Tad's 2009 Reads (TadAD)

I have a couple personal reading goals that I hack away at—without obsession—each year:

* Four years ago I decided to read all of Shakespeare's plays. I'm at 17 of 38 right now.

* Last year I decided to read two of Jane Austen's novels a year until done.

* Last year I decided to read 195 books from around the world. I keep my own little reading globally record here.

Ratings refer to my experience reading the book, not to any judgment about literary merit.

= I can't believe anyone liked this.
to = Disliked, ranging from "didn't finish or major skimming" to "finished, but didn't like, maybe some skimming"
to = Neutral, ranging from "just fair" to "passed an afternoon"
to = Recommended, ranging from "mildly" to "strongly"
to = Favorites

I'll post reviews of books read from now on here; the reviews of those already read are over on the 75 Challenge thread.

Read to this point in 2009:

Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Høeg
Company of Liars by Karen Maitland
Roads of Destiny by O. Henry (reread)
Robin Hood by Paul Creswick
Princep's Fury by Jim Butcher
This Day All Gods Die by Stephen R. Donaldson
The Antipope by Robert Rankin
The Chapel of Princeton University by Richard Stillwell
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (reread)
Juan de la Rosa: Memoirs of the Last Soldier of the Independence Movement by Nataniel Aguirre
The Winter Queen by Boris Akunin
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Archer's Goon by Diana Wynne Jones (reread)
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Bea
Sweet Silver Blues by Glen Cook (reread)
The Barbed Coil by J. V. Jones
Defining the World: the extraordinary story of Dr. Johnson's dictionary by Henry Hitchings
Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden
The Coffee Trader by David Liss
A Guide to the Birds of East Africa by Nicholas Drayson
The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry by Kathleen Flinn
The Mauritius Command by Patrick O'Brian
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
Dwight D. Eisenhower by Malcolm Charles Moos
Playing the Piano for Pleasure by Charles Cooke
Desolation Island by Patrick O'Brian
Sleepwalking Land by Mia Couto
Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie

Hi Tad,

I really like your reading classification system. When one is stuck with a five-star system, opportunities for gradation are difficult. Personally, I'd like a ten-star system. A_musing has a great ten-star system - on the reading globally thread . . . I think. However, given the five-star system in which we LTers must work, yours makes more sense than any I've come across. May I borrow it? I may have to go back a revise some of my ratings.

>2 TadAD:, Hmmmm.... I'm not sure how to feel about Smilla's Sense of Snow after reading that review, Tad. The first part does sound wonderful; the second, not so much. I hate it when great books have a terrible ending.

>3 urania1:: urania1, of course. I have no copyright on it! :-)

Actually, I just revised it very slightly in recognition of the fact that, since joining groups where recommendations happen, I'm reading fewer books I dislike. I decreased the "dislike" range and increased the "recommended" range so that I can distinguish between "mildly recommend", "recommend" and "strongly recommend".

Of course, now I have to go fix all the posts on the 75 Challenge thread, plus 4000 entries in my library. *sigh* Hopefully, I can get it done before the weekend so folks don't say, "Why was this 3 stars here but 2½ there?

>4 fannyprice:: Ack, Fanny, I was hoping no one would post about that review before I pulled it! I couldn't bear cutting and pasting 28 reviews over to here, so I changed it to just list titles.

For anyone who cares, the review is over on this thread.

As for the book, well, I'm glad I read it but there was certainly an element of disappointment.

>6 TadAD:, Haha, sorry about that! I'm home sick today with a killer migraine, so I'm LT-ing for fun.

>Tad, your rating system is pretty much the same as mine. I would recommend anything I give three stars and up. Of course, I rarely finish something that is a one or two star book, so my ratings average high. I like your color codings though.

Perhaps you'd consider posting at least an excerpt of your review with future readings?

Did you know Joseph Boyden has a new novel out?

>8 avaland:: avaland, yes, I will be posting the entire review for anything in the future. I'm really just a bit too lazy to go back and copy all of them over to here. :-)

No, I didn't know Boyden had a new one out. I definitely want to try more of this stuff so I'll add it to the TBR pile.

#2, 4 I am completely in agreement about Smila's Sense of Snow. I too found the beginning mesmerizing with a wonderful sense of place and then I thought it completely fell apart. Until now, I thought I was the only person who felt that way since everyone else seems to love it.

i liked Smila a good deal; but there really was no reason to turn it into a SF book @ the end (and i read & enjoy a LOT of SF). Would've worked out better as a more "conventional" mystery/thriller and i think it could have been very easily done.*
*apologies to bob dylan after the fact.

A LT Early Reviewer read...

Elisha's Bones, by Dan Hoesel (touchstones appear to be broken for this book)



I guess I’d sum up my reactions by saying the book is a good first effort...but it reads like just that, a first effort.

This is a thriller that is in the rough mold of Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code: Professor Jack Hawthorne sets off on a hunt for the bones of the prophet, Elisha, that are reputed to be able to resurrect the dead. Gunfights erupt, exotic locales are visited, betrayals abound, and lots of people are killed as Jack and his erstwhile girlfriend, Espy, race around the world trying to beat others who want to beat them to the prize or stop them dead.

On the plus side, I liked the main character, just the right blend of ineptness and pluck. I especially liked Espy—she managed to come across as the feisty, "you're not getting off that easy" ex without being completely trite. The action is swift, though that is also a problem I note below. The potential for a preachy religious theme was very large and, thankfully, well avoided.

On the negative side, the book felt rushed at times. The action scenes were fine but there was very little backstory to help us get to know the characters; they'd appear, talk a short bit, and then disappear—often to the graveyard, so we know we'll never get to know them. Unlike the best of thrillers, there was no sense of the reader being part of the action; too much information was hidden from us. The result of this was that the book felt flat, lacking the depth that would have made it a more involving read. The ending was predictable, but left too much unanswered (perhaps plans for a sequel?).

All in all, I just give this a "OK" rating; I can't recommend it. However, unlike Mr. Brown's work, I don't rule out the prospect of trying something by this author at a later date once he's more practiced.

Edit: typos

Boyden not only has a new book out, but it just won the Giller Prize, which has now become THE most important literary prize in Canada. Most reviewers are raving about the new one, even ones who were not impressed by Three Day Road. Oh, the new one is called Through Black Spruce.

>13 polutropos:: It's already on pre-order with Amazon. :-)

Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz



This is an account of Tony Horwitz's year-long exploration through the places where the U.S. Civil War was fought, starting in North Carolina and working his way downward. The book is not a history of the Civil War so much as a look at what the Civil War means in the minds of Southerners today.

Though he admits to having a fascination with the Civil War as a child, he brings to this an outsider's perspective: not well-informed about the events and, since his ancestors were post-war immigrants, with no familial ties to the conflict. Yet, this outsider status does not confer impartiality, nor does he attempt to conceal his personal views—he examines the people he meets through eyes that are clearly those of a liberal Northerner, one shaped and informed by the Civil Rights Movement.

The result works well. Though he rejects, even implicitly derides, some of the extreme Southern stances and revisionisms, you can sense that he comes to feel a certain sympathy for other aspects of the Southern cause, for the people who, as Shelby Foote said to him, put "one's people before one's principles."

Other discussions have made much of the time he spent with the hardcore re-enactors, the individuals who attempt to replicate, in every detail (except killing), the experiences of the soldiers. These discussions have said such things as, "you cannot help but find them absurd." Actually, I didn't find them absurd. While admitting that they derive their enjoyment from an extremism that I find unthinkable, their desire to understand what their ancestors endured, to come to grips with this quintessentially American conflict that created the modern United States is easily understood.

While there are many funny moments in the book, it is not one of unadulterated pleasure. We catch a glimpse of the fact that, despite the century from the Civil War to Civil Rights, the conflict is still being fought in many places, sometimes with guns. In fact, the book implies that it is getting worse and that, once again, the country is starting to consider whether it is really a single nation.

Pleasant at times, funny at times, thought-provoking at times, I highly recommend this to anyone with an interest in the Civil War. Look at it as one piece of a jigsaw puzzle of opinions that are still very important to who we are.

Very nice review, Tad. Enough information to be able to form some sort of judgment about the book without overloading the reader.

ETA Oops, probably should have put this in the 75 challenge group thread--I have both of yours starred, and didn't look to see which it was until after I pushed the button.

>16 ronincats:: Thanks, Roni.

During my commute I'm working my way through two adventure series of the Napoleonic Wars: the Aubrey/Maturin books by Patrick O'Brian and the Richard Sharpe books by Bernard Cornwell.

Sharpe's Trafalgar by Bernard Cornwell



I was somewhat curious to see how Richard Sharpe, ensign in His Majesty's Army, was going to figure into the great naval action of Trafalgar, but Cornwell does a very slick job of making it seem only mildly coincidental.

Aside from my enjoyment of the Sharpe series in general, this book was interesting in another way. Since the entire book is a naval adventure, it made it easy to compare it directly to Patrick O'Brian's naval stories.

They are quite distinct. Cornwell doesn't give much feel for the period beyond the obvious one of the novel's setting. This is something at which O'Brian excels; his books are full of the little details and glimpses of life that give the reader a excellent sense of the period. On the other hand, Cornwell's books are full of adventure and action. Though I enjoy them immensely, my attention can wander from an O'Brian book if I'm tired or distracted. No so one of Cornwell's—there is rarely a dull moment in them.

Another excellent adventure in the series. I recommend it to any who likes historical military fiction or action stories.

Among Schoolchildren by Tracy Kidder



Tracy Kidder's non-fiction story follows Chris Zajac, a fifth grade teacher in a poor, racially-mixed school, through a school year. The book is pleasant but, after reading his Mountains Beyond Mountains, I was expecting a bit more. The whole thing felt a bit flat—there were a lot of events but the author did not manage to make the people particularly real. We hear Mrs. Zajac's epigrams repeated endlessly, but we don't really get to know much about her as a person. What glimpses the author does provide into her character seem a trifle too saintly.

I didn't mind reading it but I wouldn't bother to recommend this.

>18 TadAD: One of these days I'm going to start the Sharpe series - I keep hearing so much about it. I just need to get my current TBR pile to a more manageable level.

Kidder is rather like John Jerome -non fiction often featuring the author as protagonist with oeuvre that range from decent to terrific. Agree that Mountains beyond Mountains will be hard for Kidder to top.

Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz



This book was my introduction to Egyptian writers in general, and Mahfouz in specific. In this book, I found him a gifted story-teller to whom I want to return.

This novel is told as a series of interlocking stories that portray the lives of a small group of individuals over a short period of time during the waning days of World War II. The stories are set in Midaq Alley, a poor backstreet in Cairo. As the book unfolds, you realize that the alley is a small village within the city; its inhabitants live, socialize, work and marry largely within its confines. Some embrace this sense of community; some feel confined and struggle to escape. The alley, itself, might almost be considered the major character of the book. Mahfouz fills it with a character of its own: shabby, cynical, vibrant, faintly corpulent. It seems to sit there, observing the individuals that run about within it, loving them in its own distant way. This sense of intimacy made me feel that I was watching the events through the alley's eyes in an odd sort of first person narrative.

There is a vibrance to the human characters who populate this story. Each individual, major or minor, is drawn with a keen eye for detail, with affection for their strengths, humor for their foibles and a lack of judgment for their flaws. I felt I knew each of these characters intimately: the inconstant Hamida, ruthless in her desire for wealth and luxury; responsible and kind Abbas, content with his life in the alley but willing to give it up for love; Kirsha, owner of the café, married but with a predilection for young men; Saniya, the miserly landlord obsessed with finding a younger husband; Zaita, the cripple maker who feels nothing but contempt for all but Husniya, the baker who beats her husband.

The social changes as Egypt struggles with a modern era, the side-effects with Western cultural imperialism, the role of religious faith in life, all of these provide an unobtrusive background as Mahfouz circulates among his creations, advancing each of their stories bit by bit as the novel progresses. The inherent inter-connectedness of their lives causes their stories to brush against each other until he draws them together in an ending that, though containing sadness, was never bleak or unsatisfying.

Highly recommended.

Nice review, Tad. (I always accidentally type "Tab" at first....)

This is a Mahfouz I haven't yet read. Sounds like its another winner!

>23 fannyprice:: Thanks, Kris.

At least you're not consistently calling me Ted or Tod. ;-)

Hi Tad,

Thanks for the great review of Midaq Alley. Sounds excellent. I have Palace Walk here and will move it up the pile.

As I'm a fan of the Sherlock Holmes tales, another LTer recommended I try...



Holmes on the Range by Steve Hockensmith



Gustav and Otto Amlingmeyer are a pair of Montana cowboys in 1893. Gustav has become enamored of the Sherlock Holmes stories being printed in Harper's Weekly. Thoughtful and observant, he is determined to try his hand at emulating his hero and making more of himself than a simple cow puncher. Otto, big, strong, loyal to a fault is...well...the perfect Watson stand in. The two are hired to work on a ranch run by secretive and harsh managers and, when bodies start showing up, Gustav finds the opportunity he desires…assuming they aren't killed first.

The blending of the detective and western genres works very well in Hockensmith's hands and the result is a fun, light-hearted and funny story that only aims to provide some entertainment, and succeeds.

Edit: typos

Emmet Gowin: Changing the Earth by Jock Reynolds



I would have loved to have put some of the images in this post, but was worried about copyright violation. So, I've just put links to a couple of images.

If you look at Emmet Gowin's landscapes of 30 years ago, such as the orchard in Siena, Italy, they have an almost abstract feel to them—the play of light and dark is as prominent as the subject itself.

Comparing his current images of the Earth, such as The Great Salt Lake or Savannah there is that same abstract element, but with a greater visceral punch. In some ways, they remind the viewer of a painting by Pollock or Kline in which the eye is not entirely sure what it's seeing, but an emotion is being conveyed. However, though many are beautiful, the emotion present is a forbidding one. Once you read the captions, you realize quite quickly why this is so. The images are all of man's incursions on the planet.

I'm not a big fan of Abstract Expressionist paintings, but these photographs had a big impact upon me. Perhaps this was because my eye was fooled and they are not abstract; they are literal records of what the surface looks like from the air.

The message of the book is fairly clear. Gowin expressed it fairly clearly in an interview he did, "I'm so conscious now that concern for the plight or the fate of the Earth is something that any grade-school child can tell you about…They sense at some deep level that something is happening, and that it can't go on this way forever."

Tad - your review is very compelling re the Reynolds book. I am going to try and source it ASAP. Thanks.

It looks a lot like the 'Earth from Above' series, perhaps?

Tad,

I am maxed on on expenditures for art books at the moment. Your description of the book reminds me of the gorgeous cinematography in the film North Fork, which I have mentioned on this thread and others. I keep pushing this film, but most of my friends will not watch it, and the ones who do look at me blankly. Even my me sainted husband only "got it" after a lengthy explanation on my part. And even then, he treated it the way some people Heideggerian philosophy. Artistically, I think you would "get" this movie. If you do watch it be sure to watch a second time with the directors' commentary, which is illuminating to say the least.

>29 urania1:: I'll NetFlix it. There's very little in my queue right at the moment. Thanks.

>28 kiwidoc:: kiwidoc. You know, you're right! I didn't really click on that but, aside from the color vs. black&white aspect, there are a lot of similarities.

I remember one picture from that exhibit...I can't recall the title...that showed a very blue river going through a gray-brown wasteland with a lot of side channels. Grayscale that picture and it would have fit in this book without a problem.

Our Hearts Were Young and Gay by Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough



Every once in a while I enjoy one of those memoirs from the middle of the last century, written with humor, nostalgia and an innocence that is somewhat lost these days. I had read Emily Kimbrough's Floating Island a couple of years ago and loved it, so when I encountered a copy of the memoir co-written with Cornelia Skinner, I gave it a try.

The book tells of the European tour the two girls took together in the early 1920s and could quite easily have been subtitled "Innocents Abroad" (with all apologies to Mr. Twain). From taking passage aboard a ship that promptly ran aground, to accidentally booking a room in a brothel, the trip is recounted with a good deal of charm and self-deprecation.

Ms. Skinner appears to have been the primary writer and I didn't find her voice quite as amusing as Ms. Kimbrough's, but the book was still enjoyable and I can see why it was such a popular book in the 40s and why Paramount had it made into a motion picture.

TadAD,

Don't tell aluvalibri about Our Hearts Were Young and Gay. She'll be on Abebooks before she even finishes reading your review. I may stroll over and check it myself ;-) I will post more later because this genre interests me for a number of reasons, but I have to go fix supper now.

Ha ha ha ha!!!!!! Too late!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
;-)

Cute ;-)

So, I'm guessing she likes this particular style of book...

She does. She's already purchased it (or so my private sources tell me).

Yes, Tad, I like that style of book. Actually, if you have time to take a look at my library, you will notice that the majority of the books I own are women-authored.

"my library, you will notice that the majority of the books I own are women-authored.
"

And now it's even easier to check from the statistic link of your profile page. All derived from the CK fields, so if you've too many unknowns you can spend a few years filling in the missing data.

Tad, I guess are taste's arent that well aligned after all, I thought you'd enjoy the Gap series more than that. But I certainly agree that Angus is the best character even if he's hardly likable. I'm glad SD managed to contrive an escape for him, as I'd expected him to get killed off, or permentantly stored until he was needed again.

Shyness & Dignity by Dag Solstad



Elias Rukla, a high school literature teacher in Oslo, is a man who has spent his entire life unconnected, to one degree or another, to society around him. Now, in the single day covered by this novel, Rukla comes to understand how far this has come.

An epiphany about Ibsen's The Wild Duck—only to realize that he cannot make his students comprehend nor appreciate it...worse, that if he could connect with them enough to make them understand, it would destroy his very view of society—sends him from the school. A damaged umbrella sends him into an emotional breakdown and, when he comes to his senses minutes later, he realizes that he had been unable to recognize that he was surrounded by students when it happened, that he had verbally abused them without understanding what he was doing.

This sets him walking blindly through the streets of the city, his memory replaying the last couple decades of his life, reflecting on the inseparable friend who disappeared out of his life, wondering if his wife feels a truest kind of indifference about him. In these reflections, Solstad has managed to capture a world of middle-age regret, sadness and loneliness.

Solstad's writing style is dense, difficult at times, yet, in some way that I don't understand, it evoked a response that felt completely in keeping with the book. He does not use quotes, except when someone speaking in the book quotes someone else, and dialog is not separated into paragraphs. Phrases are reiterated hypnotically: a couple of words will be repeated five, ten, even fifteen times over a few sentences. A sentence will be interrupted with an opening parenthesis—you might read and read for two pages before its closing mate is finally encountered. The sentences, themselves, are often quite convoluted; here is one of many as an example of his monumental constructs:

But as [in his daydreams] he would have a chance to say exactly this, he would have hastened to add, But you must not attach great importance to that because when I express myself that way I speak like a limited person, like a captive of my own time; my statement betrays how easily my heart is moved by literature from my own century rather than how good my judgment is at rendering valid appraisals of our national literature in general, he would say if he had posed this question by a bright ,extremely eager eighteen-year-old, and by this reply he hoped he would have been able to convey an aspect of himself that the pupils might be surprised he had, for he could vividly imagine [he dreamed] that it would astonish his pupils that he too, after all, let himself be moved more easily by contemporary literature than by the literature of earlier periods—that was what he imaged they thought when he was giving a sincere answer to a question asked by a bright and interested hypothetical eighteen-year-old pupil, and then they would perhaps understand that when there was such a dearth of contemporary literature in his classes, it was not due to his personal taste, but to an overarching plan, the nature of which would not, right now, he thought as he was thinking about this hypothetical situation, dawn on them, like a sudden glimpse of something that was of greater importance than both they themselves, the pupils, and the one who was teaching them, the master.

The end result of this was to give the book a sense of separateness and obsession. I felt I was standing somewhere distant from Elias Rukla, peering into his mind as it made its self-absorbed way through events. Just as the world did not touch him, so I was an outsider.

Though this book won't be to everyone's taste, it was moving and powerful.

Edit: problems with touchstones

>39 reading_fox:: Don't sweat it...we still like a lot of the same stuff. There will always be books people disagree on.

