Arubabookwoman in 2015

Well-I'm back for another year, full of good intentions on this first day of 2015. I promise to try harder this year!

For those who don't know me, I'm Deborah, in my mid-60's, a retired attorney living near Seattle with my husband of 44 years, dog Dante, and cats Thalia, Dinah and Mama. We have 5 grown kids, now scattered--our three sons (and one daughter-in-law and grandson Teddy) in NYC, our older daughter (and son-in-law and two grands, Boden and Madeleine) in Houston, and our younger daughter in Palo Alto, CA. We've been doing quite a bit of traveling to keep up.

My reading tastes are eclectic. I read a lot of translated fiction and a smattering of classics. I make a lot of my reading choices from the 1001 and other "best of" lists, as well as LT recommendations and serendipitous finds in my favorite used book stores. In recent years, I've been reading more nonfiction, and I find it's now about 25%-30% of what I read. I also read some science fiction, mystery/crime/thriller, and historical fiction.

Besides reading, my other interests are art. I'm a textile artist, and I also have been meeting with a small group of friends weekly for several years to study art history.

Some of my notable reads of 2014:

Favorites:

The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Kay Penman
London Belongs to Me by Norman Collins
Reasons of State by Alejo Carpentier
The Timeless Land by Eleanor Dark
Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan
Germinal by Emile Zola (reread)
The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott (reread)
An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris
Journey into the Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg
A Voyage for Madmen by Peter Nichols
Agaat by Marlene van Niekerk
Alberta and Jacob by Cora Sandel
The Names of the Dead by Stewart O'Nan
Children of Dynmouth by William Trevor
Montano's Malady by Enrique Vila-Matas

These were also very good and are recommended:

Goat Days by Benyamin
Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks
Someone Else by Tonino Benacquista
Greenvoe by George McKay Brown
Dr. Neruda's Cure For Evil by Rafael Iglesia
Brat Farrar byJosephine Tey
The Fishermen by Hans Kirk
Gillespie and I by Jane Harris
The Prisoner's Dilemma by Richard Powers

I was disappointed by:

Orfeo by Richard Powers
Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon

These were horrible:

The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair
The Viral Storm
The Tax Inspector

I had a lot of "meh" books this year, even though there weren't many terrible ones.

First Quarter

JANUARY

1. The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers 178 pp (1946) 5 stars
2. When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro 336 pp (2000) 2 1/2 stars
3. Pather Panchali by Bibhutibhushan Banerji 316 pp (1929) 5 stars
4. The Maquisarde by Louise Marley 385 pp (2002) 3 stars
5. Cinnamon Kiss by Walter Mosley 325 pp (2005) 3 stars
6. The Mahe Circle by Georges Simenon 160 pp (1944) 3 stars
7. Phineas Finn by Anthony Trollope 516 pp 4 1/2 stars
8. How's The Pain? by Pascal Garnier 160 pp 3 1/2 stars
9. Mysterium by Robert Charles Wilson 352 pp 2 stars

FEBRUARY

10. My Own Medicine by Geoffrey Kurland 272 pp 2 stars
11. An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine 304 pp 3 1/2 stars
12. All Dogs Are Blue by Rodrigo Souza Leao 200 pp 4 stars
13. The Little Way of Ruthie Leming by Rod Dreher
14. Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope

MARCH

15. I, Dreyfus by Bernice Rubens 3 1/2 stars
16. Augustus by John Williams (1972) 3 1/2 stars
17. The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar (2005) 321 pp
18. Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff (2010) 372 pp
19. The Child Who by Simon Lelic 306 pp

Second Quarter

APRIL
20. Garden of Last Days by Andre Dubus III
21. Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World by Joan Druett (2007) 272 pp
22. The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber (2014) 512 pp
23. The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle
24. Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout
25. Sofia Petrovna by Lydia Chukovskaya
26. God'll Cut You Down by John Safran (2014) 368 pp
27. The Caveman by Jorn Lier Horst
28. The Summer Guest by Justin Cronin
29. Fourth of July Creek by Smith Henderson
30. Death's Dark Abyss by Massimo Carlotto

MAY

31. Miss Hargreaves: A Novel by Frank Baker
32. The Eichmann Trial by Deborah Lipstadt 4 stars
33. Bomber by Len Deighton
34. The Unlikely Spy by Daniel Silva
35. Headhunters by Jo Nesbo
36. HHhH by Laurent Binet
37. Black Fridays by Michael Sears
38. The Open Curtain by Brian Evenson
39. The Eagle Has Landed by Jack Higgins
40. The Dragon Man by Garry Discher
41. Quiet Chaos by Sandro Veronesi

JUNE

42. The Cold Song by Linn Ullmann
43. An Accident in August by Laurence Cosse
44. The Asylum by Johan Theorin 416 pp 3 stars
45. Alex and Me by Irene Pepperberg 232 pp 3 stars
46. Among the Thugs by Bill Buford 320 pp 3 stars
47. Alfred and Emily by Doris Lessing 288 pp 1 1/2 stars
48. Back Channel by Stephen Carter 455 pp 1/2 star
49. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy 1146 pp 5 stars

Third Quarter

JULY

50. Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner 378 pp 5 stars
51. Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic by Molly Caldwell Crosby 320 pp 1 1/2 stars
52. Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon
53. Summer by Edith Wharton
54. Angel by Elizabeth Taylor (1957) 272 pp 3 1/2 stars
55. Arturo's Island by Elsa Morante 384 pp 3 1/2 stars
56. The Atomic Times by Michael Harris 288 pp 2 1/2 stars
57. Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer 208 pp 1 star
58. And When She Was Good by Laura Lippman 336 pp 3 stars
59. Afterimage: A Brokenhearted Memoir of a Charmed life by Carla Malden 320 pp 3 stars
60. The Absent One by Jussi Adler-Olsen 432 pp 2 stars
61. Joseph Anton by Salman Rushdie
62. The Astronaut Wives Club by Lily Koppel

AUGUST
SEPTEMBER

Fourth Quarter

OCTOBER
NOVEMBER
DECEMBER

years

nobelists

I'm happy to see you here, Deborah. I've missed your reviews. You have a couple of my favorites on your 2014 lists. I really loved London Belongs to Me, when I read it several years ago, although my old copy was titled Dulcimer Street.

I look forward to see what you are reading.

I too have missed your reviews and look forward to following your reading. I haven't read Reasons of State (yet), but I'm a big Alejo Carpentier fan and it was Germinal that got me started reading Zola.

It's good to see you here! Looking forward to following your reading throughout the year.

I read that Benacquista so many years ago and enjoyed it. Great to see that name pop up again on LT.

Good to see you here! It looks like you had a lot of great reads even with lots of meh books.

I finished my first book of the year, which I read for an American Author Challenge in the 75 group. The January author is Carson McCullers. I loved The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, which I've read twice. For the challenge I read The Member of the Wedding, for which I had seen the movie, but I didn't think I'd read the book. This book is short, and so much more complex than I thought it would be, a five star read for sure. My brief comments:

1. The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers (1946) 168 pp

A perfect portrait of what it's like to be 13. Frankie (or F. Jasmine, as she refers to herself) wants to be anywhere but where she is. Where she is is mostly in the kitchen with her young cousin John Henry and Berenice, cook and soulmate, as they while away the hot August afternoons exchanging stories and dreams. Frankie's brother is getting married in a week, and Frankie has decided that she will be leaving town forever with her brother and his new bride after the wedding. We join her as she takes a farewell walk around her town, where she puts herself in more peril than she realizes.

I am awed by how beautifully McCullers conveys Frankie's spirit--her sense of herself as worldly, yet her actual total and absolute naivete. Frankie's yearning to belong, to be a "member" of anything---ah--the memories McCullers evokes of being 13. A simply amazing book.

5 stars

Some quotes from the book that particularly struck me:

First sentence:

"It happened that green and crazy summer when Frankie was twelve years old. This was the summer when for a long time she had not been a member."

"Frankie had become an unjoined person...."

"'To me it is the irony of fate,' she said. 'The way they come here. Those moths could fly anywhere. Yet they keep hanging around the windows of this house.'"

"She was afraid of these things that made her suddenly wonder who she was, and what she was going to be in the world and why she was standing at that minute, seeing a light, or listening, or staring up into the sky, alone. She was afraid and there was a queer tightness in her through."

I have yet to read Carson McCullers. I have The Heart is a Lonely Hunter on my shelf. This will be the year.

Hi Colleen--Wasn't London Belongs To Me great? I don't know how to describe it (a long "boarding house" novel?), but I felt so, I don't know, comfortable?, reading it. I felt like I belonged in the novel.

Rebecca--I've also read THe Lost Steps by Carpentier, which I loved, and Reasons of State is very different--a horrifying portrait of a dictator, written with high humor. As in The Lost Steps, music plays a large role, and there are many erudite cultural and historic references. I read on Amazon that Carpentier was friends with Marquez and Augusto Rao Bastos, and they challenged each other to write about the dictatorships then brutalizing Latin America. Marquez wrote Autumn of the Patriarch, which I read in the 1980's and now want to reread, Bastos wrote I, the Supreme, which I have on my shelf and want to read, and Carpentier wrote Reasons of State. Three very different takes on a similar theme.
I think I recommended Germinal to you for your first Zola, after you read GB84 by David Peace about the British coal miners strike.

Lilisin--I'm looking for other books by Benacquista or similar authors--any recommendations? Best of luck with your move to Japan.

Diefleidermaus--I'm so glad you're back! I got so many recommendations from your thread. Are you finished with your studies?

and, Hello to Poquette--I follow your reading too, but you read so much more serious books than I do.

I read his work about ten years ago so unfortunately I remember nothing about it other than the fact that I enjoyed it. I own another if his works but have yet to pick it up so it would be difficult to make a recommendation based on him.

But thank you for the well wishes. I'm very excited.

>15 arubabookwoman: I loved The Lost Steps and I've also read The Kingdom of This World and Explosion in a Cathedral. In addition to Reasons of State, I have The Harp and the Shadow and The Chase on the TBR.

That's very interesting about Garcia Marquez and Augusto Rao Bastos and Carpentier. I also have I, the Supreme on the TBR and I read Autumn of the Patriarch many years ago.

I had forgotten that you recommended Germinal to me; did you also recommend David Peace's Nineteen Seventy-Four, etc., or was that someone else? (I read those before I read GB84.) I have a terrible memory for who recommended what.

Great to see you back here, Deborah, although you are an absolute menace to my TBR reduction plans. I almost bought London Belongs to Me when I went to Daunt Books in Marylebone last year, so I'll get it when I return there in a few months. I've wanted to read something by Enrique Vila-Matas, so I'll add Montano's Malady to my wish list. I own and plan to read Agaat for the fourth quarter Reading Globally theme on women authors who write not in English, so I'll make it a priority to get to it then. I own The Lost Steps but haven't read it yet, so I'll move it higher up the TBR list, especially since you and Rebecca (another TBR menace) liked it, and consider getting Reasons of State if I like it, which I'm sure that I will. Dr. Neruda's Cure For Evil sounds very interesting, so that's been added to the wish list. I'll move Germinal higher on my TBR list of books to read. And, finally, I agree with you about Gillespie and I; I loved that book!

I'm glad that you liked The Member of the Wedding; I enjoyed it as well. I'm reading Clock Without Hands, her fifth and final novel, for Mark's American Author Challenge, as I've read her previous novels. Carson McCullers is at the top of my list of favorite American authors, and I would only put James Baldwin ahead of her, and Flannery O'Connor is either alongside or just behind her.

Lovely review of The Member of the Wedding -- it makes me want to go back and read it again.

McCullers is one of those authors I've meant to read for many years but haven't. I think your review has booted her into the "this year, blast it!" camp. Wonderful review.

>13 arubabookwoman: I recently read and loved The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. I'm thinking The Member of the Wedding ought to go on the wishlist.

Such fun to review your favorites from 2014, Deborah! I am anxious to read Carpentier and now also Carson McCullers. Sometimes I feel that I neglect our own great American authors. I'm glad to see Cloudsplitter made it onto your "also recommended" list, although I would move it up, as I thought it was a masterpiece!

I too included Germinal in my top books of 2014. And though read in 2013, I enjoyed The Lost Steps by Alejo Carpentier. So, I am sad to see Orfeo on your disappointments list. I was fascinated, and challenged, by his The Echo Maker and Galatea 2.2.

You're one of the only people I've noticed that has read and loved Alberta and Jacob. I read it in 2014 and just loved it. I read the next book in the trilogy and didn't find it quite as good, but I'll read the last one this year anyway to see how it finishes out.

I also love The Sunne in Splendour, Geminal, and Brat Farrar. Looking forward to your 2015 reading!

Since reporting last, I've finished When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro, and I'm now reading Pather Panchali for Reading Globally.

Rebecca--I think I recommended David Peace's Red Riding Hood Quartet to you, or at least I reviewed it very favorably and you picked that up. It caused me to read all of his books except the one about football/soccer. I'm anxiously awaiting a new book from him---it's been quite a while.

Darryl--London Belongs to Me and Montano's Malady are very different. London Belongs to Me is a traditional chronological narrative about the lives of a number of families living in a London boarding house. I felt totally involved in their lives and times while I was reading it. Montano's Malady is a literary metafiction in which Vila-Matas engages in games of cat and mouse with his readers. It's also chock-full of literary (and other cultural) references, many of which I'd never heard of. But overall--lots of fun.

Agaat is also a book I loved--the interior life of a dying white S. African woman---particularly her relationship with Agaat, the young black woman who is now her caregiver, but who had been adopted by her when she was a child and raised by her as her daughter for a while.

I think that between The Lost Steps and Reasons of State, I would read The Lost Steps first. However, I think it would be interesting to read Reasons of State, Autumn of the Patriarch, and I, the Supreme as a unit to see how alike and how different these three great writers are.

I have no hesitation recommending Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil, but I put it on my list with a degree of hesitation. I loved the first two parts of the book, and for me those were a 5 star read. However, in Part 3, where Dr. Neruda begins executing his "cure" for evil, I had difficulty believing that someone trained in medicine, a caring psychiatrist, would do some of the things he did--even to purely evil people.

I haven't read Clock Without Hands, but based on refreshing my love of Carson McCullers with The Member of the Wedding, I think I'm going to have to read those books of hers I haven't yet read.
I've only read James Baldwin's Go Tell It On The Mountain, and that was back in the late 60's/early 70's, and Flannery O'Conner is another author I need to get to--I've only read smatterings of her short stories here and there.

Jane--thanks for visiting!

Mabith and Bragan--The Member of the Wedding is very short and easy to read. It is well worth your while to read it sooner rather than later. Bragan--Frankie in the book is very reminiscent of Mick in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

Linda--Good to see you. I had difficulty enough coming up with my favorites that I wouldn't pay too much attention to Cloudsplitter being on the second level. :)

Elizabeth--My "disappointments" list--probably in my mind meant I wasn't ready to say it was a bad book, just that I personally didn't like it or perhaps merely that I didn't "get" it. I have since reading Orfeo read some reviews/comments that have made me think I should give it another chance. I posted in my 2014 thread that Richard Powers is one of my favorite contemporary American authors, and I've read everything he's published except his first book, Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, which I hope to get to soon. Galatea 2.2, The Gold Bug Variations, The Time of Our Singing, and Operation Wandering Soul are my favorites.

The problem I had with Orfeo: It is the story of a composer who comes under suspicion as a domestic terrorist and goes on the run. The portions dealing with his life as a composer were filled with descriptions of music which I frequently found to be highly technical. I suppose that Powers was trying to make us "hear" the music, and also to make us feel what it was the composer was trying to accomplish, but it didn't work for me. I have a musical background and at least a basic understanding of music theory and composition, and if I was having difficulty, I wonder what it would be like for someone with no formal musical training. I found myself skimming these portions of the novel to get to the portions where he was on the run from the federal authorities, and that simply wasn't fair to the book. I ended up feeling that the two themes weren't cohesive, and the terrorism theme was really not sufficient on its own to carry the book. Again, I think I probably need to revisit the book. I would point out that The Time of Our Singing is a book that combines the theme of music again (the protagonist is a classical musician) and the American civil rights movement of the 20th century in a way that forms a beautifully cohesive whole, and which I loved.

Well--I just finished speaking to my younger daughter on face time. She's in Israel now on a Birthright trip (free 2 week trip to Israel for those who have a Jewish ancestor). She was covered in mud from the Dead Sea!

I wanted to mention that the last book of 2014, which I finished just before midnight New Year's Eve, was Gilead. When Gilead first came out I had decided not to read it, since I feared I would not be interested in the theological musings of an elderly Midwestern preacher. Then, there were rave reviews everywhere, and more recently rave reviews for its sequels/prequels? Home and Lila, which sounded more interesting. However, I thought I would need to read Gilead before reading these subsequent books. (I probably wouldn't have bothered but for the fact that I loved her first book Housekeeping). Well, my initial instinct was correct. Gilead was not the book for me. I think I'll still read Lila and Home, though, because the characters featured in those books were the ones who interested me in Gilead.

I'll try to be back soon to review the Ishiguro.

japaul--(Jennifer?)--Yes I loved Alberta and Jacob. I had read reviews of the later novels and decided that I wasn't interested (it was life in the Far North that I was interested in), so I'm glad that viewpoint is confirmed. Still, I'll be interested to see what you think of the final novel.

>26 arubabookwoman: (yes, its Jennifer) THe setting of Alberta and Jacob really made the book for me and probably also how the setting sort of matched Alberta's teenage angst and boredom. The second book, set in Paris, really didn't measure up. I think that in the latter half of the last book she goes back to Norway, so I'm looking forward to that.

>18 kidzdoc: >25 arubabookwoman: Last year I read Bartleby & Co. by Vila-Matas, and the description of Montano's Malady sounds like he used similar approaches in both novels. Now I too am eager to read Montano's Malady.

I'm curious how your Marilynne Robinson reading will work out. I read Gilead and found it dull. Then i re-read it after reading Home and found parts I just loved. Also i just ordered a copy of Lila today, I wanted a hardback...

>25 arubabookwoman: Yes, I think I read your reviews of The Red Riding Quartet and decided to read them. So far the only other David Peace I've read is GB84, which was stunning, but I would like to read other books by him (but, like you, not the soccer/football ones). I'll have to look to see what else is available by him.

I wasn't a fan of the book by Richard Powers that I read -- The Echo Maker. I admired what he was trying to do, but it didn't work for me.

>15 arubabookwoman: - Interesting about Carpentier, Marquez and Bastos. I started reading The Lost Steps and was really enjoying it, but then I lost the book and haven't been able to find it. I've lost a couple other books, but they always turned up. It's a bit embarrassing. It sound like Reasons of State would be an interesting read.

Too bad about Orfeo, sounds like it had some promise.

I did finish school and am now Dr. Fledermaus (although not a real doctor like kidzdoc)!

>25 arubabookwoman: London Belongs to Me sounds right up my alley, as I've become very interested in the history and neighborhoods of London. That reminds me; I should add Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire to my list of TBR books I would like to read this year.

Montano's Malady sounds like a fun read, so that stays on my wish list, although my focus on my TBR collection this year means that I may not buy it this year.

Agaat has been in my TBR collection for several years (I think I bought it during a close out sale at a local Borders in Atlanta), so I'll read it during the fourth quarter Reading Globally theme.

I do have The Lost Steps in my library and, I believe, it's on my TBR to read list for this year. I like your idea of reading Reasons of State, Autumn of the Patriarch and I, the Supreme together. I may not be able to do that this year, but I'll try to remember to read them in 2016 if I don't.

Your description of Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil, especially the good doctor's "evil" cure, makes me that much more eager to read it!

I'll write a review of Clock Without Hands later today, after I catch up with selected threads here and in the 75 Books group. I finished it yesterday morning and gave it 4 stars.

Hi Deborah, The Member of the Wedding sounds great! I've had London Belongs to Me on my shelves for a good two years now and all this talk on your thread makes me think that this should be the year I actually read it!

Well I've been staying mostly away because my computer's broken and I find it difficult to type on the iPad, even though in the circumstances, I'm quite fortunate to have an iPad. Turns out there was about 20 days left on the extended warranty on the computer so it is packed off to Hewlett Packard for repair, and who knows when I'll get it back. And since I've read 5 more books I better get busy.

Jennifer--the primary reason I chose Alberta and Jacob was its northern setting. For some reason, I love Scandinavian novels with that kind of setting. Two other favorites are The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas and The Parson's Widow by Marja-Liisa Vartio.

Poquette--I'll have to check out Bartleby and Co.. Thanks for the recommendation!

Dan--Yes, that was the problem with Gilead--it was dull. I'm willing to read Lila though because Lila was such an intriguing, but undeveloped, character in Gilead.

Rebecca--I read David Peace's Tokyo novels and liked one and hated one. I can't remember which was which though, so I'll have to check my notes. :) I don't think he's written much else, but I keep hoping for a new book.
I wasn't such a fan of The Echo Maker either, but if you are willing to give Richard Powers another try, I think you'd like The Time of Our Singing (music and the civil rights movement) or The Gold Bug Variations (music and science/DNA). I'll be holding my breath if you do decide to read one of those, because both are tomes, but quick reads and well worth it in my view.

Dief--I may give Orfeo another chance.
If you don't mind sharing, are you still in Seattle?

Darryl--I'm almost positive that you would like Dr. Neruda, and I think you'll like Agaat, although I'm less sure you would be as interested in a novel about a dying woman. I guess I'm sexually stereotyping the book, which I don't usually do, as a "woman's book." I really shouldn't do that because Agaat is nothing like a "woman's book" in the usual sense of that phrase.

Rebekki--I hope you are able to get to London Belongs To Me soon. It's a lovely book.

>34 arubabookwoman: thanks so much for mentioning the books of Vesaas and Vartio. I am so interested in Scandinavian literature but am still very much a novice and didn't know of these two authors. I've added both to my wish list.

I'm going to plug on with book comments, even though my replies above have almost exhausted my patience with iPad typing!

2. When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro (2000) 336 pp

I have read most of Ishiguro's books, but the only one I loved and have no hesitation in recommending to anyone is The Remains of the Day. Unfortunately When We Were Orphans is another of his books I didn't really connect with.

When the novel opens, Christopher Banks is about 10, and enjoying an idyllic childhood in early 20th century Shanghai. I enjoyed the descriptions of his boyhood escapades with his Japanese friend from next door, and the lives of the ex-pat community in this exotic city. There is an undercurrent of darkness, however, as Christopher's father works for a British firm importing opium and Christopher's mother is active in a group opposing opium. Christopher's world is abruptly changed when first his father and then his mother disappear. Despite intensive police investigation, no clues are found. An oddly unemotional Christopher is sent to England to live with a distant aunt.

We next meet Christopher when he is a young adult making his way in London society, and hoping to become a great and world-renowned detective. It was at this point that the book began to grate on me--it seemed aimless, meandering and illogical. One thing that particularly bothered me was that Christopher, a 30-something bachelor, basically on a whim and on the spur of the moment adopts and becomes the guardian of a 13 year old girl.

