Chatterbox Launches Into 2019: Act the Second

Late Echo

by John Ashbery
1927-2017

Alone with our madness and favorite flower
We see that there really is nothing left to write about.
Or rather, it is necessary to write about the same old things
In the same way, repeating the same things over and over
For love to continue and be gradually different.
Beehives and ants have to be re-examined eternally
And the color of the day put in
Hundreds of times and varied from summer to winter
For it to get slowed down to the pace of an authentic
Saraband and huddle there, alive and resting.
Only then can the chronic inattention
Of our lives drape itself around us, conciliatory
And with one eye on those long tan plush shadows
That speak so deeply into our unprepared knowledge
Of ourselves, the talking engines of our day.

Famed American poet John Ashbery (who won the Pulitzer and nearly every other literary prize out there) wrote the short piece I've selected to lead off my second thread, and even though he was contemporaneous with Abstract Expressionism (and even influenced by it...) I've opted to top this post/thread with a work by one of my favorite currently active artists, Peter Doig (of Scotland), who flirts with both abstraction and expressionism while remaining firmly in the realist camp (at least IMHO!)

My long-delayed, much-postponed second thread of 2019 -- since I'm already onto my THIRD batch of 75 books...

I always read far more than 75 books a year and so just keep a single ticker to track my total reading. I'll start new threads when the total number of posts hits between 250 and 300. I will try to keep the list current but last year, keeping up with mini-reviews of the books I read, with capsule comments, defeated me. So, this year, I will simply acknowledge that it's not possible.

This year I'm setting my goal at just above my 2018 level: 425. Hmmm.... So far, I'm not doing so well, as I started a retail job in the second half of March, and it's taking a toll on my energy level and time to read.

If you want to see what I have been reading in real time, your best bet is to go to my library on LT, and look at the dedicated collection I've established there, under the label "Books Read in 2019". As I complete a book, I'll rate it and add it to the list. I'll also tag it, "Read in 2019". You'll be able to see it by either searching under that tag, or clicking on https://www.librarything.com/catalog/Chatterbox/booksreadin2019.

I do have some reading objectives -- I refuse to call them challenges or targets or anything else -- ranging from specific books to themes and even authors I plan to re-read. I'll note those down in the coming posts.




My guide to my ratings:

1.5 or less: A tree gave its life so that this book could be printed and distributed?
1.5 to 2.7: Are you really prepared to give up hours of your life for this?? I wouldn't recommend doing so...
2.8 to 3.3: Do you need something to fill in some time waiting to see the dentist? Either reasonably good within a ho-hum genre (chick lit or thrillers), something that's OK to read when you've nothing else with you, or that you'll find adequate to pass the time and forget later on.
3.4 to 3.8: Want to know what a thumping good read is like, or a book that has a fascinating premise, but doesn't quite deliver? This is where you'll find 'em.
3.9 to 4.4: So, you want a hearty endorsement? These books have what it takes to make me happy I read them.
4.5 to 5: The books that I wish I hadn't read yet, so I could experience the joy of discovering them again for the first time. Sometimes disquieting, sometimes sentimental faves, sometimes dramatic -- they are a highly personal/subjective collection!

The list starts here... (Working in reverse order, from May onward/backward...!)

APOLOGIES: NONE OF THE TOUCHSTONES WILL GO LIVE...

The June List:

169. Nature's Mutiny: How the Little Ice Age of the Seventeenth Century Transformed the West and Shaped the Present by Philipp Blom (finished 6/2/19) 4.5 stars
170. You Are Dead by Peter James (finished 6/3/19) 3.85 stars (A)
171. The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See (finished 6/5/19) 3.9 stars
172. Love You Dead by Peter James (finished 6/6/19) 3.9 stars (A)
173. *Silver Guard by Geoffrey Trease (finished 6/7/19) 4 stars
174. On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane by Emily Guendelsberger (finished 6/9/19) 5 stars
175. Need You Dead by Peter James (finished 6/9/19) 3.65 stars (A)
176. *Lord Rayven's Revenge by Trisha Ashley (finished 6/11/19) 4 stars
177. The Children of Jocasta by Natalie Haynes (finished 6/12/19) 4.3 stars
178. Defying Hitler: The Germans Who Resisted Nazi Rule by Gordon Thomas (finished 6/13/19) 4.5 stars (A)
179. Dead If You Don't by Peter James (finished 6/14/19) 3.9 stars (A)
180. China Dream by Ma Jian (finished 6/15/19) 4.15 stars
181. Dead at First Sight by Peter James (finished 6/16/19) 4.1 stars (A)
182. The Korean Woman by John Altman (finished 6/16/19) 3 stars (A)
183. *Pen Pals by Olivia Goldsmith (finished 6/18/19) 3.7 stars (A)
184. The Second-Worst Restaurant in France by Alexander McCall Smith (finished 6/18/19) 3.3 stars
185. Rose Petal Summer by Katie Fforde (finished 6/19/19) 3.45 stars
186. No More Boats by Felicity Castagna (finished 6/23/19) 4.3 stars
187. The King's Evil by Andrew Taylor (finished 6/24/19) 4.3 stars
188. Last Letter Home by Rachel Hore (finished 6/24/19) 3.7 stars
189. The Accomplice by Joseph Kanon (finished 6/25/19) 4.15 stars
190. The Splendor Before the Dark by Margaret George (finished 6/26/19) 4.2 stars
191. To the Lions by Holly Watt (finished 6/26/19) 3.8 stars
192. Their Little Secret by Mark Billingham (finished 6/27/19) 4.1 stars (A)
193. Return to the Reich by Eric Lichtblau (finished 6/28/19) 4.4 stars
194. Lessons From a Dark Time and Other Essays by Adam Hochschild (finished 6/29/19) 4.6 stars
195. *Too Bad to Die by Francine Matthews (finished 6/30/19) 3.85 stars (A)
196. Pieces of Her by Karin Slaughter (finished 6/30/19) 3.2 stars

The July list:

197. The Chef's Secret by Crystal King (finished 7/1/19) 3.6 stars (A)
198. Death and Other Happy Endings by Melanie Cantor (finished 7/2/19) 3.3 stars
199. Girls Like Us by Cristina Alger (finished 7/3/19) 3.6 stars (A)
200. Guest House for Young Widows: Among the Women of ISIS by Azadeh Moaveni (finished 7/5/19) 4.6 stars
201. Appeasement: Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill, and the Road to War by Tim Bouverie (finished 7/7/19) 4.7 stars (A)
202. White Hot Silence by Henry Porter (finished 7/8/19) 4.35 stars
203. Aunt Dimity and the Heart of Gold by Nancy Atherton (finished 7/8/19) 3.4 stars
204. The Gifted School by Bruce Holsinger (finished 7/10/19) 4.4 stars (A)
205. When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt by Kara Cooney (finished 7/11/19) 4.15 stars
206. *Shadow of the Moon by M.M. Kaye (finished 7/13/19) 3.6 stars (A)
207. Newcomer by Keigo Higashino (finished 7/13/19) 4.7 stars
208. The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware (finished 7/14/19) 4.2 stars
209. The Last Train to London by Meg Waite Clayton (finished 7/16/19) 3.2 stars
210. Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century by George Packer (finished 7/18/19) 5 stars
211. A Murdered Peace by Candace Robb (finished 7/19/19) 3.7 stars
212. The Last Englishmen: Love, War and the End of Empire by Deborah Baker (finished 7/20/19) 4 stars (A)
213. The Confession of Nat Turner by William Styron (finished 7/21/19) 4.6 stars
214. Shamed by Linda Castillo (finished 7/22/19) 3.65 stars
215. The Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell's 1984 by Dorian Lynskey (finished 7/23/19) 5 stars
216. The Berlin Spies by Alex Gerlis (finished 7/24/19) 3.8 stars
217. Before She Knew Him by Peter Swanson (finished 7/26/19) 3.7 stars (A)
218. The Chain by Adrian McKinty (finished 7/27/19) 4.35 stars
219. *The Marriage Game by Alison Weir (finished 7/27/19) 3.85 stars (A)
220. HHhH by Laurent Binet (finished 7/28/19) 4.3 stars
221. I Should Have Honor by Khalida Brohi (finished 7/28/19) 3.2 stars
222. *Life Skills by Katie Fforde (finished 7/29/19) 3.8 stars (A)
223. Women's Work: A Reckoning with Work and Home by Megan Stack (finished 7/30/19) 3.75 stars
224. *Fall From Grace by Larry Collins (finished 7/30/19) 4.1 stars
225. Notes From a Young Black Chef by Kwame Onwuachi (finished 7/31/19) 3.85 stars
226. The Second Sleep by Robert Harris (finished 7/31/19) 4.35 stars

The August list:

227. The Paper Bark Tree Mystery by Ovidia Yu (finished 8/2/19) 4.1 stars
228. The Shining Path: Love, Madness, and Revolution in the Andes by Orin Stern & Miguel la Serra (finished 8/2/19) 4.25 stars (A)
229. Kopp Sisters on the March by Amy Stewart (finished 8/4/19) 4.15 stars
230. The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G. Farrell (finished 8/6/19) 5 stars (partly A)
231. The Fifth Column by Andrew Gross (finished 8/7/19) 3 stars
232. The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins (finished 8/7/19) 3.9 stars
233. Murder in an English Village by Jessica Ellicott (finished 8/8/19) 3.5 stars
234. A Perilous Undertaking by Deanna Raybourn (finished 8/8/19) 3.75 stars
235. Suicide Club: A Novel About Living by Rachel Heng (finished 8/9/19) 4.2 stars
236. *The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery (finished 8/10/19) 4.3 stars (A)
237. The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge and India's Quest for Independence by Anita Anand (finished 8/11/19) 4.5 stars (A)
238. The New Girl by Daniel Silva (finished 8/12/19) 3.65 stars (A)
239. District VIII by Adam LeBor (finished 8/13/19) 4.4 stars
240. The Words I Never Wrote by Jane Thynne (finished 8/14/19) 4.2 stars
241. *A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute (finished 8/14/19) 3.9 stars (A)
242. To Keep the Sun Alive by Rabeah Ghaffari (finished 8/14/19) 4.4 stars
243. The Devil's Slave by Tracy Borman (finished 8/15/19) 4.3 stars
244. *The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey (finished 8/16/19) 4.7 stars (A)
245. The Phoenix of Florence by Phillip Kazan (finished 8/16/19) 4.15 stars
246. The Return of Captain John Emmett by Elizabeth Speller (finished 8/17/19) (A) 4.2 stars
247. Underland: A Deep Time Journey by Robert Macfarlane (finished 8/18/19) 5 stars
248. *The Moonspinners by Mary Stewart (finished 8/18/19) 3.85 stars
249. How the Dead Speak by Val McDermid (finished 8/19/19) 4.3 stars
250. Escape From Paris by Stephen Harding (finished 8/20/19) 3.8 stars
251. *The Other Queen by Philippa Gregory (finished 8/20/19) 3.75 stars (A)
252. The Spies of Shilling Lane by Jennifer Ryan (finished 8/21/19) 3.9 stars
253. *Miss Silver Deals With Death by Patricia Wentworth (finished 8/21/19) 3.7 stars
254. The Golden Hour by Beatriz Williams (finished 8/22/19) 2.35 stars (A)
255. Crane Pond by Richard Francis (finished 8/22/19) 4.2 stars
256. The Ink Stain by Meg Keneally & Tom Keneally (finished 8/24/19) 4.4 stars
257. Platform Seven by Louise Doughty (finished 8/25/19) 4.2 stars (A)
258. Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature and the Shaping of the American Nation by Andrea Wulf (finished 8/25/19) 4.7 stars
259. The Far Field by Madhuri Vijay (finished 8/26/19) 4.65 stars
260. Great American Outpost: Dreamers, Mavericks and the Making of an Oil Frontier by Maya Rao (finished 8/26/19) 4 stars
261. Women of the Copper Country by Mary Doria Russell (finished 8/27/19) 4.5 stars
262. *The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart (finished 8/28/19) 4.1 stars (A)
263. The Bookshop on the Shore by Jenny Colgan (finished 8/30/19) 3.6 stars
264. Varina by Charles Frazier (finished 8/30/19) 4.3 stars
265. Under Currents by Nora Roberts (finished 8/31/19) 3.65 stars

The September list:

266. An Unorthodox Match by Naomi Ragen (finished 9/2/19) 2.8 stars
267. It All Falls Down by Sheena Kamal (finished 9/4/19) 3.85 stars
268. *Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (finished 9/4/19) 4.8 stars (A)
269. The Cairo Code by Glenn Meade (finished 9/5/19) 3.7 stars
270. *Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel (finished 9/6/19) 5 stars (A)
271. My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell (finished 9/7/19) 4.1 stars
272. Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference, and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls by Jessica Mcdiarmid (finished 9/7/19) 4.15 stars
273. The Resisters by Gish Jen (finished 9/8/19) 4.1 stars
274. The Sisters by Dervla McTiernan (finished 9/8/19) 4.75 stars
275. The Art of Dying by Ambrose Perry (finished 9/10/19) 4.8 stars (A)
276. The Testaments by Margaret Atwood (finished 9/11/19) 4.65 stars
277. Love and Death Among the Cheetahs by Rhys Bowen (finished 9/11/19) 3.45 stars
278. Albatross by Terry Fallis (finished 9/12/19) 3.8 stars
279. Takes One to Know One by Susan Isaacs (finished 9/12/19) 3.75 stars
280. Nothing Ventured by Jeffrey Archer (finished 8/13/19) 3.5 stars (A)
281. The Next to Die by Sophie Hannah (finished 8/13/19) 2.9 stars (A)
282. Disoriental by Néjar Djavadi (finished 8/14/19) 5 stars
283. A Single Thread by Tracey Chevalier (finished 8/15/19) 4 stars
284. Henry, Himself by Stewart O'Nan (finished 8/17/19) 3.85 stars
285. *Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde (finished 8/18/19) 4.3 stars (A)
286. Map of Knowledge: A Thousand-Year History of How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found by Violet Moller (finished 8/18/19) 4.6 stars
287. Cold Warriors: Writers Who Waged the Literary Cold War by Duncan White (finished 9/20/19) 5 stars (but avoid the audiobook...)
288. Lethal Pursuit by Will Thomas (finished 9/22/19) 3.8 stars
289. *QBVII by Leon Uris (finished 9/22/19) 3.2 stars (A)
290. Wife of the Gods by Kwei Quartey (finished 9/23/19) 3.6 stars
291. A Spy Named Orphan: The Lives of Donald Maclean by Roland Philipps (finished 9/24/19) 4.15 stars (A)
292. The Girl Who Lived Twice by David Lagercrantz (finished 9/26/19) 4 stars
293. A Better Man by Louise Penny (finished 9/27/19) 4.1 stars
294. High Table, Lower Orders by Mark Tavener (finished 9/28/19) 4.25 stars (A)
295. A Mind Unraveled by Kurt Eichenwald (finished 9/29/19) 4.4 stars
296. A Capitol Death by Lindsey Davis (finished 9/30/19) 3.85 stars (A)

The October list:

297. Wunderland by Jennifer Cody Epstein (finished 10/01/19) 3.6 stars
298. Dangerous Liaisons by Choderlos de Laclos (finished 10/02/19) 4.2 stars
299. Code Name Hélène by Ariel Lawhon (finished 10/03/19) 4.25 stars
300. Death in Focus by Anne Perry (finished 10/03/19) 2.9 stars (A)
301. The Lying Room by Nicci French (finished 10/04/19) 4.15 stars
302. God Land: A Story of Faith, Loss and Renewal by Lyz Lenz (finished 10/05/19) 4.75 stars
303. Invitation to Die by Barbara Cleverly (finished 10/06/19) 3.45 stars (A)
304. Secret Service by Tom Bradby (finished 10/07/19) 4.1 stars
305. Lock Every Door by Riley Sager (finished 10/08/19) 3.7 stars (A)
306. Cockroach by Ian MacEwan (finished 10/08/19) 4.65 stars
307. Diary of a Dead Man on Leave by David Downing (finished 10/10/19) 3.7 stars
308. Agents of Influence: A British Campaign, a Canadian Spy, and the Secret Plot to Bring America into World War II by Henry Hemming (finished 10/11/19) 4.3 stars (A)
309. Syria's Secret Library: Reading and Redemption in a Town Under Siege by Mike Thomson (finished 10/13/19) 4 stars
310. Sword of Kings by Bernard Cornwell (finished 10/14/19) 4.2 stars (A)
311. The Better Sister by Alafair Burke (finished 10/15/19) 3.45 stars
312. *The Trinity Six by Charles Cumming (finished 10/15/19) 4.3 stars (A)
313. An Ocean of Minutes by Thea Lim (finished 10/16/19) 4 stars
314. The Land Beyond the Sea by Sharon Kay Penman (finished 10/17/19) 4.1 stars
315. *A Triple Knot by Emma Campion (finished 10/19/19) 4 stars (A)
316. Daughters of Chivalry: The Forgotten Daughters of Edward I by Kelcey Wilson-Lee (finished 10/20/19) 4.3 stars
317. The Guardians by John Grisham (finished 10/21/19) 3 stars (A)
318. Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television and the Fracturing of America by James Poniewozik (finished 10/22/19) 4.1 stars
319. The Grammarians by Cathleen Schine (finished 10/22/19) 4.25 stars
320. The Compatriots by Andrei Soldatov & Irina Borogan (finished 10/23/19) 4.2 stars
321. The Regency Years: During Which Jane Austen Writes, Napoleon Fights, Byron Makes Love, and Britain Becomes Modern by Robert Morrison (finished 10/23/19 (A) 4.4 stars
322. A Small Town by Thomas Perry (finished 10/24/19) 3.8 stars
323. Good Girl, Bad Girl by Michael Robotham (finished 10/24/19) 4.2 stars(A)
324. A Different Kind of Evil by Andrew Wilson (finished 10/25/19) 3.9 stars
325. The Clockmaker's Daughter by Kate Morton (finished 10/26/19) 4.2 stars
326. *Mrs. McGinty's Dead by Agatha Christie (finished 10/27/19) 3.7 stars (A)
327. Kossuth Square by Adam Lebor (finished 10/28/19) 4.2 stars
328. A Pilgrimage to Eternity: From Canterbury to Rome in Search of a Faith by Timothy Egan (finished 10/30/19) 4.2 stars (A)
329. A Treacherous Curse by Deanna Raybourn (finished 10/30/19) 3.7 stars
330. Death in Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fight against the Drug Companies That Delivered the Opioid Epidemic by Eric Eyre (finished 10/31/19) 5 stars!!

