kidzdoc's 2011 Thread, Part 2

Currently reading:



Chinaman by Shehan Karunatilaka
Colour Me English by Caryl Phillips
Life A User's Manual by Georges Perec
Completed books:

January:
1. Angel of Death: The Story of Smallpox by Gareth Williams (review)
2. A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore (review)
3. The Memory Chalet by Tony Judt (review)
4. The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by José Saramago (review)
5. The Tenant and the Motive by Javier Cercas (review)
6. Who Killed Palomino Molero? by Mario Vargas Llosa (review)
7. An African in Greenland by Tété-Michel Kpomassie (review)
8. The Elected Member by Bernice Rubens (review)
9. The Good Doctor by Damon Galgut
10. Blind Man with a Pistol by Chester Himes (review)
11. Yalo by Elias Khoury

February:
12. Match Day: One Day and One Dramatic Year in the Lives of Three New Doctors by Brian Eule (review)
13. Monument Eternal: The Music of Alice Coltrane by Franya J. Berkman (review)
14. Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to Mubarak by Tarek Osman
15. Métaphysique des tubes (The Character of Rain) by Amélie Nothomb (review)
16. The Seine Was Red: Paris, October 1961 by Leïla Sebbar (review)
17. The Secret History of Costaguana by Juan Gabriel Vasquéz (review)
18. Staying On by Paul Scott (review)
19. Hygiène de l'assassin (Hygiene and the Assassin) by Amélie Nothomb
20. Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure by Paul A. Offit, M.D.
21. Jonah's Gourd Vine by Zora Neale Hurston (review)
22. The Latino Challenge to Black America by Earl Ofari Hutchinson (review)
23. Fear and Trembling by Amélie Nothomb (review)

March:
24. In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar (review)
25. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
26. Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero by David Maraniss (review)
27. The Book of Proper Names by Amélie Nothomb
28. A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond by Percival Everett & James Kincaid
29. I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor's Journey by Izzeldin Abuelaish (review)
30. Memory of Departure by Abdulrazak Gurnah (review)
31. Little Mountain by Elias Khoury (review)
32. Chinese Dreams (Kindle Single) by Anand Giridharadas (review)
33. Harlem Is Nowhere by Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts (review)
34. Morning and Evening Talk by Naguib Mahfouz (review)
35. Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord (review)
36. The Anatomy of a Moment by Javier Cercas (review)
37. Pakistan and the Mumbai Attacks (Kindle Single) by Sebastian Rotella
38. Chopin's Move by Jean Echenoz

April:
39. A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 by Alistair Horne
40. Annabel by Kathleen Winter
41. Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
42. Dubliners by James Joyce
43. A Murder of Crows by Larry D. Thomas
44. The Carpenter's Pencil by Manuel Rivas
45. Send in the Idiots: Stories from the Other Side of Autism by Kamran Nazeer
46. On Elegance While Sleeping by Lascano Tegui
47. Being Abbas el Abd by Ahmed Alaidy
48. Monsieur Linh and His Child by Philippe Claudel (review)

May:
49. The Collaborator by Mirza Waheed (review)
50. The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna (review)
51. The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise by Georges Perec (review)
52. Amigoland by Oscar Casares (review)
53. The Three Christs of Ypsilanti by Milton Rokeach (review)
54. The Chalupa Rules: A Latino Guide to Gringolandia by Mario Bosquez (review)
55. Death to the Dictator! by Afsaneh Moqadam
56. Curfewed Night by Basharat Peer (review)
57. Soldiers of Salamis by Javier Cercas
58. The Instigators (Kindle Single) by David Wolman (review)
59. The Shadow of What We Were by Luis Sepúlveda (review)
60. I Love a Broad Margin to My Life by Maxine Hong Kingston (review)
61. Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck
62. To Siberia by Per Petterson (review)
63. White Egrets by Derek Walcott (review)
64. The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta by Mario Vargas Llosa (review)
65. Hospital Sketches by Louisa May Alcott (review)
66. Americus, Book I by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
67. The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan by Yasmin Khan
68. All My Friends Are Dead by Avery Monsen & Jory John
69. Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera
70. The Boy in the Moon: A Father's Search for His Disabled Son by Ian Brown
71. Emerging Arab Voices: Nadwa I, edited by Peter Clark (review)
72. Red April by Santiago Roncagliolo (review)
73. The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson (review)

June:
74. The Bill From My Father: A Memoir by Bernard Cooper
75. Elegguas by Kamau Brathwaite
76. Partitions by Amit Majmudar (review)
77. A Season in the Congo by Aimé Césaire
78. Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat
79. Go the F**k to Sleep by Adam Mansbach
80. Above All, Don't Look Back by Maïssa Bey (review)
81. Fair Play by Tove Jansson
82. Naked (Asian Poetry in Translation) by Shuntarō Tanikawa
83. Open City by Teju Cole
84. A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz

July:
85. the immigrant suite: hey xenophobe! who you calling a foreigner? by Hattie Gossett (review)
86. Seeing Patients: Unconscious Bias in Health Care by Augustus A. White III, M.D. (review)
87. The Outcast by Sadie Jones (review)
88. The Sea and Poison by Shusaku Endo (review)
89. The Passport in America: The History of a Document by Craig Robertson (review)
90. The Prospector by J.M.G. Le Clézio (review)
91. The Swimmer by Roma Tearne (review)
92. Hearts and Minds by Amanda Craig (review)
93. The London Train by Tessa Hadley (review)
94. Daisy Miller by Henry James (review)
95. Lightning: A Novel by Jean Echenoz (review)
96. Fatale by Jean-Patrick Manchette (review)
97. Dump This Book While You Still Can! by Marcel Bénabou (review)
98. A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes (review)
99. Underdog: Poems by Katrina Roberts
100. Snow Plain by Duo Duo
101. Mañana Forever?: Mexico and the Mexicans by Jorge Castañeda
102. 12 Angry Men: True Stories of Being a Black Man in America Today, edited by Gregory S. Parks and Matthew W. Hughey
103. On Beauty by Zadie Smith
104. Granta 113: The Best of Young Spanish Novelists
105. Ghostwritten by David Mitchell
106. The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
107. The Anatomist: A True Story of Gray's Anatomy by Bill Hayes

August:
108. The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst (review)
109. Pao by Kerry Young (review)
110. The Wandering Falcon by Jamil Ahmad (review)
111. Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman (review)
112. London: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd (review)
113. A Cupboard Full of Coats by Yvvette Edwards (review)
114. The Broken Word by Adam Foulds (review)
115. Real Bloomsbury by Nicholas Murray (review)
116. From the Observatory by Julio Cortázar (review)
117. Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch (review)
118. The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje

September:
119. The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
120. The Last Gift by Abdulrazak Gurnah
121. On Canaan's Side by Sebastian Barry
122. The Last Hundred Days by Patrick McGuinness
123. Down the Rabbit Hole by Juan Pablo Villalobos
124. Weep Not, Child by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

The famed Argentinian writer Ernesto Sábato, author of The Tunnel, On Heroes and Tombs, and The Angel of Darkness, died on Saturday at the age of 99. The obituary in today's New York Times is pretty weak, but there is a much better one in yesterday's Guardian:

Ernesto Sábato obituary

I haven't read any of Sábato's novels, but The Tunnel has been on my wish list for awhile. I downloaded it to my Kindle yesterday, and I'll probably read it in the next month or two.

Book #48: Monsieur Linh and His Child by Philippe Claudel



My rating:

Monsieur Linh, an elderly widower in a small war-torn southeast Asian village in an unnamed country, escapes with his infant granddaughter Sang diû and other refugees to a large and impersonal city somewhere in western Europe. He and his child are initially placed in a dormitory room with two other families from his country, who treat the older man with minimal respect and disdain, as Linh trusts no one to watch over or come close to Sang diû, his most precious possession. Lost and culturally isolated in his new home, he eventually ventures outside, where he meets Monsieur Bart, a portly man who has lived in the city for years and is equally lonely, having recently and suddenly lost his wife just before they were set to retire. Despite their language differences the two men become close friends, spending most of their days with each other, until Linh and Sang diû are suddenly relocated to another part of town.

Monsieur Linh and His Child, originally published in French in 2005 and released in English translation earlier this year, is a haunting and beautiful novella about friendship and love. Linh and Bart, despite their cultural differences, share a sense of isolation and loneliness that is both unique and universal. The ethereal narrative enhances the atmosphere of the story, and Claudel's light but firm touch made this a book that I could not put down once I started it. Highly recommended!

Sounds like a good book, Darryl. (Isn't it funny, though, when a cover doesn't match the story?) And "ethereal" huh? I'll have to go see if I can find a few pages to read to see what you mean by that.

That does sound good. I am trying SO hard not to add much to my list until I get it a bit under control, but Claudel is an author I am keen to experience, so maybe I need to make yet another exception here!

Are you still an Archipelago subscriber, Darryl? I received the latest yesterday, The Chukchi Bible by Yuri Rytkheu. I read his A Dream in Polar Fog a few years ago and had mixed feelings about it.

Yes, I did renew my Archipelago subscription for this year, Rebecca. Hopefully The Chukchi Bible will be waiting for me when I return to Atlanta on Thursday night.

>3 kidzdoc:, sounds like a great book!

One of these days I'm going to have to treat myself to an Archipelago subscription.

#3 That one sounds lovely. Added to list.

Hi, Darryl

There was talk a while back of us doing a group read of 100 Years of Solitude this summer. Are you still up for the challenge, and when do you think you could fit it in?

#10: I'm still up for a group read of 100 Years of Solitude, Joyce, and could do it in July or August.

Amigoland by Oscar Casares



My rating:

Don Fidencio Rosales, a nonagenarian who has recently been weakened by a stroke, has been condemned by his daughter to a hellish old age home in south Texas near the Mexican border, appropriately named "Amigoland". He rebels against the rules that only serve to take away his remaining freedom, and he despises the staff and his fellow residents, giving them nicknames such as The One With the Flat Face and The One Who Cries Like a Dying Calf.

Soon after his internment he is visited by Don Celestino Rosales, his much younger widowed brother, and his even younger girlfriend Socorro, a divorced maid who cleans his house. The two men have been estranged from each other for years after a trivial argument, and Socorro has urged Don Celestino to visit Don Fidencio in the old age home. The two men reluctantly set aside their grudges, and the couple take Don Fidencio on a trip across the border to Linares, Mexico, in order to fulfill a promise he made to his grandfather many years ago.

Amigoland is a well written and pleasant novel, but the story and its characters were only mildly interesting to me, which made for a good but not particularly memorable read.

July or August works for me too. Anyone else up for 100 Years of Solitude?

Kd - very nice review, even if you didn't love the book.

Book #51: The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise by Georges Perec

(Alternate title: The Art and Craft of Approaching Your Head of Department to Submit a Request for a Raise)



My rating:

In 1968 members of a French company that made supercomputers for industry were eager to learn if their computers could be used to create works of art. A Parisian computer expert wrote a flowchart for an employee of a large corporation to use to obtain a raise, which was given to the supercomputing company, who proposed the challenge to Georges Perec (one wonders if the company knew what it was getting into when Perec was chosen to write this book!).

The book consists of a one sentence monologue by a hapless employee of a large company, whose life and most of his work career seems to focus on obtaining a meager raise from his boss, Mr X. In his quest, which smacks of Kafka mixed with Don Quixote, our hero must navigate dangerous cafeteria food, the fickle moods of Mr X and Miss Y, recurrent outbreaks of measles, the all too frequent weekends that disrupt his plans, and, most importantly, his own incompetence and bad luck. This was a very entertaining, witty and quick read, which made for a perfect book to read on a short flight.

Anyone who wishes to get a taste of the book is encouraged to check out a flowchart based on it, at http://www.theartofaskingyourbossforaraise.com.

Just catching up with your thread, Darryl. Wish I had known you were interested in Amigoland as I have a copy in a pile here. It was sent quite a while back to Belletrista - clearly not appropriate as the author is not female:-)

#16: Hi, Lois. That's odd that Amigoland, by Oscar Casares, would have been sent to Belletrista!

I finished The Three Christs of Ypsilanti during my overnight hospital call earlier this morning. I have to work another overnight shift tonight, so I'll review it on Sunday. I'll give this book three stars for now.

Continuing on the Cinco de Mayo theme, I started The Chalupa Rules: A Latino Guide to Gringolandia by Mario Bosquez at the end of my shift.

Hi Darryl, just stopping by. I have added Monsieur Linh and his child to my to buy list. How are you getting on with the Derek Walcott poems?

#18: Hi, Barry; I haven't read much of White Egrets yet. I'm off for the next week, after working nights this weekend, so I'll definitely finish it in the next few days.

I finished The Chalupa Rules late last night at work. I'll review it, and catch up with as many reviews as I can, over the next week.

Book #49: The Collaborator by Mirza Waheed



My rating:

This novel is narrated by an unnamed young man, the son of a headman in a small predominantly Muslim village in Indian controlled Kashmir in the early 1990s, whose four closest childhood friends have crossed the border into Pakistan to become freedom fighters after brutal government reprisals against the separatist movement. After a particularly violent crackdown by the Indian Army, the young man is "encouraged" by the local army captain and his humiliated and defeated father to work as a special assistant to the captain, in opposition to the militants and his own desire to join them.

The narrator then travels back to his idyllic and carefree childhood with his friends and family, before the appointment of the virulently anti-Muslim head of Kashmir and the electoral fraud that served as triggers to the uprisings that led to the bloody conflict throughout the region. The villagers suffer great hardship, as the Indian Army brutally punishes the families whose sons have joined the separatist movement, aided by local collaborators (not including the narrator). As the conflict becomes more intense and more villagers are tortured or killed, each family and each person must decide to stay in the village, or flee to an unknown destination, and an uncertain destiny. The narrator is also torn between loyalty to his father, who begs with his son to stay in the village and work for the Indian Army captain who regularly insults and tortures his people, and his desire for revenge and justice for his friends and neighbors.

The Collaborator is a superb and gripping debut novel, which is also an insightful and instructive book about the recent crisis in Kashmir, which I found difficult to put down after the first 20 pages.

well, that review got my attention...

Book #56: Curfewed Night: One Kashmiri Journalist's Frontline Account of Life, Love, and War in His Homeland by Basharat Peer



My rating:

This book served as an excellent counterpart to The Collaborator, Mirza Waheed's novel about the crisis in Kashmir in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as the narrator of that novel and the author of this book are of similar ages and backgrounds. Peer, a studious young man whose father is a respected government official in Srinagar, the summertime capital of Kashmir, shares his personal experiences as his village, like others throughout the region, experience great hardship and tragedy during the Indian Army crackdown against separatist militants and those who support them. In contrast to the narrator of Waheed's novel, who seeks to travel to Pakistan to join his childhood friends and become a freedom fighter, Peer, with the help of his family, moves to Delhi to finish secondary school and attend law school. While working as a newspaper journalist there, he is assigned to write stories about the growing crisis in Kashmir. He travels back to his home village, and encounters former friends and neighbors, Hindu and Muslim, there and in Srinagar and Jammu. Deeply disturbed by what he sees there, and facing discrimination as a Muslim Kashmiri in Delhi, he decides to abandon his career as a journalist and write a book about the people he knew, those Kashmiris of different backgrounds he encounters, and the troubled past and recent history of the region.

Curfewed Night succeeds as a personal and an 'on the scene' account of life in Kashmir during the crisis, and in its hopeful aftermath following the peace resolution between India and Pakistan in 2004. However, a more detailed history of the region and the origins of the recent crisis would have made this a much better book, in my opinion, although I would strongly recommend this book for anyone who is unfamiliar with Kashmir or its people.

Book #58: The Instigators (Kindle Single) by David Wolman



My rating:

Wolman tells the story of Ahmed Maher, the young Egyptian engineer that founded the April 6 Youth Movement, using Facebook to organize and mobilize supporters in the successful campaign to oust Hosni Mubarak as the country's head of state, which was a short (34 pp) but very good read.

Excellent reviews of those two Kashmiri books. It is a very troubled area and although I travelled a lot in India I never went to Kashmir. I was always put off by fellow travellers tales about the kashmiri people. I am keen to get a better handle on the area and so I will try and read these two books

#24: Thanks, Barry. At the end of Curfewed Night Peer indicates that the region is much more stable now after the India and Pakistan peace agreement of 2004, and tourists resumed visiting the region in significant numbers the following year.

Great reviews of the Kashmiri books, Darryl, thanks. The novel went straight on my wishlist - and whilst I don't read much non-fiction, Curfewed Night looks like exactly the kind of "personal" non-fiction I like.

(Still waiting for that review of The Memory of Love ;-) Although I did see somewhere that you said it was the best novel you'd read this year so I'm partly satisfied but still curious).

Thanks, Rachel. You're right, The Memory of Love is the best novel I've read this year, and my favorite of the four books I've read from this year's Orange Prize shortlist, followed closely by Room and Grace Williams Says it Loud, with Annabel lagging well behind. I'll review it in the next day or two.

Book #60: I Love a Broad Margin to My Life by Maxine Hong Kingston



My rating:

In this fascinating and unforgettable memoir, Maxine Hong Kingston, an award-winning second generation Chinese-American writer and pacifist, shares the story of her past life and the experiences of her family in the United States and her extended relatives in her ancestral village in China, along with an extension of the story of Wittman Ah Sing, the protagonist of her novel Tripmaster Monkey. What makes this a unique read is that it is in verse form, often in the Chinese talk-story form that Kingston uses in her earlier books The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts and China Men.

