Jackie's second Jar of Fate category challenge

Hi – I'm Jackie (English, but living in Scotland the past 11+ years). This will be the second year I've participated in the Category Challenge.

2017's challenge is going to be really quite similar to 2016's, as I am still looking to tackle Mt TBR via my Jar of Fate system. Which, for the uninitiated, is a jar with each and every TBR title I own (not sure of the number, but I'm pretty sure now in excess of 300) on a colour-coded slip of paper, which I will pull out to decide my next read. I did this for the first time in 2016 and it has revolutionised my reading – I have read more in 2016 than in pretty much any previous year ever (my total is still insignificant compared to some people here, but it's brilliant for me!). The idea is that I pull out each colour in turn, so that I'm not reading a succession of similar books, thus making it ideal for the Category Challenge, as each colour relates to my individual categories (this is why I'm not changing categories, that colouring took forever!! Advance notice: I'll be using these categories for the next several years until Mt TBR is vanquished!).

I have moved the categories around a bit from 2016, as I found that there was a fair bit of crossover, or at least passing similarity, betweeen some of my categories which I happened to have next to each other, so despite the plan to mix things up I did sometimes end up reading a few in a row which were more similar than I'd have liked. It had occurred to me already to put some gaps between my 3 fiction categories, but I have done the same thing for 2017 with a few of the non-fiction categories too to make it a bit more random, hopefully. I have also decided that in 2017 my 12th category (Random) will be for any CATs that I decide to participate in – that will be where I abandon the Jar, if I know that a particular TBR book I own fits with a CAT that month then I will just read it then rather than wait for the fickle hand of Fate to decide when I read it. I'm not going to religiously participate in any of the CATs, only in the months when I have something that fits. But I'm confident that I have quite a lot of TBRs that would fit in both CATWoman and CultureCAT, so hopefully I will participate more often than not, and maybe I'll be able to participate in RandomCAT some months too.

My challenge for 2017 is to read at least one book for each of the first 11 categories, plus a minimum of 7 in the Random/CATs category, for a minimum of 18 books read overall in the year. That is much less than I read in 2016, but it's not beyond the realms of possibility that I pull out a succession of chunksters to read, so I think this total is achievable but not inevitable, so there's still the element of challenge!

So without any further ado, here are my categories (with brief explanations, and colour code):

1. (red) Central/Eastern Europe and former Soviet Union. This could be travel writing or academic stuff, but equally could be Bosnian war fiction or a book on Soviet propaganda posters.
2. (dark blue) Non-fiction (general). Non-fiction that doesn't fall into any of my other categories.
3. (yellow) Contemporary fiction (1969-present). Contemporary with me, so fiction from the year of my birth onwards.
4. (dark green) Sexual/reproductive health/rights; parenting; children; gender. This reflects my academic interests and experience, and also my work. This will mainly be academic, but also includes some popular non-fiction and maybe the odd bit of fiction. There is quite a lot of crossover here with my academic and central/eastern Europe categories (which is why I've spread these three out a bit more than last year).
5. (light green) Celtic. Fiction and non-fiction relating to the Celtic lands (primarily Scotland, but also potentially including Irish, Welsh, Cornish and Breton-related books).
6. (light blue) Vintage fiction (1900-1968). Hopefully self-explanatory. I suspect this is my smallest category.
7. (pink) Academic. Some of the academic books that I've acquired over the years - text books, research methodology, stuff that I've just thought looks interesting.
8. (orange) Biography/autobiography/memoir/true events. Occasional overlap with other categories, but otherwise pretty self-explanatory.
9. (light brown) Ancient fiction (pre-1900). Lots courtesy of Project Gutenberg, plus other bits and bobs I've picked up over the years.
10. (purple) Travel. Anywhere in the world - mainly but not exclusively non-fiction.
11. (dark brown) Religious. Mainly related to Christianity, but not exclusively. Primarily non-fiction.
12. Random. CATWoman/CultureCAT reads, plus maybe RandomCAT some months.

One of my aims for 2017 is to figure out how to add pictures to LT threads – let's see how that goes!

1. Central/Eastern Europe and former Soviet Union.

1. Cornelia Mureșan - Schimbările comportamentului familial în România : o abordare din perspectiva cursului vieții. Finished 25.5.17. 3.5/5.
2. Patrick Leigh Fermor - A Time of Gifts. Finished 24.10.17. 4.5/5.
3. Patrick Leigh Fermor - Between the Woods and the Water. Finished 11.11.17. 4/5.
4. Patrick Leigh Fermor - The Broken Road. Finished 21.12.17. 4/5.

2. Non-fiction (general).

1. Gaston Dorren - Lingo: Around Europe in Sixty Languages. Finished 26.1.17. 3.5/5.
2. Various - The Anti-Inauguration. Finished 11.2.17. 3.5/5.
3. Brian Wansink - Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think. Finished 11.4.17. 3.5/5.
4. Tim Shipman - All Out War: The Full Story of How Brexit Sank Britain's Political Class. Finished 3.6.17. 4.5/5.
5. Lindsey German & John Rees - A People's History of London. Finished 3.10.17. 3.5/5.

3. Contemporary fiction (1969-present).

1. Brian Jacques - Redwall. Finished 18.1.17. 3/5.

4. Sexual/reproductive health/rights; parenting; children; gender.

1. Katie Kirby - Hurrah for Gin: A book for perfectly imperfect parents. Finished 16.2.17. 5/5.
2. Val Gillies, Rosalind Edwards and Nicola Horley - Challenging the politics of early intervention: Who's 'saving' children and why. Finished 7.11.17. 4.5/5.

5. Celtic.

1. Jim Crumley - The Great Wood. Finished 22.3.17. 4.5/5.
2. Catherine Czerkawska - The Way it Was: A History of Gigha. Finished 11.6.17. 4/5.
3. Mairi Hedderwick - Seachange: The Summer Voyage From East to West Scotland of the Anassa. Finished 30.7.17. 4/5.
4. Mairi Hedderwick - Shetland Rambles: A Sketching Tour. Finished 13.8.17. 4.5/5.

6. Vintage fiction (1900-1968).

1. L.M. Montgomery - Anne of Green Gables (1). Finished 29.5.17. 4/5.

7. Academic.

1. Joanne Faulkner - The Importance of Being Innocent : Why we Worry About Children. Finished 23.4.17. 4.5/5.
2. Hester Vaizey - Born in the GDR: Living in the Shadow of the Wall. Finished 10.12.17. 4/5.

8. Biography/autobiography/memoir/true events.

1. Nelson Mandela - Long Walk to Freedom. Finished 14.10.17. 5/5.

9. Ancient fiction (pre-1900).

1. Jerome K Jerome - Three Men in a Boat—To Say Nothing of the Dog. Finished 29.6.17. 2.5/5.

10. Travel.

1. Ben Rawlence - Radio Congo: Signals of Hope from Africa's Deadliest War. Finished 18.6.17. 4/5.
2. John McCarthy & Sandi Toksvig - Island Race: An Improbable Voyage Round the Coast of Britain. Finished 27.7.17. 4.5/5.

11. Religious.

1. Shane Claiborne & Tony Campolo - Red Letter Christianity. Finished 10.7.17. 4.5/5.

12. Random (CATS).

1. Ben Goldacre - Bad Pharma. January CultureCAT (Ethics in Science and Technology). Finished 2.1.17. 4.5/5.
2. Ray Moynihan & Barbara Mintzes - Sex, Lies & Pharmaceuticals: How Drug Companies Plan to Profit from Female Sexual Dysfunction. January CultureCAT (Ethics in Science and Technology). Finished 16.1.17. 4.5/5.
3. E. Nesbit - The Railway Children. January CATWoman (Classics by a woman). Finished 30.1.17. 3.5/5.
4. Amy Brown - Breastfeeding Uncovered: Who Really Decides How we Feed Our Babies?. February CultureCAT (Medicine and Public Health)/February CATWoman (debut books). Finished 13.2.17. 4.5/5
5. Alice Oswald - The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile. February CATWoman (debut books). Finished 23.2.17. 3/5.
6. Jan Carson - Malcolm Orange Disappears. February CATWoman (debut books)/March RandomCAT (Luck of the Irish). Finished 18.3.17. 4.5/5.
7. Na'ima B. Robert - From My Sisters' Lips. March CultureCAT (Cultural Awareness & Diversity). Finished 20.3.17. 3/5.
8. Jill Paton Walsh - Fireweed. March CATWoman (genres). Finished 28.3.17. 4/5.
9. Amy Liptrot - The Outrun. April CATWoman (biography/autobiography/memoir). Finished 2.4.17. 5/5.
10. James Bowen - Street Cat Bob. April RandomCAT (Love in the Stacks - library books). Finished 3.4.17. 3/5.
11. Ranya Idliby, Suzanne Oliver & Priscilla Warner - The Faith Club: A Muslim, A Christian, A Jew-- Three Women Search for Understanding. April CultureCAT (Religious Diversity & Freedom)/April CATWoman (biography/autobiography/memoir). Finished 15.4.17. 4/5.
12. Neil Paynter - The Sun Slowly Rises (no touchstone). April CultureCAT (Religious Diversity & Freedom). Finished 16.4.17. 3.5/5.
13. Dawn French - Dear Fatty. May CATWoman (Women in the Arts). Finished 17.5.17. 4/5.
14. Cordelia Fine - Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences. May CultureCAT (Gender Equality). Finished 18.5.17. 4/5.
15. Paul R. Ehrlich & Michael Charles Tobias - Hope on Earth: A Conversation. June CultureCAT (Environmentalism/Conservation). Finished 5.6.17. 3/5.
16. Margot Lee Shetterly - Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race. June CATWoman (Professional Women). Finished 24.6.17. 4/5.
17. Human Rights Watch Staff - Public Scandals-- Criminal Law and Sexual Orientation in Romania. July CultureCAT (Violence, Crime and Justice). Finished 9.7.17. 4.5/5.
18. Pauline Nevins - "Fudge": The Downs and Ups of a Biracial, Half-Irish, British War Baby. July CATWoman (Women of Colour). Finished 24.7.17. 4/5.
19. Victor Malarek - The Natashas: Inside the New Global Sex Trade. July CultureCAT (Violence, Crime and Justice). Finished 26.7.17. 4/5.
20. Karl Pilkington - Happyslapped by a Jellyfish. August RandomCAT (Animal Kingdom). Finished 31.7.17. 2/5.
21. David Welky - The Thousand-Year Flood: The Ohio-Mississippi Disaster of 1937. August CultureCAT (Impact of Natural Disasters). Finished 6.8.17. 4.5/5.
22. Jacky Donovan - Simon Ships Out. August RandomCAT (Animal Kingdom). Finished 6.8.17. 3/5.
23. James Rebanks - The Shepherd's Life: A Tale of the Lake District. August RandomCAT (Animal Kingdom). Finished 13.8.17. 5/5.
24. Margaretta Eagar - Six Years at the Russian Court. August CATWoman (Historical fiction/non-fiction). Finished 18.8.17. 2/5.
25. Andre Alexis - Fifteen Dogs. August RandomCAT (Animal Kingdom). Finished 20.8.17. 4/5.
26. Marta Dyczok - Ukraine's Euromaidan: Broadcasting through Information Wars with Hromadske Radio. September CultureCAT (Journalism & the Arts). Finished 27.8.17. 4/5.
27. Marie Colvin - On the Front Line: The Collected Journalism of Marie Colvin. September CultureCAT (Journalism & the Arts). Finished 27.8.17. 5/5.
28. ed. Mindy Klasky - Nevertheless, She Persisted. September RandomCAT (Where did the time go?). Finished 29.9.17. 3/5.
29. Kate Evans - Red Rosa. September CATWoman (Children's/YA lit, graphic novels). Finished 1.10.17. 4.5/5.
30. Jane Smith - Wild Island: A Year in the Hebrides. October CATWoman (Regional Reading). Finished 3.10.17. 4.5/5.
31. Jennifer Worth - Call the Midwife. October CultureCAT (Poverty). Finished 13.10.17. 4.5/5.
32. Juliet Jacques - Trans: A Memoir. November CATWoman (LGBT/Feminist writing). Finished 18.11.17. 4/5.
33. Mark Thomas - Extreme Rambling: Walking Israel's Separation Barrier. For Fun. November RandomCAT (Traffic Jam) / November CultureCAT (Conflict and War). Finished 20.11.17. 4.5/5.
34. Steven Galloway - The Cellist of Sarajevo. November CultureCAT (Conflict and War). Finished 25.11.17. 4.5/5.
35. Rebecca Solnit - Men Explain Things To Me. November CATWoman (LGBT/Feminist Writing). Finished 1.12.17. 4.5/5.
36. Dav Pilkey - Kat Kong. December RandomCAT (One Day). Finished 5.12.17. 3.5/5.
37. Bill Watterson - Calvin and Hobbes: In the Shadow of the Night. December RandomCAT (One Day). Finished 5.12.17. 4/5.
38. Campbell McCutcheon - St Kilda: A Journey to the End of the World. December RandomCAT (One Day). Finished 9.12.17. 3.5/5.
39. Emma Jane Kirby - The Optician of Lampedusa. December CultureCAT (Cultural Flow/Immigration)/December RandomCAT (One Day). Finished 29.12.17. 5/5.

I think that's me open for business! :)

I hope the Fates are kind and give you lots of great books to read in 2017!

Hurray, Jackie is back! Looking forward to seeing what the Jar of Fate has in store for you in 2017 :)

Hi Jackie, it's nice to see you back here, setting up shop early! Good luck with the chunksters, I've got some in my sights, too.

>15 LittleTaiko: >16 rabbitprincess: Thank you both! So far the Jar of Fate has revolutionised my reading, so hopefully that will continue in 2017!

>17 MissWatson: Working on the thread has helped take my mind off certain, uh, world events right now that are taking up far too much of my headspace (not in a good way). Otherwise I would probably have left it till December!

Welcome back, Jackie. I found the following thread very helpful in learning to post pictures etc.

http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/HelpThing:Html_tips

Hope you find it helpful as well.

I think this is just the neatest system! I'm looking forward to seeing what path the Jar of Fate has in store for you.

I love the Jar of Fates that you have going on. Look forward to your reading.

I love your Jar of Fate. I hope it gibes you some great books next year. :)

>19 DeltaQueen50: Thank you, I have copied that thread and hopefully will make enough sense of it to add a bit of colour into my thread this time round!