The November list:

331. Agent Running in the Field by John Le Carré (finished 11/1/19) 4.4 stars (A)
332. Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson (finished 11/2/19) 4.2 stars
333. Lampedusa by Steven Price (finished 11/2/19) 5 stars
334. Good and Mad: How Women's Anger is Reshaping America by Rebecca Traister (finished 11/3/19) 5 stars
335. Dream Sequence by Adam Foulds (finished 11/4/19) 3.7 stars
336. *Peril at End House by Agatha Christie (finished 11/4/19) 3.9 stars (A)
337. Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi (finished 11/5/19) 4.3 stars
338. *Hallowe'en Party by Agatha Christie (finished 11/5/190 3.8 stars (A)
339. The Princesse de Clèves by Mme de Lafayette (finished 11/6/19) 4.2 stars
340. Death in a Desert Land by Andrew Wilson (finished 11/6/19) 3.7 stars
341. Chopin's Piano: In Search of the Instrument That Transformed Music by Paul Kildea (finished 11/7/19) 4 stars
342. *Imperium by Robert Harris (finished 11/8/19) 4.4 stars (A)
343. *Conspirata by Robert Harris (finished 11/10/19) 4.45 stars (A)
344. Berezina by Sylvain Tesson (finished 11/11/19) 3.9 stars
345. *Dictator by Robert Harris (finished 11/12/19) 4.35 stars (A)
346. A Dangerous Collaboration by Deanna Raybourn (finished 11/13/19) 3.8 stars
347. Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer by Barbara Ehrenreich (finished 11/13/19) 3.7 stars
348. Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips (finished 11/14/19) 4 stars
349. Citizen 865: the Hunt for Hitler's Hidden Soldiers in America by Debbie Cenziper (finished 11/15/19) 4.2 stars (A)
350. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (finished 11/15/19) 4.4 stars
351. *Past Perfect by Susan Isaacs (finished 11/16/19) 3.8 stars
352. Field Service by Robert Edric (finished 11/16/19) 4.2 stars
353. The Christmas Invitation by Trisha Ashley (finished 11/18/19) 4.1 stars
354. Traitor by Jonathan de Shalit (finished 11/19/19) 3.3 stars
355. The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker (finished 11/20/19) 5 stars!! (A)
356. Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators by Ronan Farrow (finished 11/21/19) 4.35 stars (A)
357. The Colony of Unrequited Dreams by Wayne Johnston (finished 11/23/19) 4.7 stars
358. When Life Gives You Lululemons by Lauren Weisberger (finished 11/24/19) 3.65 stars
359. *Nemesis by Agatha Christie (finished 11/24/19) 3.5 stars (A)
360. The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson (finished 11/25/19)
361. She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement by Jodi Kantor & Megan Twohey (finished 11/25/19) 4.8 stars (A)
362. *The Dead of Winter by Rennie Airth (finished 11/26/19) 4.4 stars
363. The Perfect Wife by JP Delaney (finished 11/27/19) 3.7 stars
364. *The Hermit of Eyton Forest by Ellis Peters (finished 11/28/19) 3.6 stars (A)
365. *The Reckoning by Rennie Airth (finished 11/29/19) 4.35 stars (A)
366. Walking the Woods and the Water: in Patrick Leigh Fermor's Footsteps from the Hook of Holland to the Golden Horn by Nick Hunt (finished 11/30/19) 4 stars

The December list:

367. The Great Level by Stella Tillyard (finished 12/1/19) 4.2 stars
368. City of Scoundrels by Victoria Thompson (finished 12/1/19) 3.7 stars
369. The Removes by Tatjana Soli (finished 12/2/19) 3.85 stars
370. *N or M? by Agatha Christie (finished 12/3/19) 4.15 stars
371. Prima Facie by Ruth Downie (finished 12/3/19) 4 stars
372. City of Shadows by Michael Russell (finished 12/4/19) 4.3 stars
373. Self Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race by Thomas Chatterton Williams (finished 12/4/19) 5 stars
374. 1947: Where Now Begins by Elisabeth Åsbrink (finished 12/5/19) 5 stars
375. The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley (finished 12/6/19) 4.35 stars
376. The Peppermint Tea Chronicles by Alexander McCall Smith (finished 12/6/19) 3.65 stars
377. Agent Jack: The True Story of MI5's Secret Nazi Hunter by Robert Hutton (finished 12/7/19) 4 stars (A)
378. The Holdout by Graham Moore (finished 12/8/19) 4.35 stars
379. Her Every Fear by Peter Swanson (finished 12/9/19) 3.8 stars (A)
380. The Native Heath by Elizabeth Fair (finished 12/9/19) 2.9 stars
381. The Partnership Track by Michael Ridpath (finished 12/9/19) 3.7 stars (A)
382. Breaking News: The Remaking of Journalism and Why It Matters Now by Alan Rusbridger (finished 12/10/19) 4.45 stars
383. All This Could Be Yours by Jami Attenberg (finished 12/10/19) 4 stars
384. Curtain by Agatha Christie (finished 12/11/19) 2.8 stars
385. The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker (finished 12/11/19) 3.85 stars
386. I Will Never See the World Again by Ahmet Altan (finished 12/11/19) 4.65 stars (A)
387. The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis (finished 12/13/19) 4.35 stars (A)
388. Snow: A Scientific and Cultural Exploration by Giles Whittell (finished 12/13/19) 4.2 stars
389. City of Strangers by Michael Russell (finished 12/13/19) 4.25 stars
390. Serial Monogamy by Kate Taylor (finished 12/14/19) 4.4 stars
391. How it Happened by Michael Koryta (finished 12/16/19) 4.15 stars (A)
392. The City in Darkness by Michael Russell (finished 12/16/19) 4.35 stars
393. *Blake's Reach by Catherine Gaskin (finished 12/17/19) 4.1 stars
394. *Before the Poison by Peter Robinson (finished 12/19/19) 4.2 stars (A)
395. The City of Lies by Michael Russell (finished 12/20/19) 4.2 stars
396. The Ensemble by Aja Gabriel (finished 12/22/19) 3.85 stars
397. *The Lynmara Legacy by Catherine Gaskin (finished 12/22/19) 3.7 stars
398. *Unholy Harmonies by Elizabeth Pewsey (finished 12/24/19) 4.2 stars (A)
399. Ark Storm by Linda Davies (finished 12/24/19) 2.7 stars
400. Boundless: Tracing Land and Dream in a New Northwest Passage by Kathleen Winter (finished 12/25/19) 5 stars
401. *Unaccustomed Spirits by Elizabeth Pewsey (finished 12/26/19) 4.2 stars (A)
402. No Time to Cry by James Oswald (finished 12/27/19) 4.15 stars
403. Know My Name by Chanel Miller (finished 12/28/19) 4.75 stars (A)
404. *Volcanic Airs by Elizabeth Pewsey (finished 12/28/19) 4.2 stars (A)
405. City in Flames by Michael Russell (finished 12/29/19) 4.3 stars
406. Necessary People by Anna Pitoniak (finished 12/29/19) 4.2 stars
407. The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen (finished 12/30/19) 3.8 stars
408. The Other Americans by Laila Lalami (finished 12/30/19) 4.5 stars
409. London Made Us: A Memoir of a Shape-Shifting City by Robert Elms (finished 12/30/19) 4.8 stars (A)
410. Midnight Blue by Simone van der Vlugt (finished 12/31/19) 3.6 stars
411. Godchildren by Nicholas Coleridge (finished 12/31/19) 3.5 stars

* Re-Read

The April list:

113. The Glass Bees by Ernst Jünger (finished 4/1/19) 3.9 stars
114. Time's Convert by Deborah Harkness (finished 4/1/19) 3.6 stars
115. The Selection by Kiera Cass (finished 4/2/19) 2 stars (A)
116. Never Tell by Lisa Gardener (finished 4/3/19) 4 stars
117. *Vanishing Act by Thomas Perry (finished 4/4/19) 4.1 stars (A)
118. The Suspect by Fiona Barton (finished 4/5/19) 3.9 stars
119. *Death Benefits by Thomas Perry (finished 4/6/19) 4.2 stars (A)
120. The Lost Gutenberg: The Astounding Story of One Book's Five-Hundred-Year Odyssey by Margaret Leslie Davis (finished 4/6/19) 4.5 stars (A)
121. Resistance Women by Jennifer Chiaverini (finished 4/7/19) 3.3 stars
122. Inheritance from Mother by Minae Mizumura (finished 4/8/19) 5 stars
123. Crown Jewel by Christopher Reich (finished 4/13/19) 3.85 stars
124. Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham (finished 4/14/19) 5 stars
125. The American Agent by Jacqueline Winspear (finished 4/15/19) 3.9 stars
126. *Dominion by C.J. Sansom (finished 4/15/19) 4.2 stars (A)
127. Women Talking by Miriam Toews (finished 4/18/19) 4.45 stars
128. Wild Grapes by Elizabeth Aston (finished 4/19/19) 4.1 stars
129. Smoke and Ashes by Abir Mukherjee (finished 4/20/19) 4.2 stars (A)
130. The Long Call by Ann Cleeves (finished 4/20/19) 4.2 stars
131. There There by Tommy Orange (finished 4/21/19) 5 stars
132. *Silence by Thomas Perry (finished 4/21/19) 3.9 stars
133. Bookshop of the Broken Hearted by Robert Hillman (finished 4/22/19) 4 stars
134. The Last Stone: A Masterpiece of Criminal Interrogation by Mark Bowden (finished 4/23/19) 3.65 stars
135. Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive by Stephanie Land (finished 4/24/19) 4.4 stars
136. The Darwin Affair by Tim Mason (finished 4/26/19) 4.1 stars
137. A Winter Away by Elizabeth Fair (finished 4/28/19) 3.65 stars
138. *Shadow Woman by Thomas Perry (finished 4/28/19) 3.8 stars (A)
139. The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott (finished 4/28/19) 4.3 stars
140. Afternoon of a Faun by James Lasdun (finished 4/30/19) 4.4 stars

The May List:

141. The Friends We Keep by Jane Green (finished 5/1/19) 3.6 stars
142. Someone Knows by Lisa Scottoline (finished 5/3/19) 3.35 stars
143. Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11 by Mitchell Zuckoff (finished 5/5/19) 4.7 stars (A)
144. *Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov (finished 5/6/19) 4.5 stars
145. A Forgotten Place by Charles Todd (finished 5/8/19) 3.7 stars
146. My Italian Bulldozer by Alexander McCall Smith (finished 5/8/19) 3.3 stars
147. *Blackout by Connie Willis (finished 5/9/19) 4.2 stars (A)
148. Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics by Stephen Greenblatt (finished 5/10/19) 4.7 stars
149. The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson (finished 5/12/19) 4.1 stars
150. A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II by Sonia Purnell (finished 5/13/19) 4.5 stars (A)
151. Kingdom of the Blind by Louise Penny (finished 5/13/19) 3.9 stars
152. Old Baggage by Lissa Evans (finished 5/15/19) 4.2 stars (A)
153. Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (finished 5/16/19) 5 stars
154. Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity and Love by Dani Shapiro (finished 5/17/19) 4.5 stars
155. The Scholar by Dervla McTiernan (finished 5/19/19) 4.3 stars (A)
156. A Summer With Montaigne by Louis Compagnon (finished 5/19/19) 4.7 stars
157. *Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart (finished 5/21/19) 4 stars (A)
158. The Case Against Free Speech: The First Amendment, Fascism, and the Future of Dissent by P.E. Moskowitz (finished 5/22/19) 4.35 stars
159. *Pied Piper by Nevil Shute (finished 5/23/19) 3.75 stars (A)
160. The Lost One by Mary Stewart (finished 5/23/19) 3.45 stars (A)
161. The Warehouse by Rob Hart (finished 5/24/19) 4.3 stars
162. If She Wakes by Michael Koryta (finished 5/26/19) 3.6 stars (A)
163. A Deceptive Devotion by Iona Whishaw (finished 5/27/19) 3.8 stars
164. Annelies by David Gilham (finished 5/28/19) 3.9 stars
165. *Touch Not the Cat by Mary Stewart (finished 5/28/19) 3.65 stars (A)
166. All the Wrong Places by Joy Fielding (finished 5/29/19) 2.9 stars
167. The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age by Leo Damrosch (finished 5/30/19) 4.35 stars (A)
168. Want You Dead by Peter James (finished 5/31/19) 4 stars (A)

The January list:

1. Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country On Earth by Sarah Smarsh (finished 1/2/19) 4.4 stars
2. Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal (finished 1/4/19) 3.35 stars
3. The Gallery of Vanished Husbands by Natasha Solomons (finished 1/4/19) 3.85 stars (A)
4. *River of Darkness by Rennie Airth (finished 1/6/19) 4.7 stars (A)
5. Small Gods by Terry Pratchett (finished 1/6/19) 4.2 stars
6. Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors and the Drug Company that Addicted America by Beth Macy (finished 1/8/19) 4.4 stars
7. *Before the Poison by Peter Robinson (finished 1/8/19) 4.35 stars (A)
8. The Reckoning by John Grisham (finished 1/9/19) 3.7 stars
9. *The Girl in the Cellar by Patricia Wentworth (finished 1/10/19) 3.1 stars (A)
10. Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age by Stephen Platt (finished 1/11/19) 5 stars!!!
11. *The Blood Dimmed Tide by Rennie Airth (finished 1/12/19) 4.7 stars
12. Little Culinary Triumphs by Pascale Pujol (finished 1/12/19) 4.2 stars
13. Golden State by Ben Winters (finished 1/13/19) 4.35 stars
14. The King's Justice by E.M. Powell (finished 1/14/19) 3 stars
15. Welcome to Lagos by Chibundu Onuzo (finished 1/15/19) 4.4 stars
16. *Shadow on the Crown by Patricia Bracewell (finished 1/16/19) 3.8 stars
17. Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford (finished 1/16/19) 4.2 stars
18. North of Dawn by Nuruddin Farah (finished 1/17/19) 3.5 stars
19. Bewildering Cares by Winifred Peck (finished 1/18/19) 4 stars
20. *The Price of Blood by Patricia Bracewell (finished 1/19/19) 3.65 stars
21. The Flight Portfolio by Julie Orringer (finished 1/19/19) 4.4 stars
22. The Paragon Hotel by Lyndsay Faye (finished 1/20/19) 4.6 stars -- partly (A)
23. Rebel Heiress by Jane Aiken Hodge (finished 1/20/19) 3.6 stars
24. It's All Relative: Adventures Up and Down the World's Family Tree by A.J. Jacobs (finished 1/20/19) 4 stars
25. Maulever Hall by Jane Aiken Hodge (finished 1/21/19) 3.4 stars
26. Keep You Close by Karen Cleveland (finished 1/21/19) 3.9 stars
27. Of Blood and Bone by Nora Roberts (finished 1/22/19) 3.7 stars
28. The Salt Path by Raynor Winn (finished 1/23/19) 5 stars
29. They Fought Alone: The True Story of the Starr Brothers, British Secret Agents in Nazi-Occupied France by Charles Glass (finished 1/24/19) 4.1 stars
30. *The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer (finished 1/24/19) 4.2 stars (A)
31. A Taste for Vengeance by Martin Walker (finished 1/25/19) 4.1 stars
32. *Cleopatra's Daughter by Michelle Moran (finished 1/26/19) 3.7 stars (A)
33. The Comforts of Home by Susan Hill (finished 1/26/19) 4.2 stars
34. With the End in Mind: Dying, Death and Wisdom in an Age of Denial by Kathryn Mannix (finished 1/27/19) 4.35 stars
35. Arrest the Bishop? by Winifred Peck (finished 1/28/19) 3.35 stars
36. The Order of the Day by Éric Vuillard (finished 1/28/19) 4.35 stars
37. Paris by the Book by Liam Callanan (finished 1/29/19) 3.3 stars
38. Uneasy Lies the Crown by Tasha Alexander (finished 1/30/19) 4.1 stars
39. Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy by Cathy O'Neil (finished 1/31/19) 5 stars
40. Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind by Michael Massing (finished 1/31/19) 4.7 stars (A)

The February list:

41. The Black Book by James Patterson (finished 2/1/19) 3.45 stars
42. Time and Time Again by Ben Elton (finished 2/1/19) 3.9 stars
43. The Victorian and the Romantic: A Memoir, a Love Story, and a Friendship Across Time by Nell Stevens (finished 2/2/19) 4.4 stars
44. Wanderer by Sarah Léon (finished 2/3/19) 4 stars
45. Judas Flowering by Jane Aiken Hodge (finished 2/5/19) 3.4 stars
46. *The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory (finished 2/7/19) 4.1 stars (A)
47. On the Bright Side: The new secret diary of Hendrik Groen by Hendrik Groen (finished 2/8/19) 4.2 stars
48. *The Winds of War by Herman Wouk (finished 2/10/19) 3.85 stars (A)
49. Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe by Roger McNamee (finished 2/11/19) 4.3 stars
50. Late in the Day by Tessa Hadley (finished 2/12/19) 4.2 stars
51. Wide Is the Water by Jane Aiken Hodge (finished 2/12/19) 3.4 stars
52. Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by John Radden Keefe (finished 2/13/19) 4.4 stars
53. Death is Hard Work by Khaled Khalifa (finished 2/13/19) 4.5 stars
54. *The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart (finished 2/14/19) 4.3 stars (A)
55. Triple Jeopardy by Anne Perry (finished 2/14/19) 3.85 stars
56. Becoming by Michelle Obama (finished 2/14/19) 4.65 stars
57. The Killing Habit by Mark Billingham (finished 2/15/19) 4.25 stars
58. *The Hollow Hills by Mary Stewart (finished 2/18/19) 4.5 stars (A)
59. The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (finished 2/18/19) 5 stars
60. *Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy by Rumer Godden (finished 2/18/19) 4 stars
61. The Skull Mantra by Eliot Pattison (finished 2/19/19) 3.7 stars
62. *The Last Enchantment by Mary Stewart (finished 2/20/19) 4.3 stars (A)
63. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert (finished 2/21/19) 5 stars
64. The Lost Girls of Paris by Pam Jenoff (finished 2/22/19) 3 stars
65. The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides (finished 2/22/19) 3.65 stars
66. *Zoo Station by David Downing (finished 2/23/19) 4.2 stars (A)
67. The Body Lies by Jo Baker (finished 2/23/19) 4.7 stars
68. *Silesian Station by David Downing (finished 2/24/19) 4.2 stars (A)
69. Little by Edward Carey (finished 2/25/19) 4 stars
70. Hazards of Time Travel by Joyce Carol Oates (finished 2/26/19) 4.35 stars
71. *Stettin Station by David Downing (finished 2/26/19) 4.15 stars (A)
72. Bramton Wick by Elizabeth Fair (finished 2/27/19) 3.5 stars
73. *Potsdam Station by David Downing (finished 2/27/19) 3.9 stars (A)

The March list:

74. The Paris Diversion by Chris Pavone (finished 3/1/19) 3.6 stars
75. Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou (finished 3/2/19) 5 stars
76. The Power Game by Meg Keneally & Thomas Keneally (finished 3/2/19) 4.2 stars
77. 22959847::The Demon Next Door by Bryan Burrough (finished 3/3/19) 3.7 stars (A)
78. Good Riddance by Elinor Lipman (finished 3/3/19) 3.85 stars
79. Berlin Book Three: City of Light by Jason Lutes (finished 3/4/19) 4.1 stars
80. *The Angel of Darkness by Caleb Carr (finished 3/5/19) 4.4 stars (A)
81. The Trial of Lizzie Borden by Cara Robertson (finished 3/5/19) 3.7 stars
82. The Red Daughter by John Burnham Schwartz (finished 3/5/19) 4.1 stars
83. *Lehrter Station by David Downing (finished 3/6/19) 4 stars (A)
84. The Feral Detective by Jonathan Lethem (finished 3/6/19) 2.3 stars
85. The Ruin by Dervla McTiernan (finished 3/8/19) 4.35 stars (A)
86. The Wall by John Lanchester (finished 3/8/19) 4.15 stars
87. *A Life In Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII by Sarah Helm (finished 3/10/19) 5 stars (A)
88. The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi by Jacqueline Park (finished 3/10/19) 3.8 stars
89. I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara (finished 3/11/19) 4.2 stars
90. The Innocence Game by Michael Harvey (finished 3/13/19) 2.75 stars
91. *Jane Seymour, The Haunted Queen by Alison Weir (finished 3/13/19) 4.1 stars (A)
92. Anna of Kleve, The Princess in the Portrait by Alison Weir (finished 3/14/19) 4 stars
93. Devil in the grove : Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the dawn of a new America by Gilbert King (finished 3/16/19) 4.4 stars
94. The Stone Circle by Elly Griffiths (finished 3/16/19) 4.2 stars
95. *The Runner by Christopher Reich (finished 3/17/19) 4.1 stars (A)
96. The Library of Lost and Found by Phaedra Patrick (finished 3/17/19) 3.4 stars
97. My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite (finished 3/17/19) 4.4 stars
98. The Burglar by Thomas Perry (finished 3/18/19) 3.75 stars
99. The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age by David Sanger (finished 3/19/19) 4.8 stars
100. *Black Roses by Jane Thynne (finished 3/21/19) 4.2 stars (A)
101. The White Devil's Daughters: The Women Who Fought Slavery in San Francisco's Chinatown by Julia Flynn Siler (finished 3/21/19) 4.8 stars
102. The Second Biggest Nothing by Colin Cotterill (finished 3/22/19) 4.35 stars
103. *The Winter Garden by Jane Thynne (finished 3/23/19) 4.15 stars (A)
104. *A War of Flowers by Jane Thynne (finished 3/24/19) 4.1 stars (A)
105. *Faith and Beauty by Jane Thynne (finished 3/25/19) 4.2 stars (A)
106. Banners of Silk by Rosalind Laker (finished 3/27/19) 3.35 stars
107. Bangkok Wakes to Rain by Pitchaya Sudbanthad (finished 3/27/19) 4.7 stars
108. *Sleeping Dogs by Thomas Perry (finished 3/28/19) 4 stars (A)
109. Murder by the Book: The Crime That Shocked Dickens's London by Claire Harman
110. *Solitaire by Jane Thynne (finished 3/29/19) 4.1 stars (A)
111. The Golden Wolf by Linnea Hartsuyker (finished 3/30/19) 4.35 stars
112. *The Informant by Thomas Perry (finished 3/31/19) 3.65 stars (A)