Despite the fact that more than 25 years have passed without any clue about the disappearance of his parents, Christopher believes, based on his study of various vague documents, that his parents are still alive, and that he knows precisely where they are. He heads for Shanghai--it is 1937, and the Japanese have surrounded the city. Here is where I really began to dislike the book. Christopher begins a nightmarish, hallucinatory odyssey through the ruins of Shanghai, trying to get to the place he thinks his parents are being held. Here's a sample of the writing, as Christopher, stumbling through the ruins of Shanghai, comes across a Chinese army officer and asks for some guides (sorry for the long quote):

"' Particularly with all this fighting going on, my parents shouldn't be left in that house a moment longer than necessary. May I suggest we take these men here with us? Then if Japanese soldiers set upon us, we'd be much the stronger.'
'As the commanding officer here, I cannot possibly sanction such an idea, Mr. Banks. If these men leave their position, the headquarters would become entirely vulnerable. Besides, I will be putting the men's lives at needless risk.'
I gave a sigh of exasperation. 'I must say, Lieutenant, it was pretty sloppy work on the part of your men to have allowed the Japanese in behind your line. If all your people had been doing their jobs properly, I'm sure such a thing would never have arisen.'
'My men have fought with commendable bravery, Mr. Banks. It is hardly their fault that your mission is, for the time being, inconvenienced.'
'What do you mean by that, Lieutenant? What are you implying?'
'Please calm yourself, Mr. Banks. I am merely pointing out it is not the fault of my men if ...'
'Then whose fault is it, sir? I realize what you're implying! Oh yes! I know you've been thinking it for some time now. I was wondering when you'd finally come out with it.'
'Sir, I have no idea what...'
'I know full well what you've been thinking all this time, Lieutenant. You believe this is all my fault, all this, all of it, all this terrible suffering, this destruction here, I could see it in your face when we were walking through it all just now. But that's because you know nothing, practically nothing, sir, concerning this matter. You may well know a thing or two about fighting, but let me tell you it's quite another thing to solve a complicated case of this kind. You obviously haven't the slightest idea of what's involved. Such things take time, sir. A case like this one, it requires great delicacy. I suppose you imagine you can just rush at it with bayonets and rifles, do you? It's taken time, I accept that, but that's in the very nature of a case like this. But I don't know why I bother to say all this. What would you understand about it, a simple soldier?'
'Mr. Banks, there is no need for us to quarrel. I have only the most sincere good wishes for your success. I am simply telling you what is possible...'
'I'm getting less and less interested in your idea of what is and isn't possible, Lieutenant. If I may say so, you're hardly a good advertisement for the Chinese army. Do I take it you're now going back on your word? That you're unwilling to accompany me beyond this point? I take it that's so. I'm to be left to carry out this difficult task by myself. Very well, I shall do so! I shall raid the house single-handed!'
'I think, sir, you should calm yourself before saying anything more.'
'And one more thing, sir! You can safely assume I will no longer be mentioning you by name at the Jessfield Park celebration. At least if I do, it will not be in a complimentary light...'"

(The celebration in Jessfield Park has been planned for when Christopher returns triumphantly with his parents.)

The long passage quoted typifies the encounters Christopher has during his nightmarish journey through wartime Shanhai, during which time he also meets and accompanies, among others, his childhood Japanese friend, now a Japanese soldier.

After I finished the book, I could see that as a novel, at least in symbolic and surreal terms, it works. I'm able to recognize that to be successful, a novel doesn't have to be logical, make sense, or feel real. I guess the problem is that my personal preferences don't include the hallucinatory or surreal.

2 1/2 stars

>34 arubabookwoman: - Sorry to hear about your computer, but lucky about the iPad. I know a couple people who have mostly switched to using their iPads instead of computers at home, but I'm not sure if they do a lot of typing or if it is mostly looking at random internet stuff.

Yup, still in Seattle. If you do end up finishing Orfeo, I'd be interested in the review although I agree it doesn't sound too cohesive. I remember being confused by that one chapter that was all about music theory in Doctor Faustus by Mann. I read that one in high school though, not sure if it would be any better now.

>36 arubabookwoman: - I really liked Never Let Me Go, the only Ishiguro that I've read, but When We Were Orphans just sounds not good. I can think of several surreal/hallucinatory books that I like off top of my head - The Golem or The Blind Owl- but I don't know about that one.

>34 arubabookwoman: I have to confess I'm much more interested in reading more David Peace than in trying another Richard Powers. but if I did, I would probably go for The Gold Bug Variations, partly because I like the title!

Sorry about your computer, but good that it's still under warranty and that you have the ipad.

I read When We Were Orphans a number of years ago and remember finding it pretty fascinating, if untimately somewhat unsatisfying. But then I'm sort of drawn to the hallucinatory and surreal -- the world situation at large seems pretty surreal to me.

>38 rebeccanyc: >34 arubabookwoman: Chris is just finishing up The Red Riding Quartet and passing them on to me. Your review and Kay's review put them on my wishlist. Chris said I have to read them one after the other. :)

>36 arubabookwoman: I read When We Were Orphans after seeing the Merchant/ Ivory film The White Countess, starring Ralph Fiennes and written by Kazuo Ishiguro. I was hoping the book was the basis of the movie as both involved Shanghai in the 1930s, but while there were similarities, it wasn't the same plot. While I liked the novel, it wasn't what I was looking for at the time, and I suspect it suffered for that.

I think Kazuo Ishiguro needs to be approached with caution. I enjoyed Artist of the Floating world, but had an adverse reaction to Never let me go, perhaps he struggles with the fantasy elements.

I enjoyed your thoughts on When We Were Orphans, Deborah. I have been a fan of Kazuo Ishiguro and find his novels mesmerizing, even when thoroughly puzzling, such as The Unconsoled. I'm really not sure why I react to him that way. I have still to read When We Were Orphans and Never Let Me Go. As you already know, he has a new novel coming out in March: The Buried Giant, but Lois's (avaland) review does not make it sound very appealing, even to me.

By the way, I finally got around to answering your question over on my thread. Sorry for the delay.

Dief--I started Doctor Faustus several years ago, and it fell by the wayside, for reasons now unknown to me, but I remember the music theory and was not at all bothered by it. (I was a music major in college and took lots of courses in music theory and composition, a great deal of which I no longer remember, but I at least probably have more of a background than the average reader.)
I read Never Let Me Go and didn't care for it. I thought it was much ado about nothing--a somewhat familiar sci-fi theme. Maybe it was because so many people were acting as though revealing what it was about was "spoilerish" when to me it was just a given in a plot that would be no big deal in a sci fi novel.

Hi Rebecca--I understand--so many books, so little time. Maybe one day though when you have nothing to read a big fat copy of The Gold Bug Variations will jump into your hands and you'll remember I said you might like it and start reading it and get hooked.

Jane--I think that's the issue. Overall a good novel, but I just don't like surreal--though I agree the world is pretty weird these days.

Colleen--Chris is absolutely right--the four books have to be read as a unit. Each one leaves the reader with huge questions dangling in the air even though the "mystery" is solved.

Sassy--have you read any other Ishiguro, or did you read When We Were Orphans strictly because of your interest in Shanhai? I read it because Ishiguro is the January author for the British Author Challenge running over in the 75 Group and because I've had the book on my TBR shelf for years (probably since just after it was published in 2000).

Bas--I haven't read Artist of the Floating World, but had understood it to be more like Remains of the Day, which is much more to my taste. As I said above, Never Let Me Go seemed to me to have a conventional sci-fi theme, but seemed to overhype it, and ultimately failed to reach me. I'm not sure I'd call the parts of When We Were Orphans that grated on me "fantasy" , so much as that they were illogical and inane.

Linda--I read The Unconsoled and these sequences in Shanghai were very, very like the protagonist's wanderings through the unnamed city in The Unconsoled. He wanders from place to place, almost without free choice, just going where circumstances lead him, all the while aware he needs to be somewhere else, or needs to accomplish something, but still engaging in these inane conversations with the people he meets along the way. I didn't like it either, for the same reasons.
Will check your thread. Thanks.

>44 arubabookwoman: Maybe one day though when you have nothing to read At the rate I'm adding to the TBR (not to mention the size of it already), I am fairly confident that day will never come.

Also, I read Doctor Faustus a few years ago, but I felt a lot of it, especially the music parts, went completely over my head. I'd like to reread it someday.

The next book is one I read for the Reading Globally Indian Subcontinent segment. All I can say is I recommend everyone should read this book. I loved it!

3. Pather Panchali by Bibhutibhushan Banerji (1929) 316 pp

This Bengali classic, basis for the famous movie of the same name, is the portrayal of the day-to-day life in an impoverished village at the turn of the 20th century as seen through the eyes of a young boy, Opu, and his adored older sister Durga.

In the forward to the edition I read, the translator states:

"Tagore... Presents village life nostalgically as an ideal condition which the modern age is fast losing. In Pather Panchali the village is not idealized; it is not explained or commented on; it is presented as it is, objectively at times, but more often subjectively, by the people who live in it, and more particularly by the two children. There is little formal description. It is not necessary to describe the things one lives with every day; one knows them, as the reader comes to know the village of Nishchindipur, through familiarity."

The novel is episodic; sometimes just an hour has elapsed between chapters, sometimes years. I was fascinated to learn, reading between the lines, what it meant to be of the Brahmin caste in India at that time. Opu's family is Brahmin, but very poor. Their father is a scholar, and earns small amounts infrequently providing his services at religious or other ceremonial events. Most of the time, the family is hungry, and their ramshackle dwelling is falling apart around them. Nevertheless, their Brahmin status gives them certain privileges and status. Again, the poverty and circumstances of Opu's life are just givens--this is not a social document, just the life of one small boy.

Here's a taste of the tone of the book. Opu has been reading in one of his father's ancient volumes a description of the properties of mercury:

"If you put some Mercury in a vulture's egg and leave it in the sun for a few days, and then hold it in the mouth, you can fly high in the sky.
"Opu could not believe his eyes. He read the passage again and again.....
"Astonishing! It was so easy to fly and yet nobody knew about it. Perhaps nobody had a copy of this book except his father. Or it might be that all this time nobody's eye except his own had lighted on this particular place in the book.
"He thrust his nose in the book again and smelt it. That same old smell. It never occurred to him to question the truth of what was written in such a book."

Highly recommended. 5 stars

Pather Panchali sounds like one to check out.

Yes it is, Bas. Have you seen the movie?

A bit of "feminist sci fi":

4. The Maquisarde by Louise Marley (2002) 385 pp

This novel is set in the future, when the world is divided by the Line of Partition, with the "haves" on the "civilized" side of the line (mostly North America and Europe) and the rest of the world on the other side. A large corporate entity, InCo, runs the privileged countries, and allows no interaction, including aid, to the underprivileged parts of the world.
Edriel, a talented musician, lives in Paris on the "good" side of the line largely oblivious to the inequities of the world until the day her husband and daughter are killed by an alleged terrorist attack. She soon comes to believe that in fact InCo, rather than terrorists, are responsible for their deaths, and vows revenge.
She joins a resistance group known as the Chain, and here's where the novel parts ways with more typical futuristic good guys v. bad guys shoot-em-up. The Chain devotes its efforts to rescuing children in peril on the wrong side of the Line, bringing them to its headquarters in a former space hotel orbiting Earth. The children are trained as leaders and then returned to their former countries.
Edriel goes along with these rescues, while planning her own revenge against InCo. The focus of the book is actually Edriel's inner journey to the realization that violent revenge is not the answer. I liked that the focus of the book was not, as in so many books like this, on death and destruction, but on rebirth and rebuilding.
I also labeled this as "feminist" because nearly all members of the Chain are female (one major exception being the leader, Papa, a brilliant scientist suffering a crippling disease. He runs the operation from the space hotel where the lack of gravity eases the debilitating pain he suffers.).
I don't think this would be a book for someone who doesn't like sci-fi, but if you are an occasional reader of the genre, you might enjoy this. I've read another book by Louise Marley which I also enjoyed The Glass Harmonica, which involves time travel (and music--for the glass harmonica of course. Marley is a classically trained musician.).

3 stars

Mystery:

5. Cinnamon Kiss by Walter Mosley (2005) 325 pp

I don't usually follow detective series, and this is the first Easy Rawlins novel I've read, although it is apparently the 10th in the series. Easy Rawlins is a black private detective in LA in the 1960's. This is a book to read for its evocation of time and place. It's 1966, and the Watts riots have barely died down. The plot brings Easy up to San Francisco, so there are also some great portrayals of the Haight-Ashbury of the time.
Maybe it's, sadly, really not all that different now. I was particularly struck by this scene in which Easy and a companion are approached by two cops at a phone booth (no cell phones then):

"I couldn't help but think about the Cold War going on inside the borders of the United States. The police were on one side and Raymond and his breed were on the other.
"I came out of the phone booth with my hands in clear sight.
"My job was to make these cops feel that Raymond and I had a legitimate reason to be there at that phone booth on that street corner. Most Americans wouldn't understand why two well-dressed men would have to explain why they were standing on a public street."

Recommended.
3 stars

6. The Mahe Circle by Georges Simenon (1944) 160 pp

I've never read any of Simenon's Maigret mysteries, but have read and enjoyed several of his non-Maigret mysteries. The Mahe Circle is not a crime novel, but a novel that belongs on the shelf next to Camus and Sartre

Dr. Mahe is a country doctor. He lives with his mother, wife and two children, and one year decides to take his family to a different place for their summer vacation. It is while on vacation on the island of Porquerolles that he begins to question his life, and realizes that he has been thoughtlessly leading a life that had been chosen for him. He begins obsessing over events that occurred on the island and people he encountered there, and dreams of escaping his conventional life. Can this come to a good end?

Recommended.

3 stars

I'm now reading 3 books. I decided to reread War and Peace at 50 pages a day, and am now approaching p. 500. I first read it as a teenager, and I believe I mostly skimmed the war parts. This time I am thoroughly enjoying the battle/army parts, and believe I'm following the various battle maneuvers. I've just passed the part where Prince Andrey has asked to marry Natasha, but has asked her to wait a year. She has thrown a hissy-fit at the thought of waiting the eternity of a year. I'm fairly certain that when I last read this book my sympathies were entirely with Natasha on the issue of waiting a year.:) Now it seems that a year passes in an instant.

I'm also reading vol 3 of Caro's LBJ biography, Master of the Senate, another 1000+-pager. LBJ is, if anything, even more despicable. He has currently used the Senate confirmation proceedings to destroy a New Dealer with charges of Communism. This is immediately before the McCarthy Era, and LBJ is currying favor with the conservative southerners in power.

I'm also reading Phineas Finn. This is the first Trollope I've read since I took a Victorian Novel class in college and hated The Warden. There seemed to be too many political and religious factors I was unfamiliar with to be able to enjoy that novel. I was afraid that would also be the case with Phineas Finn at first, but I plugged on, and am now thoroughly enjoying it, though I'm sure many of the political references are going right over my head.

Happy reading to all!

Deborah, I read The Warden and Barchester Towers last year. I really enjoyed them, and I think it was because I used two tutored threads that had been done by Liz (lyzard). I wound up being able to say who knew church politics could be so funny. Here are links to the threads in case you are interested.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/140276
http://www.librarything.com/topic/144010#

>44 arubabookwoman: - I found the sci-fi parts of Never Let Me Go to be pretty understated, but thought the depiction of the girls' friendship with all its irritations and competitiveness was very good. Ruth reminded me a bit of an ex-friend of mine.

>46 arubabookwoman: - Pather Panchali sounds really good - I don't think I'll be reading it for the current theme read, but will add it to the list.

I hadn't heard of that Simenon, but he has some absurdly high number of books so I'm not surprised. I think I've only read non-Maigret books so far and there are several other Simenons on the pile.

War and Peace AND the Caro LBJ? Very impressive (and heavy?)

I really love Trollope, but I thought The Warden was just nice and somewhat interesting. I think the notes in my copy made all the church business pretty clear. I loved Barchester Towers though - that was what made me want to read more. Glad you're enjoying Phineas Finn.

>52 arubabookwoman: As I've said many times, War and Peace is one of my favorite books of all time. And I do mean to read the Caro sometime . . . And, coincidentally, I just read my first Trollope ever, The Way We Live Now, and I'm definitely going to read more by him.

Interesting reviews as always. Did you read a translation of The Mahe circle as that one sounds interesting. Be careful if you find yourself physically carrying your three current reads you might collapse under the weight.

>48 arubabookwoman: No I have not seen the movie.

>44 arubabookwoman: I've read The Remains of the Day as well, but I'm starting to think I like Ishiguro better as a screenwriter. Not only is there The White Countess above, but I've also seen an almost unknown film for which he wrote the script: The Saddest Music in the World, with Isabella Rossellini.

Are you having to limit yourself to 50 pages a day of the War and Peace read, or do you find yourself charging ahead?

aruba -- you are very hard on my wishlist. Pather Panchali sounds fabulous, and I loved The Glass Harmonica, so The Maquisarde goes on my list.

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Great review of Pather Panchali - I wouldn't normally recommend the film versions of books when people loved the books but I'll make an exception here. Satyajit Ray's cinematic version is a classic! Ray's actually made a trilogy of films, including the sequels to Pather Panchali.

>60 reva8: - Didn't realize that the movie was directed by Satyajit Ray. Will have to try to watch it now.

Well I didn't quite finish War and Peace this month, although if I had followed my 50 pp per day I would have. I didn't bring the book with me on our trip to CA to visit Mia. I am reading a very old, falling apart (disintegrating) volume from my inlaw's house, and I didn't want to be seen in public with it. :) My three final books in January were:

7. Phineas Finn by Anthony Trollope

This is the second volume in the Palliser Series. I read it because I saw a comment on someone's thread that they were reading Phineas Finn to prepare for a February group read of The Eustace Diamonds. Since I thought maybe I might want to join that group read, I decided to read Phineas Finn, not realizing I should have read Can You Forgive Her? first. Having finished Phineas, I am now going back to read Can You Forgive Her?. I did not find myself aware of any blatant gaps in background while reading Phineas without having read CYFG first, so we shall see. I do think I will try to finish CYFG before I start The Eustace Diamonds.

I quite enjoyed Phineas, a likeable chap, as most of the people who came into contact with him seemed to agree. I did fear for his character at times, as he wavered between his love of sweet Mary Flood at home in Ireland, and the wealthy heiress who could solve all his financial problems, and provide the necessary income for him to stay in Parliament. I will say that I allowed myself not to fret too much about my lack of understanding of some of the parliamentary maneuvering and some of the arcane political issues. I was quite impressed at how intelligently portrayed the female characters were.

I'm going to call this my first Trollope. In a Victorian novel course I took in college, we read The Warden and Barchester Towers, and I was quite put off by the religious controversies that were the subject of those books, and never read another Trollope after that, although I quite like Victorian novels. I believe now that I will finish the Palliser Series and then go back and start the Barchester Series again.

Highly recommended

4 1/2 stars

8. How's The Pain? by Pascal Garnier

I'd describe this short French novel as "comic noir". Simon is a "vermin" exterminator on one last job before he retires when he meets Bernard, a gullible young man at loose ends. Because of his ill health, Simon hires Bernard as his driver, and soon finds himself also encumbered with a pretty young woman with a squalling baby who were rescued by Bernard. And Bernard discovers that Simon's definition of "vermin" is not what he initially thought.

This is a clever, offbeat and quirky novel, and I enjoyed it very much. Amazon says that Garnier has been compared to Simenon.
Recommended.

3 1/2 stars

9. Mysterium by Robert Charles Wilson

An accident at a mysterious government research facility transports a small Michigan town into a parallel universe, where the country is ruled by religious fanatics who don't quite know what to do about the "miraculous" appearance of the town. The country is at war with "New Spain", so the powers-that-be decide to use the information from the town library to built an atom bomb.

This was just a so-so read. Nothing particularly wrong, but nothing particularly compelling either.

2 stars

We just got back from a lovely time in CA. Most of the time we spent in Monterrey and surrounding areas. On Friday, we went whale watching--it's migration season for the grey whales. We were fortunate enough to see quite a few whales, as well as several species of dolphins, sea lions, and other marine life. We also took a drive down to Big Sur, saw Pebble Beach and walked around Carmel. I have to say that this whole area is one of the most beautiful places on earth. If I can I will make an effort one of these days to post some pictures.
We spent a day and a half in San Francisco too, where I spent a lovely few hours at City Lights Bookstore. I was last at City Lights in 1969 when I visited my now husband while he was going to summer school at Stanford. The store was quite small then, and Ferlinghetti himself was sitting in the back. I still have the two books of his poetry I purchased at the store then. This time I bought:

Khirbet Khizeh by S. Yizhar--from the back of the book: "It's 1948 and the Arab villagers of Khirbet Khizeh are about to be violently expelled from their homes. A young Israeli soldier on duty that day finds himself battling on two fronts: with the villagers and, ultimately, with his own conscience."

The Case of Sergeant Grischa by Arnold Zweig--"The story of a simple Russian peasant caught on the Eastern Front in World War I, this classic novel was first published to wide acclaim in English in 1928. It is a devastating indictment of military brutality and a horrifying tale of an individual caught in the cots of a remorseless machine."

The Atlas by William Vollmann--"Set in locales from Phnom Penh to Sarajevo, Mogadishu to New York, and provocatively combining autobiography with invention, fantasy with reportage, these stories examine poverty, violence, and loss even as they celebrate the beauty of the landscape...."

The Dog King by Christoph Ransmayr--"...an audacious feat of speculative fiction and a provocative exploration of the interstices between memory, history and myth. The setting is a town called Moor, in whose stone quarry thousands of prisoners were brutally killed during the last war. Now the war is over, and the victors have sentenced Moor to return to the Dark Ages, stripping it of factories and railroads and condemning its inhabitants to relive their guilty past forever." This German novel has been compared to Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum.

A Void by Georges Perec--"...a metaphysical whodunit, a story chock-full of plots and subplots, of trails in pursuit of trails, all of which afford Perec occasion to display his virtuosity as a verbal magician, acrobat, and sad-eyed clown. It is also an outrageous verbal stunt: a 300 page novel that never once employs the letter "e"."

I was relatively restrained in my buying by the fact that City Lights sells only new books. I am more used to used book prices

>62 arubabookwoman:. Interesting to see your thoughts on Trollope. I read The Warden and Barchester Towers last year. Thanks to a tutored thread for each of them, it made the church politics more amusing than annoying. I plan on finishing that series this year, and then, if time permits, I'll start The Palliser series. I believe I heard that the church politics doesn't play as big a part in the remaining books. (That may be my imagination).

Colleen--I was just composing my response to the comments from my thread visitors when popped in. I was going to say that the group read of The Eustace Diamonds which has just started (and was the reason I read Phineas) is also being "tutored" by lyzard, as were the threads you linked to above. My plan is to read the Palliser series first, and then give The Warden and Barchester Towers a second chance and move on to the Barchester series.

Def--Yes Simenon was an amazingly prolific writer. I've enjoyed everything I've read by him, although I've not yet read any of his Maigret novels.

Rebecca--As you can see, I quite agree with you about Trollope. I'm planning on reading through the Palliser series. I'm reading Can You Forgive Her? now, and hopefully will also read The Eustace Diamonds before the group read in February is over.

