November 2022: Ends and Endings

Back in May, we did a Beginnings: https://www.librarything.com/topic/340682

So it is now time for its paired thread: the "Ends and Endings".

Did you start something new this year (or maybe in May) and you want to finish it now? Or do you want to read about the end of an empire or a life or a war? Or maybe the end of a story in a series you had been reading forever and just have one last book to read. Or maybe a last book/story by an author who will never publish again?

There are a lot of ways to end a story. And if you want to look at it that way, everything is a story - a life, a history, a process - they all can be stories. So which story's ending would you read this month?

I'll have to scour my personal library for this. I must have something that is about endings.

I may read other books that will fit this topic but for sure, I am going to be reading The Empty Glass by J. I. Baker. This is a novel about the end of the life of Marilyn Monroe.

A while ago I happened upon Werner Herzog's the twilight world but hadn't read it. Noticed it in my tbr shelf, its about the Japanese soldier in the Phillipines who is ordered to remain on the island in 1945, unaware that the war has ended. He was found in 1972. So I am thinking this is about his war ended after 30 years.

I think that this might be the perfect opportunity to read The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, but I am not sure yet.

I'm tentatively stacking Henry VIII (by William Shakespeare) for this month. It's the last of the Histories on my list (chronologically indexed by reign of the kings).

We are making reading plans for 2023 - please come and join in:

https://www.librarything.com/topic/345058#

Thank you for sending me a link to this fascinating group, Judy.

As you know I do have quite a few books to choose from at home on the shelves so I am sure that I can come up with something for next month.

I decided to go with a theme of death. :-)

My options (or at least my first choices) are both from the same author, Caitlyn Doughty:

Will My Cat Eat my Eyeballs?
or
From Here to Eternity

I'm going to read Washington, D.C. and The Golden Age, the sixth and seventh in Gore Vidal's "Narratives of Empire" heptalogy. More precisely, they're the sixth and seventh in order of the story, although Washington, D.C. was the first in publication order (and The Golden Age in publication order was seventh).

The best book (of the other five, all of which I've read) in the series is definitely Burr, where Aaron Burr appears with that catty, snarky voice we associate with Vidal himself. In Empire, there's a cute scene where Henry James makes a cameo appearance on a visit from England, talking like a late Jamesian novel with those 300-word sentences! (Vidal wasn't making fun of James; it was James the character engaging in some self-mockery when he walks in on, as I recall, Henry Adams and Secretary of State John Hay while the two are dining privately.)

Hollywood is especially interesting for the presidency of Warren Harding, whom I consider our most underrated (not great, but most underrated) president and who gets respectful treatment from Vidal the anti-interventionist. In fact, I'm surprised that Vidal gives Woodrow Wilson the relatively easy-going treatment that he does, considering that Wilson's interventionism was antithetical to everything Vidal believed in.

Lincoln was the weak novel of the five. It was just a little too reverential, although it's important for its use of John Hay (the younger of Lincoln's two private secretaries) as narrator, considering Hay's reappearance in the series in Empire as McKinley's and early TR's Secretary of State.

Going to read shepherd's crown the last of pratchetts Discworld series (actually completed and published by his daughter after he passed) The intro rather fits the theme I think

A shivering of worlds.

Deep in the Chalk, something is stirring. The owls and the foxes can sense it, and Tiffany Aching feels it in her boots. An old enemy is gathering strength.

This is a time of endings and beginnings, old friends and new, a blurring of edges and a shifting of power. Now Tiffany stands between the light and the dark, the good and the bad.

As the fairy horde prepares for invasion, Tiffany must summon all the witches to stand with her. To protect the land. Her land.

There will be a reckoning…

Forgot that this book features its own ending, at the beginning of the book, the death of a beloved character. Even Death had a tear in his eye socket

I am going to read A Thousand Beginnings and Endings by Ellen Oh. This is a book of short stories based on fairy tale and folk tales from the Far East. I have had a copy of this book for years so it is time to get it read.

Oh Ive heard about that one, Ill be curious what you think!