Book Purchases and Other Permanent Acquisitions In 2019: Part One

1. Waking Lions by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen (Kindle, Xmas gift card from LT member) 1/1/19
2. The Third Wife by Lisa Jewell (Audible sale, $) 1/1/19
3. Small Gods by Terry Pratchett (UK Kindle sale, $) 1/2/19 Read
4. The Kill List by Frederick Forsyth (UK Kindle sale, $) 1/2/19
5. Cemetery Road by Greg Iles (Edelweiss e-galley) 1/2/19
6. Goldstein by Volker Kutscher (UK Kindle Sale, $) 1/2/19
7. Midwinter by Fiona Melrose (UK Kindle sale, $) 1/2/19
8. Journey Under the Midnight Sun by Keigo Higashino (UK Kindle sale, $) 1/2/19
9. Game of Spies: The Secret Agent, the Traitor and the Nazi, Bordeaux 1942-1944 by Paddy Ashdown (UK Kindle sale, $) 1/2/19
10. Blood for Blood by Victoria Selman (Kindle First freebie) 1/3/19
11. The Snow Gypsy by Lindsay Jayne Ashford (Kindle First freebie) 1/3/19
12. The Flight Portfolio by Julie Orringer (Edelweiss e-galley) 1/3/19 Read
13. A Bend in the Stars by Rachel Barenbaum (NetGalley) 1/3/19
14. Allmen and the Pink Diamond by Martin Suter (Edelweiss e-galley) 1/3/19
15. The Road to Grantchester by James Runcie (NetGalley) 1/3/19
16. You Will Be Safe Here by Damian Barr (NetGalley) 1/3/19
17. The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age by Leo Damrosch (NetGalley) 1/4/19 Read
18. Polite Society by Mahesh Rao (Edelweiss e-galley) 1/4/19
19. Resistance Women by Jennifer Chiaverini (Edelweiss e-galley) 1/4/19 Read
20. Maskerade by Terry Pratchett (Audible, $$) 1/6/19
21. Devil's Fjord by David Hewson (NetGalley) 1/8/19
22. Wanderer by Sarah Léon (ARC from publisher) 1/8/19 Read
23. Louise's Crossing by Sarah R. Shaber (NetGalley) 1/8/19
24. The Almanack by Martine Bailey (NetGalley) 1/8/19
25. Too Bad To Die by Francine Mathews (Audible, $$) 1/8/19 Read
26. Recursion by Blake Crouch (NetGalley) 1/9/19
27. Home Remedies by Xuan Juliana Wang (NetGalley) 1/9/19
28. The Man With No Face by Peter May (UK Kindle, $$) 1/10/19
29. The Trial of Lizzie Borden by Cara Robertson (NetGalley) 1/10/19 Read
30. The Berlin Spies by Alex Gerlis (Kindle, $$) 1/10/19 Read
31. With the End in Mind: Dying, Death and Wisdom in an Age of Denial by Kathryn Mannix (UK Kindle sale, $) 1/10/19
32. Harry Clarke by David Cale (Audible freebie) 1/12/19
33. The Last Days of August by Jon Ronson (Audible freebie) 1/12/19
34. Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind by Michael Massing (Audiobook, $$) 1/12/19 Read
35. The Bitter Taste of Victory: Life, Love and Art in the Ruins of the Reich by Lara Feigel (Kindle, $$) 1/12/19
36. The Stone Circle by Elly Griffiths (Edelweiss e-galley) 1/14/19 Read
37. Home for Erring and Outcast Girls by Julie Kibler (NetGalley) 1/15/19
38. The Spies of Shilling Lane by Jennifer Chilbury (NetGalley) 1/15/19 Read
39. Keep You Close by Karen Cleveland (NetGalley) 1/15/19 Read
40. The Body Lies by Jo Baker (Edelweiss e-galley) 1/16/19 Read
41. Dual Citizens by Alix Ohlin (Edelweiss e-galley) 1/16/19
42. The Department of Sensitive Crimes by Alexander McCall Smith (Edelweiss e-galley) 1/16/19
43. Message From the Shadows: Selected Stories by Antonio Tabucchi (Edelweiss e-galley) 1/17/19
44. The Children of the Ghetto: My Name is Adam by Elias Khoury (Edelweiss e-galley) 1/17/19
45. The Old Man in the Corner: the Teahouse Detective Vol. 1 by Baroness Orczy (Edelweiss e-galley) 1/17/19
46. Paris, 7 A.M. by Liza Wieland (NetGalley) 1/17/19
47. The Royal Secret by Lucinda Riley (NetGalley) 1/17/19
48. The Lines Between Us: Two Families and a Quest to Cross Baltimore’s Racial Divide by Lawrence Lanahan (NetGalley) 1/17/19
49. The Daughter's Tale by Armando Lucas Correa (NetGalley) 1/18/19
50. Breathe In, Cash Out by Madeleine Henry (NetGalley) 1/18/19
51. Bewildering Cares by Winifred Peck (Kindle Unlimited, Freebie) 1/18/19 Read
52. A Harp in Lowndes Square by Rachel Ferguson (Kindle, freebie) 1/18/19
53. Arrest the Bishop? by Winifred Peck (Kindle, freebie) 1/18/19 Read
54. The Fledgeling by Frances Flaviell (Kindle, freebie) 1/18/19
55. Thalia by Frances Flaviell (Kindle, freebie) 1/18/19
56. A House on the Rhine by Frances Flaviell (Kindle, freebie) 1/18/19
57. Fame Adjacent by Sarah Skilton (NetGalley) 1/22/19
58. Last Day by Domenica Ruta (NetGalley) 1/23/19
59. Diary of a Dead Man on Leave by David Downing (Edelweiss e-galley) 1/23/19 Read
60. The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose (UK Kindle, sale, $) 1/23/19
61. Their Finest by Lissa Evans (Kindle, $$) 1/24/19
62. The Liar's Room by Simon Lelic (Kindle, $$) 1/24/19
63. A Winter Away by Elizabeth Fair (Kindle, gift card) 1/24/19 Read
64. Murder in an English Village by Jessica Ellicott (Audible, sale, $) 1/24/19 Read
65. Don't Let Go by Harlan Coben (Audible, sale, $) 1/24/19
66. The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World by Edward Dolnick (Audible sale, $) 1/24/19
67. Article 353 by Tanguy Viel (ARC from publisher) 1/25/19
68. The Republic by Joost de Vries (ARC from publisher) 1/25/19
69. Acts of Infidelity by Lena Andersson (ARC from publisher) 1/25/19
70. Ten Caesars: Roman Emperors from Augustus to Constantine by Barry Strauss (NetGalley) 1/25/19
71. The Order of the Day by Eric Vuillard (Kindle, $$) 1/25/19 Read
72. A Man Called Intrepid by William Stevenson (Kindle Sale, $) 1/27/19
73. Any Means Necessary by Jenny Rogneby (ARC from publisher) 1/27/19
74. Leona: The Die is Cast by Jenny Rogneby (Kindle sale, $) 1/27/19
75. Liars' Paradox by Taylor Stevens (Audiobook, $$) 1/27/19
76. Triple Jeopardy by Anne Perry (NetGalley) 1/28/19 Read
77. Mistress of the Ritz by Melanie Benjamin (NetGalley) 1/28/19
78. The Map of Knowledge: How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found: A History in Seven Cities by Violet Moller (Edelweiss e-galley) 1/28/19 Read
79. Fake Like Me by Barbara Bourland (NetGalley) 1/29/19
80. The Silent Widow by Sidney Sheldon & Tilly Bagshawe (NetGalley) 1/29/19
81. Murder Knocks Twice by Susanna Calkins (NetGalley) 1/31/19
82. Conformity: The Power of Social Influences by Cass Sunstein (NetGalley) 1/31/19
83. The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World by Peter Frankopan (NetGalley from publisher) 1/31/19
84. Very Nice by Marcy Dermansky (NetGalley, from publisher) 1/31/19
85. Working by Robert Caro (NetGalley, from publisher) 1/31/19
86. This Storm by James Ellroy (NetGalley, from publisher) 1/31/19
87. A Web of Silk by Fiona Buckley (NetGalley) 2/1/19
88. The Mausoleum by David Mark (NetGalley) 2/1/19
89. I am Yours by Reema Zaman (NetGalley) 2/2/19
90. The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley (UK Kindle, sale, $) 2/2/19
91. The Reunion by Samantha Hayes (UK Kindle, sale, $) 2/2/19
92. Bottle Grove by Daniel Handler (NetGalley) 2/3/19
93. Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life by Louise Aronson (NetGalley) 2/3/19
94. Corporation Wife by Catherine Gaskin (Kindle Unlimited freebie) 2/5/19
95. Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe by Roger McNamee (Kindle, $$ gift) 2/5/19 Read
96. The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides (Kindle, $$ gift) 2/5/19 Read
97. On the Bright Side by Hendrik Groen (UK Kindle, $$) 2/5/19 Read
98. Darwin Comes to Town: How the Urban Jungle Drives Evolution by Menno Schilthuizen (Kindle sale, $, gift) 2/4/19
99. Smoketown: the Untold History of the Other Great Black Renaissance by Mark Whitaker (Kindle, $$, discounted/gift) 2/5/19

Adding my ALA "loot" to my books acquired list, with thanks to Marianne & Benita!!

Book Purchases and Other Permanent Acquisitions In 2019 Part II

All of these are from ALA Midwinter, and were free advance review copies!!

100. Son of Two Fathers by Jacqueline Park
101. Killer Instinct by Zoe Sharp
102. The Night Visitors by Carol Goodman
103. At Briarwood School for Girls by Michael Knight
104. Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok
105. The Altruists by Andrew Ridker
106. The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo
107. Bertie: The Complete Prince of Wales Mysteries by Peter Lovesey
108. Travelers by Helon Habila
109. Baby of the Family by Maura Roosevelt
110. Beirut Hellfire Society by Rawi Hage
111. Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep
112. City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert
113. Doxology by Nell Zink
114. The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead Read
115. The Editor by Steven Rowley
116. The Missing Years by Lexie Elliott
117. More News Tomorrow by Susan Richards Shreve
118. In Paris With You by Clémentine Beauvais
119. Auntie Poldi and the Vineyards of Etna by Mario Giordano
120. The Islanders by Meg Mitchell Moore
121. The Lazarus File: A Cold Case Investigation by Matthew McGough
122. Lights All Night Long by Lydia Fitzpatrick
123. The Darwin Affair by Tim Mason Read
124. Lost Roses by Martha Hall Kelly
125. If She Wakes by Michael Koryta
126. Burned: A Story of Murder and the Crime That Wasn't by Edward Humes
127. The American Agent by Jacqueline Winspear Read
128. The Wall: A Novel by John Lanchester Read
129. The Last Stone: A Masterpiece of Criminal Interrogation by Mark Bowden Read
130. The Club by Takis Würger
131. The Quintland Sisters by Shelley Wood
132. The Coronation: A Fandorin Mystery by Boris Akunin
133. Costalegre by Courtney Maum
134. The Night Swimmers by Peter Rock
135. House Arrest by Mike Lawson
136. The Night Before by Wendy Walker
137. The Devil Aspect by Craig Russell
138. My Coney Island Baby by Billy O'Callaghan
139. The Last Time I Saw You by Liv Constantine
140. The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See Read
141. The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin
142. The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins Read
143. The Better Sister by Alafair Burke Read
144. The Ventriloquists by E.R. Ramzipoor
145. The Lost History of Dreams by Kris Waldherr
146. America Was Hard to Find by Kathleen Alcott
147. The Oysterville Sewing Circle by Susan Wiggs
148. Trust Exercise by Susan Choi
149. Learning to See by Elise Hooper
150. Red Birds by Mohammed Hanif

End of ALA books

151. The Red Daughter by John Burnham Schwartz (NetGalley) 2/6/19 Read
152. Courting Mr. Lincoln by Louis Bayard (NetGalley) 2/6/19
153. The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi by Jacqueline Park (Kindle, gift) 2/8/19 Read
154. The Rotters' Club by Jonathan Coe (UK Kindle, sale, $) 2/10/19
155. Closed Circle by Jonathan Coe (UK Kindle, sale, $) 2/10/19
156. The Painter of Souls by Philip Kazan (UK Kindle sale, $) 2/10/19
157. The Shanghai Free Taxi: Journeys with the Hustlers and Rebels of the New China by Frank Langfitt (NetGalley) 2/11/19
158. Women with Money: The Judgment-Free Guide to Creating the Joyful, Less Stressed, Purposeful (and, Yes, Rich) Life You Deserve by Jean Chatzky (NetGalley) 2/11/19
159. Confessions of an Innocent Man by David Dow (NetGalley) 2/12/19
160. 77 by Guillermo Saccomanno (Kindle, gift) 2/12/19
161. Stone Mothers by Erin Kelly (NetGalley) 2/12/19
162. Blindsided by Kate Watterson (NetGalley) 2/13/19
163. The Legacy of Grazia dei Rossi by Jacqueline Park (paperback, gift) 2/13/19
164. A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918 by G.J. Meyer (Kindle sale, gift) 2/13/19
165. The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert (Kindle, gift) 2/13/19 Read
166. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (Audiobook, sale, $) 2/13/19
167. Bones of the Earth by Eliot Pattison (NetGalley) 2/14/19
168. Memoirs from Beyond the Grave: 1768-1800 by François-René de Chateaubriand (Kindle, gift) 2/14/19
169. The Skull Mantra by Eliot Pattison (Kindle, gift) 2/14/19 Read
170. The Ditch by Herman Koch (NetGalley) 2/15/19
171. Love Thy Neighbor: A Muslim Doctor's Struggle for Home in Rural America by Ayaz Virji (NetGalley) 2/15/19
172. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (Audiobook sale, $) 2/15/19
173. A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism by Adam Gopnik (NetGalley) 2/19/19
174. Nature's Mutiny: How the Little Ice Age of the Long Seventeenth Century Transformed the West and Shaped the Present by Philipp Blom (Kindle, gift) 2/20/19 Read
175. Last Witnesses: An Oral History of the Children of World War II by Svetlana Alexievich (NetGalley) 2/20/19
176. The Women of Copper Country by Mary Doria Russell (NetGalley) 2/20/19 Read
177. Silicon States: The Power and Politics of Big Tech and What It Means for Our Future by Lucie Greene (Kindle sale, $) 2/20/19
178. Beautiful Bad by Annie Ward (NetGalley) 2/20/19
179. Savage News by Jessica Yellin (NetGalley) 2/20/19
180. How We Disappeared by Jing-Jing Lee (NetGalley) 2/20/19
181. The Library of Lost and Found by Phaedra Patrick (NetGalley) 2/20/19 Read
182. Humans: A Brief History of How We F*cked It All Up by Tom Phillipps (NetGalley, from publisher) 2/20/19
183. Truth Worth Telling: A Reporter's Search for Meaning in the Stories of Our Times by Scott Pelley (NetGalley, from publisher) 2/20/19
184. Your Life is Mine by Nathan Ripley (NetGalley) 2/21/19
185. Thirteen by Steve Cavanagh (NetGalley) 2/21/19
186. The Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene (Kindle, sale, $) 2/22/19
187. Vatican Vendetta by Peter Watson (Kindle, sale, $) 2/22/19
188. The Dancing Bear by Frances Faviell (Kindle freebie) 2/23/19
189. Dodge & Twist: A Sequel To Oliver Twist by Tony Lee (Audiobook freebie) 2/23/19
190. Out of Darkness, Shining Light by Petina Gappah (NetGalley) 2/25/19
191. Landscape of Lies by Peter Watson (Kindle, sale, $) 2/26/19
192. 22825964::The Travelers by Regina Porter (NetGalley) 2/26/19
193. The Paris Diversion by Chris Pavone (NetGalley) 2/27/19 Read
194. A Death in the Rainforest: How a Language and a Way of Life Came to an End in Papua New Guinea by Don Kulick (Kindle sale, $) 2/27/19
195. A Keeper by Graham Norton (NetGalley) 2/27/19
196. The Right Sort of Man by Allison Montclair (NetGalley) 2/27/19
197. One False Move by Robert Goddard (UK Kindle, $$) 3/1/19
198. Crown Jewel by Christopher Reich (NetGalley) 3/1/19 Read
199. 22949361::City of Omens: A Search for the Missing Women of the Borderlands by Dan Werb (NetGalley, from publisher) 3/1/19
200. 22949367::Watchers of the Dead by Simon Beaufort (NetGalley) 3/1/19
201. 22949371::Black Death by M.J. Trow (NetGalley) 3/1/19
202. Berta Isla by Javier Maras (NetGalley, from publisher) 3/1/19
203. 22867160::Where We Come From by Oscar Casares (NetGalley, from publisher) 3/1/19
204. The White Devil's Daughters by Julia Flynn Siler (NetGalley, from publisher) 3/1/19 Read
205. Time Song: Journeys in Search of a Submerged Land by Julia Blackburn (NetGalley, from publisher) 3/1/19
206. We Are All Good People Here by Susan Rebecca White (NetGalley, from publisher) 3/1/19