Nice review, Tad; hopefully I'll get to this book in the next couple of weeks.

#39> And now it's even easier to check from the statistic link of your profile page. All derived from the CK fields, so if you've too many unknowns you can spend a few years filling in the missing data.

That sounds interesting but, if you have time to, you should explain to me how to do it, 'cause I have no clue!

Tad, did the "shyness and dignity" of the title factor into the story?

Tad, I just found your thread. In your OP you mentioned some adult novels by Jane Austen.

I didn't know she did this kind of stuff. My opinion of her has gone up now that I know this. Can you post some of the titles of her adult works, please. I would like to hunt them down, for scholarly purposes only. I'm sure others will be interested too.

>44 tiffin:: Honestly, tiffin, I'm not sure I know.

For me, the entire book was about Elias' recognition that he did not connect with his society. He remarks that he was (paraphrase, I don't have the book right here to get the exact quotes) "socially aware but no longer had anything to say" and that "those who defined society reflected reality in a way that degraded everything he stood for." You can see elements of dignity in this, in his understanding that he is no longer relevant and, rather than change, he withdraws. And, certainly, he was shy...particularly as a university student when in the company of the "luminous" Johan.

However, my reaction to the book is that those words hit somewhere near—but not on—the mark. I don't quite feel that "shy" or "dignified" are his driving characteristics. I almost want it to be entitled Self-Absorption and Introversion.

Perhaps I've just missed the mark on what the author is trying to say with the title.

>27 TadAD:, Tad, just catching up with your thread after being out of town. That photo book looks gorgeous!

Thanks for the answer. When an author gives characteristics like that as the title, I always wonder how much they will factor in the story or just what the author is trying to say with them.

I felt I was standing somewhere distant from Elias Rukla, peering into his mind as it made its self-absorbed way through events. Just as the world did not touch him, so I was an outsider. That was excellent, as it really gave me the flavour of the book.

Enjoying your thoughtful reviews.

World War Z by Max Brooks



This book has been read and recommended so many times on LT that, though I'm not a big horror book fan, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. For those who haven't yet come across it, the book is an "oral history" of the human race's near destruction at the hands of the dead who are re-animated by a virus spread via bites.

What made this work for me is that the author didn'tgo the obvious route. There's nothing supernatural in the book. In fact, he wisely doesn't even explain the zombies beyond saying "a virus". The outbreak just happens and the entire book is about dealing with it. As such, it reads like a thriller and not at all like something from the horror genre.

It's told as a series of interviews with individuals from all over the world in the aftermath of the catastrophe. Each interview puts in place a small piece of the picture as humanity is first almost obliterated by hundreds of millions of infected creatures, then stabilizes in small pockets and finally begins to fight back. Along the way, Brooks comments on governments, the military, human nature, individual courage, ingenuity, savagery, man's best friend, the perils of technology and just about every other part of society.

I enjoyed the ride and can see why so many people are passing along the recommendation.

Oedipus the King by Sophocles, translated by F. Storr



Somehow I skipped having to read the Greek tragedies as a student; I missed a year of high school and perhaps that was when they came around on the curriculum.

Obviously, I'm no Greek scholar and I don't really feel qualified to comment much upon the quality of the play beyond saying that I enjoyed it quite a bit. It was interesting to watch the inexorable march toward the prophecy's fulfillment and to follow the various metaphors around "sight". I'm so used to prose that I found the verse difficult at the beginning, like picking up Shakespeare after a long absence, only more so. Still, by slowing down and reading each line at a deliberate pace, I found myself becoming immersed in it.

At first, my mind rebelled against what I expected to be a rather harsh fate laid upon Oedipus. I guess I was expecting the prophecy to be fulfilled due to gods interfering with mortals. As the play progressed, however, I realized that nothing was being forced upon him. Each action that occurred was the outcome of Oedipus' own choices. The results may seem somewhat overwhelming by modern standards of justice, but they were the natural consequences of his own actions.

I found myself wondering how the original audience would react to this play. The modern reader, simply through osmosis of a minor amount of literary history, is aware that Oedipus is doomed—that the very act of trying to avoid the Oracle's prophecy brings it to fruition. Was that in the "collective knowledge" of the time? Perhaps, once I've read a couple more of these plays, I'll add a book on the subject to the TBR pile.

I think I'll continue filling in this gap; perhaps "Antigone" will be next.

When you get through with the Oedipus cycle, read the Orestia cycle by Aeschylus. It is awesome.

The Fortune of War by Patrick O'Brian



Another excellent episode in this continuing story of Jack and Stephen. The War of 1812 becomes center stage and our heroes spend an involuntary sojourn in the United States, Diana Villiers returns to the stage, we have our expected naval battle at the end...all with O'Brian's wonderful writing.

What a delightful mix of reading, Tad (I loved Midaq Alley also!)

Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide by Peter Allison



This book is a series of anecdotes drawn from the author's career as a professional game guide in Africa. The stories are told with a light touch, a bit of humor and, quite clearly, a deep love of animals. The book is not a naturalist's study of animals, but we get a nice series of vignettes of the wildlife in Botswana.

Though he does not hesitate to skewer the rude or stupid tourist (such as the individual who almost crashed the bush plane because he insisted on lunging over the pilot to take pictures), by far the most common target of his stories is himself. He applies a great dollop of self-deprecation as he talks about running his Land Rover underwater, trying to drive an elephant out of camp by standing in front of it while yelling, becoming one of "those" bird-watching people.

About the only regret one can feel is that Allison doesn't have a greater gift for comic writing. Many of the stories are inherently funny and I found myself smiling quite a bit. However, in the hands of another author, I probably would have been guffawing.

If you're interesting in a quick, pleasant, mildly humorous read and have any interest in African wildlife, I would recommend this book.

A Cloud of Witnesses for the Royal Prerogatives of Jesus Christ: The Last Speeches and Testimonies of Those Who Have Suffered for the Truth in Scotland since the Year 1680 by Anonymous



As the subtitle says, this is a collection of the final words of various Covenanters who were executed in Scotland in the late 17th century.

On October 31, 1517, a young Augustinian monk by the name of Martin Luther nailed a piece of paper criticizing the Catholic Church to a church door and started a long period of religious struggle. Luther received almost immediate support in Scotland from John Knox, and Protestantism became firmly established in that country. The Scots entered into a series of covenants to support one another in maintaining "the most blessed Word of God and His congregation"—from this they became known as Covenanters.

Relations with the Catholics in Scotland were tense, often erupting into bloodshed, but the Covenanters gradually swung Scotland over to the Reformed faith. However, after the Restoration in Scotland, the Catholics once more surged into some power. The years of 1661 to 1688 became known as "The Killing Time" as Covenanters were ruthlessly persecuted and martyred.

Why did I read this?

Well, my great-to-the-seventh grandfather, Archibald Allison, is one of the people included in the book. He was a minister in the parish of Evandale in Scotland and was hanged at the Grassmarket in Edinburgh on August 13, 1680 for participating in the Battle of Bothwell Bridge in June of 1679, and the Battle of Aird's Moss in July of 1680, and for refusing to recant.

I found the book to be a lot of fun. The language of the times is not something you hear nowadays, full of pomp and display. I loved how so many would swear to be brief in their remarks...

Wherefore, unworthy as I am, I am come here, and beg your ear and attention, ye who are spectators and auditors, if the Lord shall permit me to speak a few words; and I shall be but brief.

...and then continue on for another 10 or 15 minutes. Of course, were I about to be executed, I might drag it along as much as I could, also.

I have two copies, a facsimile edition of 612 pages and a modern transcription of just the text of 144 pages. I read the latter but enjoyed looking through the former for all the wonderful engravings and line drawings showing the places and people.

It's really not something I'd think to recommend for general reading unless you're fascinated by this period in history, but I enjoyed it.

Edit, LT forums apparently truncate and add an ellipsis if you hyphenate too much and I hit the limit on "greats".

see 75 thread

A bunch of snow last night, so my youngest and I spent the morning with pancakes, real maple syrup and a book.



The Gammage Cup by Carol Kendall



This is one of my favorite books from childhood. I'm sure that colors my perceptions but I still find it an absolutely wonderful story.

Set in the Land Between the Mountains, the Minnipins live in their twelve villages, each full inhabitants wearing their green cloaks, living in cottages with green doors, and doing their best not to stand out from the what a "proper" Minnipin should be. All except for five individuals in the town of Slipper-on-the-Water: Gummy, Walter the Earl, Curley Green, Mingy and Muggles (no, you Potter-heads, that's with a capital 'M'). These choose to be different from their fellow citizens, each for his or her own reason—some because they want to be different, some because they don't really care that they are different, and some out of protest because they feel that no one should be prevented from being different.

Driven from their village out of fear that they will ruin its chances of winning The Gammage Cup for the Best Village, the five discover that the age-old enemies of the Minnipins, the Mushrooms, have found a way into the valley and are planning an invasion. Of course, our five rise to the occasion, defeating the enemy and saving their village.

Kendall writes very well, showing you her world instead of telling you about it, and the story draws the reader along irresistibly, full of puns and playful games with everyday words. The characters in the story are beautifully written, each fully fleshed out and well-rounded; the reader cannot help but fall in love with them. There is a clear message in this story of protest against intolerance and conformity for its own sake. The adult reader might find it a trifle heavy-handed (given that it was written at the end of the McCarthy hysteria, it should not be surprising), but younger readers will likely take it in stride. Some readers find an allegorical relationship between the invaders and Cold War Soviets, and are disturbed by the matter-of-fact complete destruction of the former. Personally, I find this a stretch and think that, sometimes, a Mushroom invader is just a Mushroom invader.

For me, the real strength of this book, beyond the writing, is the timing of the message. It's targeted at an age where children are starting to struggle between the desire to become individuals and fears of standing out. I might not put this book (and its sequel, The Whisper of Glocken) in the absolute top rank of young fantasy—the top four or five books of the genre—but it pushes hard up against them.

I've seen the cover art on the current edition and it is absolutely horrendous. Don't let it dissuade you.

Newbery Honor, ALA Notable

I HOPE that my copy of Kendall's two books are in the attic in that box I haven't gotten to yet. I loved both this book and The Whisper of Glocken. Haven't read them for ages...

Wikipedia says she wrote three more books quite a while later:

The Firelings (1981)
Other Side of the Tunnel (1973)
The Wedding of the Rat Family (1988)

Anyone ever heard of them or read them?

>59 ronincats:: The Firelings is supposed to be a third Minnipins book, but I've never seen it.

I was going to read his Independent People, but Wandering_star's review convinced me to read this book.



The Fish Can Sing by Halldór Laxness



On the surface, this is a coming-of-age story of a young orphan, Álfgrímur, being raised by foster "grand-parents" who are poor in a material sense but rich in friends and spirit. Alongside that, you sense that this is also a coming-of-age story of Iceland, itself—a puberty that is making many bad choices, but occurring nonetheless.

This book fools you. The several story lines seem like unconnected sketches: Álfgrímur's desire to be a lumpfisherman, his love of singing, his odd relationship with his relative, the mysterious and reclusive opera singer, Gardar Holm, all seem to be simple scenes in the story of his childhood. This isn't an unpleasant experience; Laxness' warm and simple presentation, reminding me of a folk tale, paints a dryly humorous picture of a large cast of colorful and interesting characters, gives us many amusing anecdotes, and slyly pokes fun at everything from government to proper manners to Eastern religion.

As the book draws to its close, however, we find those story threads weaving together into a larger story line, a satisfying morality tale about what is valuable in life, about the disappointing nature of pride and fame.

Distinctive, thoughtful, never trite—a real find.

Nice review, Tad. I'm putting this book, and his later novel The Great Weaver from Kashmir, high on my wish list.

This is an author I have been meaning to get to for ages - thanks for the great review, Tad

I was originally going to try the 999 Challenge this year. Here are two books that I had for that effort, one from "(Over?) Hyped Books" and one from "Books About Piano".



Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn



This quirky, jocund book has been zealously reviewed googleplexes of times.

Ok, just kidding. I won't give up my day job. :-) Without the pangrams...

This book has been reviewed so many times on LT that I don't feel there's much need for me to discuss it at any length. The word-play is the basis for absolutely everything in this parable about totalitarianism, mostly of the religious sort. Its plot is about par for a late grade-school novel and there's little depth to the characters we meet.

For the first half it was interesting to watch how the elisions were accommodated, the word choices that avoided certain letters. However, by the time Dunn was making awkward phonetic spellings, cute and simple had become cutesy and simplistic…the slight plot and flat characters weren't strong enough to demand the work required of me.

For my taste, this falls into over-hyped and I can only give it the barest, mildest of recommendations due to the interesting idea.

---

Grand Obsession by Perri Knize

to , depending upon your interests. For me, it was the latter.

Perri Knize's memoir is the story of her somewhat obsessive search for "her" piano. It starts with a quest for an "inexpensive upright" and quickly morphs into a journey through piano store after piano store, playing hundreds of pianos, uprights being discarded in favor of grands, budget escalating month after month. She finally finds the perfect piano, has it shipped from New York to her home in Montana, and find that the sound she loved has gone. What follows are literally years of attempts to get that sound back into the instrument. These attempts draw in an astonishing circle of people who love pianos. We meet the technician who put the original sound on her piano and can recreate it, but only for a 24 hour period, and the man who sold her the piano who then gives away his profits on the deal by flying people and parts out to Montana because he cannot bear the thought of her losing that perfect experience she once had. We follow her to Austria, where she meets the men who cut the trees for the soundboard, and to Germany, where she meets the individual craftsmen who built her piano, in her attempt to understand what made the particular sound she is seeking.

Of course, you cannot help but realize that the story of the piano is only the surface. The subtext is a story about the pursuit of a passion in life, the quest to understand and achieve something that completely fulfills you.

This book absolutely resonated with me. I'm an adult beginner on the piano, chockablock with all the "I'm too old to do this" that one might expect. I could feel her utter frustration and despair in this quest, and her utter elation when she moved forward and, somehow, it lifted me up and made me want to push harder.

If you love the piano, read this. If you love odysseys about inspiration and passion, read this. If you simply are interested in well-written memoirs, read this. If you don't fall into one of those categories, it's still a good book and I recommend you at least take a look.

Tad - that looks like a book I would really enjoy. Thanks for the inspiring review.

Another similar book that I read last month, along the lines of finding the right piano, is A Romance on Three Legs by Katie Hafner. It is about Glenn Gould and his search for the perfect piano - it is excellent. If you are interested in pianists, it outlines much of his life, his quirks and foibles (of which there are many), the life of his favourite piano tuner and a brief history of the Steinway family and company. It was really good. Hafner has an excellent journalistic and engaging style.

>65 kiwidoc:: It's sitting on my shelf, kiwidoc. :-) It was another one for that same 999 category, along with Tunstall's Note by Note and Noah Adams' Piano Lessons.

ETA: Gould is one of my favorite Bach performers...perhaps second after Hewitt of those to whom I've listened. I'm thinking I'll hoard that book until the end.

And also very much along those lines, about pianos, and passion, and perfection, and Paris, is a wonderful book called Piano Shop on the Left Bank. Highly recommended.

Hmm, great alliteration, too, and purely accidental :-)

>67 polutropos:: Polutropos. That was the book that started this whole category...well, along with starting piano lessons. My sister lent it to me and I read it through in a single sitting, loving every minute. Anyone who likes pianos and hasn't read it should listen to you!

Hola Tad

I've put Grand Obsession on my TRB list. I played the piano (mostly self-taught and not seriously) until I went to college because I loved to play.

Hmm. I'm trying to decide whether I should put Grand Obsession on my wishlist. On the one hand, I love that kind of memoir. On the other hand, as someone who's played the piano all her life, I'm a bit curious about why she would assume that the piano would sound the same in Montana as New York? Pianos are made of wood - temperature, humidity, probably even altitude will make a difference in how it sounds. Plus, over time every piano will sound different - the wood changes, settles, dries or doesn't, etc.

Whew. That's probably not really the point of the book, is it? ;-)

>70 Talbin:: The thing was, Talbin, it sounded nothing like it did in New York. She was expecting some changes, figuring a technician could ameliorate most of them, but the changes were radical. It took years to figure out and solve what caused the changes. If you read it, you can tell me if it should have been figured out much earlier.

But, no, it wasn't the point. *grin*

ETA: And, btw, all these people who have played all their lives are giving me a serious inferiority complex! ;-)

Tad,

Have you read The Piano Shop on the Left Bank? It's a charming book that follows a somewhat similar line to Grand Obsession. I enjoyed it and learned quite a bit about pianos in the process. Alas, I discovered I will never own a truly excellent piano :-(

>73 urania1:: Yes, I have. I liked it a lot.

I think this is going to be a weekend of guilty pleasure reading. My wife is away with one child and I have the other two; I'm a bit under the weather; taxes loom; I went to see a basketball game Friday and my team lost...clearly beer, pretzels and some not-very-demanding books are in order! *grin*

---

White Witch, Black Curse by Kim Harrison



While this series has been one of those little pleasures for when I'm in the mood for something very light, this seventh volume didn't do it for me.

What I thought was going to be the main storyline, the hunt for Kirsten's killer that started up in the last book, began the story well but was then dropped until the last 50 pages, where it was wrapped up in a wham-bam fashion almost as an afterthought.

In between, we have a mish-mash of things falling into one of two categories. There is tiresome formula. Rachel has troubles with yet another boyfriend. Anyone surprised?...no. Al jerks Rachel around? Anyone surprised?...no. Rachel and Ivy have trouble defining their relationship. Anyone surprised?...well, only in the sense that I thought they finally put this one to rest in the last volume.

The other category is things that seem to come out of left field. Without giving too much away in spoilers...Rachel suffers some serious public relations problems. This is not particularly surprising given what she's had to do over the stories. What is a "huh?!?" moment is that she takes this lying down, almost like she's bought into the "demon marks = black witch" concept. That's so out of character it's just jarring to the reader.

The second "where did this come from?" thing is the whole Pierce subplot. Did I miss a book; is this really #8? (no) It's dropped in like we've known about it for six volumes already.

I hope that the next volume in this series gets back on track. Otherwise, this series won't hold my attention very long—we've seen similar series implode.

---

The Surgeon's Mate by Patrick O'Brian



Another well-done episode in this series. The dry humor as Jack and Stephen marvel at the others lack of expertise outside their field provides a lot of laughter.

"The chronometer is used for finding out latitude I believe."

"To tell you the truth, Stephen, most people rely on the sextant for their latitude: the timekeeper is more for the other thing—east and west, you know"

"East and west of what, for all love?"

"Why, of Greenwich, naturally."

"I am no great navigator—" said Stephen.

"You are far too modest," said Jack.

O'Brian takes a break from ship-to-ship action in this one, but it is never dull. This series continues to move ahead strongly.

---

Next up, perhaps The Tomb by F. Paul Wilson or Purity of Blood by Pérez-Reverte.

This one was on drneutron's recommendation.



The Tomb by F. Paul Wilson



Jack "repairs" situations...provides a bit of justice in situations where the law cannot or will not fix a problem. The book is a blend of the thriller/detective genre with a supernatural element. In this episode, Jack is dealing with a vendetta that stretches back a century and a half, threatening the daughter of his girlfriend with death at the hands of horrors from Indian legend.

Wilson makes this work reasonably well. On one hand, the plot is a bit straight-forward and the story is predictable enough that there's not a huge amount of tension. Yet, somehow in spite of that, Wilson makes this work. The characters are entertaining, you can't help rooting for them, and the whole thing moves along quickly with plenty of action.

This is just the kind of grab-a-drink, suspend-disbelief, sit-back-for-a-few-hours type of book that's perfect on Saturday afternoon when you're in the mood for a little guilty pleasure instead of something that makes you think.

The title is a bit of a non sequitur, however—it seems to have no relevance to the book.

Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories by Ghassān Kanafānī



This volume contains a novella and six short stories that, through one mechanism or another, all speak about the plight of displaced Palestinians. Ghassān Kanafānī was a spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine prior to his murder and, based on that, I expected the stories to have an overtly anti-Israeli slant. However, Kanafānī's approach is more subtle and, ultimately, more moving. Instead of imposing an ideology on the reader, he simply shows us the effects…the stark consequences to individuals and families.