Bas--I did read a translation of The Mahe Circle--I am sadly monolinguistic. I read it on a newly released version on Kindle.

Sassy--I didn't realize Ishiguro was a screenwriter as well. As it is I am debating whether to read his new novel expected in March, I believe. The little I've read about it makes it sound like it will also have the hallucinatory, surreal, dream-like aspects to it of some of his other novels I didn't care for.

Jane--It's only fair play that I add to your WL--you've added many volumes to mine!

Rv88--Thanks for the reminder re the Pather Panchali movie. I'm going to check whether it's available on Netflix.

My stats for January:

Books Read: 9
Pages Read: 2,738

Authors: 7 male, 2 Female
New to Me Authors: 2

Countries: US--4; UK--2; India--1; France--2

Years: Pre-1900--1; 1900-1949--3; 1950-1999--1; 2000+--4

For British Author Challenge--1
For American Author Challenge--1
Reading Globally--Indian Subcontinent--1

Plans for February:

Finish War and Peace--only about 150 pp to go
Finish Master of the Senate
Read Gould's Book of Fish, which I meant to read in Jan. for the Australian Author Challenge
Read some more books re the Indian Subcontinent--I have many, many on my shelves
Finish Can You Forgive Her? and read The Eustace Diamonds
Read The Season of the Jew by Maurice Shadbolt for the New Zealand Author Challenge

>65 arubabookwoman: I grew up in the Monterey Bay area - I think it's pretty lovely, too, although that side is the foggy side of the bay. Santa Cruz seems to soak up most of the sun allotted to those shores! Some of my earliest beach memories are in Carmel, with beaches full of driftwood.

Nice haul of books from City Lights as well! I think I'll be reading a couple of those eventually, as they're on the 1001 Books list.

>62 arubabookwoman: You seem to have liked Phineas better than I did. I was willing to allow him some waffling on whom to marry, but when he fell in love for the 4th (or was it 5th?) time, seemingly for no reason other than there being an eligible woman in close proximity to himself, I lost interest. I'll read another Trollope someday, just not for a while I think.

>62 arubabookwoman: I recently bought Phineas Finn, having finished Can You Forgive Her? while I was away, and I'm looking forward to it. I think I'll be reading the Palliser series and then the Barchester, so maybe we'll be reading them more or less at the same time. Where is the group read for The Eustace Diamonds? I don't think I'll read it in February, but it would be a good thread to go back to when I do read it.

>71 rebeccanyc: The group read is here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/187327

Interesting to catch up. Already a lot of interesting reading, this year. Glad to see you appreciated Children of Dynmouth by William Trevor last year, very similarly to my reading of it

>69 ursula: Ursula--how lucky you are to have grown up there. (Of course, I consider myself lucky too, to have been born and grown up on Aruba, which explains my affinity for oceans and beaches. We definitely plan to go back! My daughter in Palo Alto is in fact going to be driving some grad school applicants visiting the university down to Monterrey on an outing to the aquarium (this week I think).

>70 ELiz_M: Elizabeth--I think I saw Phineas's repeated "falling in love" as being more about his worries about his financial future than as him being merely fickle--each time he met an appropriately wealthy woman, he was acutely aware that to marry her would certainly end his financial worries and allow him to remain in Parliament. And since he told himself he would never marry without love, he had to "fall in love" with these women in order to even consider this solution to his financial problems.

>71 rebeccanyc: Rebecca--I didn't finish Can You Forgive Her? until 2/28, so I didn't get to join in The Eustace Diamonds group read at all, although I will be checking the thread when I get to it, hopefully later this month or next month. I want to take a short Trollope break, since I think my reading of Can You Forgive Her? suffered by reading it so closely on the heels of Phineas Finn.

>72 AnnieMod: Annie--Thanks for visiting my neglected thread, and for posting the link!

>72 AnnieMod: Edwin--Glad you enjoyed Children of Dynmouth too. I read a lot of William Trevor 30 or so years ago, but haven't read much of him lately. (Although Children of Dynmouth is also one of his earlier works, having been originally published in 1976).

February was a dismal reading month for me. I only read 5 books, and met almost none of the goals set forth for February in >68 arubabookwoman: above: e.g. I did not finish Master of the Senate, I did not finish War and Peace, I did not read Gould's Book of Fish, I did not read Season of the Jew, I did not read any books from the Indian subcontinent. I did finish Can You Forgive Her?, but not until the 28th, so I did not read or participate in the group read for The Eustace Diamonds

Therefore, in honor of the above, there will be no goals for March!

10. My Own Medicine: A Doctor's Life As A Patient by Geoffrey Kurland

I purchased this memoir by a doctor who was diagnosed with cancer shortly after my husband's own diagnosis in 2013, and am only now getting around to reading some of numerous books on similar subjects I purchased around that time. This book was published in the early 2000's, some 20 or so years after Kurland's diagnosis and treatment, so I can only assume that things have improved sufficiently since then that some of the extreme reactions he had to some of his treatments can now be avoided or at least substantially eased.

I don't think that this is a particularly useful or relevant book for anyone with an interest in the subject. As noted, the treatment information is probably way outdated. Also, Kurland has access to the most advanced treatment methods (of the time), yet there is no discussion of access to medicine, costs of treatment, battles with insurance companies, etc.--all things I am sure most patients today are interested in.

The fact that the medical portions of the memoir are outdated could be overcome, perhaps, if Kurland was a better writer. Unfortunately, I found his writing somewhat trite, and I was very disappointed in his characterizations of the people who loved him. His girlfriend, for example, remains a cardboard character. Although his mother's character is sometimes more vividly portrayed, she is still somewhat of a caricature, as the quintessential Jewish mother offering chicken soup as a cure-all. I also didn't connect with the author's obsession with running, although I guess this was something by which he measured his recovery.

Just not the book for me.

2 stars

11. An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine

This book seems to be much beloved on LT of late. I enjoyed it as a good character study of a book-besotted irascible older woman set against the backdrop of wartime Beirut.

72 year old Aaliya, retired from her job in a bookstore, has spent the last 40 or so years translating a major work of contemporary literature into Arabic each year. As the book opens, she is in the process of choosing a book for her next translation, which according to her own tradition she begins on January 1. She is considering Bolano's 2666, but is concerned that she will be unable to complete a translation of that lengthy work in the time she has left.

Over the course of the book she reminisces on her life, her one and only friendship with Hanah, her failed early marriage, and above all, her life in books. I enjoyed getting to know her, although at times I was annoyed at her failure, despite her loneliness, to accept the friendship of the three women who live in her building, who she calls "the witches". Nevertheless, she is a character I won't soon forget.

This book was a finalist for the National Book Award.

3 1/2 stars

One note about this book. This year I want to work more on my art, so I've joined Audible, and intend to listen to audio books while working. I used to listen to many audio books during my commute while I was working, but have not listened in a while.

I listened to this book, rather than reading it, and although the narrator was excellent, I think this is a book that is better read, rather than listened to. First, there are the foreign names and other references which I have no idea how to spell from listening to the audio. (I looked up the spelling of Aaliya on the Amazon book page). The other thing is that there are many references to books and authors, and I would have preferred to have these in print in front of me rather than hearing the names and titles whiz by.

I'm thinking maybe audio books, for me at least, should be for my crime and mystery or science fiction reads??? I was also planning to listen to 19th century tomes, and I think those, which are mostly plot-dominated, would also be appropriate for listening.

What do you all think? Aside from getting a good narrator, what kinds of books do you think are good for listening to rather than reading

12. All Dogs Are Blue by Rodrigo Souza Leao

This autobiographical Brazilian novel is the story of life in an insane asylum. The author, a schizophrenic who was in and out of psychiatric institutions from the time he was a teenager, died in his early 40's shortly before this book was published. His prose is vibrant, poetic, and inventive, and I was immersed in this short but complex novel. I could never figure out whether he writes so well because of his schizophrenia, or in spite of it.

Sample:

I hate mirrors. Mirrors are just good for showing how we deteriorate with age. The first thing I broke at home was the mirror. I didn't even care about the seven years of bad luck. Then I went for the booze, and seized with undeniable madness I started throwing the whiskey bottles to the floor one by one. It turned into a dangerous place. A sea of glass shards. Some things didn't break, like the glass top of the big table in the lounge, which proved to be indestructible. A table decoration was also unbreakable. There were things that melted away at the slightest touch, that self-destructed when I stroked them, and others that remained steadfast. My father came and asked me to stop. I didn't stop. My little niece was screaming. My brother was screaming. My mother was screaming. My sister was screaming. Our cleaning lady was screaming.

No Not That.

Yes that. I'm breaking it and I'm going to break more. I'm breaking. I'm breaking. Breaking.

The police arrived and handcuffed me.

They took me to Pinel, the public psychiatric hospital.

Why did you break everything?

I broke everything because I'm made of shards. When the shards invite me to, I wreak havoc.

Highly recommended.
4 stars

It's been a long time since I listened to audio books, but I always found the works of Thomas Hardy came across well. I suspect the readers had a lot to do with that.

there will be no goals for March Sometimes that's exactly the right approach!

I think any book that's written with a lot of dialect is better as an audiobook (if there's a good reader, that is). If you can find Small Island narrated by Debra Michaels, it's amazingly well done. I've definitely enjoyed all the classics I've listened to vs reading in print. There are some very good Elizabeth Gaskell audio editions out there.

I tend to prefer fiction to non-fiction on audio. When I read non-fiction I like to be able to stop and look things up in the Internet. Mysteries or crime are my favorite audio books, and of course the reader makes a big difference. And, to Meredith's point some of the classics are wonderful on audio. I loved listening to Great Expectations and A Passage to India for example.

>76 arubabookwoman: What do you all think? Aside from getting a good narrator, what kinds of books do you think are good for listening to rather than reading?

I agree with most of what has been said above. The audiobooks that I have enjoyed the most are "lighter" fare, genre, or otherwise plot-driven books with simpler sentence structures. The best I listened to last year were Brother, I'm Dying, The City & the City, The Golem and the Jinni, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and Nemesis by Jo Nesbo.

Much less successful were Fathers and Sons, The Emperor of All Maladies, Under the Banner of Heaven, and What Maisie Knew.

>74 arubabookwoman: Your daughter works at Stanford? My kids went to Palo Alto High, across the street. :) And yeah, I'd consider an upbringing in Aruba lucky!

As for audio books, I'm not much help. I listen to a fair number of them, but almost exclusively non-fiction. I've tried listening to fiction, but I don't like it when the book is dialogue-heavy. I guess I'd like to listen to someone tell me a story rather than try to make a bunch of voices sound different in some way, so straight narration is about all I can handle.

Thank you all for your comments and suggestions on audio books!

>78 SassyLassy: Sassy--I love Hardy. I'll have to see if there are any audiobooks available of books by him I haven't read, or maybe I'll do another reread. (I've read Jude the Obscure 3 times, and Tess and Return of the Native twice.

>79 mabith: I bought North and South by Gaskell as an audiobook, and hope to get to it soon.

>80 NanaCC: Colleen--I think that's the way I'll be going--mysteries and classics.

>81 ELiz_M: Elizabeth--Wow--I can totally see how Emperor of All Maladies would be difficult to follow as an audiobook. Speaking of which, is anyone watching the Ken Burns adaptation of this book on PBS this week?

>82 ursula: Ursula--My daughter Mia is a third year Ph.D student in genetics at Stanford. Smart girl. Proud Mama.

Some brief comments on the last two books I read in February:

13. The Little Way of Ruthie Leming by Rod Dreher

As noted above, while down South on vacation in February, we drove with my mother over to St. Francisville Louisiana so she could visit her brother, sister and brother-in-law. My mother's family has deep roots in St. Francisville, which is in the heart of Louisiana plantation country. It's a very small town, where everyone knows everyone else, and everyone is described by their family roots (i.e. "she's a Percy, but her mother is a Daniel and she married a Butler, etc, etc. (these are family names)). I read the description of The Little Way of Ruthie Leming as being the memoir of a man who escapes the small town he grew up, but moves back after he sees how the town came together to help his family when his sister Ruthie became ill with cancer. When I saw the town in the book was St. Francisville, I had to buy it, and my recent trip back prompted me to read it. I should say that I don't know anyone in St. Francisville other than my relatives, but I spent a lot of time visiting my grandparents on their farm there as a child, and when I lived in N.O. I also frequently visited my grandparents.

Unfortunately, I didn't really connect with the book, and I found there were no insights helpful to me. I also don't think it is a very honest book. I wasn't aware before reading the book, but the author is an extremely conservative blogger (at "The American Conservative")--not my politics. According to one Amazon reviewer, he "espouses some pretty radical right wing (and thoroughly self-righteous) thinking. Picture Sarah Palin or Rush Limbaugh with better vocabulary." I didn't particularly note any blatant radical right wing commentary in the book, but it was thoroughly infused with religion, and with self-righteousness. To a great extent, the author's analysis of his spiritual/religious journey outweighed what I thought the book was going to be about--what it's like to live in a small southern town after having experienced the wider world.

There are benefits of small town life, to be sure, but there are also negatives. One of the benefits of living in a small town is the sense of belonging to a community, and I think that was one thing the author was seeking when he decided to move back to St. Francisville. However, in the community, everyone knows you and you know everyone, and that can be a negative as well as a benefit.

I found the book to be devoid of any analysis of the negatives of small town life. This is particularly strange since the author left St. Francisville as a teenager when for some reason not fully explained he suddenly found himself an ostracized outsider at his high school, the person picked on, when previously he had been a popular member of one of the various cliques. ("leaving behind {t}he intolerance, the social conformity, the cliquishness, the bullying.") He also gives several examples of situations where his sister Ruthie had mocked him for some of his more "urban" habits during his visits home. (And not always in a kindly way--in one instance by refusing to eat a special meal he prepared because it was "some uppity French soup that they had never heard of" prepared with "New York attitudes."). This closed-mindedness is another negative he could have explored, but did not.

I also thought there would be at least some discussion of race relations, which are still very tender in the area. As a youth, he states "We went to the same school, but lived in different worlds." Any other (rare) mention of race relations is similarly superficial.

Small towns are places where if you fit in, life can be good. I was hoping this would be a book about someone who returns to a small town with expanded horizons and was able to make it work. It wasn't.

2 stars

14. Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope

I perhaps didn't wait long enough after finishing Phineas Finn before starting Can You Forgive Her?, so I was maybe "Trolloped Out", because it took me quite a while to get into this book. I limped along each evening, falling asleep after 10 or 15 pages for the first 150 to 200 pages, until it finally picked up for me.

I continue to be amazed at Trollope's enlightened attitude toward his female characters, his awareness of the rights they give up by marrying, his willingness to recognize their intellect.

I did note that I was very interested in Lady Glencora's story, which figures prominently in this book. She appears as a minor character in Phineas Finn, and had I been more aware of her back story, I might have enjoyed her more.

Good quote:

"I do not know that she was at all points a lady, but had Fate so willed it she would have been a thorough gentleman."

Despite my difficulty in getting into the book, I still love Trollope and will continue with the Palliser series.

Unfortunately, March was another poor reading month for me. I finished only 5 books. I did, however, start the following:

The Summer Guest by Justin Cronin (p. 80)
Terminal Beach by J.G. Ballard (p. 52)
Sofia Petrovna by Lydia Chukovskaya (p. 32)
The Serpent and the Rope by Raja Rao (p. 153)
I, Claudius by Robert Graves (p. 90)

I think I'm going to abandon The Serpent and the Rope. I am not enjoying it at all, and because I haven't wanted to read it, it's partly the reason I've picked up and started so many other books.

I'm also not going to go on with I, Claudius. This is a reread of a book I read years ago and loved. I picked it up again only because I completed Augustus by John Edward Williams and Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff, and since all three books deal with roughly the same historical period I wanted to compare. It was interesting to read the different viewpoints of the same historical events and characters--each of the authors cast them in such different lights and with such different writing styles. I may get back to reread the rest of I, Claudius at some point, but for now there is so much else to read.

I'll probably continue with the other three books I've started.

I continue to be stalled on War and Peace. I read all but the last 150 or so pages in January. Since then, I've read a page or two here and there, but am having trouble getting into it again. I enjoyed the "war" and "battle" passages through-out, but now I'm stuck in a lot of "Monday-morning quarterbacking" as Tolstoy seems to be going over and over again various analyses as to why Napoleon was ultimately defeated on his retreat from Moscow. I'm just going to have to buckle down and finish it in April.

For some reason I haven't picked up Master of the Senate since January, even though I was thoroughly enjoying it. Must get back to it.

The two books I'm most engaged with now, and will likely finish in the next couple of days are The Garden of Last Days by Andre Dubus III and Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World by Joan Druett.

Well, I'm going to try to comment on my March reads before I do a final summary for March.

15. I, Dreyfus by Bernice Rubens

Bernice Rubens is an, I think, underrated 20th century British novelist. I've enjoyed several of her books. In this book, we meet Alfred Dreyfus former headmaster of a prestigious British public school now convicted of a heinous crime and writing his version of the events that led to his imprisonment. From the beginning we are aware that the book concerns anti-Semitism, and the reference to the Dreyfus case of the early 20th century is deliberate. In her author's note, Rubens states, "This novel makes no attempt to update the Dreyfus story Rather it is concerned with the Dreyfus syndrome, which alas needs no updating." I won't say more about the plot, since Rubens is a master of plotting, and the unfolding of the story and the reveals along the way are part of the pleasure of reading the book.

I will say that as I was reading the book, I sometimes felt that the anti-Semitism (and alleged fears of being exposed as Jewish) were overstated and could not be real. (In the context of "normal" people--I'm not referring to extremists/terrorists). Then, shortly after I finished the book, a candidate for governor in Missouri committed suicide apparently over what he felt were unfair allegations that he had a Jewish background. So yes, I guess this is still a very real issue. In any event, this is a book that will stay with me.

Recommended

16. Augustus by John Williams (1972) 336 pp

This fictional account of the life of the Emperor Augustus won the National Book Award in 1973. The book relates the story of Augustus from when as a callow youth he was named by his great-uncle Julius Caesar as successor, through his battles for supremacy with Mark Anthony, through his long rule into old age and death. The novel is an epistolary novel, and Augustus's life is presented from multiple points of view in letters, diary entries, histories and documents "written" by numerous individuals, real and fictional, who crossed paths with Augustus.

The introduction to the novel states that Williams was inspired to write the novel after he heard the story of Julia, Augustus's daughter. Augustus exiled and imprisoned her after she broke the laws against adultery that he had enacted. (In the novel, Williams attributes to Augustus a noble cause for these actions). The introduction goes on to state:

"This fascinated Williams and he started to read about it. Discovering that Julia had been effectively written out of the histories, the more he read, the more he was engaged by what he describes as 'ambivalence between the public necessity and the private want or need' which is at the novel's core."

I found the epistolary style to be somewhat distancing from the character of Augustus. However, I can understand Williams's choice. In the introduction to the novel he is quoted as saying:

"I didn't think I could handle it in a straight narrative style without making it sound like a Cecil B. DeMille movie or a historical romance. And I didn't want it to sound historical. Those people were very real and contemporaneous to me. I wanted a kind of immediacy to it...."

And I think he succeeded.

Recommended

A couple of further comments about Augustus. As noted, it first inspired me to read Cleopatra: A Life, a nonfictional biography which I've had on the shelf for a few years, and then to reread the beginning of I, Claudius. Claudius's grandmother Livia was Augustus's wife through much of his life. In I, Claudius she is an evil, conniving, murderous manipulator. In Augustus, while she is certainly ambitious on behalf of her sons, she comes across as rather sedate. The contrast between the narrative styles of I, Claudius and Augustus could not be greater either. I, Claudius is dramatic, humorous, overblown, larger than life, and Augustus is for the most part factual and subdued.

I think Williams is more known on LT for his book Stoner, which is receiving a lot of love on LT recently. (I haven't read it yet, but intend to soon). Again from the introduction, an interviewer once asked Williams about the apparent great difference in subject matter between Stoner and Augustus. Williams stated, "I was dealing with governance in both instances and individual responsibilities, and enmities and friendships."

I liked this statement: "Except in scale, the machinations for power are about the same in a university as in the Roman Empire or Washington."

Any professors care to comment? Certainly there are a number of novels set in academia that support that statement.

>84 arubabookwoman: That rendering of small town life would certainly grate on me. And really, if you're an outsider there's not necessarily any sense of community unless you participate in the right activities. I grew up in a town of 5000 people and about 30 churches. My parents weren't from there, my mother didn't go to church. None of my friends parents ever really reached out to her, none of my teachers ever did. We knew our neighbors names and that was really it. Church is what built the communities and they weren't likely to socialize with people who didn't go to their church or wasn't related to them. If someone new JOINED their church I'm sure they were welcomed with open arms, but otherwise...

Catching up on your interesting reviews and discussions. I haven't listened to audio books in a number of years, but when I was (I was driving a lot), the most memorable were Kenneth Branagh reading Samuel Pepys' Diary, Amy Tan's The Hundred Secret Senses and Toni Morrison reading her Jazz -- one I had read before, but her reading put a whole new light of the book and really captured the music of the book.

>85 arubabookwoman: I think I liked Can You Forgive Her? more than Phineas Finn, but I read it first so maybe that accounts for it. I'm happy you're at the same point in the Palliser series that I am, and that we both have The Eustace Diamonds to read soon.

>86 arubabookwoman: I think you have to read War and Peace, which is one of my favorite books of all time, all at once; I think it would be hard to come back to it as you are doing.

>88 arubabookwoman: >89 arubabookwoman: I'm glad to know how good Augustus is; I actually bought the new NYRB edition and didn't realize until I entered it into LT that I've had an earlier edition for many years! And I loved Cleopatra: A Life.

>88 arubabookwoman: and 89: Augustus sounds fascinating. I have Cleopatra: A Life on my TBR this year, and one of these days I want to actually read I, Claudius. I loved the old BBC/Masterpiece Theater series starring Derek Jacobi.

A lot of interesting books, of late. Nice reviews.

>87 arubabookwoman: this seems like an interesting author that wasn't familiar to me before. I've looked into her a little more now and see she seems to write a lot of Jewish fiction. One to add to my wish list - thanks!

>90 mabith: I know what you mean about small towns and churches.

>91 janeajones: Jane--listening to Toni Morrison read Jazz intrigues me. It's one of hers I haven't read. Years ago I listened to an audio book of Faulkner--and it was mesmerizing.

>92 rebeccanyc: Rebecca--I was reading War and Peace all at once. I just set it down with only 100 pages or so left, and then stalled. I've finished it now, and I expect I'll reread it in 10 years or so if I'm still around.

>93 Poquette: I originally read I Claudius and its sequel Claudius the God years ago immediately after watching the series with Derek Jacobi. I loved both the books and the series.

>94 edwinbcn: Thanks for visiting Edwin.

>95 AlisonY: I've liked most of her books that I've read--only 4 or 5 I think, and she's a prolific author. I find her sometimes uneven, but I'm interested in reading more by her. I have a couple of her books on my TBR list.