The book begins in the present, as Kingston reflects on her upcoming 65th birthday in "Home":

I am turning 65 years of age.
In 2 weeks I will be 65 years old.
I can accumulate time and lose
time? I sit here writing in the dark—
can't see to change these penciled words—
just like my mother, alone, bent over her writing,
just like my father bent over his writing, alone
but for me watching. She got out of bed,
wrapped herself in a blanket, and wrote down
the strange sounds Father, who was dead,
was intoning to her. He was reading aloud
calligraphy that he'd written—carved with inkbrush—
on his tombstone. She wasn't writing in answer.
She wasn't writing a letter. Who was she writing to?
Nobody.
This well-deep outpouring is not for
anything. Yet we have to put into exact words
what we are given to see, hear, know.
Mother's eyesight blurred; she saw trash
as flowers. ‟Oh. How very beautiful.”
She was lucky, seeing beauty, living
in beauty, whether or not it was there.

In "Leaving Home", Wittman Ah Sing, an aging Chinese-American free spirit, decides to travel to China, alone from his wife:

"I need
to get to China, and I have to go
without helpmeet. I've been married to you
so long, my world is you. You
see a thing, I see it. The friends you
like, I like. The friends you can't
stand, I can't stand. My
perception is wedded to your perception.
You have artist's eyes. I'd wind up
seeing the China you see. I want
to see for myself my own true China."

In "Viet Nam Village" she writes about her experiences as a pacifist, including an all-woman demonstration against Operation Iraqi Freedom in front of the White House, for which she, Alice Walker, and others were arrested and temporarily detained. In this section, she compares her arrest with those of her father's, many years in the past:

I had nothing apposite to say, but
had to talk. "Now I'm on the trip
my father went on. In a paddy wagon to jail.
I'm reliving his arrests. I'm knowing his feelings.
Scared. Helpless. He wondered what would become
of him. Maybe deportation. They're driving
him to the border, never to see his family again.
Oh, but my father wasn't committing civil
disobedience like us. He committed crime,
ran gambling, half the take in the city.
It was his job—go to jail, regularly.
Once a month, they raided the gambling house,
and took just one guy, my father.
He was all alone in the paddy wagon
riding through the streets and out of town.
It was okay. By the end of the night, he
was home. They let him go. He gave them money
and whiskey and cigarettes, and they let him go.
He gave them a fake Chinese name,
a different Chinese name every time;
he doesn't have a record." BaBa
used to say, "I want the life
you live." Now I'm living
the life he lived.

In "Mother's Village", she travels with her husband, a "white demon", to her mother's ancestral village, where she learns about her family's past history. She is treated like royalty, not from her status as a famous American writer, but because she is a descendant of a former emperor of the region:

"Your names are here," said the mayoress, pointing
to branches nearest the door. A fear
went through me, that fear when I am about
to learn something. I asked carefully,
"Were we soldiers? Were we servants?"
I would've asked, "Were we courtiers?"
but didn't know courtier. Most likely,
we were courtiers. "No! No! You emperor!
You emperor!" You who left for America,
became American, you forget everything.
You forget who you are. Emperor!
Chew Sung Emperor. Emperor of the Northern Sung.
Emperor of the Southern Sung. A teacher of English
took my hand, bowed over it, and said,
laughing, "Your majesty."

As she leaves her ancestral village, she sits next to a younger woman from her village, who is leaving China for the first time to reunite with her husband in America:

Once I was on an airplane beside
a village girl in the window seat. At takeoff
I asked her, "Where are you going?"
"Waw!" She shouted in surprise, and grabbed
ahold of my hand, "You speak like me!"
"Yes, I speak Say Yup language."
"Are you from the village?" "No, my MaMa
and BaBa came from Say Yup villages.
They left for New York. They lived in New York,
then California. I was born in California."
I feel like a child, younger than this girl; I'm
telling about parents as if I still had them;
I'm talking in my baby language. "Waw!"
she exclaimed, loud as though yelling across fields.
"Iam going to New York! I
am meeting my husband in New York. He's
waiting for me in New York. He works
in a restaurant. He's rented a home. He sent
for me, and waits for me." She did not
let go of my hand; I held hers tightly
as we flew the night sky. She looked
in wonder at webs of lights below.

I'm hard pressed to put into words how much I enjoyed I Love a Broad Margin to My Life, but I would say that this is easily one of the best works of verse I've read. Maxine Hong Kingston is my favorite living American writer, and this book confirms my love of and respect for her work.

Book #59: The Shadow of What We Were by Luis Sepúlveda



My rating:

In this short novel, which won the Premio Primavera de Novela in 2009, three aging Chilean anarchists are summoned by their former leader, Pedro Nolasco, to conduct one last revolutionary act, 30 years after a spectacular bank robbery after the fall of Salvador Allende's Marxist government to a coup d'état led by General Augusto Pinochet. Before the meeting can take place, Nolasco is felled in a bizarre accident by the wife of another former revolutionary, Coco Aravena, a bumbling dreamer who spends his days watching classic American crime novels and drinking red wine while his wife fantasizes about her past life in Berlin. Coco strips Nolasco of his gun and a piece of paper with a phone number on it, and attends the meeting, to the shock and chagrin of the other anarchists. The men decide to go ahead with their act despite the loss of Nolasco, in a tribute to the spirit of their former comrade.

Despite the interesting story line, this book was somewhat disappointing, as the characters and their motives were not as fully developed as they could have been, and the author spent too many pages on the political history of Chile before and after Pinochet, which I could not fully appreciate. I would guardedly recommend this novel for those readers familiar with Chilean history, but not for the general reader.

Book #54: The Chalupa Rules: A Latino Guide to Gringolandia by Mario Bosquez



My rating:

Mario Bosquez, a Chicano television journalist, playwright and producer, writes about his experiences growing up in an impoverished and abusive family in Texas, as he overcame overwhelming odds to become the first person in his family to graduate from college and have a successful professional career. He uses chalupa, the Mexican game of chance, to generate a list of rules for success for Chicanos to use in the United States, or Gringolandia, where many do not respect Mexican or Chicano culture. Some of these rules have broad applicability, such as respect for family and remembering where you came from originally, but his style of writing began to wear on me, particularly in the last section, which was written as if listening to a radio program about the Chalupa Rules called the author for personal advice. Although I admire Bosquez's personal story and his aims in writing The Chalupa Rules, I found this book to be tiresome and repetitive.

Unfortunate that the Sepulveda was not up to par. He's an author I generally enjoy.

>38 kidzdoc:: Which books of his would you recommend?

I really enjoyed In the Name of the Bullfighter and The Old Man who Reads Love Novels. Yacare is also great but don't know if that one is translated if you do indeed need a translation. I didn't include touchstones as I'm not sure those are the exact titles but still mostly right.

>33 lilisin:: Thanks! I've added The Name of a Bullfighter and The Old Man Who Read Love Stories to my wish list.

I was adding the two Kashmir books to my wishlist and found the Peer already there! Thanks for the excellent and intriguing reviews.

Darryl, I get the feeling that you liked I love a broad margin to my life. I do to from those extracts. I am just checking to see if its available on kindle. Looking forward to reading it.

>35 wandering_star:: You're welcome!

>36 baswood:: A Kindle version of I Love a Broad Margin to My Life is available in the US, Barry.

Book #50: The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna



My rating:

Shortlist, 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction
Winner, 2011 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book (Africa)
Finalist, 2011 Commonwealth Writers' Prize

This enchanting novel is set in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, at the end of the country's civil war that lasted from 1991-2002. Adrian Lockheart, a British psychologist who has left his family to pursue a more personally fulfilling career, is at the bedside of Elias Cole, a former university professor and dean who is nearing the end of his life. Adrian encourages Elias to share his story with him on weekly therapeutic visits , and Cole tells him about his career, including his friendship with Julius Kamara, another university professor, and his young wife Saffia, who Julius sees for the first time at a faculty gathering just before the successful Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969. He is immediately entranced by her, and spends much of his spare time thinking of ways to get closer to her.

The story of Elias and Saffia is interwined with Adrian's experiences in post-war Sierra Leone, along with his friendship with Kai, a talented young surgeon who has used Adrian's living quarters as a place to crash prior to the psychologist's arrival. The men become close friends, although Kai is clearly scarred by his experiences during the recent civil war, which he is unable to share with his friend.

Adrian's primary interest is in diagnosing and treating victims of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and he cares for several hospitalized patients who appear to suffer from this problem due to the civil war. He attempts to get several of them to talk about their experiences, but few of these poor souls are willing or able to share their stories or accede to his treatment plans. His colleagues and Kai are respectful of his work, but they tell him that his methods have little chance to make any impact on the lives of his patients, due to the country's lack of resources and the different cultural beliefs about mental health.

Elias is the only person who will talk freely about the past with Adrian, and through the life of the dying man and his relationships with Julius and Saffia he learns about the country's postcolonial history, including the devastating civil war that destroyed the fabric of the country and the will of thousands of Sierra Leoneans.

Adrian falls in love with a local woman, whose ties to the other major characters provide a tension to and deeper understanding of their stories. As their relationship deepens, Adrian is forced to decide whether to stay in Sierra Leone, where he is loved and believes he has much to offer, while Kai agonizes over his long held desire to move to the United States where he can practice medicine and exorcise the internal demons that plague his dreams and affect his work.

The Memory of Love is a stunning and deeply moving novel about love in its different forms, and how it can affect and be affected by greed, selfishness, personal ambition and war. The narrative is superb, and I found myself emotionally tied to the lives of the characters as much as any other book I've read in the past decade.

Book #53: The Three Christs of Ypsilanti by Milton Rokeach



My rating:

Milton Rokeach, a professor of social psychology, conducted a study at the Ypsilanti State Hospital from 1959 to 1961 of three men, who were all diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and each believed that he was Jesus Christ. The purpose of the study, which was based on the limited knowledge and lack of effective treatment options for patients with severe mental illness at the time, was to determine if a person with a deluded personal belief could change that claim, and any behaviors associated with it, if he encountered another person who shared that same, incongruent belief.

Rokeach and his partners, with the blessing of the Medical Superintendent of the hospital (as there were no Institutional Review Boards at that time), transferred the three men to a single ward and oversaw interviews and meetings in which the men were confronted with each others' claims. As expected, each man was initially upset and distraught by the presence of two other men who made the same claim as he, and each coped by adopting a view that permitted him to retain his own deeply held belief that he was the true Christ, where the others were either impostors or lesser gods. Interestingly, the men, who were not isolated from others on the hospital ward, preferred the company of the other Christs despite their frequent disagreements, and seemed to get along with each other better than the others.

After realizing that the men altered but did not fundamentally change their belief systems, Rokeach and his team decided to intervene, in a quite intrusive and ethically questionable manner, in the personal lives of each of the men, in order to force them to change their delusional beliefs without specifically addressing each one's view of himself as Christ. The experiments conducted on two of the men were described in detail in second half of the book. One man, who was never married but believed that he was, received letters from his "wife" on the outside, who urged him to give up his adopted name (Dr. Righteous Idealised Dung Sir) Another Christ, who frequently spoke of the Medical Superintendent of the hospital as "Dad", received fake letters from this doctor, who claimed that he loved him like a son, and encouraged him to take a new medication (potent-valuemiocene, which was a placebo) that would cure him of his untrue beliefs. These experiments were ultimately unsuccessful, and were deeply troubling to both men.

After two years, with nothing significant to show for the study, the team disbanded, and Dr. Rokeach left to pursue further study at Stanford and write this book.

Rokeach discusses the different types of personal belief systems prior to each set of experiments, from infancy through adulthood, and in mental health and illness, which provides context to the design of the study and the book, which consists of observations by the team, conversations by the men with the staff and each other, and the letters that were written to the men, and their replies.

The book concludes with an afterword, twenty years after The Three Christs of Ypsilanti was initially published in 1964. Rokeach updates us on the (lack of) progress made by each of the men, and reflects on the flawed methodology of the study, realizing that there was a fourth Christ in this experiment—himself:

And I would now also see the book as ending somewhat differently: while I had failed to cure the three Christs of their delusions, they had succeeded in curing me of mine—of my God-like delusion that I could change them by omnipotently and omnisciently arranging and rearranging their daily lives within the framework of a "total institution." I had terminated the project some two years after the initial confrontation when I came to realize—dimly at the time but increasingly more clearly as the years passed—that I really had no right, even in the name of science, to play God and interfere around-the-clock with their daily lives. Also, I became increasingly uncomfortable about the ethics of such a confrontation. I was cured when I was able to leave them in peace, and it was mainly Leon who somehow persuaded me that I should leave them in peace.

I initially gave The Three Christs of Ypsilanti a 3 star rating, as I viewed it with the eyes of a 21st century clinician, and was deeply offended at a study that I viewed as unethical and immoral—which it was. However, I now believe that this book is a valuable addition to the history of medicine, as it describes, in great detail, standards of medical experimentation and treatment of mental illness that modern practitioners and scientists should remember, learn from, and avoid.

I found myself emotionally tied to the lives of the characters as much as any other book I've read in the past decade.

Wow. That says it all, then, doesn't it!

Excellent reviews Darryl, Interesting comments on The Three Christs of Ypsilanti. It must have been hard for you to put some distance between yourself and the book and not let your horror of the treatment take over completely. The Memory of Love has been added to my to buy list

>40 Nickelini:: Yep. It's definitely my favorite to win this year's Orange Prize, and several others in the Orange January/July group who have read it feel likewise. I'm still amazed that it wasn't longlisted for last year's Booker Prize; I'm guessing that Bloomsbury chose not to nominate it, in favor of other titles.

>41 baswood:: Thanks, Barry. I'm glad that I thought about The Three Christs of Ypsilanti for awhile before I wrote that review (although I do need to correct its numerous grammatical errors...).

As I mentioned on your other thread, your reviews have inspired me to read both The Memory of Love and The Three Christs of Ypsilanti, which I had been unsure of.

Two wonderful reviews. I'm definitely buying The Memory of Love.

Great reviews, Darryl. I'm going to be looking for both.

39 - Adding that to the wishlist. Sounds fascinating.

I just finished White Egrets, the newest collection of poetry by Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, which won the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry last year. It was very good, as most of the poems resonated within me. It describes a man heading toward the end of his life, filled with the life and death of others, past and relatively current events such as 9/11, the election of Barack Obama, postcolonialism and post-postcolonialism in Africa, India, and the Caribbean, and post-Franco Spain, with frequent references to nature and his travels around the world. One especially touching poem is "Sixty Years After":

In my wheelchair in the Virgin lounge at Vieuxfort
I saw, sitting in her own wheelchair, her beauty
hunched like a crumpled flower, the one whom I thought
as the fire of my young life would do her duty
to be golden and beautiful and young forever
even as I aged. She was treble-chinned, old, her devastating
smile was netted in wrinkles, but I felt the fever
briefly returning as we sat there, crippled, hating
time and the lie of general pleasantries.
Small waves still break against the small stone pier
where a boatman left me in the orange peace
of dusk, a half-century ago, maybe happier
being erect, she like a deer in her shyness, I stalking
an impossible consummation; those who knew us
knew we would never be together, at least not walking.
Now the silent knives from the intercom went through us.

You can listen to British poet Daljit Nagra read the poem here:

TS Eliot Prize for Poetry: Derek Walcott's 'Sixty Years After' read by Daljit Nagra

I'll give this 4-1/2 stars for now, and review it later this week.

Book #62: To Siberia by Per Petterson



My rating:

This spare novel begins in a small village in Denmark prior to World War II. The unnamed narrator is a young girl in a troubled and struggling family, whose parents are tolerant and benignly neglectful of her. Her older brother, Jesper, is her best friend, and she loves him unconditionally. The narrator is an excellent student, which earns her no praise at home, whereas Jesper is an indifferent student, but is passionate about the anti-fascist movement in Spain and becomes a committed and active socialist. Both siblings dream of leaving their stifling home and village; Jesper dreams about Morocco, and his sister wants to escape to the frigid solitude of Siberia.

The Germans invade Denmark, and most villagers accept their presence. Jesper and others become active in the resistance movement, which ultimately leads to his separation from his beloved "Sistermine".

After the war, the narrator moves, without a clear direction or sense of purpose, to various cities in northern Europe, in a search for something, or someone, that is not clear to her or to the reader, while longing for word from her brother. She has given up on her childhood dream of moving to Siberia, but she ultimately receives a letter from her brother, who has made it to Morocco, and plans to visit her soon.

To Siberia was an interesting story, but I found the narrator and its characters to be inscrutable and of minimal interest, which makes this a marginally recommended read.

#47, Darryl if the rest of the poems approach the quality of that excellent 16 line sonnet then I will have it on my kindle.

Thanks for the warning about To Siberia. It sounds like a book I would have gotten based on the premise and then been disappointed with.

Two major literary prizes were awarded in the past 24 hours. The winner of this year's Orwell Prize for Books is Tom Bingham for The Rule of Law, an evaluation of 'the rule of law', what it meant to the development of past states and civilizations, and its importance to Western democracies:

The Rule of Law by Tom Bingham

Orwell prize goes to Tom Bingham

Philip Roth is the winner of the 2011 Man Booker International Prize, a biannual award for an author's body of work:

Philip Roth wins Man Booker International prize

Philip Roth: Winner of the Man Booker International 2011

I finished two books yesterday, which were both very good. I'll provide brief summaries below, and write proper reviews soon.

The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta by Mario Vargas Llosa: A brilliant historical and political novel in which a famous writer chooses to write a book about Alejandro Mayta, a former schoolmate and Trotskyite and who participated in a leftist insurrection in Peru in 1962, which also served as a sharp critique of different political factions and governments within the country and the devastating effect it had on the poor in Lima and elsewhere. Highly recommended (4-1/2 stars)

Hospital Sketches by Louisa May Alcott (recommended by alcottacre): A short novel based on Alcott's experiences as a volunteer nurse during the early days of the American Civil War, which described her humorous and moderately hellish journey from Massachusetts to Washington in order to care for Union soldiers seriously wounded in battle. Alcott does a fabulous job in portraying the nobility of these wounded men, and the tireless efforts of the nurses, in the spirit of the old folk saying "to cure sometimes, to relieve often, to comfort always." I liked this better than I thought I would, and it's somewhere between a 4 and a 4-1/2 star read.