>20 Sace: >21 luvamystery65: >22 Chrischi_HH: The Jar of Fate has been brilliant. The only problem is that I'm so curious to know what's coming next that I have to try really hard not to pick out 12 different titles at once! I've currently got 4 books on the go and the next title picked out, and I'm having to be really strict with myself to not pull any more out till I've made headway with them!

I found the best way to learn was simply to practise. You can practise on your thread or even on your profile page. Of course if you have any questions just ask away and someone will probably be able to help.

Your Jar of Fate system must be the most innovative in the group! Looking forward to following along in 2017.

>25 VivienneR: Thank you, though I must admit I got the idea from somebody in the 2015 ROOT group and just adapted it a little when I decided to do the Category Challenge in 2016. It's meant that I've read a really good mix of TBRs I've had for ever and a few newer shinier ones too, and it's banished those times when I'm in a choosing funk and I don't want to read a single book on my shelves because they're all just not right for just now (I'm sure it's not just me who has those!).

It was also very very eye-opening when I started writing down all my TBR titles - I had estimated I had around 100 TBRs (and thought that was such a lot!), but 3 times that amount is closer to reality!

>26 Jackie_K:

"...those times when I'm in a choosing funk and I don't want to read a single book on my shelves because they're all just not right for just now (I'm sure it's not just me who has those!)."

And you're right! I'm in one myself right now.

>27 Sace: The Jar has worked well for me - I've just read whatever title came out, regardless of how I've felt about it (I'm not allowing myself to put titles back in and choosing another instead - only in exceptional circumstances, like when I can't find the book I pulled out, or when because of being on holiday I specifically needed to read an ebook). I know others use random generators to pick titles, and others have used a system based on lottery numbers. I know what I'm like - if it's just down to me to pick, I'll end up just reading rubbish on the internet instead :)

>28 Jackie_K:
"...just read whatever title came out, regardless of how I've felt about it..."

At the beginning of this year I had done some "planned" reading and I was surprised at how it didn't take away any joy from my reading. It's not quite pulling a random title, but I had made a list or ROOTS and decided to stick to it, whether I felt like reading the books or not. I did end up liking most of the books. Though I have slipped back into the "I can't decide what to read" patterns of the past.

I have just been looking at the two CATs I plan on participating in (CultureCAT and CATwoman), and thinking of potential titles. And I'm beginning to wonder if I'll need the Jar at all next year! I have at least one title for every month of CultureCAT (18 books total), and the same for seven or eight months of CATWoman too. As I'm keen to interact more in this group than I have in 2016 I want to be fairly committed to the CATs (although I'm not going to worry if there's a month where I don't have a relevant book). So I think my approach will be to prioritise the CATs, and then use the Jar when I finish my CAT reads before the end of the month (or if I have a month where I don't have a CATwoman read lined up). All but one of the books I've identified are current ROOTs, there's just one on my wishlist which I intend to get for one of the CATWoman categories, so I'm pleased that this challenge could make another significant dent in Mt TBR!

I'm getting quite excited about this!

>30 Jackie_K: Anytime we make a dent in the TBR is a cause for excitement.

Welcome back! Good to see you here.

"I'm not changing categories, that colouring took forever!"
Haha - totally understandable!

Taking advantage of a rainy Sunday to visit all of the threads ready and waiting for 2017 to roll around. Like everyone else, I love the Jar of Fate system! Looking forward to seeing what the Fates dole out as your 2017 reading.

Wow. I need a jar of fate. Need to get some of my own books read instead of buying new ones. But I got carried away in my own goals this year and now have a pretty solidified schedule.

>30 Jackie_K: Don't swerve to hard from your jar of fate! You'll get a completely solidified goal like me. :D

This is a really good way to actually do most of your reading from your own shelves.

Hi Jackie, glad to see you here! I'm going to try this group this year. Glad the jar of fate worked so well for you that you are going with it again.

>36 Tess_W: thanks Tess, yes it's been brilliant - I have never ever read as many books as I have this year! I'm going to do two of the CATs (CATWoman and CultureCAT) though, and have so many titles that could fit them that I'm going to modify the challenge slightly. I will read my chosen CAT books each month, and aim for one book from the Jar of Fate each month. That way I should still easily meet my number challenge (1 book in each of the eleven JoF categories, plus at least 7 in category 12 which is where I'm putting my CAT reads) but still have the pleasure of the surprise of the Jar.

I love the reverse engineering you have done and I totally understand why you will continue with the system you set up last year. Do you add new books to your system as the year progresses or are you able to resist adding to your TBRs? Whichever, I hope 2017 is a successful year for your reading and your career!

>38 mamzel: thank you! Yes, I pretty much add new books to the system as I get them (although I usually let a few build up and then have a nice 5 minutes of colouring in :) ). I figure every book I obtain is basically a TBR, it just varies how long I leave them before I start! I've always been much better at buying books than reading them, so I've never really been much of one for reading as soon as I buy something. Ideally when I shift Mt TBR I can start to try and read exciting shiny new books when I first buy them, but I'm a while away from that blessed state just yet! (and this year I have pulled out 2 or 3 books that I acquired this year, as well as some that I've owned for a million years, so it's been a nice mix).

Happy New Year, Jackie!

>40 The_Hibernator: >41 Sace: thank you! Happy new year to all here!

I've read my first book of the year, for January's CultureCAT (it's quite hefty, I started it before Christmas). It's Ben Goldacre's Bad Pharma. I'm already a fan of his, I like his writing a lot - he's well known for debunking poor/quack science. This is very passionately argued, but also very very readable, a plea for all involved in developing, regulating, and prescribing drugs, to work ethically and transparently (after giving example after example after example of how they don't). He goes over the loopholes and missing trial data that has dogged medicine and drug development, and does not pull any punches in detailing the implications of incomplete/misleading data. Despite the title, it is not just the pharmaceutical industry who are targetted here, but also regulators, doctors, journal editors, academics, patient groups, and many others. This is an angry, but passionate, and ultimately hopeful book (at least, the 2013 afterword in my edition gives some considerable cause for optimism, not least because of the setting up of the AllTrials campaign). 4.5/5.

Love the Jar of Fate...I have to say that I almost always start thinking about the Flying Fickle Finger of Fate from the Rowan and Martin show (yeah, way back when, showing my age...).

>43 LisaMorr: Haha - being from the UK that was a cultural reference that passed me by completely, so I had to look it up! For some reason, reading about it reminded me of The Dove From Above (there's a UK cultural reference! It's from a comedy show called Shooting Stars).

>44 Jackie_K: Thanks for that reference - I just watched a bunch of people cooing a dove down from the ceiling...!

>45 LisaMorr: Excellent! It was a very very silly programme, but very popular, so people of my age (40s) in the UK will usually get the references if someone was to randomly insert the catchphrases into conversation.

I've just finished my second book for this month's CultureCAT, another 4.5/5 star read and a great compliment to Bad Pharma which was my first one. Ray Moynihan & Barbara Mintzes' Sex, Lies & Pharmaceuticals: How Drug Companies Plan to Profit from Female Sexual Dysfunction is basically a very detailed case study of many of the issues raised in Bad Pharma, namely how pharmaceutical companies seek to create interest in new medical conditions (which may or may not actually exist - certainly this is the debate around the nebulous 'Female Sexual Dysfunction') in order to create fertile ground for a demand for new treatments, including influencing academics and medics to research and promote these treatments. This was really well written (reflecting Moynihan's background in journalism), and very readable and approachable. It's not as angry in tone as Bad Pharma, but no less hard-hitting for that. Highly recommended.

My library's copy of Hurrah for Gin arrived! :D

>48 rabbitprincess: Hooray! I hope you enjoy it. About half of my friends seemed to get it for Christmas, judging by the various photos of it (usually next to a glass of something) on my facebook feed over the holiday period!

>49 Jackie_K: So far, so good! I love the cartoons, especially when they involve swearing and/or messes. It looks so much funnier in stick figure form!

>50 rabbitprincess: I am seriously considering bypassing the Jar of Fate and just reading it anyway :)

My third read for the month/year I pulled out of the Jar of Fate in September or October last year so it has taken me a little while to get through - especially at the start I found reading it a bit of a slog. It's Brian Jacques' Redwall, which is the first published (although not first chronologically in the overall story) of a YA series which ended up being 22 volumes by the time the author died. Redwall is an abbey (although there are pretty much no references to religion, it's the environment and traditions/routines of the abbey which is more important to the story), inhabited by peaceful mice and other woodland folk, which comes under siege by evil rat warlord Cluny the Scourge. Can plucky novice mouse Matthias find the ancient sword of Redwall founder Martin the Warrior and save Redwall from being overcome by the advances of evil?

Good points about this book include a good build-up of tension as the plucky abbey residents win skirmishes but Cluny plots again as he licks his wounds, and just as we think Matthias will find the sword a clever plot twist means that quest is drawn out till much later in the book. Also I really liked some of the characters - Constance the badger, Jess Squirrel and Warbeak the sparrow in particular. And it is beautifully written - it is a first novel, but is very assured writing and there wasn't a single place where I noticed a literary device (you know what I mean - sometimes you read something that is going well and then there's a really obvious or clumsy piece of alliteration or something like that which you know is for a particular effect. I much prefer writing where that sort of thing just isn't obvious because it's all flowing so well, and that was definitely the case here). Also a more shallow thing, the chapters are really short, which is always a big plus in my book - it's easy to feel like you're making progress because you've read 6 chapters in one go, even though each chapter is only 3 or 4 pages long, which I always appreciate psychologically!

Less good (for me), and the reason I think that it took me so long to get into reading this regularly, rather than just picking it up occasionally which is what I did to start with, is that the whole good-vs-evil thing was so very one-dimensional. So all of the goodies were 100% good, and all of the baddies were cartoon-caricature 100% evil, and I just found that a bit dull. I do appreciate that for YA readers things often need to be a bit more black and white like that, and I'm not the target audience really, but I did find that a bit irritating. Also (with the exception of the 3 characters I mentioned above as favourites) I thought the gender roles were portrayed fairly stereotypically. However, I realise that expecting realism and depth in a children's book about talking animals is really a bit silly, so I have got over myself :)

I am giving this 3/5 stars - I dropped half a star because it did take me so long to get into it. But I'll definitely be keeping it, and encouraging my daughter to read it when she's around 11-12 as I suspect that kind of age group would really enjoy this, as I did once I eventually got into it. I'm not planning on reading any more of the series, but I can understand why it's so popular.

I saw Mr. Jacques many moons ago. He said he was inspired to write these books after volunteering to read to blind people. He was very disappointed that the books he read had so little description in them so he wrote his books with lots.

>53 mamzel: Yes - I could picture exactly each scene as I read, as it was so rich in description! Despite my misgivings about aspects of it, I do think it's a remarkable first book for someone with no literary background (he was a docker in the Liverpool shipyards).

I finished another Jar of Fate pick, for my general non-fiction category, Gaston Dorren's Lingo: Around Europe in Sixty Languages which I enjoyed very much, although I occasionally found it a bit frustrating too! As the title says, he covers many of the European languages in short chapters, not in any kind of depth but often identifying one particular feature or quirk and discussing those, which was very interesting and accessible. I occasionally got a bit frustrated that the discussion didn't use as many actual examples from the language as I would have liked - as well as talking about them, I like to see what they look like! But that is a minor point really, as this book never makes any claim to being comprehensive or detailed. It is still a pretty impressive bit of research, and I think it's quite an achievement to make linguistics readable and accessible! 3.5/5.

I just finished E. Nesbit's classic, The Railway Children, for January's CATWoman challenge (classics by a woman). I'm pretty sure I'm the only Brit left who's never seen the film! This was a lovely read, very 'of its time', and I must admit to shedding a little tear a couple of times! I'm not sure I dare watch the film, I will be in floods. It's a bit corny, but I did enjoy it very much. 3.5/5.

>56 Jackie_K:
I really need to reread that one!

>57 -Eva-: I'll definitely keep it and reread it at some point. I really must watch the film, although I'll wait till I'm feeling strong as I know I'll have a good old weep!

I've finished another book for my Non-Fiction (general) category - a very new and shiny one, as I only acquired it a few days ago! It was another of Verso Books' free (short! - this one is 46 pages) ebooks on a contemporary issue (last year I read their Brexit equivalent, brought out just a couple of weeks after the UK's vote to leave the EU, and made up of essays that had appeared in the immediate aftermath of the result). This one is called The Anti-Inauguration, and was produced in the days after the Jan 20th inauguration in the USA based on an event of the same name. It is from an unashamedly left-wing perspective, looking at how to mobilise and organise in the face of the new political reality, but the main thing that I liked about it was that most of the five essays were just as critical of the Democratic party as of the new administration - it is saying the status quo isn't enough, we can aim and achieve so much better than that. The last essay in particular, by Keeanga-Yaahtta Taylor, was really excellent (emphasising solidarity rather than individual factionalism), and I also enjoyed the chapter by Owen Jones. The first chapter by Naomi Klein was the weakest one, I thought - I didn't disagree with her, I just found the writing style a bit all over the place. Overall I think that I'd like to read around this subject in a bit more depth (although I'm not especially expecting depth so soon after the event), but this is a good start. 3.5/5.

It's available for download from here if anyone's interested: http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3074-free-ebook-the-anti-inauguration-building-r....

Forgot to tell you that I really enjoyed Hurrah for Gin! Some parts were so funny that I nearly fell over laughing!

>59 rabbitprincess: Oh brilliant, I'm so glad you enjoyed it! I actually just pulled Hurrah for Gin out of the Jar of Fate so will be starting it very soon, I can't wait!

The book I've just finished counts for both February's CultureCAT (Medicine & Public Health) and February's CATWoman (Debut books) themes. It's Amy Brown's Breastfeeding Uncovered: Who Really Decides how we Feed our Babies?, which is really fantastic. I follow the author on twitter and have interacted with her there briefly; I'd say she's probably the foremost UK researcher working on infant feeding at the moment and I really like her work. So no surprise that I thought this book was excellent. After starting off with a realistic look at research into the benefits of breastfeeding (including the relative strength of this research - one thing that often annoys me when folk promote breastfeeding is the uncritical parroting of relatively weak research, but this book avoids that), she looks at wider factors which affect how empowered women feel to start, and continue, breastfeeding (from political lack of funding, parenting manuals, pressure from family, societal disapproval, etc etc). As both a health care professional who tries hard to support families with breastfeeding, and a mum who had particular difficulties with breastfeeding (primarily due to medication affecting my milk supply), I found this a supportive and helpful book and would recommend it to anyone. The only thing I was a bit disappointed about was in her section which criticised a couple of popular parenting books for their advice which is absolutely contrary to supporting and establishing breastfeeding, she repeatedly made the point that the authors were not mothers. I worked for many years in my job before I was able to have my daughter, and "how can you give advice when you've not done it" is something that I often had to face, often painfully. I think that there's more than enough to criticise in those particular parenting manuals, without having to point out something so personal, and potentially painful, about the authors. Other than that though, this is an absolutely excellent book which I would thoroughly recommend to both health care professionals and parents/potential parents who want to know more about issues around breastfeeding. It's not a how-to book at all (there are plenty of those already on the market), but a passionate argument for increased support for families, whatever choice they make about feeding, and for society to become more supportive and less uptight about breastfeeding. 4.5/5.

