kidzdoc Reads (and Cooks) Globally in 2015: Part 8

The city of Porto, Portugal, which I hope to visit later this year.




Currently reading:

    

Act of the Damned by António Lobo Antunes
When Doctors Become Patients by Robert Klitzman, MD
The Theft of Memory: Losing My Father, One Day at a Time by Jonathan Kozol

Completed books: (TBR = book acquired prior to 1/1/14)

January:
1. Clock Without Hands by Carson McCullers (TBR) (review)
2. Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward (TBR) (review)
3. A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam (TBR)
4. A Distant Father by Antonio Skármeta
5. Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively
6. The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh (TBR)

February:
7. In the City By the Sea by Kamila Shamsie (TBR)
8. The Work: My Search for a Life That Matters by Wes Moore
9. I Called Him Necktie by Milena Michiko Flašar
10 Blackballed: The Black Vote and US Democracy by Darryl Pinckney

March:
11. Grady Baby: A Year in the Life of Atlanta's Grady Hospital by Jerry Gentry (TBR)
12. The Sellout by Paul Beatty

April:
13. Such a Long Journey by Rohinton Mistry (TBR)
14. March: Book One by John Lewis
15. Nada by Carmen Laforet (TBR)
16. Outlaws by Javier Cercas
17. Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal
18. The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich (TBR)
19. Blank Gaze by José Luis Peixoto (TBR)
20. The Education of the Stoic by Fernando Pessoa (TBR)
21. Time Ages in a Hurry by Antonio Tabucchi
22. Navidad & Matanza by Carlos Labbé

Books purchased or received in 2015: (Bold = book purchased this year)

January:
1. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (2 Jan, Kindle e-book)
2. The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula Le Guin (2 Jan, Kindle e-book)
3. The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness by Elyn R. Saks (11 Jan, Kindle e-book)
4. A Useless Man: Selected Stories by Sait Faik Abasiyanik (12 Jan, Archipelago Books subscription)
5. The Work: My Search for a Life That Matters by Wes Moore (20 Jan, LT Early Reviewers book)
6. DownBeat: The Great Jazz Interviews, edited and compiled by Frank Alkyer and Ed Enright (20 Jan, free book as part of 2015 DownBeat subscription)

February:
7. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, (1 Feb, Kindle e-book)
8. Bedlam: London and Its Mad by Catharine Arnold (4 Feb, Kindle e-book)

March:
9. Less Medicine, More Health: 7 Assumptions That Drive Too Much Medical Care by H. Gilbert Welch (2 Mar, LT Early Reviewers book)
10. Time Ages in a Hurry by Antonio Tabucchi (2 Mar, Archipelago Books subscription)
11. The Sellout by Paul Beatty (3 Mar, Kindle e-book)
12. A Man of His Word by Imma Monsó (29 Mar, Kindle e-book)

April:
13. Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal (1 Apr, Kindle e-book)
14. March: Book One by John Lewis (2 Apr, Kindle e-book)
15. The Bees by Laline Paul (2 Apr, Kindle e-book)
16. Selected Poems of Corsino Fortes by Corsino Fortes (3 Apr, Archipelago Books subscription)
17. The Lost Child by Caryl Phillips (3 Apr, Barnes & Noble)
18. Fresh from the Vegan Slow Cooker by Robin Robertson (5 Apr, gift from Karen W.)
19. Paris by Marcos Giralt Torrente (8 Apr, Kindle e-book)
20. Things Look Different in the Light & Other Stories by Medardo Fraile (8 Apr, Kindle e-book)
21. Tristana by Benito Perez Galdos (8 Apr, Kindle e-book)
22. Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference by David J. Garrow (8 Apr, Kindle e-book)
23. I Never Had It Made by Jackie Robinson (8 Apr, Kindle e-book)
24. The Discreet Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa (10 Apr, Barnes & Noble)
25. My Struggle: Book Four by Karl Ove Knausgaard (22 Apr, Archipelago Books subscription)
26. Life Embitters by Josep Pla (22 Apr, Archipelago Books subscription)
27. This Life by Karel Schoeman (22 Apr, Archipelago Books subscription)
28. Amsterdam: A Brief History of the City by Geert Mak (24 Apr, Kindle e-book)
29. The Ministry of Pain by Dubravka Ugrešić (24 Apr, Kindle e-book)
30. The Theft of Memory: Losing My Father, One Day at a Time by Jonathan Kozol (25 Apr, LT Early Reviewers book)

2015 Reading Globally Themes and possible reads from my TBR collection:

First quarter: Indian subcontinent



Aravind Adiga, Between the Assassinations
Tariq Ali, Night of the Golden Butterfly
Tahmima Anam, A Golden Age
Vikram Chandra, Red Earth and Pouring Rain
Vikram Chandra, Sacred Games
G.V. Desani, All About H. Hatterr
Roopa Farooki, Bitter Sweets
Amitav Ghosh, The Calcutta Chromosome
Amitav Ghosh, The Hungry Tide
Intizar Husain, Basti
Rohinton Mistry, Such a Long Journey
Uday Prakash, The Girl with the Golden Parasol
Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh
Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
Kamila Shamsie, In the City By the Sea

Second quarter: Iberian peninsula



António Lobo Antunes, Act of the Damned
António Lobo Antunes, Fado Alexandrino
António Lobo Antunes, The Land at the End of the World
Bernardo Atxaga, Obabakoak
Juan Goytisolo, Forbidden Territory and Realms of Strife
Juan Goytisolo, Juan the Landless
Juan Goytisolo, Landscapes of War: From Sarajevo to Chechnya
Juan Goytisolo, The Marx Family Saga
Almudena Grandes, The Frozen Heart
Carmen Laforet, Nada
José Luis Peixoto, Blank Gaze
Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
Fernando Pessoa, The Education of the Stoic
Mercè Rodoreda, Death in Spring
Mercè Rodoreda, The Selected Stories of Mercè Rodoreda
José Saramago, Baltasar and Blimunda
José Saramago, The History of the Siege of Lisbon
José Saramago, Manual of Painting and Calligraphy
Llorenç Villalonga, The Dolls' Room
Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Angel's Game

Third quarter: Nobel Prize winners writing not in English

  

Knut Hamsun (1920), Hunger
Thomas Mann (1929), Death in Venice
Halldór Laxness (1955), Independent People
Albert Camus (1957), The First Man; Exile and the Kingdom
Ivo Andrić (1961), The Bridge on the Drina
Jean-Paul Sartre (1964), Nausea
Miguel Ángel Asturias (1967), The President
Yasunari Kawabata (1968), Beauty and Sadness
Pablo Neruda (1971), The Essential Neruda; Canto General
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1978), Collected Stories, Volume 1
Gabriel García Márquez (1982), One Hundred Years of Solitude; Of Love and Other Demons; The Autumn of the Patriarch
Claude Simon (1985), The Trolley
Naguib Mahfouz (1988), Midaq Alley; Rhadopis of Nubia
Octavio Paz (1990), The Labyrinth of Solitude; In Light of India
Kenzaburō Ōe (1994), The Changeling
José Saramago (1998), Raised from the Ground; Baltasar and Blimunda; The History of the Siege of Lisbon; Manual of Painting and Calligraphy; Journey to Portugal
Günter Grass (1999), The Tin Drum
Gao Xingjian (2000), One Man's Bible; Soul Mountain
Orhan Pamuk (2006), Snow; My Name Is Red; The Museum of Innocence; Other Colors
J.M.G. Le Clézio (2008), Terra Amata; The Giants; War; Fever; The Book of Flights; The Flood
Herta Müller (2009), The Land of Green Plums
Mario Vargas Llosa (2010), Captain Pantoja and the Special Service; The Green House; The Way to Paradise; The Bad Girl; The Dream of the Celt
Mo Yan (2012), Life and Death are Wearing Me Out; The Garlic Ballads; The Republic of Wine

Fourth quarter: Women writing not in English

  

Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits
Simone de Beauvoir, The Mandarins; She Came to Stay
Assia Djebar, Algerian White; Children of the New World; The Tongue's Blood Does Not Run Dry
Diamela Eltit, E. Luminata
Annie Ernaux, Cleaned Out
Sylvie Germain, The Song of False Lovers
Marlene van Niekerk, Agaat
Miral al-Tahawy, Brooklyn Heights
Delphine de Vigan, No and Me

2015 American Author Challenge

  

January: Carson McCullers, Clock Without Hands
February: Henry James, The Turn of the Screw
March: Richard Ford, Independence Day
April: Louise Erdrich, The Plague of Doves
May: Sinclair Lewis, Arrowsmith
June: Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety
July: Ursula Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven
August: Larry McMurtry William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
September: Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories
October: Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
November: Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior
December: E.L. Doctorow, The March

2015 British Author Challenge



January: Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger
January: Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
February: Sarah Waters, The Paying Guests
February: Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
March: Daphne Du Maurier, ?Rebecca
March: China Miéville, The City & the City
April: Angela Carter, ?Nights at the Circus
April: W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage
May: Margaret Drabble, ?The Radiant Way
May: Martin Amis, The Zone of Interest
June: Beryl Bainbridge, Master Georgie
June: Anthony Burgess, ?The Doctor Is Sick
July: Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out
July: Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
August: Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea
August: Graham Greene, The Quiet American
September: Andrea Levy, Fruit of the Lemon
September: Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
October: Helen Dunmore, The Siege
October: David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks
November: Muriel Spark, Loitering with Intent
November: William Boyd, An Ice-Cream War
December: Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety
December: P.G. Wodehouse, Love Among the Chickens

Books about Medicine:



1. Grady Baby: A Year in the Life of Atlanta's Grady Hospital by Jerry Gentry

TBR Books to Read in 2015:



Tomes (500 pages or more):
      Nicole Barker, Darkmans
      Simone de Beauvoir, The Mandarins
      Douglas Brinkley, The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast
      Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March
      Ralph Ellison, Three Days Before the Shooting...
      Ian Gibson, The Shameful Life of Salvador Dalí
      David Grossman, To the End of the Land
      Lawrence Hill, Someone Knows My Name
      George E. Lewis, A Power Stronger than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music
      A.J. Liebling, Just Enough Liebling
      David Macey, Frantz Fanon: A Biography
      Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety
      Paul Murray, Skippy Dies
      Patrick O'Brian, Picasso: A Biography
      Roy Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason: The Modern Foundations of Body and Soul
      Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
      William Trevor, Selected Stories
      Patrick White, The Vivisector

Non-tomes (less than 500 pages):
      Stuart Altman and David Shactman, Power, Politics and Universal Health Care: The Inside Story of a Century-Long Battle
      Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers
      Bernardo Atxaga, Obabakoak
      Amiri Baraka, Tales of the Out & the Gone
      Eleanor Catton, The Rehearsal
      Patrick Chamoiseau, Texaco
      Jean Echenoz, I'm Off and One Year
      Percival Everett, Percival Everett by Virgil Russell
      Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
      Louise Erdrich, The Plague of Doves
      Paul Farmer, Haiti After the Earthquake
      Juan Eslava Galan, The Mule
      Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America
      Jerry Gentry, Grady Baby: A Year in the Life of Atlanta's Grady Hospital
      Amitav Ghosh, The Calcutta Chromosome
      Juan Goytisolo, Forbidden Territory and Realms of Strife
      Juan Goytisolo, Juan the Landless
      Alistair Horne, Seven Ages of Paris
      Jonathan B. Imber, Trusting Doctors: The Decline of Moral Authority in American Medicine
      Robert Klitzman, When Doctors Become Patients
      Karl Ove Knausgaard, My Struggle: Book One
      Charles Lemert, Why Niebuhr Matters
      David A. Mendel, Proper Doctoring: A Book for Patients and their Doctors
      Simon Mawer, Mendel's Dwarf
      Claire McCarthy, Everyone's Children: A Pediatrician's Story of an Inner City Practice
      Ian McEwan, Atonement
      Andrew Miller, Pure
      Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
      Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Petals of Blood
      Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History
      Laura Katz Olson, The Politics of Medicaid: Stakeholders and Welfare Medicine
      Brian Orr, MD, A Pediatrician's Journal: Caring for Children in a Broken Medical System
      Orhan Pamuk, Snow
      Roy Porter, Madmen: A Social History of Madhouses, Mad Doctors and Lunatics
      Graham Robb, Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris
      Edward W. Said, Out of Place: A Memoir
      Mario Vargas Llosa, The Green House
      Richard Wright, Black Boy

Literature from the African diaspora:
The Sellout by Paul Beatty
March: Book One by John Lewis

Nonfiction from the African diaspora:
Wes Moore, The Work: My Search for a Life That Matters
Jesmyn Ward, Men We Reaped
Darryl Pinckney, Blackballed: The Black Vote and US Democracy

Planned reads for April:

António Lobo Antunes, Act of the Damned
Maria Barbal, Stone in a Landslide
Javier Cercas, Outlaws
Louise Erdrich, The Plague of Doves
Carmen Martín Gaite, The Back Room
F. Xavier Hernandez, The History of Catalonia
Robert Klitzman, When Doctors Become Patients
Carmen Lafloret, Nada
John Lewis, March: Book One
Rohinton Mistry, Such a Long Journey
Cees Nooteboom, Roads to Santiago
Patrick O'Brian, Picasso: A Biography
José Luís Peixoto, Blank Gaze
Carlos Rojas, The Ingenious Gentleman and Poet Federico García Lorca Ascends to Hell
José Saramago, The History of the Siege of Lisbon
Scott Stossel, My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind

Here's a light snack for hungry visitors to my thread:

Happy new thread and great picture of Porto, Darryl!

