Ursula Keeps On Keepin' On

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Ursula Keeps On Keepin' On

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1ursula
Modifié : Fév 14, 2017, 6:56 am



Hello everyone! I'm Ursula, living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I'm an artist and photographer (more info on that in my profile, if you're curious), and my husband is a mathematician. His job has taken us lots of places, and this year it's here, in a state I'd never visited before moving here. I read from the 1001 books list, and a variety of fiction and non-fiction books. I don't really read much from genres like mystery, etc, although occasionally I'll throw in a couple.

Currently reading:

  

A Bend in the River by VS Naipaul, Letters of Note: Volume 2 edited by Shaun Usher

Currently reading in Italian:

Currently listening to:

2ursula
Modifié : Fév 14, 2017, 6:57 am

📚📚📚 ... January ... 📚📚📚
Evicted - finished Jan 1 (418 pages) ⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2
Wave - finished Jan 2 (audio, 5h 25m) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Waiting - finished Jan 3 (308 pages) ⭐⭐⭐
The Graduate - finished Jan 7 (191 pages) ⭐⭐⭐
March, Book Two - finished Jan 11 (187 pages) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
His Bloody Project - finished Jan 14 (280 pages) ⭐⭐1/2
There Goes Gravity - finished Jan 16 (audio, 12h 17m) ⭐⭐1/2
Tent of Miracles - finished Jan 19 (380 pages) ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Half of Man Is Woman - finished Jan 26 (285 pages) ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Country of Ice Cream Star - finished Jan 27 (581 pages) ⭐⭐⭐⭐
March, Book Three - finished Jan 28 (246 pages) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
When Breath Becomes Air - finished Jan 31 (audio, 5h 27m) ⭐⭐⭐1/2

Total read in January: 12

📚📚📚 ... February ... 📚📚📚
A Long Way Home - finished Feb 1 (audio, 7h 28m) ⭐⭐⭐
Year of Wonders - finished Feb 8 (308 pages) ⭐⭐1/2
The Unwinding - finished Feb 12 (434 pages) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Total pages read: 3618
Total time listened: 30h 37m

Fiction: 7
Non-fiction: 8

Male: 11
Female: 4

3ursula
Modifié : Jan 1, 2017, 9:30 am

Wrap-up of 2016

Total books read: 101
Total pages read: 28738
Total time listened: 246h 10m

Format

Paper: 34
Kindle/ebook: 46
Audio: 21

Unsurprising, since paper books were rare in Italy (I mean, they exist! It's just that I didn't have money to spend and books in English aside from recent bestsellers were hard to find, and my Italian reading is slow so I didn't go through many). Thank goodness for the Kindle and American public libraries or I might not have read much at all.

Fiction/Non-fiction

Fiction: 73
Non-fiction: 28

This is about the ratio I manage every year. We'll see if 2017 has a little bit more non-fiction?

Authors

Female: 45
Male: 56

Way, wayyy better than in previous years. My overall library currently stands at 66.67% male/33.33% female. I hope to improve that by the end of 2017.

Year of Publication

1700s: 1
1800s: 4
1900s: 32
2000s: 64

That's a lot of recent books for me. I think it's partially a factor of trying to balance out the male/female ratio. I hope to read not quite so many recent books in 2017, and hopefully most of those will have been published in the last 3-5 years.

1001 books list

Read in 2016: 27

I have been trying to read about 35 from the list annually, so I fell a little short here. I finished strong, though.

👍👍Best of the year👍👍
(in the order read)

Fiction

    

My Struggle, Book Two: A Man in Love
A Little Life
The Well of Loneliness
The Radetzky March
Dreams from Bunker Hill

Runners-up

  

Far from the Madding Crowd
The Little Red Chairs
City of Thieves

Non-fiction



Between the World and Me

Runners-up

  

Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?
Nothing to Envy
The Worst Journey in the World

5Simone2
Jan 1, 2017, 10:51 am

Happy New Year, Ursula. I always enjoy your reviews and a lot of your favourites make it to my wishlist, so I am looking forward to another year of following your thread.

6dchaikin
Jan 1, 2017, 11:32 am

You are reading/listening to some great stuff already. And, I think you mentioned reading Ferrante it Italian. It seems like you have a great year ahead of you. Happy New Year and looking forward to following along.

7ELiz_M
Jan 1, 2017, 12:59 pm

I love the photo in the first post. Aside from the snow, it looks like an adorable getaway. I will be following your thread with great interest and am looking forward to what 1001 books and non-fiction works you read.