My first book this year in the (wordily-named) "Sexual/reproductive health/rights; parenting; children; gender" category, and my first 5 star read for ages (lots of books have come very close and been 4.5, but this one just had me nodding with recognition all the way through!). Katie Kirby's Hurrah for Gin: A book for perfectly imperfect parents is based on her blog of the same name, which has built up quite the following in the last couple of years. This is one of a growing number of parenting blogs which aim to tell it like it really is (rather than that parenting is all roses and rainbows and perfection), and is funny, irreverent and sweary, but also oh so real. The stick figure drawings just add to the overall effect that we're all just making up this parenting business as we go along.

I think what I liked most about this book (other than the fact that it is hilarious) is the sections where she reminds us (and herself, I suspect) about what really matters, and that aiming for perfection is leaving you on a hiding to nowhere. She did a blog post a while ago (not in the book) for Postnatal Depression Day which was spot on - so don't think that this is all just about swearing and dreaming about gin (although there's quite a lot of that too).

The only down side was that I have been reading this while in the throes of a viral cough and evil cold which mean that right now I don't actually dare laugh out loud in case I stop breathing or puke thanks to a mad coughing fit. I'd better read something less funny next...

Get well soon, Jackie. A bad cough is the worst.

Unfortunately due to (still!) being unwell my reading has gone down a fair bit - I normally read in the half hour or so after going to bed, but the last few days I have felt so crappy still that I just haven't had the energy for reading. So I've got behind on the book I was reading (and very much enjoying) that I was expecting to finish by the end of the month. I was though wanting to get at least one more book in this month, so I picked up a small book which I'd set aside for next month's CATWoman challenge (which as it turns out also fits this month's CATWoman!). I finished it this morning.

Now, I have to say that I am not really a poetry fan, so although this was short I did feel a bit daunted by it. The collection in question is Alice Oswald's The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile, which was bought for me as a gift by my brother-in-law (who is also a published poet). And to start with as I read I felt my usual misgivings about poetry - I wish I could get into it, I can see that it is beautifully putting into words things that us mere mortals really struggle to express, but so much of it goes over my head and I don't really understand what is going on. However, although most of the poems were only short (a page long at most), the final one was several pages long and the author did include an explanatory introduction, and that one I really did enjoy (probably thanks to the introduction meaning that I had an idea at the outset of what it was about, so I could appreciate her word-use more). So the final one has pushed up my ranking to 3 stars.

I have a hard time with poetry too, and could definitely not read it while I was sick, so that's a huge accomplishment. :) Hope you feel better soon!

Hope you are feeling better soon, Jackie. Not fair to have your reading suffer too!

>63 RidgewayGirl: >65 -Eva-: >66 VivienneR: Thank you for the sympathy! I'm still feeling not great, but am a bit happier having been to see the nurse this week that they are taking me seriously - I have been given a peak flow meter, and an appointment in a month to see their nurse who specialises in asthma, so that it can be either confirmed or ruled out. Unsurprisingly, my peak flow readings so far have been shocking, way below what they should be (which certainly confirms how I feel - like someone is sitting on my chest!). It doesn't help me with my current symptoms, but if it shows them how much my breathing is compromised when I get these viruses (and for how long! - the last two I had lasted 7 weeks each, and I'm well into week 4 of this one!) then I'm hopeful they will prescribe inhalers so I can deal with it better next time!

Luckily Lent is round the corner and I am giving up facebook for the duration, so (at least in theory, given the amount of time I spend there) that will give me quite a bit more reading time for the next month and a bit! Hopefully I will catch up with myself then :)

I finally finished a book in March! And excellent it was too! (I do have a number of others on the go too). I started this in February, intending it to be for the February CATWoman (Debut books) (I'll still add it to the thread and wiki), but as I finished it in March I am also going to count it for March RandomCAT (Luck of the Irish).



Malcolm Orange Disappears is the debut novel by Northern Ireland author Jan Carson. I have a signed copy of the book as a gift from my brother-in-law, as it was published in the year that she was in receipt of a career enhancement grant from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, which he (my BIL) also received the same year (he's a published poet - there were about 12 grants given, if I recall correctly, and they had to do a number of events (readings etc) as well as use the money to work on their next work).

It's set across America, with a cast of weird misfits, and whilst starting off relatively 'normally', as the book goes on there are more and more glimpses of magical realism. That's not something I normally like in a book, but here it worked really well. I found this funny, sad, infuriating, easy to read, horrific, entertaining, funny again, and by the end I was really rooting for most of the characters (apart from Dr Blue, who becomes more and more cartoon villain-like). I'd really thoroughly recommend this, and I'm really keen to read her subsequent work (currently a book of short stories, set in Belfast).

The basic premise is that the Orange family (Malcolm, 11, his baby brother Ross, and his parents) spend their lives driving across America, not settling anywhere and moving on whenever they get into trouble. Eventually Malcolm's father abandons them, and the children with their mum find themselves living in a chalet in a Baptist retirement village, where his mum takes a job looking after the misfit residents. Malcolm realises that he is starting to disappear, in the form of holes that start to appear on his body, first as pinpricks but gradually getting bigger, so that he can see right through them. However, nobody else seems to be able to see this. This is partly the story of Malcolm trying to figure out what to do, partly the story of the various elderly residents, and partly the story of his mum and how she tries to make her escape. Along with the residents (my favourite of whom was Cunningham Holt), the story also features a talking cat, Dr Blue's rebellious daughter, and flying children, as well as post-Vietnam era discredited psychological treatment, and a comedy shooting. It's impossible to describe really, but do read it - it's very funny, and beautifully written, a very very impressive debut. 4.5/5.

>68 Jackie_K: Great review! Being a Northern Ireland ex-pat, I'll be on the lookout for Jan Carson.

>69 VivienneR: I think you'll enjoy her work, Vivienne! Her second book (mentioned above) is a set of short stories set in Belfast, called Children's Children (it doesn't seem to have a touchstone, but on amazon it's here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Childrens-Children-Jan-Carson/dp/1910742295/ref=sr_1_1?... ).

I've just finished my read for the March CultureCAT (Cultural Awareness and Diversity).



This was a very interesting book, which (for me) ultimately failed to realise its potential. Na'ima B. Roberts' From my sisters' lips is a book that I actually won in a radio phone-in in late 2004/early 2005 when the book first came out, I'd heard an interview with the author and was really chuffed to win it! The author is a convert (or, more accurately in the Islamic context, revert) to Islam, and this book is both a celebration of Muslim womanhood and also an account of her and other women's stories of coming to Islam, and looks at certain issues (covering, marriage, children, submission to Allah, and Islamic sisterhood) under the overarching theme of 'Living Islam'. It was really interesting and I felt that I learnt a lot that I really didn't know before, so from that perspective it was successful.

However, I was ultimately disappointed with this book. I think from very early on it was obvious that this was an account from a very enthusiastic and committed convert, and thus everything was presented as obviously right and there wasn't much place for doubt and questioning, which I must admit is what I find very interesting in people's faith journeys, and where ultimately the depth and strength of faith is developed. There was a chapter early on about difficulties, so I thought that would be where I would find a bit of what I was looking for, but it tended to focus on the difficulties of other people's reactions to finding out that a woman has converted, rather than the difficulties and doubts that that woman experienced and how she worked/is working through them. She occasionally alluded to certain issues (particularly around male-female relationships) where she had to work through issues before coming to the 'correct' understanding, but she didn't say a huge amount about these. The book really left me with lots more questions - what about gay, or disabled, or feminist, Muslims? What would their stories look like? It's left me wanting to read more accounts from different perspectives.

Overall I'm giving this 3 stars. As an introduction to Islam from a particular perspective of women converts this is an informative and easy to read account (albeit quite 'earnest' in style) which gives lots of information and insight. I think I'm just more interested in the 'awkward squad' accounts!

My 1st book this year in my Celtic category is Jim Crumley's The Great Wood. This is a fantastically poetic look at what is left of the so-called Great Wood of Caledon, the forest which is supposed to have covered large swathes of Scotland thousands of years ago. Each chapter is based in another bit of the remaining forest, and looks at the land as it is, the wildlife and trees, the other influences on the land (such as commercial forestry), and the book concludes with the author's own theory on the extent of the Great Wood. Essentially this is a love song to trees, and to landscape, and I loved it. Crumley could be accused of romanticism, but I think his approach is pretty pragmatic - he isn't, for example, uniformly against forestry for example, or against introduced species, although he does argue for a different approach. He writes so beautifully (about this time last year I read another of his books, Among Islands, which was one of my favourite reads of the year). 4.5/5.

Sorry about the deleted message. I was interrupted and tried to finish quickly. Mistake. I found some info about Jan Carson that that looked interesting but can't bring it up again. I added her books to my Book Depository wishlist so I'll get them eventually.

Yesterday I finished a book which I'm going to count for the March CATWoman (genres), Jill Paton Walsh's Fireweed which is a YA book I remember reading in school and being really taken with it at the time. It's set in London in WW2 and is about two teenagers, Bill and Julie, who are essentially runaways in wartime London avoiding the authorities who would try to re-evacuate them. It's a short book, with a not-especially-happy-although-not-tragic ending, unusual for YA books particularly at this time (the book was written in 1969). I know that the author has since dismissed the book as juvenilia, but my googling suggests that there are a lot of people who are really fond of it and like me have memories of it packing quite a punch at an impressionable age. I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting it. 4/5.

My read for April's CATWoman (biography/autobiography/memoir) is Amy Liptrot's The Outrun. I can't rave enough about this wonderful book. It is a memoir of her return to her childhood home of Orkney after a decade of alcoholism and drifting in London, and deals with her reaction to the landscape and nature in Orkney, and the various experiences she has, as well as her ongoing experience of addiction while sober, and reflections about her life. Insightful, stark, beautiful, extraordinary - everyone should read it! I am pretty sure this is going to be my book of the year, it's going to take an absolutely exceptional book to beat it. 5/5.

I finished my library book Street Cat Bob (for April's RandomCAT) in less than a day - a sweet, true story of a cat who adopted a human who happened to be a vulnerably housed recovering drug addict, and together they turned their lives around. It's a pretty simple tale - James had a living creature other than himself to focus on, and that is the motivation for him to finally get himself clean and on more of an even keel. 3/5.

This is the Quick Reads version - www.quickreads.org.uk is an organisation who commission authors to write books which are designed to be short and easy to read in order to be more accessible to readers who are less confident in their reading ability, but are otherwise pretty much the same as mainstream books. They are then sold through regular bookselling outlets, or (as in this case) distributed to libraries.

(edited to add the picture)

>77 Jackie_K: I read the full version and enjoyed it. It's always good to read of a positive outcome.

My next book in my General Non-fiction category is a popular psychology book, Brian Wansink's Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think. Last year I read Beyond Chocolate by Sophie and Audrey Boss which made a lot of sense to me and made me think about trying to eat more mindfully. Reading "Mindless Eating" is my next step, this was a very readable discussion of the ways that we think we're in control of what we eat and the decisions we make about food, but actually how influenced we are by external factors. Further than that, it makes suggestions of small changes to make to our habits which can make small, but tangible (and hopefully more sustainable) differences over the long term (if you want to lose a large amount of weight in a short amount of time, this really isn't the book for you). It's got me thinking about changes I can make which I know can work for me, and hopefully I will start seeing the fruits of approaching my food more thoughtfully as the year goes on.

This was slightly spoiled for me when I found out, midway through reading the book, that the author and his lab are being investigated for misconduct over, let's say statistical massaging, with some of his academic articles being challenged over their methods and interpretations. This is not an academic book though, it's more a distillation of some of his research findings for a popular/non-academic audience, and so I had already approached it with the perspective of seeing if there were any good ideas that made sense to me rather than that it was gospel. I think reading it like that was fine, and may well dip into it again in the future. 3.5/5.

Happy Easter everyone! I hope you're having a lovely day, however you celebrate it!

I finished my two Lent books, yesterday and today.



The Faith Club: A Muslim, A Christian, A Jew-- Three Women Search for Understanding by Ranya Idliby, Suzanne Oliver and Priscilla Warner, pretty much does what it says on the tin. I didn't have particularly high expectations for this book, but I found myself really warming to all three women and really appreciating their honesty in examining their own and each other's religions. They started to meet after 9/11 when Ranya had the idea of writing a children's book which examined the similarities and connections between Islam, Christianity and Judaism, and sought out a Christian and Jewish mother to co-write it with her. It soon became apparent to them that before they could write that book, they needed to discuss their own prejudices, stereotypes and beliefs with honesty and openness, and it is as a result of that process that this book emerged. It has to be said that all three are from the more liberal end of their respective religions, which is probably why I found them easy to warm to - we all relate to 'people like us'. That said, I did find their discussions fascinating and challenging, and it has given me lots to think about.

As this is in effect a group memoir, I am counting it for this month's CATWoman (autobiography, biography and memoir) as well as for the CultureCAT (Religious Diversity and Freedom). 4/5



My second book is from the Iona Community and is a series of readings, poems and other pieces for Holy Week: Neil Paynter's "The Sun Slowly Rises" (available from here: http://www.ionabooks.com/the-sun-slowly-rises-downloadable-book.html ). Like "The Faith Club", I'd say the Iona Community is largely from the liberal end of the spectrum, with a very heavy emphasis on social justice, the environment, etc, so again largely preaching to the converted here. I found some of the readings touched me more than others (particularly the main Palm Sunday reading), but again found plenty here to make me think. Another one for this month's CultureCAT (Religious Diversity and Freedom), although it won't be on the wiki as it doesn't seem to have an LT listing. 3.5/5.

