Hi, all...
I'm also doing the 1010 challenge, but just to make this a bit harder and more of a real challenge, I'm going to focus on books that aren't in that list and that are not re-reads... I'm also going to give priority to books that are on my ever-growing TBR list, although I'll reserve the right to add in some new books as more are published over the course of the year.

I'll post 10 books at a time, and once they are read (or close to being finished), I'll post the next 10. Half of each 10 will be fiction and half non-fiction. This should be a great way to reduce Mt. TBR!




Happy reading!

Best of the 75:

Passionate Minds: The Great Love Affair of the Enlightenment by David Bodanis
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor
The Cello Suites by Eric Siblin
Unlikely Allies: How a Merchant, a Playwright and a Spy Saved the American Revolution by Joel Richard Paul

Message modifié par son auteur, Mar 3, 2010, 2:11am.

The first 10 books:

*edited to bump some stuff to group 2; books that I need to read now or return to owners shortly...*

Fiction:

1. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
2. The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk
3. White Nights by Ann Cleeves ****1/2 STARTED 1/2/10, FINISHED 1/5/10
4. The Postmistress by Sarah Blake ***1/2 STARTED 1/5/10, FINISHED 1/8/10
5. Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd STARTED 3/7/10
Non-fiction

6. Passionate Minds by David Bodanis ***** STARTED 1/16/10, FINISHED 1/18/10
7. Philanthrocapitalism by Matthew Bishop
8. The Morland Hours by Katherine Swift ****1/2 STARTED 1/26/10, FINISHED 1/31/10
9. The Book of William by Paul Collins ***** STARTED 1/8/10, FINISHED 1/11/10
10. The Cello Suites by Eric Siblin ***** STARTED 1/1/10, FINISHED 1/2/10

edited: I bumped Paul Auster (I'll read him anyway...) to add a lighter novel. Sigh. I'm definitely weak-minded.

Message modifié par son auteur, Mar 7, 2010, 8:37pm.

I've just joined the 75 Challenge but already I'm discovering what a great source of new books it can be. I've looked at The Last Empress and The Book of William from your list and they look very interesting. Thanks and good luck!

Welcome! That's a great list to start the year. I enjoyed The Book of William earlier this year (2009) - hope you like it too!

Impressive list. I recently read The Postmistress and enjoyed it. Look forward to what you think.

Welcome to the group! Looks like a great list of books to start off with. I look forward to your thoughts on Philanthrocapitalism.

dr. neutron, I loved Paul Collins's first book, so I have my fingers crossed this one will be as good. Philanthrocapitalism is kind of a work book; I've got some ideas for a book of my own about philanthropy & so need to read this anyway. Suspect it will be different enough that there is room for my idea!

Since I'm cleaning up my book stalagmites on the floor, and setting things aside to read, here is a first stab at list #2:

Fiction:

1. The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald **** STARTED 3/1/10, FINISHED 3/5/10
2. The Man from Saigon by Marti Leimbach ****1/2 STARTED 3/6/10, FINISHED 3/13/10
3. Red Bones by Ann Cleeves ****1/2 STARTED 1/11/10, FINISHED 1/18/10
4. The Disappeared by M. R. Hall ***1/2 STARTED 1/8/10, FINISHED 1/10/10
5. Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz *** STARTED 1/24/10, FINISHED 1/26/10

Non-fiction:

1. On Moving: A Writer's Meditation on New Houses, Old Haunts, and Finding Home Again by Louise deSalvo **** STARTED 1/22/10, FINISHED 1/23/10
2. The Average American: The Extraordinary Search for the Nation's Most Ordinary Citizen by Kevin O'Keefe
3. The Friendship: Wordsworth and Coleridge by Adam Sisman
4. Americans in Paris by Charles Glass ***1/2 STARTED 1/19/10, FINISHED 1/21/10
5. The Last Empress by Hannah Pakula **** STARTED 2/3/10, FINISHED 2/19/10

Message modifié par son auteur, Mar 13, 2010, 5:55pm.

I can't believe that my reading list is already breaking beyond the confines I had set for it, and forcing me to adapt and expand my categories accordingly!!

The difficulty I had was deciding on a book to kick off with, but am now almost halfway through Eric Siblin's book about the Bach cello suites (with the suites themselves providing musical accompaniment!!) It's a relief to enjoy them so much as the other non-fiction book I'm reading, for the 1010 challenge, is a long, slow, plodding thing that I'll be glad to be done with. I'm not even emerging from that one feeling better-informed, either...

#9: I have Siblin's The Cello Suites in the BlackHole. I will be interested in your take on the book once you have finished it.

Alcottacre, I absolutely loved the book; my review is now up on my profile. My next non-fiction book from this list will be either Philanthrocapitalism or the Bodanis book (which is on loan), but since I can't decide, I've opted for the second in a series of great mysteries set in the Shetland Islands that I've been yearning to read.

Nice review, Suzanne! I gave it a thumbs up. I hope I can get hold of a copy soon.

Which mysteries set in the Shetland Islands are you reading? I have Raven Black by Ann Cleeves set to read this year and it is set in the Shetlands.

That's the series, alcottacre. I started with Raven Black, and am now reading White Nights. I have the third in the series en route from the UK, and my throw it into this challenge down the road.

I look forward to your thoughts on the books.

List #3
Some of these will put a dent in my 1,001 books (I recently figured out I've read about 11% of them already.)

Fiction:
1. Memento Mori by Muriel Spark **** STARTED 1/14/10, FINISHED 1/15/10
2. The Master by Colm Toibin ****1/2 STARTED 2/7/10, FINISHED 2/9/10
3. The Lambs of London by Peter Ackroyd **** READ 2/26/10
4. The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor ****1/2 READ 1/22/10
5. The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid ***** READ 2/6/10

Non-fiction:
1. Unlikely Allies by Joel Richard Paul **** 1/2 STARTED 2/24/10, FINISHED 3/3/10
2. Samuel Pepys by Claire Tomalin
3. Not Quite Paradise by Adele Barker ***1/2 STARTED 1/28/10, FINISHED 1/29/10
4. South from Barbary by Justin Marozzi
5. Water: the Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power and Civilization by Steven Solomon

Message modifié par son auteur, Mar 3, 2010, 2:13am.

I really liked The Master when I read it a couple years ago. I hope you enjoy it as well. The Lambs of London was kind of a 'meh' read for me. I hope you enjoy it better than I did.

Just finished White Nights by Ann Cleeves, the second of four mysteries set in the Shetland Islands off the coast of Scotland. (I've just added the third, Red Bones to this list.)

This is an excellent sequel to Raven Black; that book was set in the depths of winter, this one in the 'white nights' of summer in the far north, where the sun scarcely ever sets and the policeman who comes from Inverness to help local cop Jimmy Perez with the investigation finds himself being driven slowly mad by lack of sleep. Even in the tiniest communities of the Shetlands -- perhaps especially so -- residents maintain their secrets, and some of those secrets surface slowly and painfully over the course of this book as Perez investigates the death of an incomer with no apparent ties to the tiny community of Biddista. Cleeves has a knack for carefully crafting mystery stories with a lot of character detail and a real sense of place, and I'm greatly looking forward to the two remaining books in the series & then discovering more of her books. The only weakness here is the inexplicably awkward relationship between Perez and Taylor, the Inverness senior cop, which isn't well established or explained. That makes this a 4.5 star read for me.

Sounds terrific! I am glad you enjoyed it so much.

Just saw your post on rebeccanyc's thread and have spent 10 minutes looking for your thread. The cello suites book looks excellent - I love them too and have the Rostropovich recording.

Something tells me you're going to be bad for my TBR pile... mysteries, current affairs books and books about Paris!

cmt, yes, my TBR pile has been growing as a result of LT...!!
I definitely recommend the Siblin book; it's wonderful.

Not so enamored of The Postmistress, which is a yet-to-be-published book by Sarah Blake. It's an Amazon Vine offering, so I feel obliged to review it there first, but generally, the writing and the characters were very good; the plot felt very stilted. There are bits that are marvelous, and parts where the author's hand steering events ('this is what I have to do to make my point') is all too evident. I think a lot of readers will enjoy it anyway, and won't be as finicky. It's an interesting interweaving of the stories of three women during the early years of WW2 -- a postmistress in a Cape Cod town, the doctor's young wife in the same town, and a radio reporter whose broadcasts from London and occupied Europe they hear and who affects their lives in unexpected ways. I'll read more by this writer; she's got a strong voice and original ideas and her heavy hand could lighten with time.

There's a glowing review of The Cello Suites in this week's Economist. I love it when I alraedy know about books I see there!

I'm now reading a book that reminds me a bit of the Cello Suites in its approach, Paul Collins's The Book of William. Instead of examining the travels of some music through time, he's looking at Shakespeare's first folio through time. It isn't quite as good a book, so far, perhaps because we don't see inside the work itself -- or at least, we see the book as an object (which is fascinating) although not the book as a collection of plays that Shakespeare conceived of, produced and that later was distributed. Anyway, will come back to that when I've finished it.

I did finish M.R. Hall's thriller, The Disappeared. It's another Vine book, so I won't review it extensively here. It was... OK. The plot was fascinating, involving the investigation of the coroner (who doesn't do autopsies, as happens here, but holds court sessions ruling on the causes of death) into the disappearance of two young British Muslim students. But I was never really caught up in the narrative, or felt a real sense of suspense -- the kind that has you turning the pages faster and faster. And the revelations at the end about what did happen to the students, felt like an anticlimax. Moreover, the dual plotline -- the problems the coroner has in her own life -- kept interfering with the main plot. It's fine to have a tortured soul as the main character, but the story has to remain central, IMO. (Think of Colin Dexter's Morse novels!) So -- a bit of a disappointment. But now back to W. Shakespeare, esq., and the first folio.

I keep changing my mind on this group...

List #4

Fiction:
1. Passion by Jude Morgan ****1/2 STARTED 1/29/10, FINISHED 2/5/10
2. The Siege by Helen Dunmore
3. The Life You Want by Emily Barr *** 1/2 READ 3/1/10
4. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
5. Remarkable Creatures by Trace Chevalier

Non-fiction:
1. For All the Tea in China by Sarah Rose *** 1/2 STARTED 3/13/10, FINISHED 3/16/10
2. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius by Leo Damrosch
3. The Devil and Sherlock Holmes by David Grann
4. Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre **** STARTED 3/8/10, FINISHED 3/10/10
5. Vienna 1814 by David King

Message modifié par son auteur, Mar 17, 2010, 11:00pm.

...and another group to get some more books off my shelves and read! (Well, at least some of them are coming off the shelves...)

Fiction:

1. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
2. The Information Officer by Mark Mills **** 1/2 READ 2/19/10
3. An Empty Death by Laura Wilson
4. Mud, Muck and Dead Things by Ann Granger **** STARTED 3/2/10, FINISHED 3/4/10
5. Map of the Invisible World by Tash Aw

Non-fiction

1. Kingmakers by Karl Meyer & Shareen Brysac
2. Spoken Here by Mark Abley
3. The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them by Elif Batuman STARTED 3/17/10
4. Varsity Green by Mark Yost ****1/2 STARTED 3/16/10, FINISHED 3/17/10
5. Strange Days Indeed by Francis Wheen *** 1/2 STARTED 2/24/10, FINISHED 2/26/10

Message modifié par son auteur, Mar 17, 2010, 9:30am.

List #6

Fiction:

1. Birth Marks by Sarah Dunant
2. The Infinities by John Banville ****1/2 STARTED 2/21/10, FINISHED 2/23/10
3. Blue Lightning by Ann Cleeves **** STARTED 2/19/10, FINISHED 2/20/10
4. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
5. The Plot Against America by Philip Roth

Non-fiction:

1. Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw by Will Ferguson
2. Brother Gardeners by Andrea Wulf
3. Thucydides: the Reinvention of History by Donald Kagan
4. Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art by Lane Salisbury
5. Mr. Langshaw's Square Piano by Madeline Goold

Message modifié par son auteur, Fév 24, 2010, 1:35pm.

#22: I will be interested in seeing what you think of The Book of William once you are done with it.

Alcottacre, it was great -- turned out to be just as good as Siblin's book, just in a slightly different way. Instead of discussing the plays as well as the book, he really focuses on the book's travels through history and the evolution of Shakespeare scholarship; the nature of book collecting and the relationship between a book and its owner; how the First Folio went from being a mundane object to something revered as Shakespeare became central to English-speaking cultural life. He looks at different folios -- the one that Dr. Johnson spilled all his food over, now in the British Library; the 'first folio' that was the only one presented by the printer in 1623 to a contemporary of Shakespeare; it was probably one of the first ever to roll off the presses, and was discovered by accident only a century ago in a stack of paper in a farm building...
Will try to get to a review shortly, though I'm going to be overwhelmed with work on my own MS in the next week -- it has to go to the compositors, etc. next week. My 'discretionary reading' will undoubtedly suffer!