Happy New Year!

8ursula
Jan 1, 2017, 2:07 pm

>5 Simone2: Hello! We do seem to have a similar taste. Here's to good books for both of us!

>6 dchaikin: And I'll be finishing most of it in the next day or two. I could have rushed to cram them into 2016 but I decided against it. In the case of Wave, it's simply not possible to listen to more than half an hour or so at a time. Too wrenching. Yep, reading Ferrante in Italian. That'll have to go back into the first post when I pick it up again. I had set it aside at the end of the year but soon it'll be in the mix again.

>7 ELiz_M: Thank you, it is a little cottage type thing on the property of a house near here. I assume it's a garden shed or something but I would certainly love something like that as a little studio/getaway nook!

9AlisonY
Jan 1, 2017, 3:46 pm

Happy New Year! Expecting some more great reads from this thread this year!

10janeajones
Jan 1, 2017, 4:03 pm

Happy New Year!

11The_Hibernator
Jan 1, 2017, 9:09 pm

12ursula
Jan 3, 2017, 7:02 am

Here we go, book number 1!



Evicted

The book looks at evictions and their impact on poor families, specifically in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The reasons for eviction are varied, going beyond just getting behind on the rent, and the disproportionate way that black women are impacted is eye-opening. As he reveals in a section on the end about his methodology, Desmond lived in the same poor neighborhoods as the people he wanted to talk to, which gave him access to the day-to-day in their lives, especially as they eventually came to put some trust in him. At the same time, he also got to know his landlords and heard things from their perspective as well. I felt that he was relatively even-handed with the landlords, putting the blame more on the system that enables people to get rich off the poor than the people themselves. At the same time, I don't feel that he put the poor people he profiles up on a pedestal. They're real people who have made some good decisions and some bad, but the churn of evictions have backed them all into worse and worse circumstances. The idea that anyone would be forced to spend 80% of their income on rent just to live in a decrepit home in a dangerous area is heartbreaking. The fact that so many people have to do exactly that is shameful.

On a personal note, I was reminded of childhood homes my parents rented - although we were never evicted (to my knowledge, and if so, certainly not in the manner described in this book), we did live in homes in complete disrepair, with landlords unwilling to fix things, without heat, and without choices because there was nowhere else inexpensive enough to move to.

13dchaikin
Jan 3, 2017, 7:55 am

Great first book. This was maybe the most important books I read last year, in a current event sense (but then there are a 100 different ways to define important). I was touched by his afterward.

14NanaCC
Jan 3, 2017, 8:18 am

I'm just placing my star, Ursula. You have several books on your favorites list that are on my wishlist, so that's an endorsement I like.

15arubabookwoman
Jan 3, 2017, 1:30 pm

Hi Ursula--I think I will be following your thread here where I have a better chance to keep up rather than in the 75 group. :)

Excellent review of Evicted, and I will add it to my wishlist.

The photo at top is beautiful. Did you take it?

16AlisonY
Jan 3, 2017, 3:46 pm

Evicted is getting such great reviews - think I will have to get to this one someday soon.

17ursula
Jan 3, 2017, 6:13 pm

>13 dchaikin: There are, indeed a hundred different ways to decide what's "important." I think that some universals apply though, and this is one of them. I can imagine and understand his wavering on when/if/how to intervene in a situation, and it made me smile that he was the "friend" on the two occasions he mentions.

>14 NanaCC: Happy to see you here! It's always good to see people you know liking books you intend to read, although I admit I'm not often dissuaded if people dislike one I've got my eye on. I'm contrary like that. :)

>15 arubabookwoman: It is hard to keep up in the 75ers. I hope you find Evicted worthwhile when you get to it. I did take the photo, and thank you! Sunrise and snow are a good combo.

>16 AlisonY: I am curious how it reads to people outside the US.

18ursula
Jan 4, 2017, 6:57 am



Wave

During the 2004 tsunami, Sonali Deraniyagala was with her family in Sri Lanka. The wave killed everyone - her parents, her husband, her two sons - and left her alive, though quickly wondering why she should be. I tend not to be interested in these grief memoirs, not because of the sadness so much as because they seem to usually be "inspirational." You know, how this person lost everything and managed to just get on with things and see the beauty in life or whatever drivel. This one is raw, and real. Sometimes she's suicidal. Sometimes she's bitter. She spends a lot of time trying not to think about them at all. She finds purpose in letting her anger out, and she sinks into lethargy.