I liked each of the stories here; they move in unexpected directions. In "Umm Saad", we hear the martial words from the mouth of a mother rather than her fedayeen son as we might expect. We get a reworking of the Biblical story of the Mark of Cain in "If You Were a Horse…", almost a Greek tragedy in the inevitability of fate. Most had a twist to the ending…an almost O. Henry-ish moment that causes the reader to re-think the meaning of what he has just read, making them deeper and more poignant. Particularly moving are the titular novella in which three men attempting to escape into Kuwait become an allegory for the entire Palestinian condition, and "The Land of Sad Oranges" showing us the destruction of a family as they are dispossessed.

Excellent.

Men in the Sun sounds like one for the Wish List; thanks for the nice review, Tad.

>77 TadAD:, If you liked the stories in Men in the Sun, I'd recommend getting the other collection of Kanafani's works Returning to Haifa - the titular novella is even better than the one in Men in the Sun.

>79 fannyprice:: Ok, fannyprice, I'll give it a try.

Number the Stars by Lois Lowry



This young adult novel is set during 1943, when the population of Denmark banded together to smuggle the Jewish population of the country to neutral Sweden ahead of the Nazi roundup. 95% of the Jews in the country were moved to safety (another 4% were eventually rescued from the death camps). Lowry based quite a bit of the story on actual events and individuals.

This isn't the best book to be awarded the Newbery Medal; the story feels a bit lightweight, particularly in respect to the feelings and spirit of the non-Jewish population. However, it's not the worst either with the fairly typical profile for a Newbery book—smooth reading, sympathetic characters, strong moral message.

Perfectly suitable for the younger end of the YA spectrum.

prop2gether recommended this one in last year's 75 Challenge group.



The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West



West's short book (almost a novella, really), was written in 1918. It is the story of a man returning from the war, suffering from shell-shock, and unable to remember the last 15 years of his life. Grappling with this are three women: Kitty, his wife of ten years; Margaret, the woman whom he loved 15 years ago; and Jenny, his cousin, who narrates the story, and whose thoughts provide the discussion of the damage caused by war.

Poignant, stark, no less moving or apropos for being set in the war of nearly a century ago rather than today's conflicts—an almost perfect gem of a book.

PS: About the only complaint I could have is with the edition. I wish I had ordered the 198 page Garden City edition instead of the Digireads paperback. The latter caused my eyes to swim from the small font and very closely-set lines of text.

>77 TadAD: looks interesting as does the Rebecca West. You might also like some of the novels of Martin Booth, particularly Islands of Silence and A Very Private Gentleman. I have Hiroshima Joe but have not read it yet (but it was recommended to me after reading Islands).

excerpt from Washington Post review:
But Booth, who has already written more than a dozen novels, isn't interested in producing a mere compendium of wartime horrors {WWI}, although those horrors are very much at the heart of Islands of Silence. We learn Alec's story from his recollections decades later, as a dying old man confined to a home for the mentally ill because of his refusal to speak or communicate in any way. Those memories are interspersed with scenes from his present confinement. This could be a disastrous device in the hands of a less skillful writer, producing a disjointed, slow-footed narrative. But Booth's initial languid pace is deceptive. He quickly sucks the reader into both parts of his tale, the parallel stories of the silent old man and of the young man with his mysterious adventure before the war begins.

>83 avaland:: Islands of Silence sounds interesting; I've added it to the TBR pile. Thanks.

The Idiot Girl and the Flaming Tantrum of Death: Reflections on Revenge, Germophobia and Laser Hair Removal : Laurie Notaro



First, a calibration of humor: I find Calvin Trillin generally funny—I find David Sedaris generally annoying; Sarah Vowell amuses me—Chelsea Handler bores me. If your tastes run along a different path then keep in mind during the following that YMMV.

There are some excellent moments, both the small phrases that bring a snort of laughter and complete essays. "Leaving, but Not on a Jet Plane" (a tale of selling her house) and "The Extended Warranty, the Extended Waistband, and the Repairman Who Almost Became a Hostage" (about the tribulations of getting her treadmill fixed) were consistently enjoyable. The high point is "Ready or Not", in which she abandons all but the mildest humor in telling us the story of her dogs...the favorite who died and the little puppy that eventually replaced her. In this, Notaro proved she can write movingly and convincingly.

Unfortunately, I have an upper limit of "1 or less" when it comes to being amused at penis and vagina jokes—we are treated to many. I have an even lower limit for potty humor—there's plenty including a whole essay on the subject of her husband touching poop during a sewer backup.

I finished the book, but most of it had that feel of grade school humor: little kids snickering in their "gross equals funny" world. Even if I found that kind of thing funny, I could not escape the feeling that she was simply trying too hard. There was none of the effortless flow that makes good humor such a pleasure to read.

Oh well, it was a free book.

A gift from alcottacre...



A Talent to Annoy: Essays, Articles and Reviews, 1929-68 by Nancy Mitford



Nancy Mitford was one of the famous Mitford Sisters who so delighted, enraged and scandalized Europe and America, particularly during the inter-war years. This collection of some of her essays, articles and reviews...plus many excerpts from her letters to Evelyn Waugh and others...provides an interesting picture of anything upon which she turns her particular upper-class, somewhat right-wing, astringent gaze. One can see where the title came from; there is a dry, cutting edge to many of her pieces ("Rome is a capital city only in name; in fact...it is a village...centered around the vicarage.") that I find delightful but, were you to be the target, might annoy.

Some of the pieces, particularly her work for Vogue, are humorous, short essays: "The Shooting Party: Some Hints for the Woman Guest" and "The Secret History of a London Wedding". These display a disarmingly uncomplicated style...simple reflections that make no overt effort to make the reader laugh and, therefore, do so quite easily. When I reflect upon them, I realize that they were simple much in the same way that a top athlete makes what he or she does seem simple.

Other entries illuminate a small moment in history, such as "The Last to be Broken on the Wheel", that details the end of that particular practice in France. Or, they might provide her commentary on the events she experienced in her life: "France, May 1968: A Revolution Diary Parts I & II".

The only thing that keeps this from being a 4-star book for me is that I don't speak French. She expects that her reader does, particularly in the series of articles she wrote (at Ian Fleming's arrangement) from Paris for The Sunday Times. In these pieces, many of the punchlines are in French. While I can puzzle out a few, it is a lot of effort and many are simply beyond me.

Worth reading...if you speak French, definitely worth reading. I shall certainly seek out some of her novels, particularly those feature the upper-class society of Great Britain of which her family were eccentric members.

Persuasion by Jane Austen



Completing my "two Austens a year" for 2009, this is my second favorite of her works so far after Pride and Prejudice and edging out Emma as an example of this particular genre.

Rifles for Watie by Harold Keith



The story follows Jefferson Davis Bussey, an awkwardly-named boy from Kansas who joins the Union Army to fight against the raiders who threaten his home. The story moves quickly and is full of action as Jeff learns that soldiering isn't quite what he expected, experiences his first battles as a Union soldier, and then is forced into joining the Confederate Army while posing as a civilian on a scouting mission.

The backdrop of the novel is more interesting that your typical East Coast Civil War novel. Set out in the western war of Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas, the book highlights the struggle over the question of "free or slave?" for the Territories, and the divided loyalties the issue caused. It also shows the choices and internal fractures confronting the Cherokee, Seminole and other Native American tribes as they tried to maintain some vestige of autonomy.

Perhaps the most notable aspect of the book is that there is no "right" side and "wrong" side in the way the war is portrayed; we are shown good and bad in both armies. By the end of the book, Jeff is honestly conflicted over where to give his allegiance. To the North lie home and family, a cause in which he believes, and the Army to which he gave his oath. To the South lie the individuals who have befriended him, men he has come to respect, and the girl whom he loves. In the end, both sides are portrayed just as individuals: tired, hungry, scared and fighting for a variety of reasons that have more to do with protecting families than political posturing back East.

In summary, not a bad read for any young adult readers in your household. Recommended.

Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio by Amara Lakhous



This novel by Algerian-born Lakhous definitely falls into the category of a Good Find. The quirky title and interesting cover caught my eye in the library. Sitting down to try it, I ended up reading it cover to cover in one shot. It's not long, but it's definitely entertaining.

The book is one part mystery and two parts commentary on the immigrant experience. Lorenzo Manfredini has been found murdered in the elevator of an apartment building in Rome where he lived. Amedeo, another resident, disappeared at about the same time. Further, the police have just discovered that Amedeo, though speaking flawless Italian and knowing Rome better than most residents, is actually an immigrant.

From this starting point, Lakhous has ten other residents and the police inspector speak for a chapter each and provide their perceptions of Amedeo. They all, except the last, admire or love him and are firm in their convictions that he simply cannot be the culprit. However, the revelation of his foreign status leads each to wander off into their own thoughts on immigrants: ranging from those who are also immigrants struggling with Italy, through Italians who resent the presence of foreigners, to those who view even those from a different region of Italy as less civilized. Interspersed with each of these voices is Amedeo, commenting on the person who just spoke, explaining them more fully, pointing out their prejudices, valuing them.

The book is laugh-out-loud funny at some points, but there is always an undercurrent of seriousness, of somber comment on what it means to be an immigrant. There is also observation on the blindness of prejudice and stereotyping.

A quick read that will certainly repay the time—a strong recommendation.

Hi Tad:

I have in the last week learned how to do italics, how to do bolding, and how to add pictures both from the Internet and from my newly joined Photobucket, so have turned from a total Luddite into a joyous graphics user. I see that you are able to put your ratings in stars under your reviews. How, pray tell, does one do that?

(And of course I am on your thread because I enjoy it, and thanks :-) .)

I drew the various images in PhotoShop, posted them to some Web space, then just link them in as an image.

Not nearly techie advanced to attempt anything like that.

peals of laughter

My son loved PhotoShop and could do all kinds of things with it, but heavens, no, I have never touched it. (He is off at university.)

Well, if you find some image you would like to use on the Web, you can use it multiple times. For example, over in the 75 Challenge thread, blackdogbooks uses a picture of a bone and TheTortoise uses a picture of a turtle shell.

Pick a fairly small image then just copy it the appropriate number of times...can't do halves easily. Use the 'height' attribute to an image reference to size it.

For example, given your screen name, maybe a Greek urn or something. If I typed:

<img height="50" src="http://www.doubletake-media.com/greek_urn.gif"><img height="50" src="http://www.doubletake-media.com/greek_urn.gif">

It would come out:



ETA: Sorry the URLs are truncated...LT does that. The last letters would have been "greek_urn.gif"

WOW. I am impressed.

This also teaches me that if I want two pictures side by side, I can do it, and I see how.

Some of us sure are easy to impress :-)

Regenesis by C.J. Cherryh



I've waited 21 years for this sequel to Cyteen and I have to say I was a bit disappointed. My reactions were mixed, but I felt that Cherryh didn't do her best work on this one and her editor certainly didn't do his...

I'll start with the negatives. The book is about 250 to 300 pages too long. The plot doesn't really get cracking in true Cherryh "everything breaking loose at once" fashion until about page 400. Of course there should be a build-up to that point but this build-up probably didn't have much more than 100 pages of real content to it.

Instead, we got some curious filler—it's like we were seeing Ari through a glamour lens...all soft focus and back-lit. Ari of the first book was sharp, decisive, a bit edgy; she may have been inexperienced and a bit naïve at first, but the reader had no doubt she was the smartest one around and she was going to "Get" her enemies, not vice-versa. The 18-year-old Ari of this book tries to invite kids who moved off-world in pre-school years back to live with her so she can hang out with childhood playmates, spends pages oohing rapturously about the decoration of her new apartment. Huh?

I really missed the characters from the first book. Ari went vapid for 400 pages; Ari Senior's recorded messages no longer figure into the story line; Catlin and Florian (two of my favorites) become two-dimensional backdrop scenery...there because bodyguards never leave Ari's side, but we no longer see important things from their perspectives nor gain any more insight into their thoughts.

So what saves this book from 1½ to 2 stars? Well, on the character front, we got a lot more of Justin and Grant, plus their interactions with Jordan. Though not the main characters of this story, they become much more real to us, though I have to say it seems like Jordan took a double dose of the Stupidly Nasty Pill since the first book. Their little subplot keeps the first part of the story from being a skimmer. The "real" Ari comes back for the final 185 pages.

Secondly, her world-building skills are as good as ever. Cyteen, Reseune Labs and all the other places in the book are intensely real; you feel like, "yeah, yeah, I know this place!" There are so many new things introduced in this book, that I actually wonder if it's a vamp toward a third volume that heads in new directions.

Thirdly, once the action kicks in, it's Cherryh: fast-paced, twisty, exciting. The questions left hanging from Cyteen get answered in a way that I found satisfying—they made sense not only in terms of the first book, but in terms of the larger Alliance-Union body of work. Just closing the book on the "who killed Ari 1?" question made this worth the read for me.

In the final analysis, it's not one of her best works, but it's not her worst. An editor ruthless enough to cut 250 pages out of the beginning of the book would have made this a top-notch Cherryh work.

If you're someone who will read the entire Cherryh canon, by all means pick it up. If you're just dabbling, choose others of her works. You have to have read Cyteen or none of it will make sense.

>89 TadAD: I glad you liked Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio. I recently obtained a copy. I must move it to the top of Mt. TBR. Incidentally, I love Europa Books. It is an excellent press that publishes a lot of quirky but excellent literature in translation. Thus far, I've only run across one Europa title that I haven't liked.

>96 urania1:: I'm not really familiar with that press—this book was just an accidental find. Is there something you'd specifically recommend from them?

On Liberty by John Stuart Mill



After finishing this book, I'm of the opinion it should be required reading in high school. It is not that I agree with Mill on all points—I certainly don't—it's that he's asking the right questions. Essentially, he starts a discussion on what it means to be a citizen of a community and what it means to be a just government. He highlights the often-overlooked distinction between the premise that, in a democracy, power should be in the hands of the majority and the very different premise that the majority, having that power, should be free to do as it chooses.

Of course, he reaches certain conclusions: "…the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." These conclusions can be attacked from both directions. From a more conservative position, one can question what appears to be his assumption that a society is nothing more than a collection of individuals, that no concept of shared values has a place in it. One might also question his delineations of "harm to others"…they seem somewhat shallow and limited to direct causality. From a more liberal position, one might take issue with his statements that backward societies should not enjoy full privileges because they are not "capable". One might question whether he is really trying to protect individuality or whether he is trying to protect the intellectual elite from the "despotism of collective mediocrity."

It does not matter. These questions are certainly as relevant today as they were just before the Civil War, and the attempt to answer them seems important to me.

Tad, your reading is certainly interesting!

Although I've not quite read as many Cherryh as you I'm not far off - and I can't quite decide if you are recommending Regenisis or not. I loved Cyteen, was absolutely blwon away by it, even though many people would deem that it too could be shortened by a few hundred pages. How does Regenisis compare to that?

>100 reading_fox:: It's not as good as Cyteen. Most of the characters (e.g. Florian and Catlin) are flatter. Ari got kind of vapid for most of the book. There's a lot more filler in it—the final part is good, but you have to get through the first 400 pages to get there.

If you read a lot of Cherryh, which you seem to do, then I'd give it a mild recommendation so that you can find out who killed Ari 1.

Just Enough Liebling by A.J. Liebling



Last year I read Secret Ingredients, a compilation of food-related articles originally published in The New Yorker magazine. A few authors were particularly enjoyable: Calvin Trillin is a long-time favorite author and I'm well familiar with M. F. K. Fisher, but A. J. Liebling was an unknown to me prior to that book.

This book contains 26 of his articles and essays, divided into sections on dining in Paris, World War II, New York City, Boxing, the Press and politics in Louisianna. If you can imagine essays written by a beat reporter, that will give you some of the flavor of these pieces. They are funny and sophisticated, full of gusto for life, and not a little bit of self-regard: "...Fowler's Modern English Usage, a book I have never looked into. It would be like Escoffier consulting Mrs. Beeton (The author of the first modern cookbook)."

Was this "just enough" of Liebling? On the whole, I'd say yes. I wouldn't have minded a bit more on Paris and World War II; they were wonderful...while the attractions of a long excerpt about a con man ("from The Honest Rainmaker") and the Louisianna politics had faded by their respective ends. Overall, however, I really enjoyed these pieces.

We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance by David Howarth



In the winter of 1943, a fishing trawler with 12 men—eight sailors and four commandos—landed at the coast of Northern Norway above the Arctic Circle with plans to start up a guerilla operation against the Nazi occupiers. They were betrayed by Quislings almost on the first day, the boat was attacked and sunk, and 11 of the men were killed.

Jan Baalsrud escaped just 100 yards ahead of the German troops chasing him, through sub-zero weather while soaking wet (he had to swim through ice-filled water twice that first night), with a bare foot (one toe shot off). These were the easy moments.

In the coming weeks, aided by the Norwegian farmers of this remote region, hunted by Germans, he made his way to neutral Sweden. Along the way, he endured severe frostbite, gangrene, an avalanche, a major concussion, repeated starvation, multiple blizzards, a self-performed amputation, being buried for days, abandonment on a mountain plateau (wet) for weeks.

The impact of this story is that it is non-fiction. In a work of fiction, this might not be believable even in a Dirk Pitt book. As history, about the only thing that might compare with it is Shackleton.

The book flows along quite quickly. About the only off-key note is the author's portrayal of the Sámi...or Lapps, as he calls them (most articles indicate that the Sámi consider the latter term derogatory). His descriptions are generally patronizing at best, offensive at times. Unfortunate, since two of the Sámi complete Baalsrud's rescue.

Howarth's writing falls short of inspirational but the tale is amazing and worth reading.

Harking back to Urania and her comment on Europa books, I am also a huge fan.

I was interested in your review of Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio and now intend to read it soon. I have seen it and debated over whether to pick it up.

Also, will be on the lookout for the Liebling book, too. I am a fan of Trillin too and mean to read more of him, also.

Thanks Tad. Your reviews are addictive.

This is such a great thread. I love your review of Mills and agree wholeheartedly that it should be required reading in school, if only for the fact that it would teach young people (how) to think about the relationship between the individual and society. I see precious little evidence of such thought in today's over-informed, under-motivated, blitzed-out-by-advertising, couch-potato consumer generation Y (or is it X?)

I disagree with one thing, though, but maybe this is a US/Uk difference in the meaning of the word 'conservative'. It was that arch conservative Mrs Thatcher cursed and reviled be her name for all eternity who famously remarked: there is no such thing as society, and who then proceeded to dismantle everything, but I mean everything, in England: the health service, education, welfare, culture and arts, everything that makes a society and a civilisation.

>104 kiwidoc:: Hi, kiwidoc. Let me ask you the same question I posed her...and to which she hasn't responded! :-)...I'm unfamiliar with that press; are there certain books you'd recommend from it?

>105 tomcatMurr:: Interesting, tomcatMurr...I wonder if there is a national difference in the word.

I chose that term because, here in the US, there is a large and ongoing debate on the right of a society to impose its value set on everyone in it...those in favor tend (I understand this is a generalization) fall into the more conservative side of our politics.

Copied from their website, Tad.

Europa Editions is a New York-based publisher of literary fiction, high-end mystery and noir, children’s illustrated fiction, narrative non-fiction, and memoir. Approximately two-thirds of the titles on our list are works of literature in translation

Their website is here

I have had good success with everyone of their titles so far. I have read Elena Ferratte, Amelie Nothcomb, Jean-Claude Izzo, Muriel Barbery, Tammuz, Benni, to name a few.

Your Lakhous book is a Europa. They are nicely put together for a paperback and have the flap cover which I really like.

Doghead by Morten Ramsland, translated by Tiina Nunnally



I so wanted to love this book. It won a number of Danish literary awards. It had a litany of rave blurbs from Publishers Weekly, Booklist and others. The plot sounded funny: Asger Eriksson's grandfather, Askild, was a survivor of Buchenwald and commonly thought to be a war hero, turns out to have been a smuggler who made a fortune running liquor, an engineer who tried to design boats based upon Cubist paintings, and a generally unpleasant liar and cheat.