>11 Oberon: Thanks, Erik! Have you (or anyone else) visited Porto?

Happy new thread, Darryl! That topper photo of Porto is so striking. I have not been there, but a friend of mine honeymooned in Lisbon, Porto, and Madeira. I'll have to ask her about it....

Happy new thread!

>13 katiekrug: Thanks, Katie! I'm curious to learn more about those three Portuguese cities.

>14 banjo123: Thanks, Rhonda!

Book #16: Outlaws by Javier Cercas, translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean



My rating:

A Spanish journalist decides to write a biography about Antonio Gamallo, better known by his nickname of Zarco, a boy from a broken home in a poverty stricken neighborhood who led a gang of teenage bandits in the Catalonian city of Girona in the years immediately following Franco's death in 1975, until he was finally caught and imprisoned after a failed bank robbery. He spent the remainder of his adult life in prison, where he continually tormented his guards and the Spanish legal system as he publicly denounced his lengthy prison sentence in interviews and the two books he wrote. In doing so his case because a cause célèbre throughout Spain, as he brought to light the appalling conditions of Spanish prisons and the harsh sentences that were meted out to poorer Spaniards who could not afford the best legal representatives. Zarco developed a heroin addiction during his wild teenage years, which continued in prison, and it led to his death from AIDS in the early 2000s.

The unnamed journalist decides to interview those who knew Gamallo best, in an effort to distinguish between Antonio, the flawed man, and Zarco, the legendary persona adored by many. His primary source of information is Ignacio Cañas, a well established criminal defense lawyer in Girona. Unbeknownst to most people, Cañas was a member of Zarco's gang in the 1970s, as he was led into it, and out of his comfortable middle class existence, by Zarco and his alluring female companion Tere, but he managed to escape from the police chase that led to Zarco's capture. Cañas became Zarco's defense lawyer more than 20 years after his arrest, on the request of Tere, and the two men resumed their strong yet distant and troubled friendship, as Cañas attempts to gain Zarco's release from prison, and reestablishes his relationship with Tere after his divorce.

Many unanswered questions and mysteries about what happened on the day of Zarco's capture and the events that led up to it have persisted in each of the three main characters' minds for two decades. Each of them holds onto their secrets tightly, and what is divulged to the other two, and ultimately to the journalist, is often dubious and unreliable. In chapters that consist of transcribed interviews of Cañas and others who knew him well, the stories of Zarco, Tere and Cañas. who was known as Gafitas during the time he spent in Zarco's gang, unfold like a matryoshka doll, yet many unanswered questions and the essential truths about Gamallo/Zarco remain elusively out of reach to each of them, and to the journalist.



Similar to Javier Cercas's other novels, Outlaws is based on a real person, in this case Juan José Moreno Cuenca (1961-2003), who led a teenage gang in Barcelona until his capture in the late 1970s. Similar to Zarco, "El Vaquilla", who embodied a generation of Spanish youth lost to heroin in the 1970s and 1980s, wrote two books about his life and imprisonment, Yo, El Vaquilla (I, El Vaquilla) and Hasta la Libertad (Until Freedom) and his life was the basis of the movie Perros Callejeros (Stray Dogs). Numerous songs were written in honor of him after his death as well.

Outlaws is an outstanding page turner of a novel, filled with twists and unexpected revelations around sudden turns in the narrative. Although Zarco is the focus of the book, the lives of Gafitas and Tere are just as captivating, and the mysterious and uncertain relationships between the three held my interest from the first page to the last. In keeping with my other most favorite novels I could easily start reading it again now, and I certainly will do so in the near future.

Book #17: Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal



My rating:

This novella is set in a small Catalonian town in the early 20th century, narrated by a young woman in a farm town who is sent to live with her childless maternal aunt and her husband as a 13 year old girl. She works hard for them, marries the love of her life, and lives contentedly with her husband, children and her aunt and uncle until tragedy befalls them during the Spanish Civil War.

I found Stone in a Landslide to be an evocative description of life in a small Spanish town, which was well written and mildly interesting but ultimately forgettable.

That picture of Porto is amazing, Darryl! I want to go there too! I have a friend who lives in Portugal, and she has issued an open invitation. I don't know why I haven't taken her up on it yet.

Good review of the Cercas book. It's going on my wishlist. I also can attest to Isabel Allende's House of the Spirits (noted in your fourth quarter reading globally theme) being an amazing and wonderful novel. In fact, I've read a lot of her historical novels and have loved them all, though Spirits is my favorite if only for being the first of hers I read.

Happy new thread!

Love the new thread and colorful topper of Porto, Darryl. Congrats from the last thread on your "extra" and well-deserved days of vacation...and your 500th review. Amazing!

>17 kidzdoc: This sounds very tempting - onto the wishlist.

Wow that topper is colourful ..... can only imagine the city will be vibrant & colourful as well

>17 kidzdoc: wow, this one sounds fantastic. I am going to see if my library has it.

I love the thread topper, the colours are amazing! I didn't know you were heading back to that region this year. Fantastic.

>19 Storeetllr: Thanks, Mary. I don't know much about Porto, other than it's Portugal's second largest city and that it's one of Europe oldest cities, but that photo and ones similar to it are enough for me to want to pay a visit there, hopefully in October. I'll visit Daunt Books in London in June and hopefully pick up a guidebook to Porto, Lisbon and all of Portugal.

I enjoyed Outlaws more than I thought I would, and I expected to like it based on its synopsis and my appreciation of Cercas's other books, especially Soldiers of Salamis.

I'm glad that you liked House of the Spirits; I'll definitely read it later this year.

>20 Donna828: Thanks, Donna!

>21 charl08: I bought my (signed) copy of Outlaws at the London Review Bookshop last year, so I assume that you'll be able to find it, Charlotte.

>22 roundballnz: I would assume so, Alex. Porto's city center is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and the photos of the city that I've seen so far are very appealing.

>23 LovingLit: I hope that you can find Outlaws, Megan. It was published in the UK and US last year. My review of it doesn't do justice to how complex and thought provoking it is, IMO.

I had intended to take a trip to Spain and Portugal in the near future, and after I found out that I have 34 days of vacation to use in the second half of the year, along with my month off from work in June, going there in October has now become a near certainty.

>18 kidzdoc: Hmmm ... I had that one on my TBR for quite a while but it fell victim to my end-of-2014 book cull. Sounds like I made a good decision.

Other reviewers liked Stone in a Landslide better than I did, Laura. It certainly suffered by being the first book I read after Outlaws, and I think it would have worked better as a novel two or three times its length of ~125 pages. It ended abruptly as well, which made it a much more unsatisfying read.

ooh, the LRB bookshop! Wow. Now the important question: what did you think of the cake?!!

>28 charl08: I love the pastries and other foods at the London Review Cake Shop, Charlotte, almost as much as the Bookshop itself. It was the site of my first LT meet up in 2009, when Rachael (FlossieT) and I had lunch there. I go to the bookshop at least once during every visit to London, and I almost always have lunch there at least once or twice with other LTers. I went with Bianca, Claire and Heather last June, and with Joe, Debbi and 1-3 other people in September. I remember that Debbi got the last of a delightful looking dessert when we went, but I can't remember what it was. I also liked the gorgeous glass pots and cups that the Cake Shop uses to serve tea in:

Happy New Thread, Darryl! Love the Porto, Portugal topper. Eye-popping color. Porto was the answer on a recent Trivia Crack question. Where was port wine, first made? I guessed right but I was not positive.

Great review of "Outlaws". Sounds like a terrific book.

>30 msf59: Thanks, Mark. I'll have to "explore" Porto and Lisbon a bit more, in books and images, in the coming weeks. I plan to read Journey to Portugal by José Saramago next month, which I hope will give me a good overview of the country and its major cities.

Outlaws was fabulous, and since it's my only 5 star read of the year so far it's clearly my favorite book of 2015 so far. It's available in the US, in print and electronic editions.

Friday pass thru - also adding my thanks for letting us all know about Being Mortal such a great book

Woo hoo! I went to bed last night certain that I'd have to work today, but it seems pretty likely that I won't be needed, unless there are three admissions in the next 2+ hours or one of my partners calls out sick. *happy dance*

>32 roundballnz: Hi, Alex! I'm glad that you also enjoyed Being Mortal. As you said, it's a fabulous and essential book.

Happy new one, Darryl!

Iberian Author Profile: Almudena Grandes (Spain, 1960-)



Almudena Grandes is one of the best selling and most widely respected contemporary Spanish writers. Born in Madrid in 1960, she read geography and history at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, and after graduation she worked primarily as a journalist. Her first novel, Las edades de Lulú (The Ages of Lulu), was published in Spain in 1989, which received wide acclaim after its release. A modern erotic novel about a young Frenchwoman who is seduced by the butcher whose shop she works in during one hot summer, it won the La sonrisa vertical literary award, was translated into multiple languages, and was the basis of a movie of the same name directed by Bigas Luna.

Her second novel Te llamaré Viernes (I'll Call You Friday) received little attention, but her third book, Malena es un nombre de tango (Malena), which concerns a young woman from Madrid who rebels against her wealthy family and her beautiful older sister, was also a critical and commerical success, and a movie was based on it as well.

Grandes's most accomplished and ambitious work is El corazón helado (The Frozen Heart), an epic novel in which two families reflect on their combined histories, and in doing so the history of their country, from the Spanish Civil War to the present, and the far reaching impact that the war and life under Franco had on ordinary citizens. This book was reviewed in Belletrista in 2010, which you can read here: http://www.belletrista.com/2010/issue7/reviews_19.php.

Almudena Grandes has won numerous literary awards and accolades, and she continues to write books and frequent columns in the national newspaper El País. Her latest two novels, El lector de Julio Verne (2012) and Las tres bodas de Manolita (2014), have not yet been translated into English, but hopefully will be soon.

Books by Almudena Grandes available in English translation: The Ages of Lulu; The Wind from the East; The Frozen Heart.

>34 scaifea: Thanks, Amber!

Hello there! Glad you seem to have got out of the reading slump and ticked a few more books off your lists. I found March book 2 at the library yesterday so I'm looking forward to that.

I went to Porto in about 1999 with my then fiancé and his parents. It was the end of a week-long holiday in Northern Portugal, which is quite lovely but very poor and with limited food options (especially for vegetarians and non-pork eaters). So from the food point of view, Porto was the highlight of the trip! I don't remember the city looking as colourful as in your photo - that really is gorgeous - but I did like it there a lot. There is an excellent contemporary art museum, the Serralves Foundation, which is very worth visiting, and of course a tour of one of the port wine lodges is essential. It's somewhere I should really go back to one day, preferably with less stressful travel companions!

>35 kidzdoc: Belletrista is dangerous. Just started reading about Brazillian fiction in translation. And found a copy of The Frozen Heart to request. Maybe if I don't sleep for the next month, I'll get through all these books!

>37 Sakerfalcon: Hi, Claire! Yes, so far April has been a much better reading month than any of the first three months of the year were. I'll be off from work for at least seven of the nine days that follow Sunday, and possibly all nine days, so I should be able to knock out at least four to six more books before the month is out.

Thanks for those recommendations about Porto. I look forward to talking with you more about it in June, and I'll definitely hit Daunt Books soon after I arrive in London to look for books about Portugal and its major cities.

>38 charl08: Definitely so, Charlotte. I enjoyed writing reviews for Belletrista when it was active, and I hope that Lois or someone else is able to resurrect it in the near future.

I bought a copy of The Frozen Heart several years ago after I read Ceri's review of it, and I plan to read it, probably in June. It's a doorstopper, though; my UK paperback edition ends at page 774, and the letter size is smaller than usual.

ETA: Have you found any more interesting books by Portuguese authors that have been translated into English? I'm very tempted to start reading The Blank Gaze by José Luis Peixoto today after I read about the book and its author today. He will be the subject of my next Iberian author profile.

Happy new thread, Darryl! Looks like your reading and reviewing are picking up. Hopefully that means things are not too stressful for you at the moment. :)

>40 jolerie: Thanks, Valerie. My work schedule has been much lighter this month than it was in the first three months of the year, and my reading output has picked up as a result.

I'm now 1/3 of the way through The Plague of Doves, and I'm enjoying it so far. I should finish it no later than tomorrow.

I'll be interested to see what you think of The Plague of Doves Darryl. I've just finished it and I'm rather undecided. I listened to it on Audio though, and I don't think it was well suited to that format.

I should finish The Plague of Doves after work tomorrow, Rhian, and I'll comment on it once I'm done. I'm about to start the second section, titled Judge Antone Bazil Coutts.

I forgot to mention that the Uruguayan journalist and author Eduardo Galeano died on Monday at the age of 74. He is best known for his book Las Venas Abiertas de América Latina (Open Veins of Latin America), a powerful account of five centuries of explotation and political dominance of the region by Europe and the United States, and his trilogy Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire), which describes the ruthless colonial rule of Latin America. Galeano's name became familiar to many Americans after former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez gave a copy of Open Veins of Latin America to President Barack Obama at the Summit of Americas conference in 2009.



I own three books by Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America, Voices of Time: A Life in Stories, and Genesis: Memory of Fire, Volume 1, but I haven't read any of them yet.

The Guardian: Eduardo Galeano, leading voice of Latin American left, dies aged 74

I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on Plague of Doves too. :) Happy weekend and happy new thread, Darryl!

Nothing new to report re Portuguese writers but will keep my eyes out. Thanks for the great suggestions so far.

Happy New Thread, Darryl. My elder daughter was last autumn in Porto. She told us that she liked Porto best of all the cities she has seen in Portugal. I wish you a relaxed weekend.