I hope to read The Village by Marghanita Laski (1952), which starts in a small village on the last day of WWII in Europe: VE Day, May, 1945. The book explores how that ending impacts the village way of life.

Sometimes endings are beginnings which seems to be the case with Trent's Last Case, a classic mystery that I pulled off my shelves. By it's title, I think it should fit this month's theme.

>16 Familyhistorian: "In my beginning is my end. Of your kindness, pray for the soul of Thomas Stearns Eliot, poet. In my end is my beginning."

If I have time I might read in flanders fields: 100 years Writing on War, Loss and rememberance for this theme, in honor of Armistace Day. or here in the states, Veterans Day, the last day of WWI. the war to end all wars. sigh

>18 cindydavid4: Oh, that looks interesting! I hope you'll post a review if you read it.

I will. Just found it on ABE for a decent price, should get it next week

I was disappointed with my read entitled The Empty Glass by J. I. Baker. It was meant to be a hard hitting noir story involving the death of Marilyn Monroe but unfortunately the author couldn't pull it off and the book was rather a mess.

I was going to save this book for December's prompt of "Reader's Choice" but it will fit here (and TBH, with my End-of-Year-Reading Crush schedule!): The Color of Lightning is the last of three of Paulette Jiles's books that feature Britt Johnson, a Black teamster in the Civil War (and after). For The Old West prompt, I listened to the other two books, News of the World and Simon the Fiddler (narrated by Grover Gardner) where Britt is a secondary/tertiary character. Now he gets his own leading role! I haven't started it yet; but I expect something, something Civil War, Texas and, Native Americans... well told and interesting. We'll see!

I finally got around to starting Thousand Beginnings and Endings edited by Ellen Oh and so far it is pretty good. The stories are all interesting, but a couple of them are definitely better than the others. All of them are retellings of Asian folktales and fairytales. The narrator for the recorded version is good and easy to listen to. I am listening to it in the car and this is one recorded version that I had to turn the volume up in order to hear it clearly.

This book is a prime example of paratext in action. I am listening to it, and that is a different format than the print. It is a book of short stories based in Asian fairytales and folktales. At the end of each short story there is a note about where each tale came from, and why the author took that particular view, update, or twist on that tale. I didn't realize this. When I heard the end of the story the recorded version has no (or very little) break between the story and the addendum. As I was listening to the end of the first story, I thought it was a terrible way to end a story. It wasn't until I listened to the third story that I figured out what was going on. As soon as I got into the house I checked the print copy of the book and sure enough, the printed page on which the story ended had a clear demarcation between the story and the added author's notes. This readily apparent information was not as easily translated to the recorded version as in the print version. However, now that I know what is going on, I am sure that it will not bother me.

>23 benitastrnad: I thought I ordered this but apparentlynot. looking forward to reading i t

Im more or less done with Flanders Fields 100 Years
This was a compilation of letters, essays , poems written by Canadian writers for the centenial of the war's end. A lot of great writing here, very moving/ More or less done, towards the end it felt like everyone was saying the same thingso I skimmed. But the photos taken during the war spoke a thousand words. Highly recommended

>24 cindydavid4: I might have to add this to the tbr...

Ok, so not so much in the way of history here (but a bit here and there); I chose this based on tags. Maybe should have chosen her other one on my tbr, but I'm hoping that will come in at the library in December and I can read it in the "Reader's Choice" month

Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? / Caitlin Doughty
4 stars

This is a book of essays answering kids’ questions about death. The author is a funeral director in California and she answers questions like: What would happen to an astronaut body in space? Will I poop when I die? What would happen if you died on a plane? Can I be buried in the same grave as my hamster? Add to that the book’s title question, and more.

The author reads the book herself, but she also does plenty of youtube videos and a blog, I think. Anyway, she does a good job and I find this stuff fascinating! She does a good job of mixing in some humour to go along with the rest of the explanations, as well. There is some science and history, as well, depending on the question/answer.

The title Trent’s Last Case, was correct. The case in this book was one that ended his faith in himself as a gifted amateur detective. After that he swore he wouldn’t attempt to solve another mysterious murder. It was good to read a classic of the mystery genre.