But I didn't...

The first half of the book was just baffling—Ramsland seemed a devout student of surreal humor, with its reliance on non sequitur events and bizarre situations. Asger's father who spent his childhood filling his unusually large ears with mud, snails and rotting matter to try to make them shrink; babies being born down...well...into a privy; children tricking their grandfather into drinking glasses of urine; kids who can hear the dead; and so on. I like my Absurd either meaningful or funny. It was too dark to be funny and I wasn't able to piece together meaning.

The second part of the book began to take on more of the outline of a tragedy as three generations of a dysfunctional family wrestled through class struggles, marital struggles and generational struggles. It finally pulled together as Asger and his sister come to terms with their family.

For me, it was too little, too late—given the raves, I guess I just am not wired to understand this type of book.

Nice review, Tad. This book was on my wish list; I think I'll remove it.

I needed something light during the hurly-burly of the weekend...



Turn Coat by Jim Butcher



In Turn Coat I get exactly what I asked for after reading Small Favors: the sense of marking time while the characters change directions is gone as Harry & Company start to deal with the Black Council. For those familiar with the series, it starts with an interesting hook: Morgan shows up at Harry's door claiming Wardens are hunting him down for something he didn't do. For those not familiar with the series, let's just say this is complete role reversal. I also got my wish of seeing more of Thomas and less of Murphy for a while (did Mr. Butcher somehow read my comments?).

It was fairly easy to pick out both the Who of the traitor (and even some of the How) early in the book but it didn't really matter. The story has plenty of action as Harry tries to fight the usual passel of minor bad guys plus a nightmare from Native American mythology while trying to stay ahead of the Wardens and keep Morgan alive. Harry's love life heads for the shoals again but I'm becoming resigned to this...I guess it's just part of the whole hard-boiled detective thing along with the trenchcoat and smart mouth.

Unlike his Codex Alera series, which definitely feels like there is an end in sight, the Dresden books feel like they will be around for many episodes. I think this is a good thing.

>106 TadAD: Tad,

I did try to respond to your message; however, my computer was out of commission for several days. In order to rectify the problem, I had to do a clean install (completely erasing and starting over from the beginning). The clean installation, the updates, etc., took several more days. And then I got sick. All is well now. Here are my two favorite Europa Books: The Elegance of the Hedgehog and Cooking with Fernet Branca. The latter book is a "pee-in-your pants" funny book. Do not read the sequels. They fall far short of the first book.

>111 urania1:: I'm sorry to hear that. I was just busting your chops a bit. :-)

Anyway, thanks for those recommendations. I'm always glad of pee-in-your-pants funny books, though maybe I should wear Depends?

Regarding the wearing of Depends, it depends . . . ;-)

Forty Words for Sorrow by Giles Blunt



I picked this one up based upon dihiba reading it last year. I confess that the first attraction was that it's set in Algonquin Bay, a thinly-disguised North Bay, Ontario—a place I've gone every summer since I was born. Well, I got a two-fer-one since, not only did I get to laugh with nostalgic glee when the main character stops at the Sundial Lodge in Orillia (I loved the French Toast there as a kid) but I also got a very enjoyable police procedural.

This story introduces us to what looks to be a series partnership. First, there is John Cardinal—experienced detective, slightly jaded, wife hospitalized for clinical depression, something funky in this past. We also meet Lise Delorme—younger, a bit more idealistic, transferred from Special Investigations (Internal Affairs for us Americans) to Homicide...oh, and investigating Cardinal at the same time as they investigate murders.

John has long suspected that a couple of missing kids were murder victims rather than runaways, but the only place he got was hot water with his superiors for wasting time. However, a mutilated body found in an old mine shaft causes everyone to realize they have a serial killer on their hands. In some ways, Blunt's story is fairly typical: existence of serial killer is noticed, new victim is taken, police race against the clock to get to killer before one more death. On the other hand, he has given us some very engaging characters who grow steadily throughout the story into very real people.

The author chooses to introduce us to the killers quite early in the book and we get many scenes from their perspectives. Unlike some procedurals where the tension is "who did it?", the tension here is the race between the two story lines.

I will note that, if you found something like Silence of the Lambs a bit too gruesome, you might not enjoy this. The killers are pretty twisted and it's all laid out for the reader. If you can take that kind of thing in stride, this is worth reading.

I'll definitely be back for the next one.

I've been sick for a couple days...light humor was all I could manage while fevers were coming and going but, as I mended, I was able to close out two more of the several books I had going simultaneously.



Gil's All Fright Diner by A. Lee Martinez



This was a recommendation from drneutron last year. An amusing take on the supernatural genre—a welcome respite from all the oh-so-serious vampire books out there. I've been a little under the weather and this was just the kind of light-hearted thing I needed when a little light-headed with fever. I preferred his The Automatic Detective but this did make me laugh.



Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare



A very welcome waypoint on the journey of reading all of Shakespeare. It had all the "usual" plot devices: love triangles, mistaken identities, cross-dressing women, shipwrecks...the whole works.



Blindness by José Saramago, translated by Giovanni Pontiero



I'm not sure that there's a whole lot I can say that won't be found many places about this copiously-reviewed book. The story follows the basic structure of a post-apocalyptic novel: a catatrophe strikes—in this case, an entire city (at least) is stricken blind—and the reader watches as well-ordered social interactions turn to fascism, then to barbarism and finally cease to function altogether. We follow a handful of individuals through the entire process, including the first man to be afflicted and a woman who is the only person in the story not to lose her sight, as they struggle first to cope with their situation and then to reclaim a bit of their humanity.

What makes this novel a bit different that most of this type is the way Saramago uses literary devices to draw the reader into the world of the blind. Individuals are not named; all are simply described by their role in the story..."the doctor's wife" or "the first man who went blind". Nor are they visually described except when being looked at by a sighted person who is actually concentrating on the way they look. We don't even know their nationality, though slight cultural clues would lead one to think western Europe. This gives everything a hazy overcast; we can't quite bring our identification into sharp focus.

Most notably, you can only tell who is speaking through concentration; you cannot tell who is speaking simply by looking for the usual visual clues we get in reading. There are no quotation marks; in fact, question marks and other punctuation beyond commas and periods are gone. Nor is dialog broken in paragraphs—a verbal interchange is almost always represented as a single, long sentence, with only capital letters and the rare "he said" to clue the reader that the voice is changing. For example, picking up in the middle of a conversation that has been going on:

..., How have you managed since the outbreak of the epidemic, We came out of internment only three days ago, Ah, you were in quarantine, Yes, Was it hard, Worse than that, How horrible, You are a writer, you have, as you said a moment ago, an obligation to know words, therefore you know that adjectives are of no use to use, if a person kills another, for example, it would better to state this fact openly, directly, and to trust that the horror of the act, in itself, is so shocking that there is no need for us to say it was horrible, Do you mean that we have more words than we need, I mean that we have too few feelings, Or that we have them but have ceased to use the words they express, And so we lose them, I'd like you to tell me how you lived during quarantine, Why, I am a writer, You would have to have been there, A writer is just like anyone else, he cannot know everything, nor can he experience everything, he must ask and imagine, One day I may tell you what it was like, then you can write a book, Yes, I am writing it, How, if you are blind, The blind too can write, You mean that you had time to learn the braille alphabet, I do not know braille, How can you write, then, asked the first blind man, Let me show you.

This is disconcerting at first, opaque and confusing, but you quickly learn to find other clues, "listening" intently to the threads of the conversation. I went from my usual dislike of an author who eschews quotes (it irked me, for example, in Solstad's Shyness and Dignity) to thinking it made this book work as well as it did.

It's easy to read this story as allegory for any one of a number of events of our times. However, it's not necessary to do so...the story is gripping enough to be read simply for its own sake, whether as political commentary or distopian science fiction.

Though I would not be comfortable saying this is one of the 10 Best Books of the Century (as I've heard some opine), I definitely give it a strong recommendation. I shall certainly avoid the movie for fear of spoiling it.

Great review of Blindness, Tad! Hope you feel better soon.

Yes, super review! I am putting this one on my post-exile TBR, and will stay away from the movie until I have read it. I have not read any Saramago at all, I am ashamed to say. Have you read any other of his books, Tad?

I hope you feeling better now.

I read Blindness a few months ago and thought it was excellent - although putting it on a top 10 of all time list would be a matter for hot debate (and possibly that sort of list should not exist anyway?)

His next one Seeing is waiting for me on the pile.

Hope you are feeling better soon!

Tad, just catching up on your thread. First, I have to thank your for your thoughts on World War Z, which convinced me to read it. I am in progress now and am enjoying it quite a lot.

>103 TadAD:, We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance sounds fantastic! Onto the list it goes.

>115 TadAD:, You read Blindness when you were sick?!?! I am impressed. I don't think I could handle it. Although perhaps being half awake enhances the strange atmosphere of the novel even more. Very much enjoyed your thoughts on the stylistic elements & how they enhance the story - I had similar thoughts when I read it last year.

Hope you're feeling better soon!

>116 kidzdoc:-119: Thanks, I'm feeling a lot better today. However, being at a conference for a few days with some very long-winded speakers just may force a relapse requiring me to retire to my hotel room. ;-)

>117 tomcatMurr:: TCM - No, this was my first Saramago. I'll be trying more of his stuff in the coming months, however.

Tad,

If you liked Saramago's Blindness, then you must read the "sequel" Seeing. It is a prescient description of modern "democracy" in action.

>121 urania1:: Thanks, I'll make that my next one.

American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon by Steven Rinella



At its heart, this is an Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Buffalo: its origins on the continent, paleontological record, biology, range and habitat, 'buffalo' vs. 'bison', sex life, history with Native Americans and European settlers, reasons for hunting close to extinction, traditional methods of killing, anecdotes about buffalo hunters, fur types, uses for various parts of the animal, what is involved in being allowed to hunt one, how many Ted Turner owns, why the buffalo on the nickel is clearly captive...

The history is lightweight fare, more Bill Bryson than Shelby Foote, yet, Rinella writes well enough and I found it entertaining as well as informative. The basic outlines are probably familiar to everyone but there are lots of tidbits (for example, I never knew that a beaver coat was made from buffalo hide—the 'beaver' being a type of fur found on some specimens).

The education is doled out within the framework of Rinella's hunting expedition. Every year the Alaska Department of Fish and Game runs a lottery for a small number of permits to hunt a single buffalo. Most are never used as the hunting is fairly difficult. The minor difficulties are those imposed by the Department, including: no artificial light, no laser sights, no night-vision scopes, no machine guns (!), no explosives (!!). The major difficulty is imposed by Ahtna, Inc., the Native American corporation that owns the land around most of the major rivers. The buffalo are generally in the interior land, where you are allowed to be. However, getting there is another matter since Ahtna prohibits trespassing and prosecutes everyone who disobeys. Since there are no airstrips in the places you want to go, you have to follow the rivers, staying under the high water mark (i.e., on public land), then trek up small tributaries until you bypass the Ahtna land, then start bushwhacking your way into the interior through almost impassable scrub.

Rinella gives us a blow-by-blow account (definitely not in G-rated language) of his attempt to hunt one in the dead of winter. Just reading about it is exhausting, not to mention he nearly drowns, has a few nervous moments with grizzlies and gets frostbitten after immersion in an ice-filled river. He is able to convey a second-hand appreciation of the beauty, grandeur and isolation he encountered, and of the impact made when coming face-to-face with the largest land animal of North America. He also manages to convey his love of the outdoors and love for wildlife. This last aspect is what creates a bit of a discordant feeling for me in the book. He actually expresses this discord himself:

…how can I claim to love the very thing that I worked so hard to kill? I've thought of this often lately, yet I haven't been able to answer it with force and conviction. For now, I rely on a response that is admittedly glib: I just do, and I always will.

That answer is glib. I don't have a problem with someone hunting for food (Rinella spends days trekking all the meat out); I fish and I eat what I catch. I don't think that appreciation for wildlife and hunting are incompatible. However, the first 200 pages of the book work very hard to conjure some feeling of outrage at the casual killing of the animals and then, literally within a single page of the book, he looks up, unexpectedly sees some buffalo walking by, grabs his gun and shoots one with no pause and no more comment than, "The seriousness of what I'm about to do feels like a great weight."

It came a bit out of left field. I'm sure his moral and emotional landscape is more complex than it seems—some time later he says he feels an amalgamation of guilt, thankfulness for the food, appreciation of the animal's beauty and a regard for its history—however, none of that comes out during the passages describing the event. I don't think poor convictions; I think poor writing.

On the whole, I found the book entertaining and informative enough to give it a mild recommendation. I'm glad I read it. Depending upon the subject, I can see reading another Rinella book in the future, though I don't know that I'll be active in seeking them out. One last caveat: from the time he describes shooting the animal until the end of Chapter 14 are a series of some fairly graphic descriptions of butchering the animal. If this isn't something you can stomach, be prepared to let your eyes skim.

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#123 - I finished this one recently and your review makes me want to go back and read the chapter on the kill. It was quick, but I guess I saw it as representative of the feel of a hunt...you wait and wait and watch the signs and then suddenly the animal is there and you must make a decision. I think I will go over it this weekend more thoroughly.

Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann, translated by Anthea Bell



The basic story is a mystery: a shepherd is murdered and the book is told from the perspective of his sheep as they try to unravel who did it. It sounded lighthearted, perhaps a bit fluffy, but it might be fun...and, certainly, it has received positive reviews. In the end, I only found it fair. The personalities of the sheep were well done—human-like, but certainly not human—and I enjoyed them. However, the plot could not carry the story: disjointed, lacking in depth, and occasionally venturing off into the metaphysical, which didn't fit the book's type.

Ulysses by James Joyce



I don't really know what to say—perhaps: I "read" all of it, "got" maybe half of it, "liked" less than a quarter?

For the reading, I approached it with trepidation, as words like "unreadable" and "incomprehensible" have often been bandied about. I didn't find it unreadable. It was difficult at times—the constantly changing writing styles, the profusion of pronouns instead of names, the common use of foreign languages, the...umm, irregular?...punctuation—all make this tough sledding at times, but it's difficult to read, not unreadable.

As for the getting, I think that much of the novel simply shot right past me. I'm reasonably familiar with The Odyssey and was able to follow that macro structure of the book. However, I know that much of the allusion and innuendo simply did not register with me from this book about which Joyce once said he "put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant." I understand that there are entire books...large books...devoted to explaining what is going on in Ulysses. Well and good, but that's more work than I'm willing to put into a book I didn't enjoy that much.

And, as for that, the truth is that I like stories in my stories, and I didn't enjoy Joyce as a story teller. There's no real question he's good at limning characters. There's even less doubt that the man had a command of the English language that was not short of dazzling. However, we never established a rapport with each other as writer and reader. I would find a portion of it interesting or funny and start to immerse, only to run into twice as many pages of text that I found mind-numbing in their opacity.

Does the fault lie with me? I'm willing to concede that it does simply because I cannot judge. I don't have the knowledge or training to decipher this work. I can only say much of the reported depth escaped me, evidently lost in unseen allusions and obscured by experimental writing techniques. For those familiar with Clarke's maxim on advanced technology and magic, here is my own variant: "Any literature, sufficiently abstruse, is indistinguishable from the un-profound."

In the end, I'm glad I read it so that I have an opinion rather than just hearsay. I would suggest that readers try it and decide for themselves, even if that means invoking the 50 Page Rule—it is, after all, often billed as one of the greatest books ever. However, for me it was neither moving, nor enlightening nor enjoyable. I'm content to be a cultural Philistine on this one and leave it for the intelligentsia.

"I'm content to be a cultural Philistine on this one and leave it for the intelligentsia."

Love it!

I tried this one based upon joycepa's recommendations...



Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon



The most famous conductor in the world is found dead of cyanide poisoning in his dressing room during the intermission of La Traviata. This is our introduction to Guido Brunetti, a commissario of police in Venice.

I understand why so many have fun with this series—it's fast, colorful, populated with engaging characters, and managed to avoid what I thought was the inevitable ending.

I'll definitely be back for the next one in this series

Narrow Dog to Carcassone by Terry Darlington



This was recommended by Amazon based upon my enjoying Emily Kimbrough's Floating Island. They both deal with trips aboard inland canal boats, but that's about it for similarity. Kimbrough's book was warm and funny. This one was simply tedious.

There were moments of humor but Darlington simply tries too hard. Every sentence tries to show you how witty he is, often in a sniggering teen-age way. He's not as funny as he thinks he is and his constant attempts to impress the reader with how broadly he can quote books, movies and songs pall. Couple this with unrelenting British slang and unexplained canal-boating terms, strong aversion to punctuation, a healthy set of prejudices, plus an extreme case of ADD when it comes to following a train of thought, and you've got a choppy, awkward book.

After a while I simply couldn't listen to him describe how everyone in England or France is a vandal, drug addict or worse, his wife telling him she shouldn't have married him, or any of them saying "we're gonna die" one more time and just started heavy skimming past all the "this guy's a dick" and "my dog is farting again".

Imo, read Kimbrough's book; give this one a pass.

ETA: I usually pay some attention to comments in Publisher's Weekly and Kirkus. In this case, I only read the former (and didn't give enough weight to some comments)—my bad. Kirkus would have had me think twice with lines like, "Unfortunately, those moments of luminosity are rare in a text more notable for overblown vacation babble, long-winded stories, grand overstatement and pompous bombast - plus some daunting British slang impenetrable to all but the most seasoned Anglophile."

Born with a Tooth by Joseph Boyden

Fiction, Short Stories
243 pages



Thirteen short stories, related in that they focus on First Nation life in Ontario. Of course I have my favorites, but each of them is beautifully written, pulling the reader in effortlessly. There's something here no matter what your mood: sadness, love, humor, tragedy, triumph and anger.

I have only read two of his books so far (Three Day Road earlier this year) and Boyden is already becoming one of my favorite writers.

Thanks for the review, Tad. I had not heard of Boyden before, but this book and From Mushkegowuk to New Orleans sound very interesting, and I'll look for them in the next day or two.

>132 kidzdoc:: I plan to read the latter after Through Black Spruce, which is the second in the trilogy about Cree begun in Three Day Road. I haven't put my finger on what it is about his writing that I like so much, but I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

I was surprised when I read about him to find that he teaches in New Orleans with his wife. Somehow, the lake region of Ontario and the bayous of Louisianna seem worlds apart. :-D

deebee1 recommended this anthology in last year's 75 book group and I've finally gotten around to it.



NW15: The Anthology of New Writing Vol. 15 edited by Bernardine Evaristo & Maggie Gee



This collection of short stories, essays and poetry provides the reader with a wide-ranging variety of themes, ranging from Ursula Holden's serious essay on what it means to be a writer, through Rahat Kurd's serious and surprising story about why a Muslim woman chooses to cover her hair, to Anita Desai's haunting ghost story.

All of the pieces intrigued me; three leap to mind now that I've finished the book. The first—and I think the best in the book—was Selma Dabbagh's story, "Down the Market", of an American exchange student watching a terrorist raid carried out by Israelis on Palestinians. The second was Zoë Strachan's "The Secret Life of Dads", a very real tale about a young man connecting with his father. Finally, Adam Marak's "Batman vs. the Bull", a story of a confrontation between a young boy and a child molester, left me feeling quietly satisfied. I also loved Kate Rhodes' defiant little poem, "Four Things You Never Got to See" and Tod Hartman's riotous "Dear Dear Leader", an epistolary conversation with Kim Jong-Il.

I recommend this.

Thanks, Tad; I'll be on the lookout for this book.

Cooking with Fernet Branca by James Hamilton-Patterson



urania1 billed this as "pee-in-your-pants" funny. She was quite right.

Gerald, ghostwriter for stars, innovative (serious understatement there!) cook lives in delightful seclusion on a Tuscan mountaintop. Moving in next door is Marta, composer of film scores, émigré from the former Soviet republic of Voyde. Both are articulate and intelligent, though a bit idiosyncratic, people—both are convinced the other is a barely literate, bibulous cretin. The resulting comedy of manners had me laughing the entire way through.