Just stopping by the new thread. Wow, that top photo looks absolutely magical! Glad you didn't have to go in to work. Enjoy the weather, which I'm sure is even more spring-ish there than in PA.

Lots of interesting reading, Darryl. Love that photo in >7 kidzdoc:. Outlaws sounds like a good one.

>1 kidzdoc: Happy New Thread again!

That picture is stunning. Those colors! Wow!

Happy New Thread, and hooray for an unexpected day off!

I read The Frozen Heart last year, and liked it very much. Also a few years ago I read Galeano's Memory of Fire (vol. 1 Genesis), and that was a five star read for me. Hope you can get to them soon.

>29 kidzdoc: one of my all time favourite independent book shops Darryl. I've taken a some LTers there too. You know who you are!

Wow, so many visitors! Thanks, y'all. Today was a pleasant day at work, and hopefully my long call tomorrow will also go well.

>45 The_Hibernator: Thanks, Rachel. I'll resume reading The Plague of Doves after I catch up here and have dinner, and if I can stay focused (and awake) I should finish it tonight.

>46 charl08: You're welcome, Charlotte. There seem to be far fewer books by Portuguese authors, especially ones written by women, that have been translated into English compared to their Spanish counterparts. Obviously Portugal is a much smaller country than Spain, but it seems as though there should be far more books that are available for an English language readership.

>47 Ameise1: Thanks, Barbara. I'm glad to hear that your daughter enjoyed Porto. I talked with two of the consultants at the hospital today, including one who speaks both Spanish and Portuguese, and both of them also highly recommended visiting the city.

I'm working this weekend, but I'll be off for most, if not all, of the nine days following my long call on Sunday, so I have another nice break to look forward to.

>48 Cariola: I was pleasantly surprised that I didn't have to work yesterday, Deborah. Apparently there were a lot of late patient discharges and far fewer hospital admissions the night before last than usual. I just missed being called in; the backup doctor has to work if there are 66 or more patients on the General Pediatrics census, and by 8 am there were 65 kids on the list. That makes up for my last few backup shifts, when there would be 66-68 patients on the census.

I'm not sure that Atlanta has had more spring like weather than PA has lately. We've had significant amounts of rain every day this week, including today, and the high temperatures have mainly been in the upper 60s to low 70s. Tomorrow will be more of the same, except that there is a greater risk of severe thunderstorms in the afternoon and evening.

>49 jnwelch: Outlaws was outstanding, Joe. I've liked all of the other three books I've read by Javier Cercas, but this one was definitely the best of them.

>50 avidmom: Thanks, avidmom!

>51 cbl_tn: Thanks, Carrie! It was nice to be able to stay home yesterday, especially since I was certain that I would be called in when I went to bed on Thursday night. I'm glad that I'm able to check our electronic health record system from home, otherwise I would have assumed that I had to come in and gotten dressed and traveled to the hospital for nothing.

>52 arubabookwoman: I'm glad that you liked The Frozen Heart and the first volume of Eduardo Galeano's Memory of Fire trilogy. I plan to read the novel by Grandes next month, and hopefully I'll read Open Veins of Latin America over the summer.

>53 Caroline_McElwee: Have I gone with you to the London Review Bookshop, Caroline? I think that I made my first trip there in 2007, during my first visit to London. If not, the first time would have been the first time I met Rachael, two years later, when we met there and had lunch in the Cake Shop. If I remember correctly the Cake Shop wasn't open in 2007, but the Bookshop certainly was.

Weekend greetings Darryl! I'm licking my chops at the sight of those mega subs in >10 kidzdoc:. Yummmmm. I think that means it must be dinner time.
Also looking forward to your Plague of Doves review.

>56 Carmenere: Thanks, Lynda. That photo was from this past Wednesday's New York Times Food section, which was dedicated to the sandwich.

Dinner for me tonight will the last of the red cabbage and sausage soup with black eyed peas. I've hardly cooked anything in the past three weeks, so I'm glad that I made a ton of food earlier this month and stored it in my freezer. I still have at least half a dozen portions of already prepared food, but next week will be a major cooking week for me, starting with Caroline's bœuf bourguignon, which I'll probably make on Tuesday.

I am back from my weekend university course in Gadsden, Al. The major project for the semester was due today and I decided to not do any more work on my assignment. What I get - I get for a grade. The hotel gave free copies of the USA Today and the back page featured Barcelona. The whole article was about how the favorable exchange rate between the Euro and the dollar makes travel to Europe a real bargain right now. Especially if you plan on doing any shopping.

I have been watching the exchange rate, as listed on DW TV, for the last couple of weeks and have been thinking that a trip to Europe may be closer than I think. I have been saving money for a trip and have just about enough for that plane ticket. I will probably go to Berlin, if I go, as I have a friend who lives there and could put me up for a week. That would make the trip affordable.

You make Outlaws sound irresistible. I haven't got the energy to scroll through all your posts here and over on the Iberian thread, but have you mentioned The River by Rafael Sanchez Ferlosio, it's another classic Civil War novel, about the Battle for the Jarama River. I noticed my library had just got some copies of it when I was looking for other stuff.

Regarding food: our current family faves are empanadas, borekas, spanakopitas and bacon & egg pie which I'm enjoying as it's all so easy to prepare. Not sure why we've hit the pastry so often this past week or so. I've also found a great recipe (translated from Polish) for coffee halva muffins that we can't get enough of.

Looking forward to seeing your travel plans shape up. I still have to make a start on my Iberian read, I'm still in the middle of Jean Raspail's The Camp of Saints which is a fairly controversial read but interesting for all that.

Just popping in to say Hi! Congrats on another new thread. I hope your freezer is emptying out so you have to cook some new stuff soon! Yes, I love you for your books, too. : )

>55 kidzdoc: no Darryl, we went to the Dutch Pancake House when Laura was here, then I think you all went on to the LRB bookshop, or maybe you were meeting someone and didn't go. I had another engagement after lunch that day myself, my sibs were in London.

I fell asleep not long after I had dinner, so I didn't finish The Plague of Doves. I woke up early, and since I don't have to report to work until 10 am I have at least a couple of hours to read it this morning, and I'll probably finish it later today. I haven't enjoyed the middle portion as much as I did the first 1/3 of it, but hopefully the final 100+ pages will be better ones.

My lovely image of Porto seems to have disappeared into the ether of hyperspace, so I've replaced it with a similar one that isn't quite as colorful.

>58 benitastrnad: Congratulations on finishing your weekend course, Benita!

I just read the USA Today article that you mentioned (Ride the dollar: This is the summer to travel to Europe). Several of my partners and colleagues at work and I have been talking about our upcoming trips to Europe in the past couple of weeks; two of my partners will also be in London in late June, on separate trips. We've noticed the increasingly favorable exchange rates of the US dollar with the British pound and especially the euro. Currently $1 US is equivalent to £1.49 and 1,08 €. Last June the rates were roughly £1.60 and 1,40 €. Earlier this week I took care of a patient who was born in the UK along with his parents, who moved to the Atlanta area several years ago, and they were also commenting about the very favorable exchange rates between the USD and the GBP and euro.

So, I suppose that the most popular European travel destinations will be even busier than usual, and hotel rooms will be harder to come by, and possibly more expensive as well. I'll make my final travel plans for my upcoming month off early next week. I'll probably travel to Barcelona first, spend a week there, then fly or travel by train to London, base myself there and visit Scotland, possibly Amsterdam depending on when my friends from work will be in London, and make short trips to Brussels and Paris.

I hope that you decide to visit Berlin! Please keep us posted on your plans.

>59 avatiakh: Outlaws was outstanding, Kerry; I hope that you decide to read it. I hadn't heard of The River, so thanks for mentioning it.

All of those foods sound delightful! Your comment reminded me that I wanted to give moussaka a try. There is a highly rated Turkish restaurant not far from where I live which offers it, so I'll go there for lunch one day this week to give it a try.

I'll make my flight and hotel reservations for my first trip to Europe in the next couple of days (I'll be off from May 28 to at least June 30, and probably July 4), and request three weeks of vacation in both September and October.

I just read the synopsis of The Camp of the Saints, which piqued my interest in it. I'll be eagerly awaiting your comments about it!

>60 Berly: Thanks, Kim! I only have three or four Tupperware containers of food left in my freezer, which is enough for 5-6 meals, so I'll definitely need to do a lot more cooking over the next week and a half. It seemed as though I went overboard in my cooking in Marh, but it turned out to be a good move, as it ensured that I didn't run out of food for the past two work weeks.

>61 Caroline_McElwee: You're right, Caroline. I distinctly remember parting from the large Virago group meet up at Cambridge Circus, after our breakfast at the Café at Foyles and our chat outside of one of the secondhand bookshops on Charing Cross Road. Fliss and I met for lunch at 10 Greek Street, saw a matinee performance at one of the West End theatres, and met Rachael for dinner in Cambridge.

Happy Sunday, Darryl!

>62 kidzdoc: The changes in exchange rates really makes a difference. Last time we got Euros one Euro was worth over 90p and so for all practical purposes we just worked on the basis that 1 Euro equalled one pound. When we went to Portugal this time 1 Euro was worth around 75p.

My work week is over! I'm definitely off on Monday and Tuesday, and if I'm lucky I won't be called in on backup on Wednesday or Thursday. If not, then I'm off from work until Wednesday of the following week.

>64 scaifea: Thanks, Amber! Now it's a Happy Sunday.

>65 SandDune: Nice, Rhian. On the other hand, I wonder if there will be fewer European individuals and families that decide to travel to the US this summer.

>12 kidzdoc: I have not been to Porto. I have been into southern Portugal but did not spend enough time that I really felt like I got to know the country. Sounds like a great trip though!

>67 Oberon: Thanks, Erik. I hope to spend one or two weeks in Spain and one week in Portugal in October, but I'll have to do a lot more research and reading before my plans start to take shape.

Morning, Darryl!

I want to thank you for bringing the Budget Bytes website to my attention - I've been poking around there and have printed off several recipes to try! Excellent resource for new meals!

Good morning, Amber! I'm glad that you've found some recipes to try on Budget Bytes. I need to do a bit of cooking this week, and I'm eager to try some new recipes, so I'll visit her web site later today.

Where are all of the sleepyheads this morning?

Finished the latest Iberian book, The Altogether Unexpected Disappearance of Atticus Craftsman - not the kind of book (light, comic, and not really 'literary') I'd read in translation before. The only exception I can think of is A Man called Ove, and even that had a deeper 'point' at the heart of it, despite the comedy. Next up is Lidia Jorge, with a book which has already half won me over a couple of pages in because it is a half size hardback, so comfortable reading rather than weight-lifting!

Morning Darryl! Hope you had a good weekend. Did you finish up The Plague of Doves and if so, what did you think?

>71 charl08: Did you like and would you recommend The Altogether Unexpected Disappearance of Atticus Craftsman, Charlotte? I picked up two comic novels with similarly whimsical titles by Spanish authors that I'll probably read this month, A History of the World for Rebels and Somnambulists by Jesús del Campo, and The Ingenious Gentleman and Poet Federico García Lorca Ascends to Hell by Carlos Rojas. Both are short works, at 172 pp and 203 pp respectively, so they should be easy to knock out in half a day.

Which book by Lidia Jorge are you planning to read? She's probably the most prominent female Portuguese author whose books are widely available in English translation, right? I'll have to look into her work, and I'll write an author profile about her later this week.

>72 msf59: Morning, Mark! I had to work this weekend, but it was only moderately busy, and not insanely crazy as my recent weekends have been. I didn't have time to read on call yesterday, so I didn't finish The Plague of Doves yet, but I'll do so today. I liked the first 100 or so pages of it, but it went off of the rails a bit in the next 100 pages. Hopefully it will regain steam in these last chapters.

Congrats on having at least today and tomorrow off, Darryl. I liked The Round House, the first of hers I've read, and will look forward to hearing your overall reaction to The Plague of Doves. My BIL loved her The Last Report On The Miracles At Little No Horse, and Love Medicine also looks good - a favorite of Ellen's.

>73 kidzdoc: I've started The Migrant Painter of Birds, not because of any careful thought process, just because that's the one of hers the library had. Since been reading about Margaret Jull Costa who seems to have won awards for her translations, and this happens to be one of hers.

I had forgotten that I wanted to use up some white mushrooms and bacon that have been sitting in my refrigerator for a couple of weeks, so I modified a recipe from Food.com to make fettucine with mushrooms and bacon:



I separately cooked 1 lb of fettucine al dente, pan fried 12 oz of smoked applewood bacon, which I cut into small pieces, and sautéed 16 oz of sliced white mushrooms and 4 cloves of garlic in olive oil, to which I added 2 tsp of capers and a generous amount of red pepper flakes. I combined the fettucine, bacon and mushrooms into a large pot, used some of the bacon grease to lubricate the mixture, and let the flavors combine for about 10 minutes on medium low heat. It turned out very good, but I suppose this wasn't the best meal to make for meatless Monday.

>74 jnwelch: Thanks, Joe. There's a better than even chance that I won't have to work at all this week, provided that none of my partners call out sick. Now that I've finished lunch I'll resume reading The Plague of Doves, which I'll definitely finish today. I doubt that it will earn more than 4 stars from me, but I'm encouraged that you and others thought highly of The Round House.

>75 charl08: I look forward to your comments about The Migrant Painter of Birds, Charlotte. Margaret Jull Costa is almost certainly the best contemporary translator of Portuguese literature, and she and Edith Grossman are arguably the two leading translators of Spanish literature.