I think D-Day was considered the beginning of the end of WWII?

Omaha Beach: D-Day, June 6, 1944 / Joseph Balkoski
3.75 stars

This is a detailed account, much of it using primary sources, of the invasion of Omaha Beach in Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944. It was primarily American soldiers who landed here; Canadian and British soldiers landed on other beaches that day.

I actually liked the author’s narration a bit better than the many primary source quotes he used to illustrate (and expand on) the things he was talking about. Partly, that may have been the smaller font of the quotes vs my (getting older) eyes! I tended to sometimes skim over some of those quotes. But the amount of detail and research that went into this is amazing. Very much like Cornelius Ryan’s account of D-Day as a whole (published in 1959, and used in Balkoski’s research, as well).

Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris is another good one by this author. The Act of Oblivion was signed by Charles II to find and condemn to death the men who signed the death warrant for his father’s (Charles I) execution and that resulted in bringing Oliver Cromwell to power. Most of the men were found. The story is mainly about two of those men who escaped to America, thus ending their way of life in England and leaving their families behind, and the story of the man who relentlessly hunted them. I really liked this book. Although a novel, the author states that most of the people and the timeline are factual.

A wonderful book I've read this year that fits this topic is The Family Moskat by Isaac Bashevis Singer. It's a must-generational family novel about the final half-century of Jewish life in Poland. The books begins at the turn of the 20th century and ends with German bombs falling over Warsaw.

>30 rocketjk: I've had that one on the TBR for a while...glad to hear good things about it...maybe next year.

>31 kac522: I never did post my review of the book on its work page, but if you're interested in a longish review with some quotes, you can find it on both my 50-Book Challenge thread and on my second Club Read thread for this year. Here's a direct link to the former:

https://www.librarything.com/topic/338366#7898495

>32 rocketjk: Thanks, it sounds more approachable than huge combined volume I have of The Manor and The Estate. I've read Shosha and a few stories.

Just in time for the theme, a thousand beginnings and endings 16 retellings of asian myths and legends.

Wrapped up, The Color of Lightning (by Paulette Jiles) - A historical fiction based on the real life personage of Britt Johnson, this is very different from her subsequent novels News of the World and Simon the Fiddler which take place in the same "universe" and in which Britt makes brief appearances. "TCOL" opens with a rather shockingly graphic description of the Elk Creek Raid in 1864-- So, yeah, it starts off a bit intense; but it pulls you into the time & place immediately. Britt Johnson was a Black Freedman who settled in Texas while the Civil War was winding down in the East. His family would be taken from him in a Comanche-Kiowa raid and; he would go on a legendary search for them.

I remember reading an interview with Kim Stanley Robinson once where he said the writing The Years of Rice and Salt nearly broke him. And if you are a reader of his works, you can see how after that, his writing isn't nearly as sharp & sophisticated. It's still good and even great, but just not as great as "TYORAS". I feel like The Color of Lightningis Paulette Jiles' The Years of Rice and Salt-- Clearly so much writing energy, skill & talent went into Britt Johnson's imagined biography; but while News of the World is really good, it's not as good. And as for Simon the Fiddler-- that feels pretty much like it was dialed in.

I finished Gore Vidal's The Golden Age, the seventh and last volume in his "Narratives of Empire" series, which covers mainly the period from just before the outbreak of WW2 through the end of the Truman Administration (but with some brief material afterwards running through the end of the century). Just before reading The Golden Age, I finished Vidal's Washington, D.C., which somewhat overlaps the time period but was the first book in the series in order of publication.

I gave The Golden Age 3½*** – somewhat reluctantly, because I was somewhere around 3¼***, but I figured I'd give it that extra little boost because it is better than Washington, D.C. (3***, a bit too much a roman à clef somewhat tracking Vidal's play The Best Man, which I don't that much care for). The best book in the series is definitely Burr, and I especially like Empire for a cute cameo appearance by Henry James and Hollywood for its favorable portrayal of Warren Harding.