My first book for my academic category this year is The Importance of Being Innocent : why we worry about children by Joanne Faulkner. I had picked this up thinking it was going to be a book from a sociological perspective (which is the academic approach I feel most comfortable with), but it turned out that she is actually a philosophy professor, so I was initially a bit daunted, as any philosophy at a level more complicated than Sophie's World more often than not bamboozles me. However, this was an eminently readable and very approachable book which I found fascinating. Her basic premise is that the focus on innocence in childhood is flawed, and she illustrated this by looking at both moral panics and also children who don't fit the narrative (eg adolescents, refugees and indigenous children - the book is mainly focused on Australia, although the points she makes absolutely apply more widely). I can't possibly do it justice, but would absolutely recommend it. 4.5/5.

>80 Jackie_K: Excellent review of The Faith Club. It will do a lot to increase understanding of other religions. I'm putting it on my wish list (even though I have no religion).

>82 VivienneR: Thank you, I hope you enjoy it when you get to it. I found it really interesting and learnt a lot.

>80 Jackie_K: & >82 VivienneR: - Agreed! I love seeing all the different perspectives even though I'm not a religious person either.

May CATWoman read: Women in the Arts.

Now, I have to say that I am not a big consumer of celebrity memoirs, in fact I am really struggling to think if I have ever read another one before, but last year Bookbub alerted me that Dawn French's Dear Fatty was on offer in the kobo store, so I thought I'd give it a go (thanks to Bookbub I've picked up a handful more celeb memoirs since, too). I love Dawn French, not just her on-screen personas (Vicar of Dibley, French & Saunders, Comic Relief etc) but also whenever I've seen her interviewed she seems very grounded and all-round lovely. This book came out in 2008, so some of the newer things in her life (including breaking up with Lenny Henry, which I'm still sad about!) don't feature in this, it finishes more or less with the final French & Saunders tour. It is written in the form of letters to various friends, family members and other celebs, and so is quite an episodic look at her life, but that is really effective, it really worked for me as a format. It was also in parts very very moving - her dad committed suicide when she was 19, and he is a constant presence throughout the book, with very many of the letters written to him telling him about all the things that have happened in her life that he wouldn't have known anything about. I found quite a few passages where I felt a strange wateriness in my eyes because of that - she never lays it on with a trowel, it is just very subtle glimpses of grief, but beautifully done. I thought I would have more laugh out loud moments with it than I did, mostly it produced wry and knowing smiles rather than laughter, although her final letter to Jennifer Saunders (the 'Fatty' of the title, Fatty is Dawn's nickname for Jennifer) had me absolutely howling, especially the anecdote when they were in a panto audience. There were also a few of the letters (primarily to Madonna, but also some of the ones to other celebrities) which just didn't work for me, it felt like she was trying too hard to be funny, whereas in the letters to her family and friends she was just her naturally funny self.

Overall I'd definitely recommend this as a good read, even for people who (like me) don't really do celebs. 4/5.

May CultureCAT read: Gender Equality.

Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences does what it says on the tin, really. She discusses popular (mis)representations of gender and brain research, outlining what the research actually does or doesn't show, to puncture popular neurosexism and shows how important the influence of culture, parenting, environment etc is on both implicit and explicit views on gender. This is popular feminism at it's most accessible, in my view - she's not stuffy, this is very readable and approachable, and in my view really important. It covers similar ground to Pink Brain, Blue Brain by Lise Eliot, which I read a few years ago, and I'd recommend both books. 4/5.

I have finally finished the Romanian book I started to read in January, for my Central & Eastern Europe category, and am feeling extremely chuffed with myself! Cornelia Mureșan's Schimbările comportamentului familial în România : o abordare din perspectiva cursului vieții ("Changes in familial behaviour in Romania: an approach from a life course perspective") is a text book which covers the author's work on the Romanian national Gender and Generation Survey 2005. I spotted it in a bookshop in Bucharest the last time I was there (2012) and bought it based on the title, which is vaguely related to my PhD topic so I thought I stood a good chance of knowing enough of the topic-specific vocabulary to be able to read it. Turns out that was right, so that was a relief! I generally read 2-4 pages at a time, which is why it took so long, but slow and steady wins the race. To start with it is more technical in looking at the data and how they interpreted it; I will be honest that I skimmed quite a lot of this as I am not a quantitative researcher, so the formulae and technicalities went over my head really (I would have skimmed this bit if it had been in English too!). After that it dealt with specific issues raised in the surveys - fertility, marriage, caring responsibilities - which I found much more interesting. I'm not sure it told me much I didn't already know, and as a qualitative researcher it left me with probably more questions about the people behind the figures, but I can definitely see that it is a quality piece of work. 3.5/5.

>87 Jackie_K: Congratulations on finishing!! That is a mighty achievement :D

>87 Jackie_K: Good for you! Give yourself a pat on the back for that one!

Thank you, >88 rabbitprincess: and >89 VivienneR: - I am feeling pretty smug to have finished it!

Hopefully I won't pull out any more foreign language books for a while, I think I need to recover. I have just pulled out a chunkster which will probably take me a couple of months, and am only half way through my current chunkster, so I'm hoping my CultureCAT and CATWoman choices for June will keep me on track to have some books finished in June!

>85 Jackie_K: oh, i love Dawn French. I'm gonna have to seek that one out.

My first book in this year's Vintage Fiction (1900-1968) category is LM Montgomery's classic Anne of Green Gables (1) which I got from Project Gutenberg, which I am very grateful for in giving me the chance to belatedly educate myself on classics I really should have read years ago! It took me a while to get into this one - orphan Anne is adopted by middle-aged spinster/bachelor sister and brother Marilla and Matthew, and lives with them on their farm. Imaginative Anne soon wins everyone's hearts and grows and thrives and teaches everyone not to be so buttoned-up, having various mishaps along the way but it all adds to how adorable she is. I'm such an old cynic that it took me a while to be grabbed by this, but I was rooting for poor Gilbert Blythe throughout, and this morning when I was getting to the end of it I found myself with watery eyes while reading it, so maybe I'm not such a crusty old thing after all! I will at some point get the other books in the series, but I think I'll wait for Mt TBR to reduce a little first! 4/5.

>92 Jackie_K: I am glad you liked Anne! It took me a while to get into the series as well, but it is worth reading. I am also very fond of Emily of New Moon to the point where I probably identify more with Emily than with Anne. Still, both girls are excellent heroines.

Category: Non-fiction (general)

A bit of an epic (apparently the paperback is nearly 700 pages), Tim Shipman's All Out War: The Full Story of how Brexit Sank Britain's Political Class is a really excellent, although thoroughly depressing, look at the lead-up to (and immediate aftermath of) the vote taken in the UK last year to leave the EU. The author is the political editor of the Sunday Times, so already had pretty good access to all the movers and shakers, and this is a very very thorough account of every aspect of all the various sides and groups campaigning for our vote. Obviously knowing the outcome, it wasn't a huge 'what's going to happen here?' kind of thing, but instead it meant that everything I read was read with hindsight, which meant that there were quite a lot of aspects of the 'Leave' campaigns where I found myself thinking "actually, that was really clever, that must have made a huge difference", and aspects of the 'Remain' campaigns which in and of themselves might not have been too disastrous, but knowing the outcome meant that I had my head in my hands more than once thinking 'you ****** idiots'. Essentially, a campaign that became more about maintaining Tory unity after the vote, coupled with the Labour party leadership being pretty much absent, has to take a large chunk of the responsibility, in my view.

A few general thoughts as I read:

* This is a very Westminster-centric account. Which reflects both the background of the author, and the bulk of the campaign itself. With a handful of honourable exceptions (Ruth Davidson came out very well, overall) there was very little space given to the other nations of the UK or of Gibraltar.
* It was a very male-centric account. Like the campaign itself, again. Until they got to the Tory party leadership contest after David Cameron resigned, women were very much bit-part players in this account.
* It was a pretty (though not entirely) Tory-centric account. Like the campaign itself, again. (you get the picture).

Even with those caveats, however, and the fact that I am still so upset and angry about the result and the way the country is headed, with a bunch of rank amateurs supposedly taking us into these important negotiations, this was so well written that I found it hard when I was reading to put it down. 4.5/5.

I'd LOVE to see a similar book on the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. That would really really be worth a read.

My first read for the June CultureCAT (Environmentalism/Conservation), Paul R. Ehrlich & Michael Charles Tobias' Hope on Earth: A Conversation was a free ebook I got last year from the University of Chicago Press (they do a different free ebook every month). The authors are, respectively, a professor in population studies and conservation biology, and an ecologist/film-maker, and this book is in the form of a conversation between the two on the ethical issues around climate change and ecology. I found it really unsatisfying until very close to the end, and actually nearly gave up on it, but I'm glad I stuck with it because the last 3 chapters were what I was hoping for in the whole book. What let the book down, in my view, was the conversational structure - it was pretty much the transcript (with a few details such as book titles and suchlike presumably added later) of conversations, so it was really bitty and I found it difficult to pin down at times what they were actually trying to say (not helped by the second author's constantly banging on about vegetarianism, which I found really distracting). Throughout I thought that a much better format would have been for both authors to have written separate essays and then written a response to each other. The last 3 chapters pretty much ditched the conversation structure and were more long-form, including a 3rd academic, John Harte, detailing a particular experiment he has been involved with for many years in Colorado measuring the effects of global warming. If the whole book had been like this it would have been brilliant. As it was, the final 3 chapters brought it up to a 3 star total for me - if it had continued in the conversational format I would have given it a much grumpier 2 stars.

Category: Celtic

I bought Catherine Czerkawska's The Way it Was: A History of Gigha last month prior to my trip to Gigha (in the southern Hebrides) last weekend. Czerkawska is primarily a fiction author (with her stories often based on an island which is basically Gigha, although not named as such), but she has also written a few non-fiction books, including this one. It covers various aspects of Gigha's history, right up to and beyond the community buy-out of the island in 2002. I found it very interesting, although to start with I thought it was a bit dry, and I felt a bit tired with what felt like quite long tangents - until I realised that actually that's how I tend to write too, and then I found myself warming much more to it! And actually, the tangents were never usually particularly tangential, it was just a lot of background leading to her main point. The book has clearly been very well-researched, and the author makes it clear when she is speculating rather than using rock-solid sources. Her obvious love of the island is infused throughout (she is not a Gigha resident, but has visited frequently over many years). I think I'd like to read some more about the community buy-out (one of my favourite books is Alastair McIntosh's Soil and Soul: People Versus Corporate Power, which includes a lot of detail about the community buy-out of the island of Eigg, a bit further north. Having now been to Gigha I'd love to read a similar blow-by-blow account of the process there). 4/5.

>94 Jackie_K: - "I'd LOVE to see a similar book on the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. That would really really be worth a read."

So would I!

Category: Travel



Ben Rawlence's Radio Congo: Signals of Hope from Africa's Deadliest War is the tale of his journey a few years ago from Goma to the eastern Congolese city of Manono, not much heard-of even within Congo never mind further afield. He describes the characters he meets, the journeys he makes, the places he sees, and the history that imbues them all. This is a really well-written account (as I would expect from a journalist and researcher), I could picture a lot of what he described thanks to the quality of his writing. Congo of course has such a heart-breaking past, and challenging present and future, but Rawlence does see hope, ultimately, in the enterprising and hospitable people he meets. This is a journey that the vast majority of us will never take, so I very much enjoyed this particular bit of armchair travel. 4/5.

I've finished my book for June's CATWoman (Professional Women). Margot Lee Shetterly's Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race was a fascinating and moving read, of an aspect of history that I, like millions of others, were pretty ignorant. The women portrayed in this book are so impressive, achieving what they did not only in the midst of a less enlightened era in terms of gender, but also of course in terms of spectacular institutionalised barriers put up against them purely because of their skin colour. I know that the UK really doesn't have a stellar history either when it comes to either of these issues, but nevertheless I still found myself stopping and realising with shock how much of the discrimination they faced, enshrined in law, was so very very recent. Not that things are perfect now, of course, but it was interesting to me to see how, in parallel with the focus on the work in aeronautical engineering and then the space programme, the book also looked at what was happening nationally in the civil rights movement and the progress being made (I'd have liked a bit more on this, to be honest, although I appreciate that a book needs its focus!). There's a film tie-in with the book, I'd like to see that too. 4/5.

The movie was great. It does take liberties with the timelines, and some bits are Hollywood-ized. But it was one of those movies where I felt ready to take on the world afterward.

Category: Ancient Fiction (pre-1900)

Jerome K Jerome's Three Men in a Boat—To Say Nothing of the Dog is a classic which often finds itself on those lists of books that must be read before you die, reach 40, can call youself a bookworm, etc, and I'd always meant to read it but never got round to it till now. It's meant to be one of the quintessential English comedies, so I was looking forward to a light, entertaining read. Unfortunately, for the most part I found it really really dull, not funny at all, and I'm left wondering what all the fuss is about.

I'm glad I stuck with it to the end though, partly so I can at least say I've read it (and tick it off any lists that come my way on social media), and partly because the one thing that made me smile (the bit in the pub where everyone claimed to have landed the stuffed trout above the door) appeared then, along with a completely-out-of-character but surprisingly sensitively treated vignette (seeing a dead body in the river, which turned out to be that of a 'fallen woman' who had committed suicide). Those two events added an extra half star to my overall score - 2.5/5.

Interesting choices! The Brexit book sounds very good, I just don't see myself reading 700 pages of it. For now the newspapers have to be enough. Radio Congo is a book bullet for me, it fits perfectly into my African Reads category. Hidden Figures is already on my list (just like the movie, which I missed when it was in the theatres). And Three Men in a Boat, well. I didn't like it either when I read it one or two years ago. Not as funny as I expected. So I understand your thoughts.

>102 Chrischi_HH: The Brexit book is really worth a read - I must admit though that if I'd been able to see the nearly 700 pages I might not have picked it up! One of the advantages of an ereader (especially the kobo, which only gives you a % read and the number of pages in each chapter, rather than the overall pages in the book as a whole) was that I could carry it around without dislocating my shoulder!

Radio Congo was really interesting - obviously it's an outsider's view, but on the whole he was pretty sympathetic as a narrator and largely avoided the sort of sense of superiority that a lot of outsiders bring to African travelogues.