Enjoy your time off work :-)

>78 Ameise1: Thanks, Barbara. As I mentioned on Amber's thread metro Atlanta is under a tornado watch until 8 pm tonight (it's 2:30 pm here), and a tornado has apparently touched down north of the city, which is headed to Sandy Springs, where the hospital I work at is located. Fortunately it's moved just north of the hospital by a mile or so, so it should be spared from any damage. There are other storms that are popping up, including one that is due west of central Atlanta, and in the last couple of minutes the sky has turned black and I can hear thunder in the distance.

Weather like this is normal for us at this time of year (tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, damaging winds and hail), which can pop up out of nowhere. I was thinking of going to the supermarket about 1-1/2 hours ago, but fortunately my weather radio alarm went off then, and I learned about the tornado watch, the severe thunderstorm warning and the tornado warning (a warning indicates that a severe thunderstorm or tornado has been sighted and is headed in our direction).

I'm about to be gross, so shut your ears if you are squeamish Darryl, but that dish at >76 kidzdoc: looks like someone's intestines!

Oh dear, I keep my fingers crossed that nothing worse will happen. Stay safe!

Oporto is on the Douro river which runs east through Portuguese wine country. When we were there we bought a day trip (from a kiosk along the river) that took us up river to a winery where we had a tour and tasting before floating back to the city. It rained the whole day but it was still a great outing. If you get a sunny day it would be fantastic.

>79 kidzdoc: Saw your weather report on Amber's thread so just checking in and hoping you stay safe and the storms pass by tonight without a lot of damage in your area. Tornadoes are not so common in my neck of the woods, so when we had a level 3 come through in 2011, well, we still talk about "where we were when the tornado hit."

Hope you stay dry and safe, and so do all those in your area, Darryl.

This year's Pulitzer Prizes were announced earlier this afternoon:

FICTION: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

DRAMA: Between Riverside and Crazy by Stephen Adly Guirgis

HISTORY: Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People by Elizabeth A. Fenn

BIOGRAPHY: The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe by David I. Kertzer

POETRY: Digest by Gregory Pardlo

GENERAL NONFICTION: The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert

Here are the lists of finalists in each category:

Fiction:
Let Me Be Frank With You by Richard Ford
The Moor's Account by Laila Lalami
Lovely, Dark, Deep by Joyce Carol Oates

Drama:
Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2, 3) by Suzan-Lori Parks
Marjorie Prime by Jordan Harrison

History:
Empire of Cotton: A Global History by Sven Beckert
An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight America by Nick Bunker

Biography or Autobiography:
Louis Armstrong: Master of Modernism by Thomas Brothers
Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 by Stephen Kotkin

Poetry:
Reel to Reel by Alan Shapiro
Compass Rose by Arthur Sze

General Nonfiction:
No Good Men Among the Living by Anand Gopal
Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China by Evan Osnos

http://www.pulitzer.org/node/8501

>80 Caroline_McElwee: Sigh. The fettucine does not look like human intestines, Caroline. No pasta for you!

>81 Ameise1: We're still under a tornado watch for the next three hours, Barbara, but the worst of the storms are to the east of Atlanta and are moving in that direction. From what I've heard, there were no injuries as a result of these storms, and it seems as though the tornado that was seen on Doppler radar didn't touch the ground. There are downed trees and power lines, and some areas received inch sized hail, but fortunately that seems to be the extent of the damage.

>82 RebaRelishesReading: That sounds like a great day trip, Reba! I would like to do that.

>83 bell7: Thanks, Mary. Severe thunderstorms and tornadoes are common events here in the spring. We were under a tornado watch for much of the day yesterday as well, but today's weather seems to have been worse.

>84 ronincats: Thanks, Roni. The next few days are supposed to be nice ones, so I'll get out and enjoy them.

Glad to see that you're still with us, Darryl, and that the storms are on their way out.
Thanks for reminding me about the Pulitzer announcements - I need to add the winners to my list...

>87 scaifea: Thanks, Amber. I would have added All the Light We Cannot See to my wish list, but I won't after I read two or three lukewarm reviews of it on LT. The only book I own on these lists is The Moor's Account by Laila Lalami, and I'm looking forward to reading it.

I thought All the Light We Cannot See was kind of a boring choice. Not that I've read it, of course, but from what I've heard I have formed a definite opinion :)

>86 kidzdoc: yeh, stupid to talk anatomy with a doc. I allowed for dramatic licence :-)

>89 katiekrug: I'm with you, Katie. And, for that matter, I've found nearly all of the Pulitzer Prize fiction winners this century to be ones that I'm lukewarm about, if I've read them, or only marginally interested in reading, if I haven't.

While I liked All the Light we Cannot See, I am surprised it won a literary prize. I think I've given up on the Pulitzer.

>90 Caroline_McElwee: Very true, Caroline! I don't think there are many other 75ers who have seen human intestines in a living patient on an operating table or through an endoscope.

>92 lauralkeet: I've found the Fiction winners of the Pulitzer Prize to be pedestrian, but I think that the judges do a much better job in picking winners for the other categories. You may remember that I was ticked off in 2012, when no prize was awarded in the Fiction category that year. I must have had a favorite that I hoped would win that year, but I'm not sure which one, as it wasn't any of the three finalists that were chosen.

Thanks for sharing the Pulitzer list with us. I've seen a lot of favorable reviews of Doerr's book, and while it's on my list to be read, I haven't gotten around to reading it yet, so I can't chime in on whether or not it should have won. Love your thread topper.

I have seen intestines, and a spine, and an eye, and a heart in a living person. And I think Caroline definitely has a point with the pasta, allowing for a generous dab of dramatic license. Come on Darryl!! ; )

I actually enjoyed All the Light We Cannot See quite a lot, and think that it is definitely worth a read. Just keep an open mind and don't hold the Pulitzer Prize against it.

No, not intestines at all. See, nice and flat. But having done some parasitology, well, uh ...

>95 thornton37814: You're welcome, Lori. The synopsis of All the Light We Cannot See makes me eager to read it, but the recent reviews of it here make me hesitant to do so.

>96 Berly: You have me beat, Kim. My OR experience was limited to the abdomen, in my Surgery and OB-GYN rotations, so I've never seen a spine, an eye, or a beating heart.

If the pasta was pink I would have let Caroline slide. ;-)

I'm glad to hear that you liked All the Light We Cannot See. I may eventually read it, but I already have more than enough books that I want to read before it.

>97 streamsong: Right, streamsong. If Caroline had said tapeworms instead of intestines then I would have accepted that analogy without question.

I hope you've made it safely through the violent weather's passage, Darryl. Is the worst over?

>99 laytonwoman3rd: Yes, what Linda said...

Stay safe Darryl!

I have All the Light We Cannot See on my TBR mountain so I will get to it at some point.

>99 laytonwoman3rd:, >100 scaifea: Thanks, Linda and Amber. The tornado watch expired nearly two hours ago, and the weather has been calm in the immediate area for the past 4-5 hours. As often happens here, the worst of the storms passed to the north and south of central Atlanta, and we didn't have any rain at all in Midtown after this morning.

>101 jolerie: Thanks, Valerie. I look forward to your comments about All the Light We Cannot See.

Only book I'd heard of and want to read from the list is The Moor's Account but some of the others sound intriguing.

On the topic of lists, realised I'd meant to share this post from a blog I have links to, re the International Booker, http://africainwords.com/2015/04/17/whats-happening-over-there-world-literature-...

>98 kidzdoc: now see, I learn something new every day, I did really think intestines were white. Thanks for putting me right doc. And thanks for your support Kim.

Trying the Mujaddara for dinner tonight, Darryl - will report back with results...

>97 streamsong: It brought back a smile remembering the days when kids were small and any type of pasta dish was called worms.

It sounds like a great combination of ingredients. It's fun when you start getting a feel for what will work and together and combining your own.

I finished The Plague of Doves late last night. The last third of the novel was significantly better than the middle portion, and I gave it a 4 star rating. I'll write a review of it shortly.

>103 charl08: I purchased the Kindle version of The Moor's Account last year, so I'll read it during one of my vacations later this year. Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People is the book from the lists of winners and finalists that is most likely to end up in my library, as my knowledge of the Original Peoples is embarrassingly poor.

Thanks for sharing that post; I'll read it later today.

>104 Caroline_McElwee: You're welcome, Caroline! White would be a very scary color for intestines, as that would imply that they aren't getting any blood supply. Pink is a good color. Red isn't great (infection or inflammation), and purple or black is really bad (dying or dead intestine).

>105 scaifea: Sounds good, Amber! I look forward to your report from the kitchen. I'm a bit groggy this morning, after I spent a couple of hours awake in the middle of the night, and since I have at least three days' worth of prepared food in my refrigerator and freezer I think I'll wait until later today or probably tomorrow to go to Publix.

>106 streamsong: We did the same thing when we were youngins! Actually, I'll bet that a lot of other kids did, too.

A friend of mine posted a recipe for a pasta dish last week on her Facebook page, which consisted of mushrooms and spinach, I think. I looked in my refrigerator to see if I had the ingredients for it, but the remaining kale I had looked old. I saw that I had mushrooms and bacon, and I knew that I had plenty of pasta from a BOGO (buy one, get one (free)) sale at Publix earlier this month. I did a Google search, found a basic pasta with mushrooms and bacon recipe, and modified the ingredients and the preparation to my liking. I'm sure that I'll do this more often in the future, especially when I have leftovers that I want to use up.

Book #18: The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich



My rating:

This semi-autobiographical, semi-historical novel is set in the fictional town of Pluto, North Dakota, which sits on the edge of a Native American reservation and is dying a slow death due to its isolation and lack of well paying jobs. Pluto contains a blend of German-Americans descended from 19th and 20th century settlers, Ojibwe (Chippewa) people, and the mixed race offspring of both groups. An underlying tension is present between the older members of the white and Native American residents, as the Ojibwe hold a longstanding resentment over the land that was taken from them by the settlers, and stories about Pluto's history and its former occupants hover nearby like ever present ghosts. The town's families have lived there for generations, and disagreements from decades past lie just beneath the surface and are not easily forgotten or forgiven.

Evelina is a teenage girl of mixed descent, with a German-American father and an Ojibwe mother, who lives with her parents, younger brother and grandfather Mooshum, a fantastic storyteller whose tales have at least some basis in truth. She attends the local Catholic school, and her agreeable and obedient nature belies her rebeliousness and lustful nature. One day when her father is away and her mother is conversing with her sister, Mooshum tells Evelina and her brother about a tragic event that took place in 1911 that still haunts the town nearly a century later. A family of white farmers were slaughtered in their home, save for a baby who managed to survive thanks to a group of four Ojibwe who rescued the child. A group of prominent men in Pluto learn that the young men were the first ones to discover the massacre, and they accuse them of the murders. They are taken into custody by the town's sheriff, but the townsmen overcome him and take the four into their own hands. They are all strung up to be hung for their crimes, despite their protests of innocence. Three of them are lynched, while a fourth manages to escape. Later the townspeople realize that the Ojibwe youth were not the culprits, but the identity of the actual killer is never discovered.

The novel consists of a series of chapters, in which past and current residents of Pluto provide first person accounts that cover the century from the period just prior to the massacre and subsequent lynching to the current day. In the process, the history of the town and its people are laid down like pieces of a complicated puzzle, although some of the pieces remain missing at its conclusion.

The Plague of Doves is based in part on the 1897 massacre of the Spicer family in North Dakota, and the subsequent lynching of several innocent Ojibwe, and the character of Evelina is heavily but not entirely based on Louise Erdrich's childhood, family and education. Some of its chapters were initially published in The New Yorker, and perhaps as a result this novel for this reader felt disjointed and lacked a smooth flow from one segment to the next. The middle third was the weakest segment by far, but overall this was a very good novel, filled with elements of magic realism and interesting characters, and I look forward to reading more of Erdrich's work in the near future.

>108 kidzdoc: See, now you're REALLY cooking...when you take a recipe and modify it based on your tastes and what you have on hand!

>110 laytonwoman3rd: Thanks, Linda! I'm still mildly amazed that I can make anything that tastes good.

>88 kidzdoc:, >89 katiekrug:, >91 kidzdoc:, I've read All the Light We Cannot See and thought it was pretty flawed and VERY slow. As well as overhyped, which inevitably leads to disappointment. I haven't read the other fiction options. Maybe it was just a dull year.

I suspect we could all come up with a much better list of finalists, and winners, than the Pulitzer one. Seems uninspired and uninspiring to me.

>109 kidzdoc: Good review of A Plague of Doves, Darryl. That's one awful RL basis for it, and I didn't realize it had the autobiographical elements.

The Mujaddara is simmering and smells heavenly! I like the sound of your bacon pasta, minus the mushrooms (don't like 'em at all, I'm afraid).

>112 Cariola: Thanks for your comments about All the Light We Cannot See, Deborah.

>113 jnwelch: I'm glad that you liked my review of The Plague of Doves, Joe, and I'm happy that Mark's American Authors Challenge encouraged me to finally read it.

Clearly a good number of people here are dissatisfied with the choice of All the Light We Cannot See as this year's Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winner. Since I'm apparently allergic to contemporary American literature, please tell me which book you would have chosen instead. Would Station Eleven have been an eligible and good choice? I own it but haven't read it yet.

>114 scaifea: Sounds good, Amber! I had the mushroom and bacon pasta for lunch, and it tasted even better than it did yesterday. I'll heat up the last of the red cabbage and sausage soup for dinner now.

>109 kidzdoc: great review, I will be seeking this one out eventually.