#27: OK, into the BlackHole it goes! Thanks for the recommendation.

I really enjoyed The Book of William: How Shakespeare's Folio Conquered the World for both its focus on the folio as a physical object, and for its attention to Shakespeare's plays in context (what they would have actually meant to Shakespeare's original audiences).

I also really enjoyed some of the trivia, such as "who has how many?"

Good luck with your own work!

Luxx, one of my favorite authors is William Hazlitt, and my treasure is a first edition of his lectures on the English poets. I've read all about the lectures themselves; know his history, know about the publication of the lectures, etc., so to have one... Well, it's nowhere near as valuable as a First Folio, of course, but there's something about a book that has both sentimental value and historical value -- imagine who might have read and possessed it?? -- that is irresistible, and Collins conveyed that wonderfully. Not surprising, really, given that his previous book was about living in the town of books, Hay-on-Wye (which is a great place to visit... although I suspect bargains are scarcer there today than in the early 70s when I first went there as a child.) That book, for anyone who is interested, is Sixpence House.

#30: Hah! I own Sixpence House. Now if I could just locate my copy . . .

Thank you for the nudge towards Sixpence House.

There is something about the sentimental value of a book that can make it more precious than other material possessions. I feel that way about my different editions of the Complete works of William Shakespeare; the editions themselves may not be "worth" much in a monetary sense, but I have a special memory attached to each that makes me treasure them.

Just finished a book from group three -- so I'm skipping ahead! Memento Mori is a fascinating novel that deals with death -- the awareness of death and age, and how secrets seem to become less significant with time. In it, a cluster of related septugenarians and octogenarians begin receiving telephone calls; the anonymous individual on the other end of the line simply tells them politely, "remember, you must die." Some are unnerved; others irritated; some are amused while others remain unflappable. All, however, seem to hear the voice in a different way -- to some, it's a young boy; others here the voice of a middle-aged man while one even hears a woman's voice deliver the warning. Is a gang at work? To Jean Taylor, the former maid of one of the callers, herself now suffering arthritically in the geriatric ward of a hospital, it's simply death on the other end of the phone. "If you don't remember Death, Death reminds you to do so," she tells Dame Lettie, the first of the recipients of the phone call.

But while the plot ostensibly revolves around the mystery of the phone calls, in fact, Spark tries to deal with the even deeper mystery of human relationships. What is it that divides siblings from each other; a husband from a wife; a parent from a child? What kind of misunderstandings divide old friends? What secrets are kept in the name of friendship and domestic harmony? The phone calls become only a catalyst.

It's a short and intriguing novel; and elegantly written, to boot. It's chock full of striking observation on the perils of aging and of death -- both of them thorny subjects -- and unexpected quirks and shifts in direction. Still, I've given it only four stars, because I felt that somehow the book itself ended up being as amorphous in its nature as the meaning of life itself can sometimes feel. Five stars for the reading experience, but marked down because I constantly was pulled out of the narrative with the question of Spark's intention as an author. Niggly, I know, but at least it's tempted me to read some more of her novels.

Muriel Spark is worth seeking out, IMHO. If you can get a copy of her autobiography, Curriculum Vitae, by all means do so. It is very good.

You are the second 75er to mention Spark today, so I have passed that advice on twice. Seems like I should do a re-read of the book, too :)

Message modifié par son auteur, Jan 15, 2010, 8:50pm.

List #7

Fiction:
1. This Body of Death by Elizabeth George
2. Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels
3. Murder on the Cliffs by Joanna Challis
4. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde **** STARTED 2/10/10, FINISHED 2/14/10
5. Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald

Non-Fiction:
1. The Ends of Life by Keith Thomas
2. The Snow Tourist by Charlie English **** STARTED 2/10/10, FINISHED 2/13/10
3. The Routes of Man by Ted Conover
4. How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer by Sarah Bakewell
5. Tiepolo Pink by Roberto Calasso

Message modifié par son auteur, Mar 15, 2010, 11:26pm.

Just finished David Bodanis's utterly wonderful bio/history book about Voltaire and Emilie du Chatelet, Passionate Minds. Even the science didn't flummox me, thanks to the impeccable scholarship and lively writing -- it felt like a novel, and I stayed up until 4 a.m. to finish it... (arghhh... but worth it!) I've posted a review. This would be a great 'gateway' book to France in the 18th century and the French Enlightenment, as it covers a wide swathe of topics relatively effortlessly, ranging from the rigidity of the social order, the political conflicts of the time (there's a hilarious picture of Voltaire at the court of Frederick the Great) as well as how hard it was for people to pursue their ideas and research where the facts led them. It's also a wonderful biography of Voltaire and Emilie, the latter of whom slipped into the background of history after developing scientific and mathematical theories that paved the way for numerous better known thinkers in later centuries, including Einstein. Highly recommended.

And one more finished today! Red Bones is the latest in Ann Cleeves' excellent series of mysteries set in the Shetland Islands (the review is posted on my profile.) I'm really enjoying this series, although I'll probably have to wait about a month to lay hands on the fourth and final book in the series, which won't be out in the UK until early Feb. It may be described as a thriller, but it's really more of a character-driven mystery. (If you like PD James, you'll like this, although the writing isn't as elegant; the plotting, however, is intricate indeed, involving topics as diverse as wartime skulduggery, fishing, archeology and Shetland-style knitting...)

Luckily I've got a lot of other stuff on my challenge list(s) to keep me going while awaiting Blue Lightning ...

#37: I read Bodanis' E=mc2 a couple years back and very much enjoyed it, so I will definitely be looking for Passionate Minds. Thanks for the recommendation!

Alcottacre, I'm such a math phobe (which extends to physics) that I'm quailing at the thought of Bodanis's other books, however much I enjoyed this one... But if you liked that AND enjoy history, you will become a big fan of Passionate Minds, I suspect.

Meanwhile, I'm about to start reading about WW2 in Paris.

#40: What are you reading? WWII in Paris sounds right up my alley, Suzanne.

It's Americans in Paris by Charles Glass. I'm hoping that the structure improves -- right now there's interesting material, but all thrown together, so that the book reads like a long series of chapters of anecdotes about a group of people whose only common link is their nationality and the fact that they are in Paris during the Occupation. It's what my agent calls 'episodic'. It's still interesting, but it's frustrating, because he seems to have no over-arching theme or point -- just an interest in telling the stories. We'll see. I'm only about 130 words into it at this point, so there is hope. The parts about bookseller Sylvia Beach are particularly interesting and could be a book on their own.

For more on Sylvia Beach, you might be interested in Sylvia Beach and the lost generation : a history of literary Paris in the twenties and thirties. I have not read it yet, but it is in the BlackHole.

I hope the Americans in Paris book improves for you. I will look forward to your comments.

Just ordered it, Alcottacre! You are bad for my TBR stack... Although I confess, I got the first chunk of the next bit of my book advance & it was burning a hole in my pocket. Ordered half-a-dozen books... but not the other Bodanis. Not yet...

Trust me - I am not nearly as bad for your TBR stack as the other people in this group are to mine!

Well, Americans in Paris was a disappointment. There is a tremendous amount of rich material there, but the book itself is a loose string of anecdotes, involving everyone from (alleged) collaborators to resistants. There's no overarching theme -- just an assemblage of facts, stories etc. about people who happened to be American and who happened to live in Paris during the Nazi occupation. Had the author narrowed his focused (or even made more of an effort to break away from his plodding style), this could still have been a better book. Instead, I just ended up wanting to read for myself the primary source he draws on in hopes of getting a clearer picture. I'm not sure that there's enough of a common element in being American in Paris during these years to make for a coherent narrative, at least based on this evidence. There are also big gaps: one character, an African-American veteran of the French legion and WW1, an elderly man, appears in the first chapter and the last one; there's no indication of what he was up to in between. Despite the fact that Pierre Laval, the Vichy #2, was a major character throughout (his daughter married the son of two American Parisians, the de Chambruns; de Chambrun was a descendant of Lafayette born in America) there is no mention of Laval's execution for treason in October 1945! The tidbits are fascinating, often, but you can't make a full meal from scraps. 3 stars.

The final five: a miscellany!

1. Dancing Backwards by Salley Vickers **** STARTED 3/17/10, FINISHED 3/18/10
2. Money to Burn by James Grippando ***1/2 READ 2/26/10
3. The Other Family by Joanna Trollope
4. Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India by William Dalrymple
5. The Lotus-Eaters by Tatjana Soli

Message modifié par son auteur, Hier, 5:09pm.

#46: I am sorry to hear that the book was such a disappointment, but you have saved me adding it to the BlackHole.

Alcottacre, just how big & deep is that BlackHole, anyway???

After Glass's turgid prose, it was bliss to read William Trevor. And his short novel, The Story of Lucy Gault, was so compelling that I read it beginning to end last night in bed, unable to put it down. Like all of Trevor's tales, it has a very quiet, subtle tone to it, and relies on character, language and setting; the events may be dramatic, but it is the psychological effects in which Trevor is interested. The book begins at the height of the Troubles in southern Ireland, the period that culminated in Irish independence. The Gault family has lived in their countryside home so long that their origins are lost in the mists of time -- but they were originally English, they are not Catholic, and they live in a grand house (even though the land has mostly been lost over time.) When Everard Gault, 'the Captain', fires his shotgun at a group of three young men trying to burn down the house one night, and wounds one, he knows it's time for them to leave. But his young daughter, Lucy, can't bear the thought of leaving, and in her anger with her parents for making this (as she sees it) unilateral decision, she runs away to force them to reconsider. Tragic misunderstandings ensue, and lives are changed -- Lucy's; her parents; those with whom their lives are entangled, including the young man wounded on that day in 1921. It's a poignant, almost elegiac novel (even though I found parts of the final chapters slightly rushed and even opaque at times) that will find a permanent place on my bookshelf.

Chatterbox, I've starred your thread just to read your reviews. They are wonderful. I was also drawn to your list because we share some common interests. I just finished The Book of William and thought he did a good job of describing the initial printing and early history of the folios. I have not read any other books quite like it. And Memento Mori is one of my favorite books. I've read it a couple of times. Thanks for all the good referrals!

#49: The neat thing about the BlackHole is that it is ever-expanding. Right now, I figure there are over 10,000 books in it (and I am adding to it daily). Luckily, books in my BlackHole do come out from time to time :)

Tks, Oregonreader! For some reason, I hadn't read Memento Mori previously; although I had read several of her other books in my late teens, probably because my mother had bought them. (I bought The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, however.)

Started reading On Moving: A Writer's Meditation by Louise deSalvo just as my next-door neighbors began to pack up and move; he had lived there for 11 years, his wife for 3, since they became engaged. The owner is selling the house. So I was already thinking of moving when I picked up the book to discover I've already moved more times in my lifetime than average -- 14 moves, across countries and continents, back and forth, since the age of 8 months. When people ask me where I'm from, I'm literally stumped for an answer.

Now, the difference between deSalvo in this book and me is that to her, moving involves changing a house. To me, it's leaving behind not only a house but also a city, a community, a circle of friends and, most often a country as well. (Indeed, in those moves, I'm not even counting moves from one house to another in the same city...) Still, her book is thought-provoking about what it means to be at home, and how moving jars one's sense of self and sense of place -- sometimes destructively, sometimes actually opening up the new possibilities that we all dream and assume will be part of any and every move. Sometimes her analysis becomes obvious and repetitive, as when she points out several different ways that when we move, we may change our environment, but we carry ourselves with us. That's a bit more banal an observation than I had expected for this writer, but it's largely outweighed by her interesting and judicious (though sometimes uneven) citing of moves made by everyone from Virginia Woolf to Sigmund Freud, and how moves by the likes of D.H. Lawrence may have inspired creativity without creating happiness or contentment. I've rated it 4 stars as a thought-provoking book, one I'll certainly come back to and dip into. It reminds me of Thomas Mallon's books about diarists and letter writers, in that a lot of the material is drawn from the experience of others -- which I think is good in this instance; deSalvo is writing about a subject that she really hadn't experienced for three decades until the move that provoked her to write this book. And there is a tremendous difference relinquishing one's ties to an immediate community as a young person and doing so repeatedly throughout adulthood that she couldn't have explored without citing the experience of someone like Lawrence. An interesting book.

#52: On Moving looks like one I should explore, having moved multiple times during my lifetime (I think I am up over 30 or so moves). I will have to look for that one. Thanks for the recommendation, Suzanne.

Stasia, you not only read more than I do, you move more than I do!!! :-D

Gypsy feet! But I told my husband when we moved into this house, the only way I was leaving was in a hearse.