July CultureCAT (Violence, Crime & Justice)

My first read for this month's CultureCAT is a short report, nearly 20 years old now, which I dipped into as background reading when I was writing up my PhD, but bought my own copy as I knew I'd want to read it subsequently. Public Scandals-- Criminal Law and Sexual Orientation in Romania by Human Rights Watch Staff details the changes in the law in Romania relating to homosexuality since the overthrow of the communist regime in 1989, up till the revision of the law in 1996. It also details the routine abuses of the law by law enforcement agencies and others (including awful violence towards those accused of, and imprisoned for, homosexuality), and how the ambiguities contained within the law (particularly the provision relating to causing 'public scandal') enable those abuses. This was a very detailed and thoroughly researched report, and was thoroughly depressing reading. With the advent of the last two decades of course this will now be out of date, but I suspect not as out of date as it should be. 4.5/5.

Category: Religious

My first book in this Red Letter Christianity by Shane Claiborne & Tony Campolo. I have heard both speak, at churches and festivals, over the years, and have a soft spot for Tony Campolo, even though I don't always agree with him. They are American Christian leaders and activists, from different generations, and this book is about taking the words of Jesus in the Bible seriously to, as they put it, "critiq(ue) our socially generated concepts of God". The book takes the form of a dialogue between the two on issues of relevance to today's world - debt, empire, environment, politics, war, immigration, sexuality, the Middle East, amongst others. It is so refreshing, when Christianity seems to have been co-opted by the Religious Right and seen as synonymous with the unpleasanter side of right-wing politics, to see the issues discussed so thoughtfully and carefully. Like the religious books I read earlier in the year, this was one where by and large I'm sympathetic to where the authors are coming from (very much not a right-wing perspective), so of course I'm going to be more favourably disposed towards what they say. Not that I agreed with everything, but this is definitely a book which by and large gives me hope and inspires me to look at my life and faith again and what I'm actually doing with it. Definitely worth a read - 4.5/5.

July CATWoman (Women of Colour)

My read for this month's CATWoman was a fascinating self-published memoir, Pauline Nevins' "Fudge": The Downs and Ups of a Biracial, Half-Irish, British War Baby. The reason I picked this up at all was because Pauline grew up in my home town, and a large part of the memoir is of her life there. The book has been recommended multiple times on one of the town's facebook pages. It was also interesting because she is the same age as my dad, and I suspect had very similar childhood experiences - there were certainly a lot of things in the book which rang very true from things that he has said over the years about his childhood. From the amazon blurb:

“Fudge” is the kindest nickname given to a half-black child born smack in the middle of a family of eight children who were not only white, they were Irish. This memoir shares experiences of one of more than a thousand mixed-race children, many of whom grew up conflicted about their racial identify and feeling abandoned by their black American military fathers stationed throughout Great Britain during World War II.

As well as the race aspect, this was also a memoir detailing the realities of living in a post-war, working class family in an era when violence and alcohol abuse within the family was so common.

I liked that a lot of the places she mentioned I could picture, or at least knew where they were - I went to the same primary school as her, and played in the same park. When she referred to the post-war prefabs I knew exactly where she meant - they're not there now, but I think it was the 1990s before they were finally demolished, certainly it was after I left in 1987. And in the final bit of the book, where she talks about the mixed-race babies like herself and their attempts to find out who their biological fathers were, she mentions a man who heads up a committee which was researching the GI history in the town after they'd found a load of abandoned US military gear when they were refurbishing a building that had been used by the American army during the war, who I'm pretty sure is my friend's dad! It's a very small world, sometimes.

Pauline does a great job here of detailing everyday life at the time, and also what it felt like to be both in the midst of this chaotic family and yet also, due to her race and parentage, on the outside of it, and the ongoing issues that various of her siblings had with her. After she emigrated to the USA she continued to have contact with her mum and some of her siblings, and made periodic visits back to the UK, and it was interesting to see how things had changed through her eyes. It was also interesting to see her observations of moving to the USA (she moved there in the mid-60s, when legislation was yet to be enacting allowing inter-racial marriage in most states), although it was the bits in the UK that interested me the most. Throughout it all, she acknowledges where she made mistakes but overall comes across as a remarkably grounded and well-adjusted person, particularly considering the emotional abuse and physical violence which was such a standard and regular part of her childhood.

4/5 stars, recommended.

July CultureCAT (Violence, Crime and Justice)

Victor Malarek's The Natashas: Inside the New Global Sex Trade is quite an old book (published 2004) so is very possibly out of date, although (like Public Scandals reviewed above) probably not as out of date as any of us would like. Malarek is a Canadian investigative journalist, and for this book he extensively investigated the "fourth wave" of global sex trafficking, in this case of eastern European women. This is very hard-hitting and as depressing as you can imagine. As well as outlining the stories of the women themselves, he also looks at those involved in the trafficking, including depressingly those who are supposed to be policing it, at both local and international levels. Those who blow the whistle are sidelined, meaning that any attempt at stopping the trade in humans is basically a drop in the ocean.

4/5, but not an easy read.

Category: Travel

Something a little lighter after the last few books!

I have to say that one of my guilty pleasures is glossy TV travel show tie-in books, and John McCarthy and Sandi Toksvig's Island Race: An Improbable Voyage Round the Coast of Britain did not disappoint. I didn't actually see the programme itself (it was a series in the mid-1990s) but wish I had. The two friends (I hadn't realised that they had known each other prior to John McCarthy's kidnapping and incarceration in Lebanon; he'd been best mates with Sandi's brother at university, and the three of them had shared a flat in London before he went to Lebanon), both sailing novices, crew a classic sailing ship, the Hirta, on a voyage round Britain, stopping in on communities on the way and documenting a snapshot of mid-90s life, including some very precarious communities. There were some interesting points where things are now very different, but they couldn't know at the time - for example they stopped off at the Isle of Eigg before the community buy-out, when life was very difficult for the islanders. They also were sailing while the Channel Tunnel was still being constructed, so there were various musings about what this might mean (and how pretty much everyone seemed to be against it). There were also personal musings - sailing was one of the dreams that John McCarthy and Brian Keenan shared during their years of incarceration, and dealing with the aftermath of this was still something that he was working through (living in such cramped quarters would have provided some unpleasant memories whilst simultaneously living the dream). Both of them had their challenges to deal with - by mid-point Sandi had severe RSI in both hands and was both limited in what she could do on board, and in a lot of pain. They both had their encounters with seasickness, and their triumphs too as they found themselves getting the hang of sailing and feeling less like clueless novices.

As if this wasn't lovely reading enough, the book is glossy with lovely photos throughout, so it was a visual as well as a reading feast. It is a book I got from Barter Books last year, and definitely a keeper! I want to see if I can get hold of the DVD of the series now, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is only to be found on ebay, as it's quite old.

4.5/5.

I love Sandi Toksvig! That sounds like an interesting book and show.

I love Sandi Toksvig, too. That sounds like a wonderful find!

Yes, I think she's great - her humour shines through throughout. And actually, so does John McCarthy's - they are a very well-suited double act! It was definitely a lucky find - I always head for the travel section when I go to Barter Books, and usually find something worth reading. It's interesting what some people give away that others of us think are keepers!

Category: Celtic

Sea Change: The Summer Voyage from East to West Scotland of the Anassa by Mairi Hedderwick is a beautiful book (one of the two by her I got from the library and then instantly added to my wishlist, somewhat defeating the object of the library for me which is to cut down on the permanent acquisitions!). It's the account of a voyage she took with a friend identified only as The Captain on his sailing boat the Anassa, from Lossiemouth, through the Caledonian Canal to Loch Linnhe then up the sound of Mull, exploring the various western sea lochs up to Loch Nevis and back. Throughout the book are Mairi's sketches which just add to the beauty. I love her writing, which actually reminded me a bit of Jim Crumley (I read his The Great Wood earlier this year, and Among Islands last year). She is of course best known as the author of the Katie Morag children's books, written while she lived on Coll (and which I keep intending to get hold of to build up a collection for my daughter); this voyage took place as she left Coll and was getting ready to move back to the mainland. This book shows she's more than capable of writing beautifully for an adult audience too.

I didn't mean to read two sailing books more-or-less simultaneously, it was the Jar of Fate that gave me Island Race (reviewed a few posts ago), but they were very good reading companions, albeit totally different to each other. This one was lovely to look at, and her prose is very mellifluous, I thought. 4/5

I have another book of hers (a sketching tour of Shetland) also out from the library - I am looking forward to starting that too. The combination of her writing and sketches works so well.

August RandomCAT: Animal Kingdom

Happyslapped by a Jellyfish is the first of my animal-themed reads. To be honest, having got all excited about the theme I didn't think all that much of it. Karl Pilkington is a friend of Ricky Gervais and he pops up on his radio show and podcasts, and is lauded as this comedy genius. I just didn't think he was that funny. I probably would have found this much funnier if I knew him, and had a couple of beers in me - he reminded me of the friend we all have who we tell should be on the telly because they're so funny, but nobody outside of their friendship circle can see what's so hilarious. This book is mainly anecdotes, musings and diary entries about various holidays he's taken. It was OK, I suppose, for a couple of hours of diversion, but not one I'd particularly recommend. 2/5.

I do have another of his books (it was on offer in the kobo store), which I will read at some point but not hold my breath or have any expectations. I won't bother getting any more though.

August CultureCAT: Impact of Natural Disasters

David Welky's The Thousand-Year Flood: The Ohio-Mississippi Disaster of 1937 was a free University of Chicago Press book from a year or two ago. It was a very detailed look at a horrific flood, which inundated many towns and cities in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, and looked at the various actors involved - residents, politicians, government agencies, Red Cross, the army Corps of Engineers, and others - and how they did (or, often, didn't, thanks to various individual and institutional entrenched interests) work together to try to improve the infrastructure and ensure that such devastating effect could never happen again. It was an absolutely fascinating read, really thoroughly researched, and I'd absolutely recommend it. 4.5/5.

August RandomCAT (Animal Kingdom).

Jacky Donovan's Simon Ships Out. How one brave, stray cat became a worldwide war hero is based on the true story of the "Yangtze Incident" of 1949, where British warship HMS Amethyst was trapped for 3 months on the Yangtze River during the Chinese Civil War. As well as the sailors, on board was a stray cat the crew named Simon, and this book is the fictional retelling of the story from Simon's point of view, and in his voice. I'd actually bought it thinking it was something else (Street Cat Bob, which a friend had recommended), and probably wouldn't have bought it if I'd realised, but as a couple of hours of reading fluff it was OK. I did find myself getting a bit irritated with some of the idioms the author gave Simon (saying 'more big' instead of 'bigger', and referring to fellow cats as 'mes', for example), but I did get used to it, and to be honest if you're reading a fictional memoir of a talking cat I think expecting classic high literature is probably a bit unrealistic! There were plenty of glimpses of the privations suffered by the sailors, and the end of the story is quite sad (though predictable). 3/5.

>115 Jackie_K: "and to be honest if you're reading a fictional memoir of a talking cat I think expecting classic high literature is probably a bit unrealistic!"

That's funny!

The best fiction (based on a true story) by a cat that I've read was Mrs Chippy's Last Expedition: the remarkable journey of Shackleton's polar-bound cat by Caroline Alexander. Now there was a cat who could write!

>116 VivienneR: I think I've heard of that before - might add it to the wishlist! Thanks for the recommendation.

>121 Jackie_K: It really was, although it was also quite unflinching - sheep farming isn't at all glamorous! But it was really my kind of book, and I thought it was great.

Category: Celtic



Shetland Rambles: A Sketching Tour by Mairi Hedderwick was the second of the library books I got out some time ago and then placed straight on my wishlist. This time she retraces the footsteps of Victorian artist John T Reid, by exploring and sketching large amounts of beautiful Shetland. As with Sea Change (reviewed in post >112 Jackie_K: above) the prose is beautiful, and interspersed throughout are her sketches (both rough initial sketches and the final watercolour), and interestingly here she also features copies of Reid's engravings for comparison. She is a sympathetic and interesting travelling companion, and I really enjoyed this. In fact, I think I enjoyed it even more than Sea Change, probably because I've been to Shetland and could imagine myself doing a similar trip (although the sketches would be considerably less accomplished in my case!). 4.5/5, and hooray for the library!

In other news, I have made the rare decision to abandon (for now) a current read - partly for practical purposes (I'm going on holiday at the weekend and really don't want to carry a door-stopper), but mainly because with current world events the subject matter of the story was just too much for me to handle (the book, in case anyone's interested, is The Poisonwood Bible, which I was reading for this month's CATWoman. I just feel like I don't need any more culturally imperialistic and unpleasant Christian leaders taking up my time and headspace right now). I'm not putting it back in the Jar of Fate though - it won't be too long before my contemporary fiction category comes round again, so I'll save it for that and hope I'm more in the mood for it by then! I do also have a shorter fiction book on the go (another one for this month's RandomCAT) which I'm hoping to finish before I go away, so at least my reading isn't entirely worthy non-fiction!!

You've been reading some excellent books, Jackie! My wishlist has grown some more!

Your thoughts on The Poisonwood Bible hits the nail on the head: "I don't need any more culturally imperialistic and unpleasant Christian leaders taking up my time and headspace right now"

>123 lkernagh: Thanks Vivienne! Just think of it as returning the favour re the wishlist, I have several of your books on mine!

August CATWoman (Historical fiction/non-fiction)

My book for this CAT (chosen once I'd abandoned The Poisonwood Bible for now) was Margaretta Eagar's Six Years at the Russian Court. The author was for this time (at the turn of the 20th century) the nanny to the Imperial family in Russia, for the four older daughters (Olga, Tatiana, Marie and Anastasia), staying until just after the birth of the Czarevitch (and heir to the throne) Alexis. This was quite interesting, and knowing what happened to the family at the Russian Revolution it was quite moving to see these children in all their innocence, as well as their privilege. However, it was also quite a frustrating read - I was really much more interested in the goings-on in society of everyday folk, but apart from a few mentions (such as a brief mention of the anarchist student uprising) this really isn't covered at all. It was also frustrating because my version (an ebook version) was so terribly formatted, with quite a lot of typos, and what should have been page headings appearing all over the page. I probably would have given it 2.5 stars for vague historical interest, but I'm dropping it down to 2 for the niggly formatting. 2/5.

I'm off on holiday tomorrow, so will be offline till the end of August. I'm hopeful I'll get a couple more books finished before September, and we won't mention the acquisitions. (whispers: Barter Books tomorrow! Wheeeee!)

Have a great holiday! :D

Ditto what >126 Jackie_K: said!

>126 Jackie_K: >127 VivienneR: Thank you both! It was a good holiday, mostly (we'll gloss over our car getting side-swiped by a lorry, it is now sporting an impressive set of dents and scrapes. Sigh). I'm just catching up now, and procrastinating on facebook and LT rather than doing sensible things like putting our camping gear away (or getting onto the car insurance people. Argh. Who'd be an introvert with a phone phobia?).