I thought I had mainly seen favourable reviews of All the Light We Cannot See! Maybe I am already donning the Pulitzer-tinted glasses!!

>115 kidzdoc: I would definitely have placed How to Be Both and History of the Rain ahead of All the Light We Cannot See.

>116 LovingLit: Thanks, Megan. The Plague of Doves was a bit uneven, but overall it's a very worthwhile read.

I know that the reviews for Station Eleven were largely if not entirely positive, but it seems to me that the ones for All the Light We Cannot See I read were mainly lukewarm.

>117 Cariola: Unfortunately neither of those books were eligible, Deborah. I checked to confirm what I thought, and I was right; the authors in the Fiction category have to be US citizens, and the books have to have been published here in the calendar year before the prizes are awarded.

You liked A Plague of Doves a bit more than I did. I noticed some similarities to To Kill a Mockingbird and I think that affected my impression of the book. It's hard to compete with To Kill a Mockingbird.

>109 kidzdoc: Great review of A Plague of Doves Darryl. I think you enjoyed it a little more than I did, but I don't think my listening to it rather than reading it helped, I also think more complex books such as this one work better in actual print.

My partner who worked last night got hammered with admissions, so I will have to work today, and presumably tomorrow. I'll still be off from Friday through Tuesday, though.

>119 cbl_tn: I still haven't read To Kill a Mockingbird, Carrie, so I can't compare The Plague of Doves to it.

>120 SandDune: Thanks, Rhian. I've never listened to a complete audiobook, and I think The Plague of Doves would have been difficult to fully appreciate in that format.

Blank Gaze by José Luís Peixoto is wonderfully trippy so far! How can you not like a book where Satan is the priest of a small Portuguese town, Judas is the local bar owner, and a pair of Siamese twins joined by a common pinky finger are named Moíses and Elias (Moses and Elijah)? I'm nearly halfway through it, and hopefully I'll get off work early enough so that I can finish it today.

How can you not like a book where Satan is the priest of a small Portuguese town, Judas is the local bar owner...

This makes leaving a small child with a gun under her mattress appear almost real-world...(in The Migrant Painter of Birds)

Morning, Darryl! Just wanted to let you know that the Mujaddara was *amazing* and you should definitely give it a go!

>115 kidzdoc: To me, Lila and Redeployment would have been much better choices for the Pulitzer list, Darryl. I haven't read All the Light We Cannot See, so I should be more open-minded about that one. Station Eleven was a very good read, but I wouldn't put it at the level of Lila or Redeployment. Was the timing wrong for Being Mortal? That would be my top NF.

118> Ah, both books were published in 2014, but neither author is American. bad year for American authors, I guess!

>121 kidzdoc: I've never listened to a complete audiobook I'm listening more and more to books in that format, but you do need to pick your book. Sometimes I read a printed copy of a book and think that actually I would enjoy it more in audio.

Wonderful review of Outlaws, Darryl. (I'm trying to use the brackets option for getting the touchstone but seem to be doing something wrong.)

I have it from the library and hope to read it before I have to return it.

I have not been a very successful listener of books; I don't get as engaged so they take me forever to complete. However, I am currently listening to Dead Wake and it seems to be working better for me than the fiction works to which I've listened. If it continues like this, I'll try another nonfiction work in audio to see if the pattern persists. I would be very happy to learn that I consistently enjoy listening to nonfiction works.

Edited to fix eliminate the faulty touchstone.

>122 charl08: Right, Charlotte. A small child with a gun under her mattress is mundane in comparison to a 70 year old cook who naturally births a 24 pound baby. I love well written magical realism, such as José Donoso's fabulous novel The Obscene Bird of Night and several of Julio Cortázar's short stories, and so far Blank Gaze, which was published as The Implacable Order of Things in the US, fits nicely into that category.

>123 scaifea: Thanks, Amber! I'll make Beth's Mujaddara on Friday or over the weekend. Now that it looks likely that I'll have to work tomorrow I probably won't cook anything before Friday, but I'll probably make 1-2 meals a day from Friday through Tuesday, as I'm finally running out of food.

>124 jnwelch: Thanks, Joe. I probably won't get to read A History of Seven Killings by Marlon James this month, which made several "Best of 2014" lists, but I'll plan to bring it with me when I visit my parents in two weeks.

>125 Cariola: Deborah, I read so little American fiction that I'm not a good person to ask about the best novels published in the US in any given year. I should go back to my 2014 thread to see how many US novels that were published that year I actually read.

>126 SandDune: I don't think that audiobooks would work well for me. I don't spend much time driving, now that I take the subway to and from work everyday, and I'm not fond of listening to the radio at home, although I love to listen to National Public Radio (NPR) programs when I'm driving or doing something else at the same time. I only own one audiobook, The Watsons Go to Birmingham, and that's only because I purchased it for my mother several years ago.

>127 EBT1002: Thanks, Ellen. Regarding the touchstone for Outlaws you're not doing anything wrong; LT isn't recognizing the English language title of the book, which was originally published in Spain as La leyes de la frontera. I had to use a trick that I learned from Zoë a few years ago: find the book's numerical identifier, from its URL (in the case of this book, 13078167), add two colons after that number, type the title of the book, and enclose this in square brackets, e.g. {13078167::Outlaws}, but substitute square brackets for the squiggly ones.

Hmm...nonfiction books and straightforward narrative fiction might work for me in audiobook format. However, I think I'd much rather embrace the active process of holding a paper book, or at least a Kindle version of it, rather than passively listen to it.

I received three new titles from my Archipelago Books subscription, which I picked up today:

Life Embitters by Josep Pla: Life Embitters is Pla’s Pandora’s box of surprises, flitting with melancholic irony from one end of the continent to the other in a constant reinvention of the short story. He collects encounters from the streets of pre-Depression Europe: rogues and strays in boarding houses in Barcelona, a Parisian café-owner addicted to gambling on horses, exiles and emigres struggling to survive in a Berlin struck by hyper-inflation and the rise of Nazism, a Greek shipping agent fond of frogs, a flaneur in St. James Park whose pleasure at the sight of sparrows enjoying a morning tryst soon turns to horror when a penguin decides it’s time for a crunchy snack. These crystalline, bittersweet stories confirm Josep Pla as a master of irony in his portrayal of ordinary lives across Europe between the end of the Great War and the collapse of Wall Street. Like Joseph Roth, Pla observes and records the pain and resilience of those around him, and reveals his own. (I'll probably read this in June, and read Pla's NYRB book The Gray Notebook next month.)

This Life by Karel Schoeman: Written by one of South Africa’s most celebrated writers, This Life, considers both the past and future of the Afrikaner people through four generations of one family. Told from the perspective of one woman in her final days, and beautifully written in Schoeman’s poetic, lyrical style, it is a remarkably vivid account of a 200 year old culture and history that has been irrevocably lost. A quietly powerful book about memory and reconciliation.

My Struggle: Book Four by Karl Ove Knausgaard: The fourth installment in the eagerly awaited, internationally celebrated My Struggle series. Book Four finds an eighteen-year-old Karl Ove in a tiny fishing village in Northern Norway, where he has been hired as a schoolteacher and is living on his own for the first time. When the ferocious winter takes hold, Karl Ove—in the company of the Håfjord locals, a warm and earthy group who have spent their lives working, drinking, joking together in close quarters—confronts private demons, reels from humiliations, and is elated by small victories. We are immersed, along with Karl Ove, in this world—sometimes claustrophobic, sometimes serenely beautiful—where memories and physical obsessions burn throughout the endless Arctic winter. In Book Four, Karl Ove must weigh the realities of his new life as a writer against everything he had believed it would be. (I'd better get to the first three books in this series soon if I'm going to read Book Four this year!)

Excellent review of The Plague of Doves, Darryl. You really nailed it. I think we had similar feelings about the book. No question, she is a gifted writer & storyteller.

I really liked All the Light. It was not my favorite book of last year but I do not have a problem with it winning, especially with the ones they nominated.

Okay, this is just for practice:

Outlaws

It works!

I have the first two books of My Struggle on the TBR shelves and haven't gotten to them yet. I'm thinking of them as a summer reading project. :-)

Happy World Book Day!

It looks as though I may not have to work today after all, although I won't know for certain for another 3-4 hours. I never sleep well on the night before my backup shifts, as I log in to the electronic health record system to check the number of patients on our service whenever I wake up, and tonight is no exception.

>131 msf59: Thanks, Mark. I'm glad that you chose Louise Erdrich as one of your AAC authors this year, as I may not have read The Plague of Doves this year without that nudge. I'll buy and read The Round House soon, especially after I found out this week that two of its characters, Geraldine and Judge Coutts, are key figures in that book.

I probably won't read All the Light We Cannot See, given its mostly lukewarm reviews in this group and in Club Read.

>132 EBT1002: Well done, Ellen!

>133 EBT1002: That's what I'm thinking, too. I have the first two books in the My Struggle series, and now that I have Book Four I'll have to buy Book Three from Archipelago Books if I like Books One and Two. I'll probably read Book One in July, and try to read one book a month until I'm caught up.

>121 kidzdoc:. You haven't read To Kill a Mockingbird!?

>135 kidzdoc: My Struggle is in the library, but I just don't fancy it. Think it's a combo of the size of the books and the title. Why did they let him call it that?

My vacation free holiday in June is set! I'll fly from Atlanta to JFK to Barcelona, and arrive there on May 29. I'll stay there until June 10, when I'll fly to London Gatwick. I'll stay in London for two weeks, and then travel by train to Amsterdam on June 24, before I fly back to Atlanta on June 30.

>136 brenpike: No, I've never read To Kill a Mockingbird, Brenda, and I didn't own a copy of it until recently. I should be eager to read it, given its positive comments from LT and non-LT friends, but there are hundreds of books I own that I'd rather read first.

>137 charl08: I'm not sure that I fancy My Struggle either, Charlotte! I received three of the four books in the series as part of my Archipelago Books subscription; otherwise I probably wouldn't have bought them. I am mildly curious to see what the hype is about, though.

I'm not sure why he was allowed to choose that inflammatory title, either.

*puts a black mark next to Darryl's name* *makes notation: "Hasn't read To Kill a Mockingbird"* *may have to re-think friendship status*

Seriously, it would take you a day...

Oh no, Darryl, I still think highly of you, but,, you really must give To Kill a Mockingbird a look see.

It was an assignment in 11th grade. The English teacher was wonderful at teaching. It still, after all these years, is my number one book. I've never found any book better. Some historians say it helped many with the spark of ideas for the Civil Rights movement.

Here's a deal, I'll eat one of your recommendations, if you read the book. As long as I don't have to eat eel or snake.

Darryl, I too missed out on having To Kill a Mockingbird assigned to me for a high school English class. I read it for the first time three or four years ago. I wouldn't describe it as earth-shattering or anything like that but it was an enjoyable and quick read. I will echo the sentiments that you could knock it out in an afternoon/evening.

>134 kidzdoc: I love that image.

>137 charl08: and >138 kidzdoc: Charl and Darryl, I think I've had a subconscious aversion to reading My Struggle because of that title and your comments validate this vague discomfort I have felt. "Inflammatory" and, really, kind of trite. Still, a student whom I greatly respect says it's worthwhile reading, so I will give it a try this summer.

When the American Film Institute's placed Atticus Finch as America's #1 movie hero when they counted down American film's favorite 100 villains/heroes back in 2003 I made a point of reading the book and watching the movie. Glad I did.

I'm adding my nudge with all the other nudges to dusting off your copy of To Kill A Mockingbird. I agree that it would be an incredibly quick read for you.

http://www.afi.com/100Years/handv.aspx

>139 laytonwoman3rd: *Looks over Linda's shoulder at the black mark, nods head in agreement* You must remedy this situation toot suite, mister.

>137 charl08: >143 EBT1002: I must be really stupid as I could think of absolutely nothing wrong with the title, and I had to go and google it to see what the problem was.

>139 laytonwoman3rd:, >145 scaifea: gets into formation with Linda and Amber and begins chanting.
read it read it read it read it read it

Pressure, Darryl! I only just read To Kill a Mockingbird recently, It is one of those must-reads really. I am sure you will come to your senses :)

Happy Saturday, Darryl! I hope you can find some time to relax.

Happy Saturday, everyone! Yesterday was a productive one, as I ran several errands in the morning, spent the afternoon cooking and cleaning, and finished Blank Gaze by António Lobo Antunes just before midnight. I'll spend most and probably all of today indoors, as more severe weather, including strong thunderstorms, hail and the possiblity of tornadoes, will occur here this morning and afternoon (it's raining now, and I just heard a faint rumble of thunder).

Following Amber's recommendation I also made mujaddara yesterday, using the recipe from Budget Bytes:



Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:

2 Tbsp olive oil $0.32
4 yellow onions $1.59
1 tsp cumin $0.10
1 tsp allspice $0.10
¼ tsp ground cloves $0.03
2.5 cups vegetable broth $0.30
1 cup long grain white rice (or jasmine) $0.33
1 cup brown lentils $0.68

Instructions:

Thinly slice the onions and add them to a large pot with the olive oil. Cook over low heat, stirring frequently for one hour, or until they are deeply golden brown, sticky, and caramelized. Remove half of the onions and set them aside to top the pilaf after cooking.

Add the cumin, allspice, and cloves to the pot with the remaining onions. Sauté for about one minute to lightly toast the spices. Add the vegetable broth and stir the pot well to dissolve any browned bits stuck to the bottom of the pot.