What she goes through is absolutely shattering, and she's shattered. She doesn't have any blithe faith that everything is for the best or that she has learned any great lessons from it all. It's just a terrible, terrible thing that happened to her, and she's learned to limp through the subsequent years and eventually find some sort of equilibrium which allows her to get up every day.

I listened to the audio, and the narrator (Hannah Curtis) was excellent. I had to remind myself that it wasn't actually the author speaking, it seemed so real. I took longer to listen to this than the 5 and a half hour running time would suggest, just because I couldn't listen to more than about a half hour at a time because it was such an intense experience. Recommended.

19dchaikin
Jan 4, 2017, 7:43 am

>18 ursula: Great review. It could be my faulty memory, but this is the first slightly longer review I can remember here. I think I had avoided it before, but now I think I want to read it. This was such a big event that I still remember my shock at learning of it.

20ursula
Jan 4, 2017, 10:15 pm

>19 dchaikin: Thanks! I remember watching the footage on the news and being absolutely horrified - I think a tsunami is the very last thing I would want to be anywhere near.

21ursula
Jan 6, 2017, 11:35 am

If you're curious what the snow really looks like, here is the front of our house, taken yesterday. We share a driveway with our neighbor, and they have someone who comes and plows it. When they do that, the first 15 feet of it get plowed here, into the front "yard". The rest of it gets plowed into the back. So this isn't a half-mile's worth of driveway snow plowed into there or anything. The stuff on the right is just fallen snow/drift whatever. It's 3 feet deep.

22ursula
Jan 6, 2017, 11:50 am



Waiting

Honestly, I'm not sure what I think of this book. It takes place during the '60s and '70s in China, and is about Lin, a doctor who is in an unhappy marriage with Shuyu. She lives in the village they're from while he lives in the city, working in a hospital. He becomes interested in one of the nurses there, Manna, and they begin a non-physical relationship while he tries to divorce Shuyu. The waiting is done by all of them: Manna, who waits for Lin to finally get that divorce; Shuyu, who waits for her husband to come to his senses; and Lin, who waits for his life to finally begin. The whole thing didn't end up anywhere I thought it would, and in fact I'm not sure it ended up anywhere at all. I'd say more about that, but it would spoil the whole trajectory of the story. An odd little book.

23AlisonY
Jan 6, 2017, 4:19 pm

Lovely photo - your new home looks very picturesque. What's the stone tower in the background?

24dchaikin
Jan 6, 2017, 11:45 pm

>22 ursula: Curious.

25japaul22
Jan 7, 2017, 6:58 am

That is a lot of snow! In DC everything would be shut down permanently. :-)

In the Chicago area, where I grew up, we got quite a bit of snow every winter, but not nearly as much as you get where you are. I remember how boring it gets to look at that much white for so many months. It's pretty at first, but your eyes get tired after a few weeks. Though it does make spring that much more beautiful!

26ursula
Jan 7, 2017, 8:45 am

>23 AlisonY: It is not picturesque at all. :) The building in the background is the old town water tower.

>24 dchaikin: I just got an uncomfortable feeling about what the author wanted us to think about these characters. I accept that cultural and time period differences may be at play, but I ended up liking the premise but not the way it played out. It was a National Book Award winner though, so perhaps I'm alone on this.

>25 japaul22: That's a lot of snow since around Dec. 7. Schools were actually closed that day, which is a rarity. I agree that it gets boring (already). Literally everything is covered. I'm not thinking about spring right now, because it is very far off!

27ipsoivan
Modifié : Jan 7, 2017, 10:19 am

>21 ursula: yikes. We had it bad a couple of weeks before Christmas. Our house is on a tiny laneway, with just 3 feet or so from the sidewalk to the front of the house, and all the houses are only 13 feet wide, with neighbours either attached or about 5 feet apart. When we shovel the walk (city bylaw here that it must be done within 12 hours of a snow), we have to pile the snow in front of the house, because there is just nowhere else to put it. In a snowy winter, the lower windows are quickly submerged.

28dchaikin
Jan 7, 2017, 10:58 am

>26 ursula: "I just got an uncomfortable feeling about what the author wanted us to think about these characters.

A lot of authors win awards for managing this. But it doesn't necessarily make pleasant reading.