I had my first experience of bartering books at Barter Books - even though they didn't take the majority of the books I'd taken (apparently they get so many hardback cookbooks that they have a warehouse full and don't want any more! Lesson learnt for next time, and off to the charity shop they went), we came away with twice as much store credit as I was hoping for just from the handful of books they did take. Which paid for most of our acquisitions this time, so it was definitely worth doing, and we've already highlighted some books to take for our next visit.

I finished three books while I was away - 2017 is proving my best reading year yet! (2016 was my previous best, I read 46 in the year. I'm already up to 40 ROOTs plus 4 library books this year, and it's not even September yet!). Here's the first:



August RandomCAT (Animal Kingdom)

Andre Alexis' prize-winning Fifteen Dogs is a book I received for my birthday earlier this year, and I'll be honest, if it hadn't been a gift then it's not the kind of book I'd particularly have gone for at all. However, I'm so glad I did beause I thoroughly enjoyed it once I got into it (it did take me a chapter or so before being sure I liked it!). The blurb on the back describes it so much better than I can (and means I won't inadvertently reveal any spoilers!):

A pack of dogs are granted the power of human thought - but what will it do to them?

It begins in a bar, like so many strange stories. The gods Hermes and Apollo argue about what would happen if animals had human intelligence, so they make a bet and grant consciousness to a group of dogs staying overnight at a vetinary clinic.

Suddenly capable of complex thought, the dogs escape and become a pack. They are torn between those who resist the new ways of thinking, preferring the old 'dog' ways, and those who embrace the change. The gods watch as the dogs venture into unfamiliar territory, as they become divided among themselves, as each struggles with new thoughts and feelings. Wily Benjy moves from home to home, Prince becomes a poet, and Majnoun forges a relationship with a kind couple that stops even the Fates in their tracks.

Engaging and full of unexpected insights into human and canine minds, this contemporary fable is an extraordinary look at the beauty and perils of consciousness.

The story is set in Toronto, and I probably would have enjoyed it even more if I knew Toronto and the places being described. It's a fairly short novel (my copy is 159 pages) but he managed to pack in an awful lot, and it is really beautifully written. Not at all sentimental (far from it, in fact), but even though it is quite hard-hitting, brutal even, in places, this literary wimp (no gore for me, thank you very much!) could cope with it! 4/5.

September CultureCAT (Journalism & the Arts)

My holiday meant that I was able to get a headstart on the September CATs (the next post is in the same category too). Marta Dyczok's Ukraine's Euromaidan: Broadcasting through Information Wars with Hromadske Radio is a book I got the other year from the E-IR Open Access site (along with a couple of others). The author is a Canadian academic and journalist of Ukrainian heritage, and the book consists of an explanatory introduction and conclusion, sandwiching the individual texts of podcasts she produced for Hromadske Radio (Ukrainian public radio) after the Euromaidan uprising of late 2013/early 2014. They consist of short reports on Canadian responses to the situation in Ukraine, the author's experiences when she travels to Ukraine, how the conflict is covered in the western media, Ukrainian events in Toronto (where there appears to be a large Ukrainian diaspora community), etc. They were short (I personally would have preferred a bit more detail), but I did particularly like the introduction and conclusion which provided more context about the Ukrainian conflict and wider media space. 4/5.

September CultureCAT (Journalism & the Arts)

On the Front Line: The Collected Journalism of Marie Colvin is a collection of every piece that war/foreign correspondent Marie Colvin produced, either solo or collaborating with other journalists, up until her death in Syria in 2012. She had been foreign correspondent for The Sunday Times since 1986, and by all accounts was an extraordinary woman. This book, a wonderful but oh so harrowing read, is of her reports from conflict zones around the world in that time - Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza, Iran, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Chechnya, Sri Lanka (where she lost the sight in one eye in a grenade attack in 2006), East Timor (where her reporting, after all but 3 journalists had evacuated, changed UN policy and helped many people to avoid a massacre), and Syria (where she paid the ultimate price for her determination to make sure the truth was told as widely as possible), as well as a couple of other pieces, one her acceptance speech when she won the 'Woman of the Year' award, and another her reflection as she recovered from the operation to try and save her eye (5.5 hours with local anaesthetic! This woman was hardcore). It was clear that her philosophy (as outlined in the Woman of the Year speech) was to tell the stories of the people caught up in conflict - she said she wasn't interested in whether the bullet was 150mm or 180mm (or whatever), or what type of plane dropped the bomb, it was the human cost that needed to be shown - and every single report is fizzing with humanity, whilst not shying away from just what humans are capable of. This was not an easy read, but it was extraordinary, and I felt bereaved when I finished it. What an incredible woman. 5/5.

>128 Jackie_K: Glad you too enjoyed Fifteen Dogs. I found it surprisingly good, probably because I expected more sentimentality.

>130 Jackie_K: Thank you, I took a BB hit with that one!

>131 LisaMorr: Yes, I think that's what I expected from Fifteen Dogs too. But I liked how lightly he wielded his philosophising, I never felt like I was being manipulated or bashed over the head with an obvious point!

On the Front Line is really worth a read, I'm so glad I got to it. Her loss to journalism, and to the world, is enormous.

Great reviews and OMG your car getting side-swiped by a lorry! Not the highlight of your vacation, I take it? ;-)

>133 Jackie_K: Thanks Lori, yeah that's one way of putting it! Dealing with the insurance company/courtesy car company/garage isn't brilliant now we're home, either! I'll be pleased if it's finally sorted out by Christmas, but I'm not going to hold my breath. As my dad said to me the other day, they're really quick to demand money from you, but when it comes to paying it out it's a different story...

However, I have to say I am very thankful that it wasn't a lot worse. None of us were hurt, or even particularly shaken up, and the damage to the car could have been much worse. And while we wait for things to be resolved (we can't get a courtesy car until they can confirm that the other driver's insurance company will pay for it, and as they're in Poland working that out is not going to be a quick process) at least our car is still driveable.

Long overdue catching up on your thread - lots of great reading! I'll take a book bullet for On the Front Line and just picked up Fifteen Dogs - I didn't even know what that one was about but I was picking up a number of books that won genre awards identified in the AwardCAT, I'm more interested now based on your comments.

>135 RidgewayGirl: Thanks for visiting, Lisa! Fifteen Dogs isn't at all the kind of book I usually read, but I really liked it. And On the Front Line is just wonderful (though very harrowing).

September has been my worst reading month this year - it will be the only month of 2017 so far that I've not managed at least 4 books, in fact I haven't finished any thus far, with just a day to go! I should hopefully finish one later today though, and possibly one tomorrow (but realistically probably not, if I'm honest). On the plus side, as well as my planned reading for October I have several books on the go since the start of September or before that which should be finished in October instead, so hopefully October will be a bumper month for finished books!

September RandomCAT: Where did the time go?

For this month's RandomCAT I read Nevertheless, She Persisted, an anthology of short stories edited by Mindy Klasky. I won it in last month's Early Reviewer programme, the first book for months that I've wanted to request, but read it for this CAT to inspire me to keep going with it and not leave it forever!

I have to confess to not being a huge fan of short stories usually, and the main reason for requesting this was that I know one of the authors at another site we both frequent. However, these stories were generally pretty even in quality and none stood out for me as either outstanding or complete turkeys. I think having now read them all that some of the early stories (in the 'history' section) were probably the ones I enjoyed most.

The bringing together of these stories was inspired by events in early 2017 when Senator Mitch McConnell silenced Senator Elizabeth Warren when she was trying to read Coretta Scott King's letter about Jeff Sessions (now US Attorney General). The phrase "Nevertheless, she persisted" became a bit of a rallying call, and this anthology is meant to be a literary response, with stories about women who persisted against the odds in whatever context they were. The book is separated into four sections, History, Present, Future, and Other Worlds.

Some of the stories had been published before, and some (I think) were written more recently in response to the call for stories for the anthology. I must say that I was expecting stories that more obviously drew on (and commented on in some way) Senator Warren's silencing by Mitch McConnell, and the fact that they didn't was a little disappointing.

Overall an enjoyable enough read, but probably not a book I'd rush to read again or buy for someone. 3/5.

September CATWoman (children's/YA lit; graphic novels).

The book I read for September's CATWoman (graphic novels) was brilliant. Kate Evans' Red Rosa is a graphic biography of Rosa Luxemburg, a towering figure in late 19th/early 20th century socialism until her arrest and murder in 1919 at the age of 47, during the fledgling (and ultimately short-lived) socialist revolution in Germany. Graphic books aren't usually what I go for (unless they're something like Asterix), so this was a bit of a departure for me, but it was well worth it, this is accessible, easy to read, yet with considerable depth, and was a really good overview of a woman I'd heard of but, to my regret, about whom I know very little. This has left me wanting to know much more about her, and Evans provides a useful bibliography at the end too. She's done a great job bringing the woman behind the writings to life, showing her vitality and humour as well as her impressive intellect. Highly recommended. 4.5/5.

Red Rosa looks interesting.

>139 DeltaQueen50: It really was, I haven't read anything quite like it before.

October CATWoman (Regional Reading)

For this CAT I chose a short read, but I absolutely loved it. This was a gift from my in-laws last year, and I'm so pleased with it. Jane Smith's Wild Island: A Year in the Hebrides is very similar to the two Mairi Hedderwick books I read this summer, in that they feature text and the author's paintings and prints, this time of a year spent (on and off) in Oronsay, a tidal island just off the larger Hebridean island of Colonsay. Oronsay is farmed and managed by the RSPB, and Smith went there every month for a year to sketch the birds and other wildlife around the island, to document the conservation work being done. Despite being very remote (it is reached either by boat, or by landrover driven over a strand of sand at low tide) and exposed (there is nothing between it and Newfoundland apart from 3000 miles of the Atlantic) she beautifully evokes the warmth and diversity of the habitat and landscape. Unlike Mairi Hedderwick's books, which are linear accounts of journeys, this book is based on vignettes (often very short) - she orders the book by month, but then will write a half page, or a few lines, or a page and a bit, on either a particular bird, a farm animal, or a bit of her journey to (or on) the island. The paintings and prints are very distinctive, and I really liked her style, both artistic and written. Whilst I don't live in the Hebrides, island living has been a dream for some time, and Colonsay has been on my 'must visit' list for quite a while. If I ever make it there I definitely want to include Oronsay too having read this. 4.5/5.

Category: Non-fiction (general)

Continuing my run of finally finishing all my September books in early October, I also today finished Lindsey German & John Rees' A People's History of London. I really liked the idea of this book, a kind of social geography/history, from when London was first established up to the time of publishing (2012, so they just managed to get the Olympics in too). This was often really interesting, as it didn't just focus on royalty and bigwigs, but on popular social movements and the impact they had on the developing city - as can be expected by something published by Verso, the focus was very much on left-wing/radical movements. There were a few points where I found it a bit frustrating, like it couldn't quite focus on what it was doing - they wrote about significant social movements but they didn't necessarily have their most significant stories in London, so they would brush off the most important part of the movement to focus on what did happen in London, and so it felt like there were still a lot of gaps. They also assumed quite a bit of previous knowledge, and whilst I had a lot of the knowledge I didn't have it all, so sometimes got a bit bogged down trying to figure out what was going on and who was who. Having said that, though, other parts were very good - chapter 10, which focused on immigration and race in the city, was really excellent, and really helped me get a sense of how different communities grew in the ways and places they did; and I also liked the bits from WW1 onwards. I'm giving it a final rating of 3.5/5 as LT only does half star gradations, although it's probably closer to 3.75.

>141 VivienneR: That is a beautiful cover, I googled her artwork and I love her whimsical cat pictures.

>143 VivienneR: Isn't it? I'm a big ebook fan, but this is one of those books that just wouldn't be the same in that format! Turning every single page was a delight.

>141 VivienneR: Aaah! I've taken a bullet with Wild Island: a year in the Hebrides. I've always wanted to go there but this is as close as I'll get. A paper copy is a must, that cover alone is beautiful.

>145 Jackie_K: The whole book is beautiful.

I first went to the Hebrides nearly 10 years ago, on my honeymoon to Harris (at our wedding reception people would ask us where we were going, we'd tell them, and loads of them said "Paris! How lovely!" They couldn't believe that we'd go to the Outer Hebrides at the end of December!). We've been to several of the Inner Hebridean islands since, and are hoping to get back to Harris soon to celebrate our anniversary.

What a wonderful story! I haven't been to the Hebrides, but December weather wouldn't put me off (hey, I've lived in northern Alberta). I hope you make the return visit, it would be a great way to celebrate your 10th anniversary!

October CultureCAT (Poverty)

My book for this month's CultureCAT was Jennifer Worth's Call the Midwife, the first in a set of memoirs of being a nurse and midwife in the East End of London in the 1950s that were adapted for the very successful TV series of the same name. I hadn't seen any of the series other than last year's Christmas special which my mother-in-law was watching, but reading this it was immediately obvious how easy it would be to adapt this book for TV, it was so easy to picture the people and the places from the wonderful writing (it was also really obvious to see why Miranda Hart was the perfect person to play Chummy!). I was surprised that this was a memoir from the 1950s - I had assumed from the occasional clip of the TV show that I had caught that it was set between the two world wars, and so the impact of the poverty and deprivation described was so much greater, as it was closer to my own history than I'd previously realised. Jennifer joined a convent as a lay nurse/midwife, initially sceptical about the religious aspect but growing to love and respect the nuns with whom she was training and working. There is no shortage of memorable characters - both patients and the nuns - and they are all brought powerfully and movingly to life here. A wonderful read, and I hope the Jar of Fate pulls out the next two volumes for me soon! 4.5/5.

Category: Biography/autobiography/memoir/true events

The book I read for this category (which incidentally means that I have successfully completed my 2017 challenge, which was to have at least one book in each of my individual categories) was the stunning Long Walk to Freedom, the memoir of Nelson Mandela from his childhood through to his inauguration as the first black president of South Africa in 1994. This is a book that I've owned a long time (I think bought in the late '90s) and I'm so glad I got to it eventually - thank you Jar of Fate! It was a significant chunkster so I read it mainly a chapter at a time most days, which is why it took me so long (I started it in June!), but reading it over that amount of time meant that I could really savour it. He started writing this memoir while he was imprisoned on Robben Island, and although his manuscript was discovered by prison warders and confiscated, he had managed to smuggle out much of the text already and that formed the basis of the final version of the book. I found him to be endlessly generous about everyone, always striving to see the humanity in everyone he came across, even whilst acknowledging their (and often his) faults. The way he dealt with the constant harassment, and eventual imprisonment for 27 years, demonstrated how he was able to become the great statesman that he emerged as when freed from prison in 1990. He doesn't shy away from the devastating impact that his choices to be involved in the freedom struggle had on his family - I thought it was very telling when he talked about not being able to be a father to his children due to imprisonment, and then when he was released still not being able to 'just' be their father as he was suddenly a father of the nation. The last two chapters of the book (about election day and his inauguration) made me cry. I fear we will not see his like again for a long time. 5/5.