Today I'll read The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan by Yasmin Khan, a book longlisted for the 2008 Orwell Prize, and the poetry collection Americus, Book I by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. I'll start The Prospector by J.M.G. Le Clézio today or later in the week.

Catching up, enjoyed all your reviews, really great stuff posted here. I might look up Walcott, that is a beautiful poem in #47.

Darryl, this thread is just scrumptious.

>53 dchaikin:: Thanks, Dan. White Egrets is the first collection I've read by Walcott, so I'll be eager to read more of his work (suggestions, anyone?).

>54 amandameale:: Aw! Thanks, Amanda.

>55 kidzdoc: - There is Omeros, his epic poem about St Lucia, based on the Odyssey. It's the work that probably did more than any other in helping him to win the Nobel Prize.

Personally I like the collection he published before Omeros, The Arkansas Testament, which is partly about St. Lucia and partly about his life as an outsider in America.

#52: I like your observations on The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta, and I'll move that one up a few notches on the Vargas Llosa queue. Reading his Death in the Andes made me want to learn more about the leftist movement in Peru and the Shining Path.

>56 Jargoneer: Thanks, jargoneer; I'll look for both of those collections.

>57 StevenTX: Thanks, Steven. I liked Death in the Andes, but this book was a bit better, IMO.

The Real life of Alejandro Mayta is near the top of my mental TBR, whenever I have a chance to start reading again. But there are some other books I'd like to read first, I think, for some of the other challenges.

ETA I also really enjoyed Death in the Andes.

Red April by Peruvian writer Santiago Roncagliolo is the winner of this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. The writer and the novel's translator, Edith Grossman, will each be awarded £5,000.

Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2011

'Red April' wins the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize

I bought this novel a few weeks ago, and I'll plan to read it this weekend.

Just before I went to bed early this morning I read the sad news that the spoken word perfomer, poet and novelist Gil Scott-Heron died yesterday. He is best known for his song The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, and for being a major influence on hip-hop and other spoken word musicians. After struggling for years with personal demons he appeared to be back on track, as he produced his first studio album in 16 years, "I'm New Here", last year. I haven't read his novels, The Vulture and The Nigger Factory, but both are available as a combined purchase for the Kindle, which I've just downloaded.

Here are a couple of GSH favorites of mine:

The Prisoner

Save the Children

Middle of Your Day

The new remix album, We're All Here, is worth a listen, as is Spirits from 1994 - the voice is a little shaky but tracks like The Other Side which is an extended remake of Home is Where the Hatred Is and the title track, adding lyrics to John Coltrane's song, are excellent.
There was a tribute to him on BBC at the weekend which was interesting - he didn't want to be attributed as the godfather of hip hop partly because he was at odds with the message (or lack of) most of its proponents delivered; he also disputed the idea he had disappeared (two albums in 26 years) claiming that he was always there touring and that live performance was his main medium.

Catching up after too long away from LT. Great reviews as always, The Memory of Love is added to my wishlist.

>62 Jargoneer: Thanks, jargoneer. I'll look for those two albums, and I'll see if I can view (or listen to?) the BBC tribute to GSH.

>63 charbutton:: Hi, Char! I'm eagerly awaiting the Orange Prize announcement on June 8th, to see if Aminatta Forna picks up another major prize. The Memory of Love was awarded the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book earlier this month.

I've fallen behind on reviews again, but I finished Red April by Santiago Roncagliolo last night, the winner of this year's Independent Prize for Foreign Fiction (a solid 4 star read), and I'm nearly halfway through The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson, which won the Best Translated Book Award for 2011, which I should finish by this evening.

Hi Daryll,
#61 Gil Scott Heron - Has always been a blind spot for me as his reputation as being the godfather of hip hop has rather put me off listening to him. After listening to your links I realise I have been missing something and so I have now got hold of his:

Small talk at 125 and Lexington
Pieces of a man
Free will
Moving target

I will be giving these a listen over the next few weeks

>64 kidzdoc: - I'm not sure you can hear the clips again (I heard them on Radio 6) but there is quite a bit on him on the BBC site.

>65 baswood: - Small Talk at 125 and Lexington is a little different from the later albums, more a performance poetry piece than the more musically balanced albums that came later. (It also contains his most dubious poem - The Subject was Faggots - which is basically homophobic).

I finished two books this weekend:



Red April by Santiago Roncagliolo, the winner of this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, a mystery set in Ayacucho, Peru in 2000. The main character is a by-the-book and unlikable prosecutor who investigates a disturbing murder in the city, a former stronghold of the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) terrorist movement against the government in the 1980s and 1990s. The prosecutor suspects that remnants of Sendero Luminoso are responsible for the crime and mentions this to the local head of the Peruvian police force that still rules over the area, but is curtly dismissed. In the course of his investigation he interviews several people associated with the crime, and one by one several of them meet gruesome deaths, and on each corpse is left a calling card from Sendero Luminoso. The country's focus turns to Ayacucho, due to local elections and the Holy Week celebrations that attract thousands of Peruvians and tourists, and local and national officials and businessmen are eager to suppress any evidence that the guerrillas are becoming more active. The prosecutor seems to be coming closer to a resolution to the case...but will he solve it before he becomes the next victim? This was a solid and well written if not spectacular novel, but I would give a slight nod to Death in the Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa, which covers similar ground. (3.7 stars)



The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson, the Finnish author best known for her Moomin series of children's books, which won this year's Best Translated Book Award. It was originally published in 1982, translated into English in 2009, and published by New York Review Books last year. The main character, Katri Kling, is a young woman who lives with her younger and mentally disabled teenage brother above a store in an isolated Scandinavian town. Katri is ostracized by the villagers, as she is abrupt and lacks social grace, but she is also respected by them, due to her math skills and brutal honesty. She sees no future for her or her brother, as she works as a shopkeeper's assistant for a man she despises, and seeks to improve the financial situation of her and her brother. At the other end of town lives Anna Aemelin, a widowed and wealthy children's book illustrator, who is respected but aloof. Katri insidiously integrates herself into Anna's life, and assumes responsibility over more of the elderly woman's business correspondence, increasing Anna's income while she reserves some of this money for her and her brother, to the progressive dismay of Anna and the villagers. This was a superb psychological novel, and Jansson does a fabulous job in portraying the isolation of this icy climate and its equally icy residents. I'll have more to say about this novel in an upcoming article about Jansson I'm planning to write for Belletrista, but I highly recommend this short novel. (4.4 stars)

I wasn't intending to write reviews for these books, so I'll probably have more to say about each one later this week. I'll post replies to baswood's and jargoneer's comments about GSH later today, as I have to leave for work soon.

Wow -- I'd fallen a bit behind and so have read through about ten stunning reviews over the last few weeks of reading. I'll bet there are plenty of psychologists from Rokeach's era who never regretted a thing. The Walcott quote is lovely. I saw/heard him read when I was in college (early 70's) what a privilege that was!

I haven't visited your thread in awhile and was happy to see reviews of a number of books I've had in mind. The Three Christs of Ypsilanti interested me both from the standpoint of content and because I used to live not far from there. I also read The True Deceiver as an LTER book in 2009 and have been looking for more of Janssen's adult books ever since. And White Egrets has been on my wishlist for awhile. Thanks for the link!

>68 sibylline: Thanks, Luci. I agree with you; one of the most unique things about The Three Christs of Ypsilanti is Rokeach's self critique of his study, and his admission that he may have damaged the men by his godlike desire to alter their belief systems and behaviors.

I would love to hear Derek Walcott speak in person.

>69 Cariola: Hi, Deborah; thanks for the compliments!

Hi Darryl,

Just checking in with you to see what you thought of Emerging Arab Voices. I'm trying to read it now, but I'm not liking it much at all. You did such a *brief* review of it and only called it "interesting". So, did you like it or not? Really, Darryl! You usually have so much more to say about individual books. ;-)

I feel as if I'm missing something (although I've only read the first three stories). They seem to be out of a larger context in a way that keeps me from appreciating them individually.

FYI to others: This is a multi-author bilingual book (English/Arabic) that was an LT Early Reviewer.

>71 SqueakyChu: To be honest, I didn't like Emerging Arab Voices as a collection of short stories. I viewed it as a collection of works in progress, short stories or excerpts from novels that the authors were working on during the nadwa (workshop) which weren't ready for publication on their own but were collected into this book. Reading these stories reminded me of the times that my friends from medical school and I would go to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, to attend readings of soon to be performed plays. The script would be read aloud to the audience, who would critique and give advice to the playwright and the actors. Similarly, the stories in Emerging Arab Voices needed more work, IMO, but they were mildly interesting.

I changed my rating of the book to 3 stars, as I would only recommend the book to someone who was interested in any of the individual authors or wanted to know more about several up and coming young Arabic writers.

Phew! I saw all those reviews of Emerging Arab Voices with many so many stars and was wondering just what I was missing. What you just said is more how I feel about this work.

Breaking News: The winner of this year's Orange Prize for Fiction is The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht.

Téa Obreht wins 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction

Téa Obreht: LibraryThing Author Interview

"The Hurston/Wright Legacy Award honors exemplary works of literature before the national community of Black writers. By honoring these nominees, we're recognizing the profound significance, necessity, and genius of Black writers and the stories they tell. A panel of published authors in each genre reviewed submissions and selected nominees from categories of Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry.

"Winners will receive a cash award and the coveted statute of Djhuiti (je-hu-ty), the ancient Egyptian symbol of the patron saint of writing, speech, and divine intellectual pursuit. Finalists will receive an engraved plaque. The annual Legacy Award ceremony will be held November 10th at the historic Oxon Hill Mansion in Oxon Hill, Maryland near Washington, DC."

The nominees for this year's awards for Fiction, Poetry and Nonfiction have been announced:

Fiction:
Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self by Danielle Evans
Glorious by Bernice McFadden
How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu
Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Wading Home: A Novel of New Orleans by Rosalyn Story
How to Escape from a Leper Colony by Tiphanie Yanique

Poetry:
Crave Radiance by Elizabeth Alexander
Skin, Inc.: Identity Repair Poems by Thomas Sayers Ellis
Lighthead by Terrance Hayes

Nonfiction:
Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth by Ben Shapiro
John Oliver Killens: A Life of Black Literary Activism by Keith Gilyard
The Indignant Generation: A Narrative History of African American Writers and Critics, 1934-1960 by Lawrence P. Jackson
Root and Branch: Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, and the Struggle to End Segregation by Rawn James Jr.
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
Losing My Cool: How a Father's Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-hop Culture by Thomas Chatterton Williams

From this list I've only read How to Read the Air, but I own Wading Home: A Novel of New Orleans, Lighthead, and The Warmth of Other Suns. I'll be on the lookout for the other books on this list in the next few weeks.

More info: http://t.co/lQshJ6P

As I mentioned on the Prizes thread where you also posted this, I enjoyed How to Escape from a Leper Colony, and I have, but haven't read, How to Read the Air and The Warmth of Other Suns. I'll have to look for some of the others.

#11 I'm still up for a group read of 100 Years of Solitude, Joyce, and could do it in July or August.

Darryl --I got the 1001 Books group to also join us reading 100 Years of Solitude. I haven't seen anything, so I'm guessing that you haven't set anything up yet, right? If not, I'll start a thread in the next day or so here at the ClubRead group.

PS: I have to admit I'm starting to chicken out, so I'll need some support to get me going.

>77 Nickelini: I haven't set up a thread for 100 Years of Solitude; I had completely forgotten about it! I'm on my way to San Francisco for a week's vacation today, so I would appreciate it if you would set up a thread for it (TYIA).

Having said that, though, do you think we should gauge how much interest there is in reading this book? I haven't read it, and although I'm not a fan of GGM, it's a book I feel I should read.

I should mention that I'll lead a group read of Life A User's Manual by Georges Perec in the 75 Books group, starting on August 1. I'll create a thread for it there, and post a link to it here in the next week or so.

LT has really been on the back-burner for me the last couple of months, so I'm just catching up on your thread, Darryl -- wonderful reviews as usual. I just ordered the Maxine Hong Kingston memoir; it looks luscious. I highly recommend Walcott's Omeros -- it's one of my all time favorite books/epics/poems. Interesting you're doing an article on Jansson for Belle -- I'm writing a paper for a conference in October, tentatively titled "Aging with Grace from Finland to Florida: Tove Jansson's Novels." We should compare notes.

I haven't set up a thread for 100 Years of Solitude; I had completely forgotten about it! I'm on my way to San Francisco for a week's vacation today, so I would appreciate it if you would set up a thread for it (TYIA).

Having said that, though, do you think we should gauge how much interest there is in reading this book? I haven't read it, and although I'm not a fan of GGM, it's a book I feel I should read.

I've talked to a couple of others who were interested a while ago. I have to admit that right now I'm less than enthused; however, I'm going to give it a try. I, too, feel it is a book I should read. And I loved Love in the Time of Cholera (even though I don't remember much about it). I'm finding 100 Years of Solitude very daunting, but if Oprah can read it so can I.

edited to fix touchstone, which automatically went to the Cliff Notes for the book. How silly is that?!

If you don't get enthused over 100 Years of Solitude, come on over and join the Monthly Authors Group for A. S. Byatt!

I might do that--I was hoping to get to Possession this summer, and every time I see my gorgeous copy of The Children's Book* I want to start it too.

*and why can't I get a touchstone for this? I get a list of 100 books, most of which do not have "children's" or "book" in their title, but are books for children. EG: Black Beauty. How about a search actually returning items that match the words? There's a concept. (sorry, but I'm so annoyed at these stupid so called "matches").

82> Yes, I posted the whole list of Byatt's works on the Monthly Authors thread, and many touchstones came up wrong. I fixed most of them, but the "others" list doesn't even include this one! I know that I used the touchstone for it in many postings. I don't know how to manually enter touchstones (but I'm hoping that Madeline can tell me).

And we still can't use touchstones with IE9. This has been going on for well over a month now.

BTW, The Children's Book was WAY at the top of my list of best reads in 2009. Loved it!

#80 I read a lot of GGM years ago and then I reread 100 Years of Solitude and Love in a Time of Cholera a few years ago after reading the first (and so far only) part of GGM's autobiography, Living to Tell the Tale, which I really enjoyed. I discovered that I still liked Love lots better than Solitude, for what it's worth.

Edited to fix touchstone.

I haven't been on LT much in the past two weeks, as I worked all of the past week and was in San Francisco the week before that. As usual, I bought a ridiculous amount of books from City Lights Bookstore; these are from my first visit:

To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War by John Gibler: A new publication by City Lights Books (which publishes a few dozen books every year), based on the author's reportage in the US and Mexico over the past few years.

Brodie's Report by Jorge Luis Borges: A collection of short stories written by the author in his later years; recommended by Kerry.

Hopes and Impediments by Chinua Achebe: A collection of essays which I gave to Suz (Chatterbox), after I realized that I already owned a copy of it.

The Box Man by Kobo Abe: Recommended by lilisin, this novel is an "eerie and evocative masterpiece" in which the protagonist exchanges his normal life to live in "a large cardboard box {that} he wears over his head."

Kangaroo Notebook by Kobo Abe: This is Abe's last novel, a "surreal vision of Japanese society" in which the narrator begins to grow radish sprouts on his legs, "an ailment that repulses his doctor but provides the patient with the unusual ability to snack on himself."

Lightning: A Novel by Jean Echenoz: A short novel inspired by the life of the famous inventor Nikola Tesla, which is about a young engineer who travels from Eastern Europe to America, works with Thomas Edison, and creates a number of fascinating and useful inventions. I was especially interested to read this, after I read The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt last year, which is also based on Tesla's life.

12 Angry Men: True Stories of Being a Black Man in America Today: A collection of stories by twelve African American male writers about their personal experiences with racial profiling.

The Sixty-Five Years of Washington by Juan José Saer: A novel published by Open Letter Books, set in a seaside Argentinian city in 1960, which is a "brilliant comedy about memory, narrative, time, and death, and a moving narrative about the lost generations of an Argentina that was perpetually on the verge of collapse."

Montecore by Jonas Hassen Khemiri: A novel about the experience of the immigrant community in Sweden, told by a Tunisian man who shares the same name as the author.

The Sentimentalists by Johanna Skibsrud: The winner of the 2010 Giller Prize, a novel based on the relationship between a Viet Nam war veteran and his daughter, who seeks to uncover his life and rescue him from his demons.

Harlem: The Four Hundred Year History from Dutch Village to Capital of Black America by Jonathan Gill: I wanted to read a book about the history of Harlem from its beginning, after I read Harlem Is Nowhere earlier this year. I hadn't heard of this book, but it seems to be exactly what I was looking for.

Seeing Patients: Unconscious Bias in Health Care by Augustus A. White III, M.D.: A book published by Harvard University Press written by a highly regarded African American surgeon (department chief of Orthopaedic Surgery at Harvard Medical School) about racial bias in American health care; I'll probably read this next month.

Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century by Dorothy Roberts: An intriguing and provocative look at the interplay between race, science and politics, written by a law professor at Northwestern.

Mañana Forever?: Mexico and the Mexicans by Jorge Castañeda: A new book that was reviewed in this week's New York Times Sunday Book Review, which "sheds much light on the puzzling paradoxes" of the author's native country, and its future possiblities, particularly in its relationship with its not always friendly neighbor to the north.

Two days later I went back to City Lights, and left with these books:

These are the books I bought on my second trip to City Lights last week:

When I Was a Poet by David Meltzer: A new release from City Lights Pocket Poets Series, which is a "spiritual assessment of the meaning of a lifetime spent writing poetry", by a reknowned Beat poet.

Snow Plain by Duo Duo: A collection of stories by the famed Chinese poet, who was selected as the winner of the 2010 Neustadt Prize for International Literature.

The Comedians by Graham Greene: A novel set in Haiti during the reign of terror of "Papa Doc" Duvalier, recommended by baswood and others.

Fatale by Jean-Patrick Manchette: A crime novella recently re-published by New York Review Books Classics about a nihilistic female professional killer, which was read recently by Rebecca and highly recommended by Scott from City Lights.