Book Purchases and Other Permanent Acquisitions 2019: Part III

207. The Demon Next Door by Bryan Burrough (Audible freebie) 3/2/19
208. The Suspect by Fiona Barton (UK Kindle sale, $) 3/2/19 Read
209. Their Little Secret by Mark Billingham (NetGalley) 3/2/19 Read
210. The Paper Wasp by Lauren Acampora (NetGalley) 3/4/19
211. Alpha Girls: The Women Upstarts Who Took On Silicon Valley's Male Culture and Made the Deals of a Lifetime by Julian Guthrie (NetGalley) 3/5/19
212. No Angel by Penny Vincenzi (UK Kindle sale, $) 3/5/19
213. Into Temptation by Penny Vincenzi (UK Kindle sale, $) 3/5/19
214. Something Dangerous by Penny Vincenzi (UK Kindle sale, $) 3/5/19
215. Someone Knows by Lisa Scottoline (First to Read freebie, digital ARC) 3/5/19 Read
216. How Not to Die Alone by Richard Roper (NetGalley) 3/6/19
217. The Scholar by Dervla McTiernan (NetGalley) 3/6/19 Read
218. The Executor by Blake Morrison (UK Kindle, $$) 3/6/19
219. The Angel's Mark by S.W. Perry (UK Kindle, $$) 3/7/19
220. The Runaways by Fatima Bhutto (Audiobook, $$) 3/7/19
221. Mad Blood Stirring by Simon Mayo (Kindle, gift) 3/7/19
222. Spring by Ali Smith (NetGalley) 3/7/19
223. The Starter Wife by Nina Laurin (NetGalley) 3/7/19
224. Run Away by Harlan Coben (NetGalley) 3/9/19
225. Death's Autograph by Marianne Macdonald (Audiobook, $$) 3/10/19
226. Down To The Sea In Ships: Of Ageless Oceans and Modern Men by Horatio Clare (UK Kindle sale, $) 3/10/19
227. Milkman by Anna Burns (Kindle sale, $) 3/10/19
228. Mariana by Susanna Kearsley (Kindle/Audiobook, $$) 3/11/19
229. Anna of Kleve, the Princess in the Portrait by Alison Weir (NetGalley) 3/11/19
230. Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis by Jared Diamond (NetGalley) 3/11/19
231. Elizabeth of Bohemia by David Elias (NetGalley) 3/12/19
232. Light from Other Stars by Erika Swyler (NetGalley) 3/12/19
233. Henry, Himself by Stewart O'Nan (NetGalley) 3/14/19 Read
234. Bad Axe County by John Galligan (NetGalley) 3/14/19
235. Stones of Treason by Peter Watson (Kindle sale, $) 3/14/19
236. We Were Killers Once by Becky Masterman (NetGalley) 3/15/19
237. Out of Istanbul: A Long Walk of Discovery Along the Silk Road by Bernard Ollivier 3/15/19
238. Invitation to Die by Barbara Cleverly (Edelweiss e-galley) 3/15/19 Read
239. The Ink Stain by Meg & Thomas Keneally (Australian paperback) 3/16/19 Read
240. Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right Is Warping the American Imagination by Minna Stern (NetGalley) 3/18/19
241. The Second Biggest Nothing by Colin Cotterill (Edelweiss e-galley) 3/18/19 Read
242. To the Lions by Holly Watt (NetGalley) 3/18/19 Read
243. The Great Unexpected by Dan Mooney (NetGalley) 3/18/19
244. The Goose Fritz by Sergei Lebedev (Edelweiss e-galley) 3/19/19
245. Soviet Milk by Nora Ikstena (Kindle, $$) 3/18/19
246. Fly Away Home by Marge Piercy (Kindle sale, $) 3/20/19
247. The Last Thing She Remembers by J.S. Monroe (NetGalley) 3/20/19
248. Shamed by Linda Castillo (NetGalley) 3/21/19 Read
249. The Golden Wolf by Linnea Hartsuyker (Edelweiss e-galley) 3/21/19 Read
250. The Friends We Keep by Jane Green (First to Read, e-galley) 3/21/19 Read
251. Milady by Laura L. Sullivan (First to Read, e-galley) 3/21/19
252. Love at First Like by Hannah Orenstein (NetGalley) 3/22/19
253. The Good Sister by Gillian Mcallister (NetGalley) 3/22/19
254. The Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell's 1984 by Dorian Lynskey (NetGalley) 3/24/19 Read
255. Rose Petal Summer by Katie Fforde (UK Kindle, $$) 3/24/19 Read
256. Chance Developments: Unexpected Love Stories by Alexander McCall Smith (UK Kindle, sale, $) 3/24/19
257. The Fountains of Silence by Ruta Sepetys (Edelweiss e-galley) 3/24/19
258. Haunting Paris by Mamta Chaudhury (NetGalley) 3/25/19
259. The East End by Jason Allen (NetGalley) 3/25/19
260. How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency by Akiko Busch (Kindle, $$) 3/25/19
261. The Capital by Robert Menasse (NetGalley) 3/26/19
262. Prairie Fever by Michael Parker (NetGalley) 3/27/19
263. The Guest Book by Sarah Blake (NetGalley) 3/28/19
264. This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant's Manifesto by Sukhetu Mehta (NetGalley) 3/28/19
265. Moneyland: The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World by Oliver Bullough (NetGalley) 3/28/19 Read
266. Wild Grapes by Elizabeth Aston (Kindle Unlimited freebie) 3/28/19 Read
267. The Body in Question by Jill Ciment (NetGalley) 3/29/19
268. Cantoras by Carolina de Robertis (NetGalley) 3/29/19
269. The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott (NetGalley) 3/29/19 Read
270. The Substitution Order by Martin Clark (NetGalley) 3/29/19
271. The Need by Helen Phillips (NetGalley) 3/29/19
272. A Conspiracy of Wolves by Candace Robb (NetGalley) 4/1/19
273. Hitler's Last Plot: The 139 VIP Hostages Selected for Death in the Final Days of World War II by Ian Sayer (NetGalley) 4/1/19
274. The Liberation of Paris: How Eisenhower, de Gaulle, and von Choltitz Saved the City of Light by Jean Edward Smith (NetGalley) 4/1/19
275. Shadowlands: Fear and Freedom at the Oregon Standoff by Anthony McCann (NetGalley) 4/1/19
276. The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy (NetGalley) 4/1/19
277. The White Feather Killer by R.N. Morris (NetGalley) 4/1/19
278. A Nice Cup of Tea by Celia Imrie (NetGalley) 4/1/19
279. Dragon Lady by Louisa Treger (NetGalley) 4/1/19
280. The House of Hardie by Anne Melville (NetGalley) 4/1/19
281. Metropolis by Phillip Kerr (NetGalley/Audible $$) 4/3/19
282. Girls Like Us by Cristina Alger (NetGalley) 4/3/19 Read
283. The Assassin of Verona by Benet Brandreth (NetGalley) 4/3/19
284. The Selection by Keira Cass (Audiobook sale, $) 4/3/19 Read
285. The King's Evil by Andrew Taylor (UK Kindle, $$) 4/4/19 Read
286. The House on Vesper Sands by Paraic O'Donnell (UK Kindle sale, $) 4/4/19
287. The Doll Factory by Elizabeth Macneal (NetGalley) 4/4/19
289. Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely (Kindle sale, $) 4/7/19
289. The Lost Gutenberg: The Astounding Story of One Book's Five-Hundre(d-Year Odyssey by Margaret Leslie Davis (Audiobook, $$) 4/7/19 Read
290. Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home by Richard Bell (NetGalley) 4/11/19
291. The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware (NetGalley) 4/12/19 Read
292. Summerlings by Lisa Howorth (NetGalley) 4/12/19
293. Beyond the Pale by Clare O'Donoghue (Kindle sale, $) 4/12/19
294. Sapiens: a Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari (Kindle sale, $) 4/14/19
295. The Mountain Master of Sha Tin by Ian Hamilton (Edelweiss e-galley) 4/14/19
296. How Could She by Lauren Mechling (NetGalley) 4/15/19
297. A Single Thread by Tracey Chevalier (NetGalley) 4/18/19 Read
298. Crashing the A-List by Summer Heacock (NetGalley) 4/18/19
299. The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge, and India's Quest for Independence by Anita Anand 4/19/19 Read
300. Good Girl, Bad Girl by Michael Robotham (NetGalley) 4/19/19 Read

Book Purchases and Other Permanent Acquisitions 2019: Part IV

301. The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna by Juliet Grames (NetGalley) 4/22/19
302. Five Days Gone: The Mystery of My Mother's Disappearance as a Child by Laura Cumming (NetGalley) 4/22/19
303. Big Sky by Kate Atkinson (NetGalley) 4/22/19
304. The Long Call by Ann Cleeves (NetGalley) 4/23/19 Read
305. The Book of Science and Antiquities by Thomas Keneally (NetGalley) 4/23/19
306. The Ghosts of Eden Park: The Bootleg King, the Women Who Pursued Him, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz- Age America by Karen Abbott (NetGalley) 4/27/19
307. Afternoon of a Faun by James Lasdun (Kindle/Audiobook, $$) 4/27/19 Read
308. The Native Heath by Elizabeth Fair (Kindle sale, $) 4/29/19
309. Seaview House by Elizabeth Fair (Kindle sale, $) 4/29/19
310. The Lightest Object in the Universe by Kimi Eisele (NetGalley) 4/29/19
311. The Nanny by Gilly Macmillan (NetGalley) 4/29/19
312. The Helpline by Katherine Collette (NetGalley) 4/30/19
313. The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa (NetGalley) 5/1/19
314. Chances Are... by Richard Russo (NetGalley) 5/1/19
315. Middle England by Jonathan Coe (NetGalley) 5/1/19
316. A Guest of the Reich: The Story of American Heiress Gertrude Legendre's Dramatic Captivity and Escape from Nazi Germany by Peter Finn (NetGalley)
317. Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA by Amaryllis Fox (NetGalley) 5/1/19
318. The Man That Got Away by Lynne Truss (NetGalley) 5/1/19
319. The Good Cop by Peter Steiner (NetGalley) 5/1/19
320. The Killer in the Choir by Simon Brett (NetGalley) 5/1/19
321. Deadland by William Shaw (UK Kindle, $$) 5/1/19
322. Homecomings by Marcia Willett (UK Kindle, $$) 5/1/19
323. Without Her by Rosalind Brackenbury (NetGalley) 5/2/19
324. Where the Light Enters by Sara Donati (First to Read, Adobe e-galley) 5/3/19
325. Right After the Weather by Carol Anshaw (NetGalley) 5/8/19
326. Formation: A Woman's Memoir of Stepping Out of Line by Ryan Leigh Dostie (NetGalley) 5/8/19
327. Whisky From Small Glasses by Denzil Mayrick (Audiobook, $$) 5/8/19
328. The Swallows by Lisa Lutz (NetGalley) 5/9/19
329. Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide by Tony Horwitz (Audiobook, $$) 5/15/19
330. The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution by Peter Hessler (Kindle sale, $) 5/15/19
331. Marley: A Novel by Jon Clinch (NetGalley) 5/16/19
332. Death in a Desert Land by Andrew Wilson (NetGalley) 5/16/19
333. At the End of the Century: The Stories of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (Kindle sale, $) 5/16/19)
334. The Topeka School by Ben Lerner (NetGalley) 5/17/19
335. The Silvered Heart by Katherine Clement (Audiobook, $$) 5/20/19
336. The Scandal of the Century: And Other Writings by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (hardcover, from publisher) 5/20/19
337. The Arrangement by Robyn Harding (NetGalley) 5/22/19
338. Parisian Lives: Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and Me: A Memoir by Deirdre Blair (NetGalley) 5/29/19
339. The Devil's Slave by Tracy Borman (NetGalley) 5/29/19 Read
340. Fled: A Novel by Meg Keneally (NetGalley) 5/29/19
341. The Lady in the Lake by Laura Lippman (NetGalley) 5/30/19
342. Inland by Téa Obreht (NetGalley) 5/30/19
343. The Bells of Old Tokyo: Meditations on Time and a City by Anna Sherman (NetGalley) 5/30/19
344. Qualification: A Graphic Memoir in Twelve Steps by David Heatley (NetGalley, from publisher) 5/31/19
345. Year of the Monkey by Patti Smith (NetGalley, from publisher) 5/31/19
346. For the Love of Music: A Conductor's Guide to the Art of Listening by John Mauceri (NetGalley, from publisher) 5/31/19
347. Maoism: A Global History by Julia Lovell (NetGalley, from publisher) 5/31/19
348. The Lost Art of Scripture: Rescuing the Sacred Texts by Karen Armstrong (NetGalley, from publisher) 5/31/19
349. The Snakes by Sandie Jones (UK Kindle, sale, $) 5/31/19
350. Ottoman Odyssey: Travels through a Lost Empire by Alev Scott (UK Kindle, $$) 5/31/19

I failed miserably in several of my reading goal categories last year and succeeded completely in none. OUCH. Which, of course, doesn't stop me from setting a new batch of targets. You'd think I'd learn, right? But nope.

I still have the Staynes & Storey mysteries to read, and I am planning to read Angela Thirkell's Barsetshire novels.

Other than that? I need to focus on getting some books read and off my shelves... Especially those that I probably won't want to re-read, or might want to get a digital copy of. Or that have been hanging around for far too long...

ARCs in my living room...

Lake Success by Gary Shteyngart
Sweet Little Lies by Caz Frear
The Island Dwellers by Jen Silverman
Whistle in the Dark by Emma Healey
Varina by Charles Frazier Read
The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker Read
Melmoth by Sarah Perry
The Spy of Venice by Benet Brandreth
Traitor by Jonathan de Shalit Read
Midnight Blue by Simone van der Vlugt Read
How It Happened by Michael Koryta Read

NetGalley Stack of Shame

The Other Americans by Laila Lalani Read
Mother Country by Irina Reyn
The Farm by Joanne Ramos
Goulash by Brian Kimberling
The River by Peter Heller
Necessary People by Anna Pitoniak Read
The Removes by Tatjana Soli Read
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas
Correspondents by Tim Murphy

Mystery Mania

The Second Rider by Alex Beer
Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions by Mario Giordano
And Fire Came Down by Emma Viskic
99 Ways to Die by Ed Lin
Newcomer by Keigo Higashino Read
No Time to Cry by James Oswald Read
A Taste for Vengeance by Martin Walker Read
The Ruin by Dervla McTiernan Read
The Wrong Girl by David Hewson
Salt Lane by William Shaw
A Dangerous Crossing by Ausma Zehanat Khan
The Comforts of Home by Susan Hill Read
Uneasy Lies the Crown by Tasha Alexander Read

Light & Frothy

That Churchill Woman by Stephanie Barron
Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal Read
All We Ever Wanted by Emily Giffin
Maulever Hall by Jane Aiken Hodges`Read
The Clockmaker’s Daughter by Kate Morton Read
When Life Gives You Lululemons by Lauren Weisberger Read
Takes One to Know One by Susan Isaacs Read
Snobs by Julian Fellowes DNF
Godchildren by Nicholas Coleridge Read
The Ocean Liner by Marius Gabriel

Bedroom TBR Mountain

Sugar Money by Jane Harris
Ark Storm by Linda Davies Read
Cleopatra’s Sister by Penelope Lively
Map of Salt and Stars by Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar
Resurrection of Joan Ashby by Cherise Wolas
The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer
No Man Dies Twice by Michael Smith
The Considerate Killer by Lene Kaaberbøl
The Very Marrow of Our Bones by Christine Higdon
The Rainy Season by Anna Jaquiery
Ensemble by Aja Gabel Read

The American Revolution

American Dialogue: the Founding Fathers and Us by Joseph Ellis
Rush: Revolution, Madness, and Benjamin Rush, the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father by Stephen Fried
Revolution Song: A Story of American Freedom by Russell Shorto
Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different by Gordon S. Wood
46 Pages by Scott Liell
The Unruly City: Paris, London and New York in the Age of Revolution by Mike Rapport
Tom Paine: A Political Life by John Keane
Of Arms and Artists: The American Revolution Through Painters' Eyes by Paul Straiti
A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America by Stacy Schiff

I Really Should Have Read This By NOW

There There by Tommy Orange Read
Nobody’s Fool by Richard Russo
Kim by Rudyard Kipling
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout Read
Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
Mrs. Osmond by John Banville
A Place For Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza
The Three Musketeers by Dumas
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

Personal Non-Fiction Challenge!!

Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe Read
Good and Mad by Rebecca Traister Read
The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics by Salena Zito
Natural Causes by Barbara Ehrenreich Read
Cold Warriors by Duncan White Read
The Great American Outpost by Maya Rao Read
It’s All Relative by A.J. Jacobs Read
The Map of Knowledge by Violet Moller Read
Snow: A Scientific and Cultural Exploration by Giles Whittell Read
Sharp by Michelle Dean
Boundless: Tracing Land and Dream in a New Northwest Passage by Kathleen Winter Read
The Salt Path by Raynor Winn Read
Chopin’s Piano: In Search of the Instrument that Transformed Music by Paul Kildea Read
Dopesick by Beth Macy Read
1947: Where Now Begins by Elizabeth Asbrink Read
Border by Kapka Kassabova
Walking the Woods and the Water by Nick Hunt Read
The Economists' Hour by Binyamin Applebaum
The Victorian and the Romantic: A Memoir, a Love Story, and a Friendship Across Time by Nell Stevens Read
The Broken Road by Patrick Leigh Fermor

Reading Globally

The Dragonfly Sea by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor (Kenya)
The Plotters by Un-Su Kim (S. Korea)
Welcome to Lagos by Chibundu Onuzo (Nigeria) Read
The Influence Peddlers by Hedi Kaddour (Tunisia)
We, the Survivors by Tash Aw (Malaysia)
The Dinner Guest by Gabriela Ybarra (Spain)
The Story of a Marriage by Geir Gulliksen (Norway)
Agnes by Peter Stamm (Switzerland)
A Fortune Foretold by Agneta Pleijel (Sweden)
Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharti (Oman) Read
Inheritance From Mother by Minae Mizumura (Japan) Read
The Happy Marriage by Tahar Ben Jalloun (Morocco)
Red Birds by Mohamed Hanif (Pakistan)
Solovyov and Larionov by Eugene Vodolazkin (Russia)
The Far Field by Madhuri Vijay (India) Read
Disoriental by Négar Djavadi (Iran) Read
Death is Hard Work by Khaled Khalifa (Syria) Read
China Dream by Ma Jian (China) . Read
No More Boats by Felicity Castagna (Australia) Read
The Old Drift by Namwali Serepell (Zambia)
North of Dawn by Nuruddin Farah (Somalia) Read
Little Culinary Triumphs by Pascale Pujol (France) Read
77 by Guillerom Saccomano (Argentina)
Bangkok Wakes to Rain by Pitchaya Sudbanthad (Thailand) Read

Canadian Content

Women Talking by Miriam Toews Read
An Ocean of Minutes by Thea Lim Read
Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
The Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains by Yasuko Thanh
The Far Side of the Sky by Daniel Kalla
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood Read
Serial Monogamy by Kate Taylor Read
Lost in September by Kathleen Winter
Albatross by Terry Fallis Read
The Colony of Unrequited Dreams by Wayne Johnston Read
The Break by Katherena Vermette

Happy New Thread, Suz! I see you read Blackout this month and gave it over four stars--are you planning to read the second half of the story in All Clear?

ETA I like the poem but I LOVE the painting!

Happy new one :)

That painting is amazing. Great choice for a topper! I will have to do some research on him.

I am off to Kansas tomorrow after work. My mother is getting out of Rehad and coming home tomorrow, so I am going there to spend a week with her and get some things done to the house so she can life there without much assistance.

I am starting to plan for ALA in Washington. I think we will meet at Busboys and Poets. It is close to the convention center and stays open until Midnight. I will keep you posted. I hope you will be able to come for at least a day or two. Do you know if Marianne is coming?

>13 ronincats: I've already read both Blackout and All Clear, so I'm indulging in re-reads. I still find some of the time travel concepts and characters perplexing and am hoping that this time I can get it all sorted out!!

>15 benitastrnad: Good luck with your mother, Benita.
I do hope to get to ALA -- I've booked the time off, and now I just need to sort out the travel & accommodation costs. I think Marianne did plan to go, but I haven't spoken with her recently. Shall keep you posted!!

Thanks for the visits... >12 TheWorstOffender: and >14 figsfromthistle:.

>13 ronincats: Agreed!
I look forward to everything you have to say, dear Suz!

>16 Chatterbox:
I have wanted to read the Blackout and All Clear books for some time. I have moved them up in the queue. It took me a little time to figure out that the asterisk in your lists meant that these titles were re-reads, but after I started seeing them on some of the books you had talked about on your threads in the past, I figured it out.

I am looking forward to seeing you at ALA. I will be starting to send out notices for perks, so if you can maybe there will be some free lunches!

>18 benitastrnad: Free food would be great!! I have lost enough weight through not having $$ for food in the last six weeks that I am down 2 sizes in jeans. And yes, asterisks mean a re-read...

Hello Chatterbox! I hope all is well with you.

Speaking of Canadian content. Are you familiar with a Canadian television series called X Company. I have fallen in love with it and completed one of the three total seasons. It is a WWII spy drama about Camp X spies operating in occupied France. So good. There is a five member team, each with a different skill, plying their craft against the Nazis in 1942.

X Company shows on American basic cable channel Ovation TV

>21 magicians_nephew: Hello magician's_nephew. Interesting. My Comcast only makes a couple of episodes available on demand. I also determined that it airs on Hulu. I got mine on DVD from the library. :-)

Skimming through and enjoying all the lists. Your thread is always dangerous for my wish list. I see you gave There There five full stars. I have been going back and forth on that one but you may have tipped me over the line into at least putting it on hold at the library!

Happy new thread!

>23 EBT1002: I delayed reading it for a long time because I was wary that it wouldn't live up to advance billing and because I tend to be worried about books that get vast waves of love and enthusiasm. Some I really relish; others fall short of what I want.

I looked up "X Company" and it reminds me strongly of a British TV series from the 80s, "Wish Me Luck", that features a collection of agents and Jane Asher as a character that resembles the real-life Vera Atkins.

The good news -- I just had a phone call from DHS and it looks as if my EBT application is OK (that is for food stamps/aka some money for free food items) and I'll have a sum (as yet unspecified) deposited in my account as of June 1. The bad news? I had a migraine today so bad that I couldn't get to work at my retail gig, and lost the income from my shift. My ankles also are incredibly bad (arthritis) and I end up hobbling around. The OK news? I negotiated with Cox Communications on the phone and got another $25 a month knocked off my Internet bill. Thank heavens; the people in the store wouldn't do a thing to help. Now only have to tackle the utility folks.

>27 m.belljackson:

The local senior center in Madison, Wisconsin, connects people with an organization that automatically - once you fill in form and send IRS information - sends money to Gas and Electric companies to cover around one month's payments. Maybe there's a similar fund in New York.

I'm in RI. To get help, I need to be there in person with all KINDS of information. Each time I have been they have told me to come back with something else. (Last time I took rent receipts; they wanted the actual lease, and it took me a week to get a copy of it...) Life in the slow lane, right??

>28 Chatterbox:

My ex-husband, newborn daughter, and I were once denied food stamps in the mighty state of Michigan,
in the same year that they poisoned all their milk.

And why? because I estimated the value of our ancient car at more than $25 of what they would allow to qualify -
and was not permitted to reapply for another 6 months.

And now? ex just finished 9 years as a music professor at Mills College in California and I'm living on social security and pension
earned from 30 years of teaching.