29ursula
Jan 7, 2017, 12:07 pm

>27 ipsoivan: It was discussed in my last thread of 2016 that there do not seem to be any such laws about sidewalks here. The stuff from the roads ends up on them in addition to whatever falls and they are often 6-12 inches deep. I'm guessing that it won't be long before the snow gets pushed closer and closer to the actual driveway and instead of just Mt. Snowverest there, we'll end up with a whole mountain range. Should be interesting.

I can imagine that with so little room (or none) between houses, there aren't too many places to pile the snow.

>28 dchaikin: Yes ... but I meant more that the women seemed to suck and the man was maybe entitled to better? In the author's view, I mean.

30AlisonY
Jan 7, 2017, 4:56 pm

>26 ursula: I get the feeling you're not feeling the love for old Michigan :)

31ursula
Jan 7, 2017, 6:09 pm

>30 AlisonY: Michigan is fine. Fine, fine, fine. I'll take this over a winter in Portland or Seattle any day.

However - it must be understood that 1. we have a dog that needs walks 4 times a day, and 2. we don't have a car, so we are experiencing this winter different than most people might. It's not about having to scrape ice off the windows or drive on roads that are slippery or having a slow commute because of an accident or weather. It's about slogging through those 6-inch deep sidewalks a kilometer to the grocery store, and then back, carrying groceries, up a long set of stairs which may or may not be shoveled. (Because of course we live up a hill from the entire town. Of course.) It's about walking a mile to the only coffee shop. The grocery store I mentioned is the only one we can reasonably access - there is another one but it's about 2-3 miles away. Way too far to go. We can get to a drugstore, and a hardware store, and that's it. We're living in a town (and a country) not set up for pedestrians, in a not-very-friendly climate. We ran errands today - it was 13 degrees Fahrenheit (-10 Celsius). As I said, it's fine ... but it's also sometimes really hard.

It just means that I am incredulous that there is so little care taken to clear absolutely anything. The snow plows go through the streets often, but they don't clear them completely. They push off the new snow and everyone is driving on a layer of tightly-packed (slick) snow, over a layer of ice. The downtown sidewalks are the same, even in front of the businesses. They throw some salt on them haphazardly if they do anything. I've only see one truly clear sidewalk, and no surprise, it led to a law office. They don't want anyone to slip on their walkway.

32janeajones
Jan 7, 2017, 7:18 pm

When I was a kid in western NYS, there were actually horse-drawn snowplows to plow the sidewalks. No more -- now everyone is responsible for the sidewalks in front of their property -- snowblowers abound. I'm glad we live in FL now.

33dchaikin
Jan 7, 2017, 7:21 pm

Goodness. No car and not in a city that is friendly to that. You're tough, Urs.

34ursula
Jan 8, 2017, 9:19 am



The Graduate

This was an experience a little bit like reading Fight Club after having seen the movie - you're struck by how many of the scenes, how much of the dialogue, came straight from the book. It was almost like reading a script. If by some chance you haven't seen the movie (watch it now), the book is about Benjamin Braddock, who has just graduated from college and has now lost all motivation to do anything. He doesn't want to continue on the path he was on, but he doesn't want to do anything else, either. While he's at loose ends, he falls into an affair with the wife of one of his parents' friends, Mrs. Robinson.

Here's the thing: the book has great moments, terrific dialogue, and a bit more establishing background about Benjamin. The movie has Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft, "plastics" and a soundtrack by Simon and Garfunkel. The book makes Benjamin seem like more of a creep. The movie cuts out some unnecessary stuff and adds a few indelible images. The book is fine, but I say you are getting the best of everything if you just watch the movie.

35ursula
Jan 8, 2017, 9:28 am

>32 janeajones: They do have narrow plows they drive on the sidewalks. They just don't do it on any sort of schedule as far as I can tell. Lots of people here have snow blowers too, but they only clear their own driveways, often creating 3-ft tall piles in the sidewalks.

>33 dchaikin: It's -4F at the moment (and lightly snowing, as always). Luckily, we don't need to go out except for possibly trying to get the dog some exercise - although she can't be out long in these temperatures because her paws freeze. We have some Musher's Secret wax for her paws, which works great under most circumstances but even that can't help with everything. :) I appreciate you calling me tough. :) But we decided early on that we weren't going to let it all drive us inside to order pizza for the entire winter (there is literally nothing else that delivers), so we keep our chins up.

36AlisonY
Jan 8, 2017, 11:32 am

>31 ursula: your shopping sounds like endurance training. I did have to smile at your comment on the law firm's sidewalk....