Count D'Orgel's Ball by Raymond Radiguet: Another recent NYRB Classics release, which was in the Surrealism section, which is an "intricate and seductive dance of deception and self-deception" involving a count, his wife, and a handsome and mysterious man the couple meet at a circus in early 20th century Paris.

Swallow by Sefi Atta: A "heartbreaking" novel set in contemporary Nigeria about two young women who struggle to make an honest living in Lagos. I'll probably review this for an upcoming issue of Belletrista.

The Sea and Poison by Shusaku Endo: Highly recommended by lilisin, this 1958 novel is "the first Japanese book to confront the problem of individual responsibility in wartime, painting a searing picture of the human race's capacity for inhumanity."

Ancestor Stones by Aminatta Forna: The first novel by Forna, whose latest novel The Memory of Love remains my favorite book of the first half of the year, which is about a woman who leaves England to return to her West African home to visit her family after the country's civil war, where she attempts to gather the family, reclaim its plantation, and come to grips with the country's history.

The Lost Steps by Alejandro Carpentier: An adventure novel originally written in 1953, wich concerns a composer who leads an empty life in NYC, and decides to travel with his mistress to an undiscovered village along a "great South American river".

The Emigrants by George Lamming: A classic novel about the first wave of immigrants from the Caribbean to the UK in the 1950s. I've been looking for this book for a while, after I read and loved The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon.

Taller When Prone by Les Murray: A new collection of poems by the famed Australian writer, who is frequently mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Translating Mo'um by Cathy Park Hong: The first poetry collection by this Korean-American author, whose work is featured in the summer issue of The Paris Review.

Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke: This book about an outbreak of AIDS in an interior Chinese village and the local government's attempt to cover up the blood-selling scandal that led to it was high on my wish list, after I read and enjoyed his earlier satirical novel Serve the People!.

Underdog by Katrina Roberts: A poetry collection that I admittedly bought because of the cover photo, after seeing the book prominently displayed in the Poetry Room at City Lights:



Millenium People by J.G. Ballard: A novel that was originally written in 2003 but was just published in the US, which is a thriller about a bombing at Heathrow Airport originally attributed to foreign terrorists, but later found to be due to the actions of a group of middle class Britons led by a "charismatic pediatrician turned cult leader".

On my last trip to City Lights this past Saturday I came away with these five books:

Naked (Asian Poetry in Translation) by Shuntaro Tanikawa: An excellent collection of poems told in the voice of several children, which I read earlier this week (4 stars).

the immigrant suite: hey xenophobe! who you calling a foreigner? by Hattie Gossett: A collection of poems by a writer who is new to me. I saw this in the Poetry Room, chuckled and hmph'ed after reading the first few poems, and added it to the pile.

Dump This Book While You Still Can! by Marcel Benabou: I discovered this book in the European Literature section after reading its intriguing title, which is a playful novel about a narrator who picks up a book that has mysteriously appeared on his desk which urges him to discard it immediately.

The Chameleon Couch by Yusef Komunyakaa: The latest collection of poems by this highly regarded artist, which "returns to the idea of poem-as-hymn, ethereal and haunting, as Komunyakaa reveals glimpses of memory, myth and violence."

The Land at the End of the World by António Lobo Antunes: An early novel by Antunes that has just been published in English translation in the US, and positively reviewed in today's New York Times here, which is about a "psychologically traumatized and emotionally marooned" Portuguese medic who has completed a hellish tour of duty during the Angolan civil war.

I also bought one book at the Asian Art Museum gift shop, after I saw the superb Bali exhibit there: A House in Bali by Colin McPhee, a book originally written in 1947 about the author's stay in Bali after he became entranced by gamelan music while he listened to recordings of it.

>79 janeajones: Thanks, Jane. I looked for Omeros by Derek Walcott at City Lights last week, but it wasn't in stock. It's on my wish list, and hopefully I'll find it in NYC later this month or London next month.

I'll be interested to get your take on Kingston's new memoir. That reminds me, I do want to read Tripmaster Monkey soon, as she references the book and its narrator throughout the memoir.

I'd be very interested in comparing notes about Jansson's novels. I've read The True Deceiver and Fair Play, and I'll read The Summer Book in the next month or two.

>80 Nickelini: I'm with you, Joyce; I'm less than enthusiastic about reading 100 Years of Solitude, but I will read it if you do.

>81 Cariola: Hmm...I do want to read Possession by A.S. Byatt, but I think I'm already overcommitted for the month. If I have time I'll join in.

>84 rebeccanyc: I liked, but didn't love, Love in the Time of Cholera. I can't think of any books by GGM I've read that I've been enthusiastic about, especially in comparison to novels by other noted 20th & 21st century Latin American authors.

What a load of great reading! Did you bring an extra suitcase or have City Lights ship them home for you?

I have a tote bag from Travelpro that I use as my "book bag", on book buying trips to SF, NYC and London. It can hold 25-30+ books, and is both sturdy and easy to carry:

the immigrant suite: hey xenophobe! who you calling a foreigner? by Hattie Gossett



My rating:

Hattie Gossett is an African-American poet and spoken word artist who lives in upper Manhattan, "where the Dominican Republic meets the Republic of Harlem". Her neighborhood is filled with past and recent immigrants of color, and she puts their voices and experiences on paper in this hard hitting collection of poems about the immigrant experience in the United States.

The voices in these poems speak of the dreams of those who seek a better life in the United States, such as the narrator in this excerpt from the opening poem, in america i will...#1:

i am moving to america because in america i will...
wear shoes every day & speak my mind freely
get my own web site & platinum amex with fries on the side
take the baby to a real doctor & have my own place
see the statue of liberty & drink the best beer

for me america means...
washing my clothes in a machine not in a bucket
sleeping in a real bed
seeing mickey mouse
taking a bath whenever i want to
never forgetting my ancestors
getting paid
sending money home to my family

These hopes are soon dashed by the realities of life in America for poor immigrants, as they face mistrust and discrimination from those who came before them, even from those who look like them, as in this excerpt from send them back!

send them back where they came from
theyre taking jobs away from americans
damn stinking foreigners
sneaking in over & under the borders in the dead of nite & in broad daylite
overstaying their visas
laying around making babies & getting welfare & working for nothing & not paying taxes
cant even talk english right
sure can count that money though
who let them open up so many vegetable markets & fast food spots
(gimme 4 wings fries & a soda yo)
yeah
who let them buy up all that real estate & all those treasury notes?
its a conspiracy
sure is
uh huh

And, in this excerpt from have we got a job for you!, the immigrant realizes that his job title and social standing in his home country are meaningless here:

hot jobs dreams come true bulletin #109
doctor at home scrubs the hospital floor over here
supermarket chain owner at home picks tomatoes over here
judge at home shines shoes in the courthouse lobby over here

calling all those who lived the good life
calling all those who were in charge
all who were the obedient instruments of power
all who had a big house & servants
all whose foot never touched the ground
whose hand never got dirty
who issued orders
who happily carried out orders
have we got a job for you!
here fill out these forms
report to room d for document review

The most powerful poem in this collection, thats what he told us, is narrated by a young girl brought to the US with the promise of a better life as a nanny, who is forced into the sex trade industry.

This was an interesting and eye opening collection of poems about the immigrant experience in America, whose lives and stories are often untold and ignored by the larger population. Gossett's book also contains a prologue and epilogue, which link these immigrants' current struggles to the past ones of Native Americans and African Americans.

Partitions by Amit Majmudar



My rating:

This novel is set during The Great Partition in 1948, when India gained its independence from Great Britain and the new state of Pakistan was created on the same day. The months after the announcement of the India Independence Act of 1947 were fraught with increasing rancor between the Hindu, Muslim and Sikh populations within British India, led initially by politicians seeking greater control and power, who exhorted their supporters to take to the streets, which led to increasing acts of random and brutal mob violence against members of the other communities. Relationships between these three populations deteriorated to the point where it became impossible or extremely dangerous for Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs to live alongside each other, as they had done for hundreds of years. As a result, approximately 25 million people relocated to new homelands in the days and weeks leading up to Independence Day in India and Pakistan, taking perilous journeys where food and water were scarce, and kidnapping and murder were constant threats.

Partitions is narrated by the late physician father of twin Hindu boys Keshav and Shankar, who have become separated from their mother during their attempted flight from Pakistan to India by train. The boys make a fortunate decision to jump off of the train, but the frail Shankar is injured when he hits the ground. At the same time, Ibrahim Masud, a Muslim pediatrician who cares for all children equally, is forced to flee India after his clinic is destroyed by fanatical Hindus, and Simran, a teenage Sikh girl, finds herself alone after her family is slaughtered by a Muslim mob.

The four all head in the same direction via different paths, toward an uncertain future, and each faces extreme danger throughout the journey.

Partitions is a beautifully written and gripping debut novel, which brings the tragedy and devastations of The Great Partition to life in the stories of these four characters, who are developed and portrayed very well by the author, a radiologist and award winning poet. Highly recommended! (4.2 stars)

The longlist for this year's Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books has been announced; these are the books and comments by the judges:

Alex's Adventures in Numberland by Alex Bellos (US title: Here's Looking at Euclid)
“A playful book that joyously takes us all by the hand on a grown-up trip through the world of mathematics.”

Here on Earth: A New Beginning by Tim Flannery
“Depicting the Earth as a superorganism of which we are just a part, the author uses his optimistic, experienced voice to unravel the natural history of our world and ourselves.”

Massive: The Hunt for the God Particle by Ian Sample
“An exciting adventure through the world of the biggest subject in physics: the Higgs boson.”

Packing for Mars by Mary Roach
“This sharp and witty exploration of spaceflight is a rare combination - a science book with a sense of humour.”

Spider Silk by Leslie Brunetta and Catherine L. Craig
“This book uses an unlikely subject to draw out many of the major principles of biology, drawing the reader into the surprisingly fascinating world of the spider.”

The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean
“A charming book that brings the elements of the periodic table to life.”

The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Mankind for 500,000 Years by Sonia Shah
“This book looks at an immense political and scientific challenge, malaria, and illuminates the heroic role science has played in the battle against it.”

The Price of Altruism by Oren Harman: The Bodley Head
“This book has a wonderfully engaging biographical curve, interwoven with the scientific theories of altruism postulated by its hero.”

The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridley
“Reading this book made us all feel more cheerful and provided a welcome counter-balance to some of the distortions of science by the media.”

The Rough Guide to the Future by Jon Turney
“We really enjoyed the unusual format of this book, whose many summaries, boxes, graphs and illustrations made the huge range of issues covered really accessible.“

The Wavewatcher's Companion by Gavin Pretor-Pinney
“A lovely, eccentric book filled with fascinating science that takes apart all elements of waves.”

Through the Language Glass: How words colour your world by Guy Deutscher
“A quirky book about the science of language, brought to life with history and anecdote.”

What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly
“The concept at the centre of this book, that technology is evolving somehow and ‘going somewhere’, felt immensely relevant and intrigued us all.”

The shortlist will be annouced on 27 September 2011, and the winner will be annouced on 17 November 2011.

More info: http://royalsociety.org/awards/science-books/longlist/

It's good to have you back Darryl - oh, I just know those books are going to kill my wishlist!!

Darryl, I enjoyed the extracts from the immigrant suite I will look out for that collection. Partitions has been read and reviewed by another club member I think, it is already on my to buy list.

Your review of The Immigrant Suite was noteworthy. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. As the rhetoric heats up, it's so important to remember we're talking about people.

Powerful stuff in The Immigrant Suite. Thanks for sharing some of the pieces. I just finished reading The Liberated Bride by A.B. Yehoshua, and although I didn't care for the book as a whole, I found interesting his allusions to Palestinians filling the roles for Israelis that South of the Border immigrants fill in the US. He implies that the Israelis look the other way when they need day laborers, etc. from the Palestinian territories, but then have the same reaction as in , if the Palestinians attempt to get visas, etc. And Izzeldin Abuelaish is one of the lucky few to avoid have we got a job for you! I'm not implying the two situations are the same, but I was struck by some similarities.

City Lights must love to see you walk through the door!

Loved reading that list on your other thread. Inundated with relatives; will comment more later.

>94 Cait86: Cait, City Lights always kills my book list.

>95 baswood: Barry, I'll bet that Lisa's review of Partitions a couple of weeks ago led you to add it to your wish list; it's well worth it. BTW, City Lights had this book prominently displayed at the front of the store. the immigrant suite is a typical City Lights purchase, an interesting book by an author I hadn't heard of before. It is published by Seven Stories Press, so it may not be impossible to find.

>96 RidgewayGirl: Thanks, Alison. I agree, the best thing about these poems is that they reflect the lives of real people, who most of us don't run into on a daily basis. Atlanta does have a large immigrant population, and I do care for kids of illegal and poor immigrants in the hospital on a regular basis. The recent immigration law that passed in Georgia will only make it more difficult for these hard working and decent people to live here, and I fear that the health of these kids will suffer as a result.

>97 labfs39: I have one book by A.B. Yehoshua that I want to get to soon, Friendly Fire, but I'll avoid the book you read, after reading your review of it.

>98 janeajones: That's absolutely the case! The two guys who usually work there during the morning, Scott and Gent, know me on a first name basis, and I receive a warm greeting from each of them, particularly when I make my first trip there during a stay in San Francisco. I usually stop there every 2-3 days during my trips, and I'll bet that I'm one of the bookshop's best customers. I buy 75-100+ books there every year, even though I live over 2000 miles away.

>99 rebeccanyc: Thanks, Rebecca; I hope you are enjoying time with your relatives.

I finished three books during the Holiday Read-a-Thon that Suzanne (Chatterbox) hosted on the 75 Books group that ended at 4 pm:

Seeing Patients: Unconscious Bias in Health Care by Augustus A. White III, M.D. (5 stars)
The Outcast by Sadie Jones (4 stars)
The Sea and Poison by Shusaku Endo (4 stars)

I'll write reviews of these books in the next day or so.

Book #86: Seeing Patients: Unconscious Bias in Health Care by Augustus A. White III, M.D.



My rating:

Dr. Augustus A. White III, the son of a physician in segregated Memphis, graduate of Brown (undergraduate degree in psychology), Stanford (medical school) and Yale (residency), Vietnam War combat surgeon, renowned orthopaedic surgeon and researcher, first African American to chair a department at Harvard Medical School, and former master of the Oliver Wendell Holmes Society at Harvard, has a most impressive résumé and interesting life story. Fortunately he shares his life with the reader in the first half of this outstanding book, and he is a surprisingly gifted story teller, with a style that I found completely captivating. He encounters racial prejudice along the way to the top, but handles these obstacles with grace and aplomb, in keeping with his upbringing in the African American middle class community of Memphis who nurtured and praised him while stressing him to be humble and grateful for the gifts and opportunities he had been given. He was also taught to be a role model for others, and as he became a respected professor at Yale and Harvard and a fellow of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons he used his position to advocate for greater representation of racial minorities in medical schools and orthopaedic residency programs, and to address the inequalities in health care and medical outcomes that minorities, the women, elderly and other populations continue to experience in the United States.

In the second half of the book, Dr. White describes some of the findings outlined in the landmark book Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care, published in 2001 by the Institute of Medicine, which was influenced by several studies that demonstrated that stark disparities in health care outcomes based on race, ethnicity, gender and age exist for different health conditions, even when factors such as health insurance and socioeconomic status were controlled for. Hispanics and African Americans received adequate pain control far less often than their white counterparts; women with heart attacks characterized by severe blockage of blood flow were nearly twice as likely as men to die afterward, and women with heart disease are far less likely to be accurately diagnosed by their doctors (as their symptoms are more likely to be attributed to stress) and receive standard of care treatment such as angioplasty, bypass surgery, and cholesterol lowering drugs; and elderly people, particularly women, are far less likely to be offered kidney transplants for renal failure, even those who are in good health.

In his work with the Oliver Wendell Holmes Society and his colleagues at Harvard, Dr. White and others advocated for the teaching of culturally competent care to medical students, in an effort to encourage physicians to evaluate and understand their own biases, so that they could provide each patient with the highest standard of care possible. He recognizes that most physicians genuinely care for their patients and want to give their best effort toward them, but cultural biases and personal factors that affect the patient-doctor relationship can impede the task. He injects personal vignettes and stories of others, which made me think about the families that I've taken care of who I haven't liked or communicated well with in the past, and understand that often I did not give them the same level of care that I did to families and children that I closely bonded with, regardless of their race or ethnic background.

The book closes with a section of practical suggestions for patients and physicians to use to better communicate with each other, and a list of national standards to ensure that every patient receives culturally competent health care.

Seeing Patients is a superb biography about an amazing man, a call to arms to ensure that all patients are treated fairly and equally, and a guide to aid health care providers and patients communicative effectively and respectfully to each other. I intend to encourage all of my colleagues, and the residents, medical students and physician assistant students who rotate on our service to buy and read this book, which jumps to the top of my short list of books that every health care provider should read. In addition, I think the lay reader would also enjoy and benefit from this book, as all of us have to encounter a health care provider who may or may not be respectful toward us at some point. Unfortunately, none of you will be able to pry my copy away from me anytime soon!

Book #87: The Outcast by Sadie Jones



My rating:

Shortlist, 2008 Orange Prize for Fiction

This debut novel opens in 1957 London, as Lewis Aldridge, a 19 year old from the northern suburb of Waterford, is released from prison after serving a two year sentence. No one comes to greet him, and with no practical skills and nowhere to go, he chooses to return to the small town that has been distrustful of him since his mother's disappearance a decade earlier. Secrets abound in Waterford, where social appearances are far more important than genuine love and respect, and Lewis' reputation as a pariah and his continued troubles at home and in the community cause him to become progressively unrattled.