Life would have been easier with the stamps - maybe just take ALL your files next time.

Any chance you could do Substitute Teaching?

>29 m.belljackson: I've never had a teaching certificate, so probably not. That said, I am going to approach Bryant University and propose a writing course for them. It might only make me an extra $2,500 to $4,000 each year, but...

The EBT is now OK, but the utility assistance program is a BIG problem. I'll have to try again Tuesday (my next day off...)

Sorry I am a little late in wishing you a Happy New Thread, Suz.

Am a little bit busy organising moving home and thinking about all those books.........

>30 Chatterbox:

In these trying times, many school systems will accept people with non-teaching degrees for both substitute teaching and teacher assistants.
My brother has done both in Middleton, Wisconsin, with a BA in Accounting. He gets called in the early AM and accepts only what he wants.
Qualifications? he's a retired U.S. postal worker.

If you check the local School District, job postings should be online for a variety of 9 month (!!!) positions.
Though sometimes challenging, pay has got to be better than retail or Starbucks toilet cleaning.

One other thought- book clubs in Toronto ( maybe the US?) hire reviewers who charge $350 for an hour of reviewing a book.
Some of the universities run 10 session or less programmes on various themes for retired people ( In Toronto "Later Life Learning" runs at Innis College and Ryerson University has a very big list of programmes- all hire lecturers.)

I read Merchants of Truth, well, actually, listened to it and then reread parts of this book when I got to Kansas. It is really important, and even though I think it might dwell too much on the business of newspapers, it is still an important book. Have you read it?

On the way to Kansas I listened to the entire book Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and the Fight for Facts by Jill Abramson. This book was based on an earlier book written by David Halberstam that was a Pulitzer Prize winner. The author was a former executive editor of the New York Times and she chronicles the demise of the big national daily newspapers by concentrating on the Washington Post and the New York Times. She contrasts them with BuzzFeed and Vice. Her conclusions are that the newspapers are coming out on top of the news once again, with the newer on-line sources reverting to the tried and true methods of the old fashioned newspapers and their fact checking style of reporting. However, she says that the biggest problem with the new news sources is that when they start to really report the news instead of relying on "20 ways to reduce belly fat" type of articles, they start bleeding money. Her chapter on Facebook and how its algorithms works was very important and enlightening. Essentially Facebook relies on what she calls the "happiness factor" - find out what the poster likes and feed him more of the same thing. This creates a positive feedback loop which was exactly what Cathy O'Neil talked about in Weapons of Math Destruction.

I ended up reading parts of this book when I got to Kansas because I couldn't just keep replaying the parts I didn't understand on the audio. This book is really important for people who want to understand how Trump got elected, but I would recommend that you read the book rather than listen to it.

>32 m.belljackson: >33 torontoc:
Thanks for the suggestions!

I did look into leading book groups here but all those positions are "voluntary"....

>34 benitastrnad:
Yes, I've got an advance copy of Jill's book. She has gotten some flack for plagiarism in parts, alas, as well as for over-generalizing. That stopped me from reading more deeply. Halberstam's book was excellent, although now it's dated. Meanwhile, I have Alan Rusbridger's version of the same kind of story (he was editor of the Guardian.)

Trying to read D-Day Girls but the writing is appalling and flippant. She clearly would rather be writing fiction (I'm basing this on stuff she could not possibly know or that anyone could know, but that finds its way into the books -- what people thought or felt.) It's a subject I know a reasonable amount about but that Sarah Rose (author) presents as the "first book" about this subject. I've read at least two general books on the same topic, as well as myriad individual bios or memoirs. Sigh.

>35 Chatterbox:
A newspaper editor plagiarizing? That is something I hadn't heard.

I read a new author while I was at home in Kansas. I saw a review for the newest book by Antoine Laurain and was intriqued. I looked him up on Amazon and found out that he has been quite prolific in French. I got President's Hat through Inter-Library Loan and read it. It made me laugh and I enjoyed the whole story. I think I will try to get more of his books in the future. Have you read him?

>36 benitastrnad: Here's one of the (many) pieces on Abramson. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/former-times-editor-jill-abramson-accused...

>37 benitastrnad: Nope, have not read Laurain. I've seen a lot of his books, but have ventured into that territory.

Thanks for the link. However there are mistakes in the Intelligencer article as well. Merchants of Doubt is a book title not the title of the article or a chapter in the book Merchants of truth.

There are extensive pages of notes, bibliography, and index in the book. 132 pages of them in fact. Footnotes, citations, and bibliography might be something that Vice is not familiar with, given their history of dubious news and reporting. They might be right, but I would take the work of even a discredited New York Times editor over theirs.

It would also say that shoddy fact checking is par for the course in book publishing today. Publishers don’t edit and they don’t fact check so that they can leave their authors hanging out to dry. Very convenient for them. The tendency to rush to publish has cost many an author and publisher dearly. It is one of the things that makes me sad these days.

>39 benitastrnad: I have to say that were I Abramson, I would have been ashamed at what I had done. It doesn't MATTER if you footnote something, if you are simply lifting the language -- which she acknowledged herself that she did. I would also note that the reporter who first identified this (Vice) has an extensive background in the media (i.e. isn't just a cub reporter at Vice) and has a track record of identifying people who mis-identify their information/sources or who otherwise commit misdeeds of this kind. Indeed, Moynihan spent only a year at Vice before moving on to Newsweek/The Daily Beast.

Specifically, Abramson has said “I made some errors in the way I credited sources but that there was no attempt to pass off someone else’s ideas, opinions and phrasings as my own" and that “these were all factual passages that unfortunately did not match up exactly to the right footnotes.”

That isn't good enough. Heck, it wouldn't have been good enough for Abramson when she was at the Times. Read the section "Other People's Reporting" here. https://www.nytimes.com/editorial-standards/guidelines-on-integrity.html

I acknowledge that this kind of shitty ethical behavior exists. I had a few entire phrases lifted from my book (including my damn title) by Bethany McLean in the book she co-wrote with Joe Nocera, which was published six months later. I got a private acknowledgment that they did this from someone, but no one has ever credited me in subsequent editions.

It's lazy behavior. Heck, I have known reporters who have been FIRED for doing this. If a phrase or comment comes from someone else, you attribute it to its original author. I am appalled that Abramson simply rationalizes what she did even as she says she will make changes in subsequent editions. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/business/media/jill-abramson-book-plagiarism....

Finally, I heard through the publishers that they had to make a LOT of last minute corrections of substantial facts -- errors that an author could have taken responsibility for. No, publishers don't fact check every fact in a book. My book contract specified that I, as the author, warranted that it was my original work and I had made every effort to verify all the facts. Like most responsible authors I know, I went through with a fine-toothed comb. I missed ONE substantive error. And yes, it's possible for an author to push back on publication dates, and not allow themselves to be stampeded if they think it will compromise the quality of their book. Mine was published NINE MONTHS after its original date, because I had to rethink some concepts as the news altered what I needed to write about, and because the editor wanted me to do some tweaking. Even then, we delayed another two weeks so that I could write a fresh introduction. Abramson has enough clout to insist on the publishers accommodating her and not vice versa. A new author may not, but in this case there was a bidding war for Abramson's book, and she did have clout.

I understand your point about footnotes and bibliographies, and I appreciate the fact that they are there. (It amazes me that Michael Lewis's book, The Big Short, contained NEITHER, and was still revered by many...)

I admire Abramson for her ambition in tackling this subject and her willingness to speak out. But like most of her former colleagues, I'm horrified by the way she rationalizes what none of us would accept in ourselves or others.

>40 Chatterbox: Good Grief! I didn't accept that kind of shoddy acknowledgement in an 11th grade term paper!
Just saying......

>40 Chatterbox: Abramson was at Auckland's Writers Festival last month and I refused to buy a ticket to hear her talk - pity that others didn't. If she was at our festival then no doubt she was feted at a few in Australia as well.

I never heard of Abramson before I read this book. It is interesting that she managed to raise such ire, and not only from her employers? Sort of like Hilary Clinton? I suspect a form of woman bashing is at work. Abramson took on a couple of the big new media companies and exposed them and they don't like it.

I read the Inquirer article for which you provided the link and I have to say that of course Vice would trash the book. It is a book in which all the shortcomings of the "new media," and that company in particular, were exposed. Their complaints about Abramson's lack of citing seems to me to be sour grapes. The New York Times did not complain about what she said in the book. Neither did the Washington Post. Only Vice.

There might be plagiarism and if so who did she plagiarize? That was not clear to me in the article. It is possible that Abramson plagiarized. If so she is in good company. Doris Kearns Goodwin and Steven Ambrose come to mind. I agree with you that there is no excuse for this. That said, I still think that if there are problems with the book, that the publishers bear some responsibility. They are shirking their editorial responsibilities and have for many years. They continue to shove the responsibility for fact checking and editing off onto authors, while pressuring authors to adhere to the publishing dates set in contracts. I notice that the Inquirer article didn't say anything about Simon & Schuster not checking the facts before they published the book. Yes, authors bear responsibility for what they write, but publishers agree to accept the responsibility for what they publish. In my opinion, if Simon & Schuster let a shoddy piece of work out to get published that is their problem as much as it is the authors. It was the publisher that redrew copies of Goodwin's books after publication. So far that hasn't happened with this title, so I am guessing that Simon & Schuster are confident enough of their book and the author's abilities to not have done this.

I think it is clear that the book starts out to prove a point and is highly partisan. That being that the ways of the old fashioned news reporting newspapers is best and that the new media companies do not follow these long established practices, instead practicing a new form of "yellow journalism." These practices, in particular that of publish first and apologize later, is bad for real news and for the concept of truth. Abramson tells the reader that she has an agenda right up front in the introduction. As pointed out in the book, and footnoted, from a third party, the numbers of non-news items that are clicked on are the reasons the new media outlets have high traffic, (articles such as Donkey Porn) not their news. It is those total numbers that count. I find it interesting that in all the years it has been around that Vice has never turned a profit and up to 2017 has never met its profit targets and still manages to produce content (of dubious importance - things such as 10 ways to lose the fat off your face) using other people's money. The newspapers that were examined in the book - Washington Post and the New York Times - were not allowed to continue to borrow money by our current financial system and ended up sold or bailed out to individual White Knights, while Vice and BuzzFeed, but Vice in particular, have investors throwing money at these yellow journalism news sources.

As a defense of old fashioned news reporting and editing this book works. Of course, I may be locked into a positive feedback loop (term from Weapons of Math Destruction as well as Merchants of Truth) and this book just confirms for me that the new media outlets are lacking in truth telling, favoring sensationalism to get traffic.

As you know I have been doing lots of reading about social media and new media news outlets in the last year. I considered this book to be part of that reading, and was unaware that there was any controversy about the book. Nothing has been said in Publishers Weekly or Booklist about this, and those are my two main sources for news about books and publishing.

For me this book was another in the long line of reading and educating of myself that I have been doing since November of 2016 about why and how we are being manipulated by "Fake News." Perhaps this book is just another "Fake News" item? If so it was remarkably footnoted and referenced.

I am continuing this line of reading because I find it interesting, but now am concentrating on the history of these organizations. I am going to read Everything Store next and see what it has to say about Amazon as a company.

There is an ALA Washington meetup thread started. Here is the link to it.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/307549

>43 benitastrnad: OK. Re Abramson -- she didn't just raise ire from new media employees. I'm not one of that breed, and I'M angry. I look at the examples of "accidental lifting" of entire phrases from her sources, and I'M furious. If anything she is able to defend herself BECAUSE of her status, gender notwithstanding. I thought her firing from the NYT was very problematic, so I was eager to read the book. By the time I was able to pick it up -- this had exploded. I was furious, because she HERSELF has played a role in firing people for PRECISELY this kind of "slip up". (In contrast to her assertions that she wouldn't do such a thing; she draws a distinction between doing this in a news article on deadline and doing it for a book that is PRECISELY the wrong way around. Regardless, she has done it. I won't mention the person's name here, because he has worked hard to rebuild his life and credibility after his firing, but...) She, like me, is a WSJ alumna and we have had this drummed into us after joining the organizations: ANY kind of stuff like this, accidental or done-a-purpose, is utterly and completely unacceptable. Look, had this been because of some sloppy work by one of her assistants (and yes, she hired assistants for this), she could have come out and said, look, I was in a rush to finish the book, I had notes prepared for me by assistants that didn't contain full references (if that's what it was) and it's inexcusable and these will be fixed immediately. I apologize to everyone. BUT SHE DIDN'T. She doubled down.

I also have to take issue with your point that nobody from the traditional media complained. They definitely did. Here's only one example, from the Washington Post's media critic. It details what happened and explains why it's deeply problematic. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/02/07/jill-abramson-falls/?utm_term... I'd urge you to read it. It should certainly help explain the details of what she copied and/or plagiarized -- the language she directly lifted from other sources without acknowledging it. And you know? This kind of behavior is a power play. She is saying, implicitly, "these sources don't matter; no one cares until I present these words and ideas." And it's a dismissive approach to whoever wrote that in the first place -- you're so unimportant that I can just lift your wording and phrases that you worked hard to craft and present that language as my own. Just -- NO.

Abramson is immensely talented. And she's now immensely powerful. At the NYT she was treated the same way that any abrasive guy would have been treated -- perhaps unfairly, but she was playing power games there. (She told Sulzberger that she had cleared the hiring of Janine Gibson with Dean Baquet, and then when the offer was made to Janine, Dean expressed annoyance to Sulzberger -- which made the latter furious that he'd been misled. It was the straw that broke the camel's back.) I will always want to read what she writes, but she also -- like many men -- has an attitude that "I know what I'm doing" and "the rules don't really count." I applaud her for spelling out her bias up top -- that's good ethics. But she should have been more careful OR she should have owned her mistakes. Immediately. That's what ethical behavior looks like.

NYT staffers have been careful not to speak out on the record publicly, because she still has a lot of fans among the editors, but I've seen at least one article that captured the split in opinion among them -- from people who think she just goofed to those who are appalled. NO ONE thinks this didn't happen, incidentally. There's a similar view among the WSJ alumni, many of whom are horrified or very dismayed. It's possible to admire the book's overall conclusions and deplore what happened -- and most of all, deplore her decision to first deny that she plagiarized (accidentally or not) and then to acknowledge it only indirectly by saying something like "I made some mistakes, but it's not plagiarism." People I know who eagerly anticipated the book, having worked with Abramson in the DC bureau, feel she has let them down. She says her students don't mind or don't see a problem -- but they aren't long-time media professionals who have had ethics drummed into them for decades. I wouldn't look to my journalism students for validation on a question like this... https://nypost.com/2019/02/14/jill-abramson-i-wouldnt-fire-reporter-for-plagiari...

Certainly, the publisher bears some responsibility. But the ultimate responsibility lies with the author. A book MS isn't a term paper or thesis that can be run through some kind of program searching for lines/phrases from other published material. Authors are, or should be, grown ups capable of managing this themselves. I've written one non-fiction book, and co-authored two others. I know what it's like when you're wrangling a LOT of raw material (although not what it's like to have assistants help you!) You have to be careful. She wasn't. The buck stops with her. And I'm not going to give her a free pass because I happen to admire her or think she has important insights. That's akin to giving Garrison Keillor a free pass on harassment allegations (investigated by an independent law firm) because I liked "Prairie Home Companion" or saying that Charlie Rose isn't as bad as Harvey Weinstein, and because he's a brilliant interviewer, he should be forgiven more readily. (Let's not even get into Al Franken, although that may be the closest analogy, since his defenders rush to point out that some of the women who accused him are Republicans or their supporters, and so won't even consider that he MIGHT have done something amiss.)

I also have to take issue with your characterization of online news. A lot of it is clickbait (just as the conventional media has included fashion features, etc. for eons, or astrology columns, or fawning profiles in magazines.) But have you looked at Vice's SERIOUS content? For instance, some of the strongest reporting at Charlottesville came from a young woman who followed the right-wing and got themselves to condemn themselves on camera. I didn't always like the way it was presented, with the (cute young blonde) reporter often front and center, but that's my reaction to a lot of stuff in "60 Minutes", too. Here's Esquire's commentary on that, which I think has links to the documentary. https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/videos/a57009/charlottesville-vice-documen...
I also recall, just off the top of my head, an excellent article that took a critical look at the struggle Syrian refugees have had in settling into Canada. When everyone else was lauding Canada for accepting these refugees, this smart reporter went and asked them about their actual experiences rather than just jumping on the self-congratulatory bandwagon. The result was this article. https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/gy98wm/most-syrian-refugees-coming-to-canada...
Then there is my friend Jake Adelstein, who finds that Vice is one of the only places that will publish critical coverage of Japan's current government (more right-wing than anything seen since WW2, with a PM who believes in emperor worship...) On Vice, he has reported important stories about government corruption and organized crime. They are very well sourced, but don't make him popular among Japan's powers that be, but Vice cares less than many big publications, he has found.

My broader point is a warning not to dismiss all online media organizations as purveyors of clickbait, because they offer clickbait. That's akin to dismissing all of the NYT content as fake, because the NYT employed Jayson Blair, who DID write fake stories for many months before being caught, or because Judith Miller and others were used by the administration to write that Iraq probably had WMD in the run-up to the war in Iraq.

Sure, the book works. It's probably good. But the author shot herself in the foot -- not just by the initial missteps but by the way she reacted to those who called her out on them. It's like letting slip the N word and, when someone points out that this is racist, saying something like, "well, African Americans use it when talking to each other" instead of simply apologizing. Because when something like this happens, that's the ONLY acceptable response. I've got other problems with Abramson (she said in one interview that she "never records" interviews because she has a photographic memory for what has been said in interviews with sources -- that's horrifying to me especially in someone reporting on high-profile stories with a high risk of litigation. You need to be able to document that person A said PRECISELY what they said to you, to your editors, to your lawyers. Either in notes or on tape. If person A won't let you tape, and won't let you take notes, that's a different issue. That's not about your "photographic memory" but about the limitations you faced in your reporting that might affect accuracy. I simply can't imagine a professional journalist being this cavalier. Or saying something like this publicly, which might encourage younger reporters to do the same in the delusion that they, too, have photographic memories.

Sorry if this tirade is over the top. But there is so much misunderstanding about media ethics and media policies -- what is acceptable and what isn't. Abramson, bless her heart, has given the Breitbarts of this world lots of new ammo to fire off at the traditional media organizations during what could be a second Trump administration, or during the campaign. Don't trust the NYT or any of those organizations that lauded a plagiarist. She could have defused all this by displaying some humility. But -- nope.

Here endeth the rant...

>42 avatiakh: I'd probably go hear her speak because I'm interested in her thoughts and views, but I wouldn't view her as an ideal mentor, based on some of the things she has said about her work habits/practices and on this incident. You want a mentor who holds herself to the same standards she holds YOU and others to... What makes me sad about this is that a smart, incisive thinker and writer with a depth of knowledge about the media world scored an "own goal" unnecessarily.

>41 LizzieD: As I noted above, there's no program to run a book MS through in search of plagiarism or "borrowings". Which is why you have to be hyper-vigilant. It's also a reminder that when you're relying on an assistant to draft sections of a book, it can actually be more work than just doing it yourself. You have to trust them as much as you trust yourself not to mess up. I can see a scenario -- in the context of some of these examples -- where a young assistant made notes for himself and then just put together a draft verbatim, which she didn't query. I bet that young guy is now shaking in his shoes, as if that did indeed happen, his career is toast. Abramson will survive, but someone young at the start of their career? Nope.

Meanwhile, on a book topic -- I finished reading Philipp Blom's latest work of history, and it's fascinating. Nature's Mutiny addresses the ways in which what was called "the little ice age" from the late 16th century to the early 1700s -- 100 to 150 years -- affected Europe's society, economy, political environment. In Blom's analysis, it triggered the final shift from feudal structures and local markets to today's capitalist-based universe. The only way for populations to survive periods in which local crops failed during deep cold and lack of sun was to trade, and that gave way to new political and economic structures. (Indeed, it was during this time that the first stock markets were created in Hamburg and then in Amsterdam -- something I wrote about nearly 20 years ago.) Blom knows this period well, and he produces a deep, detailed and still accessible chronicle of events, causation and consequences. Nor, intriguingly, does he shy away from drawing some analogies with our current period of climate change. In contrast to the little ice age, however, this time it's human behavior that is causing disruptive climate alterations and in contrast to the 16th/17th centuries, we're not yet really adapting to what is going on (solar panels notwithstanding...) He raises but doesn't try to answer provocative questions about what those adaptations will look like. And makes the reader (or at least THIS reader) think about not only what was gained in the previous lot of adjustments to profoundly hostile environmental shifts but what was lost (the sense that subsistence farming was just fine, versus maximizing output has positive implications as well as negative ones -- more and more growth, if it comes at the expense of the world around us isn't an automatic "good", IMO, and should at least be questioned as a goal.) An intriguing book that while capturing the history of an era, forces us to think about it differently. In the vein of Jared Diamond's work, and obviously inspired by some of his stuff, but with a different focus. Highly recommended.