LOL! that's the way I feel about my place now, especially with all the books. The problem? I'm renting!

Finished Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz. There are a couple of very interesting stories, even books, struggling to get out of this long and overly complicated novel revolving around the life of an admissions officer at Princeton. Alas, the author's ruminations, via her protagonist, of the job (which is central to the plot) are rather banal at heart, and the main plot twist just didn't work for me -- it felt a bit forced. Lots of little problems here, from the 'voice' to what the reader is told when, and a lot that feels superfluous. The writing is good, but essentially this is well-written chick lit dressed up as thought-provoking fiction for women. I'm sure a lot of readers will like it, but it just irritated me. I've given it 3 stars, because it's not actively bad, just not anything really memorable, beyond one or two characters and one or two moments/situations. So, uneven and kinda meandering.

On to ... something else!

#56: I think I will skip that one. Hope your next read is better, Suzanne!

I highly recommend Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare & Company which I read last year. It's a good memoir about her go as the owner of the legendary bookshop in Paris in the 30's/40's. Joyce andHemingway are just a couple of friends that frequented her shop.

Some good reviews there - I must try something by Ann Cleeves this year, I have several of her books already and have met her at crime fiction events a few times. I hope to like the novels as much as I like the person.

#59 -- do give her books a try. I can't remember why I decided to read this series -- I hadn't read any of her other books -- but I enjoyed them enormously. An original voice in a very crowded field, yet not quirky in the nature of the books. If you like PD James, you'll like these -- procedurals with character and detail and atmosphere. I get very weary of formula books, and these are far better than many others.

#58 - Thanks for the rec! I think I'll order that, though I prob won't get around to reading it for a while since I now have the bio sitting on my TBR stack...

Finished reading my first LTER book, Not Quite Paradise. My review is posted, but in essence this was a book that couldn't decide whether it was a memoir, travelogue or some other kind of book. What was really missing was any sense of a unifying/overarching theme -- a purpose, a message she wanted to convey, beyond: Sri Lanka is a fascinating a troubled country, and here's the story of my experiences there. Fine, good enough -- but that isn't enough for me. I kept mentally comparing it to wonderful books that really do address this, like Emma Larkin's Finding George Orwell in Burma, which provided the same kind of insight into a country in a memoir fashion and ended up being deeply insightful. That was a five-star read; this was more of an intriguing but ultimately ho-hum 3.5 star book to me. I do suspect that many readers will find it far more compelling, given the lack of similar books about Sri Lanka and given the fact that I tend to be very picky when reading memoirs. It is well written, and there are loads of fascinating details, stories and characters. But that doesn't always combine to make up a great book, and that was my issue with this. Still, don't regret the time spent reading it.

I'm also reading The Morville Hours, suggested to me by another LTer (can't remember who right now, alas...). Am enjoying it tremendously, but it's a book to be read in small doses at a time -- indeed, that's what the author seems to be calling for, drawing attention repeatedly in the first two chapters to the way modern life has become rushed and driven by fractions of an hour, while the life of a garden is seasonal, and really develops only slowly, over years. It's very measured, and calls for an equally measured and careful reading to fully appreciate what the author is doing.

#61: The Morville Hours was highly recommended by Tiffin (Tui) last year, although I am not sure whether that is where you picked up the recommendation, Suzanne.

I think I will skip Not Quite Paradise.

#62 -- Yes, unless you've got a compelling interest in Sri Lanka (I was intrigued enough to add it to my LTER requests, although it wasn't at the top of that wish list), it can safely be saved from the Black Hole, I suspect... :-D

Since I had such a great experience with The King's Touch by Jude Morgan on my 1010 Challenge, I've decided to pick up Passion by the same author, a novel built around the women in the lives of the major romantic poets, for some light reading to intersperse with the heavy stuff I'm now tackling.

Message modifié par son auteur, Jan 29, 2010, 10:26am.

I've just added Passion to my TBR list. Thanks for the tip. I had never heard of the author but this book sounds like a great diversion. I need more hours in the day!

Just finished The Morville Hours and LOVED it. A fascinating combination of reflections on gardening and life, linked by the author's commitment to the idea that we let time race by, counted in hours and seconds and measured by tasks, rather than understanding and working in sync with the rhythms of the seasons and the natural world -- essentially, we have isolated ourselves from that natural world and what it gave us, in exchange for other stuff. I'll try to get a review up in the next day or two; dashing out the door now (ha!) to a social obligation, aka brunch...

#65: I added that one to the BlackHole when Tiffin lauded it last year. I hope I can get my hands on it soon.

I'd bump this one up the list; it's a very quirky and unique kind of book that defies description, but forces you to think about what we leave behind in our rush to 'progress'. It's also very English, which I realize sounds odd, but no American could have written that book, given the lack of hundreds of years of recorded history on which to draw. It's also one of those books that you can put on your shelf and pull out to read a segment of whenever the mood strikes...

#67: I will have to see if I can get it through interlibrary loan. It is not available through any of the 4 libraries close to me.

Finished Passion by Jude Morgan today. It's a bit of an epic -- a very dense 500-plus pages -- but fascinating. Not quite as good as the first of Morgan's books that I read under this pen-name (the others of his I've read were under the pseudonym of Hannah March; an excellent but short series of mysteries set in Georgian England.)

In this, Morgan sets out to look at the lives of the women whose fate was entangled with that of some of the Romantic poets, particularly Byron and Shelley. It's an ambitious undertaking, but it succeeds in large part to Morgan's extensive research that never feels as if it's being delivered in the shape of a 'lesson' for the reader, but more as incidental tidbits. Morgan's writing is excellent, and he has somehow managed to master different 'voices' for all the different women who feature here, and different dialogue formats. Lady Caroline Lamb speaks directly to the reader, in such a breathless and excited tone that you can certainly imagine her referring to Byron as "mad, bad and dangerous to know." On the other hand, the Lamb/Melbourne family's interactions are scripted as if they were part of the dialogue from a play -- reflective of the nature of the family's relationships, where appearance matters above all else. Then there is Byron's wife, who sounds for all the world like an intellectual yet stuffy refugee from Anthony Trollope's Barsetshire.

The core of the book deals with two characters: Mary Godwin, daughter of two scandalous parents (her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, is best known today) who would go on to scandalize the world herself by running off with the married poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley. (Yup, that would be Frankenstein's Mary Shelley.) As portrayed by Morgan, she emerges from behind Shelley's life and that of her own fictional creation as a fascinating character, juggling domestic considerations with grand passion and literary creation. There is Byron, and all his innamorati -- Lady Caroline Lamb; Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont; and most infamously, his own half-sister, Augusta Leigh. The outlier -- although just as well-crafted -- is the relationship between John Keats and Fanny Brawne, which is more loosely connected to the others, and can't really be compared with the longer and more complex relationships. It could, IMO, easily have been put to one side and left what is already a long and complex narrative a little more manageable.

Morgan's theme is (surprise, surprise) passion, and the extent to which grand passion is capable of distorting one's life. The Romantic poets focused on passionate themes in their poetry, so it's intriguing to explore the idea of passion from another perspective.

This book falls into my 'thumping good read' category, but it's also a great way for someone to get a feel for the period and the personalities. In other words, it's another great historical novel from this author. The cover on my edition, which features a swooning young woman en deshabille, does it a disservice. This is no romance novel, but rather a fascinating work of historical fiction of the kind that is getting hard to find. Jude Morgan is an author who should be getting a lot more attention, IMHO...

Still reading Hannah Pakula's biography of Mme Chiang Kai-shek. After a bumpy and somewhat stiff beginning, I'm finding the topic and the setting fascinating; still the writing is not terribly impressive (in a veeerrrry long book that is not a good thing) and it's awash in repetitive detail. Still, so far a good book.

Message modifié par son auteur, Fév 6, 2010, 7:44pm.

#69: I am all for 'thumping good reads', so into the BlackHole it goes! Thanks for the recommendation, Suzanne.

You've started the year with an interesting selection of books this year, Suzanne. I've added The Morville Hours and Passion. The both seem really different, not run of the mill. Thanks for the rec's.

Read (actually, devoured) The Reluctant Fundamentalist today. Since "wow" isn't much help when deciding whether or not to read a book, I'll try and organize my thoughts a bit.

To start with, it was probably the ideal book to yank me out of my post-Jude Moran stupor. Mohsin Hamid's prose is crisp, the tension builds steadily and yet slowly, not a word is misplaced or poorly considered. Told in the voice of Changez, a young Pakistani from the one-time imperial city (both British Raj and, before that, Mughal empire) of Lahore, Changez travels to Princeton, where a ferocious intelligence and willpower win him one of the most coveted jobs in finance. And yet... Changez is an outsider, someone who will never share the automatic assumptions Americans make about themselves and their role in the world, even as he slips effortlessly into that society, contributing to and profiting from it.

His story of his relationship with America is told in his own voice, recounted to an American he meets by chance (or possibly not...) in Lahore, over cups of tea and then dinner, and then walking back to the American's hotel. We see the American only through Changez's eyes, as he comments on the former's nervousness, his frequent phone calls, his body language, his reaction to the waiter, etc. As Changez recounts his story -- of a love affair, of his American experience, of his disillusion and departure -- the tension mounts, and it becomes increasingly clear that this may not be an accidental encounter. But who is playing which role? Who is the real 'fundamentalist', here? Is it Changez, who has abandoned the rigid fundamentals of profit and loss taught by his former Wall Street bosses, in favor of a more fluid world view? Or is it the mysterious American who, despite never being given a voice of his own in this powerful novel, looms as a larger presence?

The story builds to a powerful climax, in which the eye of the reader -- his or her ideas of the story, view of the narrator (reliable or not?) and the way they interpret the breadcrumbs scattered along the narrative pathway becomes overwhelmingly important and ultimately decisive.

This is easily one of the best contemporary novels I've read in a long time, not only because it raises some hot button issues but simply because as a novel, it is nearly flawless; certainly a book that will endure for decades to come. Although written by a Pakistani who now lives in London, it should be required reading on any American literature syllabus since, at its core, it's a novel devoted to the nature of the American experience -- specifically, that of those immigrants who once formed part of our national myth but who now, like Changez, may no longer believe that they can only build a future here. It certainly raises some very provocative questions, but that is just part of this book's rewards: above all, it's simply a great novel and Hamid is an author to watch.

It's going to be hard for the next book I grab to live up to this one!!

There you go again, adding another book to my wishlist. Thanks for you review of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, looks interesting.

I've got The Reluctant Fundamentalist on my TBR already .... your wonderful review is encouraging me to push it up.

#73/74 -- Go for it -- it is really worthwhile... (and besides, it's a relatively slim volumes, so if end up loathing it, it won't be as if I've suggested re-reading War & Peace! ;-)

I think I'm going to read Toibin's novel about Henry James as a way of easing myself into trying (for the 127th time) to read one James's thicker novels in my 1010 Challenge. If, that is, I can resist the siren song of William Boyd's new novel...

Message modifié par son auteur, Fév 7, 2010, 12:02am.

Right, both those 2 are going onto the pile. (TRF was there already and I saw it in a shop yesterday...)

#72: I read that one last year and for me it was a 'meh' read. I am glad you enjoyed it more than I did.

#75: I hope you enjoy Toibin's The Master. I thought it was very good!

I'll be on the lookout for your review of The Master!

I felt so fortunate to find a hardcover of The Master at a library booksale this past fall. My older TBR's are so backlogged that I don't think I'll get to my new TBR's until '11 eeeek.

Somehow, all the new TBRs that I REALLY want to read have a strange way of creeping onto my 'priority read' list and getting themselves read. It's certainly not a "FIFO accounting" system (First in, First out) around here when it comes to books! Picked up Toibin late last night and am two or three chapters into it. It's very interesting & a completely different narrative arc from Mohsin Hamid. Since I have this Jamesian phobia (no idea why...) I can't tell if some of his style is itself Jamesian -- a somewhat oblique approach to telling a story. Anyone?? I noticed from the flyleaf he's written some travel books, which I'll hunt down.

That was a wonderful review of The Reluctant Fundamentalist. I read it several years ago, and was also blown away by it.

JANUARY BOOK SUMMARY:

5 STARS
Passionate Minds by David Bodanis
The Cello Suites by Eric Siblin
The Book of William by Paul Collins

4.5 STARS
White Nights by Ann Cleeves
Red Bones by Ann Cleeves
The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor
The Morland Hours by Katherine Swift

4 STARS
Memento Mori by Muriel Spark
On Moving by Louise de Salvo

3.5 STARS
Not Quite Paradise by Adele Barker
The Postmistress by Sarah Blake
The Disappeared by M.R. Hall
Americans in Paris by Charles Glass

3 STARS
Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz

Nice summary, Suzanne!