Lewis is befriended by Kit Carmichael, a younger girl who has always admired him. However, her father is Lewis' father's employer, a respected but abusive man who despises Lewis and threatens Kit and his older daughter, Tamsin, to avoid the wayward boy. As tensions build, Kit becomes the only person who can communicate with Lewis, whose own father adds to his increasingly unstable behavior.

The Outcast was a brilliant page turner for the first 2/3 of the book, with its realistic though disturbing portrayal of the lives and secrets in a small town community in postwar England, and the characters of Lewis, Kit and others were compelling. Unfortunately, the last 1/3 of the novel doesn't meet the same standard of excellence. However, this was still a very good novel, and one that I would strongly recommend.

Darryl, Superb review of Seeing patients. A book that has obviously made you think carefully about your own professionalism. It is so hard to treat people equally in any professional situation. Even if we can keep our prejudices under control we still have to face the fact that we have a better rapport with some people.

How inspiring though to find somebody in your profession that you can really look up to.

Book #88: The Sea and Poison by Shusaku Endo



My rating:

This stunning, disturbing and deeply moving novel about the actions of Japanese doctors in a hospital during World War II opens in postwar Japan, in a small town that has been battered and demoralized after the country's defeat. A ordinary man infected with pulmonary tuberculosis who has recently moved to town seeks out the local physician for care, and he meets Dr Suguro, a withdrawn and defeated man who provides him with the treatment he needs, but nothing more. The narrator later meets another physician who trained at the same hospital in Fukuoka as Suguro did, and learns that Suguro was imprisoned for taking part in an experimental operation on a lightly injured American airman.

The first person narration then shifts to third person accounts of Suguro, a medical intern at the time of the airman's vivisection, along with those of Toda, another intern who is more urbane and comes from a wealthy family, but lacks the moral scruples of his colleague, and a nurse who formerly worked at the hospital but has returned in disgrace after her husband has left her for another woman. The three, along with the power hungry and uncaring supervising physicians, care for patients afflicted with TB who are treated worse than animals, particularly those who are welfare cases and cannot afford to pay for their care. The doctors view these patients' lives as hopeless and unworthy, whose only value is to serve to advance medical science, even if it means they must die premature and pain filled deaths.

After an unfortunate accident, Suguro and Toda are "invited" to participate in the operation on the downed airman. Toda readily agrees, knowing that his participation will advance his career. Suguro initially agrees, but experiences deep moral conflict once he learns of the nature and brutality of the operation. The nurse does not attend the surgery, but becomes aware of the nature of the operation and the effort by the doctors and head nurse to cover up both the operation on the soldier and the earlier accident.

The Sea and Poison, the winner of the 1958 Akutagawa Prize which was later made into an award winning movie, is a powerful tale of man's inhumanity to man, and the role that societal and peer pressure play in causing decent human beings to commit immoral acts toward those in their care or under their power. Based on a real story, it served as one of the first novels that openly criticized acts committed by Japan in wartime against its citizens, enemies and prisoners of war, and brought to light some of the atrocities that the world would learn about in later years.

I'm happy to see you enjoyed the book as well!
What did you think of the shifting narrative perspective? I thought it was quite a good way to describe the events. I think I would have been disappointed if it had been a descriptive monologue from Suguro for example. What are your reasons also for the last 1/2 star?

>104 baswood: Thanks, Barry; Seeing Patients now becomes my favorite book of the year, and it will remain on my desk at work to remind me of its lessons. I do agree with you that each of us will have a better rapport with some people than others, but this shouldn't mean that those parents and children I don't relate to as well shouldn't receive the same level of care and attention as those I do like.

>106 lilisin: I also thought that the shifting narrative perspective was a very effective technique. Why didn't I give it 5 stars? The ending was a bit abrupt to me, as I wanted to know more about what happened to the three main characters after the war, and after the crime against the P.O.W. was uncovered.

BTW, have you seen the movie that the book is based on? It came out in 1986, and won a major prize at that year's Berlin International Film Festival. I normally watch very few movies, but I would love to see this one.

I watched a few clips of the movie on Youtube so perhaps someday I'll get to it but I'm not in any rush to see it.

I read a review of Seeing Patients some months ago that made it sound intriguing, although I forget where, and now with your recommendation I may be motivated to go look for it, although I have so many other books I want to read first.

#102 I think another area where we see the bias/rapport issue is in teaching. It can be devastating to a young child to feel "unliked" by her teacher, and children learn best from teachers with whom they share a bond. And I can imagine it is hard, as a teacher, to invest as much time and energy into every child, even those who push her buttons.

#105 I have added The Sea and Poison to my pile, although it sounds as though it may be a nightmare provoker.

>109 rebeccanyc: Rebecca, you read a review of Seeing Patients and didn't let me know about it??? Hmph. ;-)

>110 labfs39: Great point, Lisa. I think this book has applicability beyond the doctor-patient relationship, and beyond issues of race, ethnicity, gender and age. I and my African-American colleagues find that some of the patients that we have the hardest time relating to are inner city African-Americans, many of whom view us as elitist "bourgies" (short for bourgeois) who talk and act white. (I do own the book Acting White: The Ironic Legacy of Desegregation by Stuart Buck, which discusses this longstanding issue in detail, and I'll read it soon.) Frequently these families treat us with more disdain than our white colleagues, and prefer to see white doctors. So, I'm much more likely to have a good rapport with a white family, educated or not, than I am with a poor African-American family, and thus the biases I own are against my "own people" (even though these families nor I would consider ourselves the same, in the way that many African Americans, including my barber, didn't initially support Barack Obama's presidency because he wasn't "black enough" or "authentic").

#111, Clearly, I am an abject failure! However, I've now spent 15 minutes trying to redeem myself by trying to find the review online. Either I need my coffee or it isn't on the web sites of the New York Times, the New Yorker, and the New York Review of Books, the only publications I can think of where I might have read the review.

>112 rebeccanyc: LOL! I can't find any reviews of Seeing Patients either, but I did find a link to the Tavis Smiley interview of Dr. White on PBS earlier this year:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/interviews/harvard-medical-school-dr-augustu...

The Millions has come out with a list of highly anticipated books for the second half of 2011:

Most Anticipated: The Great Second-Half 2011 Book Preview

I'm especially looking forward to these titles:

Anatomy of a Disappearance by Hisham Matar (August)
River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh (September, although I already have the UK edition)
Last Man in Tower by Aravind Adiga (September)
Crossbones by Nuruddin Farah (September)
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami (October)
The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst (October)
Cain by José Saramago (October)
Zone One by Colson Whitehead (October)
The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje (October)
Nanjing Requiem by Ha Jin (October)
The Palace of Dreams by Ismail Kadare (October)
Blue Nights by Joan Didion (November)
The Artist of Disappearance by Anita Desai (December)

Although it didn't make the list, I'll certainly buy Color Me English, the new collection of essays by Caryl Phillips when it is published in the UK next month.

Thanks for that article, Darryl. The Stranger's Child sounds excellent, and I'm looking forward to the new Adiga and Eugenides. Have you read anything by Anita Desai? I'd like to try one of her books, but I don't really know where to start... same with Ha Jin. Any recommendations?

I really, really looking forward to The Cat's Table; I already pre-ordered it!

#113, I can't be imagining it, but maybe I heard something about it on NPR, since I usually listen to that when I'm exercising or driving. There are two good interview shows on WNYC, and either of them could have had a discussion/interview. I didn't see the Tavis Smiley interview.

>115 Cait86: I haven't read (and, to my surprise, don't own) anything by Anita Desai. The Stranger's Child and River of Smoke are getting good reviews in the UK, and both seem to be strong possibilities for this year's Booker Prize longlist, which comes out on 26 July.

Ha Jin is one of my favorite writers; I especially liked Waiting and War Trash.

>116 rebeccanyc: I'll have to check to see if NPR interviewed him.

#117 Ha Jin is also one of my favorite authors, and for the same two books. I just picked up The Crazed by him. Have you read it?

Thanks for posting the "highly anticipated" list. There's lots to look forward to!

>117 kidzdoc: I have read The Crazed, and also enjoyed it. I haven't read his latest novel, A Free Life, but I'll add it to my list of summer books to read.

There are some definitely great authors on that list. Anticipation indeed! I've read one book by Anita Desai, Fasting, Feasting, about 10 years ago but don't really remember anything about it. I only had vague impressions of it at the time I know but perhaps I'd enjoy it more now.

Mao's Great Famine by Frank Dikötter was selected as the winner of this year's BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction tonight; more info here:

http://www.thesamueljohnsonprize.co.uk/pages/news/index.asp?NewsID=32

Thanks, I've added Mao's Great Famine to my wishlist (and bookmarked the Prize page for further reading ideas). I'm curious as to how Frank Dikötter got access to new archival material for his book. I would think it even harder than accessing the Russian archives as Anne Appelbaum was able to do for Gulag: A History. His research methods alone would make for interesting reading.

Thanks to you and The Millions list, my wishlist just went up 12 books.

I will definitely read Mao's Great Famine when I can get a hold of it, and other books of Frank Dikötter. However, if you are interested in the Great Famine in China, you may as well read Hungry ghosts (1998) by Jasper Becker. That author also claims to have had access to hitherto closed archives. Hungry ghosts was a very well-documented, and very shocking book.

It will be interesting to compare these books as Becker is a journalist, while Dikötter is an academic, based in Hong Kong. Although it has been said that Hong Kong remains relatively free till 2047, for a 50-year period after the return of the colony to the mainland, there are worries and indications that authors and publishers are censored or under pressure of self-censorship, i.e. toning down and not including information which may be deemed unwanted by Peking. In 2002 Jasper Becker was fired from the position he held with the South China Morning Post saying the paper restricted his reporting.

In my own experience, China has slightly different positions toward journalism, which the central government sees as reaching mass audiences of relatively lowly educated people, and academic publishing, aimed at a small audience of relatively highly educated people. It will be very interesting to compare these books.

The Passport in America: The History of a Document by Craig Robertson



My rating:

Craig Robertson, a professor of Communication Studies at Northeastern, provides a comprehensive history of the passport in the United States, starting from its initial use in the late 18th century. The book is divided into two parts, on the assembly of the passport (including the document itself, the applicant's name, signature, physical description and, later, his photograph), and the use of the passport as its primary role changed, from a letter of introduction to foreign governments for travelers, to an essential form of identification in the early 20th century, particularly for immigrants wishing to travel to or establish residency in the US. I was interested to learn that married women did not routinely receive their own passports until the women's suffrage movement took place, as respectable women always traveled in the presence of their husbands, whose passport photograph included their wives and children; and that the upper and middle classes resented having to use passports as a form of identification, as many felt that this document was most appropriate to keep anarchists, non-white immigrants and other undesirables from entering the US and western European countries.

The book includes several interesting personal stories, including the one that opens the book about a Danish man who was encouraged to shave off his Kaiser Wilhelm mustache upon entering Germany, and then was denied entry to the US after his clean shaven face did not match his passport photo. However, I found most of the book to be a bit dry and academic, and there was almost no discussion or analysis about the history and use of the passport after the 1920s, which would have made this a more interesting book for me.

The Prospector by J. M. G. Le Clézio



My rating:

This novel about a man's search for a lost treasure and personal fulfillment begins on the island of Mauritius in 1892, where the eight year old Alexis L'Estang lives with his parents and beloved older sister Laure in an isolated house, surrounded by rich foliage and close to the sea, which nurtures and draws him in every night. His older friend Denis, the son of the black cook who lives nearby, teaches him about the mysteries of the sea and the local flora in the mountainous forest above it. His father also passes on to him his dream to find the hidden treasure of the Unknown Corsair, through maps and stories.

The family's idyllic existence is disrupted by tragedy, causing it to sink into poverty, and Alexis is forced to take on responsibilities in advance of his years. However, he does not abandon his father's dream, and he eventually travels to the island of Rodrigues to seek the treasure that will ensure his family's good standing. There he meets Ouma, the love of his life, but his search is disrupted by the onset of the Great War, and he must abandon his search, and Ouma. Eventually he is able to return, as an older man whose dream and love have not been diminished by time, but his family's continued poverty and changes in the region cause his dual goals to become more distant and seemingly unachievable.

The Prospector is filled with evocative descriptions of the sea and island life, which was its main strength, along with the love that Alexis and Ouma shared for each other, and the description of the horrors of trench warfare. However, the other characters, especially Laure and Alexis' mother, were not portrayed as richly, and I had some difficulty in understanding Alexis' motivations and actions. Despite this, I thoroughly enjoyed, and would highly recommend, this beautifully told story.

The Swimmer by Roma Tearne



My rating:

2011 Orange Prize longlist

Ria is a poet who lives alone in the small East Anglian town of Ipswich, surrounded by small minded and nosy neighbors who are isolated from their fellow Britons, and fearful of the immigrants that are slowly infiltrating the country and their region. Her only close living relative is her brother Jack, a bully interested in right-wing politics who frequently harasses and troubles her, along with his less than lovable wife and children, and she is not particularly friendly with anyone in town, whose citizens view her with suspicion as an outsider who has returned from London to live amongst them.

Ria's uneasy peace is disrupted one night as she spots a man emerging from a swim in the river adjacent to her home. She eventually meets him, and learns that he is a young doctor from Sri Lanka who has fled his troubled country for the safety of England, and works on a nearby farm while he waits for his application for political asylum to be processed. At the same time, there are a series of crimes being committed by a person of color in the region, along with increased suspicions from the townspeople that a group of foreign terrorists are hiding nearby, which leads to greater scrutiny of Ria and her home as she and the young man become ever closer.

The Swimmer describes a maudlin love story, which is followed by an improbable and, for this reader, very distasteful second love story, along with the increased xenophobia of the citizens of a small town and a country fearful of immigrants of color and terrorism. I found this novel to be superficial and its characters to be quite trivial, especially in comparison to Tearne's superb previous novel Brixton Beach.

>122 labfs39: I've posted two reviews of Mao's Great Famine on the book's home page on LT, and I'll definitely pick up this book ASAP.

>123 alphaorder: Yep, that Millions list is a dangerous one for anyone's wish list.

>124 edwinbcn: Thank you for the information about Hungry Ghosts; I'll read it along with Mao's Great Famine.

Nice reviews as usual, Darryl, and glad you enjoyed The Prospector also. I agree with you that the evocative descriptions were the best part and that Alexis was a little hard to figure out; however, I found Ouma more mysterious than you did.

Darryl, serves you right for reading the Passport in America. You will be reading a history of driving licences next. There is dull and there is more dull.

I am surprised by your thoughts on The Swimmer not that I have read it, but I have heard so many good things about Roma Tearne.

LOL! It seemed like a good idea at the time...

I have all four of Roma Tearne's novels: Mosquito and Bone China, which I haven't read yet, along with Brixton Beach, which I loved, and The Swimmer. Based on the comments of others I expect that I'll enjoy her first two novels, but The Swimmer was a massive disappointment.

Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord



My rating:

This unique and engaging debut novel by Barbadian author Karen Lord is based on a Senegalese folk tale which incorporates magical realism as its primary device to build upon the story.

You can read the entire review in the latest issue of Belletrista, which was published earlier today:

http://www.belletrista.com/2011/Issue12/reviews_11.php

Boy, I had a lot to catch up on here, Darryl. Glad to read your review of the Kingston memoir. I'd love to read it *sigh* but I say that about so many books. the Sea and the Poison sounds great too. *sigh*

So many books, so little time...

Hearts and Minds by Amanda Craig



My rating:

This novel, which was longlisted for the 2010 Orange Prize, is set in contemporary London, and opens with the discovery of the body of a young unknown woman in a pond in upscale Hampstead Heath. From there we are introduced to the five main characters: Polly, an divorced asylum lawyer, who fiercely struggles to combine her career with motherhood; Job, an educated and literate immigrant from Zimbabwe, who has fled to the capital to avoid the horrors of his homeland; Ian, a white South African teacher in a rundown public school where chaos and violence is a constant threat; Anna, a 15 year old girl who agrees to emigrate to London to become a hotel chambermaid but is forced into sexual slavery; and Katie, a young American who works as the personal assistant for the publisher of the Rambler, a London daily best known for controversy rather than accuracy and good taste.

The five live separate lives of near constant frustration and occasional menace, in a faceless city where the police are indifferent and all except the most wealthy are emotionally abraded and cross. Through them and several minor characters Craig shows us the underside of life in the capital, where illegal immigrants fill the jobs that are beneath the dignity of other Londoners, and live hand to mouth in a daily battle to earn enough to survive, while steering clear of the constant threat of discovery by authorities and deportation back to their home countries. A series of unrelated and increasing threats affect each of the characters, and the author expertly weaves their stories and lives together in a tale that is both believable and compelling.

Hearts and Minds is a superb novel which gives the reader a view of the lives of the invisible and voiceless workers of the underground economy of a large city in the context of a gripping story. Highly recommended!

>133 avaland: Thanks, Lois! My ultimate goal in life is to reach the stage where I can read books faster than I accumulate them...

Wow! Hearts and Minds sounds fascinating, and your review is thumb-worthy as always.

Great review of Hearts and Minds Darryl. I will be very interested to read this one as its set in my home town.

Above All, Don't Look Back by Maïssa Bey



My rating:

In 2003 the north African country of Algeria was in a state of recovery after a decade-long civil war that claimed the lives of over 160,000 Islamic fundamentalists, government troops and innocent civilians. On May 21 of that year a 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck just east of the capital of Algiers, and over 2,000 Algerians were killed in the initial quake and the aftershocks that followed over the next several days. The government came under intense scrutiny and criticism, as many recently constructed buildings collapsed due to shoddy building design and materials, and local and national officials provided inadequate and untimely aid to the earthquake survivors. As a result, the already fragile psyche of the Algerian people was damaged even further, as thousands of citizens faced displacement, fetid and disease ridden tent cities, violence, and post-traumatic psychological trauma.

Maïssa Bey, born near Algiers in 1950, originally taught literature until the 1990s, when she began to write in response to the effect of the war that plagued her country. She dedicated this novel to the memory of victims of natural disasters, including the 2003 earthquake and the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.