Plus, for those who are on the adventurous side of the culinary world, you get the recipes for such delights as Garlic and Fernet Branca Ice Cream, Otter with Lobster Sauce, Iced Fish Cake, and many others.

Sharpe's Prey: the expedition to Copenhagen, 1807 by Bernard Cornwell



This is the fifth (chronologically...they were published in a different order) in Cornwell's series about Richard Sharpe, a soldier in the British infantry during the Napoleonic Wars. As the subtitle says, this episode occurs during the British invasion of Copenhagen in 1807, a seldom-remembered event. Denmark possesses the second most powerful navy in existence after Trafalgar destroyed the French fleet. The Danes are neutral in the wars and have taken their fleet and moored it up in Copenhagen's harbor, refusing to allow either side to use it.

As our story opens, the French have just concluded the Treaty of Tilsit with Russia, one whose provisions states that the Russians will turn a blind eye toward a French move to seize the Danish fleet. The British cannot afford to allow this and demand that Denmark moor the fleet in England for safe-keeping. The Danes refuse. In response, the British attack Copenhagen, shelling—tactics that presage the horrors of warfare a century later—the civilian population of the city with thousands of explosive and incendiary rounds in order to break the Danish will and force them to yield the ships.

Richard Sharpe is sent into this volatile situation in advance on a mission as a bodyguard for Captain Lavisser, who has orders to follow up on intelligence that the Danish Crown Prince is amenable to a bribe. Of course, the reader is aware from an opening scene that this intelligence was faked by Lavisser himself who is a French agent and intends to abscond with the £43,000 in gold while opening the city to the French. What follows is an exciting ride through intrigues, betrayals and battles. This book packs a bit more punch than the previous, where Sharpe's actions were somewhat constrained by being at sea.

The overall tone of the book is not as up-beat as some of the earlier stories. When Sharpe enters the book, we learn immediately that Grace died in childbirth and Sharpe is left rudderless: he cannot deal with her absence; he had spent his fortune on property for the family they were starting, only to lose it to her family's lawyers afterwards; he does not fit in as an officer because of his background and sees no future in the Army. The subplot of this story is Sharpe coming to terms with all of this, emerging at the end still sad, but able to let Grace go and throw himself back into life an infanty officer. In addition to Sharpe's personal troubles, new layers (darker layers) are added to his personality as he watches, appalled, the slaughter of the helpless Danes, full of contempt for those who make strategic policy.

A good read.

Death in a Strange Country by Donna Leon



An America soldier is found floating in a Venetian canal, murdered. Commissario Brunetti is called in and soon finds himself involved in a case extending from Venice to the American military base at Vincenza—complicated by government cover-ups, shadowy Mafia presence and insurance scams.

This is the second in the series and I enjoyed it even more than the first. The plot is reasonable...more a "why did the murder occur?" than a "who did the murder?" story. It moves along swiftly and logically. Ms. Leon continues to flesh out her characters, mostly by providing us further glimpses into Brunetti's family, from the son starting to emerge from the Land of Teenage Angst to the father-in-law who moves in the powerful world of the movers and shakers that start to take notice of Brunetti's efforts.

The best part of the story is that it doesn't have a pat solution. Once the reader understands all that is going on, any complete solution would have been simply too neat, though many mystery authors would have tried. Instead, though the reader is left with a very satisfying resolution to some of the immediate problems, Donna Leon makes no secret of her stance on some of the larger issues involving big business and government, and the reader is left sharing some of Brunetti's cynical perception that he has done nothing to solve the real problems...only moved them somewhere else.

I recommend this series for mystery fans.

Tad, Joseph Boyden won the Canada literary Giller prize for his Through Black Spruce. He is Canadian and has a portion of Cree in his blood.

I read it but was not blown away - I was in the minority there, obviously.

(I think a lot of people were hoping that The Cellist of Sarajevo would win.)

So glad to have found and caught up with your journal. Great reviews; I've added several titles to my wishlist thanks to you...

>139 kiwidoc:: I'm going to be reading the Boyden on a trip next week. We'll see how it goes compared to his earlier stuff (which I loved, obviously). I've also got The Cellist of Sarajevo sitting on the TBR pile—I have high hopes for it.

>140 Fullmoonblue:: Thanks.

Purity of Blood by Arturo Pérez-Reverte translated by Margaret Sayers Peden



This is the second in Pérez-Reverte's series about Diego Alatriste, a sword-for-hire in 17th century Spain. Moving from the intrigues with England of the first book, this story brings the characters up against the Spanish Inquisition, as Alatriste and Iñigo are betrayed in an attempt to extract a young girl from a convent. These are not sugar-coated historical romances. The author has no hesitation over populating the story with fanatic priests who will torture major characters, with corrupt political figures who do not scruple to burn innocents at the stake in order to score a political "point" over an opponent. Nor does he attempt to make his main characters more sympathetic by imbuing them with 21st century mentalities.

The plot line of the book is not overly strong. Nothing unexpected happens to surprise the reader. However, the pacing is well done and the book is a quick and pleasant read. In the balance, I'd have to say I enjoyed this slightly less than Captain Alatriste, but will not hesitate to read the third. As with the first book, fans of Dumas' musketeer books will likely enjoy this one, though I continue in my belief that the books are not as similar as many make out—the persective of gallant, somewhat naïve d'Artagnan gives us a far different world than that of the cynical, brutal, somewhat amoral Alatriste.

The Wedding Officer by Anthony Capella

General Fiction
420 pages



This book was a bit of a surprise to me. Reading his first novel, The Food of Love, what you got was a romantic comedy based upon the Cyrano theme: fun-filled, light, and full of sensuous descriptions of food. I expected the same from this book based upon its description.

It's 1944, and Captain James Gould arrives in Naples, assigned to discourage marriages between British soldiers and their gorgeous Italian girlfriends...Once a masterful cook in her father's restaurant, Livia Pertini is the Allied officers' new chef.

You can guess where it goes from there.

However, though the book is still humorous and generally light reading...and is certainly filled with sensuous descriptions of food...Capella adds a bit more roundness to this work by including the darker aspects of Italy 1944: the complete destruction of a country caused by both retreating Germans and advancing Allies; 40,000 Neapolitan women (out of the estimated 90,000 women in Naples) working as prostitutes to avoid starvation; the Allied plan to kidnap those prostitutes who had syphilis and forcibly relocate them behind German lines in order to infect the enemy soldiers; the list goes on. Some, perhaps, will not like these darker notes in their romantic comedy, but I thought it made the book a richer. Instead of hearing a single note throughout the entire story, one reactions shift back and forth, providing more contrast.

Perhaps I felt that Laura and Bruno in his first book had slightly more chemistry than Livia and James do in this one, but it's a minor flaw in the overall work which I would certainly classify as a very pleasant summer read. Definitely R-rated if you're planning on giving it to someone without reading it first.

Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee



Strongly recommended...whether you've seen the movie or not.

My Review

This is a very impressive reading list. Several of your reviews inspired me to add books to my wishlist.

Perhaps I, too, will get around to reading Ulysses someday. I haven't had the guts to try, yet. I did, however, read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. How do the two compare? Is Ulysses more difficult to "get?"

I haven't read the other yet. It's on my list for later this year.

Cromartie v. the God Shiva: Acting Through the Government of India by Rumer Godden



My Review

Bottom Line: Those who read my thread in last year's 75 Challenge Group know that I've become a fan of Rumer Godden's brand of story telling. However, this one wasn't one of her best, though it certainly had one of the more intriguing story concepts.

Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama



My Review

Bottom Line: A pleasant and articulate read, but not ultimately satisfying if you're looking for a picture of what shaped the man who is President. It recounted some of the events that influenced his life, but did not answer the "why" questions about what made those events the important ones.

Dressed for Death by Donna Leon



Another pleasant adventure with Commissario Guido Brunetti. A nearby town calls Brunetti in to investigate the corpse of what is apparently a transvestite found lying near the industrial district, a common hangout for the sex trade.

I enjoyed this one even more than the last (Death in a Strange Country). The story felt more like a mystery, whereas the last one felt a bit more like a political treatise. This is not to say that Leon doesn't provide some commentary on social issues in this episode. In this one, she turns her attention to the condition of prostitutes, particularly male prostitutes, and transvestites in Italy. As usual, there is a fair degree of cynicism about Italian authorities and social conventions as Brunetti works to resolve the case in spite of them.

Three books in and this series is still one I recommend—they are getting better as they go.

The River Between by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o



My Review

Bottom Line: I have no doubt that I will re-read this exceptional and hauntingly sad story of social strife in a Kenyan village, nor that I will be seeking out other works by this author.

It is not long and I strongly recommend it to anyone with even a mild interest in African literature.

TadAD, I enjoyed The River Between also, and I can highly recommend Ngugi's later novels. The ones I've read, Petals of Blood and Wizard of the Crow are longer, more complex, and more bitingly satiric than this one, which I believe was his first.

>151 rebeccanyc:: Thanks for those recommendations. I'll definitely look them up.

I absolutely loved Wizard of the Crow; The River Between is now on my wishlist.

Wizard of the Crow was fantastic, as was A Grain of Wheat (both 5 star books, IMO).

The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women by Jessica Valenti



Bottom Line: I think this is an important book to read. It's not flawless. For some people it will be anathema. Nonetheless, this is a debate we should be having openly and honestly rather than sniping at each other from the gutters.

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My Review: I think that this book can be...largely...summed up with the following quote:

It's time to teach our daughters that their ability to be good people depends upon their being good people, not on whether or not they're sexually active.

In other words, it attacks the notion that females should be defined by their sexual status and that the only theater where they can operate morally is in the decision about whether or not to have sex outside of marriage.

Regardless of what you may have been told about this book, it is not a polemic in favor of promiscuity...the central issue isn't whether a woman decides to have pre-marital sex or not, it's how society views that decision. A footnote she wrote expresses it best:

For the record, I think virginity is fine, just as I think having sex is fine. I don't really care what women do sexually, and neither should you. In fact, that's the point. I believe that a young woman's decision to have sex, or not, shouldn't impact how she's seen as a moral actor.

The book's topics range from the "the desirable women are young girls" message of our mass media (think Britney Spears or the fastest growing type of plastic surgery...vaginal rejuvenation), through the fetishization of virginity (think Purity Balls), to an examination of the problems with Abstinence Only Education (it's not working). Along the way, it touches soundly on rape, the impossible standard of "manliness" our society endorses, abortion, and the legal situation of women in our country today. In other words, this book is going to push a lot of buttons for some people.

I think that's OK. I think it's fine to challenge people's opinions, to make them step up and understand why they think the way they do. If they can do it...even if only to their own satisfaction...at least people are thinking about things rather than just engaging in some patellar reflex. If they can go a step farther and articulate and defend, we move on to honest discussion and maybe doing something about problems.

I'll be forthright: I agree with much of what was said in this book. If that means you want to stop reading this review right now, I'm OK with that. I am concerned about this virgin/whore thing we've got going in this society—that a woman is either one or the other. Yes, I have opinions about sexuality in young girls, but I also believe that they are much more complex creatures than a hymen—I want my daughters to place serious value on "compassion, kindness, courage, or integrity".

The book is not perfect, in my opinion. It is a little strident and reiterative. Perhaps this is necessary to drive the message home against the societal pressures arrayed against it; I don't know. However, that aspect did feel a bit abrasive at time, like I was being shouted at. And, I think it teeters on the edge a few times: not in intent, but in articulation. For example, I would certainly agree with her position that it would be good if a woman did not have to be cautious if she's had a couple drinks and decides to walk home at night from a bar. However, it think it is naïve to endorse that a woman shouldn't be cautious...it is not a perfect world and there are men out there who rape women. I want to be clear: I don't think she actually takes this position, or others like it, but it did read that way to me at times.

This book would make a phenomenal Book Club read...assuming the members could behave like adults and discuss the issues. It homes in on one of the the most central elements of our culture and asks us to take a clear look at it. That would be much more fun than reading a book where everyone agrees!

Read it; think about it; argue about it, if you wish!

Battle Cry of Freedom by James M. McPherson



Bottom Line: Exceptionally easy to read, describes not only the actual conflict but the social and economic forces that caused the war and shaped its outcome. Highly recommended if a history of the Civil War interests you.

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My Review: There are certainly more detailed histories of the Civil War out there—looking at the 2946 pages of Shelby Foote's work I have sitting on my shelf makes that clear. However, it's hard to imagine something approximating this scope that does a better job of explaining the Civil War than McPherson's Pulitzer Prize-winning book.

Starting in 1847 with the Mexican War, and ending with 1865, the book cycles between political, social, economic and military aspects of these years. Setting the war against the socio-economic backdrop explains not only the war, itself, but gives the reader insight into many of the aspects of what our country has become. This book allows the reader to see quite clearly the premise that the United States of today owes more to the Civil War than it does to the American Revolution and the Founding Fathers. In fact, in his Epilogue, McPherson argues that the South (despite being a slave-owning society) was a better representation of the social order of our European roots, and that the Civil War changed America's future to the less mainstream, Northern vision of society.

McPherson brings the major players of the time to life for the reader. Of course, the result of this was often a feeling of incredulity at how much insubordination, incompetence, timidity and plain old-fashioned back-biting went on in both armies and governments. There were many times in the book where the reader cannot help but wonder if a more decisive general couldn't have ended the war sooner. Though, this may or may not have been a positive thing: had the South not been so completely beaten, then the Northern determination to alter the Southern way of life, by force if necessary, may not have had time to become so fixed in the minds of Lincoln, Republicans and the population who gave them a mandate, and the conflict might have erupted anew later on.

McPherson's easy writing style, seldom dry or pedantic, occasionally humorous, makes this book extremely readable. Though it is long and chock full of content, it never felt slow or dense.

Highly recommended.

Ragamuffin by Tobias S. Buckell



Bottom Line: Turning out to be a science fiction writer I watch for, not another clone of everyone else's space opera.

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My Review: I haven't been reading much science fiction lately...so much of it seems derivative and cliché and, quite frankly, boring. Therefore, it's a good feeling to find an author who seems fresh and original.

I read Buckell's Crystal Rain last year—this book is the sequel, moving the conflict from a single planet, "Lost Colony" type of story, to the wider, interplanetary backdrop of a space opera. There's something of Reynolds in his plotting and maybe a hint of Cherryh in his depiction of aliens, but his voice seems quite unique to me. One of the interesting things is that a lot of the background in his stories is based on Aztec and Caribbean cultures. It doesn't come across as a gimmick, just a natural part of the story. The larger events of the plot in both of the books aren't particularly surprising, the details of the paths to get there are intriguing and exciting.

With well-drawn characters, good plots and plenty of action, this is fun science fiction. The third volume has been published...I'm looking for it.

Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy by Rumer Godden



Bottom Line: A wonderful novel about self-forgiveness and compassion.

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My Review: Elizabeth Fanshawe gets lost in Paris in 1944 during the celebrations over the liberation of the city. She is helped, befriended, ultimately seduced and used by Patrice, the owner of a brothel, who turns her into the prostitute, Lise. Scarred in an accident with a customer, Lise becomes La Balafrée, the successful and worldy madame running the brothel. Her final transformation comes years later when, after imprisonment for a murder, she becomes Soeur Marie Lise, a nun in the order of the Dominicaines de Béthanie.

The story is based upon the real Dominican Sisters of Béthanie, an order whose work includes helping prostitutes, drug addicts, others afoul of the law and which sometimes accepts these individuals into their ranks in accordance with one of their principle sayings: very great sinners have within themselves what makes the greatest saints.

I found this book more reminiscent of In This House of Brede than the other Godden books I've read since. Not only is its religious setting of a convent similar but the manner of the story also has that more serious, even adult, tone that the earlier book had. It is told as a series of flashbacks over Lise's life from the age of 20 into her mid 50s, chronicling her journey of self-forgiveness and discovery of a life that gave her fulfillment and purpose.

I thought it was beautifully written, particularly full of vivid characters.

Death at Victoria Dock by Kerry Greenwood



Bottom Line: Another light piece of mind candy in the Phryne Fisher series.

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My Review: The Phryne Fisher books, of which this is the fourth, are quite short, populated with many simple characters, and lightly plotted.

Nonetheless, there is something endearing about the outspoken, bold, wanton Phryne that makes them fun to read. Perfect for a couple of hours on a summer afternoon, I can't help but enjoy these pieces of mind candy.

In the particular episode, Ms. Fisher runs afoul of a band of anarchists in 1928 Australia. Irritated that they shot at her, angered that they shot up her car, and infuriated that they killed a handsome young boy...for her opinion is "You know how I feel about pretty boys—there aren't enough of them in the world as it it—we can't have people wantonly removing them"...she decides the killers must be hunted down and punished, preferably by hanging.

They are best found at the library or second-hand shop, since paying $25 for a 164 page, read-once mystery seems a bit excessive but, if you enjoy this kind of summer reading, give them a try.

Tad, I'm interested to read your review of Rumer Godden's book. I've never read anything by her, but I remember my mother being fond of her work, and that she had a copy of The Greengage Summer. I will have to look and see whether I kept it somewhere.

>160 rebeccanyc:: I've never read that one, Rebecca, though I'd like to at some point.

She seems to have two types of books, those with an adult tone of which the most famous is probably In This House of Brede or perhaps Black Narcissus...both made into movies at some point, one with Diana Rigg, one with Deborah Kerr. The other type are her what I call her "tweener" books. I believe The Greengage Summer is the most famous of that type.

Interesting point, but of course when she wrote it there was no such thing as "tweener" books, or even "young adult." Even when I was a child we went from kid's books straight to adult books, although of course there are all levels of adult books.

Gone for a little over a week. I've returned to find a small stack of titles for my wishlist!

>162 rebeccanyc:: Yes, true.

Great review of The Purity Myth. I'll definitely watch for it at my library.

I read The Greengage Summer when I was 12 or 13, and remember loving it--in fact I wouldn't mind looking for it and reading it again now. I don't remember it being particularly "YA" (other than its characters were of that age) and I was reading "adult" books at that time.

I am going to look for Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy to add to my library.

The Greengage Summer is a wonderfully entrancing book. It is a thinly described memoir of a summer Rumer Godden did spend in France. I have the Folio Edition with a wonderful introduction by Godden describing the events of that mysterious summer.

I'm going to look for The Greengage Summer this weekend when I go to my family's house in the mountains. That's where I remember seeing it -- I can picture the cover -- when I was a child.

Sharpe's Rifles: Richard Sharpe & the French Invasion of Galicia, January 1809 by Bernard Cornwell



Bottom Line: The sixth episode in the Richard Sharpe series—still fun, but not quite as good as the previous five.

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My Review: This is the sixth episode, chronologically, in the adventures of Richard Sharpe, British infantryman during the Napoleonic Wars.

Up front, let me say that this book is still a lot of fun. It's only in comparison to the first five that I downgrade it a bit.

This book was written ninth, which might seem fairly far along in the 24 book series, but it was still before the first five books that preceded it chronologically. I think that this shows in a couple of ways.

You get some hints of this in the facts of the story. In one scene, Sharpe is recounting the battles he has fought in and needs to make a fairly complete accounting. Though he mentions Seringapatam, Assaye and Gawilghur, he omits mention of Trafalgar and Copenhagen...presumably Cornwell hadn't thought of those adventures, yet. There is also a bit of an inconsistency in his reaction to the weight of Murray's cavalry saber, though he used—and liked—a much heavier sword in India during the first three books. However, those types of things are really very minor and don't detract from the book.

What did detract, for me, from the last sixth of the book was Sharpe's character. It seemed less formed that it had in the first five books. Without giving specific spoilers, I thought this was most notable in his reactions to Louisa Parker toward the end: his initial response felt right but, within a day, this brooding, sensitive, sometimes bitter fellow was somehow happy-go-lucky and accepting of rather unfair and certainly unexpected behavior toward him by a couple of individuals. It didn't fit the Sharpe we've come to know and didn't ring true.

On the positive side, we get an exciting opening and, once we get past a bit of mysticism in the middle, a quite exciting ending. We get introduced to Patrick Harper who is almost as an enjoyable character as Sharpe, and who I understand plays a major role in succeeding volumes.