Well, I had to do something to impose a bit of order on my rather chaotic plan... :-D

January was a great month for you, Suzanne. I look forward to see what February brings. : )

#84: Plan? What's a plan? :)

Stasia, a plan is something you make when every time you move around your home, you bang into a stack of books, and when the resident felines use said book stacks as a kitty climbing gym.

Anyway... Finished The Master by Colm Toibin today. It's a powerful and compelling novel that I responded to on two levels: the creative process, and the way in which everything else in an author's life becomes subordinated to that and, secondly, a related theme -- the need to control personal relationships and the need for solitude and the impact this has on an individual and those near to him. There's obviously a gay theme running through this, but to me that was subordinatedto the broader issue: in Toibin's view, Henry James appears as an individual who needs to shape his world in his own image, to create a universe that is conducive to his work, and everything becomes secondary to that. Is it selfishness or force majeure? That's left up to the reader to determine; certainly Toibin makes James a sympathetic figure while providing the reader with enough information to understand the sacrifices his needs demand of others.

It reminded me a lot of The Hours by Michael Cunningham, not only because literary themes are part of the plot, but because of what I see as Cunningham's central question -- what duty to we owe to those who love us? And what happens when our needs for ourselves collide with that duty? (In James's world, as portrayed by Toibin, James displays an unconscious yet acute selfishness toward those he claims to love the most.) Overall, I admit I prefer Cunningham's novel to this; I suspect it's because the biographical approach eventually became overwhelming and the prose rather dense. I did pick up one of Toibin's other novels, The Blackwater Lighthouse, and skimmed the first few paragraphs; if that is any guide, it's as I suspected, and Toibin was deliberately 'channeling' James's style in this book. I've long struggled to read James -- I pick up one of his novels only to discard it, irritated by a rather 'precious' style. (It reminds me of Baroque furniture -- very ornamental, but uncomfortable to sit in.) I'm going to try again this year, however; The American sits grimly on my 1010 Challenge list, waiting for me to stop ignoring it.

I'm taking a brief break from Hannah Pakula's massive bio of Mme Chiang Kai-shek. Not because it's bad, but it's long and overwhelming. The two most rewarding books I'm reading right now are a slim volume by Michael Ignatieff (who has studied and written a lot about issues of nationalism and identity) about his own Canadian forebears, True Patriot Love. That's going into my 'off the shelf' challenge; the other good read right now is a mystery that's part of my global mystery category for the 1010 challenge, The Serpent Pool by Martin Edwards. Will take a look at this list and find something light & frothy (or at least, non-Jamesian!) to follow Toibin. I think I'll have to come back to this book later for a re-read, after I've had time to digest it, try the novels again and maybe seek out a Henry James bio.

Message modifié par son auteur, Fév 10, 2010, 1:27am.

#87: I am glad you liked The Master. I thought it was terrific and much better than Brooklyn, IMHO.

I have never read The Hours so I will have to check into that one. Thanks for the mention, Suzanne.

BTW - Darryl asked me what my plan was for reading books of my own this year: I told him - pick a shelf and read all the books on it and then move to the next one :)

The Hours is excellent. It's actually one of the only books I've read where the film lived up to the book and vice versa, even though they place the emphasis slightly differently. I ended up stopping every few pages to think about what Cunningham was saying and how he was communicating those thoughts.

I checked my local library and they have a copy of it. I am not sure when I will get to it, but it is nice to know it is available.

I have The Hours on my tipping tower of tomes and I look forward to reading it even more now that I've read your review.

Oooh, love that illiteration -- "tipping tower of tomes".

I'm going to start two books from my list #7 -- jumping way ahead. I need a counterweight to Mme Chiang, of which I can only read so much at one sitting. Not that it's bad; there's just so MUCH of it!!

So I'll be picking up The Eyre Affair and The Snow Tourist -- the latter thanks to Ellie, and in spirit of the weather!

I can't belive how many books you're chewing through. I heard a Guardian Books podcast with the author of The Snow Tourist - it was a few weeks ago (she says vaguely... ). It sounds like a great book to read right now!

Mme Chiang sounds like she should be left in a corner for a while.

My husband read a review of The Cello Suites last weekend and said "if you want to buy me something..." to which I told him I was already planning on buying it for him! Thanks. It's out here, but in German only.

Can I break it to you very gently, Cushla, that it's available on Kindle for $9.99?? :-)

Is shipping from Amazon.com to Basel horribly pricey? Because the book itself is reasonably affordable here. Try Book Depository US (much as I hate to direct any business their way, grrrr....)

I think Amazon shipping from amazon.de is free - will look! I'm a big Book Depository fan too...

Finished The Snow Tourist today (well, early this morning...) Kind of amusing to start reading it as a blizzard descended, although the blizzard was only about 12 inches worth of white stuff, most of which is now grey stuff and melted stuff.

I liked the book, and will have a review up sometime in the next day or so (probably on my review pages rather than on this thread.) English has some marvellous descriptions for the snow he encounters ("a souffle of frozen cloud), and some fascinating vignettes of the places he goes. But it doesn't succeed triumphantly in any one of the genres it aspires to -- memoir, travel, nature, book about winter sports -- although it's good to very good in all of those categories. I'd recommend it if the topic intrigues you, and it's certainly a book that I'll keep on my shelves to dip into, but it wasn't a gem. And GREATLY missing from it were photographs! English writes about the photographic studies done of snowflakes, but these aren't reproduced; he waxes rhapsodic about Breughel's winter snowscape but there's no plate of it to refer to. Boo hiss to the publishers for skimping on that front, in a book that clearly would have benefitted from some snow images. I'm glad I read (and thanks to Ellie for the suggestion), but it's a plain vanilla 4-star book for me.

In case anyone is interested in reading Anchee Min's about-to-be published novel, Pearl of China, I've just posted a review on my 'main' review page. Basically, while the first third is excellent, the rest flags and ends up feeling like a memoir or history book, enlivened with some dialog. Min can't seem to come to grips with a fictional character (Willow Yee, the young girl who in this telling of Pearl Buck's story, is the latter's childhood friend), and writing about a historical character, she is stymied in different ways. Disappointing, in part because the potential for a great story was so large.

I'm posting these comments here, because it made me think back to The Master which was also an insight into a novelist's creative mind at work, and an utterly brilliant biographical novel that doesn't flag on any front.

My hope is that this will send people out in search of some of Buck's novels. Sure, maybe she isn't the kind of literary genius who should have won the Nobel price (not worthy to be mentioned alongside Kenzaburo Oe, Thomas Mann, or Orhan Pamuk). But she wrote several of what I'd call "thumping good reads" in addition to the book that everyone seems to know The Good Earth. These include Kinfolk and Pavilion of Women. It's also interesting to read her own biographical novel of Tzu Hsi, the last Empress of China, Imperial Woman, and realize how much more compelling it is when compared to Min's own two-volume saga on the same subject, the second half of which is a tedious read.

Pearl of China ended up in my 50-book challenge as an 'overflow' book -- a great solution for books that I want to read or need to read that don't fit in anywhere else!

#98: Too bad about Pearl of China. It sounds like one I would have liked.

I will add the Buck books you mentioned to the BlackHole. It looks as though my local library has all of your recommendations.

Finished The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde today. Hmm, I can see what it was a TBR, and I certainly didn't enjoy it as whole-heartedly as I did Shades of Grey, which I read last month for my 1010 Challenge.

It's very clever and imaginative, but sometimes I found myself feeling that displaying that wit and intelligence was the point of the book, rather than the story. It also requires such a complete suspension of belief that I found myself getting exasperated sometimes. At times, it felt as if whenever Fforde had written himself into a corner, he'd write himself out again by dragging in something like a plasma gun or some other wild & woolly feature of this new world. Stripping out about 1/3 of the extra "super clever witty" details would have made this a tighter and more compelling book. As it is, it's 4 stars, just making it across the threshold from 3.5. I didn't get immersed in the book until about half or 2/3 of the way through, and it really wasn't until the final chunk that I found myself caring about the characters. I'll read the others in this series, to see if it improves. What startled me most is how real the narrator of Shades of Grey feels to me -- how vivid an individual he is -- against just as weird a background. That's a far more convincing narrative; perhaps in between this, his first book, and his newest one, Fforde has found a way to make his characters live and breathe and not just behave like literary action heroes.

I'll probably move on to something light & 'normal' -- either the Emily Barr or Nicci Gerrard novels, followed, perhaps, by William Boyd's newest book, Ordinary Thunderstorms. After his last, I have high expectations of this one...

Still plodding through Mme Chiang's bio. I feel like I'm on my own version of the Long March.

I think I would be throwing in tons of light reading to offset the bio.

Stacia, believe me, I am... Just finished The Night Villa by Carol Goodman for my Off-the-Shelf Challenge. (brief reviewlette over there)

My copy of Blue Lightning, the fourth volume in Ann Cleeves' quartet of mysteries, arrived from the UK today. Nos. 2 and 3 were among the books I've already read for this challenge, and so I can't resist launching into the final one immediately even though (a) it will mean that I won't have it to look forward to any more, (b), I also started Emily Barr's The Life You Want late last night, (c) I'm still trying to read Mme Chiang's bio and (d) how many books can I read more or less at once anyway, especially since I'm not Stacia?? Zero willpower, that's me.

The good news -- I'm nearly finished with the ARC of Anne Perry's The Sheen on the Silk, which I'm reading for the 1010 Challenge. It's -- okay.

Message modifié par son auteur, Fév 17, 2010, 5:03pm.

#104: Zero willpower, that's me.

Now you know why I have 20 or so books going at any given time :)

Finished The Information Officer by Mark Mills today. This has been sitting on my bookshelf since I ordered it from the UK about a year ago. Not sure why -- as I'm finding with some of these off-the-shelf reads, it's really excellent.

It's the middle of World War II, and the tiny island of Malta is being pounded to pieces by daily (and nightly) bombing raids by both the Germans and the Italians. So who will notice a few dead bar girls amidst the thousands of other casualties. Then one is found with a slashed throat, clutching the tabs that submarine officers wear on their dress uniform in her hand, and information officer Max Chadwick undertakes to stop the murderer -- and do his job ensuring that word doesn't leak out to the local population that one of the British military officers may be a serial killer.

This is a fascinating and gripping yarn by a writer who manages to effortlessly blend details of the murderer's inner thoughts with Max's quest to bring him to justice and the attacks on Malta. (The climactic scene takes place against the backdrop of a massive raid and the arrival of critical deliveries of war materiel.) It's a standard serial killer thriller, but also a spy novel; a buddy novel, but also a romance. Oh yes, and a 'thumping good read', thanks in large part to the dramatic tension that builds steadily throughout and kept me turning the pages at a faster and faster rate.

Sounds intriguing!

#106: Mac did a very good review of that one last year that prompted me to put it in the BlackHole. I read Mills' Savage Garden a few years ago and liked it, so I definitely want to get my hands on that one as well.

I'll definately keep my eyes open for Mark Mills. Thanks for finally reading The Information Officer.

Chatter: How was The Night Villa? I have had it sitting on my shelf for a couple of years. I always put it off wondering if I will actually like it. It was an impulse buy.

I found myself liking it a lot more than I thought I would. It's of its genre -- romantic suspense -- but well-written and more intelligent than many. My review is over on my books-off-the-shelf thread. And I've also read & reviewed Anne Perry's upcoming book, The Sheen on the Silk, posted on both my 1010 challenge thread and as a review. Gotta say -- as a longtime Perry fan, dating back to her very first book, of which I own a hardcover -- it was a big fizzle for me.

#111: Unfortunate about the Anne Perry book. I am also a longtime fan, but I think I will give that one a pass. Kudos to the lady though for trying something different.

I feel like I deserve a prize -- I have finally finished my persona "Long March" and completed all 800-plus pages (I read it on Kindle, so I don't know) of The Last Empress, Hannah Pakula's biography of Mme Chiang Kai-shek.

I've posted my review on my 'reviews' page and won't rehash the whole thing here. I've rated it 4 stars because it's such a solid piece of work; its main flaws are its sheer density and exhaustive nature, as well as the fact that while Pakula documents everything imaginable about her subject, I think she emerged from the book as just as enigmatic a character as she was at the start!

It's a great book for anyone trying to come to grips with China's history in the 20th century, particularly the first half. (Mei-ling Soong Chiang lived to 2003, but the book deals with her life in only a very perfunctory fashion after the Chiangs are driven off the mainland to Taiwan in 1949.) And for anyone who's interested in military history, there's a lot here. But reading requires a real commitment, not only of time but energy.

OK, back to some light reading to save my brain from overheating... :-)

Wow, you finished it - congratulations!! Great review. I've read almost nothing about China, so think this might not be the best place to start.