The remainder of this review can be found in issue 12 of Belletrista:

http://www.belletrista.com/2011/Issue12/anth_14.php

The London Train by Tessa Hadley



My rating: (3 yawns)

Longlist, 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction

The London Train consists of two linked stories, whose main characters each take a train from Cardiff to London. In the opening story, a writer travels to London in search of his daughter, who has withdrawn from university and only informs him of her whereabouts and condition, to the chagrin of her mother and his ex-wife. In the second half, a woman attempts to reestablish her life and balance in Cardiff as a librarian, after she leaves her husband, with whom she lived in London. During this portion the two characters meet, and a relationship of convenience results.

I found the first half of the book moderately interesting, but the second half was mind numbingly dull, and I sped through it to get to the end. The London Train would be best appreciated by those who like stories about relationships, particularly ones that are flawed, but would be of little or no interest to anyone else, in my opinion.

Daisy Miller by Henry James



My rating:

This novella is set in the last days of the 19th century, and opens in a resort town in Switzerland, as a young American man of means decides to leave Geneva to visit his aunt. While there, he meets a spirited young American woman from upstate New York, whose attractiveness is exceeded only by her impetuosity. The man is bewitched by her charm and flirtatiousness, to the chagrin of his aunt who finds her to be vulgar and reckless, and he eventually catches up with her some time later in Italy. There she engages in even more scandalous behavior than she did in Switzerland, which ultimately leads to her downfall.

Daisy Miller was an interesting story about a young woman who would have fit in well in 1920s America, but was ahead of her time in the 1890s Europe, whose upper classes were not ready for women who spoke their minds and refused to allow societal constraints to constrict their lives.

Love the three yawns

Love the three yawns too. I read something by Tessa Hadley a few years ago and have been unmotivated to read anything else by her ever since. It was so forgettable I have to look up the title, since I gave the book away: it was Accidents in the Home.

Darryl, did you see this article in yesterday's NY Times about a new method of interviewing medical school applicants to evaluate their interpersonal and team-playing skills?

>140 kidzdoc: - I read Daisy Miller recently and while I enjoyed it it is rather cliched. Innocent young American girl goes to Europe, which is a place to wary of, ending up in Italy, where decadence is the name of the game. If I have learned anything from the 19th century novel it is that going to Italy is never a good thing - disease, death, and worse of all, disgrace is all that lurk there (It is worth noting that all three are quite commonly found together - first disgrace, then disease, the death - and usually a coda stating that none of that would have happened if he/she had just listened but he/she was their own worst enemy). And it's full of dangerous romantic ideas - they're in the people, the stones, the very air that you breathe, so much so that if you return you will never be the same again.

I do think it is interesting that James' most cliched novel was also his most successful and yet while he craved success later he couldn't bring himself to write such a crowd pleaser again.

>135 kidzdoc: Good luck with that!

144 - sure, it's cliched now, but not so much when it was published in 1878. And James went on to use that theme again and again and again. And again. And then later writers, such as Thomas Mann and EM Foster used it too. Now we get the "go to Italy and have a magic life," a la Under the Tuscan Sun, which I find far worse.

I read Tessa Hadley's The Master Bedroom and concluded at the end that I wasn't interested in reading anything else by that author. She wrote well, but didn't say anything.

>141 baswood: Thanks, Barry.

>142 rebeccanyc: Thanks, Rebecca. I read The London Train for Orange July, and especially because it was getting some buzz in the Man Booker Prize discussion group as a possible choice for the 2011 longlist. I would be surprised, and disappointed, if it made the longlist, and based on your comments and others I won't read anything else by Tessa Hadley.

>143 rebeccanyc: I did read that article, and found it very interesting. I think it's a great idea to evaluate the interpersonal skills of applicants for medical school during the interview process. Communication with patients and families, and the ability to work well in a team with other clinicians, nurses and ancillary staff is extremely important, particularly in the hospital setting. While I was on rounds on Monday I was introduced to a local college student who was rounding with one of the other attendings, and I discussed this article with both of them.

Here's a link to the article from Monday's NYT, if anyone is interested:

New for Aspiring Doctors, the People Skills Test

>147 RidgewayGirl: She wrote well, but didn't say anything.

That is a perfect one sentence description of The London Train!

Just dropping in to say that I've enjoying reading your reviews, as usual! The Sea and Poison and Hearts and Minds are now on my wishlist.

>149 charbutton: Thanks, Char!

Lightning: A Novel by Jean Echenoz



My rating:

Lightning is a fictionalized account of the tragic life of Nikola Tesla, the inventor of alternating current, the form of electricity used to power homes and businesses, a man whose grandiose ideas and ambitions did not lead to financial success or personal fulfillment, due to the unscrupulous men who benefited from his work and his own failure to demand adequate compensation for his achievements.

'Gregor', born during a fierce lightning storm in a small Serbian town, travels to New York from Austria as a young man, where his accomplishments were exceeded only by his pomposity and showmanship, and is hired by Thomas Edison to be his personal assistant. After Edison plays a dirty trick on him he is employed by Edison's rival George Westinghouse, who parlayed Gregor's alternating current concept into a vast fortune, then convinced Gregor to tear up the contract that would have turned him into a multi-millionaire. Plagued by financial difficulty and ostracism from other scientists and potential investors, Gregor's life and career take a steady down turn, as he becomes more withdrawn and quirky and chooses to spend more time with the pigeons that he tends to in his increasingly shabby hotel rooms than the woman who loves and nurtures him.

Similar to his most recent novels Running and Ravel, Echenoz expertly uses fiction as a technique to tell the tragic story of an underappreciated man in Lightning, a compelling short novel that I could not put down once I started reading it.

Fatale by Jean-Patrick Manchette



My rating:

Fatale was a strange and unbelievable crime novella about a attractive young widow and cold-blooded killer who moves to a small French seaside town, where she uses her allure and social skills to befriend the most influential people. After a series of mysterious deaths occurs, Aimée befriends a mentally troubled man living on the edge of town who seeks revenge against its most prominent citizens, and uses him to blackmail them, in order to keep sensitive information from leaking out. The plan goes somewhat awry, but Aimée triumphs due to her cunning and superior strength and ability.

Other than the clever portrayals of Aimée and the troubled Baron Jules, there was little in this novella to keep my interest, and the story was rather slight and wooden. Fatale may be of some interest to those who like crime novels, but everyone else should steer clear of this book.

As I mentioned on your other thread, I liked the way the author skewered a lot of pretensions, and I too liked Baron Jules. I couldn't help thinking that we weren't supposed to take everything literally, although I don't think it really came together as a critique of bourgeois society and capitalist greed.

Hey Darryl - I'm reading Visitation at your recommendation and really loving it thus far (only a few chapters in). I just wanted to thank you for how much you've single-handedly brought me books I wouldn't have found on my own.

I am adding Lightning to my list. I've been wanting to read more about Tesla, and voila! Thank you for your good review.

Dump This Book While You Still Can! by Marcel Bénabou



My rating:

A man who has just turned 40 and lives alone in a cluttered apartment one day finds a book that he doesn't remember buying on his desk. Its cover is completely blank, and the book opens with a request that it not be read:

Come on, dump this book. Or better yet, throw it as far away as you can. Right now. Before it's too late. That resolution is your only escape, believe me.

The narrator is piqued and intrigued, and decides to read the book in spite of the author's request, both for the challenge of reading it, and because he is convinced that it will be worth the effort. He is perplexed and consumed by it, and he devotes nearly all his energy to elucidating its hidden messages. Throughout this book, we learn about Sophie, a young but elusive woman who he loves deeply, his past and current unsatisfactory life, and the pleasures and frustrations of reading.

Unfortunately, I lost interest in this story and its narrator somewhere in the middle of the book, as it became a bit too clever and esoteric for me. So, I would encourage anyone considering this book to dump it before you buy it.

A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes



My rating:

This novel was originally written in 1929, and is centered on the lives of two sets of British children who live with their parents in Jamaica in the late 19th century, after slavery was abolished and while the country was taking its first steps toward independence. The seven members of the Bas-Thornton family reside in a dilapidated house on an isolated and ruined sugar cane plantation, where the children enjoy each others' company amid the exotic flora and fauna, with minimal contact from the black Jamaicans who live in the surrounding hills. Their only contact with other whites is with the two children of the Fernandez family, who live along the seaside.

The island is devastated by a fierce hurricane that destroys the Bas-Thornton's home, and the parents decide to send the children back to the safety of England, where they can receive a proper education and upbringing. The Fernandez children join them, along with a servant, and all are placed in the care of the captain of a small barque, as neither family can afford to send them to England on a steamer. En route, the ship is captured by a motley crew of pirates dressed as women, and the children are taken as booty. The pirates are unable to rid themselves of the children, and are forced to sail with them onboard while they search for other prey. Children being children, they adopt to and thrive in their new home, as they drive the pirates to perpetual distraction while endearing themselves to them.

A High Wind in Jamaica is a mostly rollicking but occasionally tragic novel about imperfect but engaging and lovable children—and pirates—and a most enjoyable sea adventure that ended far too soon.

Darryl, I read High wind in Jamaica when I was a teenager and loved it. Your review brought back some good memories as I had forgotten most of what it was about. Not a children's book I think.

Any book entitled Dump this book while you still can deserves the review that you gave it.

I am, as you know, another lover of A High Wind in Jamaica; I was impressed by the way the author conveyed sharp perceptions about class, race, and ideas of guilt and innocence in a story that on the surface is an adventure. Not at all a children's book, Barry.

I thought you'd enjoy this article, Darryl. It's from today's copy of The Washington Post.

>160 SqueakyChu: Thanks, Madeline! That was a good article. I'll buy Hisham Matar's new novel, Anatomy of a Disappearance, after it comes out in the US on August 23rd.

>159 rebeccanyc: Thanks for that comment about A High Wind in Jamaica, Rebecca. I didn't comment about those elements in my review, and I really should have, as they elevated it from a simple, but well told, adventure story to a substantive novel. And, as you and Barry said, it definitely isn't a children's book.

>158 baswood: LOL, Barry! I took a chance on Dump This Book While You Still Can!, as it was on the shelves at City Lights, where I've discovered an untold number of books and authors who were previously unknown to me that I've loved. Unfortunately, this wasn't one of them.

From your review of DumpThis Book While You Still Can:

So, I would encourage anyone considering this book to dump it before you buy it.

LOL!!

The Dump this Book discussion reminds me of a 60s classic, Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman. I imagine he would have been disturbed if everyone did.

I will be leading a group read of Life A User's Manual by Georges Perec in the 75 Books group, which I'd like to start in early August. I've created an introductory thread here:

Life A User's Manual: An Introduction

I'll post more information about the book and its author later today. Feel free to post any questions or comments, and to share information about the group read with anyone you think may be interested in reading this book. I'll also post information about this group read on the Club Read Message Board, and in the Reading Globally group.

Don't have much to say on because I've been wrapped up in unrelated reading, but I just realized I haven't posted on this part 2 thread yet. Delurking as I just now caught up on your last three weeks. Enjoyed reading your reviews of all these great books (and the couple that belong in the dump).

Another delurker, here. I bought Anatomy of a Disappearance - nice title - by Hisham Matar. Now to find the time to read it...

The longlist for this year's Booker Prize has just been announced:

Julian Barnes The Sense of an Ending (Jonathan Cape - Random House)
Sebastian Barry On Canaan's Side (Faber)
Carol Birch Jamrach's Menagerie (Canongate Books)
Patrick deWitt The Sisters Brothers (Granta)
Esi Edugyan Half Blood Blues (Serpent's Tail - Profile)
Yvvette Edwards A Cupboard Full of Coats (Oneworld)
Alan Hollinghurst The Stranger's Child (Picador - Pan Macmillan)
Stephen Kelman Pigeon English (Bloomsbury)
Patrick McGuinness The Last Hundred Days (Seren Books)
A.D. Miller Snowdrops (Atlantic)
Alison Pick Far to Go (Headline Review)
Jane Rogers The Testament of Jessie Lamb (Sandstone Press)
D.J. Taylor Derby Day (Chatto & Windus - Random House)

The shortlist for this year's prize will be announced on 6 September, and the winner will be announced on 18 October.

More info: http://www.themanbookerprize.com/news/stories/1514

Six of the 13 longlisted books are currently available in the US: Jamrach's Menagerie, The Sisters Brothers, Pigeon English, Snowdrops, and Far to Go, which are all available as e-books, and A Cupboard Full of Coats, which I just purchased as a paperback book from Amazon. Here are the US release dates for the other books:

The Sense of an Ending: 24 Jan
On Canaan's Side: 8 Sep
Half Blood Blues: ?
The Stranger's Child: 11 Oct
The Last Hundred Days: ?
The Testament of Jessie Lamb: ?
Derby Day: ?

I now have all five of the currently available e-books on my Kindle, and I received The Stranger's Child from The Book Depository last week. I'll read The Stranger's Child, Pigeon English, Jamrach's Menagerie, and probably one other e-book over the next month, and I'll buy (and hopefully read) the other six longlisted books when I go to London next month.

I have the Jane Rogers book and i'm sure it came from the book depository. Just saying in case you want to give it a try.

>169 Nickelini: I'll definitely try the Rogers, Joyce, along with all of the Booker Dozen titles. I'd like to read as many of them as I can, and definitely all six of the shortlisted novels, by the time the winner is announced on October 18th.

BTW, four of the longlisted authors are Canadian: Alison Pick, Patrick McGuinness, Patrick deWitt and Esi Edugyan.

If anyone is interested, several of us, including myself, Cait, Rebecca, and Margaret from Club Read, are having a discussion about the longlist on the 2011 Man Booker Prize thread that I've created in the Prizes group: http://www.librarything.com/topic/121090

and me!

Yes...and Jenny! :-)

I hope that we can form a group to read Booker titles, similar to what Jill (mrstreme) has done with Orange titles.

>172 kidzdoc: - I'm game! Start a Booker Group and I will join for sure. August-October are always my Booker months anyway.

>173 Cait86: Where should I start it? And, is anyone else interested besides the two of us?

>174 kidzdoc: - What about creating an actual group, like the Orange January/July one? I'm sure if you post a link to it here, the Prizes, and the 75ers, people will join.

I'm in!

>175 Cait86:, 176 Thanks for the encouragement! I'll put out feelers on those threads to gauge interest, and if there is enough interest, I'll create a group in the next day or two.

I just noticed that there is a dormant group entitled Man Booker Reading Group that was formed in 2009 by jessicaskura, who I don't know. I sent her a PM to see if she would be interested in having us join her group, before I formed a new one with a nearly identical title. Hopefully she'll respond to give me her opinion.

>178 kidzdoc: - According to jessicaskura's statistics, she hasn't added a book to her library since Oct 2009, so I'm guessing she isn't active on LT anymore. If you don't get a response from her, can you contact Tim about changing the creator/admin on the Booker group? Or, get him to delete it, and we can start a new one?

>179 Cait86: Thanks for checking on her account, Cait. That being the case, I'll plan to create a group if I don't hear from her in the next 24 hours. I prefer "Booker Prize" to "Man Booker Prize", so I would name the group "Booker Prize Discussion Group", or maybe simply "Booker Prize".

Do you want to be a co-administrator?

>180 kidzdoc: - Sure, I'll be co-admin; I've never done that before!

Okay, the Booker Prize group has been created! All are welcome to join.

http://www.librarything.com/groups/bookerprize2008

# 182 - I've joined the group, but the thread looked so pristine, I dare not add my message there.

>183 Trifolia: Thanks for joining, Monica! Feel free to add anything you would like, and to create any new threads you want to. I've just posted a thread for members to introduce themselves, and I'll add a general discussion thread shortly.

ETA: I need to figure out how to make Cait a co-administrator...

Darryl -- I'll be at City Lights on Monday (my b-day--isn't that appropriate!). As my family will be pacing the sidewalk (they get bored after the first hour in a bookstore), I need to maximize my experience. Is there anything in particular I should look out for? What's your City Light routine?

My normal routine is to start my day with a leisurely breakfast at Caffe Greco, which is also on Columbus Avenue in North Beach, a couple of blocks away from the Financial District. City Lights opens at 10 am, so I like to get there soon after it opens, and chat with Scott or Gent, the guys that have worked mornings there for years (Scott is one of my main sources for jazz recommendations). When you enter the store, the portion closest to the cash register has the newest works of fiction and nonfiction, and the Surrealism section is also located there. On the main floor (a couple of steps up) is where the newer fiction and nonfiction titles are located, along with City Lights' own publications, and European literature, so I go there next. There is a room with translated non-European literature as you head toward the Poetry Room upstairs, so I'll go there before checking out the Poetry Room, which is roomier and quieter than the main level; I'll sit in one of the rocking chairs there to peruse the dozen or more books that I've picked up, and get a few poetry books.

However, if you're pressed for time, I'd probably stick to the main level and the front of the store, as there are plenty of good books there, unless you're looking for particular books or category of books. Scott and Gent are very knowledgeable and helpful, especially if you have specific information about the books you're looking for.

There is a very nice French cafe nearby City Lights, also on Columbus Avenue, Brioche Bakery & Cafe, which is also on Columbus Avenue on the same block at City Lights, but on the opposite side of the street, but down the hill toward the Transamerica Building, which has excellent pastries, quiche and soups.

Maybe the family can go to Fisherman's Wharf while you shop for books? If so, you and/or they can take the 8X Bayshore Express bus, which runs on Columbus Avenue (on the opposite side of the street from City Lights; you can pick it up in front of the Brioche Bakery, and it terminates on the Embarcadero near Pier 35 (I think), a short walk from Pier 39. Chinatown is close to City Lights, and they could walk on Broadway over to Stockton St, and shop there.

Other North Beach places I especially like:

L'Osteria del Forno: A tiny but excellent Italian restaurant, on Columbus Avenue near Washington Square Park.

