the angst about his girlfriend. I was just like get over it and move on. That's a bit harsh. Hmmmm. I should probably read this one again and try and have a bit more empathy.

BOOK 51: The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares

A weird, fabulous little book. A man lives on an uninhabited island which he found out about from an Italian rugseller in Calcutta. A musuem, a chapel and a swimming pool were built on the island but no one ever lived there. A group of tourists suddenly appear but they don't seem to be aware of the man's presence. The blurb compares Casares' writing to that of Philip K Dick - I can see the similarities in the way both writers play around with notions reality and fantasy.

Right, I've finally caught up with September's books.

Now for October.

BOOK 52: The Shadow-Boxing Woman by Inka Parei

A Belletrista read that I reviewed here: http://www.belletrista.com/2011/Issue14/reviews_6.php

BOOK 53: Blow Your House Down by Pat Barker

This is Barker's harrowing and deeply moving story of women living in northern England making their living from selling sex at a time when a man is killing prostitutes in their town. It's brilliantly written, provoking me to tears, anger and laughter. Very powerful.

BOOK 54: The Siege by Helen Dunmore

Reading The Siege felt a bit my experience with The Help. I enjoyed it when I read it and stayed up late to finish it but overall it was just OK. I didn't move me. I'm not quite sure why.

BOOK 55: A Life in Full - stories shortlisted for the 2010 Caine Prize for African Writing

This collection showcases stories by writers from South Africa, Kenya, Zambia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Ghana, Malawi and Zimbabwe. I have to admit that I was disappointed by it. I read and thoroughly enjoyed the 2007 Caine Prize collection so had high hopes for this, but none of the stories grabbed my imagination. I can't actually remember what any of them were about. I think the problem is that at the same time I was reading an excellent collection of short stories by the American writer Amy Hempel and the Caine prize writers' work suffered in the comparison.

BOOK 56: The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

I'm a great fan of Ishiguro and loved The Remains of the Day. Stevens is a typical English butler, meticulous and always conscious of the standards that a person in his position should adhere to. He is a bit of an anachronism, perhaps more fitting for early 20th century life rather than a post-world war two society. This is a story of buttoned-up Englishness, all reserved and unemotional. I was reminded of An Artist of the Floating World, Ishiguro's previous book set in post-war Japan - a man out of place, with a very self-absorbed view, unable to comprehend the feelings of others or articulate his own emotions.

Interesting reading, Char!

so envy you reading The Remains for the first time! thanks for the reminder that I need to get to his An Artist.

Lots of good reads here. I also enjoyed I Am Not Sidney Poitier, and I'm curious to find out what parts you didn't understand (and I might be able to help, since I live in Atlanta, where much of the novel takes place). I need to get to The Invention of Morel, which I have, along with The Siege. The Remains of the Day is a masterpiece, and it's definitely amongst my top 10 or 20 favorite novels.