The series is very good; this particular episode is good. I continue to recommend them.

>167 urania1:: urania - Maybe I'll make that my next Godden read. I've liked everything of hers so far with the exception of Cromartie v. The God Shiva, which I thought was fair.

Death and Judgment by Donna Leon



Bottom Line: The fourth Guido Brunetti mystery—Leon ups the cynicism factor as Brunetti struggles against the moral vacuum of Venice and Italy.

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My Review: Another wry and cynical pas d'armes between Commissario Brunetti and the corruption of Italian society. Once again, what starts off looking like a simple crime gradually extends tendrils into the world of the powerful and wealthy of Italy, the individuals who not only view themselves as above the law but, to a certain extent, are above it.

Brunetti gave another small smile, "...we need...a list of Signor Trevisan's clients..."

"I want you to bear in mind that these are not the sort of people who are usually subject to a police investigation."

Under ordinary circumstances, Brunetti would have remarked that, except for the last few years, the police had been investigating little except "people like these,"...

Brunetti must work against the criminals, his sycophantic superior and corrupt fellow officers to try to unravel the mystery of a series of murders. In the end, he succeeds in understanding what happened and curtailing some portion of the larger problem. However, unlike the previous three books, this one does not provide a neat and satisfying ending; Leon's disenchantment with the crumbling world of her detective is felt much more strongly in this volume. Don't take this as a negative; I think the atmosphere of this story is deeper for it and I'm looking forward to reading the fifth volume.

Potiki by Patricia Grace



Bottom Line: A calm, lyrical and very compelling story of a Māori community.

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My Review: This novel tells us of Hemi and Roimata and their children, members of a coastal Māori village in New Zealand. Though the book is filled with many tales, it forms a single story in three parts: introducing us to the family; showing their return toward traditional life following hardships, economic and otherwise, in the white world; finally telling of the conflict between this community and the developers, "Dollarmen", who wanted their land in order to build a resort.

For me, the value of this book lay in the fact that the surface story—the conflict between the indigenous people and those who would exploit them—didn't really form the theme of the book. Recounting that type of conflict has been done before, and often. Instead, I realized that this story was about connectedness in all its forms, about a world view that I found distinctly different and fascinating. Using the traditional carvings of ancestors that decorate the communal assembly hall as a thread that weaves through from the first pages to the last, Ms. Grace touched upon the villagers' feelings of connectedness with their ancestors; with their past history, both good and bad; with each other; with chance strangers who graced them with a visit; and with their land and dwellings.

The result was an interesting shift in perspective. Though the author's voice was politically clear in her beliefs, the result wasn't so much a negative definition, a rejection of the West, rather it was a positive affirmation of themselves—"we are what we have always been" rather than "we are not like you."

It was beautifully done. When the book was over, I felt I had obtained a real glimpse into another culture, and a little of the calm of the story had rubbed off.

Tad,

Thanks for the review of Potiki. Another one for my wishlist.

Thanks for the great review Tad. I read Waiariki by Patricia Grace earlier this year and loved it. You've described her perspective so well.

Thanks for pushing Potiki further up my TBR list!

Great review, Tad; I'll definitely make Potiki my first Patricia Grace read.

I remember reading Rumer Godden when I was a child, a book about a gypsy, could that be right? I remember loving it dearly. I had no idea she wrote stuff for adults as well.

Tad, if I suddenly drop everything and read all the Sharpe series in one go, I will blame you!

>177 tomcatMurr:: LOL.

Alexandria by Lindsey Davis



Bottom Line: Not the best in the series but I enjoy the series so much that it was still good...if that's makes sense.

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My Review: Some people love their Mosley, some their Leon, Grafton or Parker. For my part, Lindsey Davis' series featuring Marcus Didius Falco, an "informer" (private eye) in the Rome of Vespasian's day, are the comfort mysteries I snatch up as soon as they come out. Not only are the plots interesting and the backdrops exotic, but the characters are wonderful—Falco...up from the gutter, tough, honest, loyal and cynical as all hell; Helena Justina...patrician, ascerbic, cultured, loving and cynical as all hell; as well as a wide, ever-growing cast of supporting characters you grow to love or despise as their personalities demand.

This is the ninteenth in that series. It's not the best, having a slight flavor of formula based upon the previous books. I have no idea if this is a momentary dip—as will all series of this length, there have been greater and lesser stories—or whether Davis is tiring of it. I sure as hell hope not the latter.

If you like mysteries and you've never tried this series, I definitely recommend you pick up Silver Pigs (the first book) and give it a try. If you're already reading the series, this one isn't one of the best, but it's still fun.

Looking through the pile to find Silver Pigs . . . .I know it is in here somewhere, and it is high time it made its way to the top!

Catching up, and noticing that I've managed to lurk but never actually comment here. I love your Bottom Line. You've just inspired to add Battle Cry for Freedom and a book by Ngũgĩ wa Thiongʾo to my wishlist.

The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri, translated by Stephen Sartarelli

Mystery
218 pages



Bottom Line: Not my cup of tea.

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My Review: Note: I've edited this review after reading an article on the challenges faced by Sartarelli in translating Camilleri.

I picked this up because a fair number of other LibraryThing members have enjoyed it but, I have to say, it didn't work for me.

The locale (Sicily) was exotic and interesting but that's about it for positive aspects.

I found the story awkward and choppy—it simply didn't flow along, one scene leading to another in a graceful fashion. Everything, from the events of the story to the thoughts of the characters, seemed to strike jarringly, sometimes out of the blue, sometimes just awkwardly. More importantly, I did not find the characters enjoyable. They were emotionally flat and somewhat lifeless. I left the book knowing little about Montalbano and caring less.

Finally, I found the language a bit of a distraction. Originally, I thought this was the fault of the translator. However, after reading an essay on the difficulties of translating Camilleri's style, I fault the author. In a plot-driven book, unless the story line deliberately has the protagonist as an outsider, I don't want to feel like a foreigner looking in; I want to feel that these are people I might know. However, the people in this story did not come across like they were speaking colloquially. It sounds like it was the author's choice to do this, but it didn't work for me.

I doubt I'll pick up another in this series. For mysteries set in Italy, I much prefer Donna Leon's Commissario Brunetti stories.

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

Science Fiction
405 pages



Bottom Line: An exception to the "it's hard to find good science fiction nowadays" position.

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My Review: I thought this was good science fiction, not landing among the pantheon of the Greats, but worth reading.

The entire story centers around a Jesuit mission to be the first to contact the inhabitants of a planet in the Alpha Centauri system. The author deliberately draws upon the parallels with the Jesuit missions to the New World three centuries ago. It is "soft" science fiction—less concerned with spaceships than with psychological issues—and I think it's entirely possible that the only reason it was science fiction at all was because there are no real "first contact" possibilities in the modern world and historical novels are too constrained by, well, the actual events of history. In fact, there's very little science in the story and the only effort you'll have to make is to move the dates of the story by a half-century or more in your mind (your call on the rate of technology progress). If you don't, you'll be wondering why you aren't reading about a few technological advances in today's newspapers...mining the asteroids, for example. For the rest, the author just sort of waves her hands at the mass driver for the spaceship and the hyper-efficient solar panels.

Ms. Russell has succeeded at type of plot structure that I think many authors fail at: the book starts with the present and then, in a series of flashbacks, tells you why the present looks the way it does. I usually find these somewhat boring; the author often fails to make the past anything but completely evident in the present and, so, why bother reading further? However, this book has done a good job of keeping up the suspense. The story opens with Emilio Sandoz, a Jesuit priest who is crippled and mentally unstable, being brought before the head of his order to explain what happened.

Why is everyone else on the expedition dead? Why did the second expedition, who rescued him, accuse him of murdering a child in front of their eyes? Why have all the muscles on his hands been surgically removed? The mysteries go on and on and, by-and-large, are well answered. I say by-and-large because a few of the minor questions have unsatisfying answers, particularly those dealing with the harm inflicted directly on him, but I don't think these ruined the story.

What did I like most about this? The aliens, for one. You get a sense of the fact that Ms. Russell is an anthropologist by trade. I didn't find them to be "humans in funny suits" or cardboard. I thought the action portions of the story also worked well in a John Carter of Mars sort of way. Perhaps it was the lack of science in the story, but there was a real feel of the Golden Age pulps to this. I particularly enjoyed the discussions about celibacy and sacrifice.

What disappointed me? Mainly the spiritual side-story. What was intended to be the major theme here was Sandoz' search for faith and God. However, we never really experience it; we just hear characters talking about it. This was a classic case where you want to say, "don't tell me, show me." The result was that, while I liked him a lot as an individual, I wasn't invested in his spiritual struggle. I didn't get any sense of identification with him and his spiritual triumphs and failures didn't move me or even resonate that much. I felt Ms. Russell simply rushed through this aspect of the book, particularly in the final events on the alien world.

In the end, it was a good science fiction story. It is extremely readable; you end up liking the characters...even the slightly corny ones...and caring what happens to them. It could have been a great one, but it failed to capitalize on its real strength: the spiritual journey of Father Sandoz.

I think this one's got enough mass appeal that you might want to try it even if you aren't a real science fiction aficionado.

TadAD - That's a really nice review. I haven't read it, and this gives a good sense of what to expect when (if?) I do get there. It also explains the confusion I had because I knew this book had a strong religious aspect, yet that did not seem to bother readers who might eschew that. So, anyway, thanks!

Tad,

I read The Sparrow earlier this year, but had not gotten around to reviewing it. You are "spot on" in my opinion. I am glad you posted your review to the book page. I can now just say "what Tad said"!

>184 dchaikin:: I'm one of the readers in question, I think. I'm unreligious, myself, and often find books that are written from a religious point of view hard to engage with or even actively off-putting. But I loved The Sparrow, and I think a large part of the reason why it worked for me the way it did is because the novel never required me to subscribe to Father Sandoz's theology in order to feel for him. And, man, did I feel for him.

I heartily recommend the book, personally, whatever one's religious affiliation.

(Edited to fix an annoying typo.)

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

Popular Fiction
322 pages in hardcover



Bottom Line:Filled with delightful moments of wicked humor; equally filled with pace-destroying philosophical ponderings; an ending that came out of left field—in the balance, I enjoyed this little spin on some fairy tale themes but it wouldn't be my top recommendation from this small press.

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My Review: I've read and really enjoyed two other Europa Editions books (Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio and Cooking with Fernet Branca) and really expected to love this one, especially since it was a runaway bestseller in Europe. However, I can't say that I did.

I felt like there were two works interleaved with each other.

The first was the story of two of the residents of #7 Rue de Grenelle in Paris. We are introduced to Renée Michel, deliberately striving to hide behind the stereotype of a Parisian concierge and conceal her intelligence, her love for Tolstoy, Mozart and the Dutch Masters. We also meet Paloma Josse, a rich, precocious pre-teen whose skewering observations on her social class lead her to a decision to kill herself on her thirteenth birthday rather than become what she despises. This story is darkly humorous, full of rich and absurd commentary on privilege, popular culture and pretension. It starts a bit slowly but I quickly found myself becoming invested in these two...despite their faults and minor hypocrisies...and impatient to have their stories re-enter the book.

The second is a platform for the author to wax philosophical on the meaning of life, the universe and everything. Through the first few of these interludes, I would simply grin and bear it. By the time I was three quarters of the way through the book, I found them simply mind-numbing. They exuded that faux-profoundness of a group of college undergraduates and absolutely destroyed the pace of a story I was really enjoying.

The ending. I can envision a lively group discussion about the ending. I won't say what it was, of course, though that makes it very hard to discuss. In my opinion, it didn't work. Perhaps it resonates with some particular European sensibility but, despite being (perhaps!) consistent with some of the philosophy expressed by Renée, it was simply too...I'm not sure of the word, perhaps "artificial"?...for my taste.

In the end, I don't think this book lives up to the standard it, itself, sets for books (when you get to the part about plums, you'll know what I mean). I'd like to do a William Goldman on it and create The Elegance of the Hedgehog: The Good Parts Version.

Enjoyed, but definitely not my favorite Europa Editions creation.

The Invisible Wall by Harry Bernstein

Memoir
320 pages in hardcover



Bottom Line: I ended up captivated by the inhabitants of this memoir about a childhood spent in extreme poverty and religious bigotry.

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My Review: Somehow, the first pages didn't encourage me. The extremely simple voice made me wonder whether his writing style was going to become tedious. The opening paragraphs made me think "uh oh, another 300 page whine about oppression." I don't know why...just my mood, perhaps.

It didn't really matter. Within a few pages more those thoughts had flown and I was simply reading. The simple writing style did not become tedious. The whines about oppression never appeared—in fact, there was never any whining about anything in a life that held more than its share of hardship.

At age 95, Harry Bernstein wrote his first book, a memoir of his life in a poor Lancashire mill town. Part of the story is about poverty, about a family with so little money that buying any food was, sometimes, a major problem. Part of it is about the trap of too little education and opportunity. More of the story is about the invisible wall—the divide that stretched up the middle of his street: all the houses on one side rented by Christians, all the houses on his side rented by Jews.

What I liked most about this book was that he simply recounted the stories, not particularly taking sides or drawing "larger meaning" from things. We see that, yes, there was a lot of anti-Semitism in the neighborhood but, at the same time, we see bigotry directed against the Christians with equal clarity and force.

The subtitle of the book is "A Love Story that Broke Barriers" and the much of the story focuses on a romance that crossed that wall. The author doesn't try to create a lot of suspense in the story; the reader can predict much of what will happen long before it actually occurs. However, I didn't find this objectionable—he simply tells the story in the chronology that his young self was able to understand or realize things and allows the adult reader to see ahead.

I understand there is a sequel picking up the next phase of his life after his family came to America. I don't know if I'll read it or not; it might be better to just leave things where they ended, allowing the epilogue of the book to let us know how everything turned out.

Definitely recommended. I'm waffling between 3½ stars and a "strongly recommended" 4 stars. I'll start conservatively but may change my mind later.

I'm so far behind in reading and posting that I don't see how to catch up. Leaving aside most of my summer light reading, here are some I found worth recommending or definitely had problems with...



The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan



Bottom Line: A marvelously-readable book about four meals, each the culmination of a particular food chain: your local supermarket food, something like Whole Foods food, organically/pastorally-produced food, and food directly hunted/gathered from nature.

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If you've read Barbara Kingsolver's book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, this will have a very similar feel and, to some extent, content. I preferred this one, however.

What Michael Pollan does is trace the production of three types of meals, one of them with two subtypes. The first is what you might obtain from your local supermarket—you may be surprised to learn that, no matter what you think you're eating, you're really consuming corn. The second is organic food, from nominally organic from a chain store to the food coming off a sustainable, organic, local-food farm. The last is a meal where he attempts to gather and hunt each ingredient himself.

I really enjoyed reading this. It had just the right pace and right level of detail to accomplish its purpose. It, by turns, horrified me about industrial food production, educated me about the various food cycles (natural and otherwise), amused me in a "laugh or you'll cry" manner with details of government policy, and encouraged me with stories of people who are trying to fix things. It also gave a rather thoughtful perspective on Animal Rights and the ethics of eating meat.

As it predicted, it now takes a deliberate act of "not thinking" to eat certain foods. It also makes me wish I lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains to be near Polyface Farm...where organic really is organic, not just a relatively meaningless marketing term defined into emptiness by the USDA.

This is another one of those books that you can make a case for being worth reading regardless of your particular stance on some of the issues, simply because it encourages you to think.

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith



Bottom Line: Wonderful first half...last third slightly hackneyed? Still, a book I enjoyed and recommend, especially if you like Austen.

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The back blurb of my copy has, "Everyone is cheering the return of I Capture the Castle." I'm rather surprised. This book is enjoyable enough that I'd have assumed it was continuously in print.

If you took a plot conceived by Jane Austen, slapped it down in the middle of the 20th century, you'd have the basic structure of the book—although, no promises that things will turn out as rosy as Ms. Austen would contrive. It worked well for me. The main character, Cassandra, was warm and engaging and I enjoyed her voice (the novel is in the form of her journal). The other characters fulfilled their roles reasonably well: her sister, Rose, a bit off-putting; her father, the eccentric; the object of her affection, Simon, somewhat affection-worthy; etc.

What kept the book from a higher rating was that I found the last third...until the last few pages...did not live up to the book's beginning. The first part was full of her 17-year-old observations on her family's condition of abject poverty and the colorful characters around her, sometimes witty, sometimes insightful, sometimes naïve. The story eventually turned into a somewhat commonplace tale of unrequited loves and infatuations. It was still very readable but it didn't have that amusing sense of freshness of before. I could see a teenage girl writing those things but I'm not sure they are so enthralling for the reader. The ending rescued it, however, avoiding the trite for the intriguing.

All-in-all, it was an enjoyable book and I'd recommend it if you like this sort of story.

PS: She's the author of One Hundred and One Dalmatians for those who have loved that story. :-)

The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims' Progress by Mark Twain



Bottom Line: As always with Twain, quite funny, though the middle part seemed to get a bit caustic.

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Twain's travelogue of an expedition he organized to the Holy Land with a group of American tourists will provide hours of entertainment. He aims his wit at every single aspect of the journey, from the passengers (not excluding himself) to the natives of each country they pass through, skewering each ridiculous situation, or silly behavior he finds.

It's interesting to follow the progress of his mind-set through the story. At the start, there is only the comedy of Americans who need to get over themselves and funny situations in foreign lands. As the book moves into the middle third, his humor turns to cynicism and even anger as he encounters those who prey upon the hopes and beliefs of people in order to make money. Finally, upon reaching their destination, he is able to see past these things and reaches a sort of respect and amazement for the history and faith that lies underneath.

Definitely recommended.

Terra Incognita by Sara Wheeler



Bottom Line: Recommended but not rhapsodized, despite some reviews I had read. A little too sentimental, some occasional mean spirit, but gives a good picture of life in Antarctica today.

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This is a book that has sat on my shelf for a number of years, awaiting that moment when I was in the mood for an Exploration Memoir. I had a certain degree of high expectation about the book based upon initial reviews that talked about a "rare" and "extraordinary" book. After finishing the book, I can't quibble with "rare"—how many authors have travel books about Antarctica, after all? I do, however, disagree with the "extraordinary" part.

Ms. Wheeler does some things quite well. The book is full of stories about Amundsen, Scott, Shackleton, Wilson and a host of other figures from the early days of polar exploration. These stories are timed beautifully and go into just enough depth that they bring those early days to life. Rather than being a distraction from her adventures, they serve as a backdrop that provides color and contrast to the present.

She does an equally good job of giving you a picture of what life is like now, filling the book with tiny little details that turn abstract facts into vivid images—calling -50°C "cold" is true, but abstract; saying that -10°C "had come to seem tropical" is only slightly more real; saying that they threw a cup of boiling water in the air and it hit the ground as ice makes it all very clear.

The book is also full of a fair amount of humor at life in this extreme environment, ranging from the simply amusing (hang your clothes by a quick lick on the collar and then pressing them against the ice-covered walls of the cabin) through the faintly appalling ("solids only" outhouses that can electrocute you if you deposit liquids).

There is no central theme or defining journey in this book. Her adventures were mostly spur-of-the-moment, taking advantage of opportunities to visit this station or that as they presented themselves. Rather than feeling diffuse, I think this worked well. It gave the book a real feeling of "I want to see everything!" as she moved from helping unload cargo to apprenticing at one scientific site or another.

Yet, the book fails to reach "extraordinary."

She is, at times, mean-spirited. The inhabitants of the Antarctic stations are mostly male and, of course, any largely-single-sex environment is going to provide amusement or annoyance to members of the opposite gender...depending upon how much they are affected by it. However, her tone was not one of amusement or even irritation; it was one of unending condescension and superciliousness. Her British hosts (she was a guest at several national camps during her time in Antarctica) come in for particular slighting. This appears to have been triggered by the fact that she wasn't made much of on her arrival (though it's not explicit, my reading of the events is that she arrived during the changeover period when those who had been isolated for nine months by the winter finally got to see their friends again) and wasn't immediately made an intimate in a group of individuals who had spent months and years isolated together.