Well, I've been MIA quite a while. We were gone most of May on a cruise of the British Isles and visiting my sons and their families in NYC. Since we returned from our trip, insofar as LT is concerned, I've been quite busy researching Nobel Prize winners for literature. Reading Globally will be concentrating on reading literature laureates who wrote in languages other than English for the third quarter, and I am leading this theme read. I'm fascinated by the research I'm doing, and surprised to discover that there are quite a few laureates I have absolutely no interest in reading, although previously I had as an informal reading goal reading at least one work by each laureate. I have started a thread in the Reading Globally group, but it is not open yet for comments. I'll post a link in my thread here when it is open in case anyone wants to read about this subject.

I loved our trip of the British Isles, which included a stop at St. Malo, France, where we climbed the seemingly millions of steps to the abbey at Mont St. Michel. We were on a smaller boat, and so were able to visit smaller islands, including some uninhabited ones. After St. Malo, we visited Guernsey, the Scilly Islands, and the Isle of Man. As we moved northward into the Hebrides, the weather got colder, windier and some of the islands were bleak, but I absolutely loved it. St. Kildas was atmospheric, and we learned we were lucky to be able to get ashore (in zodiacs), as often the waves and weather make landings impossible. As I wandered among the ruins it was so easy to imagine how difficult life was for the islanders. Has anyone here read Island of the Wings, set on St. Kildas?

It was sunny and bright when we were on Iona, and I was also very moved visiting St. Columba's Abbey--the belief is that the Book of Kells had its beginnings here. I bought some yarn spun from the wool of some sheep there, but not sure what I will make yet. I took hundreds of photos of course, but unfortunately I still am flummoxed by trying to post photos on LT. I might at some point when I have more time manage to post some on my profile page.

Re reading, on the trip I mostly read quick and easy mysteries/thrillers etc., but shortly before we left for the trip I watched an HBO special which was a dramatization of the Wansee Conference, after which I wanted to learn more about Eichmann. So I read The Eichmann Trial by Deborah E. Lipstadt. (Numbers for all reviews will be the numbers of the order I read the books this year on my on-going list, since I'm getting so far behind on reviews. Which reminds me, I have to post that list at the top of my thread above).

32. The Eichmann Trial by Deborah E. Lipstadt

This is a book about the capture of Eichmann and his trial and conviction in Jerusalem. It was a fascinating analysis of the legal issues raised by his capture (and kidnapping from Argentina back to Israel), and issues such as how and by whom Nazi war criminals could be tried--Israel was not in existence when the crimes were committed and the crimes were committed elsewhere, for example, so on what basis could Israel claim jurisdiction? Then there were decisions to be made as to how broad the evidence to be presented should be--should the evidence be limited to only instances of specific actions or deeds of Eichmann, or was testimony from Holocaust victims and camp survivors who may not have had any personal connection with Eichmann relevant?

A significant portion of the book revisits some of the analysis and conclusions reached by Hannah Arendt in her seminal book Eichmann in Jerusalem, and arguably one should have read Arendt's book before reading Lipstadt's (I haven't). Lipstadt posits that Arendt's acceptance of Eichmann's claim that he was a small cog in a very big wheel ("the banality of evil"), "mistakenly ignores the central role that historical anti-Semitism played in the role of the Holocaust." Lipstadt delineates the evidence that she believes clearly established that Eichmann was "a man who considered the Nazi leaders to be his 'idols' and who was fully committed to their goals." In addition, Arendt argued that the Nazi actions were crimes against humanity, with the Jews being victims as members of humanity, and under this theory, Arendt believed that the testimony of the survivors was irrelevant. Lipstadt's thesis is that the crimes of the Holocaust were directed against the Jews as Jews per se, and resulted from historical anti-Semitism. In Lipstadt's view, the testimony of the survivors was essential, and in fact may be the most important element of the trial.

Lipstadt's purpose in writing the book was to examine the legacy of the Eichmann trial, and a large part of that legacy was created by Arendt's work and the controversy it created. (There were some who argued that Arendt's book "exonerated" Eichmann). I think Lipstadt's book did a good job of analyzing the issues involved in the trial itself, fairly explained the issues raised by Arendt's book, and logically defended her own conclusions regarding all of these matters. I'm not sure whether I'll read Arendt's book at these late date (50 years after the fact), but I'm glad I read Lipstadt's.

4 stars

>96 arubabookwoman: St Kilda is a place I've wanted to see for a long time. Then I read Island of Wings in 2013 after a great review by dmsteyn. I thought it was excellent. You may also be interested in the nonfiction The Life and Death of St Kilda.

The Eichmann Trial sounds worthwhile. I read Eichmann in Jerusalem in 2012 and think it is still worth reading, so the Lipstadt book would be a good followup. Reading Arendt was a follow up to reading a book on the abduction of Eichmann from Argentina, which raised some of the same questions.

When you mentioned you were on a trip to the British Isles, I thought you meant England, Scotland, Wales, NI. I didn't realise you literally did a trip of many of the smaller 'British Isles' until I read on further. Sounds amazing - you have visited more of the small isles than most of us in the UK ever will.

Did you get to take in any of the WWII occupation history in the Channel Islands?

The Hebrides have always appealed to me for a visit, but alas as we in N. Ireland live under the same rainy, cloudy weather system, it's hard to summon up the enthusiasm to inflict more of the same greyness on our holidays. Maybe one day...

Nice to see you back, Deborah. Your trip sounds wonderful and interesting. Island of Wings has been on my wishlist since SassyLassy reviewed it. I think I need to make an effort to get to it.

Looking forward to more of your reading and/or adventures.

>98 AlisonY: Alison--I didn't realize you lived in Northern Ireland. Our second to last port of call was Portrush in N. Ireland. We visited the Giant's Causeway, Dunluce Castle, and the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, among other things. That area is stunningly beautiful! We had all kinds of weather that day--from sun to sleet. I think it was especially windy, because as it turned out in the afternoon it became too rough for the zodiacs to bring us back to our boat, so they moved the boat around to the lee side of Ireland a bit down the coast and we were bussed there to get back on the boat. I don't recall the name of the town now-- I will have to look at a map-- but it wasn't all the way to Belfast. This was the 28th of May I believe--anyway, it was right after the golfer Rory McElroy (sp??) had an awful golf day, and that was the big news locally that day. I live in the Pacific Northwest now, and we often have grey weather as well, but I don't mind as it's so good for the flowers.

We only had a short while on Guernsey, so we didn't get to the German Occupation Museum (some people from the boat did). We decide d not to since we had visited the Normandy beaches, including the German gun placements etc. last fall. I have read a couple of very good books that are about that time period on Guernsey--The Book of Ebenezer Le Page by G.B. Edwards and a book by Tim Binding, whose title I now forget and I'm going to have to go look up.

>97 SassyLassy: Sassy--I read Island of Wings too, and that was why I was especially excited when I saw it was included on this cruise. I'll have to check out The Life and Death of St. Kilda. While I was on St. Kilda I asked one of the scientists there (there are three scientists who live there seasonally) how accurate the book was, and he said it was pretty accurate. There was one thing he said was chronologically incorrect, but it was minor and I can't remember what it was.

ETA: The book set on Guernsey during the Nazi occupation by Tim Binding that I referred to above is Lying With the Enemy. I also enjoyed it--it's more of a mystery/thriller, though, than a literary novel.

>Hi Colleen--We cross-posted. Thanks for visiting. I think you would like Island of Wings.

>100 arubabookwoman: you made it to N. Ireland - yay! I laughed when I read your comment about the weather - yes, we've had quite a few days recently where it's been several seasons in one day, and particularly wintry for the time of year. If you were here around the time of the Open then you unfortunately hit some particularly bad weather, but sounds like you enjoyed yourself anyway.

>96 arubabookwoman: Sounds like you had a wonderful trip. I read The Eichmann Trial a few years ago (and had read Eichmann in Jerusalem decades earlier), and found it both interesting and thought-provoking.

>100 arubabookwoman: I think that Lying with the Enemy may have two titles; my Tim Binding book on Guernsey during the Occupation is Island Madness. As you say though, more of a mystery novel than a literary one. I usually really like Binding's books, but was disappointed in that one.

Slinking in here to say sorry I've been MIA, and hello and thank you for visiting to my kind visitors.

>102 AlisonY: As I said Alison, we had all kinds of weather on the same day, so some good weather was enjoyed.
>103 rebeccanyc: I think I bought The Eichmann Trial after reading your review Rebecca.
>104 SassyLassy: Yes I think they are the same. I don't remember loving Lying With The Enemy but don't recall disliking it either.

I got into a reading funk after our return from our trip, started a number of books which failed to engage, and then decided to read from my TBR shelves "A" books--that is, books whose titles start with the letter A. So, since mid-June here are the "A" books I've read:

43. An Accident in August by Laurence Cosse (2003)

After the accident that killed Princess Diana, there were reports that a slow-moving white car might have been grazed by the car Diana was riding in, causing it to swerve and crash. This book creates a fictional driver for that car. Louise (Lou) is driving home from work that night when her white Fiat is side-swiped by Diana's car. For some reason, although she sees the crash in her rearview mirror, Lou keeps driving. Not until the next day does she see on the news the identity of the victims of that car crash. Not wanting to be known as "the girl who caused Diana's death", she decides not to come forward (there is no mention at first of the possible involvement of another car), and quickly arranges for repairs to her car. Unfortunately, Lou makes a series of increasingly more stupid decisions, and as a reader, I kept wanting to tell her to shape up and do the right thing. I felt some of Lou's decisions resulted in the book becoming rather unrealistic, although I thought its premise was initially a good one.

2 stars

44. The Asylum by Johan Theorin

This novel is narrated from the point of view of Jan, a young man who is a child care worker. He is seeking employment at a nursery school which is part of a mental institution in which are housed some of Sweden's most violent insane criminals. While the nursery school is not located on the grounds of the institution, it is connected to the institution by an underground tunnel leading to a basement with an elevator up into the premises of the institution. The nursery school/day care is attended by children of the inmates, and they are brought to visit their parents through this tunnel.

From the beginning, we can see that Jan is a competent and caring caregiver. However, from the beginning we can also see that there are some questionable events in his past. We know he is interested in the job at the nursery because of his obsession with a singer who is reportedly an inmate at the institution. We also know that there was an incident in his past when a child under his care went missing. As he begins work, we also learn that some of his coworkers have hidden reasons of their own for working at the nursery school.

This was an interesting read, and well-written, but I wouldn't call it top-notch Scandi-crime. It was competently plotted, although perhaps a little long, and internally cohesive (it all made sense in the end). It just wasn't compelling.

3 stars

45. Alex and Me by Irene M. Pepperberg

This is a memoir about the author's 30+ year relationship with an African grey parrot named Alex. The author is a scientist, and wanted to study the cognitive processes of animals. (ALEX initially stood for Avian Language Experiment, but Pepperberg later referred to her work as the Avian Learning Experiment). This was a delightful read, and Alex was a wonderful character. As Pepperberg states, "Alex taught me that we live in a world populated by conscious creatures....We are a part of nature, not apart from nature. The 'separateness' notion was a dangerous illusion that gave us permission to exploit every aspect of the natural world...without consequences."

Recommended

3 stars

46. Among the Thugs by Bill Buford

I've had this book on my shelf for years, but picked it up now (for reasons in addition to its title starting with "A") because Buford, at the time the editor of Granta, was a good friend of Salman Rushdie, and is mentioned frequently in Rushdie's memoir Joseph Anton, which reawakened my curiosity.

This is a book of immersion journalism. After witnessing an act of random football (soccer) violence, Buford decided to investigate the phenomenon of football hooliganism in England in the early 1990's. It had gotten so bad that many British fan clubs were "banned" from travel to the Continent to attend matches, as violence and mayhem seemed to accompany these fans everywhere. The book describes how Buford insinuated himself into Manchester United's "firm" or fan club, becoming known to many of its members, his travels with the club to games and matches in Great Britain and on the Continent, and indeed his own participation in the vandalism, riots and violence that accompanied the group wherever it traveled. The book is at its best when it describes the feeling and emotions of mob mentality; it is not so good when it tries to intellectually explain the roots and causes of mob violence.

I'm not particularly a football (US football or UK "soccer") fan, but I have often wondered at the propensity for violence in sports. This book is a glimpse into that world.

Recommended

3 stars

47. Alfred and Emily by Doris Lessing

This is a two part book. The first part consists of a novella in which Lessing reimagines lives for her parents in which they could be happy. Her father becomes a man who is not wounded in World War I and is a satisfied and comfortable farmer in England. Her mother marries her first love, who does not die in World War I. He dies young, and her mother becomes a wealthy educational reformer. The second part of the book consists of random musings by Lessing on her parents and their actual lives on the farm in Africa on which Lessing grew up. This part of the book felt very disjointed and somewhat meaningless to me. In fact, overall, I'm not sure what Lessing's purpose was. I could see these thoughts as a series of daydreams, random free associations, the memories of an old person. However, I'm not sure these musings (including even I suppose the novella making up the first part of the book) are worthy of publication.

1 1/2 stars

50. Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner (1936)

I can't help myself--whenever I pick up a novel by Faulkner I get immediately drawn in and can't put it down. So, even though I've read Absalom, Absalom twice before, it started with A, I picked it up, and.....

This is the story of the tragedy of Thomas Sutpen, told by Quentin Compton, who hears it from Miss Rosa, and also from his father, who heard it from his grandfather.....etc, etc. Very Southern gothic, very tragic. If you've never read Faulkner, you have to give him a try, although this is not the easiest book to read.

5 stars

51. Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic by Molly Caldwell Crosby

Alongside the 1918 flu pandemic, there was another epidemic, and epidemic of sleeping sickness. Over a period of years, it affected more than 5 million people, killing about one-third of its victims during its acute phase and leaving about one-third more to die inch by inch, minute by minute over a period of years. Since the epidemic ended in the 1930's, it has reappeared only sporadically around the world. However, we still do not know what causes the disease, nor do we know how to treat it. We also do not know whether or when it may recur in its epidemic form.

This could have been a very good and informative work on an important topic. However, it is instead disjointed and full of irrelevancies. Crosby has organized the book around "case studies" of victims of the disease (one of them being the wife of J. P. Morgan), and research and findings about the disease are presented in a haphazard manner, with earlier conclusions later being repudiated and vice versa. I ended up not being clear on where our knowledge of this disease stands today.

My main complaint about the book, though, is that it is full of entirely extraneous and irrelevant material, and becomes more of a social history than a scientific book. For example, describing one of the doctors walking through Penn Station on the way to see a patient in 1925, she goes into a description of the magazine covers on the newsstand: Ladies Home Journal--color picture of a bride and groom; Good Housekeeping--mother reading to her daughter; Field and Stream--man and woman on a picnic beside a stream; Saturday Evening Post--a Norman Rockwell drawing; she even notes a brand-new weekly--the New Yorker. A few pages later, the NYC skyline is sighted: it has "inspired many." "In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald (blah, blah, blah)""; "Ezra Pound described (blah, blah, blah)"; "Ayn Rand saw (blah, blah blah)"; "And Frank Lloyd Wright (blah, blah, blah)". I could give pages of examples like these. They really grated on me.

A couple of interesting speculations on her part jumped out at me. Woodrow Wilson in Europe shortly after the end of World War I suffered a case of flu, and apparently experienced major personality changes as well as a mental decline and physical handicaps afterwards which were kept secret from the public, which she speculates may have been the result of the sleeping sickness. (And which ultimately led to changes in the disability laws regarding the presidency.) She also speculates that some of Hitler's aberrant personality traits may have been the result of sleeping sickness, as he too suffered from a case of the flu around the time of World War I. (There are some intriguing studies mentioned regarding the connection between influenza and this form of sleeping sickness, but whether the connection is merely coincidental or meaningful is never fully clarified).

Apparently, Oliver Saks's book Awakenings covers this same topic, and in a much more cohesive way. I have placed it on my Kindle, and who knows--it starts with "A"-- it might be up next.

1 1/2 stars

54. Angel by Elizabeth Taylor 1957

Elizabeth Taylor is one of my favorite underrated authors, and my favorite of hers is Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont. I liked this NYRB reissue a lot, although it wasn't quite up to Mrs. Palfrey.

Angelica Deverell, becomes a best-selling author in her teens--she's so bad she's good, tasteless and ignorant. We follow her from her childhood poverty, through her early successes, bringing her fabulous wealth, through to her old age, when her fortunes have declined and she is no longer in style. Through-out it all, she lives a life of humorous, but at the same time sad, self-deception.

Hilary Mantel, who wrote the introduction to the NYRB version, described Angel as a "high priestess of schlock", and said, "Angel is a book in which an accomplished, deft and somewhat underrated writer has a great deal of fun at the expense of a crass, graceless and wildly overpaid one."

Recommended

3 1/2 stars

55. Arturo's Island by Elsa Morante

On the island of Procida off the coast of Naples, 14 year old Arturo leads an Edenic existence. His mother died when he is born, and his father disappears onto the mainland for weeks, sometimes months at a time, leaving Arturo free to explore the wonders of his island, coming and going as he pleases. Until the day his father steps off the ferry with a new wife and step-mother for Arturo, that is. Nunziata is just a couple of years older than Arturo, and with her arrival his world is up-ended.

This is basically an unusual and enchanting coming of age novel, as Arturo must learn to navigate his way to maturity.

Recommended

3 1/2 stars

56. The Atomic Times: My H-Bomb Year at the Pacific Proving Ground by Michael Harris

I have conflicted feelings about this book. I expected a great deal more information than it contained. In fact, for almost the first half of the book there was very little information about the nuclear tests--it was sort of a non-fictional Catch-22--a memoir of the absurdities of the life of an enlisted man in the military, albeit a life spent on an island only a mile long (most of it consisting of the airstrip), with no trees and with MPs whose primary function appears to have been to make sure no homosexual activity took place.

Once the H-tests started happening, the information again was purely anecdotal, and again heavily weighted toward illustrating the absurdities of the military. However, many of the events described underscore the fact that authorities either knew very little about the effects of the tests that were being conducted, or else acted with callous disregard for human life and the environment. For example, the soldiers were informed that they must never look at an explosion, or risk being blinded. Initially, they were told that they were required to wear protective googles which would be provided. Then, they were told the googles were not going to be provided (and they didn't really need them anyway) because it was more important that the colonel have new furniture for his house (so as not to be embarrassed in front of the VIPs who would be observing the test). (Apparently the army could not provide both the goggles and the furniture in the time available before the test). In any event, all the VIPs and military brass had goggles and other protective clothing during the tests.

On another occasion, after being constantly told how careful the government was regarding weather patterns and the siting for the explosions so that there would never be any fallout on the island they were on, "mistakes were made", and shortly after a test, the PA system began repeatedly blaring for everyone to go indoors and shut the windows. Unfortunately, none of the windows would shut, as they were all rusted open. Also, the men were constantly told it was safe to swim in the lagoon, yet a piece of coral from the lagoon placed near a potted plant caused the plant to wither and die.

So, the book was an unusual memoir of a year in an unusual place during an unusual time. It just wasn't very factually informative.

FYI--I just received an email notification that this book is available on Amazon for FREE for Kindle, if anyone is interested.

57. Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

This sounded like a good SF book: a group of female scientists, an anthropologist, a surveyor, a psychologist and a biologist (the narrator) are sent to explore the mysterious Area X. Eleven previous expeditions to Area X have ended in tragedy, with some of the explorers committing mass suicide, some turning on each other and killing each other (so that future expeditions are sent without weapons) and some dying mysteriously of cancer within short weeks of their unexpected return home. However, this turned into more of a horror story, rather than science fiction, and also turned out to be a trilogy (The Southern Reach trilogy. I probably won't read further. I read one Amazon review which described the book as being full of a "sense of confusion and hopelessness", and stated that there are no more answers from reading all three books than merely the first chapter of the first book. I don't mind hopelessness; I do mind confusion and inexplicability. So I can't recommend this book.

1 star

58. And When She Was Good by Laura Lippman

This is a stand-alone psychological thriller from crime writer Laura Lippman. Heloise is a suburban Madame (posing as a lobbyist). We learn her life story--an abusive childhood from which she ran away to become a street prostitute, and her subsequent "rescue" by a wealthy pimp. The pimp is now serving a long jail sentence, but before going away set her up in her business. In her respectable suburb, she is known merely as a young widow, raising her son. She is leading a comfortable life, but when a Madame in nearby suburb turns up murdered, Heloise begins questioning her life. She is also concerned that her young son is becoming old enough to ask questions about her life. She decides she wants to leave the life and go "legit". However, this proves harder than she expected.

This is an interesting crime novel, with lots of information on the business of prostitution.

3 stars

59. AfterImage: A Broken-hearted Memoir of a Charmed Life by Carla Malden

This is a "medical" memoir. Carla Malden, screenwriter daughter of actor Karl Malden, describes her husband's 11 month battle with colon cancer, and the year following his death as she attempted to come to grips with the fact that despite doing everything right, the battle was lost. This was a very sad book.

3 stars

60. The Absent One by Jussi Adler-Olsen

THERE ARE SPOILERS BELOW:

I like police procedurals, and I liked the first novel in the Department Q series. But I didn't like this book, the second in the series. The plot is improbable, and the "bad guys", a group of friends who had attended boarding school together, are just so terribly, terribly awful they didn't seem real. They were complete sadistic sociopaths, but were also well-respected and famous in their respective fields. They began acting out while still in school, and the book is full of detailed descriptions of violence they inflicted on both people and animals. Kimmie, the one female in the group, is now a homeless person, and she is being sought by both the police and by the "bad guys", since she has evidence that can incriminate them. Kimmie, is also is an unbelievable character. She hears voices, and is made at times to appear schizophrenic or otherwise mentally ill, but she is also extremely cunning and intelligent and constantly outwitting her pursuers.

The story really deteriorates at the end. The bad guys are holding a fox hunt, to be attended by leaders of industry and government. When Carl and Assad (the police) arrive to arrest them, they overpower Carl and Assad and decide to kill them. Then, despite the fact that Carl escapes into the woods where the hunt is to be held, they hold the hunt anyway. The bad guy on whose estate the hunt is being held has a complete zoo available for him to choose from for hunting and other escapades (he likes to regularly torture and kill animals), so to make the hunt extra fun, he had obtained a rabid fox to be hunted. They put Assad in a cage with a hungry hyena, and release the fox into the woods. They hope (a hope realized) that one of the hunters will get too close and be bitten. That happens. It is all pretty stupid, and also disgusting.

Not recommended.

1 1/2 stars

62. The Astronaut Wives Club by Lily Koppel

This is a light and fluffy account of what it was like to be an astronaut's wife. (There are apparently no other books on the subject). The original seven Mercury astronauts were generally military test pilots, and their wives were used to living in drab base housing, struggling to make ends meet on a military salary. When their husbands were chosen for the space program, the wives were thrust into the spotlight. They were suddenly treated like royalty--tea with Jackie--and found their incomes amply supplemented with Life Magazine payments and freebies, including cars, houses, clothes etc. They were also expected to be perfect, and have perfect children. They were advised by NASA to always feed their husbands a good breakfast, and to ensure that their husbands were not subjected to stress of any kind when they were at home. For their part, the wives had to grin and bear their husbands' philandering and to stifle their fear that every doorbell ring meant news of a husband's firey death. If they struggled with the "blues", they could not seek help, because anything other than a perfect marriage hurt an astronaut's chances of being chosen for a mission.