*Wafting cool air Suzanne's way*

Congratulations on making it through!

I feel like I deserve a prize -- I have finally finished my persona "Long March"

Yes you do Suzanne but the only prize I can give you is a thumbs up. Is that good? : )

The thumbs up definitely works for me! And to pat myself on the head, I went off and read a (borrowed) copy of Playing for Pizza by John Grisham. (It'll count on my 50-book overflow challenge!) I was surprised -- I've been disappointed by his latest mysteries, and I don't like football, but I still enjoyed this little book for what it is, a kind of feel-good short novel about a numbskull NFL quarterback who ends up playing in Parma, Italy and (of course) finding himself.

Cool, I've got that one in my Tipping Tower of Tomes. Hope to get to it this year. Numbskull QB's are usually so cute ; )

Message modifié par son auteur, Fév 20, 2010, 5:43pm.

It reminded me a lot of Peter Mayle's books -- Italy instead of France, and American football nut instead of British food-and-wine nut. But lots of descriptions of place and good meals and companionship and general warm fuzzies.

Finished the final book in Ann Cleeves' Shetland Quartet, Blue Lightning. Set in Jimmy Perez's home of Fair Isle -- the most remote uninhabited island in the United Kingdom -- it's a chilling story of murder in which Perez and his fiancee, Fran Hunter, become all too closely involved. The ultimate mystery: an isolated island, and on it, a former lighthouse turned wildlife station closed to the outside world. Within that lighthouse, a dead body will mean that wedding preparations are the last thing on Perez's mind.

I'm going to have to go watch the Olympics to get this book out of my mind before I try to sleep tonight! But it was an excellent and gripping conclusion to the series. Hard to say more without offering up spoilers, but I'd strongly suggest reading the series, from beginning to end. Do NOT start with this book, however...

--> 117

Suzanne, I'm with you on Playing for Pizza. I don't read John Grisham but I picked up this audio book from the library last year as a last resort for something to listen to on my commute. Surprisingly, I enjoyed it a lot. Cute story! Now I know the origin of Parmesan cheese as well. So...it was also educational. :)

Finished The Infinities by John Banville. I loved it and will get a review up shortly. But for a lot of readers, it's going to be a more difficult book to read than his Booker-winner, The Sea. Essentially, the plot revolves around a dying man (a mathematician) and his family; but it's quasi-narrated by one of the Greek gods, Hermes, who are also fluttering around and wreaking havoc. There are whiffs of alternative history throughout, a lot of mythological references throughout and, as if to emphasize the difference between death and life, a lot of reference to pretty much every bodily function and fluid you can imagine. It's going to take a lot of re-reading for me to grasp all the nuances here, but it's really a great novel. I rated it 4.5 stars.

Sounds interesting. Have you read The Untouchable by Banville? I loved it, after letting it sit on my bookshelf for several years (only bought it because it was cheap at my favourite secondhand book fair). I have his Revolutionary Trilogy coming on the boat.

I have not read any Banville yet. Maybe I should start with his 'easy' book, The Sea?

Cushla, I had only read The Book of Evidence and The Sea so far. I should try more of his... Stasia, yes, advise trying latter before The Infinities; this one will make your mind bend in very strange directions. It's not an easy or straightforward book. But I think you'd like The Sea.

Simply stopping by to say hi.

#125: OK, duly noted. Now I have to find a copy of The Sea.

I've added The Sea to the list as well!

Hi Suzanne. Delurking to say I've also added The Sea and The Infinities to my wishlist. I'm looking forward to your review.

Ok, the review is up. Now let's try to do the 'link' thing. Here is where
my review should be...

Message modifié par son auteur, Fév 25, 2010, 10:37pm.

Ha! It worked...

Now for the update. Finished Strange Days Indeed today. It was an intriguing, funny and very witty and well-written look back at the decade of the 1970s. Ultimately not as satisfying as it could have been; while the author argues convincingly that it was the golden age of paranoia (and musters anecdotes from Nixon and Mao to movies and the lives of everyday citizens to bolster the claim), there is no real sense of why this is interesting or relevant 30 years after the end of the decade. I found it a fun read as I grew up in the 70s (graduated from high school in 1979); experienced first hand the blackouts during the miner's strike in the early 70s in London (this is a rather British-centric book) and watched my parents stress out during the wage and price controls. I'm not sure that it will appeal to anyone with only a casual interest, however; there just isn't quite enough point.

Interesting, I was mostly in my 20s in the 1970s and I wouldn't have thought to call it the age of paranoia: the world wasn't in great shape (but then, when is it?) but a lot of people managed to have a lot of fun.

I think he leans a bit too heavily on Watergate and the collapse of governance in England, personally; the kind of conspiracy theories (grassy knoll, Three Days of the Condor, etc. etc.) that really got going in the 1970s were in part the product of the 60s combined with Watergate, and I think just continued. It's a fun book, but there's no real analysis at all, just lots of anecdotes tied together. Which is, of course, exactly the kind of 'thinking' he criticizes in his book... hmm....

Now reading the first thriller set in the financial crisis, Money to Burn by James Grippando. Mildly amusing, a solid thriller, but waaay too repetitive of all the stuff I already know about the Wall Street collapse. Suspect other readers may enjoy it more; still, it's a change to have a financial thriller in place of a legal one. (Besides, there's a great lampoon in there of Jim Cramer...)

You read such great books! I graduated from high school in 1970. I very much enjoyed your description of Strange Days Indeed. Balancing the despair and paranoia was a sense of hope...earth day, anti war demonstrations, etc.

Those were indeed strange, crazy times.

Finished Money to Burn. Well, it's about time there were a few Wall Street thrillers to throw into the mix along with all the Grishamesque legal thrillers, and this is a solid entry into that sweepstakes; very well timed! It's a fun and fast-paced combination of a classic "evil guy messes up lives of worthy ordinary folk in a conspiracy" suspense novel, combined with pretty much every major theme in the Wall Street crisis, from subprime lending to credit default swaps; naked short sellers to Bernie Madoff. Indeed, the heavy reliance on the actual backdrop for the plot is why I didn't give this 4 stars as a solid thriller. I've been writing a book about Wall Street (non-fiction...) and anyone who's been following the action will already be very familiar indeed with the plot backdrop -- I found myself skipping pages altogether when the discussions of subprime losses, liquidity, etc. came up. The fun part? Seeing Steve Cohen's stuffed & pickled shark by Damian Hirst make a special guest appearance, and the lampooning of CNBC as FNN, complete with a Money Honey and a Jim Crameresque character.

Amusing; but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who earns their money in the markets or who's lost a lot as a result of subprime mortgages or in their portfolios -- reliving it all will just drive up your stress level.

Up till now about the only writer producing consistently good & entertaining financial thrillers was a Brit, Michael Ridpath. It's worth looking for some of his books, such as Final Venture, The Marketmaker or Trading Reality. They're a notch above this, and while Grippando relies on what happened to propel his plot forward, Ridpath had an uncanny knack of anticipating what was about to go bust. He was about a year ahead of the 1990s emerging markets debacle, for instance, and his dot.com bust book came out a year before that market went bust. Now there's a conspiracy theory for you to run with... :-)

... and then this evening, wrapped up reading The Lambs of London. Stasia, I think I enjoyed this a lot more than you did -- it was a solid 4-star book for me, tilting toward a 4.25... (Any second I'm going to insist being able to score along a 1 to 100 continuum!!)

This has been sitting on my shelves since I picked it up at Waterstone's on Piccadilly 2 or 3 years ago in a 3 for 2 special sale. I generally love Ackroyd's work, although I'm more familiar with his NF than his novels. This one appealed because of Charles Lamb, whose wonderful essays I love, and whose life -- caring for his sister, toiling away 6 days a week as a clerk and fitting his literary passions away into the corner of his life -- has always struck me as very poignant.

This book is set over the course of about 18 months leading up to the most climactic event in the lives of the Lamb siblings, and their personal tragedy (no spoilers here) overlapped in time and space with that of another Londoner of about Charles's age, William Henry Ireland. Lamb was almost certainly aware that Ireland and his father, owners of a bookstore in the City, were bringing out newly discovered works by Shakespeare, including a complete play that was staged by Sheridan, but history never reveals that they actually met. Ackroyd started this by saying to himself -- "what if?" What if the siblings who would go on to write the Complete Tales from Shakespeare (which introduced Shakespeare to me when I was about 8 about 150 years later) had encountered the man who tried to bring new works by the bard to light? How might it have changed their lives?

And that's the story at the heart of this slim novel, with Charles, on the one hand, being first a figure of envy for Ireland, and letter being envious of him. Mary, meanwhile, is entranced by Ireland and perhaps also enchanted by the glimpses of another, literary world that Charles invites her into too rarely. In contrast, Ireland seems eager to share "his" Shakespeare discoveries; Mary is enthralled. "To dwell in another time -- if only for a moment -- offered her proof that she need not be confined or restricted" by her domestic duties caring for a senile father under her mother's thumb. Literary characters who stride across Ackroyd's stage include Thomas de Quincey (author of Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and lots of great essays). Ireland, opines de Quincey, is preying upon Mary. He "forges feelings as he forges words." (In 'real life', Lamb's salons would extend to include Shelley, Leigh Hunt and William Hazlitt, and his work was admired by Coleridge.)

Characters here aren't always as fully developed as they might be, but this is still a fascinating glimpse of what Lamb and his circle might have been like, and has prodded me to go in search of a biography of him. While this novel isn't one I'd necessarily urge on all and sundry, I would say: you MUST, at some point in your lives, read Lamb's wonderful Essays of Elia. My personal fave is "Old China".

You might want to try Mad Mary Lamb by Susan Tyler Hitchcock for a nonfiction view of the Lambs' lives, Suzanne. It does sounds as if you enjoyed the Ackroyd book more than I did.

Just catching up on your thread and wow, you've been talking about a lot of good books lately. The Master is on my tbr, I read Toibin's Homage to Barcelona late last year - it's a bit dated but still interesting.

FEBRUARY BOOK SUMMARY

A total of 34 books read this month, across 4 separate challenges...

In this challenge:

5 STARS
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

4.5 STARS
Passion by Jude Morgan
The Information Officer by Mark Mills
The Master by Colm Toibin
The Infinities by John Banville

4 STARS
The Last Empress by Hannah Pakula
The Snow Tourist by Charlie English
The Lambs of London by Peter Ackroyd
Blue Lightning by Ann Cleeves
The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

3.5 STARS
Strange Days Indeed by Francis Wheen
Money to Burn by James Grippando

Read The Life You Want by Emily Barr. I've read most of Barr's other books; this is a sequel to her first and, IMO, her best, Backpack. In it, Tansy is now married with two little boys -- but very restless and back to drinking too much. Max, her husband, urges her to go and help out a friend now running a children's ashram in India, but it eventually becomes clear to Tansy that she is being manipulated... Unfortunately, the best part of this book is Barr's description of what it's like to be a traveler in someone else's world -- that is excellent, and thoughtful -- but the plot itself emerges far too late and comes as far too much of a surprise to Tansy. Perhaps it suffers from "sequelitis"? Not one of the author's better books. I'd recommend Backpack or Plan B. At her best, Barr is good at combining chick lit with a degree of suspense and adventure -- blending English chick lit with the plots you'd find in Nicci French, for instance. 3.5 stars.

Meanwhile, I'm reading a rather good nonfiction book about the American revolution; a story about arms smuggling involving the playwright, Beamarchais, a colonial merchant and a cross-dressing spy! Shows that reality can sometimes trump fiction...

Whew... nice list for February, Suzanne. I had to add Blue Lightning to my wish list because I do so like Ann Cleeves. Glad to hear you liked The Information Officer. I thought that was a very enjoyable book myself

Nice recap Suzanne. Would you share with me your strategy in getting so much reading accomplished? I need help

I am ashamed to admit that I've never read any Charles Lamb. I was tempted when I was reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, but never wrote it down. I suspect now that I've written down three titles, I can expect to add a zillion more to my list.

Message modifié par son auteur, Mar 2, 2010, 12:00pm.

Hmm, Lynda, not sure it's a productive one for the rest of your life. Battle the blues, finish a book and collect the 2nd chunk of the advance, fail to aggressively work on developing a pipeline of new freelance assignments, and instead sit around reading whenever you're not battling a migraine! But seriously, I don't have kids or a husband, and reading has always been my primary leisure activity. I've spent hours a day reading since I was a kid; my mother used to have to ration my books when we went away on holiday. So reading is just a big part of my life, and has been for decades. I read on the subway, while eating meals (if I'm eating alone), before I go to sleep (for at least an hour and often two) and generally whenever I have a small window of free time.