Congratulations on finishing your challenge, Jackie. Or at least on filling all your goals!

Category: Central/Eastern Europe & Former Soviet Union

I last read Patrick Leigh Fermor's A Time of Gifts the best part of 20 years ago, and didn't remember much about it other than that I'd found it a bit hard going. This book is the first of what was meant to be a trilogy detailing the author's year-long hike from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople in 1933-4, when he was 19. This particular volume covers the first part of the journey, from leaving London, then Holland, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, finishing with his crossing the border from Czechoslovakia into Hungary. Sometimes he sleeps in barns, other times in baronial piles as the guest of various contacts he makes along the way, other times in the open air. The next volume, Between the Woods and the Water, picks up where this book finishes and is the account of his journey through Hungary and Romania. Leigh Fermor actually never wrote the final book in the trilogy, and died before he could, but a few years ago a couple of established travel writers in their own right had access to his diaries of the trip, and finished the trilogy with The Broken Road.

When I last read the book, I remember feeling really bogged down with the classical and artistic references and the flowery language, and although it was interesting I think it was the wrong book for me at the time, and so I never did get round to starting Between the Woods and the Water, although I'd bought them both together. I subsequently bought The Broken Road so that I had all three, and also bought another book after hearing an interview with a guy, Nick Horn, who retraced Leigh Fermor's journey a few years ago (that book is Walking the Woods and the Water). I also recently discovered that I had bought another copy of Between the Woods and the Water, which I suspect I bought thinking it was the third in the trilogy, before I realised that he hadn't actually written that! I'm usually pretty good with duplicates, and have very very few, but now I have the dilemma of which one to keep, the one that's the same size and design as the first one (which I presumably bought at the same time), or the second one which is bigger and arguably better quality paper. The second one I suspect would get me more at Barter Books if I were to take it there, and I'd always have the niggle of having two different editions if I kept it, but it is better quality and looks lovely on the shelf. Dilemmas, dilemmas!

Anyway, I started this again with some trepidation, as I remembered finding it all a bit heavy going, but for some reason I think I was just more in the right place for this book, as I absolutely loved it this time. The language is beautiful, and I found it simply didn't bother me if there were classical/artistic/religious/historical references that I didn't catch, as his use of language was just perfect, there isn't a word out of place. There were long passages which probably could sit quite comfortably in Private Eye's Pseud's Corner column, but even that didn't matter, because it was all just so beautiful. I think I felt much more of a sense of the time this time round too - as he prepares to leave Holland to enter Germany at the end of 1933 (10 months after Hitler's rise to power), and then throughout his time in Germany, the sense of impending doom is never that far from the surface, although he doesn't lay it on at all thickly.

Last time I gave this 3.5 stars, but I'm increasing that on this re-read to 4.5 stars. A lovely read.

I've actually decided, after reading this book, to set aside the Jar of Fate temporarily, and read all the other books in the series so I get more of a sense of the whole journey (with a little break as I have a review copy of a book which I need to get done in the next few weeks). I think if I'm not sick of vicariously hiking round Europe by then that I'll also tackle the modern retracing his footsteps book, as the contrast will be fascinating. I'll then pick up the Jar again after that for my next reads.

Congrats on finishing your challenge. Will you use the Jar of Fate next year?

>138 Jackie_K: This looks like a really interesting book. I've been reading more graphic novels in the past years and will have to put this on the list.

>152 Jackie_K: Thank you! Yes, I will be still using the Jar of Fate next year (I've still got somewhere between 300-400 books in there, so having written them all out and coloured them all in I'm going to use it till I've got Mt TBR back under control. Hahahahaha, like that's going to happen). I have an idea for pictures and theme for the Category Challenge next year, the link is in most cases entirely tenuous, especially as I've colour coded everything so they'll be the same actual categories as this (and last) year, so I can't get the categories to match the pictures too closely. But I'm usually so unimaginative that I think I'll go with it anyway as I'm so proud of myself for having thought of anything at all :)

>153 VivienneR: It really was, I hope you enjoy it if you get to it!

Your Jar of Fate is such a wonderful idea that I was tempted by it at the beginning of the year. I was prevented because I knew how it would work - I'd pick a slip of paper, and then another, and so on until I reached the one I had my eye on.

>155 rabbitprincess: Thank you, but I mustn't take the credit, it was an idea I got from someone in the ROOT group the year before. It's worked really well for me, I think it helps that I don't allow myself (usually) to put the slip back in and choose another (the only exception being where I couldn't actually find the book I'd pulled out, and once when I was going on holiday and didn't want to take a paper book with me so I tried again till I got an ebook). I found before I used the Jar of Fate that, faced with the entirety of Mt TBR, I'd freeze and end up reading nothing (or very little), but this way I've found it's given me a good mix of books I've owned for ages and books I've bought this year or last, plus plenty in between, so I've read loads more than I would have done otherwise. And actually (apart from the initial horror about Just How Many books I had still to read), I found the initial writing down and colouring in of the titles really relaxing!

Thinking about it, this year the bulk of my reading has been for CATWoman and CultureCAT, so I had to trawl through the Jar at the end of last year to pick out the titles I wanted to read for those. Next year I'm going to be less CAT-heavy and rely on the Jar more again.

The Jar of Fate was an excellent plan and worthwhile keeping it up. I was tempted by the idea but I just know I would cheat.

Category: Sexual/reproductive health/rights; parenting; children; gender.

I received a copy of Challenging the politics of early intervention: who's 'saving' children and why (by Val Gillies, Rosalind Edwards and Nicola Horsley) from the publisher (Policy Press) in return for a fair and considered review. Below is the text of my review (which I have put up here on LT, and on amazon and Goodreads as requested by the publisher, as well as on my somewhat neglected blog).

I approach this book from the perspective of a current practitioner (in health services), but with an academic/research background.

This is an excellent review of the underlying politics and interests underlying the prevailing social investment model of early intervention for children in the UK, and it is particularly excellent and thorough in dismantling the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ fetishisation of poorly interpreted neuroscience which forms the basis of much policy and current practice in early intervention. The historical roots of this approach provided fascinating background to what has become a largely cross-party consensus (though for differing reasons, depending on one’s political hue) that individual work with children and their primary caregiver (primarily the mother) is prioritised over the improvement of the social and material conditions in which children and their families live. The outlining of the various interest groups involved (political, business, philanthrocapitalist, and certain practitioner groups), as well as their problematic co-opting of poorly- (or over-) interpreted brain science, laid bare the underlying (not always entirely philanthropic) motivations for the development of this consensus, and paved the way for a blistering – and very timely – exposure of the overal social investment consensus as effacing gender, race and class factors impacting on children’s development. Further insights from practitioners highlighted indeed how, as the authors state on p.119, “Practitioners work in contexts where there is little internal questioning about the general endeavour of early intervention”, but instead accept the over-simplistic and poorly interpreted brain studies as a foundational evidence base and theoretical justification for their practice – a situation which arguably also applies to the policy makers and managers charged with developing and implementing these practices.

Whilst the book is specific to the UK context, in fact it is primarily England-focused, with just a couple of mentions of other policy initiatives (primarily the Named Person, currently contested and undergoing revision in the light of significant opposition and legal challenge) in Scotland. I would have liked to have seen a little more from parts of the UK other than England, whilst recognising that the underlying points and background apply to early intervention policy across the UK nations. Another concern echoes a previous Amazon reviewer*, which is that whilst this is an excellently argued and thorough academic critique of the current situation in policy, and in fact it does indeed end with a call for a collective rather than individualised response to social harm, moving away from an all-encompassing prioritisation of “risk” (a call with which I entirely agree), nevertheless as a practitioner I found I was looking for some practical suggestions of what to do in cases where individual responses and involvement with individual families is entirely justified, and required quickly. There may well be scope for further work in this area, if the authors are able to link with practitioners, academics, policy makers and service managers who share their concerns and misgivings. I would also have liked to have seen more input from professional bodies, as the bulk of those participating in the case study and interview part of the book were from the voluntary or non-statutory sector (it was unclear whether the FNP nurses interviewed were working within or outwith the NHS, although earlier the book had identified the decoupling of the FNP service from other statutory services in England). Perspectives from groups such as the Institute of Health Visiting, or other social work bodies, for example, would have been interesting and may have added a further layer of nuance to the authors’ arguments.

Overall though this has provided me with an immense amount upon which to reflect as a practitioner, and I recommend it wholeheartedly. It would be ideal not only for students of social policy and health/social work management, but also would offer valuable insights to practitioner training courses (social work, teaching, health visiting, etc).

Thank you very much to Policy Press for this opportunity!

* Simon Haworth on 29 September 2017 included in his amazon review the following, with which I absolutely agree: “One potential criticism is that, perceptive and value-based as the book is, it does at times seem to move too far way from the dilemma-laden nature of frontline practice, where difficult and emotive decisions do need to be made to protect children, even when it is evident that the system has failed the family.”

4.5/5.

>158 lkernagh: Thumb for your excellent review!

>159 mamzel: Haha, thank you! It's a bit in academese, but that's the audience for the book and the publisher said they appreciated it!

The rest of my current reading is just as stimulating, but less academic, so normal service will resume shortly!

Category: Central/Eastern Europe & Former Soviet Union

Continuing my journey with the second of Patrick Leigh Fermor's trilogy of memoirs of his epic 'gap year' in 1933-34, walking from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople (I reviewed the first in post >151 RidgewayGirl: above). The first book ended with him just about to cross over the border from Czechoslovakia into Hungary, and this second, Between the Woods and the Water, continues the journey through Hungary and Romania (or Rumania as he refers to it, which I must admit got me a bit twitchy!), and ends with him waiting for a boat to cross the Danube from Romania into Serbia. As with the first book, the language is beautiful, the places are evoked very powerfully, and the mood of impending doom as the build up to war continues occasionally penetrates, although is not lingered on for long. Also similarly to the first volume, he continues to experience the generosity of strangers throughout, sometimes staying with people known to people he'd stayed with previously, other times chancing on the kindness of shepherds in their hut in the middle of nowhere.

I was particularly interested in reading this volume as someone who has lived in Romania, including some of the area he was travelling here (Transylvania, mainly). The complicated history of the region (originally part of Hungary, but always with a large Romanian population, and then granted to Romania after WW1) was something I was aware of, having lived a few months with some Hungarian doctors when I lived in Transylvania in 1994, but as with the first volume, here too the travelogue is liberally interspersed with history, so a lot of the gaps in my knowledge were filled out somewhat. Unfortunately though, what was a bit disappointing to me was that there were so many contacts he stayed with who were friends or relatives of the minor aristocracy he'd stayed with in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, that a large part of the book lost the sense of travelling through the essence of the place - in fact there were a couple of chapters entirely devoted to a diverting stay with one friend. He even himself admits that he was aware he was straying from his original plan of tramping through the landscape, and I don't blame him for lingering with someone who clearly became a close friend (and the married friend of this friend, with whom Leigh Fermor enjoys a brief intoxicating romance). Once that part of the journey was over though, and he got back to walking through the Carpathians on his way back towards the Danube, I enjoyed this every bit as much as the first book.

And even though I could have done without much of the interchangeable castles and stately piles and minor aristocracy, that section is a very well-written account of a way of life that is largely now over. Nobody at the time could have foreseen the battle over the region, firstly by the fascists and then by the communists, and I couldn't help wondering (as also did the author, in retrospect) what happened to them over the intervening years. Several of his encounters (both some of the aristocrats, and also unexpectedly at a logging mill in the Carpathians) were with Jewish people, and I felt very sad knowing their likely fate.

The last part of the book is set at a part of the Danube known as the Iron Gates (a part of Romania I've never visited), and I really liked his account of that area, particularly of a fascinating island in the middle of the Danube about a mile long which had a population of 400-500 Turkic speakers. I found myself thinking how have I never heard of that, I must check the map when I finish this chapter, only to then read the epilogue which detailed how the whole of that area - the island and the river banks - are now underwater, the result of the enormous hydro-electric dam constructed jointly by Romania and Yugoslavia at the Iron Gates. So throughout, I think that one of the most important things about this book is its sympathetic portrayal not only of a way of life, but in parts literally places, that no longer exist.

I'm going to have a little break (to catch up with the CAT reads I'm committed to in November and December) but then come back to the third, posthumously published, volume, The Broken Road - I'm really keen to see how this journey ends, even while I feel a bit nervous about how his first draft and diaries have been handled by other authors.

4/5.

(ooh that's a really long review, for me! I think this is definitely the time for me to be reading these books, I'm getting so much more out of them than when I first tried A Time of Gifts).

Stopping by to get caught up. Congratulations on completing your challenge. Lovely reviews!

Catching up on everyone's reads. You've had some very eclectic titles!

November CATWoman (LGBT/Feminist writing)

For this month's CATWoman theme I read Trans: A Memoir by Juliet Jacques. Juliet is a trans activist and writer, and wrote the "A Transgender Diary" blog for The Guardian a few years ago detailing the months leading up to her gender reassignment surgery in 2012. The book starts with the piece she wrote for the paper immediately after the operation, and then goes back to look at her life, and her growing understanding of her identity. I found parts of this very moving, especially how she told her parents and their growing acceptance. I also liked how this wasn't just a straightforward memoir, but she sited her story in the wider culture and debates around trans identity. 4/5.

(note to self: will need adding to the wiki once they've sorted out the spammy gremlins)

November RandomCAT (Traffic Jam) / November CultureCAT (Conflict and War)

My read for this month's RandomCAT (which once started I realised also fit this month's CultureCAT as well) is the wonderful Mark Thomas' wonderful Extreme Rambling: Walking Israel's Separation Barrier. For Fun. He is a British left-wing comedian and activist, and I was lucky enough to see his show the year he did the "Walking the Wall" tour. This is the book of the walk, which fleshes out the show. Along with a cameraman called Phil he set out to walk the entire length of the currently constructed separation barrier built by Israel between it and the West Bank, crossing checkpoints and walking in both Palestine and Israel. Whilst his sympathies (and mine) are largely with the Palestinian side of the issue, this really isn't a hatchet job, and he tries hard to see things from both sides. As well as being funny and sweary and insightful, this is also a very reflective account, both of what he sees and his own (not always comfortable) reactions to them.