After the initial Mercury series, as more astronauts are named, the 9 Gemini astronauts and the Apollo astronauts, the book becomes less interesting. The wives do not come across a individuals, and the information and analysis the book provides barely skims the surface of what I wanted to know. What the book does is tell us very little about a whole lot of people. It was interesting revisiting the major events of the space program, but again only scant and superficial information, usually only a few brief sentences, is provided about even the major occurrences.

Overall, the book was a fluffy read, and to some extent I would say it took a somewhat mocking tone about the social mores of the 50's and early 60's to which many of these wives adhered, and that bothered me. I can't really say I was satisfied with the book, and I'll have to wait for a more incisive writer for a better understanding of what it was really like to be an astronaut's wife in anything other than a superficial sense. Until then, I guess I'll just have to reread The Right Stuff.

2 stars

The other books I read in June and July ( the "non-A" books) are:

42. The Cold Song by Linn Ullmann
48. Back Channel by Stephen L. Carter
49. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (finally finished)
52. Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon
53. Summer by Edith Wharton
61. Joseph Anton by Salman Rushdie

Maybe I'll get to these tomorrow

Wow! Great to catch up with all your reading!

>105 arubabookwoman: I didn't like Laurence Cosse's A Novel Bookstore, so I haven't read anything more by her.

>111 arubabookwoman: I could have sworn I read and liked a book about the flu pandemic by former NYTimes science reporter Gina Kolata, but LT says I don't own Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It. I can even picture the cover!

Enjoyed reading about your other reads too, and look forward to tomorrow's reviews.

And so you are reading all the books whose titles begin with A that are on your shelves. Have you been tempted to buy any new ones that begin with A. You might never get to the B's

Enjoyed all of your reviews and a reminder to me to read more Faulkner.

Catching up here after a long absence. Your British Isles trip sounds fascinating -- I didn't know there were trips like that.

I remember watching the Eichmann trial on TV when I was about 12 -- it was a searing event that has never really left my consciousness. I think it was my first real exposure to the horrors of the Holocaust -- even before I read The Diary of Anne Frank.

Wow you've been busy! Great reviews. As Barry said, I need to read some Faulkner.

What a fascinating experiment your all-A reading is! Every once in a while, I'll idly think about what it might be like to solve the which-book-to-read-next problem by reading in alphabetical order or something, but I can't quite imagine ever actually doing it.

I have a copy of Among the Thugs, which I bought after reading an excerpt from it in The New Kings of Non-fiction and finding it absolutely fascinating -- all the more so, really, because I would never have imagined soccer hooligans as a subject I'd ever have the slightest interest in reading about. I must get to the book itself sometime.

I also have The Astronaut Wives Club, and it seems like a really interesting topic -- I'm fascinated by anything at all involving the early days of the space program -- so I'm a bit sorry to see that you found it unimpressive.

And, although it's been quite a while since I've read it, I can definitely recommend Awakenings.

Isn't there a new TV series called The Astronaut Wives' Club?

What a fantastically eclectic bunch of books you've been reading lately - was fascinated by your reviews.

The book about the sleeping disease was especially interesting, although it's a shame the author turned an interesting subject into an over-written piece of work. It reminded me of a story I'd read a while back about some villages in Kazakhstan that were being struck down by a mysterious sleeping disease. I just Googled it to see if there were any updates, and indeed only this month The Guardian reported they have finally got to the bottom of it after 2 years. Unfortunately it has been caused by excess carbon monoxide from closed up uranium mines, and the villages are now being evacuated.

Anyway, I digress. Great reviews.

Thoroughly enjoyed all these new reviews. One day I need to get to Faulkner and back to Elsa Morante.

Wow, you've been reading a lot of interesting books lately. Sorry about the one-star ones though - those are never fun (although sometimes I like writing long, detailed reviews of Everything Wrong with This Book).

I enjoyed Angel and Arturo's Island as well - are you planning any more reads by those authors? I have a couple more Elizabeth Taylor books on the pile (not sure where they are though). I don't know if there are any other available Morante books besides Arturo's Island, History, and Aracoeli (I think the SPL has House of Liars but I read bad things about it in the intro to one of the books), but I wanted to read the bio of her by Lily Tuck.

I have such fond, but vague memories of Tuck's biography of Morante (Woman of Rome). Recall something really beautiful. Of course, now I've ruined it for you. Anyway, recommended.

Let me try to do my last reviews for June and July (the "non-A" books) before I say hello to visitors:

42. The Cold Song by Linn Ullmann

One might believe this to be a typical Scandi-crime book since it's ostensibly about the disappearance of a young woman one summer, and the discovery of her (murdered) body two years later. However, it's much more than that. Linn Ullmann, writing from constantly shifting points of view, covers many complex characters over many years. I view it as primarily a novel about mothers and daughters. There's Milla, the girl who disappeared while working as a nanny for Siri and John's children. Milla's mother is a photographer, and for many years throughout her childhood Milla was her subject. Now an adult, Milla's relationship with her mother is ambivalent, and she's resentful of having been taken advantage of as a child.

When Milla disappears, she along with Siri, John, and their children are spending the summer at the summer house Siri shares with her mother Jenny. Siri and Jenny's relationship is also a clouded one, tragically affected by the death of Siri's brother many years before when they were children. And then there's Siri's relationship with her daughters, the older, and difficult Alma, and the sunny, easy Liv.

A good solid book, albeit not a great one.

3 stars

52. Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon

I picked this book up because I'm constantly hearing in artist's groups I'm in discussions about "copying"--a lot of contemporary quilt artists, for example, feel quite proprietary about techniques they use or their "style" of creating their work. On the other hand, my study of art history has indicated to me that artists have always "stolen" from one another (in fact I have a book about all the different "copying" Picasso and Matisse did, including to each other). Artists have always done it, but nowadays everyone who is not avidly proprietary seems deathly afraid of committing plagiarism. I'm in the deathly afraid camp--I don't consciously copy, but I'm constantly absorbing ideas, and this may be considered by some to be "stealing", although it always involves pondering, incorporating, changing, mixing up, evaluating, and turning on its head etc., etc., what I've taken.

That's the thesis of this slim book: Nothing is original. Everything came from something else. What the artist has to decide is what is worth stealing. Artists collect ideas and mash them together. Jim Jarmusch said, "Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic."

This book is not particularly comprehensive or challenging--I may be too old for the target audience, which seems to be people born after 1990 who are more used to reading twitters and phone texts than an intellectual essay. It's written in a sort of checklist format, with many of its points covered in one mere short sentence or even an graphic illustration. It covers 10 general "tips", the first being to steal like an artist, for "unlocking" your creativity. Although it's a brief book, and somewhat shallow, it makes some decent points, and was a quick, entertaining read.

I particularly liked this description of the artistic process (when he presented in the form of a graphic V):

(Moving steeply down from the top left-hand): "This is the best idea EVER" to "Ok, this is harder than I thought" to "This is gonna take some work" to "This sucks--and it's boring" to (Deep in the Valley of the V) "Dark night of the soul" (and ascending up the other side) to "It will be good to finish because I'll learn something for next time" and ending with "It's done and it sucks, but not as bad as I thought."

2 stars

53. Summer by Edith Wharton

Trolling the threads of LT recently I saw a review referencing the "devastating" ending of Edith Wharton's Summer. This compelled me to pull the book from my shelf. I thought I had read it before, but as I read it I had no memory of the characters or events it describes. And devastating, indeed, the ending is.

This is the story of Charity Royall, a young woman living in a small country town. When Lucius Harney, an architect from the city, comes to town, she falls in love. This book has been described as Wharton's most sexually explicit novel, and it created a huge scandal when it was published in 1917. We can experience with Charity the joy of her first experiences, but know that at that time and place an educated, sophisticated, wealthy man from the city is not going to marry an uneducated, poor, unsophisticated country girl, no matter how beautiful. And we know, as Wharton shows us time and again, that at that time the options for women were extremely limited--especially for a "tainted" woman.

In the Reading Globally Nobel Prize Writers thread, there was a long discussion about the dearth of female literature nobelists (only 13 of 111 literature laureates have been women). Wharton certainly must be counted among the writers the Nobel committee overlooked.

Highly recommended.

4 1/2 stars

61. Joseph Anton by Salman Rushdie

Rushdie's memoir primarily covers the fatwa years. However, he includes quite a bit of information about his childhood and formative years, including his time at an English boarding school. Reading about how he got his first book published, how Midnight's Children came to be written, his writing process, where he gets his ideas, the stylistic and technical choices he makes in his writing and all other sorts of literary matters was quite fascinating, and this was the part of the book I liked best.

I also enjoyed most of the rest of the book about the fatwa years, but felt that it went on just a bit too long. Of course, Rushdie may have just been seeking to create in the reader the feeling of the tedium of those years. I had forgotten just how long they were--more than 10 years in hiding. I had also forgotten just how violent they were--one of Rushdie's translators was murdered, and two other of his publisher/translators were stabbed or shot. And many died or were injured in riots protesting the book around the world.

At first Rushdie had to scramble to find a new place to stay every few weeks, then he later was allowed to stay in one place for a few months. After a few years he was able to move into a home he purchased and basically reconstructed to include the most up to day security and protection devices and reinforcements. During the entire fatwa time he and his wife of the moment lived with a cadre of security guards 24 hours a day. (Wherever he lived, there had to be room to accommodate these guards, who ate, slept and lived on the premises with Rushdie.) He was also being constantly reminded (in the press), about the enormous cost of his protection to the taxpayers, the implication being that some people, Margaret Thatcher for example, are worth being protected, and others, a nasty writer like himself for example, are not.

In addition to going on a bit long about the day-to-day tedium of being under protection (i.e. the repeated battles to be able to go out to dinner, or visit friends or go to a book signing; the lengthy battle to insist that a paper back version of The Satanic Verses be published), the book is a bit gossipy. In some cases I found it interesting to read about Rushdie's famous friends. For example, reading about Bill Buford caused me to read Buford's book. But in some cases, it felt to me like Rushdie was score-keeping, as if he divided writers into those who supported him and those who did not. One person who comes off extremely poorly in the book is Marianne Wiggins, his wife at the time the fatwa was declared. In Rushdie's version of events she is a simply awful human being, and at times seemed almost mentally ill. (I really liked her book John Dollar, so I wonder what her version of events would be.) Rushdie himself doesn't always come of as the most likeable character--shortly after Marianne leaves he takes up with Elizabeth, and they seem deliriously happy (or as happy as they can be in the circumstances), but shortly after his and Elizabeth's son is born he begins an affair with a beautiful Indian actress, and there's much discussion/whining about the ensuing divorce proceedings and about Elizabeth's trying to get her hands on his money.

Well I better stop before I tell the whole story--all 650+ pages of it. Rushdie in my view is an excellent writer, and despite its flaws, this book is well-worth reading.

3 1/2 stars

64. Trick or Treat by Lesley Glaister

This is a compact psychological thriller about Olive and Nell, who have lived their entire lives separated by one house, but who can't stand one another and have ignored each other for years. Olive was once a beauty, and lived her life unconventionally, refusing to marry her life-long lover Arthur. Now she is morbidly obese and senile, and is cared for by Arthur as he would care for a child. Nell, on the other hand, is trim, and keeps a perfect house. She does have a few problems though, like her fortyish son Rodney, who has just returned from "away" where he was sent for "indiscretions" unnamed, but of which he must have been cured since he's back, right?

As the novel opens, a hugely pregnant woman and her three children have moved into the house in between Olive and Nell. Wolfe, the eight year old youngest child, sensitive and lonely, invites Nell and Rodney and Olive and Arthur to his Guy Fawkes party. For the rest of the book, impending tragedy looms, and it ultimately occurs. Just not the one I was expecting.

This was a wicked good book. For fans of Shirley Jackson.

3 1/2 stars

>121 rebeccanyc:--Rebecca--Apparently Accident in August is one of her very early books, and it was reissued after the success of A Novel Bookstore. I have, but have not yet read, A Novel Bookstore. What didn't you like about it?

>122 baswood:--Bas--Given the state of my bookshelves, and the rate at which I keep buying books, there's a distinct possibility that if I kept reading "A" books I would never get to the "B" books. Anyway, I've abandoned that method of choosing books now--it was just to get me out of my reading funk.

>123 janeajones:--Jane--I too remember reading about the Eichmann trial. It made an impression on me--his being in a glass cage--but I don't remember much, perhaps because we didn't have TV.

>124 NanaCC:--Hi Colleen--Hope you get to Faulkner soon.

>125 bragan:--Betty--I never intended to stick to this alphabetical system (I wouldn't have been able to), but it got me out of my reading funk by taking the angst out of choosing what to read next. I'm surprised you haven't read The Astronaut Wives Club because I thought I had heard about it on your thread. I guess not. I intend to read Awakenings soon, since I put it on my Kindle.

>126 janeajones:--Jane--yes, it's apparently a series on ABC. Haven't seen it though.

>127 AlisonY:--Hi Alison--As I said, I'm going to read Awakenings to see if I can learn more about this disease. It's related to other types of encephalitis and West Nile Disease, but they don't know how it's transmitted or really even how to treat it. It could also reappear at any moment, so it's rather frightening.

>128 dchaikin:; >130 dchaikin: Hi Dan--We'll be in Houston again in late October--try for another cup of coffee?
I'll look for the Morante biography by Lily Tuck. It sounds good

>129 DieFledermaus:--Stephanie--I've read and liked several books by Elizabeth Taylor. My favorite was Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont. That book was about the loneliness of aging, though, and since you're so young you might not be as interested in such topics as I am :). It was made into a decent movie, too, with Joan Plowright (??) in the title role.

I read History: A Novel years and years ago, but don't remember anything about it. I should probably check it out again. And I intend to look for Morante's biography.

Thank you all so much for visiting!

I've been on a reading binge in August. So far, I've read:

Day of the Dolphin by Robert Merle (1967) 1001 Book
Mad Men On the Couch: Analyzing the Minds of the Men and Women of the Hit TV Show by Stephanie Newman
Dead Man Leading by V.S. Pritchett Amazon exploration (novel)
The Lost City of Z by David Grann Amazon exploration (nonfiction)
Ten Seconds from the Sun by Russell Celyn Jones crime
Chocky by John Wyndham 1001 Book

Hopefully, I'll review these soon.

I've been reading a lot too. It's hard to keep up with the reviewing -- other books keep intruding -- not such an awful place to be though.

Enjoyed your reviews today.

Really enjoyed those reviews - some great books there!

I plan on reading at least one Wharton this month. You've made me think it should be Summer instead of The Reef, which is the one I had picked. I have her complete works on my kindle, and have loved the ones I've read. My reading has slowed to a snail's pace though, as I've been watching grandchildren - picking up, dropping off, taking for fun things.... Rewarding in its own way.

>136 arubabookwoman: I had to go back to my review of A Novel Bookstore (because my mind is like a sieve), and I see that I said I wanted to like it more, that I liked the parts about the bookstore, but I couldn't get into the mystery and romantic plots.

And I too enjoyed your new reviews. And wow, you've read a lot in August!

You've been busy indeed. What a great reading binge. I like the idea of reading alphabetically to get out of a slump, and am happy to see that it worked for you. It also made me think of all those second hand bookstores where the fiction is arranged alphabetically and where I could never get past B without overextending my budget. Now I make it a point to start at a letter further on each time.

>132 arubabookwoman: I've heard those same discussions in groups too, and while I'm one of those in the "afraid" group who respects copyright completely, when it comes to techniques I have some difficulty with the trend toward copyrighting them. The ones that stick out in my mind are Zentangles, basically a form of doodling, and common images like a star or an anchor.
The V as a process is a brilliant description. Despite your two stars, I think I'll have to look for this, if only to contribute to the discussions which will start up again as fall arrives and groups get back together.

As for the rest, you remind me that I haven't read Edith Wharton yet this summer, which was a resolution. Nor have I read Joseph Anton yet, but that hasn't even made it to my TBR (maybe I should start at the Rs next time I'm in one of those bookstores). History: A Novel is the only Morante book I've read, but I should read others, as that was a powerful book.

I occasionally think about picking up Steal Like An Artist, but I think I'll give it a miss for a while longer. I started an Etsy shop when the site was six months old, and was pretty surprised at how protective some of the people were. One woman refused to share what book binding techniques she used, despite it being a super standard (and old) binding method. She didn't want to contribute personally to anyone making something that could take business from her. Really turned me off and kind of shocked me, having grown up in a "we can make that" household.

I'm a bit late getting back to your thread but pm'd you about late October. Loved those Aug 7 reviews. You make me want to read Jospeh Anton.

I've been toying with the idea of reading Joseph Anton - it hadn't appealed to me until I listened to a podcast with Rushdie discussing the book. You've definitely pushed it up the list. Perhaps I should see if there is an audiobook version read by Rushdie.

ETA: there is!

Hello everyone--will answer comments after I get some August reviews down. Before I get to August though, I wanted to include my thoughts on a book I read back in May after I read The Eichmann Trial. I just wanted to include them because most people I know on LT who read this book loved it, and I had a different reaction--more negative:

36. HHhH bby Laurent Binet

This is historical fiction about the assassination of Heinrich Heydrich (the main proponent for the Final Solution at the Wansee Conference). While it is a novel about Heydrich, his assassination, and his assassins, it is also a novel about writing a novel, specifically writing historical fiction. And that is the part I did not like. The constant authorial intrusions and interruptions bothered me terribly. (Or rather, perhaps, the intrusions of a fictional narrator who is writing a novel of historical fiction--in either case my complaint is the same). This may be merely a personal preference of mine, as I've had this same reaction to at least one other book like this. (However, in August I read The Lost City of Z, in which the author inserts into the history of the Amazonian explorations of Percy Fawcett his own adventures in researching the story and ultimately following in Fawcett's footsteps, and I found that in The Lost City of Z, the authorial intrusions worked perfectly--the book would not have been as good without them.)

I can objectively see that this is a very clever book, and perhaps a good novel in the metafictional sense. Binet calls the book an "infra-novel" in which the creative artist's struggle comes to the foreground. However, to give you a sense of how it grated on me, I can do no better than quote the following excerpt from an Amazon review:

"Imagine, if you will, picking up Tolstoy's War and Peace, and being confronted with passages like, 'And so Napoleon decided to invade Russia. Or at least that's what I think he decided. I wasn't there, so I can't exactly read his mind. All I can do is tell you that he did invade Russia, which is the story I'm going to write about. But it's hard to concentrate on that story just now because I'm equally fascinated with the lovely, blonde, 20 year old stenographer I just haired, and she's a tremendous distraction.'"

2 stars

Now that I've got that off my chest, on to some August books. (And why the first touchstone to come up when I type this book is Pride and Prejudice, I'll never know):

64. The Day of the Dolphin by Robert Merle

I tracked this book down and read it because it's on the 1001 List, one of the few spy thrillers to make the list. I was curious as to why it earned that honor. It's the story of a research program, funded by the government, to teach dolphins to talk--not merely to "communicate"--with humans. When the program proves successful, evil elements from the government abscond with the dolphins to force them to do evil deeds.

There's a lot of information about dolphins in this book, but since it was written in the 1970's I'm sure a lot of the information is outdated. In particular, I believe it is now thought that dolphins are not as intelligent as was once believed, although they are certainly intelligent. And, while I don't know one way or the other for sure, I can't believe that dolphins would have the anatomical capability to "speak" in grammatical English. (And since the novel was written in French, I'm not sure why the dolphins were taught English, rather than French, or even Esperanto :)., although the research facility was in the US.)

Nevertheless, I enjoyed this book. It is written in a strange stream of consciousness style, with a constant shifting of the point of view character. And the characters were well-developed, including some rather strange individuals, some at the training facility, and some in the government. I guess one of the whole points was how wonderful, innocent and good dolphins are--in this book dolphins in the wild looked on humans as somewhat Godlike--and how horrible it was for them to awaken to the evil that lurks in the heart of man.

3 stars

65. Mad Men on the Couch by Stephanie Newman

This is a book I mostly skimmed, rather than studied, and it is perhaps another book in which my objective in reading it was probably at cross purposes with the author's objective in writing it.

I came to the TV show Mad Men late--in fact I've watched the entire series during the first half of this year. My husband was watching the series, and, being in the same room while it was on, I joined him in about the 5th season. I then went back and watched the first four seasons. I enjoyed the show, particularly as a reminder of what living through those times was like. I had truly forgotten how hard it was for women starting in a "man's" profession back then, and how entitled many men felt to belittle women. I was one of 6 women in my law school class of about 200, and I had male students question my right to take a "man's place" in the class, since I would not have to support a family.(!) Some of the professors were also less than supportive of female students. What a change 5 years after I graduated, and I went back to the school to recruit--the class was about 40% women. But I digress....

Anyway, I think I was expecting a light-hearted, witty, and fun look at the Mad Men characters, and I found the book rather heavy-handed. It begins with a fair amount of discussion of psychoanalytic theory which was somewhat academic and dry. When the author begins discussing the characters, their decisions and quirks, she does so through the lens of serious psychoanalysis, which on the one hand I found obvious and simplistic, and on the other hand found presented in a dry, academic way. The book took itself far too seriously. I also found it somewhat repetitious, since it frequently discussed individual incidents from the point of view of multiple characters.

FYI, it covers only the first four seasons.

For serious fans of the show only.

2 stars

66. Dead Man Leading by V.S. Pritchett

Years ago I read Pritchett's Collected Stories, which I loved although I don't usually "get" short stories. I hadn't realized he had written a novel, so when I saw this available for cheap on Kindle, I grabbed it. As a bonus, its plot revolves around Amazonian exploration, which I like reading about. Harry Johnson is the son of a missionary who disappeared into the jungle 17 years previously. He has had some previous experience of the Amazon when he and a friend set off upriver to join an older man on a planned exploration. While seeking an answer to what happened to his father was not the stated purpose of the exploration, that is what the expedition turns into.

Until I read my next book (see review for The Lost City of Z coming up), I thought Pritchett's description of the hardships suffered by the explorers--the heat, the insects, the disease, the deprivations, the hostile Indians, etc.--were magnificent, and so very graphic. And they are good--in a "You are there!" kind of way. However, I found some of the plotting didn't make sense, particularly Harry's fear that he may have gotten his girlfriend back in England pregnant (she is the stepdaughter of the expedition leader), and his preoccupation with her failure to write him.

I'm not sure whether this book is in any way based on Percy Fawcett, the explorer who is featured in The Lost City of Z, but after Fawcett's disappearance, Fawcett's surviving son (his older son disappeared with his father) launched an expedition to find him, and since this book was written in the 1930's I'm sure the Fawcett story at least influenced Pritchett.

However, if you only choose to read one book of Amazonian exploration, it shouldn't be this one--pick up The Lost City of Z instead.