Add the rice and lentils to the pot. Cover the pot with a lid and turn the heat up to high. Allow the contents to come up to a boil. As soon as it reaches a full boil, turn the heat down to low and let it simmer for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, turn the heat off and let it rest for 10 minutes without removing the lid. Finally, remove the lid, fluff with a spoon or fork, then top with the reserved caramelized onions. Serve warm.

Notes:

If your vegetable broth is low sodium or sodium free, you'll likely need to add some salt when cooking the rice and lentils. Taste the broth before setting the pot to boil and add salt as needed.
____________________________

This recipe reminded me of adas polo, a Persian dish made with lentils, basmati rice, caramelized onions, potatoes, raisins and dates, which my mother learned from an Iranian friend of hers many years ago (although she probably hasn't made it in 20 years or more). Sohaila made it with chicken, so I pan fried chicken thighs and had it along with the mujaddara. Very tasty!

I both a fresh set of ingredients to make Caroline's bœuf bourguignon, so I'll marinate the beef after breakfast, make preparations for it after dinner, and let it slow cook overnight.

>139 laytonwoman3rd: Linda! I am deeply wounded by even the suggestion that you would reconsider our friendship. *sniff*

>140 Whisper1: You're on, Linda! To Kill a Mockingbird isn't high on my list of TBR books, but if I can read it in a day, as Linda says, then I'll plan to read it over the summer.

So, the next time we meet up I'll order something that I love and would like for you to try. The first thing that comes to mind is a tapas plate with grilled octopus, which is absolutely divine if it's made well. I'm salivating at the thought of it, and that will be one of the first things I'll order after I arrive in Barcelona at the end of next month. The hotel I'll stay at (Hotel Barcelona Center) is a short walk from a nice restaurant that I ate at last year, which served excellent pulpos i patas (grilled octopus with potatoes). I'll bet that we can find a Spanish restaurant in Center City Philadelphia that serves them.

>141 Oberon: Thanks, Erik. I don't expect to be blown away by To Kill a Mockingbird, and part of me expects to be disappointed by it. I'll have to read it when I'm in a mood to give it a fair chance.

>142 EBT1002: Right, Ellen. I saw that on Facebook, and I loved it as well.

>143 EBT1002: Great, Ellen. Please let me know when you start My Struggle: Book One, as I may want to read it with you. I won't start it before I return to the US at the end of June, but I probably won't travel anywhere in July, so I could read it either then or in August. I've heard good things about this series as well.

>144 avidmom: Thanks, avidmom. I'd add To Kill a Mockingbird it to my list of planned reads for May, but I want to squeeze in as many books about the Iberian peninsula as I can next month, and read at least a couple of books about Amsterdam before I go there in June. I found a Guardian article titled 10 of the best books set in Amsterdam earlier this week, and I purchased the Kindle versions of two books, Amsterdam: A Brief Life of the City by Geert Mak, and The Ministry of Pain by Dubravka Ugrešić, a novel about a woman from war torn Zagreb, Yugoslavia who is living in exile and teaching in Amsterdam, as she and a community of fellow émigrés come to grips with their new lives and mourn what has been lost to them. I'll be on the lookout for other books about Amsterdam as well (any tips would be greatly appreciated).

>145 scaifea: Is July soon enough for me to read To Kill a Mockingbird, ma'am?

>146 SandDune: I probably should have been clearer about the title of My Struggle, Rhian. As you've learned by now, the book's title is Min Kamp in Dutch and Mein Kampf in German, which is, of course, the title of Adolf Hitler's autobiography. A non-LT friend of mine made a comment about the book's English title, and when I asked Bianca about it she said that the book was published under a different title in Germany than Mein Kampf.

Oh, no, What did I get myself into?

I'm smiling though. We have lovely spring weather here in NE PA. The sun is shining, the air is crisp, and the rose bushes trimmed in the fall are now inches above the ground, longing for the days when they can show their glory of color.

>147 lauralkeet: Yikes! It's a To Kill a Mockingbird cult!

>148 LovingLit: Oh no, the cult has gone international! I shall read it in July or August, Megan.

>149 msf59: Happy Saturday, Mark! I'll do some cooking and spring cleaning during the next four days, as I'll have a potentially busy week to come, with a long call on Wednesday, a regular shift on Thursday, and overnight calls on Friday and Saturday. My last shift ends at 8 am on Sunday, and I'll fly to Philadelphia on Monday afternoon to spend a week with my parents.

>153 Whisper1: Ha ha! BTW I'm still salivating at the thought of grilled octopus, and my stomach, which was sound asleep half an hour ago, is begging for some. Hopefully a couple of scrambled eggs on a bialy will partially satisfy it.

An old friend of mine and his wife visited me in Atlanta two years ago, and I took him to my favorite Atlanta area restaurant, the Iberian Pig, which specializes in Spanish cuisine (that's the restaurant I posted about on Facebook a few weeks ago). He's a "meat and potatoes kind of guy", as he and his wife say, and he was a bit skeptical about going there, even though I and his cousin who lives here highly recommended it. I ordered a plate of grilled octopus and offered some to him. He gave me a disdainful look, but he did taste a piece. He liked it so much that he ate half of my plate, and we shared two more plates of octopus afterward.

I'm glad that the weather in NE PA is nice. We had perfect spring weather in Atlanta the past two days, and tomorrow and Monday will be nice, but today will be a washout.

Hi Darryl, I wish you a wonderful weekend.

>137 charl08:, >138 kidzdoc:, >143 EBT1002: I also have avoided My Struggle. To me, the title doesn't sound inflammatory; it sounds like a self-indulgent, whiny tell-all. Who would want to read four whole books on that subject?

>150 kidzdoc: A friend told me yesterday that she had heard they're predicting hail for us today, but I don't see it in the weather reports online. We've had rain but so far no thunderstorms. It seems like a good day to stay inside and read.

>151 kidzdoc: I don't expect to be blown away by To Kill a Mockingbird, and part of me expects to be disappointed by it.

I read To Kill a Mockingbird in high school 40-ish years ago, which maybe skewed the experience; I reread for a book group this month and... I was underwhelmed. So maybe there’s a hole in my brain somewhere, wouldn’t surprise me.

>152 kidzdoc: Darryl, I will make a note in my calendar (heh) to touch base with you around the first of July. I would love to read My Struggle: Book One along with you. I think it will be a read that benefits from some thoughtful conversation. I have a trip to NC planned for mid-July and one of the things I'm most looking forward to is the flight. This is always true (undistracted reading time!) but especially true this time as I used miles and have myself booked in first class both directions. Anyway, this might be a good read for that trip.

I found this New Yorker review from about a year ago and it actually made me more interested in reading it. Joshua Rothman review

I will join the chorus of folks urging you to read To Kill a Mockingbird. I also hope we are actually at the same meet-up someday and, if this occurs, I will let you (kindly, please) choose something from the menu for me. :-)

With so much buildup, you may in the end be underwhelmed with To Kill A Mockingbird, Darryl. But it's beautifully put together; close to being a perfect novel, akin to Remains of the Day. Easily one of the best books I've ever read. You'll be glad you read it.

Are you still planning on London in September? We hope so.

>156 Ameise1: Thanks, Barbara! I hope that you have an enjoyable weekend as well.

>157 Cariola: Looking at it that way I would certainly agree with you, Deborah. I'm even more curious about the My Struggle series now, so I'll take a brief look of the three books I own. Book One (430 pp.) describes his childhood and adolescent years in Bergen, Norway, particularly in the years that follow his alcoholic father's death at the age of 39, when Karl Ove would have been 15 years old. In Book Two (573 pp.), Karl Ove has moved from Bergen to Stockholm, where he strikes up a friendship with a fellow Norwegian exile, and he reconnects with Linda, a poet that he met years earlier. He falls in love, presumably with Linda, and raises a family. I don't own Book Three, but in Book Four (485 pp.) he is an 18 year old schoolteacher in a small Norwegian fishing village, where he befriends the locals, confronts his inner demons, and embarks on his career as a writer. I read a few scattered paragraphs in Book One, and they were well written and captured my interest. If I didn't have so many other books I wanted to read ahead of it I would have no problem starting the series today. BTW, there are six books in the series.

>158 cbl_tn: The first round of rain has passed east of Atlanta, Carrie, but there will be more storms this afternoon, and those are the ones that are supposed to produce high winds, hail, and potentially tornadoes. From what I saw yesterday north and central Georgia are in the slight risk category for severe weather, but central and eastern Tennessee are supposed to have a higher risk for it. Do you have a weather radio? I keep mine on at all times, and I rely on it heavily to inform me of severe weather. I bought mine at Radio Shack nearly 18 years ago, and it still serves me well.

>159 qebo: Hmph. You didn't have to remind me how long ago it was when we were in high school, Katherine! ;-)

I have a sneaking suspicion that I'll have a similar reaction to yours after I read To Kill a Mockingbird, which has a lot to do with my decision to put off reading it.

>160 EBT1002: Sounds good, Ellen. July will be a good time for me to read My Struggle: Book One, as I'll be back from Europe and will likely stay in Atlanta for the entire month. Thanks for mentioning the New Yorker review of it; I'll read it shortly.

We'll have to meet up someday soon! A dear friend of mine lives in Portland, and I'd love to see her in the near future. I'd also like to take a trip to Portland, Seattle and Vancouver, but I'm not sure when that will happen. Now that I'm spending the bulk of my holiday time in Europe a get together there may be more likely than the Pacific Northwest.

>161 jnwelch: Thanks, Joe. The Remains of the Day is one of my all time favorite novels, and if To Kill a Mockingbird is even close to Ishiguro's masterpiece then I'll definitely enjoy it.

Yes, I am planning on coming to London in September, but I still need to submit my holiday request. Please remind me of the dates that you and Debbi will be there.

>163 kidzdoc: Good! I'll pm you.

>164 jnwelch: Thanks, Joe!

Iberian Author Profile: José Luís Peixoto (Portugal, 1974-)



José Luís Peixoto is one of Portugal's literary stars, as his books have won or been nominated for numerous literary awards in his home country and abroad, and the late Nobel Prize writer José Saramago referred to him as “the most surprising revelation in recent Portuguese literature.” Peixoto was born in a small village in the Alentejo region of Portugal, received degrees in Modern English and German Literature at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, and taught for several years before he became a full time writer.

Peixoto's first published work was Morreste-me, which was written in 2000 and is a tribute to his late father. It was translated into English with the title You Died on Me, and it appeared in the December 2010 issue of The Warwick Review. Peixoto first gained literary attention later that year with the release of his first novel, Nenhum Olhar, which won the Prémio José Saramago, the biennial award for the best novel published by a Portuguese writer, and it received critical acclaim after it was published in English translation as Blank Gaze in the UK in 2007 and The Implacable Order of Things in the US the following year. This surreal and bleak but richly imaginative novel is set in a poor village in the Alentejo region in the days before the world ends.

To date, Peixoto has written nine works of fiction, four of which have been translated into English, including The Piano Cemetery, three poetry collections, and three plays. His most interesting work was a collaboration with the Gothic metal band Moonspell, which resulted in a collection of short stories titled Antidoto, published as Antidote in English translation, along with an album with the same name. His visit to North Korea in April 2012 for a 15 day "Kim Il-Sung's 100th Birthday Ultimate Mega Tour" was published in two parts in the American literary journal Ninth Letter last year.

>155 kidzdoc: There was an article on Decatur in the Times (maybe tomorrow's issue, not sure now) but i didn't see a mention of the Iberian Pig, which is a pity. I still recall our meal there, without you, alas, as you were under the weather.

Jim's family has moved out of Atlanta, so I'm not sure what will draw us there next, but the Iberian Pig is on the schedule.

>167 ffortsa: Thanks, Judy! I just looked at the NYT web site, and the article will appear in tomorrow's edition of the paper:

Decatur, a Commuter Town Near Atlanta, Turns Trendsetter

Several of my partners and friends live there, although it's a bit of a painful commute from there to Sandy Springs, where the hospital I work at is located. If that wasn't a consideration I would seriously consider moving there, and even though I like living in Midtown Atlanta I'd prefer to be in Decatur.

>168 kidzdoc: But how could they have missed the Iberian Pig?? i sometimes wonder if these little travelogue pieces require 'contributions' or ad purchases. Even at the Times.

>162 kidzdoc: Yes, I do have a weather radio! I'll turn it on if it starts looking bad here.

>169 ffortsa: True, Judy. Everyone I know who's been there loves The Iberian Pig. Granted, there are plenty of great restaurants in Decatur, but that one is always included in any "Best of" lists that I've seen recently.

>170 cbl_tn: Good idea, Carrie. I just saw this image on the National Weather Service Atlanta web page:

Book #19: Blank Gaze by José Luís Peixoto (US title: The Implacable Order of Things)

  

My rating:

I think: perhaps the sky is a huge sea of fresh water and we, instead of walking under it, walk on top of it; perhaps we see everything upside down and earth is a kind of sky, so that when we die, we fall and sink into the sky.

I think: perhaps suffering is tossed by handfuls over the multitudes, with most of it falling on some people and little or none of it on others.

This surreal, haunting and bleak novel interspersed with glimpses of tender beauty is set in an unnamed small town in the arid interior region of Alentejo in southern Portugal. Life is a daily battle for its poor residents, who battle poverty and the whims of nature to eke out a hardscrabble existence in a village beset with jealousy, violence and tragedy, with little hope for a better future.