My other big history book for last month was the latest by Leo Damrosch, The Club, about the group of friends that Samuel Johnson assembled in 18th century London and that met almost weekly -- names like Oliver Goldsmith, Burke, Sheridan, Sir Joshua Reynolds, etc. And of course, Boswell. This is a group bio, but really it's about Johnson and his relationships with each of these. I would have liked more insight into the various kinds of social groups/salons that were so dominant at the time, but with the exception of contrasting "the Group" (an exclusively male group of movers and shakers that met at a tavern) with the circle assembled by Johnson's close friend Hester Thrale (more diverse, and a home-based group), Damrosch doesn't delve deeply into that topic. Pity -- I'm curious about intellectual salons as a phenomenon. Still the author is an expert when it comes to 18th century thinkers, and this is authoritative and interesting.

>45 Chatterbox:
There are plagiarism software programs. The University uses them all the time. Some are paid for, others are out there for free. in general the programs that cost money are better and easier to use. All dissertations, thesis, and major papers for any course are run through them. If more than 17% of the total word count shows up as exact or nearly exact copy from another source that paper, dissertation, or thesis is flagged and sent to the professor. The professor then has to check for footnoting and source noting. You can bet that if UA has these tools that they are available to Simon & Schuster as well.

Many of the issues and ideas that you raised are the very issues that the Abramson answered in the text of the book. As you ably pointed out there are many similarities between the author and some of the sexual harassment problems in journalism in the last few years. The author did address the issue of sex discrimination in newsrooms of traditional news reporting as well as the new media. Strangely, as poor as the ratios are in the traditional news organizations they are even worse in the new media organizations.

I also have to state that - No, I have not looked at Vice or BuzzFeed. I am a Luddite. I don't have internet access at home and hope to be able to keep it that way for a long time. I pay for my internet access on an as-needed basis.

>45 Chatterbox:
I don't consider your statement a rant. I think it is coherent and I want to hear your opinion. Otherwise, I wouldn't have posted what I did. I think you are an erudite and observant literary person. I have great respect for your knowledge and for that reason I want to know why you think the way you do. Your professional experience with publishing is different than mine and I think you come at things from a different angle than I do. That difference is valuable knowledge and gives me food for thought.

Suz - grateful to hear your informed insight on the Jill Abramson brohaha.

There is a new play in town called "INK" about the early days of Rupert Murdoch's press empire in London circa 1969.

According to the play Murdoch didn't care a rap for politics - he just wanted the paper to make money and sell more copies than the Mirror.

If that called for shoddy journalism, celebrity puff pieces or topless girls on Page Three - than that was OK with him.

Johnny Lee Miller played Larry Lamb the editor who threw the rules of journalism out the window and ran contests and practically set his trousers on fire to sell more copies.

Is publishing a newspaper a business? Then the good ones are the ones that people buy - and the content is decided by the hand of the markety.

But My! what a strange new world we find ourselves in.

>50 magicians_nephew:

Sure wish that "...the good ones are the ones that people buy..." was true for Madison, Wisconsin.

A few years ago, the only competing daily newspaper to the generally awful moderate-right Wisconsin State Journal
was driven out of business because enough people did not buy it.

It is now a weak once-a-week addition that comes inside of the conservative press which has NO daily competition.

It seems that Abramson is not the only high profile author to get caught not fact checking. Naomi Wolf has been called out for being in error during an interview on the BBC about her latest book Outrages.

NPR had a big story on it today. Well actually it was about the publishers lack of doing any fact checking. The article was about the financial end of publishing and why it costs authors more than it does publishers to do fact-checking. Here is the link to the article reported by Lynn Neri.

Well I can’t get it to put a URL in here so here is the cut and paste version of the interview transcript that is available.

Checking Facts In Nonfiction

LISTEN· 4:35
4:35

PLAYLIST
DOWNLOAD

EMBED
TRANSCRIPT

Facebook

Twitter

Flipboard

Email
June 8, 20198:31 AM ET
Heard on Weekend Edition Saturday
Lynn Neary at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C., May 21, 2019. (photo by Allison Shelley)
LYNN NEARY
Authors, not publishers, are responsible for the accuracy of nonfiction books. Every now and then a controversy over a high-profile book provokes discussion about whether that policy should change.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

When Naomi Wolf was embarrassed when some of the facts in her new book "Outrages" were challenged during an interview, it renewed discussion about an old problem in publishing - fact-checking. It should be routine when publishing a work of nonfiction. As NPR's Lynn Neary reports, that's not always the case.

LYNN NEARY, BYLINE: Brooke Borel wrote the book on fact-checking. Actually, Borel is careful to say she wrote a book on fact-checking. Borel's book is "The Chicago Guide To Fact-Checking," but she would never claim it's the final word on the subject. Borel has a lot of respect for the craft, and she says it's more important now than ever.

BROOKE BOREL: Now, in this moment, I think, collectively, as journalists, as nonfiction writers, when we do introduce errors of any degree into the record, it just gives more ammunition for folks to say, oh, this is fake news or this is misinformation or what have you.

NEARY: Getting caught in a fact-checking controversy can be humiliating. Naomi Wolf was discussing her new book about the criminalization of homosexuality in Victorian England when she experienced every writer's nightmare. Matthew Sweet, a presenter on the BBC 3's "Free Thinking" "Arts & Ideas" podcast, challenged the facts in the book.

(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "FREE THINKING")

MATTHEW SWEET: I don't think any of the executions you've identified here actually happened.

NAOMI WOLF: Well, that's a really important thing to investigate.

NEARY: Wolf has since defended her book, saying she is correcting the mistakes in it. But the controversy is not going away. A negative review in The New York Times criticized Wolf for also making false claims in past books. In another Times review, bestselling author Jared Diamond came under criticism for playing loosely with facts in his new book "Upheaval."

MARYN MCKENNA: Did they not think to hire fact-checkers? Are they so confident in their abilities that they didn't think it was necessary?

NEARY: Maryn McKenna is a writer who specializes in science and health. She paid $10,000 to have someone check the facts in her last book "Big Chicken." She says writers like Wolf and Diamond are bestsellers and should be able to afford a fact-checker.

MCKENNA: Or the publisher ought to be able to afford it because they're expecting substantial revenue from these books. It really makes one wonder whether accuracy, as a value, is something that's really top of mind for publishers or whether there's a separate calculation going on about sales volume that accuracy and veracity doesn't really intersect with.

NEARY: But publishers aren't responsible for the accuracy of a book - authors are. It's written into their contracts. And while some writers may be able to pay a fact-checker, says McKenna, a lot can't. Let's say a writer gets $100,000 advance.

MCKENNA: That sounds like a lot of money. Well, in fact, it's not a lot of money. And here's why.

NEARY: You get that money in three payments. The first installment, about $33,000, is paid before the book is delivered to the publisher. And from that, you need to pay for things like your agent's fee and taxes.

MCKENNA: That brings you from $100,000 advance - that thing that sounds like so much money - down to about $21,000 for which you're going to pay for the entire process of writing a book.

NEARY: And that, says McKenna, is exactly when a writer has to pay for fact-checking. Money, says literary agent Chris Parris-Lamb, is the main reason writers don't get their books fact-checked.

CHRIS PARRIS-LAMB: I would like to see every book fact-checked, and I want to see publishers provide the resources for authors to hire fact-checkers.

NEARY: Parris-Lamb sympathizes with writers, but he doesn't expect publishers will start paying for fact-checking anytime soon because, in the end, he says, the author has more to lose than the publisher.

PARRIS-LAMB: It's the author's book. That's what people are buying. That's who people are trusting. And I think it's a very different situation from, you know, someone who subscribes to The New Yorker because it's the author that readers are coming to rather than the publisher. I mean, frankly, very, very few readers know who publishes an author.

NEARY: But writer Maryn McKenna says publishing companies would also benefit from fact-checking, and it wouldn't cost them much to write it into a contract.

MCKENNA: A couple of thousand dollars more - $3,000, $5,000, $10,000 more specifically to guarantee the accuracy of the text - wouldn't that be worthwhile to protect our work and to protect the business that is publishing against the almost, at this point, automatic claim that we are fake news? That would be an easy fence to put up.

NEARY: Meanwhile, Naomi Wolf's new book will be released in this country on June 18. Her publishing company says corrections will be made in future printings. Lynn Neary, NPR News, Washington.

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

I think that's an excellent overview of the economics of publishing and why it works against authors paying to check facts. The 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 payout structure means you do the bulk of the work over a year or 18 months -- and then get the bulk of the payment (less your agent's take, usually 15%) only after the publisher accepts and publishes the book (perhaps 4 to 6 months apart, usually in the same calendar year.) Still, sadly, many books don't earn out their advances (nearly a decade later, while my book is still in print, it has yet to earn back the $$ the publishers spent on me). That's one reason why publishers are reluctant to do this. With established authors like Jill Abramson, with whacking advances (Andrew Ross Sorkin got about $500k for his book on the crisis, perhaps more...), and people who are accustomed to being hyper vigilant about errors in their work, I think that's not unreasonable. As an author, I accept that responsibility. I don't expect a publisher to be as adept as I am about fixing possible errors. In fact, one of my editor's possible "fixes" would have INTRODUCED an error into my book. That has happened to my reporting, and only today, with an article in the WSJ, I managed to make a small error in the name of a commodities index (it's the S&P GSCI and not the S&P Goldman Sachs Commodity Index.) That got past me, three editors AND a fact checker. A good author constantly questions themselves about this stuff. Honestly, I WANT this responsibility -- ideally, backed up by a professional fact-checker -- because it forces me to be ruthlessly honest with myself. There's a risk that some writers would end up being lazy about this stuff if they can say "oh, it's the publisher's job to pick up after me." The ideal is to have someone questioning you -- are you sure about the underpinnings of this argument?

Still, I'm not sure how fact-checking would have fixed this "plagiarism" hullabaloo. Obviously, you check every footnote (I did, three times -- it was a nightmare). But that might not have caught more than half of the phrases questioned.

>49 benitastrnad: Wow, I would love to see that play! Michael Wolff wrote a no-holds barred bio of Murdoch, The Man Who Owns the News, that leads me to suspect that this POV may be accurate. Intriguingly, he has interfered far less with editorial content at the WSJ than many feared -- indeed, the editor who infuriated the reporters is now gone... and a veteran WSJ guy, Matt Murray, is running the place. I wouldn't say it's as good as it used to be, but it isn't as bad as many feared. (The op-ed pages were always slightly to the right of Attila the Hun; the perspectives of reporters ran the gamut from socialist to libertarian/Trump supporters.)

The problem, of course, is that viewing news ONLY as a business (rather than a public trust that happens to need to pay its own way) ends up being dangerous when taken to extremes. I'd point to Facebook's "news" content -- they have figured out they can keep people on the site, seeing more ads, for longer if they feed them stuff that excites their emotions and with which they can agree. If they challenge members by sending them links to content that they might not agree with or that irritate them, they'll go somewhere else. So it becomes a feedback loop. Drat those algorithms, anyway...

OK, have just worked back to back 4-hour shifts at the Republic of the Banana, and my feet/ankles are in torment. It's official -- major arthritis in both ankles and probably in toe joints as well. Oh joy, oh bliss.

But I get to see my new doc last week, and I really like her. And I have suddenly found myself on Medicaid. Good grief.

>53 Chatterbox:

My daughter uses Medicaid Transportation when she needs help getting to and from doctor/chiropractor/PT appointments.

>35 Chatterbox: Uh-oh. I've got D-Day Girls sitting on my desk at work. I keep meaning to start it. Ugh.

Message from Abby regarding the passes to the exhibit hall at ALA.

Okay - passes are here! These are good for exhibit-hall only access to ALA on Saturday, Sunday, & Monday.

https://www.compusystems.com/servlet/ar?evt_uid=291&oi=IQruTjvKoFzHoIiGjo9vo....

The "code" is V134 but you shouldn't need to enter that - the URL above populates it for you in the form.

I'm a bit behind here but wondered if you had mentioned Linda Fairstein being dropped by her publisher and resigned from several charity boards. She oversaw the prosecution for the Central Park 5 and the recent Netflix series, “When They See Us,” brought it all back into the news cycle.

>57 avatiakh: I hadn't mentioned that... This actually flared up for the first time last year, when Fairstein was going to get an honorary award from the Mystery Writers of America. A group of fellow crime writers revived her role in the Central Park 5's convictions, and argued against her getting the award. Otto Penzler (who has since become a publisher of a new imprint featuring female crime writers, of all things, because of course women in this area are SO scarce...) who has a bookshop (Mysterious Bookshop) and was a founder, I believe of the MWA, was infuriated by this and declared that none of the writers who criticized Fairstein would be included in what his shops sold. (He also notoriously loathes "cozy" mysteries...) Fairstein lives in the same co-op building as a friend of mine in Tribeca, and my friend finds her kind of haughty and unpleasant (before this whole thing erupted...) She had given my friend (who doesn't read mysteries) a signed copy of her latest book and was kind of hostile when my friend didn't swoon in awe. Sigh. I don't care about whether writers are "nice" or not; there's always someone who will say that a particular person is or isn't. But if they have big flaws in their personal history, especially if these happen to be relevant to what they are writing about, will they acknowledge them, or do they double down??

I became a fan of her books for a while but stopped around Lethal Legacy, felt like they weren't pulling their weight anymore. I don't know much about the case, though if it's social media outrage driving her downfall based on a Netflix miniseries then I have to have some sympathy as many of these film productions aren't always that accurate, I've also seen some criticism of the Chernobyl tv series. Sounds like she's in a difficult position, not likely to get a lot of sympathy from the book community.

On a side note, I've been reading the blog, An Historian Goes to the Movies, which is quite informative.

I read the posts about faulty works with great interest. I am not au fait with the bruhaha about Abramson's work but was interested in the controversy over Wolfe's latest work since I had attended her talk about Outrages while in London. I didn't pick up one of the copies of the book there and wonder if the copy on order by my library will be a corrected one. As I do a lot of research for my family history, I can see how Wolf may have made her mistaken interpretation. I'm sure that I have gone down that rabbit hole once or twice but, unfortunately, in the rush to publish false information gets out there which makes research even more difficult.

>60 Familyhistorian: Oh yes, with family history/genealogy -- it's very easy to fall into traps. Then there's the "wish to believe" that doesn't die, even when confronted with facts/data. With which we are all familiar in political discourse, too!

I've just started listening to the audiobook version of City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert, narrated by Blair Brown, and so far it's completely engrossing. I LOVE the way the narrator captures the voice of the main character. It may turn out to be one of those books that is even better listened to than read...

Just marking your thread because I'd lost track of it

Have you read the Walter Scott winner, The Long Take? Apparently, this year's ceremony also included a "world premiere of an operetta specially commissioned from writer Alexander McCall Smith to celebrate ten years of the Prize." I am ... surprisingly charmed by this idea. Perhaps I am not as cynical as I think.

>62 libraryperilous: nope, have not read it. Oddly, it doesn't seem to appeal to me much right now. That said, I'm alternating between non-fiction and ultra-lightweight stuff (mysteries and chick lit). Sigh.

>61 Chatterbox: You definitely struck a chord with that "wish to believe". That can take you down strange paths in genealogy and political discourse, as you pointed out.

>63 Chatterbox: It doesn't hold much appeal for me either. I see you have The Right Sort of Man on your acquired books list. I sped through it in an evening. It was a highly enjoyable mystery, and I loved the friendship between the two female main characters.

>65 libraryperilous: Thanks for the recommendation!

Just emerged from the "fog of books" that is ALA annual -- I'm not exactly sure how many ARCs I acquired, but it was A LOT in spite of having a bad cold AND arthritis. Marianne has most of them, and will deliver to me on Wednesday. She kindly dropped me off in NYC, where I had one or two quick errands to complete, and I'll push on home to Providence tomorrow...

>66 Chatterbox:

Glad to see that Marianne made it NYC. I think she was a bit worried about driving there as she had not driven there before. I am glad that you got books! I think this was my smallest book haul in years. I have six boxes to send back. In particular I didn't get many children's books for my new grand niece and nephew, but I think that was a case of not being in the right place at the right time.

I got back to the hotel last night and crashed. Somewhere in all the traveling I caught a cold and I spent a miserable night. Today I am holed up in my room and am not planning on going anywhere except to a tub of nice hot water. I don't like it when I travel and get sick. I feel it is a waste of money and time. There are to many wonderful art museums here for me to be sick.

>67 benitastrnad: Argh, I hope that isn't my cold that you picked up. My doc ASSURED me that after 2/3 days I wouldn't be contagious. And Friday night was day #3...

>66 Chatterbox: Sorry to hear about your ailments but pleased to hear of a good haul of ARCs - look forward to seeing more details of the books and then of reading them.

The photo of the LTers at the ALA looked like everyone was having a good time. Hope you are home and recovering now.

I am indeed at home and TRYING to recover. With my 86 ARCs to keep me company!! The cats look bemused...

I wish you a good start into July with a wave of a popcorn

It was good to see you at ALA. I would like to have you convey my greetings to Harlan. He was a delightful addition to our Meetup group.

I am now at home after a journey fraught with perils that included having an attempt on breaking into my car in the long term airport parking lot. I opted for a cheaper place at the Ramada Inn close to the Birmingham Airport and when I got back on Saturday night I could not unlock the doors or start the car. I had to have a technician from Roadside Assistance come and start it. As soon as he got the charger hooked up the lights and horn started going off. He said that is a sign that for some reason my burglar alarm was going off. On a Subaru the alarms run for a certain length of time and then the car locks down so that nobody can get into it. That includes shutting down the battery. I didn’t think I would ever get home.

I also spent 2 days in bed. Tuesday through Thursday with some kind of evil disease I picked up at the conference. I am still trying to recover and the coughing as made my chest and stomach hurt! I am rarely sick and this really knocked me right out of the saddle. I hope that you and Marianne manage to avoid it. It was so bad I told my sister that I wanted to find one of those Docs-in-the-box places. I couldn’t breath and every breath hurt. Fortunately I am doing better now, but I know I will have to take it easy for the next week or so and recover fully.

I didn’t get 86 ARC’s at this conference. I did meet lots of really neat book people.

>73 benitastrnad: Oh no, Benita! What a terrible thing to find upon your return! On top of having the luckinpucky. Enough to want to pull the covers over one’s head, for sure! I am so sorry.

Haven’t unpacked the book haul as yet. Managed to get to down to Suzanne’s to drop off her set of ALA books.

Suzanne - I second Benita’s sentiment about Harlan. Lovely man. You were so right that I would enjoy meeting him.

Hoping all is well there with you!

>73 benitastrnad: Oh, I'm so so sorry about the plague or whatever the heck has laid you low -- hope you are starting to feel better now -- and your car misadventures. Onward and upward?? Get some rest and feel better. And while you may not have the quantity of ARCs, you at least don't have to find a home for them all, and budget time to read them. And I'm sure you've got some good ones, too.

>74 michigantrumpet: Tks, Marianne...

I shall give Harlan best wishes from you both. He has long been one of my fave people on the planet. I bought him a pair of funny socks at the Republic of the Banana today -- one sock says "Carpe" in neon green on gray, and the other says "Diem". I think he's one of the few people I know who will get it!!

>72 paulstalder: Merci pour le popcorn, Paul! I must say that I LOVE good popcorn, preferably with lotsa butter on it, at movies. I hated going to movies when I lived in Japan as they were completely devoid of even the smell of popcorn. People used to eat dried fish snacks instead, to my horror. I'm sure that has changed since the 1980s, however!

ALA has posted the final figures for attendance at ALA's Annual Conference in Washington, D. C. it was 21,468 total. Last year in New Orleans it was 17,599.