2 1/2 stars

67. Lost City of Z by David Gann

British explorer Percival Fawcett, his son Jack, and Jack's friend Raleigh disappeared into the Amazon jungle in 1925. Fawcett had spent several years on expeditions in search of a fabled lost ancient city, and the story of his adventures is fascinating and makes compelling reading. Dozens of subsequent expeditions were launched to search for Fawcett, all of them unsuccessful, and the stories of some of these expeditions also make for fascinating reading. It's estimated that up to 100 people may have themselves disappeared and/or died on such search expeditions.

Into this mix drops David Gann, Brooklyn boy, non-outdoorsy, non-athlete, dare I say "nature-phobe", who becomes fascinated with Fawcett's story, and decides to follow in his footsteps and solve both the mystery of his disappearance and find the Lost City of Z. The story of Gann's investigation of the life of Fawcett and ultimately his own Amazonian journey is as fascinating as Fawcett's own story, and is an essential component of this excellent book. He visits the British National Geographic Society (where he is initially dismissed as a "Fawcett Freak") to view maps and read Fawcett's original reports. He interviews Fawcett's descendants and views his diaries. I was extremely amused by his visit to an REI-like emporium:

"There were rainbow-colored tents and banana-hued kayaks and mauve mountain bikes and neon snowboards dangling from the ceiling and walls. Whole aisles were devoted to insect repellants, freeze-dried foods, lip balms and sun screens. A separate section existed for footwear....There was an area for 'adrenaline socks' and one for Techwick 'skivvies.' Racks held magazines like 'Hooked on the Outdoors' and 'Backpacker: The Outdoors at Your Doorstep,' which had articles titled 'Survive a Bear Attack' and 'America's Last Wild Places: 31 Ways to Find Solitude, Adventure---and Yourself.' Wherever I turned there were customers, or 'gear heads.' It was as if the fewer the opportunities for genuine exploration, the greater the means were for anyone to attempt it...."

I also liked the description of one "gizmo" after another--including a Swiss army knife with a computer flash drive to store photos and music. What a contrast with the "gizmos" available to Fawcett. And I do not mean to belittle the majesty and remaining mystery of the Amazon, which even today the Brazilian government estimates is home to more than 60 Indian tribes that have never been contacted by outsiders.

Highly Recommended. 4 stars

68. Ten Seconds From the Sun by Russell Celyn Jones

This is a novel of the genre I call psychological thrillers--think for example Ruth Rendell. Ray, a river pilot on the Thames, leads an ostensibly content life--good marriage, healthy and happy children, nice home and job. But Ray harbors a deep, dark secret from his past, something his wife, family and friends know nothing about, and one day that secret rears its ugly head. From then on, Ray makes some pretty poor decisions, digging a deeper and deeper hole for himself. To a certain extent it annoys me when characters in books do this--make decisions that are clearly going to end badly. I find myself wondering whether such a character, who has, as Ray, been painted as intelligent and decent, would realistically have made such decisions, or whether my own biases and belief that the decisions are wrong cause me to question the author's ability to develop realistic characters.

Putting this quibble aside, this book explores the interesting theme of whether there are some deeds, including in this instance deeds committed as a child, that can never be atoned for. (This was a theme in another book I read a few years ago that I think is a better book than this one, Boy A by Jonathan Trigell.)

I also enjoyed the background of river navigation on the Thames aspect of this book.

3 stars

69. Chocky by John Wyndham

This is classic science fiction written in a simple style. Matthew is about 11 years old when he develops what his parents Mary and David believe to be an imaginary friend. They are a bit concerned; after all, 11 years old is a bit old for such a development, but hope that it will soon be outgrown. They become more concerned when Matthew begins asking his science and math teacher obscure questions on subjects he really has no reason to know about, and begins performing actions that he previously was unable to do (swimming, painting artistically pleasing pictures). When asked Matthew claims that "Chocky" helped him. His parents consult a psychiatrist, and are appalled when he suggests that they consider the possibility that Chocky is real.

This is a short, engaging read. It's a "think" novel, not an action novel. While it's the story of alien contact, it's not scary or menacing, but rather actually a quite comfortable read.

3 stars

70. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

I must be the last person on LT to read this book, even though I purchased it shortly after it was published. I'm kicking myself for putting it off so long. I loved it and wanted it to never end.

Briefly, it's the story of Ursula Todd, born on a snowy night in February 1910. And dying. And being born again on a snowy night in February 1910, and dying, and living her life over and over again, and dying over and over again, until, as she comes to believe, she finally gets it right. (Although, to be sure, she doesn't fully comprehend or remember what she is going through--just occasional feelings of deja vu, or precognition).

Much of the book--many, many of Ursula's lives--are so very dark, since much of her life is lived in the shadow of the rise of Hitler, and during the Blitz in London, but Atkinson is such a good writer I loved reading them all. (Although much of her life, especially her earlier years contrariwise seemed very idyllic, lounging in the Edwardian garden at the family home.) The plots, characters, settings were all so real and convincing, I was totally immersed and living the lives along with Ursula. (I do have to say the one life I didn't care for was the one where she passed WW II in Germany, the wife of a German, and in a position of acquaintanceship with Eva Braun such that she on occasion came into contact with Hitler.)

I loved Atkinson's first several books, especially her first, Behind the Scenes At the Museum, but didn't care for the first Jackson Brodie (?) book and so did not continue to read the series. I'm glad that she has dropped that series for the moment, and I will go on to read A God in Ruins, which I don't yet own. But I'm wondering whether I should give her detective series another chance.

BTW I heard a podcast (either on the BBC or the Guardian) in which she was requested to bring to the interview three objects related to the book (in this case A God in Ruins). One of the objects was the silver angel that dangled above the pram when used by both Ursula and Teddy, so it is mentioned in both books, and is an actual trinket highly prized by Atkinson in her own life.

Highly Recommended 4 1/2 stars

71. The Good Nurse by Charles Graeber

This is a true crime book about the serial murderer Charlie Cullen. No one, not even Charlie Cullen himself, knows how many patients he murdered, but he is believed to have killed upwards of 300 people before he was finally arrested in 2003. When he first began his spree, he would inject particular patients (or inject into their IV drips). He began with insulin, resulting in insulin spikes which if untreated (or even when treated, since with these frail patients treatment was frequently unsuccessful) would kill the patient. Later he began using other drugs, including digoxin. He subsequently began to randomly inject numerous saline IV bags in the storage room with these poisons, so that it was the "luck of the draw" as to which patients would receive the poisoned drips. Often the poisoned drips would be administered when Cullen was not even at the hospital, making detection even more difficult. Many of these patients were already seriously ill, so usually, at least in the beginning foul play was not suspected.

Even so, early on there were instances in which questions were raised about Cullen. A relative of one patient questioned Cullen about an injection Cullen gave the patient which didn't seem to appear in any doctor's orders. The patient died, but the hospital convinced the relative that the death was natural and convinced the relative not to demand an autopsy. It soon appeared that the hospitals at which Cullen worked were almost covering up for him. At each hospital when the suspicious deaths began to mount, and the evidence appeared to point to Cullen, he would be let go (usually by just issuing a "Do Not Hire" order, since in most cases he was working on contract). Horrifically, the hospitals did not report their suspicions to the State Nursing Board or to any other hospitals, even when other hospitals called for references after Cullen applied for a new job. Cullen was able to continue his murderous spree for 16 years in 9 separate facilities, as he moved from hospital to hospital. (And this is not to mention Cullen's numerous suicide attempts and mental breakdowns--in between stints as a nurse, he spent months in in-patient psychiatric hospitals, none of which seemed to bother the employing hospitals; they were just glad to have a nurse who was willing to work overtime and weekends.)

Even after the police were involved, and detectives were investigating, the hospitals still tried to cover up Cullen's actions. It took the detectives months to learn that records were available through which they could view Cullen's medication requests--the hospital had told the detectives that such records were not available for more than a few months. This aspect of Cullen's story is the most chilling for me. Rather than risk their own liability for Cullen's actions, each hospital appeared to sweep everything under the rug, and let Cullen move onto another hospital and kill more patients!!!

What I took away from this book is that every patient in every hospital should have a family member or friend with them at all times, to double check everything that is being done to the patient and every medication being administered.

Highly recommended 3 1/2 stars

72. The Life We Bury by Allen Eskens

Assigned to write a short biographical piece for a college class, Joe interviews Carl, a Vietnam War veteran currently residing in a nursing home. It turns out that Carl is also a convicted murderer, who has only recently been released from prison since he is suffering from terminal cancer and is expected to die soon. As he listens to Carl, Joe becomes convinced that Carl was wrongly convicted, and decides to clear Carl's name and find the true murderer.

This book got rave reviews on Amazon. It won an Edgar for the Best First Novel, and was a finalist/winner of several other literary awards. I was expecting much from it, and I was mightily disappointed. The novel reads like a YA novel. The characters lack complexity and nuance, and are cardboard thin. The plot is predictable and full of holes--Carl's conviction for example rested upon a teenager's diary entry, written in an easily solved Code which was wrongly interpreted by the prosecutor but which could have been correctly interpreted had the prosecutor interviewed an obvious witness. The ending is right out of a fairy tale--not only is the correct murderer found and Carl's good name vindicated, but Joe gets the girl AND he gets a huge reward (which he didn't even know about), so that all his money problems are solved, and he can stay in school and take care of his autistic brother, and so on... happily ever after.

As I looked through the Amazon reviews again I see that there are some fairly negative ones, including some like me whose high expectations were disappointed. I saw several which compared the "gee whiz" attitude of this book to a Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys mystery (although one said that comparison did a disservice to the Hardy Boys). The one that most reflected my own view was a one sentence review that simply stated, "I thought it was written by one of my seventh graders."

Skip this. 1 star

72. The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope

I continued to enjoy Trollope's Palliser novels in August with the delightfully devious Lizzie Eustace, who insists that her late husband gave her as her own property the Eustace family diamonds, so that they are not a part of his estate. Her assertion creates all sorts of problems, including the fact that her fiancé finds her assertions distasteful and dishonorable enough that he no longer feels able to honor his pledge. I mostly enjoyed this, although I found it went on rather a bit long about some things. I did specifically enjoy learning the arcane bits of English common law about what does and what does not constitute an "heirloom" (the Crown jewels--possibly yes; the Eustace diamonds--definitely no), and what a widow can claim as her "paraphernalia" after the death of her husband. On to Phineas Redux.

4 stars

Will try to finish August reviews this weekend. Remaining August books to review are:

74. The Residence by Kate Andersen Brower
75. Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack by Haruki Murakami
76. The Believers by Zoe Heller
77. Kinder Than Solitude by Yiyun Li
78. Three Dollars by Elliot Pearlman
79. The Forgiven by Lawrence Osborne
80. Great Works: 50 Paintings Explored by Tom Lubbock

I might even start September, where my reading continues to be for the most part enjoyable:

81. The Marauders by Tom Cooper (novel about shrimpers affected by BP oil spill
82. Do No Harm by Henry Marsh (neurosurgeon's memoir)
83. My Father's Den by Maurice Gee (New Zealand psychological thriller)
84. Towards the End of Morning by Michael Frayn (comic novel set on Fleet Street in the early 60's)
85. Countdown City by Ben H. Winters (vol. 2 of end of the world trilogy)
86. The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell (David Mitchell needs no introduction. He has a new novel coming out in October, so I had to read this now)

>138 janeajones: Hi Jane--Is it retirement that is giving you more time to read? I agree that it's more fun to read than to review, but I find that I appreciate the book more if I review it.

>139 AlisonY: Thanks Alison.

>140 NanaCC: Grandkids are the Best, Colleen, and are an acceptable excuse for reading less. I envy those who live close enough to their grandkids to see them regularly--Unfortunately, we live in Seattle, 2 grandkids are in Houston, and 1, soon to be 2, are in Jersey City. We try to see them all at least 3 times a year, and do Face Time on a frequent basis.

>141 rebeccanyc: Rebecca, I understand about minds and sieves--I have the same problem.

>142 SassyLassy: I do somewhat the same in bookstores--I rotate between starting with the A's, starting in the middle, and starting with the Z's. Steal Like an Artist is a very quick read, so by all means go for it. It had some good points, and was quite clever. It's pretty superficial though, and not a serious treatment of the issue at all though.

>143 mabith: Mabith--I'm also frequently annoyed by other artists/craftspeople who are "proprietary" about something that is just a technique, or something that is generic or in the public domain. I have heard of quilters who try to claim copyright on quilt block patterns that have been around for years, and that our great-grandmas made.

>144 dchaikin: Dan--I will PM you. Right now my plan is to get to Houston around the 23rd of October.

>145 wandering_star:--Glad you found the audio version. I listened to Audible, and Rushdie read the introduction, and another person narrated the bulk of the book. I enjoyed the narrator, even though it wasn't Rushdie. Sometimes I think authors make poo narrators.

Wow - you've been very busy catching up on reviews! Enjoyed reading through them all, and no - you're not the last person to have got to Life After Life - I still have to get to that one!

Enjoyed your review on HHhH - I really enjoyed the book, but I can totally understand other people having the take on it that you did. The whole notion of historical fiction seems to divide people, but I did like the unique investigative nature of his book, and going with him on that journey of discovery.

You've been a busy reader and I enjoyed catching up on your reviews. And I haven't read Life after Life either. I've looked at The Lost City of Z countless times in the bookstore but never bought it, so I appreciated your review. And I'm glad you continue to enjoy Trollope; I'm a new convert.

Thank you for all the great reviews! I will add The Lost City of Z to my wish list. And I have to confess that your negative review of HHhH is making me want to read it :-)

I never did get to Wharton this summer, Deborah. Before the end if the year, I will. Right now enjoying next to last in the The Chronicles of Barsetshire. I see you had several disappointments in your reading. I'm so glad you read Life After Life to make up for them. I thought it was wonderful.

>146 arubabookwoman: I have nor read HHhH and I will now give it a wide berth if it is as puerile as you suggest in the final paragraph of your post.

>146 arubabookwoman: - loved your comments and the quote from the review. I can see why you would not like the book (HHhH). The author isn't adding info, he's just manipulating the impression. I enjoyed it, but I can see that being annoying too

>150 arubabookwoman: great review of the lost city of Z. When I break down and buy audiobooks, instead of depend on my library, this will be on my list.

>153 arubabookwoman: another great review. Despite all the reviews I've read of Life After Life, your review was still fun to read. I probably should actually read it (it's on the waiting list for my library's audiobook)

>154 arubabookwoman: that's insane. I had not heard of this. Insane!

These were fun reviews.

>157 arubabookwoman: noting Oct 23. My in-laws visit later that week - so that might be perfect time. Ha! (Kidding, i love my in-laws)

Whew -- you're reading and reviewing much speedier than I. Enjoyed catching up.

Back to answer all my lovely visitors after I finish these August reviews:

74. The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House by Kate Andersen Brower

This is a charming behind the scenes look at life in the White House from roughly the Eisenhower era through the Obamas, as seen through the eyes of those who keep it running--the maids, butlers, cooks, plumbers, florists, electricians etc. Most of these people have held their jobs for years, and these jobs seem to be passed around among family members and friends, so not surprisingly most of the anecdotes (and this is an anecdotal book) are positive--with a few exceptions. No one would be surprised to learn that Hillary was pretty mad at Bill over Monica and that he spent more than one night on the couch. And the staff memories of the White House after Jackie returned from Dallas in November 1963 are brutally tear-inducing.

But there are also lots of funny stories--LBJ's insistence on super-powered water pressure for his showers and his battles with the plumbers over this, for instance. Other petty demands include Nancy Reagan's last minute choice of a dessert for a state dinner that required the chef to work day and night.

One fascinating factoid: On each Inauguration Day between late morning when the old first family leaves and late afternoon when the new first family appears, the staff must entirely move out and clear away all the old family's stuff and move in and set up the new family's stuff, so that when the new first family arrives they can rest and relax after the day's ceremonies before moving on to the inaugural balls.

Recommended for the voyeur in us all.

3 stars

75. Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack by Haruki Murakami

In March 1995, five members of the religious cult Aum released sarin gas in 5 different cars an several Tokyo subway lines. Overall, (miraculously only) 12 people died, and thousands were injured, many very seriously. Author Haruki Murakami was living abroad at this time, and later read a letter from a woman whose husband was injured in the attacks. He couldn't get the letter out of his head, and when he returned to Japan a few years later he began interviewing survivors of the attack (and in one case relatives of a deceased victim). This book presents, primarily verbatim, transcripts of about 60 of those interviews, as Murakami attempts to make sense of the attack and the reaction to it, and to ponder on what it means to be Japanese.

In the course of the interviews, the victims, including ordinary workers on the way to their offices as well as subway workers, reflect on what happened, how they reacted, and what they observed of others' reactions. What struck me was how long it took for anyone to realize how serious the situation was. The perpetrators had the sarin (in liquid form in plastic) wrapped in newspaper, which they placed on the floor of a subway car. As they exited, they stabbed the sarin package with a specially sharpened umbrella tip to break the package and release the sarin. Passengers noticed fumes and some would leave the car at the next stop, but passengers at the next stop would see a car with empty seats and get in the contaminated car to continue to the next stop. This occurred despite there sometimes remaining on board people who were obviously very ill or even unconscious. Sometimes at a stop, a subway worker would come on board, remove an unconscious passenger, "mop" up the "spill", and the car would proceed on. Even passengers who felt ill with symptoms such as difficulty seeing (a "feeling" of blackness descending) or difficulty breathing would proceed to work, often walking past people collapsed on the subway platforms or sidewalks, only seeking help when they totally collapsed or when they heard news reports at work about what had happened. One passenger described the scene: "People foaming at the mouth....half of the roadway was absolute hell. But on the other side people were walking to work as usual....It was as if we were a world apart. Nobody stopped. They all thought, 'Nothing to do with me.'"

The volume I read contained an added section of later interviews Murakami did with members and former members of the cult which carried out the attack. These members all claimed to have been unaware that the attack was planned, but many of them admit that had the leader ordered them to carry out these attacks they are not sure they would have been able to resist such an order.

This book is very different than Murakami's fiction (although I guess you could say the general theme of the Japanese character and the ennui and alienation of today's youth apply in both cases). Murakami acknowledges his debt to the oral histories of Studs Terkel. A fascinating read.

3 1/2 stars

76. The Believers by Zoe Heller

This is a novel about a dysfunctional family, and it's also, perhaps, a satire. Lots of people don't like it because almost all the characters are unlikeable--some in fact are hugely unlikeable. The novel centers on the family of Joel Litvinoff, an womanizing activist lawyer who makes his living defending terrorists--present-day Muslims and Black Panther-like individuals in the past. As the novel opens, Joel suffers a stroke, and he lies in a coma for most of the rest of the book.

Joel's wife Audrey appears to live to support Joel, entirely burying her own wants and desires to the needs of Joel. In fact, as Heller cleverly shows us, Audrey is one of the most self-centered and mean characters to appear in the pages of a contemporary novel. Joel and Audrey have three children. Rosa has just returned from a Marxist fling in Cuba and is flirting with becoming a Hasidic Jew, much to the dismay of her atheist parents. Karla, an overweight "marshmallow" of a social worker married to a union organizer, bears the brunt of Audrey's snide remarks. Adopted son Lenny, a drug addict unable to hold a job, is adored by Audrey.

I think the fact that the characters are so unlikeable is what makes this book likeable. Here's a quote:

"{Audrey} was always congratulating herself on her audacious honesty, her willingness to express what everyone else was thinking. But no one...actually shared Audrey's ugly view of the world. It was not the truth of her observations that made people laugh, but their unfairness, their surreal cruelty."

3 stars

77. Kinder Than Solitude by Yiyun Li

First let me say I loved Yiyun Li's The Vagrants. Kinder Than Solitude--not so much.

The focus here is on four individuals and on an incident that occurred 30 years before the novel opens, at a time when the individuals were in their teens, and which left one of them in a vegetative state. After the incident, Moran and Ruyu left China for the US. Boyand has stayed behind in Peking and become a successful businessman. He has kept in touch with the family of Shaoai, the woman in the vegetative state. Over the years, Boyand periodically emails Moran and Ruyu the status of Shaoai, but otherwise there has been no contact between the three. Boyand is not even aware if Moran and Ruyu receive or read the emails. As the novel opens, Shaoai has just died, and Boyand has dutifully notified Moran and Ruyu. The novel proceeds alternating between the contemporary time, the time of the teen friendship of Moran, Ruyu and Boyand, and the lives of the three survivors over the years since the incident.

Yiyun Li says the book is about characters who have to make sense of a death. I never really connected with the book, and it was not one I looked forward to picking up each night.

2 1/2 stars

Interesting to read about the Tokyo Gas Attack and the reactions of the commuters involved.

Hi Bas--yes it was interesting. As I said, I think Murakami wants us to draw some conclusion about the Japanese character from these reactions.

78. Three Dollars by Elliot Perlman

This is the story of how Eddie Harnovey ended up at age 38 with a wife, a 6 year old daughter, a university education and work experience in chemical engineering, but with no job and only $3 in his pocket. Even though the book was written in the 1990's it feels absolutely up-to-date and timely in terms of the ever-increasing, cut-to-the bone expense practices of today's corporations, together with a big dose of the difficulties of holding onto one's ideals as one makes a way through a world of post-Reagan/post-Thatcher economic practices.

The novel begins "Every nine and a half years I see Amanda....", and each time Eddie sees Amanda he has only $3 in his pocket. Eddie and Amanda are best friends, until at the end of Eddie's 9th summer, when Amanda is yanked from his life for no reason he can discern. We follow Eddie through his university training, his marriage, and his career in a government bureaucracy similar to the US's EPA (the book is set in Melbourne), in which he must approve/disapprove mining plans, and through his touching trials of fatherhood.

I've liked the other books by Elliot Perlman better--Seven Types of Ambiguity and The Street Sweeper, but Perlman is an excellent writer, and I'd probably try anything by him. This is not quite up to his best, but it's still quite worthwhile, and I recommend it.

3 stars

79. The Forgiven by Lawrence Osborne

David and Jo Henniger, wealthy Brits, are on their way to a weekend house party in the remote desert of Morocco when their car strikes and kills a young Arab boy. Unsure what to do, they put the boy's body in their car and continue to the party. Their hosts, owners of the "castle" and surrounding guest houses in the desert, while also foreigners, are more familiar with Moroccan ways and notify the police of the incident, but assure David and Jo that all will be quietly taken care of. The party, meanwhile goes on--seemingly a 24 hour per day, 3 day bash. However, a few hours later, the dead boy's father and other family members show up at the gate demanding justice.

Talk about culture clash--the abstemious religious Muslim staff and the hedonistic jet-setters partying like the world is about to end. This is a book of extreme contrasts, and a revealing look into worlds I know little about--both that of the jet setters and that of the Berber desert people who earn their living excavating fossils in the hostile desert. This is a morally complex book, and one I won't soon forget, right down to the stunning ending.