Molinari Delicatessen: A classic Italian deli which is over 100 years old, that makes great sandwiches and has excellent meats, cheeses, olives, etc.

Sigh...I wish I was there now.

That's great Darryl. Thanks! Lots of helpful details.

Last time I was in San Francisco (1991!), my now-husband's uncle was running an Italian bakery in North Beach. It made it feel very familiar and homey. He's been back in Vancouver for years, but I wonder if we could find the bakery again. Will try.

Can't believe I haven't been back in the past 20 years--I've managed four Europe trips, three Hawaiian holidays and many other trips during that time!

I'm not planning any trips to San Francisco, but I've "favorited" your message about City Lights and neighboring cafes because reading about them made me want to go!

Pao by Kerry Young



My rating: (3.7 stars)

This novel is narrated by Pao, who fled at the age of 14 from Guangzhou, along with his mother and brother, to Jamaica in 1938, after his father was killed during the second Sino-Japanese War. Uncle Zhang, a friend of Pao's father who is the godfather of Kingston's Chinese community, provides for the family and takes Pao under his wing. Pao quickly learns the business, and acquires more power and status as he provides protection for businesses and individuals in Chinatown and becomes an influential racketeer and businessman in his own right. He marries Fay Wong, the beautiful but self-absorbed daughter of another powerful businessman, which allows him to accrue more power but leads to personal grief and tragedy. Through Pao's narrative the reader learns about multicultural Kingston, the relationship between the races and different segments of the local community, and the history of Jamaica as a British colony and an independent though not completely free nation, where the majority struggle to overcome poverty and increasing violence while a select few profit handsomely and leave the island with their ill gotten gains.

Pao is an engaging narrator, whose Jamaican patois, frequent quotes from Sun Tzu's The Art of War, and personal conflicts and successes make this an enjoyable and educational novel. However, the reader learns about the other characters through Pao's not entirely reliable eyes, and they are more inscrutable and less interesting as a result.

Th author was born in Kingston and emigrated to England in 1965 along with her Chinese father and Chinese-African mother, and her personal knowledge and experiences add flavor and integrity to this compelling debut novel.

Book #111 Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman



My rating: (4.2 stars)

This Booker Prize longlisted novel is narrated by Harrison Opuku, an 11 year old boy who has recently emigrated to an impoverished south London neighborhood along with his mother and older sister, while his father and baby sister remain behind in Ghana. His mother works long hours as a midwife, and he and his sister Lydia are left mainly to fend for themselves. Harri is a good boy, although a bit naïve in comparison to his classmates and the boys in the neighborhood. He lacks a father or other adult male authority figure that he can relate to, and falls under the influence of a local gang of older boys who terrorize younger kids in his school and conduct random acts of violence in the neighborhood, with little deterrence from the adults who live there or the local police, who are generally viewed as incompetent and hostile.

The novel opens with the stabbing death of a schoolboy on a sidewalk near Harri's flat. Harri does not know the boy well, as he is older and goes to another school, but he and his friends vow to find out who murdered him. Inspired by the American television show CSI, the boys use their fledging detective skills to spy on potential suspects and gather fingerprints and other specimens from the crime scene. Harri is generally well liked by his classmates, as he is a fast runner and a good fighter, and he eagerly participates in typical boyhood pranks and games. His home life is a bit dull, as his older sister finds him to be a bother, and he befriends a pigeon who serves as a companion, confidant, and guardian angel.

As the story progresses, the identity of the boy's killer is obvious to the reader, but not to Harri, whose investigation intensifies as he gathers more clues and puts himself in danger.

Pigeon English was written in honor of Damilola Taylor, a 10 year old Nigerian boy who was murdered in 2000 in the south London neighborhood of Peckham, along with other children in the UK who experience fear and violence on a daily basis, and is also based on the author's own childhood experiences and people he encountered as a child and young adult. Harrison's voice and character are maddening, lovable, and ultimately unforgettable, and this is one of the better coming of age stories that I've read. The novel's main flaw is the character of the guardian pigeon, whose comments I found inscrutable and whose presence was unnecessary and distracting, which caused me to knock half a star off of my rating of this otherwise superb novel. It is also a very timely one, given the recent acts of violence in impoverished neighborhoods in south London and elsewhere. I doubt that Pigeon English will win this year's Booker Prize or even make the shortlist, but it is a novel that was enjoyable and deserves to be widely read.

Book #110: The Wandering Falcon by Jamil Ahmad



My rating:

The Wandering Falcon is a moving collection of interconnected short stories set in the remote tribal areas that border Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, which all feature one character, Tor Baz, who began life as the child of two lovers who have fled from their village and spent his life as a wanderer throughout the region's villages, a man who belongs to no particular tribe but is able to gain the respect of those he encounters. Life in these areas is difficult, due to the harsh climate; the rough terrain; the sometimes brutal justice administered to those who break tribal customs and laws; the hostile relationships between neighboring tribes; and government officials, who draw and enforce fixed boundary lines between countries where none existed before, thus impeding the centuries old way of life of these nomadic tribes.

Despite these hardships and restrictions, the people portrayed in this book are full of life and pride in themselves and their tribes, and their stories are both unique and universal.

Jamil Ahmad began his career as a Pakistani civil servant in Balochistan, compiled notes about the people he met there, and originally wrote these stories in the mid-1970s. He retired, moved to Islamabad, and was inspired to rewrite them in 2008 at the age of 75, when the book was initially published. These regions, known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, have gained more importance in recent years, as they are home to the Taliban and other insurgent groups that have waged war against the Pakistani and Afghan governments and their Western allies. Although these stories were written well before the onset of the wars in Afghanistan and the strife in Pakistan, Ahmad provides valuable insights into the people who live there, in an engaging manner that made for a quick and enticing read.

Steve Inskeep of National Public Radio recently traveled to Islamabad and interviewed Jamil Ahmad. Ahmad's fascinating story, which includes additional insights about the people in his book, can be heard online at http://www.npr.org/2011/06/16/137216570/wandering-falcon-describes-pakistans-tri....

Some fascinating reads here...

Both of these books sound interesting; thanks for the reviews, Darryl.

It is nice to read some positive comments on Pigeon English - so far I have seen very conflicting reviews of it. I'm looking forward to your opinion of The Stranger's Child. I am trying so hard not to buy it from the UK, but it doesn't come out in Canada until October! :(

So far, I haven't read any outstanding novels from the longlist - Far to Go was good, Snowdrops was not, and The Sisters Brothers seems ok so far. I think my next one will by The Sense of an Ending, which seems to have much better reviews.

Excellent review of The Wandering Falcon and link. I was travelling in that area in 1975/6 and so it will interest me greatly.

I hope that you are not getting too stuck with the Peter Ackroyd. I find him difficult to read at times.

Book #108: The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst



My rating: (4.7 stars)

The novel, based in part on the life of the early 20th century English poet Rupert Brooke, opens at Two Acres, a Victorian estate in suburban London in 1913. George Sawle, a student at Cambridge, has invited his close friend Cecil Valance, a poet of modest talent and greater wealth, to spend a weekend with his family. Cecil's wit and striking good looks charm everyone in attendance, none more so than George's younger sister Daphne, an outspoken and independent minded 16 year old girl who spends her days reading and quoting from the poetry of Tennyson and Valance. After a raucous and unforgettable weekend, Cecil dedicates a poem to Daphne and the estate, which he wrote in the notebook that she lent to him.

Cecil dies tragically during the Great War soon afterward, and the uncovered poem gains widespread fame as a glimpse of English country life in a time of innocence. He is revered by Churchill and other leading public figures, and details about his life take on greater interest. However, Cecil's homosexuality is hidden by those closest to him, as these activities are not to be discussed in public.

Although the poet serves as the main focus of the novel, Daphne serves as the book's central character. The book moves forward in time from 1913 to 2008, and through her and other main characters within and surrounding the Sawle and Valance families Hollinghurst paints a detailed picture of British upper middle class society through most of the 20th and early 21st centuries, including its preferences and deep prejudices, and the changes in its view of sexual behaviors. The novel is enhanced by the author's comic wit, and its characters are as finely portrayed as in any book I've read in recent memory. However, the novel's last section was flat and somewhat contrived, which kept me from giving it a 5 star rating. Despite that, The Stranger's Child is one of the best novels I've read this year, and I think it would be a worthy winner of this year's Booker Prize.

>192 wandering_star:, 193 Thanks wandering_star and Rebecca; The Wandering Falcon is currently available in the UK, but it won't come out in the US until October. Pigeon English is available on both sides of the pond.

>194 Cait86: I liked Pigeon English better than I thought I would based on the reviews, Cait. It seems that everyone hated the use of the pigeon, but I only found it to be a mild distraction.

My next novel from this year's longlist will be either A Cupboard Full of Coats or Jamrach's Menagerie. I'll be in London in two weeks, and I'll pick up the remaining books from the longlist then. I'm especially eager to read The Sense of an Ending, On Canaan's Side and Half Blood Blues.

>195 baswood: Thanks, Barry. The Wandering Falcon is currently available in the UK, BTW.

I think I am getting a bit bogged down in London: The Biography, and I'll probably read it in bits and pieces. I've wanted to get to River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh for awhile, so I think I'll start it now and see if it grabs me as tightly as Sea of Poppies did.

Hi Darryl! Thanks for visiting your thread. You've got many great reviews! I've got Pigeon English waiting to be read - so thanks for the review. Partitions is another book that caught my eye for the early review - once again, a wonderful review.. and just above me I see that you have read and reviewed yet another Booker Contender. Great review, and onto my shortly to be ordered list of books.

>198 vancouverdeb: Thanks, Deb! I'll look for your reviews of these and other books from this year's Booker Prize longlist.

Book #112: London: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd



My rating:

This weighty tome about the life of the city of London was a massive disappointment, and a grueling and nearly impossible book to read. It isn't a biography in the linear sense, rather it is a collection of short chapters about different aspects of the city throughout its history, including its rivers, churches, theatres, and outcasts. Each chapter consists mainly of quotes from other sources, and its lack of narrative flow makes for an exceptionally dry and thoroughly unrewarding read, which reminded me of an 800 page essay written by a college freshman. Anyone brave enough to tackle this book is advised to read it in tiny segments, or, as I did, skim the book to read the most interesting sections.

Thanks for the warning about London. I've read the same author's book Thames and my thoughts were about the same as yours. There were some interesting bits, and I'm fascinated by the Thames, but overall it was torture to read. I had considered giving London a try anyway, but now I think I'll look for a different book on London.

#110 I'm loving the The Wandering Falcon. Thank you for sharing the link to the NPR interview. I liked the line that "the tribe is the basic building block of civilization".

I'm not surprised by your unhappy face for London: The biography. I have not read it, but have read Hawksmoor some time ago and found it dry in places.

I had a similar experience with Peter Ackroyd when I tried reading his biography of William Blake. Unlike you, I didn't manage to finish it.

>201 Nickelini: Thanks for warning me about Thames, Joyce. I would have purchased it if I had enjoyed London: The Biography or if someone here said that it was good, but I'll avoid it, and all other books by Peter Ackroyd, from now.

>202 labfs39: I'm glad that you're enjoying The Wandering Falcon, Lisa. I liked that line, as well. I hope that Jamil Ahmad writes another book or two, despite his advanced age as a debut author.

>203 baswood: Thanks again for your original comment about Ackroyd in message #195. Your comment was the first one that made me realize that I wasn't enjoying London: The Biography not because I wasn't focusing on it properly, but because it was a tedious read.

>204 RidgewayGirl: I can't honestly claim to have finished London: The Biography, as I skimmed through most of it. However, I think I read enough of the first 150 pages and the remainder of the book that I skimmed to form an accurate impression about it.

In contrast to the Ackroyd book, Real Bloomsbury is a delightful read so far. The author has lived there for a dozen years, and his book is at once a history of the neighborhood, a walking tour of its buildings and streets, and a memoir of his experiences living there, including an unforgettable account of what he saw on 7/7, the day of the London bombings, as he passed by Tavistock Square on his way back home from the British Library. I'll finish it this week, and bring it with me to London next week.

Darryl - Enjoying your reviews, and looking forward to more of your reviews from the Booker list. I always have this thought that one year I should join you (and now, your group), maybe next year. I'm entertained by, but not at all surprised by your Ackroyd review.

#205 - Bloomsbury is one of the nicest bits of London to stroll around (especially if you include Fitzrovia, which is the area to the west of Tottenham Court Road). Where are you planning to go during your trip?

>206 dchaikin: Thanks, Dan. I think that everyone has been surprised by the longlisted books that were selected (and the ones which were not).

>207 wandering_star: I haven't walked through Fitzrovia, but I did stay in Bloomsbury last summer (at the Hotel Russell on Russell Square) and walked through the neighborhood, so I can easily envision most of the buildings that Nicholas Murray describes in Real Bloomsbury.

I'll stay in Holborn (arrive on Aug 26, leave on Sep 18), at a hotel located midway between the Holborn and Covent Garden tube stations. This will be my fourth trip to the capital in the past five years, and thanks to LT I've met several people from the 75 Books club on previous visits (and I'll meet at least two or three others while I'm there). I'll see two National Theatre (NT) plays with one friend ("FELA!" on Aug 27, and "The Kitchen" on Sep 10), and we're hoping to get same day tickets for "One Man, Two Guvnors", which is completely sold out so far. The two "Double Feature" performances (two shows, each featuring two new works) at the NT sound interesting, so I'll see them, probably by myself. At least four of us are planning to meet in Cambridge on Aug 30, and I'll probably spend another day with a friend there. I have tickets to attend Michael Ondaatje's talk at the British Museum on Aug 31, and Simon Schama's lecture at the National Theatre on Sep 5. I'll definitely visit the Tate Modern to see the Joan Miró exhibit before it closes on Sep 11, and the Wellcome Collection's "Dirt" exhibit before it closes on Aug 31. I'd like to see two or three of the BBC Proms performances at Royal Albert Hall, particularly the ones that feature the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra just before Last Night. I'll almost certainly spend three or four days in Paris toward the end of my stay via Eurostar (somewhere between Sep 11-15), and I might take a day trip to Brussels (also via Eurostar, since it's less than a two hour trip from St Pancras station).

Darryl - sounds like a fabulous trip! Lucky you. So different from the way I see cities now that I have a family in tow. Enjoy!

Sounds like a wonderful and well planned trip! I'm curious: on what topic will Michael Ondaatje be speaking? I simply loved Anil's Ghost, and although I haven't given it a reread yet (my litmus test for a true 5 star book), I consider it one of my all time favorites.

I saw Fela as one of the National Theatre's global transmissions and was really taken by it. As good as the music is and as much as it is about the music, it is about Fela. I believe you will enjoy it. If you don't yet know about him, I suggest that you at least look at the Wikipedia account of his career.

One Man, Two Guvnors, if I understand correctly, is the first play to be transmitted globally in the coming season. I am hoping that the transmissions will continue to be received near me.

The prospect of your trip is wonderful. I hope you have fun.

Robert

Enjoy yourself in London Darryl. I will be interested if you can post something about the Ondaatje talk.

>209 Nickelini: Thanks, Joyce. One benefit of being a SINK (single income, no kids) is that I'm free to travel unencumbered, which leads to sighs and wistful looks among my friends who do have children.

>210 labfs39: Ondaatje will be talking with fellow author Geoff Dyer (Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi) about his latest novel The Cat's Table, which will be released in the UK on August 25 and in the US in October. It's about an 11 year old boy who travels by ocean liner from Ceylon to England in the 1950s to live with his divorced mother, and his life as an adult as it compares to this idyllic voyage. It's apparently based in part on Ondaatje's own journey from Ceylon to England in 1954; he lived in south London before he eventually moved to Canada. I read the first section of the book, which appeared in the May 16 issue of The New Yorker (link here, subscribers only, though), and I can't wait to start reading it next week. Here's a link to his Aug 31 talk at the British Museum, if anyone else will be in London and is interested in going; if so, please let me know:

Michael Ondaatje in conversation with Geoff Dyer

>211 Mr.Durick: Thanks for your comments about FELA!, Robert. I'm downloading a sample of the book Fela: This Bitch of a Life by Carlos Moore onto my Kindle, and if it's good I'll probably read it before I see the play. I have Fela's CD The Best of the Black President, which I love, but I admittedly know very little about the man. One of my work partners is currently in London with her husband, and they are going to tonight's performance.

Triple thanks for mentioning the NT Live broadcasts! The live broadcast of One Man, Two Guvnors is on Sep 15, and it's being shown at several London theatres. If Fliss and I can't get tickets for a performance at the NT then I'll definitely see it that day. Unfortunately, the only theatre that shows these performances in Georgia is located in Macon, which is about two hours south of Atlanta; otherwise I would see these broadcasts on a regular basis. I see that The Kitchen will be broadcast on Oct 6; I'll let you know what I think of it when we see it on Sep 10.

>212 baswood: I'll definitely post comments about Ondaatje's talk here, Barry, and a review of the book at the same time. If possible, I like to have read the book of interest before I attend the author's talk, and I should be able to read The Cat's Table before the 31st.

Sounds like a wonderful trip! Despite having just returned from the UK myself (a trip which was full of interesting things including the Dirt exhibition), I am very jealous.

Incidentally, another highlight of my trip was the exhibition of animation which is currently on at the Barbican. I don't know if you would have time to fit it in though - there are so many films available to watch that we spent 5 hours there, and could easily have stayed another couple of hours if we hadn't had to meet someone.

>214 wandering_star: Thanks for mentioning The Animation Show, and the Barbican, one of the many places in London I haven't visited yet but want to see. I should be able to see that show, as I have plenty of still unplanned days.

Interesting news about the new Ondaatje book. I loved Anil's Ghost and enjoyed Running in the Family, so I'm excited to hear he's writing another Sri Lanka book. It's available August 30th in Canada (well, available to order from Amazon.CA . . . interesting that it's coming out in the UK first).