I probably gave The Golden Age that slight bit of a ratings boost because of my strong agreement with Vidal's anti-interventionist foreign policy – although in expressing his politics in the novel, Vidal was a bit tendentious in his literary style.

I have finished The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. Although it is not historical fiction in a strict sense - or well, parts of it are, but large parts are not - this novel fits the topic of Reading Through Time perfectly. Time is an important aspect throughout the novel and is reflected on at length, as is history.

I loved reading this, although I am still pondering it and have not made up my mind about some of its aspects. But I am happy that, thanks to this group and this month's prompt, I have finally taken it from the shelf and read it.

>37 MissBrangwen: Oh I like Barnes (my fav it England,England but liked this one as well. a short book but lots of room for thought, about how time and memory shifts in our lives.

>35 Tanya-dogearedcopy: Oh I loved News of the world, really disappointed with Simon the Fiddler. Im a bit confused tho; How does the Color of Lightning fit with The Years of Rice and Salt (which I tried to read and couldnt get into it) thx!

>39 cindydavid4: Apologies, I'm a bit "narced out" on flu meds so I may not be the most coherent! What I was trying to convey was that The Color of Lightning (by Paulette Jiles) was very much a masterwork of the author's and; that her subsequent work pales by comparison, even as good as News of the World is. Paulette Jiles' work does not "fit in" with Kim Stanley Robinson's-- I only used his Years of Rice and Salt as an comparative example to illustrate how there could be an author's work that displayed their craft at top form; only to be succeeded by other novels that seem derivative of that same talent, even if those later works are good.

I'm sorry you couldn't get into Years of Rice and Salt. It's one of my favorites; but I can see how it wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea! I read (and re-read it) about ten years ago when I had lost my job and could indulge in exploring the text to within an inch of its life! I'm not so sure that if I were to pick it up for the first time now if I would have the patience for it. For those of you who may be reading this and wondering, "YORAS" is an alternative history of the world as if the Plague had wiped out 99% of Europe-- leaving Eastern cultures to take ascendancy. Three characters are continually reincarnated, working out their karma...

thanks for the clarification; I thought thats what you were saying but not sure. Ya know YORAS should be up my alley, middle ages, alternative HF eastern cultures. I might need to give it another try, Hope you are feeling better!

>38 cindydavid4: This was my first novel by Barnes, but I'm sure I'll read more of him! I'll keep England, England in mind.

I finished reading/listening to the collection of short stories Thousand Beginnings and Endings edited by Ellen Oh. This book is a product of the author group "We Need Diverse Books" headed by the YA author Ellen Oh. The book is a compilation of short stories based on Eastern folk and fairy tales. Each story is a retelling of a folk or fairy tale from Asia. There are Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Indian, Persian, and Vietnamese stories in the collection. Like all story collections the quality was a bit uneven, but all were interesting take-offs and interpretations. I found myself intrigued enough by the stories that I began to try to figure out what the original starting point story was as I listened to them. End notes after the story were helpful and provided arich background for the stories. I listened to most of this book and the narrators were good, but I felt they did not bring anything extra to the reading and were a bit flat. Overall, I would recommend this collection with the caveat that the reader should have some prior knowledge of the folk and fairy tales in order to fully appreciate them.

>43 benitastrnad: and there's the rub. I knew next to nothing and needed to read the small blurbs after each story to figure out what it was all about.. Those blurbs needed to be at the beginning for the reader to make any sense of whats happening. And after the first few stories ,I just tired of reading them. I really would have preferred stories from the original tales Whats ironic is that I usually love takes on fairy tales and stories but since I didn't have a background to these, the 'takes' didn't excite me all that much.

Annie thanks for setting this theme up as well as the begiining one in May. Both have brought up many interesting selections and expanded my tbr read list (aka book) as well. This has been fun!

>45 cindydavid4: It was fun indeed (I even have a book to post about but I will be late with it - I did read it in November but with the double virus that got me, I had not gotten around to a review yet). :)

I like focused themes but sometimes themes like this one and its paired one in May can be a lot of fun because people can bring in all kinds of unrelated books into it. :)