3 1/2 stars

80. Great Works: 50 Paintings Explored by Tom Lubbock

I came across Tom Lubbock when I read a reference on LT to the book The Iceberg: A Memoir by his wife Marion Coutts, about her life after his death. Clicking through Amazon, I found that Tom Lubbock had also written a memoir, Until Further Notice I Am Alive, and clicking onward I found that Lubbock was primarily an art critic/writer. As I clicked through his books, I landed on this one, and the striking cover made me covet the book--so much so that I bought it and read it.

The book contains 50 short essays on paintings which were originally published in The Independent. There is no rhyme nor reason to the paintings chosen, no particular school to study, no point to make, no "I'm here to teach you", just paintings that struck Lubbock's fancy, and his unique observations about each painting.

Here's an example to give you a taste of what the essays are like, from the very first painting, "Boy Lighting Candle" by El Greco. Lubbock begins by asking us to imagine a kitchen sink with the tap flowing, but so slowly that when we look at it we are at first not even aware of the flow of the water. Then he asks us to imagine a man falling against the backdrop of a cliff--somewhat Wiley Coyote--so you keep imagining the end to come, the big crash at the end, but no, the man keeps falling and falling and falling.....Finally Lubbock asks you to imagine a man on a stationary bicycle, pedaling and pedaling away, but getting nowhere. Then you notice a cable which is attached to a dynamo, and you realize the man pedaling the bike is creating the light that lets you see the image of him pedaling. Lubbock then applies these apparently random images by asking you to imagine these three effects in a single picture--El Greco's "Boy Lighting Candle" We see a boy blowing on embers: movement that is invisible, like the water in the tap. We await an imminent climax--the candle bursting into flame--as we await the falling man's impending crash at the bottom of the cliff (which never comes). And the whole image is lit by the ember--but what will happen when the boy stops blowing, the light will fade away, and we will no longer see the image, as with the man pedaling the bike.

I thought the way Lubbock brought us into the picture was brilliant. His approach to the other paintings is similar, but all in a way unique to the paintings themselves. I was enthralled. This is not an academic book, it's a book about thinking about painting, and you learn by seeing how one brilliant person thought about painting.

Highly recommended.

4 stars

>166 arubabookwoman:, >169 baswood:

Underground was one of those books that really fascinated me when I first read it and the first book where I actively found myself willingly marking passages to be read again later. It is a book I highly recommend to others to get a look at the Japanese psyche and the day to day life of a Japanese person. (Along with the interesting look at Aum Shinrikyo, of course.)

Great reviews, and like others I'm particularly fascinated by The Underground.

>173 lilisin: I am not so sure it would be any different in London.

The book about paintings sounds excellent.

>175 baswood:,

In terms of reactions, I agree with you that any large city might act similarly. However, when I made that comment I was thinking more along of things that were said during the interviews that particularly stood out as Japanese.

I'm not Japanese, or an expert on Japanese culture, so what I say may be entirely based on stereotype (particularly because Murakami did very little editorializing--as I said the book was mostly verbatim transcripts). I think it's true that in many large cities people might tend to ignore others in distress or not want to get involved. In this case, however, want struck me was that what seemed to be foremost in the interviewees' minds was the need to get to work, their almost-compulsion to not disappoint their bosses by being late to work. I can't see many American workers who finding themselves surrounded by people "foaming at the mouth", and who themselves were having difficulty breathing and were losing eyesight, who would still have foremost in their mind the need not to be late for work.

Another interesting aspect the book pointed out was that at first the Japanese hospitals and health care workers had no idea what was going on, and had no idea how to treat the victims. It was only because a single doctor took it upon himself to directly call the emergency departments at the major hospitals and advise them that the symptoms were of sarin poisoning, and to tell them how to treat sarin poisoning that proper care began for the victims. According to the book, this was a very "un-Japanese" thing for the doctor to do, rather than following the rules of the book and going through proper channels etc. which may have taken days to get the information to the people who needed it.

I've returned to the Pacific NW gloom from my trip to Houston for the quilt show and to visit Boden and Maddie. And while there I had a quick meetup with Club Read's own Dan Chaiken, who I think most of you are familiar with. It was great fun, as well as a surprise to learn we both graduated from the same university, although I was there 20+ years before Dan.

Now to blitz through my September reviews:

81. The Marauders by Tom Cooper

This novel portrays life in a small (fictional) south Louisiana town, not yet recovered from the devastation of Katrina, now struck with the ravages of the BP oil spill. Jeanette is a shrimping town, and the shrimpers are barely hanging on. Not only is shrimp scarce, but no one wants to eat Gulf shrimp due to fears of chemical contamination. There are lots of characters, oddball and otherwise, but the novel centers on Wes Trench, a young man who blames his father for the death of his mother in Katrina and who is now struggling with whether to follow in his father's footsteps in the shrimp fishing industry, and Gus Lindquist, a one-armed shrimper who hopes to discover the fabled lost treasure of the pirate Jean Lafitte. The problem is that in searching for the treasure in the deep bayous and cheniers, he keeps getting closer and closer to the clandestine marijuana crop of the threatening Toup twins, who don't want any interference with their activities. Two small-time ex-cons from New Orleans, ostensibly in Jeanette to help with the cleanup, are also seeking a fabled treasure--not pirate treasure, but the Toups' crop. Then there's the BP "front man", originally from Jeanette, but now assigned the task of getting the shrimpers (including his own mother) to waive their legal rights against BP.

I enjoyed this story of a way of life in jeopardy. I've seen it compared to works by Carl Hiassen and Elmore Leonard. Maybe, but in my view, although there are some oddball characters (accompanied by a fairly good dose of humor), this is much more serious.

3 1/2 stars

82. Do No Harm by Henry Marsh

"I often have to cut into the brain, and it is something I hate doing," is the opening sentence in this engaging memoir. Each chapter is titled after a disease of the brain, a few I was familiar with: Trauma, Infarct, Medullablastoma, (which I was familiar with since my niece suffered this when she was 6--she is now 25 and in good health, although for Marsh's patient the cancer recurred when the patient was in his 40's), but most of which I hadn't heard of, i.e. Akinetic Mutism, Neurotmesis, Empyema, Astrocytoma, Oligodendroglioma, etc. etc. Don't those mysterious words just make you salivate to read this book? (Just kidding). However, despite these esoteric chapter titles, Marsh's stories of his experiences in neurosurgery are highly engaging and eminently readable.

Marsh states that frequently the most difficult part of brain surgery is deciding whether or not to operate, since the risks are usually great, benefits may be nominal, and mistakes, even when death is avoided, can be devastating. In Marsh's view, mistakes are "unacceptable, but inevitable," and he does not shy away from including in his stories his mistakes as well as his success stories.

In addition to his stories about his patients, his stories about the state of the science of the medicine of the brain, and the stories about his personal life, I also enjoyed his wry sense of humor, mostly in regard to his dealings with the British health bureaucracy.

3 1/2 stars

83. In My Father's Den by Maurice Gee

After living away for many years, Paul Prior has returned to the small New Zealand town he grew up in to teach at the local school. He takes particular interest in Celia, one of his students, and lends her books and helps her with her studies outside of class time. Not surprisingly, when Celia is murdered, Paul becomes the prime suspect. Despite this bare bones plot summary, this is not really a crime novel. Gee writes beautifully, and moves back and forth over time--as the novel considers Paul's difficult childhood, how he deals with the accusation and suspicions of the town, his current relationship with his more successful brother.

Recommended.

3 1/2 stars

84. Towards the End of Morning by Michael Frayn

I believe this is Frayn's first novel, and it shows. I loved his novel Spies, and very much liked Headlong, the two other books I have read by him. This book sounded intriguing, so I picked it up. It's set in the crossword and nature notes department of a Fleet Street newspaper, and is reportedly somewhat autobiographical. I enjoyed the characters and some of the humor, but for the most part I found this very dated. It just didn't resonate with me.

2 1/2 stars

85. Countdown City by Ben H. Winters

When Detective Henry Palace returns in this second volume of The Last Policeman Trilogy, there are only 77 days left until the asteroid is due to hit Earth. Henry is no longer employed by the police department, and the few police who are left take a pretty laissez faire attitude in a society where money has no value, and shortages of necessary goods and services prevail.

Henry's old babysitter turns up one day seeking his help in finding her husband Brett, who has disappeared. She is sure that he would never "go bucketlist" or otherwise desert her to face the end alone, and fears he has come to some harm. Although hundreds of people are disappearing everyday (including many who commit suicide), Henry believes her and takes the case.

What was more interesting than the mystery to be solved (as was also the case for me with the first volume) is the creation of the world at the end--the reflections on what it means to face the end of the world. As Henry searches for Brett we experience with him the difficulties of retaining his humanity when all around people are losing theirs.

I guess I'm going to have to read the final volume to see if the world really does end.

3 stars

86. Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

If you were a character in this book, and you happened to look up on a typical evening at precisely the moment it occurred, you would have seen the moon break up, disintegrated into thousands of fragments, some large, some small. At first the scientists of the world occupy themselves with trying to discover the why of this event. However, within a few days they determine that the more important question is what the effect of this event will be, and it is quickly determined that in about two years all life on Earth will be destroyed by a raging bombardment of meteorites (bolides) from the moon debris. Thus begins this fascinating and exciting book.

The (longer) first part of this book concerns itself with what happens during those two years, as heroic efforts are made to ensure that some remnant of humanity, as well as other forms of life on Earth will survive this apocalyptic event. Efforts are directed at survival in space. The international space station ("Issy") is enlarged, and dozens of "arklets" are built to "swarm" around Issy. Genetic information on all forms of life is sent into space. Potential survivors are chosen to occupy the arklets.

The first part of the book also details the immediate aftermath of the destruction of life on Earth, and what happens to the few thousand survivors of humanity. Unfortunately, the cataclysm hasn't quelled humankind's propensity for conflict, and, to make a long story short, at the end of the first part what remains of humanity are the seven "Eves" of the title.

The second part of the book fast-forwards 5000 years. Earth has been undergoing a terraforming process for a couple of thousand years, and it is now habitable. All humans are divided into races or groups determined by the Eve from whom they descended--Dinans from Dinah, Ivans from Ivy, Teklans from Tekla, and so forth. Each of the races has retained the distinct characteristics, physical and mental, of the seven women, each very different, we got to know in the first part. Most of humanity lives in a vast "ring" of cities orbiting the Earth. Very few live on Earth--mostly scientists who are documenting the development of new eco-systems. However, recently signs have appeared that perhaps some pockets of humans who remained on Earth survived.

I loved this book. It was a perfect blend of hard science, exciting plot, and interesting characters. Despite the plethora of detail I never found myself skimming or bored. (Well, okay, a few times the discussions of orbital mechanics went on a bit much for me.) This book has it all--apocalypse, epigenetics, terraforming, asteroid mining, robotics etc. etc.

I had only one major quibble that picked at the back of my brain while reading the second part. After 5000 years all seven races remain rigidly separate, and every person is identifiable almost immediately as belonging to that particular race. It bugged me that there had been no intermingling of the races over 5000 years.

As a side note I have to point out that in the second part I loved one particular character named Sonar Tax Law. I would have loved her regardless of her personality because my daughter Sonia's nickname as a child was Sonar, and because as an attorney I practiced exclusively Tax Law.

Highly recommended.

4 stars

87. The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert

The Pulitzer Prize winner reports on a mass extinction that is ongoing before our very eyes. Over the past 500 million years there have been five mass extinctions, when diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Kolbert's thesis is there's a sixth extinction going on now. However, this time the extinction is caused by us.

The book begins by going through the past 5 extinctions. Then the book "travels" the world to look at the myriad ways in which humans are causing this catastrophe--from acidification of the oceans to clear-cutting of forests to transferring invasive species around the globe (deliberately or inadvertently). Kolbert presents the facts without political rhetoric. Here are some of the facts I want to remember from this book:

--There's always a ongoing "background extinction rate" which is different than a "mass extinction," which is what is going on now. (A mass extinction is an event that eliminates a significant portion of the world's biota in a geologically insignificant amount of time.)

--Amphibians are the most endangered class of animals today, with an extinction rate 45,000 times the background rate.

--It is estimated that 1/3 of all corals, 1/3 of all sharks, 1/4 of all mammals, 1/5 of all reptiles, and 1/6 of all birds are headed for extinction.

--The temperature change estimated for the coming century is roughly the same as the temperature changes during past ice ages; however, the rate of change is at least ten times faster than in the past.

--During past eras of climate change, some species survived by "migrating" to a more amenable area of habitat or were otherwise able to adapt. Now, species will have to "migrate" or adapt ten times faster than in the past.

There is something called the "Species Area Relationship" (SAR), which posits that the larger the area you survey, the greater the number of species you will find. Using the SAR and the rate of temperature change these various estimates of extinction rates were made:

--Assuming all species are inert (so failure to adapt or migrate would mean that habitable area of a species would shrink): 1. If warming held to a minimum, between 22% and 31% if species would be extinct by 2050; 2. If warming was maximal, 38% to 52% of species would disappear.

--Assuming species were highly mobile/adaptable, with minimal warming 9%-13% would be extinct by 2050 and with maximal warming 21%-32% would be extinct.

Along the way Kolbert travels the world and visits with scientists of all specialties, including the scientists at the Great Barrier Reef, scientists studying tree migration in the Andes, caves in North America and jungles in Central America were bats and frogs respectively are dying in droves, and much, much more.

Highly recommended.

4 stars

88. The Year of Reading Dangerously by Andy Miller

I didn't care for this literary memoir. Andy Miller works in the literary field as an editor, but felt that he had gotten away from reading--his busy life with a job, a small child, a house etc. leaving no time for reading. He decides to embark on a reading program (52 books in a year) of books he felt he should read, wanted to read or had lied about reading. He called these the List of Betterment, and it included the sublime (Middlemarch) and the disgraceful (The Da Vinci Code).

Here's what I didn't like:

1. Everyone's busy. Not an excuse for not reading. Especially since he commuted several times a week to London on the train (1+ hours each way). Apparently he needed a "special" place to read--sometimes he traveled to London to go somewhere (like the British Museum) to read. I like the British Museum as much as the next person, but I wouldn't feel the need go there specifically to read if I lived in Kent.

2. The book is more of a memoir than a discussion of the merits of specific books. His life is not all that interesting, and his thoughts on the books he reads aren't particularly sparkling. One Amazon reviewer said, "It's clear that his literary and musical tastes were arrested in adolescence."

3. And that's another thing--his music references. I never heard of most of the bands/songs he discusses, and they play a prominent part in the book.(One of the books he reads is "Krautrocksampler: One Head's Guide to the Great Kosmisch Musik--1968 Onwards."

I can safely say "Avoid This." Unless, of course, you are a fan of Kosmisch Musik.

2 stars

89. Giraffe by J.M. Ledgard

In May 1975 the largest herd of captive giraffes (about 49 giraffes, including 23 who were pregnant) were massacred in a small Czech town, apparently senselessly. The author, a British journalist, discovered the fact of the massacre, and chose to write this book, a novel, to explain the event, rather than a more appropriate in my view nonfiction account.

This book tells the story of the giraffes from their capture in Africa, their ocean voyage to Europe, their travels to the small Czech zoo via riverboat and train, their lives in the zoo through to their final gruesome deaths. Ledgard uses several different narrators, including a couple of sections narrated by one of the giraffes. Also narrating individual sections of the novel are Emil, a haemodynamicist (a biologist studying vertical blood flow), Amina, a factory worker who visits the zoo and loves giraffes, Tadeus, a virologist, and Jiri a sharpshooter.

What was jarring to me in this book was that the author used the horrifying story of the giraffe massacre to present a morality tale of the evils of communism. I was constantly removed from the story of the giraffes on the many occasions when Ledgard used one or another of his characters to comment on the failures or evils of communism. I found this particularly bothersome since the author is not Czech, or otherwise a victim of a communist regime, so it made the book feel even more like a polemic.

Of course the entire book did not sound like a polemic. For the most part it is written rather dreamily in poetic language. (In fact one of the main narrators, Amina, is a sleepwalker, clearly intended as a metaphor for the plight of most people under communism). And there is no question that the slaughter of the giraffes is described graphically and in gruesome detail. Faint-hearted animal lovers should avoid this section of the book at all costs.

I'm glad I read the book, and I think the story of the giraffes is an important one. I just wish the book had been presented as non-fiction, or at the least that the author had not attempted to use the book as an anti-Communist propaganda tool. (POSSIBLE SPOILER--For the record, it's clear that the giraffes would have been killed regardless of the political regime under which they resided--they were suffering foot and mouth disease.)

Cautiously recommended.

2 1/2 stars

90. A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson

I've discussed this book on my thread in relation to Life After Life, to which it is a companion, and have noted that I think the two books need to be read together, as in my view they comprise a complete view of the World War II experience of the British. Unlike Ursula in Life After Life, Teddy lives only one life. Atkinson is a master storyteller, and she bounces us seamlessly around Teddy's life, the life of his wife Nancy, his child Viola, and his grandchildren Sunny and Bertie. As the novel states of Teddy, "Part of him never adjusted to having a future," since as an RAF pilot he never expected to survive the war. Yet, when the book ended with Teddy on his death bed, in his 90's, I wanted more.

Highly recommended.

4 1/2 stars

91. Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King

I don't like horror novels, and many of Stephen King's novels fill that genre so I don't read them. However, I've enjoyed many of his books which don't include horror elements (although they usually involve science fictional elements). This book is a straight-forward crime novel, and it won a 2015 Edgar for the best first novel (not sure what that means since obviously King has written many, many other novels).

The novel begins as a line is forming in the predawn hours for a job fair. Suddenly, a lone driver in a large Mercedes deliberately plows through the line, killing 8 people and wounding 15. Later the abandoned Mercedes is found with a clown mask on the front seat. The driver is never caught.

Fast forward several months to retired cop Bill Hodges, who regrets the failure to catch the Mercedes killer. He's also at loose ends, not sure what to do with himself now that he's retired, and contemplating suicide when he receives a letter from an individual claiming to be the Mercedes killer. The letter taunts Hodges and threatens more crimes. Hodges can't resist responding (rather than turning the letter over to authorities), and the cat and mouse game is on.

This is quite a good mystery. The pov character alternates between Hodges and Mr. Mercedes, a suitably creepy murderer. There are lots of other characters to love and hate and plenty of plot twists and turns. King is apparently turning this into a series, and there is already a second novel featuring Hodges as the crime solver.

Highly recommended.

3 1/2 stars

92. The Unwinding by George Packer

This National Book Award winner tells the story of the US over the last 30 years or so--and it's the way of telling it that makes the book unique. Packer uses the lives of several people as examples of what has happened. These include Tammy Thomas, factory worker/community organizer in Youngstown, Dean Price, son of a North Carolina tobacco farmer, now biofuel manufacturer/advocate, Jeff Connaughton, a D.C. insider, on again/off again lobbyist/Biden aide, and Peter Thiel, a Valley venture capitalist billionaire. Their stories over the last thirty years are told in episodic, roughly chronological chapters. Interspersed with their stories are the stories of a dozen or so public figures, including Oprah, Newt Gingrich, Elizabeth Warren, Jay-Z, Colin Powell, Sam Walton, Raymond Carver, Robert Rubin, and so on. There's also a long series of narratives devoted to the city of Tampa, which Packer uses to illustrate the real estate bubble and burst. There are also excerpts from newspaper headlines, advertisements and song lyrics, a la Dos Passos's USA Trilogy.

I loved this book. There are no authorial intrusions, and each of the individuals profiled. Each story is independent, and there are varying political biases, but all share a common theme: things are falling apart.

Highly recommended:

4 1/2 stars

93. Any Four Women Could Rob The Bank of Italy by Ann Cornelisen

After being waved through road-blocks because it apparently does not occur to the Italian police that females could be criminals, several female friends and acquaintances (six not four) decide to rob the mail train. I found this to be an intriguing premise, but it is very poorly executed. All the characters (ex-pats living in Italy) sound the same, and I had difficulty telling them apart. The descriptions of how the characters perpetrated the crime were confusing, and also confusing was how they returned the money afterwards. This is one to avoid.

1 1/2 stars

Well, that's September's reviews. Next I'll move on to October:

94. One For the Books by Joe Queenan
95. Trust No One by Paul Cleave
96. Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey
97. The Harder They Come by T. C. Boyle
98. James Miranda Barry by Patricia Duncker
99. Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King
100. Windward Heights by Maryse Conde
101. Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen
102. The Snowman by Jo Nesbo

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL!!!!

Giraffe has been in my TBR pile for years and I never seem to get to it. In fact, I can't even remember what made me buy it in the first place. Giraffes are my favourite animal, so based on your review, I may not actually want to read this at all! Still, interested to read your thoughts since I never see it mentioned on LT.

>190 arubabookwoman: The Unwinding sounds very interesting. I had never heard of it I think.

>188 arubabookwoman:. The more I read by Atkinson, the more I like her. I reread Life After Life before reading A God in Ruins, and loved the way they fit together even though the plot devices were so different.

I enjoyed, as always, catching up with your reading. I have been meaning to read The Sixth Extinction since reading excerpts in The New Yorker; I always enjoy Kolbert's writing. Giraffe sounds intriguing too, especially because we visited the Bronx Zoo a few weeks ago and saw the giraffes which are MUCH bigger than I had imagined even after seeing countless nature shows on public television. I agree that The Unwinding sounds intriguing. And I read Any Four Women Could Rob the Bank of Italy years and years ago and enjoyed it, but I no longer can remember anything about it so maybe it was as slight as you say.

I'm impressed by how you can write reviews so long after you've read the books. If I don't write the review right away, I get too absorbed in the next book I'm reading and no longer can think of what so say!

More great books reviews and suggestions for the TBR. Can you review the Houston Quilt Show? I long to be able to go one day.

>193 Nickelini: Giraffe was a book I've also had on my TBR shelf for many years. I finally read it as I am attempting to clear some of my older books. Although I had some problems with the book, I'm glad I read it. It certainly was a horrifying incident.

>194 FlorenceArt: I'd highly recommend The Unwinding.

>195 NanaCC: Colleen, I read everything by Arkinson until she started writing mysteries. I read the first one and didn't like it very much, so I never read any of the succeeding mysteries. I'm glad she's gone back to writing straight-forward novels.

>Rebecca--I think you'd like The Sixth Extinction, Giraffe and The Unwinding, although from reading excerpts in The New Yorker of The Sixth Extinction, you probably got enough of a sense of her thesis. I think Any Four Women Could Rob the Bank of Italy, was very much of its time, so if you read it in the early 1980's when it was first published, I think it would have seemed much better than I found it reading it today. By the way we'll be in NY at the end of December/first of January, since a new grandson is being born soon. Don't think we'll get to the Bronx Zoo then, even though our son and his family are members. :)

>197 catarina1: Catarina--I love the International Quilt Show in Houston, and I've been going every year since 2001 (I only missed 2007, the year my father died). I think every moderately avid quilter should see it once in their life time. First it's HUGE. The convention center must be at least 6 or 7 blocks long. I don't know if it still is, but for a while it was the largest (in terms of attendees and $$ spent) convention in Houston. In addition to the quilts juried into the show, there are dozens of special exhibits; exhibits from SAQA (http://www.saqa.com/), SDA (http://www.surfacedesign.org/), the Hoffman Challenge, Wearable Art, antique quilts from various museums, quilts from the major Japanese exhibitions, and dozens of other exhibits. Then there's the vendors--hundreds of booths selling things related to quilting (or not)--from merely regular quilt stores around the country, all the major sewing machine companies, thread companies, yarn stores, dyers, antique trims, ribbons and buttons, jewelry, and on and on and on. (My husband who visited the show for the first time this year commented on how the vendor aisles seemed much more crowded than the show aisles.) I usually buy a lot of things I can't normally find around here--some hand-dyed threads and fabrics in particular. This year I bought a stack of vegetable-dyed batiks (which are very unlike the commercial batiks you see in the quilt stores), which I'm going to use for a "carry-along" hand-work project--an English paper-pieced Grandmother's Flower Garden (I've made 2 so far).