Blank Gaze is centered around several memorable and sometimes fantastic characters over two generations of village life. The most influential character is the devil, who conducts infrequent services and occasional weddings at the abandoned and decrepit town church, while taunting several men in the local bar run by Judas about the infidelities of their wives while the men are working away from home. Gabriel is an ever present 120 year old wise man, whose good advice is rarely followed. Moíses and Elias are Siamese twins joined by a common pinky finger. An old blind prostitute whose mother and grandmother are similarly afflicted services men on a regular basis, and a giant regularly torments a sheepherder and his wife.

The novel consists of snapshots of these characters over a 30+ year period, and consists of third person observations and first person accounts, which resemble haunted confessions by people who are overwhelmed by the untoward events affecting their lives and the ones of those closest to them. Brief periods of tenderness and joy are soon squelched by tragedy, which ultimately consumes everyone, including the devil, under an unforgiving blazing hot sun.

I found Blank Gaze to be a stunning and unforgettable novel, whose rich images outweighed the ethereal portrayals of its characters. Reading this was akin to watching a play on a stage covered in fog, as characters spoke initially hidden from sight, who subsequently appeared and were sometimes different from the one I thought was speaking. Although the points and themes that Peixoto were trying to express eluded me, I enjoyed reading this short book, and I will definitely look for more of his work in the near future.

Good review of Implacable Order. It sounds fascinating, if stark.

>173 Storeetllr: Thanks, Mary. It started out light and trippy, with its fantastic characters and surreal descriptions, but it became a darker book as it progressed toward its fateful end.

I ordered the US version of this book, The Implacable Order of Things in 2008, the year that it was published here, and unknowingly purchased Blank Gaze during a visit to London in 2009, thinking that it was a different book. If anyone would like my unread copy of the US version please send me a PM with your address, and I'll be glad to send it to you.

>162 kidzdoc: This was the Knoxville weather map this morning:

The accompanying text that talked about wind and baseball sized hail was even scarier: This is the strong to severe thunderstorm potential for our region issued by the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma. We have a good chance for severe or strong storms late this afternoon in the orange sector, with large hail (golf ball to baseball sized), gusty winds (60 - 70 mph) along with a slight chance for an isolated tornado. The timing of these storms will be during the 4pm to 10pm time frame, so keep an eye to the sky this afternoon. The Local 8 weather team will be keeping you up to date all day and go to local8now.com where you can monitor the interactive radar map.

>175 thornton37814: Yep, I saw that the most severe weather would be in Tennessee on the local ABC affiliate in Atlanta, so I'm not surprised by that image. I hope that it isn't as bad as the forecasts suggest.

>176 kidzdoc: I have to work until 5 p.m. so I'm hoping the really bad here holds off until at least 5:30 p.m. when my car will be safely in my garage at home. They are now predicting that south of I-40 will have the worst earlier and that later in the evening, north of I-40 will get slammed. I'm hoping I'm far enough north of I-40 to be spared the early onslaught.

>174 kidzdoc: That is a lovely offer, Darryl, and I almost asked you for your extra copy of Implacable Order, but I checked with my library and was able to get it from them, so I'll leave it for someone who can't borrow it from their library.

Nickel and I had breakfast in the warm sunshine on the back patio this morning, but we were only able to be out there for an hour when suddenly heavy clouds and high winds rolled in and the temp dropped seems like 10F in a few minutes. So back inside, all doors and windows shut tight, and heat turned up a bit. Crazy weather everywhere!

>172 kidzdoc: I like the sound of Blank Gaze Darryl, especially as we were in the Alentejo region when we were in Portugal recently. Not that it looked that arid at the time - I think they'd had quite a wet winter - and it was quite green.

>177 thornton37814: It's eerily calm here, Lori, with mostly sunny skies and a temperature of 75 degrees, with no rain on the north Georgia Doppler radar or anywhere nearby. It's muggy here, which means that the air mass is probably unstable, and ripe for unpredictable severe pop up thunderstorms, hail and tornadoes. I'll definitely stay inside for the rest of today, and I hope that you get home safely.

>178 Storeetllr: I'm glad that you found The Implacable Order of Things in your local library, Mary. My offer still stands for anyone else who would like my copy of it.

Yikes! Crazy weather, indeed.

>179 SandDune: Blank Gaze was a very good read, Rhian. Given the date I purchased it (8 Aug 09) I'll bet that I bought it at the London Review Bookshop, or possibly from Foyles. Hopefully you can find it locally.

Here's my overly ambitious list of planned reads for May:

Martin Amis, Lionel Asbo: State of England
Antonio Lobo Antunes, Act of the Damned
Bernardo Atxaga, Obabakoak
Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings
Jonathan Kozol, The Theft of Memory: Losing My Father, One Day at a Time
Sinclair Lewis, Arrowsmith
Sid Lowe, Fear and Loathing in La Liga: Barcelona vs Real Madrid
Geert Mak, Amsterdam: A Brief Life of the City
Josep Pla, Life Embitters
Mercè Rodoreda, The Time of the Doves
Karel Schoeman, This Life
Kamila Shamsie, A God in Every Stone
Dubravka Ugrešić, The Ministry of Pain
H. Gilbert Welch, Less Medicine, More Health: 7 Assumptions That Drive Too Much Medical Care

>182 kidzdoc: I guess I should be dancing that To Kill a Mockingbird is not on your May list. Whew, It looks like I won't be eating anything rather different in May.

>153 Whisper1: Darryl, If I lived in Pennsylvania Dutch (Lancaster and surrounding areas) country, I'd say "Awch, Get Outttt" regarding your friend liking those squiggly things that kind of slosh around the plate and stare up at you with their glazed eyes.

>180 kidzdoc: Our weather seems to have been much calmer on that first round than predicted. I'm hoping the 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. round is just as peaceful. I do have a weather radio app on my iPhone. It's pretty obnoxious when it goes off, but at least it alerts me.

>182 kidzdoc: That is an ambitious list. Hopefully you will make it through the list. I'll be interested in seeing your review of the Welch book.

>183 Whisper1: You'll be safe until the next time we meet up, Linda!

You've uncovered my culinary weak point: eyes! They make me very squeamish, even on whole fish, and I would have a hard time enjoying any meals that include the whole heads of any animal, big or small. Fortunately grilled octopus are pieces of that creature, with no eyes on the plate, and I have no problem eating the cupped tentacles of one.

>184 thornton37814: It's been completely quiet in Atlanta since late morning, Lori, and my weather radio alarm hasn't gone off. I'll have to check to see if we're out of the clear, or if tonight has the potential to be a stormy one.

I almost certainly won't make it to every book on that list! I do want to read the Welch, as it is one of my LT Early Reviewers books, along with the Kozol, which arrived yesterday.

>184 thornton37814: >185 kidzdoc: It looks like the bad weather is in Kentucky. Not a drop of rain here since early this morning.

>186 cbl_tn: Same here, Carrie. South Georgia is getting the worst of this rain, and it looks like both of us are in the clear for the rest of the night and tomorrow.

Big cooking day today! I made another trip to Publix and I've just finished breakfast, so I'm ready to go. I marinated the beef for Caroline's bœuf bourguignon overnight, so this morning I'll sautée it and place it in the slow cooker for eight hours, which will be ready in time for dinner. I also plan to make the pickled tomato salsa and cilantro sauce for pollo ciudad again, and prepare another batch of crispy gnocchi with cremini mushrooms, asparagus and Brussels sprouts. I was thinking of making Ethiopian-style tempeh and lentils, from a recipe in a cookbook that one of my partners bought for me, Fresh from the Vegan Slow Cooker, but neither of my two local supermarket chains stocked tempeh or fenugreek. I'll look for those ingredients at Whole Foods Market tomorrow, and try this recipe early next week.

Thanks Darryl for putting José Luís Peixoto on my reading radar. Definitely sounds like my cup of tea. Your travel plans for June sound perfect. Barcelona was briefly discussed as our vacation destination for this summer but, for one reason or another, it somehow got pushed aside. Instead we're headed to New Orleans which my trumpet playing son is exited about. Preservation Hall being high on our things to do list.
Your menu for today sounds fabulous! Have a great Sunday!

>188 kidzdoc: Oh Darryl, your menus sound promising. I just get hungry reading it.

>189 Carmenere: You're welcome, Lynda. Blank Gaze/The Implacable Order of Things was a unique and interesting book, to say the least, and I'll definitely read more of his work.

I'm looking forward to returning to Barcelona, seeing Amsterdam for the first time, and meeting up with LTers in London, Amsterdam, and possibly Barcelona.

Your trip to New Orleans sounds good! Will this be your first time? If so, I'd be happy to give you restaurant recommendations, if you'd like.

I hope that you enjoy your Sunday as well, Lynda! It's a lot warmer here today than it has been this week, but fortunately it will cool down over the next two days from the low 80s to the upper 60s.

>190 Ameise1: The bœuf bourguinon has been going in the slow cooker for about three hours, the pickled tomato salsa is maturing in the refrigerator, and I just finished having the crispy gnocchi, cremini mushrooms, asparagus and Brussels sprouts for lunch (that's definitely my favorite vegetarian recipe). I need to finish the garnish for the bœuf bourguinon, and I'll modify Caroline's recipe by substituting egg noodles for croutons, so I still have another hour or so of cooking before I'm finished. I'll wait until tomorrow to make the cilantro sauce and rice for the pollo ciudad, as I won't have it today, and that will give the pickled tomato salsa at least 24 hours to mature in the refrigerator before I have it for lunch or dinner tomorrow.

I'll resume reading Act of the Damned by António Lobo Antunes, which I started late last night.

Hi Darryl! Have fun in Amsterdam! Although I prefer Utrecht over Amsterdam I think you will enjoy it. Which LT-ers are you meeting and when?

>192 connie53: Thanks, Connie! I'll be in Amsterdam from June 24-30. I've sent you a PM with details about my visit.

Happy Sunday, Darryl! Dang, all this talk about travel is making me itchy to go somewhere too.

>186 cbl_tn: The thunderstorm finally arrived around midnight, but it wasn't nearly as bad as predicted.

>194 Storeetllr: Happy Sunday, Mary! Other than a quick two day trip to San Francisco in December and a brief visit to see my parents in January I haven't traveled or been on holiday since September, so I'm eager to get away.

>195 thornton37814: That's good to hear, Lori. We didn't have any rain to my knowledge after yesterday morning's storms, and after a hotter than normal day today the next two days should be very nice ones.

Darryl, have you tried kalettes yet? I'll bet you'd love them. New veggie, a combination of Brussels sprouts and kale. Very yummy roasted or sautéed in a little olive oil and tossed with crumbled feta or goat cheese.

I haven't heard of or tried kalettes, Deborah. I love both Brussels sprouts and kales, so I'm sure that I'd love them. Thanks for mentioning them! I'll see if Publix, my local supermarket, has them in stock. If not, I had planned to go to Whole Foods Market after I get my hair cut and car washed tomorrow, so I'll look for them there if they aren't sold at Publix.

198> They are really cute--look like miniature curly lettuces. The flavor is milder than Brussels sprouts. Hope you can find them!

Ooh, kalettes sound good! I will have to keep my eye out for them.

I am trying to imagine boeuf bourguignon over croutons... Like small crunchy croutons on a salad bar?

Perhaps we'll get a photo? Hint hint... :)

ETA: Never mind, I saw on FB you were using egg noodles and the recipe called for croutons. I was thinking it was the reverse. And I'm thinking the recipe probably meant sliced baguettes or something similar.

Food sounds amazing. Any Iberian dishes planned to fit the reading theme?

Caroline's bœuf bourguignon is ready!



Here's the recipe. I followed it almost to the letter, except that I used sliced bacon instead of a half pound slab of it, and I substituted egg noodles in place of croutons. I let the beef marinate overnight, and put it in the slow cooker this morning. My Bouquet Garni consisted of thyme, sage, basil and a bay leaf, which I inserted into the crevice of half of a celery stalk and secured with string.

Bœuf Bourguignon

Marinade:
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 onions, sliced
2 carrots, sliced
10 parsley stems
Bouquet Garni
handful of peppercorns, crushed
4 tbsp cognac
1 bottle dry red wine, preferably Burgundy
2 tbsp olive oil

3 lbs lean stewing beef (chuck), trimmed of excess fat and cut into 1 1/2" cubes
Salt & freshly ground pepper
6 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp all-purpose flour
1 tbsp tomato paste
3 tomatoes, quartered

Garnish
1/2 lb slb bacon, sliced about 1/4" thick
4 tbsp olive oil
30 pearl onions
3 tbsp butter
1 tbsp sugar
3/4 lb button mushrooms, trimmed, rinsed and dried

Croutons
6 slices firm white bread, crusts removed, cubed
3 tbsp butter
2 tbsp chopped parsley

Prepare marinade: combine all ingredients except the oil. Add the meat (it must be completely submerged n the liquid) and then sprinkle the surface with the oil. Cover and marinate for 12 hours.

Remove beef from the marinade and drain well. Remove the garlic and bouquet garni; set aside. Strain and reserve the marinating liquid. Drain the marinated vegetables, set aside.

Heat 1/4 cup of the oil in a large pan over high heat until very hot. Season the beef with salt & pepper and ad to the pan, a few pieces at a time. Sauté until evenly browned. Remove beef from the pan and discard the oil. Add the remaining 2 tbsp of oil and reduce heat to medium. Add the marinated vegetables and cook until lightly colored. Add the beef, sprinkle with flour and stir well. Stir in the tomato paste and cook for about 1 min.
Add the reserved marinating liquid along with the garlic, bouquet garni and quartered tomatoes. Add water as needed to just about cover the vegetables and bring to a boil. Place in slow cooker on low for 8 hours.