Suzanne

Sorry to hear that you suffer from migranes. I know firsthand that this is quite an affliction.

I'm sorry to hear of the migranes too, Suzanne. My husband suffers from them too. When he suffers, we all suffer.

A very dear friend of mine is a divorced empty nester and she reads as you do, while eating or soaking in the bathtub with her bookrack. Books are wonderful companions. As an only chld, I was never alone when I had a book in hand.
Until my son goes off to college in 8 years, I'll continue what I'm doing. Wake up early and read while they sleep. After they're up....well....it's catch when catch can.

Migraines have been a fact of life for three decades; I just have to work around them. It's a lot easier now that I work from home and don't need to explain myself all the time & see peoples' eyes roll at the thought of *another* migraine.

Read The Calligrapher's Daughter for my 1010 Challenge -- excellent book! Highly recommended to anyone who likes 20th century historical fiction. I know that Anchee Min's new book is going to get a lot of PR, but this was MUCH better -- similar historical time frame, but so much better written. Night and day.

My mom had and still has migraines so I know how debilitating that can be. When she was having an attack, she'd need to go to her room, close the door, draw the curtains and rest with a wet towel across her forehead. We weren't allowed to bother her and had to sort out our fights in whispers amongst ourselves .... sometimes I would wonder if she went in there just to get away from us rowdy kids. ;-)

The Calligrapher's Daughter sounds interesting .. thanks for the tip, I've added this to my wish list.

Message modifié par son auteur, Mar 3, 2010, 12:12am.

Finished reading Unlikely Allies: How a Merchant, a Playwright and a Spy Saved the American Revolution. Vivid recreation of 18th century Paris and the power politics of the era, and highly recommended. I'm bouncing into my list of best books, and the review is here

#149: I definitely need to find a copy of that one. Thanks for the review and recommendation, Suz!

Today's book du jour -- yesterday's was Mistress of the Revolution, briefly reviewed over on my off-the-shelf challenge page -- was Mud, Muck and Dead Things by Ann Granger. A rather quirky title - maybe that's what kept it on my shelf since it arrived from the UK last fall! In any event, it's a very solid mystery by an author I've been reading since the '80s. This is her fourth series (one now has more than a dozen books; the other has 8 or so, and is ongoing; the third is made up of two good Victorian mysteries.) It's set in contemporary Gloucestershire, with a plot revolving around a young girl found murdered in a boarded-up farmhouse, site of another murder, decades ago. It's not a cozy mystery, nor is it gritty or noir, just a plain vanilla English crime drama with the emphasis on the crime investigation, with some slight digressions into the lives of a wheeler-dealer and the owner of a riding stable. Lots of links between characters and plot elements, all done seamlessly and effectively. Granger is an accomplished crime author, and if her characters and plots never transcend the genre, that's not a major flaw.

The one quibble -- this is billed as the first in what presumably will be a "Campbell and Carter" series, and yet the Carter -- a new Detective Superintendant who arrives about a third of the way into the book -- is never really developed as a character. He's as much of an enigma on the final page as he is an absent figure on the first. That makes the book feel like the first part of a trilogy, and is slightly frustrating.

Going forward, my priorities are two ARCs that look very intriguing -- Major Pettigrew's Last Stand and For All the Tea in China and William Boyd's new novel, Ordinary Thunderstorms. For my 1010 challenge, I'm reading a good NF book now, Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty, and have my eye on a mystery novel and a biography after that. So many books, so little time...

I'm definitely interested in Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty, so I'll look for your review.

Ditto what Darryl said!

Based on Suzanne's comments about Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty on my thread, I have just ordered it from the Book Depository (cheaper than Amazon for this title, even before the free shipping).

Promise to cross-post the review here as well as on the 1010 challenge! It's definitely holding up, about halfway through. It's just so damning -- the absurdity of it all -- that I have to read it one or two chapters at a time to digest what I'm learning and keep my blood pressure under control.

Suzanne

It is hard to keep up with all the wonderful books you are reading. I'm adding The Calligrapher's Daughter and Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty.

As a side note, when I served on the board of directors for a local homeless shelter, to raise funds, I gave presentations to local business and churches. It always amazed me that some business men and women who rec'd. a free lunch when they attended the meeting, questioned why there should be food distribution to the poor.

NO! That just floors me. Although I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.

#156, oh, you see, I find that very American. It's all in line with the ethos of 'self-responsibility' the drove welfare reform proposals and created "work-fare". Still reading "Enough", and it utterly amazed me that we're able to tolerate a whole population of aid-dependent individuals in Africa and yet not in our own back yards, when the solution to the former is (by this argument at least) relatively straightforward by comparison to the latter.

Today's book du jour: The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald. This is a difficult book for me to evaluate -- I certainly can't share the rhapsodies that follow it everywhere, it seems, nor can I agree with the critics, whose problems with it seem to be mostly related to the fact that it's literary fiction.

Essentially, it's a biographical novel of ideas set in the midst of the German romantic era, in the final decade of the 18th century. (Goethe appears as a character.) The central character is Friedrich (Fritz) von Hardenberg, a petty nobleman's son, philosopher, poet and romantic, training to be a salt inspector. The central plot is his sudden love for 12-year-old Sophie von Kuhn, a not-that-pretty, not-that-bright girl who, nonetheless, in the true romantic tradition of valuing innocence over sophistication, he dubs his Philosophy, his muse, his guardian spirit. No one around him can understand what draws him to Sophie; such plot as there is revolves the gradually coming to terms of those around him to their engagement -- and her later illness.

All this is set against a background of beautiful, fascinating details of everyday life in late 18th century Saxony -- the giant laundry day, the details of travel, of fair days, including the Tennstedt fair, where pigs' parts are boiled with peppermint schnapps. (One character, Karoline, imagines the townspeople saying of her "A fine young woman still, what a pity she has no affianced to treat her to a pig's nostril!")

The writing is beautiful, the detail drew me in, and yet the story left me unsatisifed. Not because "nothing happened"; perhaps it was that the characters seemed more to symbolize/stand for principles or ideals than to exist as individuals. With the possible exception of Karoline, they felt unidimensional. I read a lot of literary fiction, I've read a considerable amount about the German romantics, both primary sources (Goethe, Schiller, Kant, Fichte) and second-hand materials, and yet this novel flummoxed me. It's essentially a series of pristine, elegant vignettes. Yes, there's a common theme -- the irrationality of love, particularly among the Romantic generation. As Goethe points out to Fritz's brother, it's not a young' girl's understanding that wins love, but "her beauty, her innocence, her trust in us" -- in other words, her utter naivete, in the absolute sense of the word. The character of Karoline, almost the polar opposite of Sophie, seems to be drawn in such a way as to emphasize the distinction between the two of them. Karoline is practical, yet that doesn't exclude being thoughtful or curious or even sentimental. She is mature and understanding, and yet it's to a thoughtless, witless child that Fritz is drawn.

I'm rambling here, but that's mostly because I'm still struggling to understand why this book is viewed as a masterpiece. There are bits a pieces that are masterful, such as when Fritz's sister Sidonie throws a purse of coins to some begging prisoners. Karl, the brother who is a soldier, predicts they will fight each other over the coins; Erasmus, the brother who is a philosopher of sorts as well, says they probably have some kind of system of distribution. "The Bernhard", the youngest child, says gloomily that the youngest probably will get the least. (There's an interesting comparison here between "The Bernhard", who although a child possesses a deep understanding of what his oldest brother means by his quest for the 'blue flower' of the title; and that of Sophie, who, while older, is even more naive in most ways and has no understanding and not even any natural curiosity, it seems.)

Enough babble. I may have to reread this book, but I dislike having to do so simply to get at a sense of why it's important. When I re-read a novel of this kind that has already taken a lot of my time and attention, it's usual to get another layer of meaning. In this case, I'm still puzzled by the author's primary purpose.

Suzanne, why force yourself to re-read a book that you did not care for? Not every book is for every body and if you did not like The Blue Flower it is certainly your perogative to do so. I share your frustration though in not liking a book that everyone else seems to love - that has happened to me more times than I can count (although not with TBF.)

It's not that I didn't like it -- the writing was beautiful. What frustrates me is not getting the point of it. And wondering whether the only point was to display a tremendous knowledge of the era and explore the theme of love being irrational? Maybe if I re-read it, I'll discover something that I've missed...

I understand. Sometimes I think, maybe if I go back and re-read the book I will understand what it is about it that everyone loved and I somehow missed or what it was that the author was saying that flew over my head.

On the other hand, I also feel that life is too short for me to re-read every book that is like that! lol

I'm with you, Stasia, on the life is too short front. I have gotten much better both about not even finishing books I don't like and about having a good sense of which books I might not like even though they are highly praised by others. Of course, I may miss out on some books I might end up liking that way, but there are just so many book to read . . .

#163: I will try just about anything once (except horror - I just cannot do it) and if I think the problem is the mood I am in, I will come back to it. If it is something I think I would not like, I just give it up as a bad job because as you pointed out, there is not enough time to get to the ones I do want to read.

Yes, this is an unusual book for me. Most of the time, I either like a book, or don't care enough for it to finish it (or if I do, to re-read.) In this case, while I liked it, I didn't love it, and I'm puzzled by it and by my reaction to it. Usually, I can understand why others hold up a book as some kind of wonder, even if I don't share that opinion. This time, I couldn't. Ho hum.

Anyway, the book du jour was Death of an Englishman, reviewed on my 1010 Challenge here, as I don't plan to post a separate review.

I certainly salute you on your perseverance, Suzanne. It's a great review, though but I'm sorry you didn't enjoy the book as much as you would have liked.

I enjoyed reading your review of The Blue Flower, but it won't make my wish list!

#165: I wish my local library had more of that series. I have only been able to read one, Death in Springtime since that is the only one that it has.

I'm going to have to start reading Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd today, in honor of the author's birthday...

Finished two books today, both for the 1010 challenge. (Follow the link above in #165.) These included Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty, which I know several 75ers are interested in; plan to spend a day or so pulling together the kind of detailed review this book demands and will post a link to it on this thread. Let's just say that it lived up to its early promise, and certainly is one of the most impressive/remarkable books that I've read this year.

I'm definitely looking forward to your review, but your comments are sufficient for me to add this book to my wish list.

#170: Ditto what Darryl said.

I'm looking forward to it too. Have you read Dead Aid? I've seen it here and read a review in the FT.

I recently downloaded it; it's sitting on my Kindle awaiting my attention...

Oh good - I'll wait!

Do you know how long something can sit on my Kindle, unread?? LOL!

Got some Barbara Pym books in the mail today from Amazon.co.uk... :-) Now I can check them all out and compare.

#176: Do you know how long something can sit on my Kindle, unread?? LOL!

Probably as long as stuff ends up waiting in the BlackHole!

#176 ha, true, but I'm not about to run out of books!

That's exactly how I rationalize all my book purchases, Cushla...
Today I took delivery of the Pyms, a NF book about Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre (which I'll review here), an English chick lit book, and a bio of Charles Lamb by Edmund Blunden (whose book about WW1 I greatly admire), published 1933. Oh, and I downloaded the new Sebastian Faulks novel and the first Louise Penny novel. Sigh.

I am currently reading Still Life A Mystery. I'm hooked. I think it was Bonnie (Brenzi) who so aptly said that these books are comforting and wonderful.

I'll be interested it learning your impressions of this book when you are finished.

So, I read a Kindle book about the Pitcairn sexual abuse trials that had been sitting on my Kindle for a short while, and that was utterly chilling. (It ended up on my 50-Book Challenge overflow thread, and there are detailed comments on it there.)

Pitcairn is a rock in the middle of the Pacific, still days of travel by boat from anywhere (Tahiti; it's two weeks by boat from New Zealand). It's home to only 50 descendants of the Bounty mutineers, who apparently for generations have been systematically having sex with the girls on the island as young as 10 or 12. Finally, some outsiders listened and there was a prosecution. While reading the book, I came across a reference to author Colleen McCullough who is married to a descendant of a mutineer on 'neighboring' Norfolk Island (more than a thousand miles away) that it's the Polynesian custom to "break your girls in at 12." Leaving aside the fact that the Pitcairners don't see themselves as Polynesians, but more like the British descendants who now inhabit Australia and New Zealand (they don't celebrate their Tahitian heritage, but only their Bounty roots, and hate being described as Pacific Islanders by the media), they covered up these 'traditions' unlike practitioners of things like female circumcision, and it was their own daughters & sister who eventually sought help from the outside, I find this comment utterly terrifying. This wasn't the case of women experimenting with older teens, but with men in their 30s or 40s picking out the best 10 year olds and climbing into their rooms at night or raping them when they went out to get firewood, day after day. When the girls tried to get help, they seem to have been ignored.