Then there's the classes which go on for a full week. There are hundreds of classes to choose from, most of them last a day, but they range from half-day to three days. This year I took classes on painting fabric with thickened dyes, painting fabric with acrylic inks, making abstract quilts, and paper piecing pojague (Sp.??--a type of Korean piecing).

There are quilters from all over the world, and there's lots of exchange of information and techniques in classes or just sitting in the hallways or eating areas with a cup of coffee. You're constantly passing famous quilters you see on tv or in magazines in the hallway. Last year I talked to a woman from New Zealand who alerted me to a copy of the famous (although I had never heard of it) "Tristan" quilt which was being displayed on the show floor. The original "Tristan" quilt is in the V & A museum, so when I went to London shortly after the show I was able to see it too.

Any way I love going to the show every year, taking classes, seeing all the quilts and buying things. Hope this answers your question.

I really need to figure out how to put pictures on LT so I could show some of the quilts.

Harkening back to Rebecca's comment about waiting so long to write reviews, I've decided to read more books from the library, and buy fewer books, so I'm going to have to review the books before I take them back to the library. I'm reading my first batch of library books now, and am finding it difficult since I underline and notate in my own books, and highlight and make notes on my Kindle. I'm trying to have a sheet of paper around to make notes on for the library books, but I don't find that particularly convenient. Anyway, I finished my first library book, so I'm going to review it, waaaaay out of order of reading:

The Seven Good Years by Etgar Keret

This book is a collection of essays written by Israeli writer Keret covering the seven years beginning with the birth of his son and ending with the death of his father. I think I was expecting some meaningful and deep essays about life in Israel and what it means to be a Jew today. Instead, the book is for the most part a memoir of Keret's personal and professional life, frequently related in a "Dave Barry-ish" humorous way. Of course, since he is a Jew and an Israeli, these topics are touched upon, but for the most part not in any kind of depth. And since the essays collected in this issue were written over a period of years, and cover various topics, I didn't find that there was a clear unity in the book (often a problem for me with essay and short story collections).

All of this sounds very negative, but I actually liked the book. The essays that stood out for me included the first, "Suddenly, the Same Thing," in which Keret discusses the birth of his son, which occurred at the same time as a terrorist attack:

"I try to calm him down to convince him that there is nothing to worry about, that by the time he grows up, everything here in the Middle East will be settled: peace will come, there won't be any more terrorist attacks...." But, although his son is just a newborn, who are supposed to be naïve, "even he doesn't buy it."

3 stars

Thanks so much for the description of the Houston show. I knew it had to be good because I see it mentioned frequently. It does sound amazing. 6 or 7 blocks long!! Before I quit to go back to graduate school, I was a potter. About 5 years ago I had a chance to go to London for a few days and spent many hours at the V&A - the entire top floor is devoted to ceramics. It isn't 6 or 7 blocks but at least three - the display brought me to tears.

(I have wanted to go to the quilt shows in Tokyo to see those amazing Japanese quilts in person. I have a very good friend whose husband will be taking his last sabbatical next year. She wants to rent a house in Tokyo for a few months - if they do it, and I can swing it, I just may finally get my wish.) But Houston, of course, is a lot closer.

I would be interested in seeing your Grandmother's Flower garden with those batiks. I had picked up a packet of those paper templates earlier this year and started a few using Japanese taupe fabrics. Not much to show for it yet however.

How lucky to be able to take those workshops. They sound interesting. There are only a couple of small quilt shows in this area - one done by AQS in Lancaster, Pa and another in Hershey, Pa. I did take a workshop at the AQS one from Kaffe Fassett a couple of years ago.

Quilting is so tempting! I am presently overwhelmed by returning to knitting and facing my perennial problem that I really don't like following directions. I'm working on learning which stitches I like and making little things out of the bits and pieces . . . Have you read the Australian novel The Idea of Perfection by Kate Grenville. The main character is a quilter, who is sent to help a town put together an historical museum, lots more goes on that that, of course, and I found it a marvelous book.

Back to add - spousal unit, Knox, just finished up Seveneves and while we both liked it, we felt it was sort of three books crammed into one. And that he was playing around with various tropes and just having fun, basically. But we both agree that the non-mixing of the "races" seems a bit peculiar and unrealistic in that setting, although he did make an effort to make it plausible. He was annoyed too by the sudden introduction so close the end of the "pingers". Another book?

Wow all those great book reviews. November 23 was a busy day for you. I note the books that you have earmarked as highly recommended as I have not read anything by those authors.

Appreciated you posting your review of the Houston show. It sounds wonderful.

Will respond to all later, but first:

I have a dilemma--any advice?

My son (age 25) just purchased for my husband and me for Christmas a 2 year subscription to kindle unlimited. He got it on special, but I'm sure he paid at least $100. When kindle unlimited first came out, I had looked into it and saw that the book choices were not very good. My son read "unlimited reading" in the come-on, and I'm sure interpreted that as "unlimited books." I just spent a few hours checking every book on my 600+ wishlist, and although well more than half had kindle editions, only one was in the kindle unlimited program. My questions:

1. Do you know anything about the kindle unlimited program, and are there enough good books in the program to justify the expense?

2. If not, do you think I should tell my son, so he can see if he can get his money back? He was so proud of thinking of this brilliant gift, but I don't want him to waste his money, and I don't think he would want to either.

I'd appreciate any feedback. Thanks.

Hi, I don't know much about Kindle Unlimited but thought this link was quite useful in summarising it:

http://ebookfriendly.com/kindle-unlimited-ebook-subscription/

There seems to be a lot missing in terms of publishers, and the target seems to be books which normally sell at a very low cost. I may be wrong, but my interpretation is quantity not quality.

There seems to be a 14 days cooling off period:

14 Day Right of Cancellation

If you paid your membership fee as soon as you joined Kindle Unlimited, you may cancel within 14 days after you signed up. If you choose to cancel, we will refund your full membership fee if you have not taken advantage of the Kindle Unlimited benefits.

To cancel, just adjust your membership settings in Your Account, or you can use this cancellation form.

If you haven't used the membership yet, and it's not likely to be of use, personally I would tell your son. I'm sure he'd rather he didn't waste his money on something that won't be used.

I agree with Alison. If I'd purchased something returnable that wasn't really going to be worthwhile for my parents I'd want to know.

Deborah, I agree with others. Chris and I had tried it, and it really wasn't what we had expected. We went back to our normal family membership. Maybe he could convert to gift cards to spend on Kindle purchases if he is invested in a gift that is Kindle related.

A bit late, but enjoyed all these reviews. Very intrigued by The Unwinding. And bummer about the limited Kindle unlimited.

>200 catarina1: Catarina--one thing about Houston is that they usually have a special exhibit of some of the quilts from the prior year's Tokyo show, so if you can't get to Tokyo, but do get to Houston, you'll at least have a taste of the Tokyo show. Plus, if you like Kaffe Fasset, he teaches every year at Houston.
I've only made 6 or 7 Grandmother Flower Garden units so far, so not much to show. Plus I haven't had much success posting pictures. However, someday I will try again to post pictures, and will include some of these pieces.

>201 sibylline: Lucy--I like to knit too. I used to knit a lot more when my kids were young, but when they got old enough to refuse to wear what I had knitted for them, I slowed down quite a bit. I've gotten back into it recently--mostly concentrating on shawls and scarves.
I did read The Idea of Perfection a long time ago, and remembered that it was about a quilter.
After reading SevenEves, I bought Reamde for my TBR shelves (another 1000+ pager). I agree that SevenEves is ripe for a sequel.

>202 baswood: Barry--if you get to any of those books, I hope you like them. If they sound interesting to you, give one a try!

>203 SassyLassy:--The show is wonderful. I recommend any half-way serious quilter to go at least once in their life. I'm so lucky my daughter lives there and I have a place to stay (plus an excuse to go to Houston so frequently).

>208 dchaikin: Dan--I think you would enjoy The Unwinding. Let me know if you get to it.

>205 AlisonY:;>206 mabith:;>207 NanaCC: Alison, Mabith, and Colleen--Thank you for the advice.

My husband and I gave a lot of thought about what to do, and we finally decided that our son, who works hard for and is very careful with his money, would prefer to know that Kindle Unlimited was not what he thought it was. He read Amazon's advert, "unlimited reading" to mean "unlimited books", and when we told him that of the 600+ books on my wishlist, only 2 were on Kindle Unlimited he was concerned, and was totally okay with my suggestion that he ask for a refund.

Getting a refund from Amazon was a different story however. When my son asked for a refund they told him it was their policy not to give refund for Kindle Unlimited (even though it had not been used and I'm pretty sure we were within the 14 days), although they cancelled it as of 12/2017. When my son told me this I put on my lawyer language, and two supervisory levels later, Amazon agreed to issue something called a "promotional credit," which according to them means that it can be applied to the cost of Amazon purchases, but not to purchases from third party Amazon sellers, and not to sales tax or shipping costs.

I can't believe Amazon made it so difficult to get a refund for Kindle Unlimited. My husband works closely with someone who is a neighbor of Jeff Bezos, and I was about to tell the person I was talking to that I was going to call Jeff Bezos personally if I couldn't get them to change their "nonrefund" policy for Kindle Unlimited, but luckily it didn't come to that.

Now some reviews.

94. One For the Books by Joe Queenan

I enjoyed this collection of essays about books and the reading life. Did you know that the average American reads about 4 books a year and finds this "more than sufficient"? There was much discussion about why we read, and Queenan states that, "no matter what they may tell themselves most book lovers do not read primarily to obtain information or to while away the time or to better themselves or even, in the words of C.S. Lewis, to know that they are not alone. They read to escape to a more exciting rewarding world." Hmmm--I'm not sure I agree--What about you?

Other remarks of his that struck me related to how we read as we get older. After turning 64, Queenan states that he now only buys about 20 books a year, and that he is relying on his 1374 unread books to get him through the rest of his life. (He reads between 100 and 200 books a year). He states that as we age, "Life becomes a zero-sum affair, where every second spent reading mediocre books is time that could be spent reading great ones." Somewhat more depressingly, he also states that any book you read after age 60 "could be your last."

Unlike others in the "professional" book world, Queenan loves amateur reviewers like those on Amazon, because they are "fearless" when it comes to trashing high-profile authors with whom mainstream reviewers would hesitate mixing it up. However, he is not fond of public libraries, because "the wheat and the chaff are intermingled," and they are "filled with books I have made a deliberate point of never reading."

Beyond being full of witty thoughts about reading and books, One for the Books, is also full of some good reading recommendations, some I had heard of, but many that were more erudite.

Recommended.
3 1/2 stars

95. Trust No One by Paul Cleave

This is a psychological thriller with a protagonist suffering from early onset Alzheimers. Jerry Grey wrote brutal murder mysteries under the pen name Henry Cutter before his career was ended by this devastating diagnosis. He now lives in a group home, and has some clear days, although most days pass in a fog and he is unable to remember what happened. His daughter refuses to visit him, and his wife seems to have left the scene. Lately, he has taken to escaping the home and going "wandering." When he comes into awareness, he is in a police station, confessing to committing some brutal crimes. Fortunately, these confessions are similar to crimes he invented during his career as a murder mystery writer, and the police don't believe him and return him to his group home. Until one day, when some vicious murders begin occurring during the times Jerry is wandering and is unable to recall where he was or what he was doing.

This was a decent mystery read, and I'll read more by Christchurch author Cleave.

Recommended.

3 stars

We have a pattern going--here's another mystery with an Alzheimers-stricken protagonist:

96. Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey

While ostensibly a psychological thriller/murder mystery, this is actually mostly a book about aging in its focus on the day-to-day life of an elderly woman suffering from worsening dementia.

Maud is losing her memory, but frequently thinks of her best friend Elizabeth and the wonderful times they have had. It occurs to her that it has been ages since she has seen Elizabeth, and she becomes convinced that Elizabeth is missing. Maud begins a quest to find Elizabeth--going to her home, where she never answers the doorbell, writing notes to herself to keep herself on track, reporting Elizabeth missing to the police, seeking help from Elizabeth's rather nasty son--but no one believes her that Elizabeth is missing.

All of this is entwined with a missing person's case from Maud's youth, 70 years ago when her own sister went missing and was never found.

I enjoyed this book for the most part, particularly its emphasis on certain uncomfortable aspects of aging. I found the ending a little too contrived however. Nevertheless, I recommend the book if it sounds like your kind of thing.

3 stars

97. The Harder They Come by T.C. Boyle

As this book opens, Sten and his wife Carolee are on a shore excursion from their Central American cruise. They are at a nature preserve in the jungle when a band of robbers demands that the group of travelers from the ship turn over their valuables. Something in Sten cracks, and he reverts to his training as a Marine in the Vietnam war. He grabs the leader of the robbers, the one with the gun, in a choke hold, and the other robbers flee. When it ends, the robber is dead, and Sten becomes an unlikely (and uncomfortable) hero.

After this prologue, the book is set in Mendocino California, where Sten is a retired school principal, and it focuses on Sten, his mentally disturbed son Adam, and Adam's much older lover Sarah, who has some pretty crazy ideas herself. Adam sees himself as a "mountain man," like John Colter, a historical figure. Sarah is an extreme libertarian, and ignores some of Adam's more schizophrenic behaviors. Sten and Carolee have suffered the anguish of trying to help Adam for years (unsuccessfully), and are now at the end of their rope. Tied in to the tragedy of these characters are issues relating to illegal immigration, drug use, the violence, particularly gun violence that seems endemic in American culture, the Homeland Security paranoia Americans seem to currently suffer, and other issues of our present day culture.

I liked this book a lot. However, while the prologue provided insight into Sten's character, I'm not sure that it added much to the issues that were the focus of the book, and I'm puzzled as to why Boyle included it. Apparently, it was based on a true event that occurred several years ago.

Recommended

4 stars

98. James Miranda Barry by Patricia Duncker

This is a novel of biographical historical fiction. It is based on the true story of a brilliant female physician who lived as a man under the name James Barry. The novel traces her/his life over the decades and on three continents (Europe, Africa and the Americas). There was a lot of focus on the issue of "why" did she become a he. James began cross-dressing as a child, and was encouraged to live as a man by her/his mother and her/his mother's lover, since at the time life for a woman was generally a life without choices. As a historical figure, he was known as a brilliant and excellent doctor.

Recommended.

3 stars

99. The Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King

This is an important book (it won the 2013 Pulitzer for Nonfiction), and I'm going to recommend it because of the importance of its subject matter. It tells an eye-opening and thrilling story. However, it does so in a confusing and convoluted way. I found it to be, for the most part, extremely disorganized and poorly written, and I couldn't believe that it had won a Pulitzer. I nearly gave up on it many times during the first 100 or so pages. After that it flowed better, but oh how I wish it was more competently written.

In 1949, in Groveland Florida a 17 year old white girl claimed to have been raped by 4 black men, and Sheriff Willis McCall went into action. Four innocent young men were blamed (one of whom was already in police custody for another matter at the time the rape allegedly occurred, but never mind). In short order, three of the young men were arrested and the fourth was killed "resisting arrest."

Riots were instigated by the KKK, and much of the black area of town was burned down. The three arrestees were brutally beaten and tortured, and two of them confessed to the rape; one refused to confess.

At the time the Groveland events were unfolding, future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall was an attorney for the NAACP deeply involved in the case that became the landmark school desegregation case, Brown v. Board of Education. Nevertheless, he signed on to defend the "Groveland Boys," as they were known. Marshall expected to lose the case at the trial level. The NAACP strategy at the time was to get these types of cases overturned at the appellate level, and that's how this case proceeded. The three surviving Groveland Boys were convicted at the trial level; two received the death penalty but one was given "only" a life sentence. Since at the time there was no guarantee that if the case were retried, the defendant who had initially received the life sentence would not then be sentenced to death, that defendant did not appeal.

The convictions of the other two defendants were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. A few years later, when their cases were to be retried on remand, Sheriff McCall was transporting the two defendants, chained together, from the state penitentiary to the courthouse. McCall made it look like they were trying to escape and shot them both in cold blood. One of the defendants died, but the other lived. While the sheriff was investigated for this blatant act of murder, he was never charged or convicted. Thurgood Marshall called the failure to charge Sheriff McCall, "the worst case of injustice and whitewashing I have come across." McCall continued to be reelected as Groveland's sheriff until 1972, when he was indicted and suspended from office for kicking to death a mentally retarded black prisoner in his cell.

The now one remaining Groveland Boy was convicted on retrial and again sentenced to death. This time the Supreme Court did not overturn the conviction, and the last part of the book is an exciting page turner as we follow the legal maneuverings to attempt to save the final defendant from execution.

Although I've heard of other similar cases that occurred in the first half of the 20th century, I had never heard of the Groveland case. And, although the case went to the Supreme Court more than once, it is rarely mentioned in civil rights histories, law texts, or apparently even in biographies of Thurgood Marshall. At the time it was ongoing, the case itself and the various coverups generated little attention or outrage other than in the black newspapers. Perhaps I'm naïve, but this case shed so much light for me on how evil and corrupt the justice system was (and perhaps still is). It also shed light on how courageous the civil rights workers and lawyers were as they took on these cases, and other types of civil rights issues. (In fact the NAACP rep for the Groveland area died when his house was firebombed on Christmas day before the trial of the Groveland boys. The perpetrators were never found--and there is some suspicion that the sheriff may have had some type of involvement. Langston Hughes wrote a poem about the event: "The Ballad of Harry Moore.")

Again, although this book was for the most part not well-written, I'm going to highly recommend it.

3 1/2 stars

100. Windward Heights by Maryse Conde

This is a reimagining of Bronte's Wuthering Heights set on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. The Caribbean setting was wonderfully evoked, and Cathy and Rayze' (Heathcliff) were also wonderfully real. This version goes well beyond Bronte's issues of wealth and class, and also considers race and slavery as important factors in the story. I found this to be a complex and involving read.

4 stars

Will try to be back within the next few days to catch up with November's books. I want to be caught up by December 28. We are leaving for 10 days in NY then, to visit our brand new 4th grandchild (3rd grandson), born 12/4, and named after my husband. I can't wait.

>216 arubabookwoman: So disappointing to hear that Devil in the Grove isn't of the quality that the subject matter demands (and that a Pulitzer winner should have). It's been on my list for a while, but now I'm very hesitant to start it as an audiobook, as poor organization seems to be heightened in audio vs print reading for me.

Congratulations on hitting 100 books, with more to come. There's some really good reading here.

Enjoy the visit to the new grandson.

>211 arubabookwoman: "no matter what they may tell themselves most book lovers do not read primarily to obtain information or to while away the time or to better themselves or even, in the words of C.S. Lewis, to know that they are not alone. They read to escape to a more exciting rewarding world." Hmmm--I'm not sure I agree--What about you?

I wouldn't say that any of those three reasons really capture why I read. It's a hard thing to put in to words. Maybe the closest is that I like the way it expands my mind and I find it interesting, entertaining, and sometimes challenging. I'll have to think about it more . . .

I do read to escape...and to relax. I consider it akin to a kind of meditation. I'm very interested in everything you "talk" about in the Queenan review. I might have to check that one.

Lots of interesting posts. The Devil in the Grove is really depressing.

I'd say I read for all the above reasons. I read for information/knowledge, because I think it's a good use of time, to learn, to experience things I never could otherwise, because it's fun, because history is important, because it lets me know about other cultures/times, etc etc. There is really no single summation of why people read, I think it's rather presumptuous to try to claim so!

>222 dchaikin: It does have a meditative quality for me as well in that it keeps you totally in the present - the mind cannot wander as you read the words, only if you stop/pause.

>224 japaul22: My mind does wander, but usually in some relation to the book at hand. But I think my mind wanders either less or more constructively while I read than with most things in life.

What I notice is that reading puts me in a very structured universe with a set kind of thought process. This by itself is comforting. But each book is different, and I have trouble starting new books.

(Audio is different as I passively listen. If my mind wanders too much, I need to hit stop)

Somebody gave me Devil in the Grove several years ago and I have yet to read it. I hate it when books aren't well written, but I agree with the importance possibly overcoming that.

Maryse Conde is on the list I'm putting together for the Reading Globally theme read on the Caribbean starting in January. Glad to know Windward Heights was good.

And, as always, enjoy catching up with your reading.

>210 arubabookwoman: all I can say is shame on you, Amazon (but alas I'm not wholly surprised by their meanness).

I particularly enjoyed your reviews of Elizabeth Is Missing and Devil in the Grove, Deborah. I own the Healey, and will read it soon, and I want to read the King eventually.

>211 arubabookwoman: One for the Books. I checked back on LT about this and noticed a review from Bragan who labelled Queenan as a curmudgeon. I don't mind a bit of curmudgeonliness and so would probably enjoy this.

I certainly do not read to escape to a more exciting world.

>229 baswood: I did at least find him an entertaining curmudgeon.

Apropos of arubabookwoman's question, I did find his ideas about what books are for and what they do (or should do) for people entirely too narrow. But then, I think that about lots of people's ideas about what books are for. Me, I read books for all the reasons, and I rather pity people who get only entertainment, or only self-improvement, or only deep literary insight, or only escapism out of them, rather than all of the above and more. But I suppose they must have other things in their lives to fill in the gaps. :)

>211 arubabookwoman: If he thinks people read primarily for escapism, it's awfully mean to be down on public libraries and deny the poor their escape... If we read for escape then does a book's quality matter if it provides that escape? It's strange to even come near the idea that most people don't read for a mixture of all those reasons and more.

I read Why I Read by Wendy Lesser recently, which never actually seemed to come close to talking about why she reads (or what she 'gets' from books), but spent the whole book talking about what she especially likes and dislikes in fiction (from a purely literary view). So if you know anyone thinking of submitting fiction to The Threepenny Review, they should read Lesser's book first as a guideline of how to be published there.

>231 mabith: He said that escape is the main reason people are reading, not that they shouldn't get something else beside that. That applies to me anyway. I read to escape, but I also want more. Another way to put it is that all reading is a form of escape, but some escapes are better than others.

>218 arubabookwoman: Have a great NYC holiday, and thank you for all the reviews!

>230 bragan: "all the reasons" - nice callback!

>232 FlorenceArt: I get that, what I meant was that I can't imagine how someone comes close to believing that people only read for one reason. And if I did believe that I can't imagine being against libraries and denying people that escape.