I laughed until I cried when I saw the live show, and I think reading it with his voice in my head definitely helped, although it is really very readable even if you don't know him or his work. I loved the account of "our man in Jerusalem", but it's his encounters with everyday folk trying to live with the reality of the wall and its impact on their lives that will stay with me. 4.5/5.

(note to self: also needs adding to the wiki eventually)

November CultureCAT (Conflict and War)

My other read for this month's CultureCAT was Steven Galloway's The Cellist of Sarajevo. Regular readers know I'm more of a non-fiction buff, but this fiction-phobe actually thought this was excellent, and I'm so glad I read it (it was initially recommended by a friend in my old RL book group several years ago). The book is set in Sarajevo during the siege in the early/mid-90s, and takes as its starting premise the shelling of a bread queue by snipers which left 22 people dead. The apartment block behind where the shell landed included the apartment belonging to an unnamed cellist in Sarajevo's orchestra, and he decides that for 22 consecutive days, one for each of the people that died, he will leave his apartment in full concert gear, sit where the shell landed and play the same piece each day. The rest of the book follows three Sarajevans, Dragan (mid 60s, retired, wife and son left the city so he is left living with his sister and brother in law), Kenan (mid 40s, married with 3 children), and Arrow (a young woman who prior to the war was in the university rifle shooting team, and who is now used by the defenders of the city to try to take out the snipers who are targetting the civilians still in the city). Each chapter follows each of them in turn, their experiences during the siege of (in Dragan and Kenan's case) trying to cross the city to get food and water whilst avoiding the unseen snipers, and (in Arrow's case) an assignment to kill the sniper the defenders have heard are planning on killing the cellist to further lower morale.

Already really well-written and evocative, the book was thrown into even sharper relief for me last week by the conviction mid-way through reading it of Ratko Mladic at the International Criminal Court in the Hague for, amongst other things, planning and ordering the Sarajevo siege. Even though this is a work of fiction, the author does a great job of detailing the everyday privations, dangers and decisions that desperate people under siege have to make. 4.5/5.

(will also need adding to the wiki)

Your last three books sound very interesting, which means three BBs at once... :( ;)

>167 VivienneR: Wow, now that's good value :D

November CATWoman (LGBT/Feminist Writing)

Rebecca Solnit's Men Explain Things To Me is a series of 9 essays published in various places over the past decade, some also featuring a postscript to update it (the first essay, the Men Explain Things to Me which gives the book its title, was originally published in 2008, and the postscript is from when the book was published in 2014. As I read it with Trump, Weinstein, and all the others in my head from this year I couldn't help but think she could easily publish an absolutely blistering post-postscript this year as well). I found this a very readable book, clearly outlining the misogyny in society without resorting to "all men are..." (in fact she is very careful to frequently state that it's not all men). It still saddens me though that what she writes about is so obvious from the everyday experience of so many women, and yet so many people still need it pointing out (and then still don't get it).

There was one essay which didn't quite work for me, but I was reading it at bedtime and think I might have just been too tired for it (the one on Virginia Woolf). Otherwise I agreed with pretty much everything in this book and wholeheartedly recommend it. 4.5/5.

December RandomCAT (One Day)

Two super-short reads for this month's RandomCAT.



I bought Kat Kong a while ago because I'm already a fan of the author's Captain Underpants series. This was equally silly, and took about 2 minutes to read. I'll read it to my daughter at some point too. The animals in the photos were all the author's pets. 3.5/5.



What can I say? I love Calvin & Hobbes, and lots of these from Calvin and Hobbes: In the Shadow of the Night put a big smile on my face. 4/5.

>170 Jackie_K: Calvin & Hobbes are favourites of mine too!

>171 Jackie_K: I know a lot of my reading can be quite heavy or serious or earnest, but sometimes a day of everything light and gentle is just what you (I) need. So Calvin & Hobbes was just perfect.

I haven't started my 2018 thread yet, but have just now dug out the books that are possibles/probables for ColourCAT and for the 75ers Non-fiction challenge, which are the two challenges I'll be doing in addition to the Jar of Fate. A lot of them are ebooks, but digging out the physical books and looking at them in a pile has made me really enthusiastic for next year's reading, there are some really good ones in there.

I'm also hoping, for the first time ever, to have read 60 ROOTs this year. I'm currently on 55, and have 4 on the go, so it will be tight (might have to find a short one!). But I'll be really chuffed with myself if I can manage it.

>172 rabbitprincess: Good for you to have been so successful with ROOTs! I tried a point system this year in an attempt to increase ROOT reading, but just found that I bought more books! Then they counted as ROOTs.

>173 Jackie_K: Ah - sounds like there's a bit of a flaw in that plan! :D

December RandomCAT (One Day)

Campbell McCutcheon's St Kilda: A Journey to the End of the World was a library book which I picked up as I have always been fascinated by St Kilda, formerly the most remote of the inhabited British isles (around 50 miles west of the Outer Hebrides), until the evacuation of the remainder of the population to the mainland in 1930. I've read a few books about it, and as this book points out, most books are about the population and daily life and history of the islands. This one takes as its basis a book of photos discovered in a flea market, detailing a tour on the steamer the Hebrides around 1911, starting in Glasgow, taking in several of the Western Isles and then spending a day in St Kilda. As well as the photos it includes adverts and brochures from the tour company as well as postcards from locations throughout the journey, and basically details St Kilda through the lens of the tour (highlighting how important these tours were for the islanders to enable them to receive and sell/barter goods).

The photos were fascinating, as were the brochures, although the brochures and adverts in particular did tend to smack of a "see the primitive natives and their fascinating life" type narrative which I wasn't entirely comfortable with (not least because I am fascinated by it myself, and probably as guilty of 'othering' the St Kildans as anyone else). I did wonder what they thought of the tourists, beyond their reliance on them buying their goods.

An interesting addition to the books I've read already about St Kilda. 3.5/5.

Jackie, what's the weather like where you are? I've been seeing some gorgeous photos of wintry weather across the UK and Europe -- as well as amusing stories about Christmas markets being cancelled because of the snow!!

Thanks rp, the snow has mainly affected England (Midlands downwards) and Wales, and northern Scotland. Here in Stirling (and throughout the central belt, from what I can gather from fb) it's sunny but frosty and cold (high of -1 degrees C today), and I don't think snow is forecast.

I decided to do some science today, and hung out some of my washing (just the towels and bedding) for a couple of hours. It froze, and is now hanging up indoors along with the washing that I didn't hang outside, and I'm hoping to be able to definitively prove that washing hung outside, regardless of outdoor temperature, dries faster than the washing that wasn't (I've proved that already up to a point, but never done it with frozen washing before).

Category: Academic

My next book in the academic category was Hester Vaizey's Born in the GDR: Living in the Shadow of the Wall. The author interviewed around 30 people who were born in East Germany since the Berlin Wall had been built, and who experienced life both before and after the fall of the wall and the reunification of East and West Germany. She then took eight of those interviews (although also drawing on the others where relevant) to look at in more detail to show how there wasn't a uniform experience of East German life either before or after reunification, sandwiching those eight chapters between an introduction and conclusion drawing together all the themes and threads. She points out how in the West we tend to have just a couple of narratives of East Germany - either a dictatorship where the Stasi (secret police) permeated every nook and cranny of everybody's life (cf the film "The Lives of Others"), or a population that are hopelessly nostalgic for the certainties of the past (cf the film "Goodbye Lenin"). This book shows how - of course - it is so much more nuanced than that. A couple of the interviewees had very awful experiences of the Stasi, or faced restrictions and ridicule because of their faith, whilst others got by fine and whilst being aware of the Stasi did not experience their intrusions into their lives. What I found most interesting was how they talked about reunification with West Germany, and how difficult it was when everyone assumed that they would all be delighted to welcome western consumerism as well as democratic freedoms, and would all be thrilled to drop the shackles of socialism, but the reality was that many West Germans took advantage of their naivety to make money, and they found themselves in a culture that dismissed their personal life histories but didn't show them how to navigate the new reality. A very interesting read. 4/5.

>178 LittleTaiko: That sounds really interesting. Good review.

>177 Jackie_K: - How did the science project turn out? I'm really curious to find out which one dried faster.

>180 Jackie_K: Haha, it's been kind of inconclusive, I may have to repeat the experiment. It's been so cold here that we've had the heating on a lot, which has probably skewed my results! On face value, the frozen washing has taken about the same time to dry as the clothes that were hung indoors from the start. But as with any washing hung outside, it smells so much nicer, so it was definitely worth doing!

>181 christina_reads: - Sounds like you'll need to repeat the experiment when it's a tad warmer, if for no other reason but to get that wonderful outdoor drying smell. That is definitely one of my favorite smells. Of course, I also love walking through our neighborhood and smelling the scent from dryer vents wafting in the air so I guess I'm an equal opportunity dryer. Ha!

>170 Jackie_K: - Calvin & Hobbes never goes out of style. Love the cartoons!

Category: Eastern Europe/Former Soviet Union

I have just finished the third in Patrick Leigh Fermor's trilogy detailing his year spent walking from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople in 1934, The Broken Road (I reviewed A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water earlier in this thread). This volume did not come out in Leigh Fermor's lifetime, but was produced posthumously a few years ago from his first draft and diaries by his literary executors, travel writer Colin Thubron and his biographer Artemis Cooper. The book covers his leaving Romania and entering Bulgaria, his travels through Bulgaria, back through Romania for a bit, then back down the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast. The text of the first draft stops mid-sentence a few days before he arrives in Constantinople, and the only text available to Thubron and Cooper were brief diary entries, which are reproduced - sadly very scant, after the beautiful prose of the rest of the book up to that point, which even in not-final-draft form was well up to the standard of the previous two volumes. I, and I suspect many others, would have loved to have read his fully formed thoughts on Constantinople, where he spent a good two or three weeks.

There is a gap in the diary of a week and a half, and when he picks it up he has left Constantinople and is on his way to Greece, specifically to tour the monasteries of Mount Athos. The rest of the book reproduces his (much more expansive) diary entries of that journey, which takes the best part of a month, and whilst not the expansive and mature prose of the later writer, definitely shows more than just glimpses of his attention to detail and interest in place and history.

As with the earlier volumes, he experiences hospitality and adventures and makes great friends as well as passing fleeting acquaintances, and has extraordinary adventures that are unimaginable now. Although it's a shame that he died without being able to finish the final draft himself, and the absence of any detail much about Constantinople is a particular loss, Thubron and Cooper have done a fine job, and this is a fitting tribute to an extraordinary traveller and writer, as well as an account of a time and of ways of life long lost. 4/5

>184 VivienneR: I keep meaning to ask you whether you've read In Tearing Haste, which is a collection of letters between Patrick Leigh Fermor and Deborah Devonshire (one of the Mitfords). It seems like something you might enjoy!

>185 Jackie_K: No I haven't, but I'm keen to read the biography by Artemis Cooper and I will add In Tearing Haste to the list as well - thank you very much for the recommendation! As well as the travel trilogy I've also read his book A Time to Keep Silence which is also wonderful. His writing is just so beautiful.

Hi Jackie, stopping by to wish you and your loved ones peace, joy and happiness this holiday season and for 2018!

Thank you very much, Lori and Vivienne - we had a lovely Christmas, and I hope you did too!

My 2018 thread is finally up: https://www.librarything.com/topic/279359

I think I am going to finish one more book this year, for December's CultureCAT, hopefully today or tomorrow. I'm still going with my December CATWoman read as well but I ran out of steam a bit with it so I suspect I will be carrying on reading it into the first week of 2018. I'll write up here when I eventually finish it though.

December CultureCAT (Cultural Flow/Immigration) / December RandomCAT (One Day)

My CultureCAT book for December was a quick (hence also included in RandomCAT for December) but quite harrowing read, Emma Jane Kirby's The Optician of Lampedusa. The author is a BBC foreign correspondent, and what ended up as this book started out as a report for the Radio 4 flagship news programme, PM. A boat carrying 500+ African migrants sank just off the little Italian island of Lampedusa, which sits in the Mediterranean off the coast of Tunisia. The optician of the title, along with his wife and 6 of their friends, were spending a day or two on their friend's boat, sailing, when they came across the aftermath of the sinking, and ended up rescuing 47 of the migrants, who by that point had already been in the water a good 4 hours. This book is an extended look at what happened, the lead-up to their sailing break, the rescue, and what happened afterwards. I found it really moving, and it asks really important questions about helping or looking the other way, whilst never being preachy. Highly recommended, although not an easy read. 5/5.

In other news, I'm still reading December's CATWoman book, but have stalled a bit, so will aim to finish that next week. I'll post it up on this thread in 2018 when I'm done with it.

December CATWoman (Post-1960 novels by women)



I've officially decided to finally abandon my December CATWoman book. I've given it 3 stars anyway, as the writing is such that had I finished it I'm very very sure I would have given it 3 stars, but this is my second attempt at this book and I realised that the reason I have now stalled twice with it is that I'm just not that invested in any of the characters. Anyway, for what it's worth, it was Kim Edwards' The Memory Keeper's Daughter, the basic premise of which is that in the 1960s a rural doctor delivers his wife's twins during a storm, they clearly didn't know till the birth that they were having twins. The first child, a boy, is healthy, but the second is born and it is clear that she has Downs Syndrome. The doctor makes the decision to tell his wife that the girl died at birth, and gives her to the nurse who assisted at the delivery to take her to a residential home. The nurse does so, but is so appalled at the home that she leaves with the baby and starts a new life with her. That's pretty much where I stopped at the book both times - it follows the various characters, doctor and his wife (who is clearly suffering with undiagnosed postnatal depression, and never stops grieving her 'dead' daughter), nurse, and latterly the children as they grow older. The premise of the book is fine, the writing is well-done and not at all mawkish, but it just didn't make me want to find out what was going to happen. Now that's happened twice, I feel better about abandoning it, it's clearly just not the book for me. Onto the Barter Books pile it goes.

Good review of The Optician of Lampedusa. I'll keep an eye out for a copy as it sounds worth reading.

There aren't any review's up on the book's page. Would you consider adding yours?

>192 Good point, I'll do that now.