Just finished an extremely good mystery by a Japanese author, Keigo Higashino, entitled Newcomer. The protagonist is a detective who is new to the Nihonbashi neighborhood where he must solve a murder. It's written in short segments, each focusing on an individual whose life is linked to both the neighborhood and the crime in different ways. Kaga, the detective, doesn't just pursue a solution to the major crime, but also wraps up all kinds of smaller puzzles involving each character en route identifying the culprit. A low-key, character-driven tale. Time to find the other book in this series that has been translated....

>77 Chatterbox: Oh, sounds nice. I'll look for it.

I had to bid farewell to Cassie the cat today. I wrapped her up in a favorite fleece blankie and carried her like a baby down to the vet's, so she didn't have to be scared or bounced around in her carrier. It was peaceful, but heartbreaking.

Oh, my thoughts are with you, such a sad day for you.

So so sorry to hear - such a loss for you. Thinking of you.

>79 Chatterbox:

So hard to let go of our beautiful pets...all that LOVE!

Oh, Suze, I'm so sorry!

Again, I'm so sorry. How I wish their precious lives were longer!
Peace to you, Suzanne, for doing the right thing again.

So sorry to hear about Cassie, Suzanne. My heart breaks for you.

So sorry you had to let Cassie go, Suzanne, it is the hardest thing.

It is never easy letting our beloved pets go. So sorry about your Cassie.

I am so sorry. It has been a really tough year for you and losing two personalities that have been with you for years only adds to the pain. It is hard to provide the kind of support you need through typing in letters on a screen, but I hope you know that we understand.

If anyone (in the US) wants an invite to participate in Banana Republic's friends & family sale (50% off regular priced stuff) pls shoot me a PM with your e-mail address. I can send out up to 40 e-mail invites.

I'm sorry for your loss of Cassie, Suzanne.

>89 Chatterbox: Do you get some credit for purchases? I need to do some shopping, so if you have room for me on your list, please do send an email. There's a store around the corner, or if it's better for you I can order from the catalog.

>91 ffortsa: Your invite should be en route already. Sadly, I don't get commission or anything (if you were in Providence and opened a Banana Republic credit card with me, I would get a notch en route to a cash reward) but I DO get kudos from the manager for the # of social media invites sent AND a "prize" if I send out the most. The prize may be a Starbucks gift card or something -- LOL. Seriously, though, if I worked on commission, I would be earning two to three times what I am, because it turns out I'm very good at this. Much better than most of my younger colleagues, however nice many of them are. For many it's just a way of putting in time and making money and it's been kind of eye-opening, in all kinds of ways. Some of them I really like; some I do find lazy (one guy in particular has a penchant for doing nothing but tidying earrings -- which means he doesn't have to run around the floor) and will always replace clothes from the fitting room wherever HE wants to put them, which often means someone else finds them in odd places and has to do it over again.)

>90 libraryperilous: Thanks so much. I miss her dreadfully. Picked up her ashes today, and have been realizing that I no longer have a "comfort kitten" when I get migraines. And of course for her fierce and tenacious personality.

It's interesting -- I've consistently enjoyed my non-fiction reads this year more than the novels I've chosen to read. And the phrasing I used is important -- I realized it's because I'm reading more "popular fiction" and the books I think are really fabulous (versus just mildly enjoyable to read) tend to be more "literary", whether in style or substance.

I loved Dorian Lynskey's new book about George Orwell, that is really a biography of his novel, 1984, for instance: The Ministry of Truth. Then there were Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham, Fall and Rise by Mitchell Zuckoff (about 9/11), On the Clock by Emily Gundelsberger (about low-wage work these days, which resonated quite a bit!!), Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (a critique of how the internationalization of finance has created a borderless world that nations, with the national limits of the reach of their laws -- effectively -- find those geographic constraints restrict their ability to ensure their citizens adhere to their laws), Guest House for Young Widows about the women who joined ISIS and finally, George Packer's bio of Richard Holbrooke and a de-facto bio of his life and times. To name only a few...

There certainly have been some good novels that have fascinated and excited me. I finally read HHhH, by Laurent Binet, which is meta fiction set in WW2; Women Talking by Miriam Toews, There There: A Novel by Tommy Orange and two standouts from Europa, No More Boats by Felicity Castagna and The Children of Jocasta by Natalie Haynes (anyone who has enjoyed Madeline Miller's novels should read that one...) Hopefully all the touchstones showed up, I've been having some issues with them...

I'm thrilled that you read and enjoyed HHhH. It blew me away. Otherwise, Children of Jocasta is a BB for me, and it's firmly on the wish list.
I guess I should talk about working in retail from my experience as a part-time bookseller (but a key holder) at our local Waldenbooks in the 80s. I did that along with private piano lessons in the 80s and learned a lot. My only recognition was mention in the company newsletter for recognizing the opening paragraph of The Tin Drum - only one other person in the country bothered to send in the ID. My promised tee never appeared. But people! I really liked most of my co-workers, and the great unwashed public provided an education that I wouldn't have gotten, even teaching in the public high school.

>93 Chatterbox: & >94 LizzieD: I really must get to the Laurent Binet book soon.

I really do hope that your year takes a turn for the better, Suz.

Sorry to have been AWOL. Juggling migraines, work, etc. etc.

New neighbors moved into the top floor apartment in the house -- a youngish (to me) couple who seem very pleasant.

I've had some good books, and some disappointments. The standouts so far this month would have to be The Siege of Krishnapur (yes, I finally got around to reading it...) and Robert Macfarlane's new book, Underland, though the latter is not ideal for anyone with claustrophobia!

I'll give a shout-out to the historical mystery series set in mid-1930s Singapore by Ovidia Yu -- the sleuth is a young local Chinese woman, which makes this a refreshing alternative to the usual fare in which upper class white sleuths solve crimes... Another good mystery series I've just started begins with District VIII, and features a Hungarian gypsy turned police detective. The author does an amazing job of capturing what has happened in recent years in Hungarian politics and blend that with crime and corruption. I'm about to read book #2 in the series, Kossuth Square, also set in Budapest.

>96 Chatterbox: Hi there Suzanne, coincidentally I just finished The Siege Of Krishnapur last night and thought it was brilliant. The details he included (the grease the sepoys would have to handle when they loaded their guns!) made the book just so real. I also loved the first book in the trilogy Troubles, although it's been several years since I read it.

What did you think of City Of Girls? I listened to the audio and didn't really engage until the last half of the book. The first half was just too much fluff for me. But by the last half I actually cared about Vivian's story.

Good to see you emerge, Suz, but sorry about the migraines, work, etc. Glad the new neighbors seem nice (and hopefully quiet!). Have you tried the Rivers of London fantasy crime series?

>96 Chatterbox: Glad your new neighbors are nice.
The historical mystery series you are reading sounds really interesting. On my WL it goes :)

>96 Chatterbox: I just finished Underland as well and agree with you on claustrophobia. I took it to be a testament to his writing that his descriptions could induce claustrophobia in the reader.

>96 Chatterbox:
Got a BB for that Adam LeBor series. And I might just add the Ovidia Yu series as well. They both sound good.

>97 brenzi: I stalled on City of Girls, but that wasn't the book's fault -- it was mine. I definitely mean to finish it, and even when the story has been less than gripping, the audio has been fabulous, IMHO.

>98 ronincats: Speaking of excellent audiobooks... The last one, I thought, was so-so, but I have enjoyed this series primarily because of the superb narration by Kobna Holbrook-Smith, who brings these books to life. I wouldn't even consider reading them -- that's how good they are.

>99 figsfromthistle: >101 benitastrnad: Always pleased to score a BB!

>100 Oberon: Yes, to me that's the hallmark of a very good writer. It's true of fiction as well. If a novelist can make you forget that a character is a creation of their imagination and lead you to dislike that character intensely -- well, you may still not "like" the character, but you should applaud the book, IMO, as that author has been so skilled as to convince you this person was real that you end up feeling it's all about people you actually might encounter IRL. A less skilled writer couldn't create an unlikeable character.

Then there are novels that have such interesting premises, settings, plot ideas or characters that when an author fails to deliver, I end up feeling angry. Like The Golden Hour by Beatriz Williams: set partly against the backdrop of Nassau during WW2, when the Duke of Windsor was the governor of the Bahamas. Fascinating setting, right? But Williams dumps the entire kitchen sink into her plot, from missing kids to missing spouses to missing parents, AND combines the plot above with one set in 1900 to 1916 that could (and should) have been an entirely separate novel. Sigh. It's going back to Audible.

Hi Suzanne - I've been enjoying Liz Nugent's books lately, very compulsive.

Classes started this last week and I have been putting in some extra hours so my reading has sort of stalled. I am still reading but not making a huge amount of progress. So I went to the library and came back with the first in the Frank Tallis Max Lieberman series. I also got the next Camilla Lackberg book. Maybe these will prove able to keep me up at night.

I want to read the Frank Tallis novels. I've managed to pick them up as Kindle sale books over the years... I have kind of stalled with the Camilla Lackberg books, though I want to get back to them.

finished listening to the audio version of Louise Doughty's new novel, Platform Seven. It's the first book she has published since the thriller Apple Tree Yard, and it's one of those "Gone Girl on a Train" books, but better than average and with a twist -- the narrator is a ghost who recovers her memory of who she is and how she ended up dead and we learn what happened and all about karma for the other characters... Not bad, ackshually.

Will finish Founding Gardeners today -- by Andrea Wulf, who also has written about Humboldt and other natural history topics. Very, very good.

>102 Chatterbox: I've always viewed Williams as a soapy author, so I pass on her novels even though the locales sound intriguing.

re: the general kitchen sink plot, I find that across genres. It especially irks me when I'm reading historical fiction about, e.g., a revolution or a labor uprising. Why do you need to add an unrequited romance or an unwanted pregnancy or a missing child? There already is enough drama in the historical plot! I also struggle to enjoy romance novels and the endless forced barriers that keep the protagonists from being together. Have you ever thought about ... just talking to each other about your feelings?

The trend in fiction for dual timeline stories feels like it's been around for several years now, with no signs of dissipating. Sigh.

>106 libraryperilous: I read my share of light fiction, but it has to be substantive. I have no objection to people trying to make the characters more interesting and vivid (I dislike historical novels that read as history with added dialog), but there's a point at which it becomes too much and I become an incredulous reader.

Speaking of which... an example of EXCELLENT historical fiction (about a labor uprising, no less...) is Mary Doria Russell's latest novel, The Women of the Copper Country. I didn't even know when fact became fiction, and it was all so compelling I literally couldn't put it down. (The author's notes spell out fact vs fiction...) READ THIS BOOK! It's every bit as good as Doc and Epitaph, but with a different setting and theme.

A shout-out to a few books that are noteworthy:

Disoriental by Négar Djavadi is a novel published by Europa Editions that went on to be nominated for several literary prizes, including a couple for the caliber of the translation (the author is Iranian by birth, now living in Paris.) I'm increasingly intrigued by novels dealing with issues of exile/emigration, and this falls into this category. At first, I was taken aback by the apparently rambling way the author approaches what is, in essence, both a family saga and one woman's tale of displacement both geographically and her distancing from family life (another form of exile). It deals with the Iranian revolution of 1979 (a focus of a couple of a few recent good novels).

Ambrose Perry's new historical mystery/suspense novel, set in Edinburgh circa early 1840s, is now out and it's excellent. The Art of Dying extends the tale of a physician, whose entanglement in mysteries brings to the forefront a conflict between his struggle to establish himself as a respectable, wealthy physician and his inherent interest in justice and honesty. Both this and the debut are excellent and atmospheric.

I read The Testaments, the much awaited sequel to Atwood's Handmaid's Tale. Reluctantly, I have to say it doesn't quite measure up, although that still leaves readers with an excellent tale. I'm just a little bemused about how it ended up on the Man Booker shortlist, but whatever... It will sell itself because of the TV series. But whereas the original book was just that -- original -- this one feels throughout as if it were written more to address the persistent curiosity about "what next?" on the part of Atwood's readers. She does a good job with that, but whereas the abrupt end to the former novel felt very real, the strands are tied up here almost too neatly. There is one older character (Aunt Lydia) who narrates one of three streams/views of Gilead, and two others who are younger. (Trying to avoid spoilers...) I loved the insight into the Aunts -- their creation and their lives. The rest felt a bit too predictable, but I think I still rated it 4.5 stars.

Finally, a word about a book that won't be out until January, but I'm flagging it advance, My Dark Vanessa. This is a #metoo novel -- or billed as one -- and I remain deeply divided about it. On the one hand, it's a ruthlessly honest look at the life of a young woman, then and now, who becomes/became involved with her teacher as a high school sophomore. It's told from her perspective -- and she remains insistent that this was true love, even though the reader can see through the first person POV to understand how manipulative and destructive it was. This could have been done in a heavy-handed way but wasn't. And thank heavens for that. Still, many readers will find the ideas/themes disturbing. I didn't like many of the characters, but I found them to be remarkably vivid and honest. And the overall point -- that life and relationships tend to be more complex than binary categories seek to impose -- was handled in a convincing way, with an emphasis on self-delusion and a slow and painful growth to some kind of understanding. What was excellent about it was that the author manages to write deftly about how there are no easy answers, and no black or white characters -- we are all a mix and a mystery often to ourselves. There are points in the narrative where she lets herself, her characters and her readers down by being repetitive or (occasionally) more explicit than the narrative requires, but although I'd recommend that many avoid it because of the themes, it's worth at least giving a try. It's also very well written, and the cover does it a disservice (makes it look like another "Gone Girl on a Train" clone...)

The above notwithstanding, I continue to have better luck with my non-fiction reading this year.

Thanks, Suzanne. I'm slapping my hands to keep from ordering the first Parry. I'm not sure how many slaps I have left in me.

>109 LizzieD: Library request/ILL, perhaps??? It would avoid damage to your hands, at least... I wish I could help, but my copy is digital and can't be loaned...

Thank you for the thought, Suz.
I suspect that the library would buy it if I asked, but I'm hopeless at reading something in a limited time. Well --- as soon as I have a deadline, I find 30 other things I'd rather read more. The wish list at PBS does just fine for me.

Thanks for the heads up on the new Ambrose Parry. The first one was really good.

The next book bullet I'll toss out is a doozy: Cold Warriors: Writers Who Waged the Literary Cold War by Duncan White. You'll read some of the increasingly familiar stories -- Pasternak and Dr Zhivago, and I'd also give a shout-out to Lara Prescott's very good novel about this; Orwell and his break with the hard left and his understanding that totalitarianism "meets", whether its origins are on the left or right, when both oppress individuals; etc. But I hadn't known the extent to which Richard Wright was caught up in Cold War literary politics, or Graham Greene's involvement in both espionage and Cold War literary battles. Mary McCarthy was part of this, as was Koestler, and some Soviet/Russian novelists I knew (Solzhenitsyn, Akhmatova, Babel) as well as names who were new to me. Throughout, I kept wondering how the author would wrap this up, given what has happened in Russia over the last few decades. I vividly remember the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, and watching the joy/euphoria on the faces of people who felt they could suddenly speak what was in their minds. Now, repression -- a different kind, one largely devoid of ideology -- has taken hold again in different forms in many places. There are new censorship laws in Russia, and publication of anti-nationalist or internationalist works (ones not supporting dominant nationalist parties in countries like Hungary, Poland, etc.) are increasingly hard to find. The epilogue addresses all this adroitly, and the book is worth reading for that alone.

Just -- don't listen to the audiobook. Mispronunciations are rife, everything from a "biro pen" (an English-ism I'm familiar with, having had my form mistress tell for me years to "take out your biro, Suzanne and don't get the ink on your blouse..." -- which the narrator pronounces as "beer-oh" rather than "bye-roh") to the rue Scribe in Paris (pronounced as if it were the medieval dude copying manuscripts, rather than SCREE-b) and mispronouncing the name of former Hungarian leader Imre Nagy. It's "Näj" phonetically, or, if you prefer, "nadj". NOT "nah-gee". Sigh. Some of these audiobooks will drive me crazy. Oddly, the dude gets ALL the Vietnamese names correct...

That sounds like a great read and those audiobook mispronunciations are outrageous. I'm also part of the 'biro' generation.

I didn't know about bye-roh and am happy to be corrected, having only ever read the word. Meanwhile, I'm reading right now about Pasternak in my ER ARC of Cold Warriors and enjoying every minute. So much I didn't know!

>113 Chatterbox: I didn’t realise before now that ‘biro’ was not a universally understood English word! Definitely bye-roh not beer-oh

For a look at a younger Richard Wright's politics, see Milton Cohen's The Pull of Politics.

I'm on hold for both Cold Warriors and the Prescott.

>115 LizzieD: Yes, sometimes I go back over my list of "unsatisifed" ER requests and order one or two -- I take all my spare change, dump it into a Coinstar and turn it into an Amazon gift certificate. This was a real winner on the book front, but not so much on the audiobook!!

>117 libraryperilous: Thanks for the suggestion re Milton Cohen. I'm listening to A Spy Named Orphan about Donald Maclean, and after that will definitely need to take a break from Cold War politics for a while, but will put this on my TBR list.

>113 Chatterbox: You got me with a BB for Cold Warriors: Writers Who Waged the Literary Cold War. It will have to wait in line after the many other BB wounds I have sustained after skulking around the threads. I have yet to find an actual physical copy of the latest Ambrose Parry on this side of the border strange as I remember seeing the first one in book shops all over - of course, that might have been when I was in Scotland. Somehow all the bookstores blend together.

I have a new kitten in the house!

Tiny (4 months old, but small for her age...), VERY black, with a little stub of a tail (probably a birth defect produced the bobbed tail.) Very feisty and playful and super affectionate.

It took a few days to come up with the right name, but she is now Minka, or for short, Mina or Mimi. She spent most of the early morning aggressively pursuing a toy over top of the bed... :-)

Sir Fergus the Fat is underwhelmed. He thinks his treats will be threatened.

Welcome, Minka!! She sounds adorable.

Congratulations on your new household member. Minka sounds like she will keep you all on your toes (including Sir Fergus).

>120 Chatterbox:
Congratulations on the new cat. How wonderful. I know she isn't going to replace any of your other feline friends, but she will only add to your adventures in living.

I had a tough two weeks. A long time colleague and librarian here unexpectedly died and I am disconsolate. She had worked for the university for 36 years, starting when she as in her 20's. She was 61. Her last day at work was June 30th. Her retirement party was August 25 and she died on August 27. She collected one retirement check. It is making me think about retirement, and I have decided that I want to do it sooner rather than later. However, I still have to go 2 1/2 years to reach 30, and a much fuller pension because of that. The downside is that every day I feel older and slwoer and have more trouble doing all the things I did in the past. I have had two days this fall with teaching 2 classes in one day and they darn near killed me because I was on my feet for 1 1/2 hours without sitting down. I don't think I realized how physically demanding teaching is. If I were in the public schools, I would be putting in for retirement ASAP. I hope I can hang on here for the next 36 months. To be truthful, what keeps me from retiring is the fact that I would have to wait for almost 3 years for Medicare to kick in and I just don't want to do that. I know that makes me sound spoiled, but I don't want to have to pay those high premiums for health insurance.

Welcome, Minka!

>123 benitastrnad: I'm sorry for your loss, Benita.

Hooray for Minka! I hope that she can charm Sir Ferg as completely as she has you, Suzanne.

>123 benitastrnad: I'm also sorry for your loss, Benita. 61 is too young.
I am also a great proponent for early retirement. I was not quite 64 with 18 years instead of 20, but I couldn't do it any longer. As for standing - yes. My feet and ankles may go down at night, but they puff up immediately upon my getting up in the morning. My doc says, "Nurses and teachers." If you can hang on, do it. Medicare is a wonder, but having more $ coming in would be great for us. On the other hand, now that you're thinking about it, you'll definitely know when it's time to go.

>123 benitastrnad: So sorry to hear your news, Benita.

>120 Chatterbox: New kittens are always good news.

I thought you might want to see this annoucement from Publisher's Weekly newsletter. It came today.

New tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on certain goods imported from the European Union will include books. According to Section 4 of a new directive from the U.S. Trade Representative, printed books, brochures, leaflets, and lithographs produced in Germany and the U.K. will be subjected to a 25% tariff beginning October 18.

The new tariffs, which cover up to $7.5 billion of products imported from the E.U., were in response to the E.U. providing subsidies to Airbus. The World Trade Organization signed off on the right of the Trump administration to impose the tariffs.