I also found the story a little too mawkish. There are those books where the author articulates a spiritual journey and I find them fascinating. However, I'm not so fond of those books where the author substitutes a vague sentimentality instead of finding words to describe something meaningful. A paragraph ending in "The dignity of the landscape infused our minds like a symphony; I heard another music in those days." is fine...a pretty, poetic picture. However, when these types of paragraphs occur every few pages throughout a 341 page book, when "the landscape spoke to me so directly that I no longer seemed to be made of ice" is succeeded by "It's as though God has given me a gift, once in my life, to step off the planet for two months and listen to a different music," it becomes tiresome. By the end, I found that my mind would skim these paragraphs rather than savor them.

It's not a perfect book. However, Ms. Wheeler writes well and does make the continent come alive. There are so few contemporary books about travels in the Antarctic, and even fewer written from a woman's perspective, that I would recommend this one.

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls



Bottom Line: I enjoyed this a lot, though I almost don't want to believe the life some children lead.

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Toward the end of the book, someone turns to the author and says, "You West Virginia girls are one tough breed." I have to agree wholeheartedly. The subtitle of this book could easily be Endangering the Welfare of a Minor for Dummies.

Jeannette Walls' memoir is about growing up in abject poverty in an extremely dysfunctional family. Probably the most notable thing about it is the total lack of whining. Through a childhood with the town drunk for a father, one of the most selfish and foolhardy mothers on the planet, constant emotional abuse (and sometimes physical), starvation and injury, she avoids self pity and simply tells her story with a clear determination that she wasn't going to fall into any of the traps life laid out for her. Though she never sugar-coats the events, the story is filled with the occasional flash of humor and a constant spirit of finding the adventure in whatever circumstances were dealt to her without ever seeming Pollyanna-ish.

I'm a bit late to the table on this book, my natural aversion to over-hyped bestsellers kept it on the shelf through the period of mania, but I'm very glad I read it. Recommended.

Dracula by Bram Stoker



Bottom Line: Kudos for being one of the progenitors of a genre; kudos for wonderful, creepy atmosphere; jeers for absolutely stupid good guys—a bit slow occasionally, but worth the read.

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In a way, you know what's going to happen; this story has been part of our culture for too many years (and too many movies) not to know. On the other hand, that didn't spoil it.

I'd divide this book into three parts. The first part (until Lucy's story is done) and the last part (once the active chase for Dracula starts) I found delightfully creepy and suspenseful. It was easy to see how this spawned over a century of horror stories. It was also fun to see the antecedents of all the little details of our current vampire mania—Eric gets Sookie to drink his blood so he can track her and hear her thoughts?...ahem, been there, read that.

The middle portion of the book was a tiny bit of a slog. It was light in the adventure department and rather high in both the protagonists-must-be-stupid and the people-must-pontificate departments. Oh well, it was another era and another standard of what is enjoyable in a story.

I recommend giving it a try; the very lack of modern "polish" lets this book conjure up a nice sense of darkness and terror.

Women of Algiers in their Apartment by Assia Djebar



Bottom Line: Feminist stories of Algerian women, exposing the voices suppressed by their culture. Incredibly dense and opaque prose at times that requires a lot of concentration but, even when not fully understood, summons images like a tone poem.

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Assia Djebar's book is a set of short stories and an essay about the women of Algeria and their existence in a society that wants to keep them apart from the world, subservient to the male. It isn't the romantic formula of Western literature about the harem; these are stories of oppression, both at the hands of individual men and from two paternalistic societies: French colonial and fundamentalist Islam. More precisely, they are stories about the loss of voice and public identity, about disappearing into a private enclave whose keys are held by men. I've re-read her Overture to the book several times, an introduction in which she discusses her choice to write in French, rather than the Arabic imposed upon her country and her sex. After each story, going back and reading it, the words become more clear:

Arabic sounds...but always in feminine tones, uttered from lips beneath a mask...An excoriated language, from never having appeared in the sunlight, from having sometimes been intoned, declaimed, howled, dramatized, but always mouth and eyes in the dark...Words of the veiled body, language that in turn has taken the veil for so long a time.

I found the chronology of the stories interesting; they move backward. They start with the 1970s in the days of post-colonial Algeria as the country moves toward an Islamic society. They pass through the arc at whose zenith women stood relatively equal with men as guerilla fighters, able to pass the French soldiers with a flirt while carrying their bombs and guns. They end with the stories of the colonial days. In comparing the last, with their seraglios, to the first, where the female freedom fighters are deliberately forgotten, their selves dumped into insane asylums under the care of male doctors, you get a real sense that nothing really changed—only the outward form is different.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of this book for me, given the feminist core, is the situation of men. Of course, many are simply the oppressors in these stories; she makes clear her position that the world would be a better place without them. Yet, the few men who are not the victimizers come across, themselves, as victims...and victims that are, in some ways, even more desperate: lost, alone and isolated. For, despite the subjugation of the women, both past and present, Djebar shows them bound together in a society of their own. When they are hurt or in need, it is always another woman who reaches out to ease their pain or help them understand. Shared suffering, forced seclusion and exclusion have crafted a hidden society, the world of the "apartment" or harem, which has bonds that aren't seen in the outside world.

There's a whole second level to this book, an allegory of Algeria as a woman, her true and diverse voice suppressed, first under the paternalism of a colonial power, later under the paternalism of Islam and Arabic. The language of this book is so dense and opaque that I need several readings to explore everything. I've read the first story three times and have come away with something new each time.

Highly recommended.

Six Not So Easy Pieces : Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time by Richard P. Feynman



Bottom Line: Recommended—but a very qualified recommendation.

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First of all, despite the title, viewing this as a sequel to Feynman's Six Easy Pieces may lead to a bit of disappointment. While both books are drawn from his monumental Lectures on Physics, they have a different target audience in mind. The first book aimed more at the lay reader, carefully choosing sections from the larger work that avoided mathematics and did not posit any prior understanding of physics.

This book, while still intending to educate the newcomer, is farther down the track, assuming elementary algebra, calculus and physics. In this case, elementary means elementary college level, not typical high school classes.

Do you have to have this to get through the chapters? No. However, without it, much of the content will be meaningless...in the sense that you'll just have to assume he's not talking baloney. You'd probably be better off finding an overview article on these topics somewhere on the Web and reading it. This material is from actual undergraduate lectures given by Feynman and the approach is correspondingly rigorous.

Feynman has a marvelous gift for making the esoteric understandable and entertaining. It's hard to imagine anyone could do a better job of giving an introduction to relativity. Nonetheless, these are "not so easy" compared to the first book.

A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins



Bottom Line: Wonderful subject but the overly-florid prose bothered me.

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At age 22, disillusioned with the suburban America of 1973, Peter Jenkins set off to hike across the United States. This book covers the first two years of that journey—from Alfred, New York, down along the Appalachians, to New Orleans.

It's a pleasant-enough book but I was expecting something of the caliber of his Looking for Alaska. This wasn't. Much of the writing in this earlier work is insipid and/or maudlin. I guess the 25 years between the two books served to hone his skills.

I don't really recommend this unless you're an inveterate travel-book junkie and I won't be making any special effort to read the sequel that chronicles the rest of his journey.

Selected Readings from the Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker



Bottom Line: Extremely witty but take in small doses to avoid gloom.

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If you've never read any Dorothy Parker, you've missed a great deal of sharp observation, trenchant wit and a talent for the caustic one-liner that is rarely equaled. This is a nice collection of 30 or so pieces that provide a representative sampling of her work from The New Yorker, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Life, and the host of other places that published her work. It includes her O. Henry Award-winning "The Big Blonde".

The thing about her writing is that, while it's bitingly funny, it usually exposes an underlying sadness in people or society. A too steady diet of it leaves me a bit cheerless. Therefore, I suggest sipping from this, keeping in on the nightstand and mixing in a story or review with your other reading.

Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon



Bottom Line: Just plain a lot of fun to read.

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This was a couple afternoons well spent. It's kind of hard to describe how this book came across other than just a much-more-colorful-than-life slice of life. Basically, a comic book concept—golems and fights from secret Antarctic bases—morphed into a novel, all about escape and escapism, heroes and triumphs over adversity.

At 600+ pages, it's not a quick book but I never found it plodding. Chabon sucked me in right from the opening scenes of the meeting between Joe and Sam and I didn't want to put it down. Joe's adventures escaping from the Holocaust and the drama of the pair breaking into creating comic books make the first half of the book fly by.

The book does peter out a bit in the last quarter. What starts out as a novel about two people, full of adventure, somehow ends up a story about just one of them with the other fading off into the background and the story line becoming more prosaic. Still, I was hooked by that time and anxious to find out what happened and there are moments that definitely move the reader even then. The good absolutely outweighs the not-so-good.

It was more upbeat than the other Chabon book I've read (The Yiddish Policemen's Union); I won't say better, just very different.

I definitely recommend this.

April & Oliver by Tess Callahan

Note: The author is a neighbor of mine, living a couple of houses up the street. I don't think that had any real influence on me other than ensuring I read the book, particularly since my reactions are not out of line with other reviews. But, you've been warned. :-)

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Bottom Line: A very enjoyable story about star-crossed lovers that avoids a lot of the trite aspects we often encounter; a bit frustrating as I was never able to connect with Oliver, though April was very real.

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My wife read it first and her comment was, "I enjoyed it but I'm not certain it's your normal type of book." Insofar as I have a normal type of book, this made me a bit uncertain and I wondered if I was in for what she calls "a woman's summer read" (not to be confused with chick lit).

Within twenty pages or so I had completely forgotten those thoughts and was simply enjoying the story. It's not my normal type of read but it was enjoyable. Take a basic story about a pair of friends who might have been lovers if only circumstances and timing worked. Then put some darkness and depth into their lives and don't resolve it with a clichéd fairy tale ending. The result worked for me.

Most of the characters came alive for me—I didn't particularly like them, but they felt real, which is what matters as far as I'm concerned. My only real problem with the book was that Oliver was an exception to this. He never came into focus, particularly as an object of desire for April. As the book progressed, April grew ever more real and rounded but Oliver just stayed fuzzy for me.

The language is very distinctive. It seemed very spare at first, yet the images she created were vivid and compelling. It reads easily and I finished the book in a single sitting.

My type of book or not, I'll read her next one.

The Various Flavors of Coffee by Anthony Capella

Somewhere around to

Bottom Line: Pleasant enough read but does not live up to either The Food of Love or The Wedding Officer.

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In a nutshell, I was disappointed with this book, though it wasn't bad.

It has the same writing style as his previous books: pleasant to read and fast paced. It has the same mixture of themes: a love of food, a good love story, a bit of adventure and action, and a bit of heated sex. It has even more plot twists and surprises than did they. What it doesn't have is likable characters.

Bruno from The Food of Love was a lovable Cyrano and Laura a sexy object of desire. James from The Wedding Officer was an amiable everyman and Livia entrancing. Unfortunately, Mr. Robert Wallis from this story is a fairly callow, self-centered and rather unpleasant youth. Even the more mature version we have by the end of the book doesn't seem fundamentally different, just a bit less puppyish. As for the two objects-of-his-affection, I found neither of them that attractive.

So, a well-written story populated by below-average characters, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it. I'll read his next one, hoping for something more like his first two.

Beyond that, Laurie R. King's Mary Russell books are picking back up after a precipitous drop following the first one. I read A Letter of Mary and The Moor—first was OK, second was enjoyable.

The addition of Dick Francis' son to the writing team cannot stave off the fact that the sun has set on these horse-racing mysteries. Read Even Money and didn't like it at all.

Found out I can enjoy but am I'm not a raving fan of Andrea Camilleri's Sicilian mysteries (The Shape of Water, The Terra-cotta Dog, The Snack Thief) but do really like Donna Leon's Venetian ones (Death and Judgment, Acqua Alta), thanks to Joyce's recommendation.

I think Paul Harding's Brother Athelstan series is going to be a decent replacement for the deceased Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael series. Read the third in the series, Murder Most Holy.

Guy Gavriel Kay continues to write great fantasies that read like histories. Read The Lions of Al-Rassan which takes its basis from the 13th century Spanish Reconquista.

Hated Moby Dick.

Still plowing my way through War and Peace and While in the Hands of the Enemy...for both I want large blocks of uninterrupted time and never seem to find it.

Enjoying catching up along with you.

Indeed. So many good things here. My wishlist grew quite a bit - Omnivore's Dilemma, Terra Incognita, Women of Algiers in Their Apartment, and April and Oliver. I think I will try to read Dracula before Halloween. Kavalier and Clay is one of my favorites - I was kind of sad for it to end. This: "Hated Moby Dick" does not help me. I keep trying to get pumped up to read it one day and can't find the motivation.

Fanny & Jane,

Thanks for stopping by.

I'm sorry I couldn't encourage you on Moby Dick. I've now decided, after reading two of his books, that Melville and I are simply oil and water and won't be trying anything else of his. :-/

--Tad

"The addition of Dick Francis' son to the writing team cannot stave off the fact that the sun has set on these horse-racing mysteries"

I felt that the partnership worked quite well in silks though. Very much a typical Francis. Maybe even money was just one of his not-so-good offerings rather than the beginning (or even the middle) of the end.

Lots of good reviews there. Thanks.

>206 reading_fox:: I haven't tried that one. I read Dead Heat and Even Money. The first was just fair; the second I didn't like. If I see Silks remaindered somewhere, perhaps I'll try it.

ETA: I feel like Francis' best years were a decade or two ago—the era of Reflex, Odds Against, Whip Hand, Hot Money. I'm not sure what the last one I absolutely loved was...maybe The Edge. However, you are right that he was uneven in his quality. Books like Slay Ride were never high on my favorite mystery lists.

For the Halloween group read...



The Wood Wife by Terri Windling



Bottom Line: A wonderful book, a must-read if you like American Southwest folklore combined with urban fantasy.

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I had remembered really enjoying this book from when I read it about 12 years ago. I had forgotten how much I liked it, enough that I'm nudging it into my Favorites list for this particular genre.

Windling takes the same basic American folklore stock as Charles de Lint and others have used and, like them, crafts it into a contemporary story where our world touches those myths. Coyote, Crow and other spirits walk just on the edge of our perception, seen only by a few. As is often true in folk tales, Windling populates her story with artists, their creative side drawing them closer to that other world and fragments from the works of Neruda, Borges and Rilke are woven into the tale, along with a bit of Windling's own poetry (which I rather enjoyed) as well as references to Kahlo, Miller and Nin.

There's a narrow path for stories that attempt contemporary fantasy. On one side lie stories where, despite the setting, there's no sense that it's really our world—Harry Dresden may claim to live in Chicago but...no...not really. To the other side lie those stories so rooted in reality that any magical elements seem intentionally to distort the tale. Neither is a bad thing; there are many enjoyable books written in both areas. However, because it's more rare, I enjoy a book that is unquestionably of this world and, yet, still has that sense of fey. This one does—there's never a moment of doubt that Davis Cooper was part of the hip scene in the 30s, or that Anna Naverra was an integral part of the Surrealist movement, or even that Maggie Black is a poet who has mislaid her muse in the commercial world of publishing. Yet, when Crow steps into view on the mountain, all I felt was, "Of course."

Part of it is the wonderful sense of locale that Windling creates. She lives in Arizona much of the year and her story evokes the beauty of the southwest, particularly the Rincon Mountains, rendering it seductive even to the non-native. By preference, I'm a creature of the American northeast, cool, well-forested, and abundantly watered. Yet, I couldn't help but be seduced by her words and want to go and experience the austere landscapes she portrayed.

The story she told and the setting would have been enough for me to enjoy this book, but I also appreciated in her distinctive vision of the spirits. If you imagine a continuum—someone like Jane Lindskold on the left with her mythical figures all too human, squabbling like the immature Gods of Olympus, through Charles de Lint in the center with his spirits otherworldly and remote but still capable of emotions we recognize, then Windling's creations sit over on the right. They are un-human in their concerns and motivations, neither good nor evil but amoral in the strictest sense. It felt chilling and right.

Is there anything I would change? Yes. I think some of the characters were underexposed, Tomás in particular. I would have liked her to stretch the ending a tiny bit, to turn the penultimate 25 pages into 50 and let us spend a little more time with the resolution. Yet, these are minor cavils and shouldn't detract from what I think is one of the better urban fantasy novels out there, one that really captures that fey sense.

I really wish she'd stop painting, stop editing, stop writing children's books, stop whatever else she's doing now and give us another novel such as this one.

Tad - your reviews are wonderful to read. I have often looked at the Michael Pollan book and wondered if I could be bothered reading about four meals - obviously I should and on the list it goes.

And a brace of mysteries set in Africa...



The Leopard's Prey by Suzanne Arruda



Another pleasant installment in this mystery series set in Kenya of the 1920s. I enjoy them though they're just lightweight reading. This episode does begin to touch upon the treatment of the natives by colonizing powers. I wonder if the books are going to take on a social consciousness aspect?



The Camel of Destruction by Michael Pearce



Bottom Line: The best so far in this colorful and humorous series of mysteries set in Cairo of 1910.

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The mystery plots in Michael Pearce's series are about average. What I find most enjoyable about these books is the wonderful setting and colorful characters with which he's peopled it...Cairo of 1910: the corrupt and bankrupt Ottoman government of the Khedive of Egypt and Sudan; the British Advisors and soldiers who occupy the country in fact, if not on paper; the Nationalist population drawing from the ranks of the city folk and fellahin. Pearce was raised in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and these books have a wonderfully authentic air to them, full of the sights and sounds of the city.

In this volume, Captain Owen—British occupier of the post of Mamur Zapt, Head of Cairo's Secret Police...i.e., charged by Britain to keep political matters from getting out of control—has to figure out how the suicide of a minor civil servant, some unknown person cheating citizens out of their inheritances and something going on at the Agricultural Bank all fit together. All told with the dry humor I've come to expect from Pearce.

The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason - Yuck! Didn't bother finishing this inane, inconsistent and affected thriller.

Sharpe's Eagle: Richard Sharpe and the Talavara Campaign, July 1809 by Bernard Cornwell - Lots of action, not so much plot or character depth as the chronologically earlier books in the series (this was either the first or second volume that he wrote). Still, I'm completely invested in this character by this point, so I enjoyed it.

This was going to be part of the "Books About the Piano" category of 999...



A Romance on Three Legs by Katie Hafner



Bottom Line: An interesting and enjoyable look at one of the more colorful musical greats, Glenn Gould, the Steinway Piano Company, the almost-blind piano tuner, Verne Edquist, and how they all came together in Gould's search for an instrument that let him fully express his artistic vision.

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This book is portrait of three individuals. The first is, of course, Glenn Gould: the highest paid concert pianist of his day who, nonetheless, abandoned the "jungle" of the concert stage and worked only in recording studios; a hypochondriac and sometimes bizarre figure who often refused to accept reality. The second is Verne Edquist: virtually blind, educated by the state in a trade school for the blind, who became one of the most gifted piano technicians in North America and, eventually, the person who made Gould's piano sound the way he envisioned it. The third is Steinway CD 318: a piano deemed past its useful life as a concert piano...dented, scratched and relegated to be sold second hand, which became his perfect instrument.

Hafner tells the story of Gould's half-career search for a piano that would allow him to play the music as he heard it in his head, the decades of perfecting its sound and creating an enormous catalog of recorded music upon it and, finally, the bittersweet loss of the instrument. Along the way, we are offered a look behind the curtain at the Steinway Company, particularly its Artists Program—an endorsement program similar in scope to Nike's dominance of sports figures today—as well as a glimpses of other major figures on the musical scene.

I enjoyed the book and read it in a single sitting. However, I can't help but compare it to the work by Perri Knize that I read earlier this year, Grand Obsession. They are similar in theme (the search for an ideal piano) but this book is drier, more intellectual. While I have a preference for that in Bach, I don't in biography and think that...if you must read only one...you should choose Knize's.

Recommended.

edit: typos

The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne



Bottom Line: I enjoyed the slow, leisurely building of a tale; I didn't enjoy the precipitous ending where everything is wrapped up by the narrator rather than the characters.