*alternatively, you can put it all in a dutch oven with a buttered round of parchment paper and then the lid, and place it in a 375F oven for about 3 hours or until beef is tender.

Prepare the garnish: Cut the bacon into lardons, blanch and drain. Heat the oil in a frying pan, add the lardons and sauté until golden brown. Drain and set aside.

Melt 1 tbsp butter, add the sugar and pearl onions and caramelize them.

Add 2 tbsp oil and 2 tbsp butter in a large frying pan over high heat. Add the mushrooms and cook until moisture has evaporated. Season to taste. Set aside.

Melt 3 tbsp butter, and add the bread cubes to the pan. When well coated, remove and transfer to a baking sheet. Bake in a 425F oven until golden. Set aside.

When the beef is tender, remove the beef and strain the cooking liquid. Discard the solids. Add beef to a large pot, add the strained cooking liquid to the beef, add the lardons, onions and mushrooms and cook over a medium heat for about 10 mins.

To serve, top the stew with the croutons and sprinkle with chopped parsley.
_________________________

I would also recommend serving this with a generous mug of cognac, since there should be plenty left over in the bottle ;-). This tastes absolutely fabulous! Thanks for the recipe, Caroline.

>199 Cariola: Thanks, Deborah. I definitely want to make kalettes, either Monday or Tuesday when I'm off from work, or the following week when I visit my parents. Publix doesn't sell them apparently, so I'll look for them at Whole Foods tomorrow.

>200 katiekrug: The birthday girl's wish is my command. I looked up recipes for bœuf bourguignon online, as I didn't know how to blanch and drain the bacon, and noticed that several of the recipes used egg noodles instead of croutons. I bought two bags at Publix this morning, and thought that would be a better option, as it would stretch out the meal more than croutons would.

BTW, I boiled the bacon lardons in water for 10 minutes to blanch them, and drained them on paper towels before I sautéed them in a large frying pan. The garnish (lardons, pearl onions and mushrooms) was very tempting in itself, and I'll bet that would have tasted great over egg noodles.

>201 charl08: Thanks, Charlotte. I won't prepare any Iberian dishes for the Reading Globally theme, but I will be in Barcelona from May 29 to June 10, so I'll post photos of the meals I have there and the restaurants that I dine in, similar to what I did last year when I visited that amazing city.

>163 kidzdoc: Okay, I'll figure out a way to meet you in Europe. :-)

I'm not even halfway through it but I am thoroughly enjoying Outlaws by Javier Cercas. I was trying to describe it to P and I could do so, but I couldn't quite say why the story is so compelling. In some ways, it's a simple tale. And I can hardly put it down.

>204 EBT1002: Sounds good, Ellen! The only American LTer I've met in Europe so far is Laura, when she and I were both in London in March of last year, although this will change in June. Laura and Fliss are the only LTers I've met in two different countries (US and UK) so far, but that total should at least double by the end of that month.

Great! I'm thrilled that you're enjoying Outlaws so far. I hope that you continue to do so, and I look forward to your final comments about it.

Hi Darryl! It's about time I paid a visit to your thread. So here I am waving!

Hi, Connie! It's good to see you here.

Do I drop by and try to catch up on a whole thread and a half I've missed, or do I wait for the (surely not far off) new thread and just pretend the last 8 don't exist? Hmmmm. ;o)

Hi Darryl - hope life is good!

>208 flissp: I'd vote for waiting for the new thread, Fliss!

Life is very good at the moment; I hope that's true for you, too.

>202 kidzdoc: Now, that looks goood!

I read To Kill a Mockingbird years ago. I didn't then, and still don't understand why people think the book is so good. I think this is one case where the movie is much better than the book.

What I really don't understand is why anybody living in the South would like the book. Don't they understand that the book is about them? Or do they all think that they didn't do that? It was those "other" Southerner's who practiced segregation.

>211 benitastrnad: Or it is about Us. The North can be a tad too quick to claim virtue for not being the South... (I am pretty much meh on To Kill a Mockingbird as a novel. I haven't seen the movie.)

>210 Whisper1: See? I knew that we could find a food that we could agree on, Linda.

>211 benitastrnad: Interesting comment, Benita. One of my closest partners at work is a 60+ year old white woman from rural North Carolina, who is also an avid reader, and she loves To Kill a Mockingbird and has been encouraging me to read it for years.

>212 qebo: Although I didn't grow up in the Deep South I can say that I've experienced far, far less racism from Southern whites here in Atlanta than I did from whites from rural Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio when I was a medical student at Pitt. I agree that many Northerners do castigate Southerners for their history of racism in the middle 20th century, but based on my experiences (which would take too long to explain in detail here) I would much rather live in a small town in Alabama or Mississippi than a similar one in Pennsylvania or Ohio (although I felt very comfortable living in Pittsburgh).

I think the real enemy when talking about racism is poverty. I just finished reading Hellhound on His Trail and there is lots in there about King's wanting to move beyond Civil Rights and into real social change. That made everybody nervous including President Johnson who thought that King didn't appreciate all the social changes he had managed to squeeze out of Congress. King wanted to make the Poor People's March he had planned for that year to be the focal point of the Civil Rights movement in the future and was meeting resistance from all sides. I really must read Taylor Branch's work on the Civil Rights Movement and King.

I didn't mean to imply that only Southerner's practiced segregation. I think that the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision by the U. S. Supreme Court was for everybody in the U. S. It has long confounded me that the North won the Civil War and settled the issue of Slavery and then lost it after the fighting was over. How did the Republican Party moved from freeing the slaves to being the party that keeps people in poverty? How that happened fascinates me. But I do stand by the feeling that I get from living here in the South that it was somebody else who had those laws. It was somebody else who had black servants or sharecroppers. It was somebody else who did ... (fill in the blank). It wasn't. It was the people who lived here and it was the other people in the U. S. who allowed it to continue to happen and did not stop it.

Wow, sounds like some crazy weather was heading your way Darryl. Did it pan out or has it not arrived yet?
Yum, your list of food to make is making my stomach rumble. Thank goodness dinner is only a few short hours away.

Blank Gaze sounds intriguing. I'll have to check out my library for that one. Thanks for the thoughtful review!

FYI--This book was my top read of 2013!

MASTERPIECE on PBS has optioned The Signature of All Things, the best-selling novel by Eat Pray Love author Elizabeth Gilbert, to be adapted for television. The critically-acclaimed bestseller chronicles the explorations of scientist Alma Whittaker, a heroine who is equal parts Elizabeth Bennet and Charles Darwin, as she spends her days seeking nothing less than the answers to the origins of life.

Author Elizabeth Gilbert says: "I'm beyond thrilled to be working with MASTERPIECE on the adaptation...Whenever I dreamed of seeing my novel transformed for the screen, I dreamt of working with exactly this team of people, and I'm delighted that my dream has come true."

MASTERPIECE, produced by WGBH Boston, is developing the project with Origin Pictures, a top UK film and television production company. Stay tuned for more details!

(For the record, this book is NOTHING like Eat Pray Love.)

doobie doobie dooooo

The Bud Light penguins gave your address up...said it was copacetic for me to...enlighten...you.

They were not specific as to how I might accomplish this.

>216 Cariola: My local book group read The Signature of All Things last month (at my suggestion -- fortunately w/ positive response) so I'm very much looking forward to the PBS production.

Morning, Darryl! I made the African Peanut Stew from Budget Bytes yesterday and it was excellent!

http://www.budgetbytes.com/2014/08/african-peanut-stew-vegan/

Just sayin'...

>214 benitastrnad: Well said, Benita. I own copies of At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968 by Taylor Branch, and Hellhound On His Trail by Hampton Sides, but I haven't read either book yet. I'll see if I can get to at least one of them later this year.

>215 jolerie: The severe weather that we were supposed to have gotten on Saturday passed well to the north and to the south of Atlanta, and we didn't have any rain at all here after that morning. Yesterday was a gorgeous day, and today will be as well.

I'm glad that you liked my review of Blank Gaze. It seems to have been published with that title in Canada, and not the US title of The Implacable Order of Things.

>216 Cariola: That sounds great, Deborah! I own The Signature of All Things, but I haven't read it yet. Hopefully I can get to it before the television adaptation comes out.

>217 richardderus:



Nooooo!!! There is no escape from fiendish penguins or LTers who won't let me enjoy my watered down mediocre American beer in private!

*jumps off moving train, passport in hand*

>218 qebo: I'm glad that your book club (and you as well, I presume?) liked The Signature of All Things, Katherine. I'll have to make room for it soon, perhaps over the summer.

>219 scaifea: And I wasn't invited? I'm hurt, Amber.

I'm glad that you liked it! I'll probably give it a try after I return from Philadelphia the week after next.

I found an interesting vegan recipe on the One Green Planet web site that I'll make today, Xi Hong Shi Chao Jidan, or Chinese tofu scramble, which is made with tofu, onions, scallions, a tomato, and spices. I'll buy tofu at Whole Foods later today, and hopefully find tempeh as well.

>221 kidzdoc: I thought you knew, Darryl, that you have an open invitation to Scaife Manor! Any time, friend.

>222 scaifea: Aww! Thanks, Amber. I promise that I won't come empty handed.

>223 kidzdoc: As Mark would say, B.A.G.!

>224 scaifea: Biscuits And Gravy? Sure, I can bring some.

Book #20: The Education of the Stoic by Fernando Pessoa



My rating:

This short work is a collection of observations and reflections of life by the Baron of Tieve, the fictional "quasi-author" who contributed to Pessoa's famous novel The Book of Disquiet. The baron was a sensitive and tortured soul, who spent much of his life in solitude and ultimately committed suicide due to his immense unhappiness and inability to find love with a woman. Although this book has a high rating on LT I could not connect with it, as I found the baron's comments to be obtuse, morbid and banal. Your mileage may vary with this one.

Book #21: Time Ages in a Hurry by Antonio Tabucchi



My rating:

This collection of nine short stories written toward the end of the author's career all concern the passage of time, and how the different characters in them confront significant life challenges and overcome them. I only liked one of the stories, "Clouds", in which a young girl and a former military man both on holiday have a conversation about his past while sitting on a beach. I found the other stories to be unfocused, uninteresting and lacking in insight.

Ruh roh, Darryl. Two sort-of stinkers in a row - pick thee a winner next!

>228 katiekrug: I did finish a much better book this afternoon, Navidad & Matanza by Carlos Labbé, which I gave 3½ stars, Katie.

Glad to hear it :)

>230 katiekrug: Thanks! I expect that the books I'm now reading will be even better.

>229 kidzdoc: I'm glad your reading material is improving. I too was concerned when I saw two in a row with low ratings!

Hey, Darryl, I'm in the midst of yet another round of get-rid-of-the-paper, and found an article from a local free newspaper about tapas, so here are some suggestions for your next trip to NYC:
Toro - 85 10thAve
Boqueria Tapas Bar - 53 W. 19th St.

I haven't tried either yet, so they may be just so much 'toro', but we can go the next time you're in town.

>232 cbl_tn: Thanks, Carrie!

>233 ffortsa: Thanks for those recommendations, Judy! I'll spend Monday through Sunday visiting my parents, but I'm not sure if I'll go to NYC or not, and if I do it won't be over the weekend after next.

>225 kidzdoc: *snork!* Yes, please - yum!

Morning Darryl I did finish The Buried Giant. I liked the book but I am not sure it is your cuppa. Then again, you are an Ishiguro fan. Close call...

Hope the week is going well, my friend.

#233
My supper group is doing tapas for our meal this coming Sunday. We are also having Sangria with it. It should be another memorable meal. I am wanting a cast iron Hibachi so that doing some kinds of tapas will be easy.

>235 scaifea: Good! Biscuits and gravy it is, Amber.

>236 msf59: Hi, Mark! I had to work today, so I missed your morning message. I'm much more a fan of The Remains of the Day than a fan of Ishiguro's entire body of work, so I've been in no rush to read The Buried Giant.

>237 benitastrnad: Sounds good, Benita!

Ohmigosh! I'm just loving your threads this year with all of the recipes and pictures of such good food. You are inspiring me!

Karen O.

Thanks, Karen!

Darryl, are you still subscribing to Archipelago Books? I've let my subscription lapse because I wasn't enamored with their catalogue in the last couple of years.

Darryl, I ended up really enjoying The Fishermen, a great debut novel.

>241 cameling: I am, Caroline. I didn't subscribe the past two or three years, but I renewed it for this year after I looked at its forthcoming offerings and realized that I wanted most of the books that were going to be published this year. I plan to read three 2015 Archipelago books this month, Life Embitters by the Catalan author Josep Pla, which is set in Barcelona; This Life by South African author Karel Schoeman about four generations of an Afrikaner family during and after the apartheid era; and Selected Poems of Corsino Fortes, which focuses on the life of the people of Cape Verde.

>242 avatiakh: I'm glad that you liked The Fishermen, Kerry; I'll keep my eye out for it.

Happy Friday, Darryl! I have also heard good stuff about The Fishermen. It is on my To-Read list.

>244 msf59: Just ordered this at the library! Fingers crossed for a speedy delivery...

>244 msf59: Happy Friday to you too, Mark! I've also added The Fishermen to my wish list; the Kindle version of it is available in the US.

>245 charl08: I look forward to your thoughts on The Fishermen, Charlotte, as I suspect that you'll get to it before I do.

Huh, I'll have to check out that poetry book - my parents lived in Cabo Verde for a while (as diplomats) and I visited them there. Thanks!

>247 jjmcgaffey: You're welcome, Jennifer. The poems are both in the original Portuguese and in English translation. I'll let you know how it is.