A Cupboard Full of Coats by Yvvette Edwards



My rating:

Jinx is a beautiful but deeply troubled east Londoner born to Caribbean immigrants, whose life was shattered 14 years ago when her mother Joy was brutally murdered by Berris, her second husband and Jinx's stepfather. Jinx blames her own jealousy and spite for her mother's murder, and has shut herself off from everyone, including her ex-husband and their young son, until the day that Lemon, Berris' best friend and a man she has admired since she first met him as a teenager, knocks on her front door. Lemon seeks to makes amends for his role in her mother's murder, now that Berris has just completed his prison sentence. During an intense weekend, filled with deep emotions and tempered by Lemon's irresistible cooked meals, the two relive their own separate and interlinked past histories, the passionate but troubled relationship between Berris and Joy, and the seemingly benign but malicious acts that led to Joy's murder.

A Cupboard Full of Coats is an intense and gripping debut novel which was an interesting selection for the Booker Prize longlist. I don't expect it to be selected for this year's shortlist, as it lacks the rich character development and complexity of the typical Booker fare. However, this being a far from typical year for the prize, I wouldn't be completely surprised if it does appear amongst the six finalists.

You are getting through those Booker longlist books and it would seem The stranger's child is way out in front

>218 baswood: That's exactly right, Barry. I fully expect to see The Stranger's Child on the shortlist, and would be somewhat surprised if Pigeon English or A Cupboard Full of Coats made the cut.

The Broken Word by Adam Foulds



My rating:

This is a powerful and damning epic poem about the brutality inflicted by British colonialists on ordinary Kenyans and freedom fighters during the Mau Mau Uprising, also known as the Kenyan Emergency, which took place there from 1952-1960 and cost the lives of tens of thousands of Kenyans and 200 colonialists. The main character, Tom, is a British lad on the cusp of adulthood, whose father volunteers his services after members of the Mau Mau resistance group are reported to have savagely murdered other Kenyans who refused to take the oath to fight against the colonialists, or die in the process. Those suspected of being Mau Mau fighters are hunted down and shot like wild animals, or, worse yet, are captured, tortured and forced to work under the most inhumane conditions until they die of starvation or injury. Tom, encouraged by fellow colonialists and his family, is quickly transformed from a reluctant observer to an active participant in the worsening brutality.

As the poem closes, Tom appears to have returned to a more normal existence, as he enters university and falls in love with another student. However, we are able to glimpse the subtle behaviors and beliefs that will surely haunt Tom and those nearest to him throughout the remainder of his life.

The Broken Word won the Costa Award for Poetry in 2008 and the Somerset Maugham Award in 2009, and deservedly so. This is easily one of the best poetry collections I've read, and its deeply moving passages deserve to be read by anyone with an interest in the Kenyan independence movement.

The Broken Word sounds fascinating, Darryl. Most, but not all, of my knowledge of Kenya comes from Ngugi wa Thiong'o.

>221 rebeccanyc: Same here, Rebecca. I did download a Kindle sample of Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya, Caroline Elkins' Pulitzer Prize winning book about the Mau Mau Uprising, and I'll look at it soon.

Melville House Publishing has a special offer on one of its books, Spurious by Lars Iyer, in honor of its selection for the shortlist of the tongue-in-cheek Not the Booker Prize that is "awarded" by the Guardian (the winner gets a Guardian mug). For a limited time, e-book editions of the book are on sale for $1.11; I downloaded the MOBI file of the book onto my laptop, via Kindle for PC, and transferred it to my Kindle. More info and a description of the book here: http://mhpbooks.com/book.php?id=488

#222, We have Imperial Reckoning and I think my sweetie started it; it apparently is gruesome as well as grim.

>223 rebeccanyc: I've read some mixed reviews about it, as some claim that the number of Kenyans killed during the Uprising is greatly exaggerated, and that the Mau Mau rebels are portrayed in an overly sympathetic manner. There is an excellent chance that I'll still read it, despite these criticisms.

Excellent recommendation for The broken Word Darryl. It's on my to buy list

Real Bloomsbury by Nicholas Murray



My rating:

Real Bloomsbury is one of the best books about a neighborhood or city that I've ever read. The author has lived in Bloomsbury for the past dozen years, and it is at once a walking tour, a history of the neighborhood and its people, a short but vivid description of the main members of the Bloomsbury Group, and a personal account of the author's life as a Bloomsbury resident, including the day of the London bombings on 7/7, as he passed by Tavistock Square and Russell Square, the sites of the two of the bombings. I felt as if I was walking alongside him as he described what he saw and what he loved about the streets and buildings, and my repeated travels through the neighborhood in the past few years allowed me to appreciate the book that much more. I'm sure that I visibly beamed when he lovingly described the London Review Bookshop, my favorite London bookstore, and I know that I had a smile on my face at the end of the book. There aren't many books that gave me as much delight as this one, and I look forward to reading it again later this week as I walk along the streets of Bloomsbury.

On to the wishlist it goes . . . I'm sure he mentioned Virginia Woolf now and again.

>227 Nickelini: Yes, Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group was the last topic discussed in the book, although she was mentioned in several earlier sections.

Enjoyed your review of Real Bloomsbury Darryl. I am a subscriber to the London Review of books and have often wondered what the bookshop is like. It is a bit too far north of the river for me though.

The London Review Bookshop is located on Bury Place, 1/2 block south of Great Russell Street, a stone's throw away from the campus of the British Museum. It's considerably smaller than City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, but it has an excellent selection of quality literature, nonfiction and poetry. Like City Lights, all of the books are new ones (actually, City Lights does have a couple of shelves of used books in the upstairs Poetry Room), all sold at list price, and in both stores I've discovered superb books whose authors were unfamiliar to me (the last one being The White Family by Maggie Gee). The staff there is very helpful and knowledgeable, and the shop is airy and comfortable. The shop recently purchased the store next door to it, and converted it into a Cake Shop, which has very nice salads, sandwiches, quiche and soups. One of my friends from the 75 Books club works for the LRB, and she's taken me for lunch there several times on past visits, as it's very close to the LRB's office on Little Russell Street.

This is an excerpt from Nicholas Murray's description of the shop from Real Bloomsbury:

If Bloomsbury's reputation is still one of literary and intellectual life, then the London Review Bookshop on Bury Place...must be one of its nerve centres. Linked to the London Review of Books,...the shop opened in the spring of 2003 and aimed to be, what it palpably is, a real bookshop for serious readers. No paid-for window displays, no three-for-twos, no hype or marketing nonsense, it is the sort of bookshop Parisians, for example, would take for granted, but which is increasingly rare in Britain. The window display actually makes you stop and look. There might, you think, actually be the best and most important new books of the month rather than some rubbish which the publisher has to bribe the bookshop to exhibit. Inside everything is clean and new and stylish and there really does seem to be at least one copy of everything.

I'll head there on Friday afternoon, after I've checked in to my hotel room in nearby Holborn.

Darryl, that looks so enticing.

Have a wonderful trip, Darryl!

>231 baswood: Yes, the bookshop and the cafe are friendly, inviting, and very enticing.

>232 rebeccanyc: Thanks, Rebecca! I'll bring my netbook with me, and I'll post updates and highlights every day or two.

I'll second that about the London Review Bookstore. It is wonderful, but alas, it is 6000 miles away from me. have a wonderful trip - I know you will!!

Just popping by to say hi. Been enjoying your reviews.

>234 catarina1: Thanks, Catarina!

>235 janemarieprice: Hi, Jane! It's good to see you here.

While I suspect you'll be out enjoying London rather than posting updates for us, I'm looking forward to reading about your adventures. Enjoy yourself thoroughly!

Hope you are having a wonderful trip! Happy book browsing and music listening.

Darryl, Atlanta misses you. We had our first cooling day of rain today-- such a blessed relief!

>237 RidgewayGirl: Yikes, I haven't posted a message here since I came to London. Must change that.

>238 labfs39: Yes, I'm enjoying my trip to London. I've bought nearly two dozen books, visited three friends from the 75 Books club in Cambridge, and read seven of the 13 books from this year's Booker Prize longlist. Today will be a rainy and windy day here, so I'll stay inside and catch up on reviews, while I await today's announcement of this year's Booker shortlist.

I'll post reviews, comments and photos on a new thread, since I'm nearly at the end of this one.

>239 GCPLreader: I didn't miss being in Atlanta yesterday, after I received a dozen or more text messages about tornado watches and warnings in and around the city. I hope that you're doing okay.

The shortlist for this year's Booker Prize has just been announced. The six finalists are:

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan
Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman
Snowdrops by A.D. Miller

The prize will be awarded in London on October 18.

Book #116: From the Observatory by Julio Cortázar



My rating:

This prose poem was written by Cortázar in 1973, after his 1968 visit to the Jantar Mantar, a collection of 14 geometrical instruments built in the 18th century by Maharaja Jaipur Singh in Jaipur, the capital of the Indian state of Rajasthan. During his visit, Cortázar took approximately 300 photos of these instruments, some of which are included in the book.

Cortázar employs imagery from these instruments in a poem about the cosmos, man's place in it, and the brutal and unforgiving lives of eels.

This poem went completely over my head, as I didn't understand what Cortázar was getting at, and I felt as confused as if I was reading it in a completely foreign language. Even worse, I read a recent review of the book, and I didn't understand it, either! I didn't like or dislike it, so I'll give it 3 stars because I have no idea how to rate the book.

Book #117: Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch



My rating:

This novel takes place in the middle of the 19th century, and is narrated by Jaffy Brown, who is born to a struggling single mother in the Bermondsey section of London. He experiences a second birth eight years later, as he is rescued from the jaws of a tiger he has decided to pet on the nose by its owner, Charles Jamrach, a big hearted exotic animal collector and breeder. He employs Jaffy, and introduces him to Tim Linver, an older boy who also works for Jamrach, who befriends, and torments, the young lad.

Jaffy and Tim become young men, and both are lured away by the call of the sea, as opportunities for each of them on land are quite limited. They join the crew of a whaling ship, whose wealthy owner charges them with an even greater task: to bring back a live dragon from an island in the South Pacific, which has been described by several travelers but never captured. However, a great tragedy befalls the crew, and the journey becomes a long and tortuous struggle against starvation, hopelessness, destiny and death, which is described in detail throughout the latter half of the book.

Jamrach's Menagerie was apparently based upon a true story. It was an interesting story, but only moderately so. The supporting characters were thinly portrayed, as were the description of life aboard a whaling ship. The narration during and after the shipwreck was the strongest part of the novel, but it was often gruesome and went on far too long. This book is a curious selection for this year's Booker Prize longlist, and I am surprised, and a bit disappointed, that it made the shortlist.

Book #118: The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje



My rating:

Michael is a precocious yet naïve 11 year old boy living with relatives in Ceylon, now known as Sri Lanka, in the mid 1950s. His mother, who divorced from her husband years before and moved to England, has sent for her son. He is placed aboard a spacious ocean liner for the three week journey, supposedly under the watchful eye of a wealthy friend of the family, but he is essentially left to fend for himself when he is not dining at "the cat's table", so named because it is situated far away from the tables of the captain and the most important passengers.

Michael quickly makes the acquaintance of two other preadolescent boys; Cassius, a troublesome betel-chewing older boy, who was expelled from school but has been selected to attend school in England; and Ramadhin, an introspective and mournful lad. The three unsupervised boys wreak mild to moderate havoc throughout the journey, occasionally accompanied by Michael's alluring and wild teenage cousin Emily, yet they remain just out of reach of harm's way.

The boys encounter and are befriended by a variety of intriguing adult passengers, including an alluring older woman who maintains a stock of birds and wears a coat with pockets for them to be displayed; a musician with two names and even more secrets; and a wealthy man who is dying from a curse placed upon him by a religious man and desperately seeks a cure in Europe. The most mysterious passenger is kept in shackles for a particularly heinous crime, and is only allowed on deck late at night, where the boys observe him with fascination, fear and respect.

The journey marks a transition from the innocence of childhood to the tragedies and disappointments of adulthood for the three boys, although they emerge physically unscathed. The second half of the book describes their intertwined lives, which continue to be influenced by the events of the voyage.

The Cat's Table is a compelling drama, filled with comedy, irreverence and intrigue, with well portrayed characters. Ondaatje does a masterful job in describing the voyage aboard the ocean liner, the mindset of Michael and his young companions, and the sense of ever present menace that held this reader's attention throughout the book. I can't understand why this wasn't selected for this year's Booker Prize longlist, as it compares well with the best of the lot, but it should be a strong contender for this year's Giller Prize.

Ondaatje does a masterful job in describing the voyage aboard the ocean liner,

I read in the Globe and Mail on the weekend that while writing the book, Ondaatje took a transatlantic voyage by ship. He also was a boy named Michael who sailed from Ceylon to England in the 1950s, but he says he's not the boy in the book. It sounds like all of this lived experience contributed to his writing a good book.

The Cat's Table sounds great, and I'll have to look for it. I've been meaning to read From the Observatory since I got it from Archipelago, and now I know I may be mystified by it -- thanks!

Book #123: Down the Rabbit Hole by Juan Pablo Villalobos



My rating:

This novella, which was longlisted for this year's Guardian First Book Award, is narrated by Tochtli, an 8 year old boy whose father Yolcaut is a ruthless Mexican drug lord who resides in a heavily guarded mountain hideout. The boy is similarly isolated, as he does not know his mother and has only met a dozen or so people, nearly all of whom work for or with his father. Other than his father, his closest companions are his teacher, Mazatzin, who provides an alternative view of manhood and morality to his paranoid and ruthless father, and the books that keep him occupied and supplement his advanced vocabulary.

The hideout is filled with exotic animals, but Tochtli wants a pygmy hippopotamus from Liberia more than anything else in the world. Yolcaut eventually gives in to his son's demands, and he takes Tochtli to Monrovia, along with his teacher, where they assume false identities and employ a local guide to hunt down the elusive and rare animal.

Down the Rabbit Hole was a mildly interesting read, which held my interest for its 70 pages, but would have been overly tiresome and repetitive had it been much longer, primarily due to Tochtli's repeated use of vocabulary words such as sordid, disastrous and pathetic. This book isn't worth anything close to the £10 I spent on it, so I'd recommend borrowing it if you want to read it.

>245 Nickelini: Right, Rebecca; he took a similar voyage from Ceylon to England at roughly the same age and at the same time. However, his author's note at the conclusion of the book says that "Although the novel sometimes uses the colouring and locations of memoir and autobiography, The Cat's Table is fictional—from the captain and crew and all its passengers on the boat down to the narrator." Sadly enough, I bought a ticket to hear Mr Ondaatje talk last week at the British Museum, which is a short walk from the hotel I'm staying at, but I fell asleep and missed it entirely.

>246 rebeccanyc: If you read From the Observatory and understand it, I'd appreciate it if you explained it to me! Fortunately it's a short book, as I'm sure you've noticed.

Excellent review of The cat's table Darryl. Its good to see that Ondaatje does not disappoint. I will look forward to reading this.

Hope you are not getting too wet in London

Book #124: Weep Not, Child by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o



My rating:

Ngũgĩ's powerful debut novel about colonial Kenya was released in 1964 while he was a student at the University of Leeds, and was the first book published in English by an East African. The story is centered around Njoroge, a young Kenyan boy within a loving but impoverished household who is overjoyed when his father Ngotho is able to pay for him to attend school, an opportunity that was not made available to his older brothers. Ngotho is barely able to provide for his family as he works for Mr Howlands, a white landowner who views the Africans who work for him as savages who are barely more useful or worthy of his attention than his farm animals. The property that Ngotho and his family lives on is owned by Jacobo, a wealthier black Kenyan who is supportive of the Mr Howlands and other colonialists and oppresses and torments Ngotho and other landless natives.

Ngotho is challenged by an older son to take a stand against his employer and participate in the nationwide strike against white rule, subsistence wages, and laws designed by the colonialists to restrict most black Kenyans from advancement. The strike is brutally repressed, and Ngotho and his family suffer as a result. The failure of the strike leads to the Mau Mau uprising, in which nationalists commit acts of violence against colonialists, and black Kenyans who do not agree with their oath of loyalty. Njoroge is caught in the middle of the struggle, as he does not take the oath of loyalty but is opposed to colonialists and the natives that benefit from their rule. His older brothers join the freedom fighters, as the conflict
threatens the lives Njoroge and the other members of his family, and he is forced to decide whether to continue with his education or take a stand with or against his brothers and his father.

Weep Not, Child is a superb first novel, as Ngũgĩ convincingly places the reader amidst the difficult decisions and violence that many ordinary Kenyans faced during the early days of the independence movement. I would have enjoyed this novel more if some of the key supporting characters had been better developed, but this is a minor criticism of this highly recommended book.

>249 baswood: Thanks, Barry. It was a wet and windy day in London, but it was a good day to do laundry, read a couple of books, and keep abreast of the Booker Prize shortlist announcement.

Did you notice you similar your review is to the only other one, cameling's? I think I'll pass on this one, despite being an Archipelago Book.

You missed Ondaatje's lecture? :-( I was hoping to hear all about it. I think he's an excellent writer. Anil's Ghost is a favorite. I'm just sorry that they ever made a movie out of The English Patient. Now my mind's eye is clouded by Hollywood whenever I think of it.

Excellent review of Weep Not, Child, too. I'll keep my eyes open for it.

>252 labfs39: Yes, I definitely noticed that my review is essentially the same as Caroline's; we had talked about From the Observatory, and had the same opinion about it. I think it's a book that would be best appreciated by those readers with a more formal literary background than I have, so I wouldn't want to dissuade anyone from giving it a try.

I could kick myself for missing Ondaatje's talk!

I primarily read Weep Not, Child now because Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is the mini-author that lilisin's Author Theme Reads group is focusing on for the next four months. He is one of my favorite authors, and I've read several of his later novels, most notably the fabulous Wizard of the Crow. I haven't read many of his earlier novels, and I'll read those in the near future, particularly The River Between and Devil on the Cross.

New thread here!