The first reaction to the tariffs came from Stephen Lotinga, chief executive of the U.K.’s Publishers Association, who said: "We are deeply concerned about this development and raised it immediately with the Department for International Trade and the Intellectual Property Office. It is completely unacceptable that book exports are collateral damage in an unconnected trade matter. We will continue to argue in the strongest possible terms against tariffs that could be damaging to the trade and are in nobody's interest."

The new E.U. tariffs come as the U.S. publishing industry continues to grapple with the ramifications of earlier tariffs placed on books and related products imported from China. Although the Trump administration opted not impose 25% tariffs on virtually all books made in China, 10% tariffs were levied September 1 on trade, professional, and educational books. Other categories of books, including religious books, bibles, and children’s picture books either received a delay in the imposition of tariffs or were granted an exception.

>113 Chatterbox:

good to see you back posting in these environs again Suz. You were missed.

Somerset Maugham was involved in "the Great Game" though his biographers disagree on just how and how much.

And Poor Dorothy Parker found herself labelled a "Premature Anti-Fascist" for being against Nazism and Fascism before it was "fashionable". (Dottie: "Is it OK to dislike Hitler NOW?").

Parker's "journalistic" trips during the Spanish Civil War may have covered up some clandestine work on her countries behalf. Again biographers disagree.

>113 Chatterbox: Sounds interesting. I did have some idea that Mary McCarthy and Lilian Hellman's famous feud was partly based on politics. Hellman was a Stalinst and Mary McCarthy had Trotskyist sympathies. There's actually a chapter in The Group about someone's neighbours arguing about the relative methods of Stalnism and Trotskyism. I was quite surprised rereading it 10 years ago because I clearly had no memory from my first time read when I was 14.

>128 magicians_nephew: I always find "premature anti-fascist" a shocking phrase because of the implications, but it was widely used to mean Communist once the Second World War was over. The Cold War was partly a return to pre-WWII attitudes - at the same time it was not unusal to think that at least Hitler and Mussolini were sorting out problems and helping Europe to avert the spread of Bolshevism. Obviously it all stepped up during the 1950s with Senator McCarthy. After graduating from Oxford and spending two years in China, my dad moved to Leeds, Yorkshire, England, to take up a post in the new Chinese Studies department set up by an American who had been forced out of his employment by McCarthy because of his knowlege of the language and interest in the country. I was born in Leeds a few years later.

Congrats on the new kitten. What fun! Would love to have a kitten, but am afraid Miss Jane would not be at all happy. Plus, I think I signed something at the Humane Society when I adopted Jane, promising - under pain of death - that she must always be an only cat.

I finished my second book of the month (it's been slow because I have had lots of overtime at work). Daughters of Mars by Thomas Keneally. It was full of historical detail and was an engrossing story about World War I and the role of nurses in the Australian Army. Stylistically it was a bit odd - there were no quotation marks, and lots of dashes instead of commas. However, the ending was awful. The author tried a twist and that ploy just didn't work. It left me confused. If it hadn't been for that one thing I would have put it as one of my top fiction reads of the year. Have you read it?

>131 benitastrnad: Read it, and loved it. It sent me on a mini-Keneally binge, actually. I particularly loved Gossip From the Forest and Napoleon's Last Island. And I'm really relishing the mystery series set in the 1820s in the Australian penal colonies that he has been co-writing with his daughter, Meg Keneally.

>131 benitastrnad:
This was my first Keneally. Several days after finishing it, I am still peeved with the ending. But I think the book was marvelous. I take it that his other novels are just as good? And I got 2 more book bullets as I have added both Gossip From the Forest and Napoleon's Last Island to my ever growing TBR listings.

While you're book binging Keneally you might spare a glance for his Confederates a detailed history and a sympathetic look at the Southern side of the Civil War.

But my favorite (after "Schindler") will always be Gossip from the Forest

>134 magicians_nephew: I have been saving both "Schindler" and "Confederates", actually! :-)

After two glowing recommendations for Gossip from the Forest I will need to move that one up on my list. Unfortunately, neither my library nor the public library has a copy of it, so that will mean an ILL request.

How is that kitten settling in, Suz?

>137 ronincats: Miss Minka is fine and dandy. Completely crazed/manic -- in other words, a typical kitten.

I, however, am going slowly nuts. Another much-delayed check, with my rent due date approaching, and now my mobile phone died. I HAVE to replace that, as without it I can't work (journalistic stuff, which is vital.) Just give me a brick wall to bash my head against, pls.

If anyone is interested in history -- check out Kelcey Wilson-Lee's new bio of Edward I's five daughters. It's an interesting group biography (late 13th/early 14th century) and blends what is known about their lives with what happened to womens' lives in that era rather adeptly and in a very accessible way. (I compared it to Queens of the Conquest, which was dull/dry as ditchwater, and ended up feeling like a list of charters that the queens in question signed; perhaps the fault of what info was available, but still...)

>138 Chatterbox:
I saw some reviews of Daughters of Chivalry but decided against adding it to the ever growing TBR list. You just got me with a book bullet and I added it to my list in LT.

>138 Chatterbox: Thanks for the heads up on Daughters of Chivalry my library has it on order and I am number 2 on the hold line.

Fingers crossed that tomorrow's mail may bring the late check, Suzanne.
!()@@#^! for the cell phone.
Thanks for the heads up on *DaughtersOC*; it's firmly on my wish list.

Hi Suzanne! I noticed that back in 2013 you were going to lead a tutored read of Wolf Hall and it sort of fell flat for reasons I know not. I was wondering if you'd be willing to try that again in 2020. My understanding is that the third book is coming out, and I thought I'd try rereading the first two and finishing up the trilogy. It would be nice to have someone around who knows what I'm reading. :) No problem if that's too much work for you. I was thinking of reading a biography of Thomas Cromwell before reading the book, anyway. I don't even know if our group does tutored reads anymore.

>142 The_Hibernator: Sure, would be happy to do that again. I think I did it with Ilana/Smiller69, but obviously questions and issues are very individual -- what one person knows or is familiar with could well differ from what someone else already understands about the background & context. I'm very much looking forward to book #3 -- and have re-read the first two already recently. Would be happy to lead a tutored read/group read/whatever... And as for what the group does or doesn't do, there's nothing stopping us from launching a thread dedicated to this trilogy, related books and the historical context...

Great! Thanks so much. If we do the entire trilogy, we may need to set aside a year, since they are long books. That way, no pressure is put on either of us to spend all our time on it (my baby slows me down). We can start in January? In the meantime, are there any supplementary books (histories or biographies) that you would suggest I put on my Christmas wishlist?

We can play by ear whether we have time for the entire trilogy as a tutored / group read. I'm perfectly open to other people asking questions, too, (so group read) but it's a matter of how much effort you will be able to put in.

ETA: Would 50 pages a week be too slow? Just bought the books, and I think if I really want to think up some good questions for you, that's a good pace for me.

>144 The_Hibernator: We can keep the pace open. When you have questions, post them, and I'll address them. Or when I think of something that's relevant, I'll add it -- on a slow pace!

Let me ponder some other reading. Alison Weir has some adequate histories of the era and personalities, and Diarmid McCullough (I think) has a bio of Thomas Cromwell (which I haven't read, so perhaps I should read that one!!)

I think if we read the trilogy over the course of the year, that would be a good pace. By mid-summer, many people will be getting around to picking it up. (I think it appears in late March.)

I picked up Wolf Hall in the last year and it's here on the tbr shelf, so would definitely be interested in joining in at least for that book!

>146 ronincats: It will be interesting to have someone else reading along Roni!

>145 Chatterbox: Don't worry too much about coming up with books to read. I did a little research of my own to find what was available on Audible and my library as audiobooks, which is the most convenient format for supplemental reading right now. I found:



This selection of books, as well as some about the Wars of the Roses (which I think Henry the VIII was at the very tail end of when his reign started?), are ones that I might or might not read; depending on how much time I have.

You don't have to address this issue right now, of course, but my main interest is the sociopolitical background of the times, and how they fit into Wolf Hall. Like "what were the the reasons behind the English Reformation (besides Henry VIII wanting a divorce) and how was did this affect the politics within his court? How did the Reformation affect the common people?" I'll have some confusion about what happens in the book and why, and if you are not prepared for sociopolitical questions I will focus on more book-specific questions and leave the sociopolitical questions to the supplementary material.

>147 The_Hibernator: You make some good points. Generally, things to think about when considering the context for Henry VIII are:
-- the only female ruler in English history was Matilda (12th century) and even then she was never properly crowned because her cousin, Stephen, grabbed the throne instead, prompting a civil war during which it was said "Christ and the saints slept." By his first wife, Henry had only a single daughter.
-- The Tudors' hold on power, apparently strong, was actually not all that great. Henry VII based his claim on conquest rather than birth (wise, given the taint of bastardy through the Beaufort line). It's important to understand that there still remained a number of people who might have been considered to be legitimate (male) heirs other than the Tudors, which is why it's so important to understand Henry VIII and his thinking to be a result of the Wars of the Roses. Although the latter officially ended in 1485 (Bosworth, with the death of Richard III and arrival of the Tudors), and unofficially a decade or so later when pretenders claiming to be sons of Edward IV were defeated, you can read about Henry VII's crusade against the Plantagenets and Yorkists in a couple of books, like The Winter King by Thomas Penn. There's also The Last White Rose by Desmond Seward. (Henry was born in 1491 -- the year that Perkin Warbeck made his doomed attempt to overthrow Henry VII; the following year Elizabeth Woodville, the queen of Edward IV and Henry's grandmother, died.)
-- the role of reformism within the Catholic church, before and after Luther. Henry was an independent thinker, and a humanist who supported philosophers like Erasmus. (Though he hated Luther, and later executed people who were too Protestant...) Henry -- once given a reason to do so -- was willing to think out of the box. And thus to break with the Pope.
-- the role of the Church within English society, including the fact that if you were a priest, you were a subject of the Pope and church rather than the king. Look back to Henry II vs Becket for some context on that. Meanwhile, Henry was unquestionably an egoist.

>148 Chatterbox: Henry was unquestionably an egoist

Things could have gotten really interesting if Prince Arthur had lived. Would Henry have been content to be the second son? Would have been content to be the Falstaff or the faithful second to Arthur?

>149 benitastrnad: Especially if Arthur and Catherine had had no children, or no sons....

>150 Chatterbox:
Would the War of the Roses have had a Tudor phase? Or Tudor Pause? And then resumed with the other heirs vying for the throne?

>151 benitastrnad: I wouldn't have thought so. Most historians I've read define this period of civil war as between different heirs to Edward III, descended from his different sons. The Tudors had a couple of insurrections, but only in Henry VII's era were they explicitly linked to competing claimants from the rival family (the descendants of the Lancastrians, aka the eldest legitimate son of John of Gaunt, vs the descendants of the duke of York, a younger son, who married into the family of son #2, Lionel, who had no male heirs. John of Gaunt was son #3; the Black Prince left a single male heir, Richard II, who was deposed by his cousin, Henry IV.) In Tudor times, civil conflicts tended to be based on religion, and when rival claimants DID arise, they tended to be from the Tudor family (eg, Lady Jane Grey, great-niece of Henry VIII, who was put forward as a Protestant alternative to Mary Tudor on the death of the young Edward VI, or Mary Queen of Scots, a Catholic rival to Elizabeth I, who was descended from another of Henry VIII's sisters.) By the end of Henry VII's reign, there were no more heirs vying for the throne in reality, although that didn't stop Henry VIII feeling paranoid. So by the end of HIS reign, many many more were dead (including the elderly Countess of Salisbury, niece to Edward IV and Richard III, the last Yorkist monarchs, who literally had to be chased around the block to be executed...)

>152 Chatterbox:
That paranoia was what I was referring to. Not only was the Countess of Salisbury executed so was her eldest son. And her middle son, who was a Cardinal in the Catholic church, fled for his life. And yes, there were other Tudor claimants who had just a close of a claim on the throne as did the Tudors. So what I meant by a Tudor phase - is would the Tudor's have fought amongest themselves if they could have raised the armies necessary to do so? Is that what Henry VII's, tax the peerage to death policy was doing - preventing them from having the cash or lands to form a base for rebellion? And by pause - would those descended from the Mortimer/March line have tried to gain the throne? Or was this just a trumped up dream of Henry VIII's?

It should have been Bloody Henry - as he killed so many.

Hey! I started listening to the Great Courses lecture series on Henry VIII. I'll also start an autobiography of Cromwell as soon as I finish the book I'm listening to. It's not the one you suggested, but I thought I'd read a digital copy of that one soon if I feel I want to learn more. (I tend to overdo background reading because I love understanding sociopolitical issues.)

>153 benitastrnad: While I find the level of executions carried out in 16th century England really shocking, I think Henry VIII has to be viewed within his era - for a long period there were many disputed claims to the throne and real plans pursued. His own father had won the throne through war, and then there's the controversy about how Richard III had possibly eliminated rival claimants. Executing two of his wives makes Henry VIII stand out, I suspect, more than the number of executions for treason overall. His sixth wife had reasons to be afraid for her own life. I think she died in childbirth after hsi death, and her third husband Thomas Seymour was subsequently executed under Henry VIII's son.

>153 benitastrnad: Well, the earldom of March had been extinct for nearly a century by the time Henry VIII arrived at the throne. (1425, I think...) The claim to the title/estates moved into the female line, and was picked up by the Yorkists (which is why Edward IV was earl of March before his father was killed...) The Mortimers themselves were pretty much extinct in the male line. In the female line, the interesting one to me was the link to the Percy family. Hotspur (who rebelled against Henry IV) was one of those descendants, which must have made his rebellion even more threatening to (another) usurper. But the Percy descendants were less likely contestants for the throne than members of the York family, notably the Courtenay family (descended from Edward IV's younger daughter Katherine, who married the earl of Devon, or the descendants of George of Clarence (like the aforementioned elderly countess, who was his daughter.) Go back one generation, and you get to the descendants of Elizabeth, sister of Edward IV, who had a bunch of children that clung to the Yorkist/Catholic cause, and that the Tudors mostly got rid of.

I could make a case that Henry VIII's succession was the first completely uncontested one since that of Richard II. (OK, when Henry VI inherited as a baby/toddler, it was actually contested, but his uncles and great-uncles manipulated him and fought for influence/real power.) And that fact probably made him see conspiracies where few if any existed.

>155 elkiedee: I think it was Henry's willingness to execute his wives/royal women (like the countess of Salisbury) that makes him particularly shocking. That, and the fact that he executed Catholics who refused to accept his legitimacy, AND Protestants who denied the sacraments. He cleared the way for his own son to execute his two Seymour uncles, for Mary to execute Jane Grey (her cousin) and for Elizabeth to execute the Duke of Norfolk and Mary Stuart (her cousins.) Jane Grey's execution aroused pity, but the others were accepted as necessary.

People still think of Richard III as an infamous murderer and Hevry VII an enlightened king but oh lordy look at the many many people Henry murdered in not so subtle ways to ensure the line of succession (and his own head) .

The Winter King is a good look at the subject

I finished Unlikely Disciple and your were correct - it was quite well done. I liked it and posted my review to the October Nonfiction thread.

I registered for ALA in Philadelphia on Friday. I intend to get one of the Conference hotels as that makes packing books around much easier. I had to pay the higher registration fee because I missed the deadline. We have a new Associate Dean and she had no problem approving the money for the registration fee, so that is covered. My sister and friend are not coming this time, so I am looking for a roommate.

>159 benitastrnad: Sounds great! We could put up an ALA thread next month/after Thanksgiving, perhaps? I had been thinking about finding out if anyone wants to share an AirBNB apartment rather than a hotel -- it might be more cost effective if five or six of us are going. It will be a financial struggle for me to manage, so I need to keep costs low...

>160 Chatterbox:
I have put out a couple of feelers to others who have indicated that they are going to be there. It sounds like Mark, Ruth Brenzi, Marianne, and you will be there. Mark is only going to be for the weekend and would leave on Sunday. Mark said that he wanted something close because he would be without transportation. I haven't looked at the conference hotels, but using them makes transportation easier. I will do some checking and get back to you.

>161 benitastrnad: Judy and I might be interested too

I am way behind but just to add hit with >113 Chatterbox: and with Ovidia Yu. I just finished a thriller by a young author who clearly knows Turkey, but as you say, good to have a wider range of characters as well as authors.

Hope you have a good time in Philadelphia! One year I hope to get to one of these...

I'm super jealous of those going to ALA. Anyone going to OLA?

Dropping by to wish you well, Suz.

>165 PaulCranswick: Thanks for visiting, Paul! Hope all is well with you.

>163 charl08: I have to let you know that at my retail outlet (the one I must now toil at, on my arthritic ankles and toes!) we have the cutest brooch with a penguin on it...

https://bananarepublic.gap.com/browse/product.do?pid=531548002&cid=1143829&a...

There also are all kinds of shirts & socks (all men's, alas) with skiing penguins on them... :-) Every time I see any of them, you pop into my mind!

Some recent reading highlights: Adam LeBor's two recent mysteries set in Budapest, with an intriguing political backdrop and a Roma detective. Starts with District VIII. Pat Barker's latest -- The Silence of the Girls. Then the two books written by Pulitzer winners about Harvey Weinstein are very good, though I would give the nod to the one by Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor, She Said. Then there is another non-fiction book by a Pulitzer winner, Death in Mud Lick by Eric Eyre. On the lines of freedom of speech, there was I Will Never See the World Again by Ahmet Altan, which includes a short essay on the "wood sprites", aka the spirits contained by the written word in books. Wondrous. I am going to have to get a physical copy of this, and of London Made Me by Robert Elms, which echoes so much of my own London experience in the 1970s, 1980s, etc. that has now vanished (including the Odeon Marble Arch and the Stockpot.)

I've been re-reading/listening to Rennie Airth's mysteries and am thrilled to know that there's a new one coming out in January!!!!! I've just been approved to read the final mysteries in the Dr. Siri series by Colin Cotterill and by Timothy Hallinan (the Poke Rafferty series set in Bangkok), and after those are done (e-galleys), I'm going to have withdrawal symptoms.

That said -- I have discovered some new authors in the mystery arena. Ambrose Parry's second book is almost as good as his first -- the second is The Art of Dying. And Dervla McTiernan is ALMOST as good as Tana French

Underwhelming? Under Occupation by Alan Furst. That said, it's a great sleep aid when nothing else works.

Giving a shout out to The Far Field by Madhuri Vijay, a new/young Indian novelist. Can't wait to see what she does next. Another interesting new series is the Stefan Gillespie books by Michael Russell, revolving around an Irish detective in the 1930s (so far).

Migraines still bad and I'm cursed by recurrent dental infections. Sigh. Not to mention the damn arthritis. But there are still books... If you notice more audiobooks on my list, it's a sure sign that I'm dealing with migraine hell.

>166 Chatterbox: Good news about the new Rennie Airth book, Suz. I should get back to that series.

I hope you are coping with the holiday rush, definitely not the best time to be in retail.

Just stopping by to say "hi" Suz and hope the new year treats you better than the old

>166 Chatterbox: I've just bought District VIII as I'd wishlisted it for some reason (I think #2 was a Kindle deal) and it was 99p.

Ambrose Parry is in fact Christopher Brookmyre writing with his wife.

>169 elkiedee: I had NO idea about "Ambrose Parry"'s identity! Well, that explains why the plots are so accomplished...
I hope you enjoy the Adam Lebor books as much as I did....

>168 magicians_nephew: Oh, I hope that 2020 brings only good things with it, not just for me but for others. 2019 has been a real bear.

Wishing you good things for 2020. And many thanks for the work you out in to the nonfiction group: I've read more NF because of it.

The penguins are everywhere here too!

Or in other words, Happy Christmas! And have a great New Year as well.

Hope you have a wonderful Christmas!

>170 Chatterbox: I think I heard something on the radio this year, but it's mentioned on the publisher and agents' websites. I missed this newspaper article from last year:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/aug/12/when-nicci-french-met-ambrose-parr...

Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Solstice, some other tradition or none at all, this is what I wish for you!

Thank you for keeping me company in 2019.......onward to 2020.

I'm a regular lurker stopping by to say Happy New Year. I love your book descriptions and pick up a lot of TBR's from here.

Happy New Year Suzanne! I'm going to start slowly reading Wolf Hall today. I was wondering if you want to start the tutored read thread or if I should?

>178 The_Hibernator: I was just thinking about this. Why don't you start the thread, and include any preliminary questions or thoughts you have, and then I can jump in as/when needed? Just PM me the link....