37ursula
Jan 8, 2017, 9:21 pm

>36 AlisonY: It made me laugh, too. :)

I admit my husband does the vast majority of the grocery shopping, not because of the circumstances but because I loathe grocery stores and they make me homicidal. When we are out together, I go with him to help carry things back though.

38ursula
Jan 11, 2017, 9:25 pm



March, Book Two

Finished the second volume in this series of John Lewis's memoir. This one hit it out of the park for me. It built on everything that had been set up in volume one, and covered so much ground. The freedom rides, the fracturing of the movement, the March on Washington ... It's powerful stuff, and just like when you see the news footage on tv, it seems so hard to believe that this was so recent and yet also that in some ways we haven't come far from it. I'm really looking forward to the final volume, which I will be reading soon both because I already have it out from the library and also because this one ends at such a critical juncture.

39dchaikin
Jan 11, 2017, 9:40 pm

>38 ursula: hmm. Now I'm really interested.

>34 ursula: mental note, don't read the book (but... I haven't seen the movie yet. Embarrassing to admit. )

>35 ursula: mushers secret wax for dog's paws in snow. Hmmm.

40ursula
Jan 12, 2017, 5:16 pm

>39 dchaikin: They're really good!

You haven't seen The Graduate?! Well, I guess I shouldn't be that surprised. I was a weird kid and in high school went through a big phase of watching old movies. I think that's when I saw it for the first time.

I don't think you'll need Musher's Secret where you are! In fact, we didn't use it in Denver either (although she did freeze her paws from time to time). But for here, it's a necessity and after reading a lot of reviews, it seemed more practical than dog booties.

41valkyrdeath
Jan 13, 2017, 5:58 pm

>38 ursula: I really need to read this one. I read Volume 1 some time ago and liked it, but I'm not sure if I should wait until I have Volume 3 before carrying on, especially after what you said at the end of your review.

For some reason, The Graduate is a film that slipped by me too, despite its fame. It's on my watch list though, which is as bad as my to read list.

42AnnieMod
Jan 13, 2017, 6:19 pm

>38 ursula:

I had been reading a page here and there from these since they got published... the first volume is coming from the library tomorrow :)

43ursula
Jan 14, 2017, 7:03 am

>41 valkyrdeath: I don't know that history can end on a cliffhanger, but it did pick a dramatic moment and I'm looking forward to what role Lewis plays in the next part of the story.

I gave up on having a "to watch" list, just like I gave up on a "to read" list. I see the benefits of it, but it just became a list of things I was supposed to watch/read but somehow always avoided because I wasn't in the mood. So now I just meander around. :)

>42 AnnieMod: Nice! I kept hearing things about them, and then they were on display at the library so I figured now was the time!

44ursula
Jan 15, 2017, 7:17 am



His Bloody Project

This story about a triple murder committed by a 17-year-old boy in rural Scotland just didn't grab me. The story is told in 3 parts: a document that was written in prison by Roddy Macrae, the murderer (he freely admits that he killed the victims), a statement by a psychologist after examining Roddy, and an account of the trial partially pulled from contemporary newspaper accounts. It sounds like a great accomplishment as a novel, and in some ways it probably is. I'm sure it's not easy to write in the style of so many different 19th century characters. But there's got to be more to hold it together than craft, and for me, there just wasn't. I liked Roddy's account well enough, but I was progressively more bored by the other two sections. And there just didn't seem to be any point - was he insane? Did he really commit the murders for the reasons he gave? Who knows, and I would add: who cares. It didn't add up to anything at all.

45janemarieprice
Jan 18, 2017, 9:20 pm

Just catching up here. I've heard a lot of buzz about Evicted so put it on my wishlist. Does it cover only Milwaukee or does it cover tenant laws/issues in any other areas?

I'm horrified by your snow trials! I'm looking to move and considering several different cities including some cold ones but will be in the same boat with no car. Granted where I grew up is 71 degrees right now.

46AnnieMod
Jan 18, 2017, 9:36 pm

>45 janemarieprice: Milwaukee only except for a few comments here and there for other places.

47ursula
Jan 18, 2017, 10:03 pm

>45 janemarieprice: Yes, Milwaukee only. I think it's pretty universal, though.

Good luck with looking at cities to move to. If you are able-bodied and the city has some reasonable public transport, you should probably still be okay. But small towns are not for the faint of heart (speaking literally as well as metaphorically).