My own visceral reaction is that I don't think I can ever buy a McCullough book again and knowingly contribute to her royalties. I've worked with rape victims, and no 10 or 12 year old, however 'sophisticated' (which I struggle to believe is possible when isolated on a patch of volcanic rock a week's journey from any other place) can consent to sex so violent that several victims ended up infertile because of the damage they suffered. Just needed to vent; I was so disturbed that an author whose work I've mostly admired (I think her First Man in Rome series is superb, although Ladies of Missalonghi is outright plagiarism of LM Montgomery's The Blue Castle could use her public platform that way...

powerful message! What is the title of the book re. the Pitcairn book. Re. Colleen McCullough, I'm going to search to see if she has a website and then post a message to her!

It is Lost Paradise by Kathy Marks. I found the same quote in a story in the Sydney Morning Herald of Nov. 16, 2004. (There is a link from her Wikipedia page). Wanted to be sure she had actually said it and wasn't misquoted before posting anything. There's also a link on there to an interview she did where, frankly, she sounds like a real b*tch. The interviewer noted that Germaine Greer had compared The Thorn Birds to Barbara Cartland's books, and McC. said she got sneered at because "I think in their heart of hearts all these people know that there, that I’m more secure than they are, more confident then they are, and smarter then they are."

#183: I am going to look for that one - and my copy of The Thorn Birds which I will promptly dump. Thanks for the information, Suzanne.

#181: That is an extraordinarily disturbing story, especially the part about McCullough. I agree with Suzanne; 10-12 year old girls are NOT mature enough to engage in consensual sexual activity. Girls of that age (or younger) who behave in a suggestive fashion are very likely to have been sexually abused, and there are many girls and women who have been silently abused, often by a "trusted" relative, family friend or authority figure.

Message modifié par son auteur, Mar 10, 2010, 6:11pm.

How tragic, how upsetting, how ignorantly cruel of Colleen McCullogh to say something like that! I guess she isn't as smart as she thinks she is. Of course, I'm wondering how she would feel if she was on the receiving end of the rapes, or, if she had a daughter or grand daugther that was subjected to this animalistic behavior.

I'm floored. Just floored. I don't think I can read the books of her I have on my shelf, and I won't be purchasing any of her books again. That's absolutely sickening.

In the interview noted above, McCullough cheerfully admitted that she doesn't like children. Which is one thing -- and at least she has had the sense not have them herself -- but to then assume that this is normal? Heavens, it's not normal on islands that ARE Polynesian, except in rare instances, and typically among peers -- a 14 year old boy and 12 year old girl, for instance. There was a story in this book of a researcher asking how one of the women (who defended the men) had ended up having her first child at 12. The researcher was told, well, you didn't do your work very carefully? That was my second child; the first died. If nothing else, the climate of secrecy in which this occurred argues against the fact that this was standard practice and socially justified. What happens between consenting adults is one thing (and I have little patience with people who use rape allegations as revenge for being dumped, etc. -- which does happen) -- but a 10 or 12 year old??

I stumbled over this book after reading a so-so historical fiction about a relative of Fletcher Christian's who had been in love with him, etc. etc. Wanted to learn more about Pitcairn. Gulp. Guess I got what I asked for.

Thank you for letting us know about the book and McCullough. I definitely will spread the word about her and will not be reading any more of her books. (I had read only The Ladies of Missalonghi and was not impressed).

... and back to other matters, like books....

Thursday's book du jour was Operation Mincemeat, to be published in the US as Operation Top Secret, presumably because the publishers believe Americans don't know what mincemeat is. (In case they are correct, it's a delicious melange of raisins, currants, chopped dried fruits, marinated in all kinds of yummy stuff, and then baked in pie shells (or, in my house, made into tarts). This is the fourth book I've read by Ben Macintyre, and he keeps getting better. The story is one I was familiar with because of the film based on these events -- The Man Who Never Was -- in the 1950s, but the book is even more fascinating, jam packed with interesting characters and coincidences.

Essentially, it's a spy story, set at the height of World War II, in the months leading up to the invasion of Sicily. Already the Allies were using all kinds of misdirection to feed inaccurate intelligence back to the Germans, but they were particularly concerned about the Sicily landings, not just as a trial run for D-Day but in their own right: if they were repulsed, there might very well never be a D-Day, just a stalemate. How to convince the Germans that the Sicilian attack was only a feint; a cover for the real attack on Sardinia or Greece? Some of the smart and very eccentric minds in the intelligence operations got pondering this, and decided to float a body, containing secret documents, onto a Spanish beach in hopes that the ostensibly neutral Spanish fascists would share the information they found with the Germans AND that the Germans would believe it. Sound incredible? This is the story of that operation, from idea all the way through to the Sicily landings, and it's quite something.

The only reason I've rated this 4 stars rather than 4.5 is that I was already familiar with the basic story, although there is still an awful lot of new stuff here. The main protagonist, for instance, had a brother who was a Soviet spy: he was a typical ecccentric in that he founded a cheese-eating society at Cambridge, was a table-tennis nut, collected rare species of mice and, oh yes, spied for the Soviet Union. In between producing films for Hitchcock and Eisenstein, and teaching Charlie Chaplin to swear in Russian. That will give you an idea of the kind of eccentricity at work!

If you're interested in this kind of World War 2 intelligence saga, the best book of all (although not as lively or succinct a read as this one) is Churchill's Wizards by Nicholas Rankin, which covers Mincemeat and the various misdirection operations that surrounded D-Day itself. It came out about a year ago, and should be in paperback shortly, I imagine.

#190: It is funny that you mention The Man Who Never Was as I have that one checked out of the library right now.

I already have the Rankin book in the BlackHole, but I am adding the Macintyre book as well.

Very nice review of Operation Mincemeat (count me amongst the ignorant; I've never had mincemeat, although I knew that it was a fruit based dessert). I usually don't read books like this, but I may have to make an exception for this one. I'll probably buy it for my father, and let him read it first.

Suzanne, I think there was at least one other book about the deception campaign that focused on the planting of the body with the fake plans, whose name escapes me, and a movie, which I've actually seen, although its name escapes me too. But it was about the plan to float the body and how British intelligence obtained the appropriate body, etc.

Message modifié par son auteur, Mar 12, 2010, 9:25am.

#193: Rebecca, The Man Who Never Was is both a book and a movie. Could that be it?

Operation Mincemeat sounds like one I can't miss. Thanks for the interesting review.

Great review - I will look for both those. I read a trashy but unputdownable Ken Follett thriller about the D-Day deception last year - The Eye of the Needle. (Warning: very, very trashy!)

Yes, that's it, Stasia. Thanks. I kept thinking "The Man Without a Name" and there is no such book or movie, so I was stumped. Great movie; I never read the book.

That's right; it was written by the guy who orchestrated the whole thing, Ewen Montagu, back in the late 40s or early 50s. The great thing about this book is that Macintyre got access to a lot more info that Montagu couldn't write (such as the identity of the body that floated into Spain) and was able to write about Montagu himself (and his brother, a Soviet spy). A lot of the stuff written back then was done to pump up the wartime heroism, and it downplayed some of the things (like Ultra) that didn't become public until the 70s or even later.

Cushla, yes, I read Follett, too -- trashy fun. I refer to books like that as candy for the brain -- yummy but of no nutritional value whatsoever!

Oh, gosh, Suzanne, I just reread your original review and realize you mentioned the movie in it; I must be losing my mind and/or I just didn't read it carefully enough. The new book sounds great and I will look for it.

ETA I also just realized that Ben Macintyre is the same guy who wrote Agent Zigzag, one of my favorite books of last year, recommended to me by Chris/cabegley.

Message modifié par son auteur, Mar 12, 2010, 1:35pm.

This American knows what mincemeat is is -- one of my aunts used to make mincemeat pie for holidays. She and I were the only ones who ate it, though: to the rest of the family, mincemeat was as palatable as fruitcake.

Sigh. I like fruitcake too.

I'm tossing Churchill's wizards into the Swamp. If I only manage to read one, sounds like that's it. Thanks for the recommendation!

Mincemeat is much better than fruitcake... Yum. But I enjoy many fruitcakes, too. My mother sends me some every Christmas, and when I'm in London I go to Richoux for afternoon tea -- they have a very good fruitcake there, nice and moist.

Rebecca, judging by your most recent review, I would beg leave to suggest your mind is firmly in situ. And yes, Macintyre has written a number of excellent books. I'd also recommend The Napoleon of Crime.

I have the old copy of The Man Who Never Was home from the library to read in the upcoming weeks. If I can ever get my hands on the Macintyre book it will be an interesting comparison.

#199: I just ordered a copy of Agent Zigzag yesterday after getting tired of waiting for my local library to get a copy. I hope I enjoy it as much as you did, Rebecca.

Finished The Man from Saigon by Marti Leimbach early this morning. I loved the writing, and her ability to conjure up a sense of place (war, the Vietnamese jungle) as well as emotions and interior dialogue by her characters: a rather naive young woman who has arrived in Vietnam in the mid-1960s to write stories with a "women's angle"; her Vietnamese photographer/assistant/translator, who may be more than he seems in a number of ways; and the burned out war correspondent who has been "in country" for 26 months, longer than most of the soldiers he follows into combat. Leimbach doesn't make the mistake of trying to make the drama in her book outdo the drama of the war itself, but may err too far in the other direction -- it is never really clear why we, as readers, should care about their problems given the magnitude of the conflict that surrounds them. Perhaps that is her message? I also found her characters just a bit too studied and careful -- too representational, for want of a better word or phrase. In a really great book, the characters live -- they exist, they are, they can be no other, and to the extent that a reader finds a broader theme or message in them, that's in the reader's eye. In a novel that doesn't quite reach those heights, the strings connecting the author to his or her creations are more visible, or visible even part of the time, reminding us of the author's presence as the architect of the story. When those strings show up here, it's disappointing; a reminder that these are fictional creations who are intended to make us react in certain ways. Anyway...

The plot is simple: Susan and Son, her assistant, get separated from the military convoy they are following to a protected hamlet/refugee settlement; they are kidnapped by three VC who have been separated from their unit. As Susan, Son and their three captors roam the jungle looking for the main military division of the VC and finding only devastation, Marc, her jaded lover, is searching, with equal futility, for Susan and Son. The second part of that narrative is less effective than the first, but I've still rated this 4.5 stars. Not sure whether it will be added to my list of best reads of the year, as yet, however...

#203: That one looks very good and would fit in with my Vietnam reading. The local library does not have it, so I will go further afield. Thanks for the recommendation, Suzanne.

I've never understood why the filling in minced pies aren't actually minced meat. I detest minced pies as much as fruitcake... barring my mother's fruitcake - and I think that only because hers are really moist, infused with tons of brandy, and you get a nice mouthful of nuts and fruit with every bite. I used to eat a slice of that with a nice chunk of ... Wensleydale cheese .... I was introduced to this combination when I worked on a farm in Yorkshire many moons ago.

Good review, Suz ... this sounds like something I will like. Off to the wish list it goes.

Ah, Caroline, then what you want is what the French Canadians in Three Pines would call a tourtiere, a pie made of minced spiced meat. I loathe it! and used to dread the evenings my mother would dish it up. I also loathe walnuts, which tend to be the nuts must included in fruitcake, so I seek out nut-free versions. But I'm with you on the Wensleydale cheese -- very yummy. I'll have mine with some fresh apples and pears, please...

Add me to the lovers of Wensleydale cheese. One of the cafes at the National Theatre in London makes a delectable Wensleydale cheese and carrot chutney sandwich, and I think I had a similar sandwich at a Marks & Spencer take away at Victoria Station.

Is Wensleydale cheese available on this side of the pond?

I have spotted it intermittently at Dean & Deluca. Most of the other places I go for cheese are more into local organic stuff, or funky herb-scented Spanish goat cheeses.
English sandwiches are great. Not overstuffed, and very creative.

#200 & 201 mmmmmmm mincemeat, mmmmmmmm fruit cake.

#205 Yes, the secret with fruit cake is definitely lots of Brandy (and twice as many nuts as any recipie suggests...) ;o)

#205 - 7 I like Wensleydale cheese, but, I'm afraid it fails to reach the true greatness of a proper mature Crockwell Bishop Stilton for me - just not strongly flavoured enough!

#208 Aha! This must be our National food!

Fliss -- yes, a coronation chicken sandwich alongside streaky bacon-flavoured crisps!! ;-)

Stilton has too strong a flavor for me, alas.

Sigh, I'm making only slow progress with my reading, unless I can count re-reading my own book galleys on this challenge? (she said hopefully?) However, re-reading one's own less than peerless prose for the 18th or 19th time is distinctly unsatisfying; I'd currently give it only 2.5 stars.