>46 AnnieMod: Thanks for jumping in with the answer! :)

48ursula
Jan 19, 2017, 6:31 pm



There Goes Gravity

Sometimes I listen to audio books that aren't that great because I listen while I'm working anyway and it's a pain to go find something else, and the book I'm listening to isn't actively annoying me. This is one of those books. Lisa Robinson started writing about music at the end of the '60s, working for all the big publications at one time or another and also starting a couple with her husband. She went on tour with various bands, including Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones. She interviewed everyone - John Lennon, David Bowie, Freddie Mercury ... and on into the present day, Bono, Eminem, Lady Gaga. She kept obsessive notes, went through miles and miles of cassette recordings. This means she's able to talk with authority about what someone was wearing, what they said, to recite the conversation word for word.

It's a strength, and also definitely a weakness. Sometimes it's funny - she would frequently give a list of what Mick Jagger was wearing in the 60s and end it with "... all at the same time." Sometimes it just makes you realize why interviews are edited. ("I said 'don't you think that's strange?' he said 'not really' I said 'you don't? not at all?' he said 'why would I?' I said 'I just thought....'" You get the idea.) She was an anomaly on tour - a woman, a non-drug user. These things seem like they could be a jumping-off point for something interesting, but they don't seem to interest her much, except to say that it was sometimes an odd position to be in. When discussing interviews in the past, often there are words in there that are no longer appropriate to use, and every time she feels compelled to say "yes... you could say that then." (example: talking to Yoko Ono about being Oriental) This really irritated me, and I wondered if it would have irritated me as much in print. Part of it was her delivery (the book is read by the author) in a flat, sardonic New York tone.

Anyway, there were some interesting stories in the book but there was also a lot of not-interesting stuff, so I wouldn't really recommend it unless you're looking to listen to something light that you can get distracted from for a while and still not really miss anything.

49auntmarge64
Jan 19, 2017, 8:49 pm

>38 ursula: I admire John Lewis so much, and the March trilogy is wonderful, if for no other reason than to honor what he's done with his life. I hope all school and public libraries carry it. Like you, I've read the first two, and Your post just reminded me I need to get online and order the third from my library. (Just did that.)

50auntmarge64
Jan 19, 2017, 8:51 pm

>44 ursula: I'm with you re: His Bloody Project. My review read, in part, this tale of inevitable and total degradation and destruction was more than I could stand.

51RidgewayGirl
Jan 20, 2017, 9:37 am

I have a copy of His Bloody Project and look forward to forming an opinion on it!

A short story in the middle of Roxane Gay's Difficult Women is about a university professor in the UP. It made me think of you. Hope you're still surviving.

52DieFledermaus
Jan 20, 2017, 6:01 pm

>38 ursula: - Glad to read a review of the March trilogy. I hadn't heard of it until recently (as being in the news and selling out everywhere). I definitely want to read it now!

53ursula
Jan 21, 2017, 9:22 am

>49 auntmarge64: I sort of started the third (I have some other things I need to finish in a bit more of a hurry to return them to the library). It is really great that the story is both in a graphic novel format and aimed at young adults because I agree, all libraries should have it and everyone should read it.

>50 auntmarge64: I don't exactly mind unrelenting misery, goodness knows I've read enough books that description would fit, but this one just didn't engage me. I didn't really care much about Roddy or find him interesting at all except maybe in the interlude in the town when he got drunk with his dumb friend. I felt like responses to the book were generally positive so it's nice to hear from people who didn't like it. :)

>51 RidgewayGirl: And I will look forward to seeing what that opinion is!

At which university? I think there are 3 - Northern Michigan in Marquette, Michigan Tech in Houghton, and us, Lake Superior State in SSM. We are still surviving - at the moment the weather has been turned upside down and been above freezing and raining. So everything is a slushy mess and I am unhappy as I HATE RAIN. Particularly this sort of rain, when it's barely above freezing. This is the entire reason I would hate to live in the Pacific Northwest. My absolute least favorite weather of anything I can imagine is 36 degrees and raining. I'm looking forward to next week, when temperatures are supposed to drop again and we'll be back to snow.

>52 DieFledermaus: I saw that it was selling out all over the place thanks to the coverage of John Lewis's boycott of the inauguration. Good all around.

54dchaikin
Jan 21, 2017, 9:50 am

>48 ursula: I do the same, Urs, listen to audio books that aren't that good just because it's too hard to find or choose another book. Sounds like she had an interesting life, anyway.

55RidgewayGirl
Modifié : Jan 21, 2017, 10:25 am

>53 ursula: There are two stories (so far - I'm halfway through) set around the Michigan Institute of Technology. I was wondering how they'd shorten that name, given that just going by the initials is a bit misleading. There was a bit where the protagonist is unhappy with the sad state of the winter produce, which is something I remember from growing up in Edmonton, AB during the seventies. The choices of fruit were limited to the point where I still think grapes are awfully fancy and we ate mostly frozen or canned vegetables.

56ursula
Jan 21, 2017, 2:46 pm



Tent of Miracles

A kaleidoscopic view of life in the state of Bahia, Brazil. (It's even more kaleidoscopic when you're like me and don't realize for the first 100 pages that there's a glossary in the back of the book which defines all the Portuguese words.) The frame of the book is that an author, Fausto Pena, has been asked to write a book about Pedro Archanjo, a Bahian writer who has been largely forgotten. But when an American scholar shows interest in his work, suddenly the entire state has decided he's a national hero and must be celebrated. To that end, his works are unearthed and everyone scrambles to be the biggest fan. All of that is presumably contemporary to when the novel was published, in 1969.

Most of the book, though, takes place in Archanjo's time, the early 1900s. He works at the university as a runner, and is friends with some of the professors and reviled by others as a lower life form because he's black. His writings tackle some of the deepest issues in Brazilian culture - folkways including voodoo (also known as macumba and candomblé), and the issues of race relations; his answer is miscegenation for all). As one can imagine, these were revolutionary viewpoints at the time, particularly since there was a police crackdown on the practice of candomblé. Archanjo is a colorful character - a leader in the candomblé rites, the father of many sons who don't know he is their father, an intellectual, and eventually an old man who everyone knows and respects (in the neighborhood, at least). Archanjo is vivid, but even more vivid is the whirling life of Bahia - the mix of races and customs, the orixas and rites of candomblé, the poverty and vibrant life.

I'm not explaining the book well, but it's like falling down the rabbit hole into an entirely different world. It takes a bit to find your footing, but then you're swept up. I did have quibbles - I found the later chapters from the contemporary author writing about Pena a bit of an interruption or annoyance in particular - but I am looking forward to Amado's other books.

(This is on the 1001 Books list.)

57ursula
Jan 22, 2017, 12:04 pm

>54 dchaikin: Yeah, I guess since I limit the type of audiobooks I listen to to a relatively small subsection of books, it makes it a little more difficult. Also, there are usually waiting lists so it's not like I can just pick whatever. When I try the "available now" filter, lots of times the results are less than inspiring!

>55 RidgewayGirl: Ah, I just googled that. It looks like it is a trade school - heating and air-conditioning, automotive programs, etc. And it seems they use MIIT. :)

The produce is not as dire as it would have been 20 or more years ago, but it's certainly not as plentiful as I'm used to. (I realize that growing up in California means that I didn't even realize fruits and veggies had seasons.)

58dchaikin
Jan 22, 2017, 4:40 pm

>56 ursula: fascinating review. Rebecca made me want to read Amado. This, even the kaleidoscopic aspects, only intrigues me more.

59ursula
Modifié : Jan 24, 2017, 9:54 pm

>58 dchaikin: It was intriguing. Although I was sometimes disoriented, it makes me interested in getting to his other work.

60janeajones
Jan 24, 2017, 8:32 pm

Nice review of Tent of Miracles -- I read it about 25 years ago when I was involved in an NEH seminar about Latin American literature. Amado is a delightful author and certainly opens up new world views.

61edwinbcn
Jan 25, 2017, 12:21 am

I read The Graduate last year, and felt it had very strong dialogue (there is very little narration).

62ursula
Jan 26, 2017, 8:44 am

>60 janeajones: Thanks! I'm definitely going to read more by him.

>61 edwinbcn: I agree the dialogue was pretty strong, which is why it ended up in the movie pretty much verbatim.

63ursula
Jan 30, 2017, 7:37 am



Half of Man Is Woman

Set in the boonies of China during the Cultural Revolution (which is where Zhang spent a good portion of his time as well), the book is about what happens to people under a regime like that. Not just the hard labor, and the loss of family ties, but the loss of self. The main character (who is also named Zhang, although the character's first name is Yonglin) is a poet and therefore condemned as an intellectual, and the novel describes his utter inability to interpret the world anymore - bad enough for any human being, but with an extra layer of trouble for a writer. It's a result not only of being imprisoned and isolated, fed propaganda day in and day out, but also of the constantly shifting priorities of the changing power dynamics in the country. In a very short time, up can become down and right can become wrong. You inform on a neighbor to get yourself out of trouble, but in a few months you are being condemned for having informed because the sands have shifted again.