I did finish a Henry James novel for the first time in about 26 years -- The American. My thoughts/comments are over on my 1010 Challenge thread. When I feel less overwhelmed, I'll try to figure out the linking stuff again.

The thing about Stilton is that too many shops sell it when it's not quite ripe, so it tastes very sharp. Good Stilton should be rich and creamy, but it's surprisingly hard to come by. Every year my Granny orders a whole Stilton at Christmas (yes, that is a lot of cheese - but it does get sub-divided quite a bit!) and for some reason, it always tastes much better than the lumps you usually buy. No idea why...

Mmmmmm crisps. Honestly, I could live without chocolate if I had to (I'd rather not), but I'd hate to do without crisps. ;o)

Galleys should count, absolutely!

Message modifié par son auteur, Mar 15, 2010, 3:33pm.

I have to live without chocolate (migraines), but I do have a shipment of Walkers' salt & vinegar crisps arriving from one of the British food shops shortly. Now the only things from the UK that I have trouble getting online are Europa steno and A4 notepads, M&S underwear multipacks, and sandwiches! I've solved the book problem, the baked beans problem and the crisps problem... (and even the clotted cream problem...)

I just ordered The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People that Read Them. It may be a short while before I get to it, but I heard the author, Elif Batuman, interviewed on the local NPR station this morning, and I couldn't resist. For some reason touchstone is not working at all today...

I too suffer from wicked headaches...not fun...not fun at all.

Today's book du jour was/is Typhoon , a spy novel by Charles Cumming. It's for my off-the-shelf challenge, so is noted over there with a few comments. Good enough, although Cumming is NOT the new John LeCarre and has written better novels.

Just started reading A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks. So far, meh. A rather overly complicated plot that revolves around far too many details. It'll end up in my Overflow Challenge (aka the 50-book challenge).

By all means, count the galleys!

Yes count the galleys, and I was quite happy that you'd slowed down for a few hours. And I'm also happy that the new Faulks book gets a "meh" - one less that I'd been thinking looked good.

Cushla, whoops finished a book overnight tonight when I couldn't sleep. (Stress-induced insomnia???) Now, I'm exhausted from too little sleep and too much work to do, so I'll just post briefly. Besides, I owe the first review on this to Amazon, as it's a Vine book.

All the Tea in China by Sarah Rose is the non-fiction look back at the adventures of Robert Fortune, a botanist from England, who went undercover in China in the 1840s to steal tea plants and seeds and tea-making technology that could be introduced to India, ensuring Britain a reliable source of supply. It should have been a much better book than it was; it's amusing and entertaining in spots, but choppy in style and ultimately frustrating. I often felt that surely some of the primary sources must be livelier reads. There were also too many unanswered questions. Anyway, will try to get a more detailed review up once I've posted to Amazon.

#218: Too bad about that one, Suzanne. It sounds like one I would have liked.

You may like it more than I did. My review is up; it focuses more on what's missing rather than what is there, since the book's jacket copy and promotional material handles that quite adequately. I kept wondering, where's the REST of the story?!

I have read Tea: the drink that changed the world by Laura C. Martin and currently have home from the library The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakuro. Maybe one of those would be more to your liking.

Mebbe; I got it from Vine more for its look at China and botanic history -- I'm fascinated by books about plant-hunters, who did some truly amazing things. The fact that it was tea was incidental to me. I do think the book would probably appeal more to a tea afficionado.

Ah, OK, that makes a difference. I may look for it after all.

I think plant hunters are interesting too.

ETA: I looked at your review and have decided to pass.

Message modifié par son auteur, Mar 16, 2010, 2:24pm.

In honor of March Madness, I'm starting to read Varsity Green by Mark Yost, a no-holds-barred look at the business of college athletics.

...and I've finished it! It's a very good book, one that comes at its subject with absolute subjectivity. Yes, Yost blasts the extent to which college athletics has become about nothing but money, but also nimbly avoids falling into any traps, like deploring the cost of stadiums and extravagant training facilities -- he points out that these can lead to funding for academic programs that wouldn't have been there otherwise. (On the other hand, he is careful to point out that over the long run, if the disparity in the growth rates of academic vs athletics-related giving continues, that could lead to problems, although he doesn't see that happening now.) Yost reserves his greatest ire for the way the profit-oriented system misleads, abuses and then discards its "student athletes", insisting that they are really sociology majors who play football only for love, and then profiting from their cheap labor until they are injured or don't live up to expectations, at which point they are left to their own devices. (No more special tutoring sessions or scholarships.) There were a few flaws, like the repetition of key anecdotes and his key piece of data: that only 3% of high school athletes will get college scholarships, and only 2% of that 3% will be able to go on to a professional career (in other words, out of 10,000 high school athletes, 300 will get a college scholarship and 6 will have pro careers), chastening numbers that everyone chooses to overlook until it's too late, figuring they will be the exception rather than the rule. I'd be very interested to see Yost follow this up with a hard-nosed look at high-school and elementary school athletics, and the kids whose lives revolve around a single sport to the exclusion of all else, even having nutritional coaches and surgery for major sports injuries by the time they are 14. That's dealt with in one of his chapters, but there's probably enough there for another book...

I'm rating Varsity Green , a rather obscure book that has flown beneath the radar, a solid 4.5 stars, and suggesting it as must-reading for anyone who'll be watching March Madness.

I had never heard of this book but will definitely look for it. It is very pertinent to me as I work at the University of Oregon, and we have what is getting to be the "typical" arrangement around the country. Multi-million dollar buildings for training, housing, and tutoring athletes (esp football) and the rest of the university which is struggling with burgeoning student population and crumbling infrastructure. My solution for the athletes would be to admit them for eight years, four to play the sport, and then when they don't get drafted, four more to get an education. Thanks for the review.

Omigod, yes, you will want to read this. There is a fair amount about Oregon in it...

I also work in academia. Lehigh is a very sports oriented college. In fact the Lehigh/Lafayette rivalry is one of the oldest in the country.

Isn't it sad when a schools reputation is good/bad because of sports? Our coaches are busy right now bailing the football stars out of jail for theft, domestic violence, DUIs. There is such a sense of entitlement!

...and the sad thing is that by the time they arrive in college, it's pretty much instilled already. It's so ingrained in our culture that athletes are stars, that from the time they started showing talent, they were probably treated as special. That's what appeals to me about what Yost describes as "non-revenue" sports like fencing, rowing, etc. Yes, the kids are still likely to be monomaniacal, but because they don't generate as much obscene money for the institution, they get less adulation. (Unless they become Olympic medal candidates, of course...)

bingo...well put!

Two more books to add to the list of 'read this year', tho neither for this challenge:
Alan Gordon's Thirteenth Night , read for the off-the-shelf challenge, is a wonderful medieval mystery, involving what happened to the characters in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night 15 years later, with the fool Theophilus (aka Feste) at the heart of the action as a member of the Guild of Fools. Refreshingly different and fun. A hard to find book, but definitely worth it! I'm going to read some of his others now.

Sebastian Faulks's A Week in December ended up marginally better than expected, but only just. There are far too many characters, whose lives overlap too unconvincingly, and some of them are simply parodies or thinly-veiled real people. There's the overly evil and one dimensional hedge fund manager, social climbing wives, a bitter and vituperative reviewer (one wonders if Faulks was anticipating the reaction of readers to this book?), a Polish footballer, etc. It's all about madness and reason, in its various forms, and there are two competing plot threads, one involving a terrorist plot and one a financial act of terrorism by Veals, but half of the story has nothing to do with either. The ending is a damp squib. Only for the author's real fans. Read for my Overflow/50-Book Challenge.

Today's "Book du jour" for the 75 Challenge is Dancing Backwards by Salley Vickers. This is an author who seems incapable of writing a bad novel. Like many of her previous novels, this tackles themes relating to middle age, to unfulfilled possibilities, to addressing old wrongs or old sadnesses. Vi Hetherington is crossing the Atlantic onboard a luxury liner; the narrative drifts seamlessly back and forth between her onboard encounters with her fellow passengers and a dance instructor, and her past life as a young poet, trying to balance her most important friendship with her first experiment in love. It's clear from the beginning that Vi is a solitary by nature, and that her late husband had trouble adjusting to that; now she is widowed, she is free to revisit an old friend and her past self. The voyage is the bridge between her lives. I thought this was an excellent book; it's not a five-star book, as in some ways it doesn't delve deeply enough into the themes it tackles, but it's certainly a solid 4 star read, and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who's looking for a novel that revolves around characters and ideas rather than dramatic events.

Had lunch with my agent today and came away with three free books -- yippee! OK, I don't think I'll rush to read Success Made Simple: An Inside Look at Why Amish Businesses Thrive but who knows? (Book isn't out yet, maybe that's why the touchstone doesn't work.) Also got the pb of Righting the Mother Tongue and The Bone Thief by Jefferson Bass, an author I haven't read before. Free books... *Grin*

OMG! I have all the Jefferson Bass books and adore them. I am waiting another week for this to be out. Any way you could snag another copy for me? They are so full of information. I wish I could meet these men in person so I could listen to them for hours. I have no one to talk to about these books because they creep most people out. I'm going to have to keep my eye on you Chatterbox! In my mind you snagged the golden fleece with The Bone Thief.

Scarpettajunkie, I don't think I can really ask for another copy, but I can lend you this one, as long as you promise solemnly to mail it back when read? I don't think I'll get to it for a week or two or three, so if you're waiting on it eagerly, would be happy to do that. Just PM me your address and I'll try to mail it tomorrow. (My agent wanted my opinion, so I do have to read it, just no obligation to do so overnight!)

Finally posted my review of Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty today -- you can find it here

Great, wonderful review...Thumbs up from me. I have a lot of experience in working with the poor. I volunteered at a homeless shelter and was on the board of directors for 15 years....

The distribution of food in this country and in the world is a sad, sorry, pitiful thing.

This book is already on my tbr pile..I hope to read it soon.

Suzanne, I'm taking my copy of Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty on my trip to visit my sister, and since I bought it on your recommendation, I'm going to wait until I finish it to read your review.

The responsibility, Rebecca.... *quakes in shoes*
Do let me know!

I'm particularly interested generally in the mismatch between donor intentions (they do philanthropic giving that makes them feel good and ties to their beliefs vs. focusing on needs/effectivenes too much of the time.

But the next book I write -- determined over lunch today -- will be the book about why Americans are so maniacal about genealogy -- so much so that websites about it get almost as many hits as Internet porn and that it's the most fave pastime second only to gardening.

If I had my way, a well-thumbed copy of this book would rest on the desk of every US Senator and member of Congress, and they'd be thinking about the issues the authors raise while crafting their policies.

From Suzanne's Hot Review of Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve... on today's Home page.

Suzanne...*applause* for the review, and brava for its Hotness!

Murrikins and genealogy, hm? 2011? Please don't say 2012, that's too long to wait. ;-P

Congratulations on both the wonderful review and the free books, Suzanne!

I am adding Thirteenth Night and Dancing Backwards to the BlackHole - Enough is already there. Thanks for the recommendations.

Message modifié par son auteur, Hier, 12:39am.

Great review. My copy should be here any day now - have had Book Depository mail every day this week! (but Astrosaurs and Oxford Readers...mabye today.)

Thanks, Richard for the hotness applause! :-)

Alas, I suspect it probably will be 2012. If I find a publisher this summer, I'd finish the MS next year -- and it takes six to nine months from there to wend its way through the whole publishing system. Also, since I'm going to have to promote the first opus, I really wouldn't be able to start work on this one until Labor Day. At least, unlike the Wall Street book, it's unlikely that events will force me to completely reshape what I'm writing about from soup to nuts!

Cushla, shall keep my fingers crossed that BD parcels continue to arrive at such a regular clip. Stacia, don't tell me the BlackHole is finally full????? Horrors... But I suspect you'll really enjoy both books.

#243: The BlackHole can never fill up! I was just referring to the book, Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty, already being in the BlackHole.

#239, Don't worry, Suzanne. I'm also taking three other books, so the reading enjoyment of my trip doesn't rest entirely on your shoulders!

It is fascinating to learn how obsessed people in the US are with genealogy!

Suzanne, I was wrong - I ordered the Paul Farmer book, not Enough (but have now clicked on BUY for Enough - aaagh!). This morning's mail brought more Astrosaurs and Let the Great World Spin and The Patience Stone. Have started walking home from the supermarket with a book open and 3 bags of groceries.

I used to do that as a child -- walk home from school with a book under my nose. Or sometimes at the back of our "crocodile" when going to or from something; this was at my school in London. I was forced to stop when I walked into the same lamppost twice in less than a month. The first time I got a goose egg on the right side of my forehead; the next time I hit it with my left! So -- be careful!!!