Zhang sees a naked woman bathing one day and is instantly in some sort of love with her. After that brief glimpse of her, he doesn't see her again for years. When they meet, they begin a relationship, although things are not idyllic. Zhang the author uses Zhang the character's impotence and inability to understand love and relationships to illustrate the destruction of the self under conditions like that, and to contemplate what remains of humanity when you've forgotten what it means to be human on even the most basic levels.

I don't know that it's a great book, really, but I've definitely been thinking about it since finishing it. I found the woman, Huang Xiangjiu, hard to relate to - but whether that is because of a limited portrayal or because she is also stunted like Zhang but seen by the reader without the benefit of an interior monologue is unclear.

64ursula
Jan 31, 2017, 6:21 pm



The Country of Ice Cream Star

This is a post-apocalyptic novel set in the eastern United States. It seems to be disease again that has wiped out most of the population, and those who remain don't live to be much past 18, because that's when they fall sick with the posies, a disease that will be fatal in a short amount of time. The main character is Ice Cream Fifteen Star, who belongs to the Sengles who live in Massa woods and are somewhat allied with the Christings against the Armies. And that should give you just a bit of a feel for how this book reads. It's in an invented version of English, and you'll have to figure it out and fall into its rhythm to get into the book. But when you do, it has the effect of fully immersing you. Ice Cream and a couple of her other Sengles find a Roo, a white man (they've never seen one) who appears to be in his thirties (well past the age when anyone should be dead), and although he should be the enemy, they aren't entirely sure what to do with him because he is such an anomaly. He quickly learns to speak to the Sengles in their language and starts teaching them Rooish as well. Should they listen to what he tells them?

This is a long book (almost 600 pages), and the world is fully realized, so there are a lot of characters, a lot of actions that happen, a lot of changes of scenery. It's richly imagined and the language never lets you down. In the acknowledgements, the author says that someone helped her cut it down from the original 900 pages, which is good - but the bad is that I found the ending very abrupt. It was almost as if the editing help said, "Hey, you can just stop here." That's my biggest complaint, with the second being that it probably still could have been a little bit shorter. But it's worth reading if you are willing to be patient with the language.

I haven't read A Clockwork Orange, but this actually gives me hope that I'll be able to get through it. I've always been nervous about dealing with the language it's written in.

Here's a little excerpt to give you a taste of the writing:

"I be the only living Sengle ever seen a roo. Sure they ain’t trouble Massa woods for years until this day. Only jones children, of thirteen and more, still known this fear.

It been a month before, by Tember when the summer still prolong. This night, I gone sleeping at the library, alone except my mare and hound. I like to be alone from Sengles, and I like to take my pony and my hound indoors. Be sweet in separateness to feel their faith. Driver give me talk about this habit – he say I be unmanageable since I got a horse. This saying true, but he ain’t recognize that I be better so.

The library a prettieuse and cleanish edifice. Been a place for books in sleeper times, but now the books is gone. "

65ursula
Fév 13, 2017, 7:02 pm

Okay, I'm giving up on the idea that I will feel like writing "real" thoughts about books anytime in the immediate future and I'll just throw a few lines out there.



March, Book Three

You know this series is great. Read it. This is probably the best book of the three, which is a great way to end it.



A Long Way Home

The basis for the movie Lion. A 5-year-old Indian boy gets lost on a train, ends up in Calcutta, and ultimately in an orphanage and adopted by an Australian family. He eventually tracks down his hometown and his family using Google Earth. The verdict: he spends a lot of time going over and over the minimal memories he has, which is understandable but a little boring. Then he spends a lot of time staring at Google Earth, which is exactly as exciting as you think it is. It's a story that's maybe better condensed down into a 2-hour movie.

66SassyLassy
Fév 13, 2017, 7:51 pm

>65 ursula: The snow will disappear, the sun will come out and real thoughts will return.

67ursula
Fév 14, 2017, 6:55 am

>66 SassyLassy: If only it were the snow.

This time of year (November - March) is no fun, and not because of the winter. My husband's life in academia means this is job posting/application submitting/interview waiting/news waiting season. It is a long, arduous, slooooow process. And the fact that it happens to coincide with Christmas, New Year's, both our birthdays, Valentine's Day, and our wedding anniversary is not good. It essentially ruins what should be a fun-filled time of year.