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Another atmospheric read for the Halloween Group Read but this one evoked some mixed feelings. I was expecting the slow, deliberate pace of 19th century fiction, and certainly got it. It required a willingness to be patient with the unhurried exposition of characters and the frequent pauses for admonitory reflection, plus an acceptance of the fact that there aren't going to be any electrifying moments. I wasn't in any hurry and was able to relax and enjoy the trip.

What I didn't enjoy was the ending. After 290 pages of this slow trip, we get a sudden and very pat ending for our characters in about 50 pages. Yet, even at that, very little of the story's completion came as part of the plot through the offices of the characters. Instead, the narrator interjects himself for half of it to give us an "oh, by the way" explanation, clarifying what has happened. I was rather disappointed by all this.

In the end, I'm glad I read it, enjoyed it, and would mildly recommend it. If you don't look for modern pacing or excitement, it can be quite pleasant...like floating along on a slow-moving stream with a nice view.

Tad - I read the Hafner book a few months ago and really enjoyed it. She is a journalist so you can see the research and attention to detail in her work. I think that if you understand the nature of Gould and his diagnosis of Asperger's - it explains his intense, perhaps irrationally over-focused obsession with the piano instrument that he played.

(Often seen in genius figures - Aspergers' with a savant aspect - a suspected diagnosis in Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, George Orwell and H G Wells. According to the diagnosis after death, these people had Asperger's syndrome: Ludwig van Beethoven, Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus, Andersen Hans Christian and Kant Immanuel,Huxley).

Now I am going to have to read the Knize book, after such glowing recommends. Thanks.

>214 kiwidoc:: Karen,

I hope you enjoy Grand Obsession.

About the Asperger's list: I just finished The Island of Dr. Moreau by Wells (and he studied under Thomas Huxley, or did you mean Aldous?) and my daughter is reading Andersen's tales to me. An interesting coincidence.

Aldous, Tad.

I seem to really like the Asperger's art - most on that list I loved. I discovered H.G. Wells when I was 8 and gobbled up all his stuff. I guess you have to account for the reader's brain too.

Medical diagnoses in historical figures is quite a fascinating subject - albeit imprecise.

Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden



Bottom Line: An absolute pleasure to read. Boyden is firmly in my Favorite Authors list now.

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I half-wondered if Boyden's second novel would engage me as his first, Three Day Road, did or whether it would turn out to be a case of a wistful "Oh well!" for another author lacking staying power. It was the former; I didn't want to put the book down.

Like his first novel, this is told by alternating narrators. The first is Will Bird, a well-known Cree bush pilot, who lies, comatose, in the hospital while his thoughts spin out the tale of how he got there. The second is his niece, Annie Bird, who has returned to Moosonee to sit with her uncle because her friend, a nurse, has told her that talking with a patient may help to rouse him. While sitting there, she tells him the story of her search for her missing sister, who went south to Montreal and New York to be a model. Eventually, you start to see the two threads merge naturally into a single story that's exciting and tense.

This book has the same clean writing style that I admired so much in both his first novel and his collection of short stories, Born With a Tooth. It's fluid, quick and compelling, and takes you right into the First Nation communities around Moosonee, or out into the frozen bush on the borders of Hudson Bay. He has also crafted another set of vivid and complex characters that engaged me from the opening pages.

Though this book won Canada's top prize for fiction (the Giller Prize), I still rank his first novel ahead of it. Will's story line is gripping and forceful—there wasn't a chance I was going to set the book down while in the midst his chapters. Some of Annie's tale, however, is a bit more prosaic. Though the portions of her story set at home drew me right in, when she recounts her sojourn in the drug-fueled lifestyle of the glitterati, there's a bit of dullness to the story...almost as if the superficiality of that life had colored the writing. I wanted those parts of the book over so I could get back to the North. I also found a faint hint of blockbuster in the ending as, after a climactic scene, everything begins to wrap up tidily.

But...don't interpret this as damning—I was delighted with this story and have added Boyden to my Favorite Authors list.

By the way, if the characters' surname sounds familiar to those who have read Three Day Road, Will and Annie are Xavier Bird's son and granddaughter. Since he has stated he will always write about the First Nations, I'm hoping there will be more stories about the inhabitants of Moosonee and Moose Factory.

Great review, Tad. I was not quite so taken with Boyden - I found his writing less appealing than you, but in a firm minority wrt that. I agree that the North setting was more appealing than the NY part.

An Autumn War by Daniel Abraham



Bottom Line: Part III of the quartology—loved it. I also love that Abraham is able to define a clear story arc instead of producing an endless stream of books that wander toward some vague ending.

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I really enjoyed this book, the third volume in Abraham's The Long Price Quartet. On one hand, I'm happy that the series is defined as a quartology; the current trend of dragging fantasy series on interminably is not enjoyable. On the other hand, I really like his writing and each volume is better than the last.

This one is does not suffer from the common "middle book" problem of being merely connective tissue between an interesting beginning and an exciting ending. The plot gets twisty and readers are forced to think about who are really the bad guys and who the good. The characterizations continue to be well done and there's plenty of action and excitement with an ending that leaves you anxious for the fourth volume (have no fear...it's already published).

One of the things I particularly like about this series is how the fantasy elements take a back seat to the stories about people.

Definitely recommended.

I picked this up based upon Prop2gether's and Avaland's comments last year...



Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell, translated by Stephen Murray



I really enjoyed this first book in the Kurt Wallender series—a very real detective dealing with an intriguing murder. Wallender came across as completely human—nabbed for drunk driving, struggling with a separation from his wife, unsure how to deal with his daughter. I also liked the social commentary as Wallender contemplated the changes happening in Swedish society.

For the Halloween Group Read...



The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells



I found this a rather compelling novella-length story. If you suspend judgments about 19th century biological theories, it's an exciting adventure story with a lot more atmosphere than I expected. There is also a great deal of social commentary. I can't help but wonder how the Victorian readers reacted to the body shots on the effects of a class system, the unflattering parodies of religion, and the warnings about equating pure scientific advances with true progress. The issues he touched upon are, perhaps, even more pertinent today than they were then.

I think this would make a fascinating Book Club read—quick, yet raising questions ranging from colonialism to cloning.

My favorite Wells' work so far.

A Halloween Group read...



Ghost by Alan Lightman



Maybe 2½ stars if I was in a good mood...but I'm tired. I never got interested in any of the characters; they came across as flat and insipid. The hoopla surrounding "I saw something I can't explain" didn't ring true—it was just too much of a reaction for a relatively minor, and common, event. I finished the story but it was absolutely unmemorable for me and I'm glad it was a library book.

Callisto by Torsten Krol



Torsten Krol (a nom de plume for a midwestern author who does not want to reveal his name) was extremely depressed about his recent divorce and decided to:

...rectify my lamentable situation by pouring scorn on a target worthy of my ire. No, not my ex-wife—George Bush and his attempt to carve himself a slice of history at the expense of ...just about everyone!"

Right about now, you should be examining your political leanings to decide if this book is for you, because he ain't kidding about the pouring scorn part.

Krol's story introduces us to Odell Deefus, a big, dumb hick who decides to enlist in the Army to fight against the "mad dog Islamites." On the way to the recruiting station, his car breaks down and he finds himself accidentally mixed up in a murder and not-so-accidentally involved with drug smuggling. These would be bad enough (if the police knew about them) but he is also mistaken for a terrorist by Homeland Security, deported to someplace suspiciously like Guantanamo where the expected things happen, and completely unable to contact the object of his major infatuation, Condaleezza Rice, to explain things. The whole thing becomes a giant, satirical look at a bureaucracy that distorts reality to conform to its beliefs.

Wickedly pointed humor that's wickedly funny. I loved it.

Jamilia by Chingiz Aïmatov, translated by James Riordan



Bottom Line: Avaland recommended this one—I do, too.

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Living in Kyrgyzstan during World War II, Seit is a teenage boy experiencing his first, unrequited crush on his sister-in-law, Jamilia. Jamilia is married to Sadyk, whose tepid letters from the war are sent to his parents and mention her only in passing in the postscripts. The two of them get thrown together with Daniyal, a soldier invalided back from the front, whose sullen demeanor slowly thaws to reveal a poet's soul. Aïmatov sews these elements together into a love story that feels like a folk tale handed down through the generations. Reading about the author, it seems the folklore tone is characteristic of his work as he aimed to recreate the oral tradition of his nomadic people. It gives this story a charming air that I loved.

Obiously, I recommend it.

84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff



This small collection of correspondence between Ms. Hanff and a British bookseller has been recommended by so many on LT that I'll simply say that I found it wonderful and was sorry when it ended. It became an instant favorite.

Hi Tad - my hubbie is a fan of Wallender and Henkell. The BBC did a very good series with Branagh as Wallender and he did a very effective job of the part.

Eclectic mix of books. I think I might look out for the Chingiz Aïmatov book, thanks.

Hi Karen,

They did? I think I'll hunt that down after I read a couple more in the series. I like to have my own image of the character before TV "tells" me what he should be like.

I'm a big Mankell fan too and thought the BBC series would be dreadful, but it was surprisingly good, once you get past the incongruous British accents.

>Tad, wow! I had a lot to catch up on here!

- I saw some of the Branaugh series, he was good as Wallander but I prefer the Wallander created in my head through the books. I would recommend you read a few more of the books before scaring up those DVDs (must be on NetFlix by now...). Also, re: DVDs, look for "Jar City" which is a great adaptation on Icelandic author Indridason's Jar City (I think it has a different title in the UK). English subtitles.

- re The Sparrow. I really enjoyed this back in the 90s when it came out and part of me wants to say that it's very much a part of the 90s. I wonder what I would think of it if I read it now. Dukedom has read what he considers some good SF and has noted them on his thread, but he's very behind in his reviews.

- Terrific thoughtful post about Women of Algiers in Their Apartment. I read this in 2007 and really need to read it again. I've since read two of Djebar's earlier works ("Nadia" and Children of the New World and their is something to be said about reading chronologically... I'm currently reading her latest in English, The Tongue's Blood Does Not Run Dry, a collection of stories. The first story mentions Olivia... wasn't she a the French friend/doctor in Women of Algiers?
(I put aside So Vast a Prison when I started an African literature class, so I must go back to that one also...).

I quite liked the Branagh Wallander series -- but not half as much as the swedish series recently aired on bbc4, fantastic, leading man I think is called krister henrikson and had me riveted, they are saving the final 4 episodes of first series for xmas as I think its been a hit. But they are making more I believe - only the first was based on one of the books, rest created for television.

Also a big fan of 84 charing cross road - a lover of english lit excited me about it when I was far from it.

>231 tonikat: I had heard the Swedish series was better. I'd love to get my hands on it!

Oh - do you have a name for the Swedish series. I might try and Utube it!!

Here is a fan site I found for it, Karen:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/s/#5TpnQi/www.inspector-wallander.org//
it has a database of film and television adaptations, and here is the IMDB page for what I think is Season 1, Episode 1 of the Swedish adaptations:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0418494/

Great idea to YouTube it...if we can find it.

Well, I shall Netflix them sometime soon. I really would like to read a couple more in the series first to cement my mental image, but I'm not sure how.

I'm still wading through War and Peace (yes, it's been months). I started Šimečka's The Year of the Frog but was only a couple pages in when the library called to remind me that Abraham's The Price of Spring and some others were overdue, so I jumped hurriedly over to that and, while returning the others, picked up Al-Shaykh's The Locust and the Bird because it was sitting on the checkout counter and the cover/blurb looked interesting...but it's a 10-day checkout only. I haven't read anything about the latter—has anyone here read it?

So, it might be a bit before Mankell comes up to the surface.

The Price of Spring by Daniel Abraham



Bottom Line: An enjoyable and nicely appropriate ending to one of the better fantasy series written in the last few decades.

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In this fourth and final volume of The Long Price Quartet, the furor of the war between Galt and the cities of the Khaiem is long over and both sides are struggling to find a future after the unimaginable tragedy that ended it. Otah, Maati and the other major players are becoming old and the pace of the story adjusts to reflect this. Instead of a struggle of armies, the struggles are those of politics and visions for the future—strive to recapture the glories of the past or set aside old animosities and look to the future? This is not to imply that there is anything dull about this tale; if anything, the characters continue to get deeper and draw the reader more firmly into their world. It is simply more reflective in nature.

And the story ends. As I mentioned in my review of An Autumn War, I'm very happy that Abraham was able to define a complete story arc. I was left with a sense of completion...that I was told a story with a beginning, middle and end...that I don't get from the current trend in fantasy series of wandering ever-onward on some endless path.

Fantasy books aren't for everyone (though the fantasy aspects of this series are rather light) but, if you do enjoy the genre, I'm hard-put to think of another completed series by a current author that I found so satisfying.

Piano Lessons: Music, Love and True Adventures by Noah Adams



Bottom Line: Entertaining and well-written memoir of Noah Adams' first year of beginning piano as an adult.

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At age 52 Noah Adams, former host of NPR's All Things Considered, gave into his secret desire to learn to play the piano and went...pretty much on impulse...to Steinway and bought an upright. This book recounts his first year after the purchase.

There are a lot of things that make this book fun. It's full of little anecdotes from his years of interviewing performers. It has plenty of humorous moments, both at the piano and away from it. It's written with an engaging style that makes the pages fly, clearly communicating his love for piano music.

Perhaps most of all, this isn't some tale of overwhelming inspiration or secret genius that leaves you feeling terribly mortal in a world of giants—he's bad about practicing, he freezes up in recitals, he's overly ambitious ("there's this piece Horowitz plays that I'd like to learn this first year"), he can't decide on how he should learn (self-teaching course?, workshops?), he gets discouraged a lot when gratification is slow. In other words, he comes across as a completely real everyman.

I had a lot of fun with this one.

My last book for this year's Halloween Group Read...



Creepers by David Morrell, narrated by Patrick Lawlor



Bottom Line: This really wasn't to my taste at all.

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I've read three or four of Morrell's books in the past and always found them fair...nothing I'd recommend to anyone other than a hard-core thriller fan, but they passed the time. Unfortunately, this one did not reach that level for me; I disliked it.

Up front, let me say that I apportion some of the blame for this on Patrick Lawlor. This was an audio book for my commute and my usual fare for this purpose is read by some of the really good readers out there: Patrick Tull, Nadia May, Frederick Davidson, etc. I found Mr. Lawlor's reading kept getting in the way of the story as my attention would be caught by him, rather than the tale. That's a cardinal no-no and I'll avoid his presentations in the future.

That said, even in print the story wouldn't really have appealed to me. First, the whole plot felt like it was constructed out of clichés. Without spoilers, think of "horror-type" thriller movies out there and you'll be able to put together a lot of the elements of this one—the scarred-by-the-past psychopath, the "don't leave the group!" moments, the "don't go in there!" scenes. Second, it felt rather contrived...you know, the violent lightning storm breaking out just when the characters need their cell phones type of thing? Third, Mr. Morrell needed to heed Chekhov's advice and tighten up the loose strands of the plot. There were too many plot elements introduced that went nowhere, such as the love quadrangle that was observed repeatedly in the beginning but ended up being irrelevant and largely forgotten by the end of the story.

However, the real cause of my reaction is mostly due to the constant use of two techniques I absolutely hate. First, everyone speaking in dangling sentences to create "tension":

We've got to..."
No.
But, if we don't, he'll...

It was endless. It drove me crazy.

The second was the constant "As you know, Bob" moments of the first half of the book. Put in a darn prologue if you want to info-dump and stop making people sound like characters in CSI: Miami!

The Adams book looks interesting from your excellent review. Piano (and any instrument) is so difficult to learn. The 100 hours rule needed to master a skill is easily forgotten in this day and age!!

I like that 100 hours rules. It makes it sound doable. Like I could make 100 checkboxes and check them off one by one. How about 100 hours over 30 years? Do you think it would still work - I'm thinking more of playing the guitar.

The Locust and the Bird by Hanan al-Shaykh, translated from Arabic by Roger Allen



Bottom Line: The retro cover caught my eye at the checkout counter of the library; the blurb sounded interesting; in the end, however, the book failed to amaze me.

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This is Ms. al-Shaykh's semi-biography of her mother, told after decades of a relationship marred by the mother's abandonment of her family in order to be with her lover.

On the positive side, it is a interesting work for its depiction of pre-1975 Lebanon, particularly the life of the abjectly poor, illiterate families living away from Beirut. We are exposed to the extended family systems that promise support but sometimes deliver betrayal as individuals climb over their relatives to escape poverty; the forced marriage, through trickery and actual coercion, of a girl at age 13; the patriarchal system that leaves divorced women nigh on desperate. For these aspects of the book, I would recommend it.

On the other side, Hanan al-Shaykh's mother, Kamila, failed to appeal, even marginally. It was easy to summon compassion for her, to understand the cries of, "don't judge her so, look at her life!" Yet, that was not enough. I found it impossible to feel any respect, much less liking, for the self-centered girl and, then, woman. For this particular type of story to have worked for me, I needed to feel at least some tiny modicum of fondness for the subject but all I could feel was distaste for a thoroughly unpleasant person whose goal in all things large and small seemed to be self-gratification regardless of the cost to those around her. The language the author used, somewhat simple and emotionless, also contributed to the lack of engagement.

I don't begrudge Ms. al-Shaykh taking the opportunity but the book felt a trifle self-indulgent, as if she was focused on making amends for her part in the failed relationship rather than crafting a tale for the reader. Since those exorcisms have little relevance for me, sitting outside of the personal relationships, I was left only with a rather dry story about someone I disliked.

I can only give this a minor recommendation for its glimpse of Lebanon before its Civil War tore the country apart.

All the way back to 212, Tad, I'm sorry, it's taken me a while to catch up with your thread.

The Hafner book sounds fascinating. As a lapsed pianist myself, and an obsessive listener to piano music, I enjoyed your review very much. I recommend Charles Rosen's Piano Notes for more on the piano, and Daniel Mason's The Piano Tuner if you haven't already read that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB76jxBq_gQ

(Isn't Aspergers' just another name for the delightful eccentricity which often accompanies genius? Of course, 'delightful eccentricity' as a label is not very helpful for drug companies to use to encourage us all to buy their Asperger's 'medications'.)

Hi tomcatMurr,

Isn't that a fabulous video? I wonder if that's the Chickering piano he loved so much?

On the book side, I've read the Mason book and the the Rosen book was on my list for this year. I was originally going to do the 999 Challenge with "Books About Piano" as one of the categories. I decided against the challenge, but have been picking away at the list:

1) Playing the Piano for Pleasure by Charles Cooke
2) Grand Obsession by Perri Knize
3) A Romance on Three Legs by Katie Hafner
4) Note by Note by Tricia Tunstall
5) Just Being at the Piano by Mildred Chase
6) Piano Lessons by Noah Adams

--still to go--

7) Steinway: the making of a concert grand by James Barron
8) Piano Notes by Charles Rosen
9) Body and Soul by Frank Conroy

I'm began piano lessons a few years ago after almost 50 years of "wanting to," so the subject is interesting to me.

Why lapsed?

--Tad

My piano sits looking accusingly at me from the end of the room, like a spurned lover.

"You never touch me no more....."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-JOUyQtX0w

Yes, it cheers me up every time I watch it. I love the energy he gives off.

I think it's unlikely to be the Chickering piano. He seems rather young in the movie, and I think he kept the Chickering in the studio for recording 'performances'.

p.s. thanks for the list. I'll see if I can get the Steinway book especially. If one can't afford the piano, a book about the piano I guess is the best substitute

>241 TadAD: depressaholic also read The Locus and the Bird, his review is HERE.

>246 avaland:: Hmm, it appears he liked it a bit more than I did. I'm willing to give al-Shaykh another try but that one just left distaste in my mouth the whole time I was reading it.

Just stopping in and...whoa...you've been busy! Great reviews TadAD.

The Railway Detective by Edward Marston



Like other readers, I found the Holmesian similarities readily apparent. On the positive side, the characters are likable and the plot flows along smoothly, though not complexly. On the negative side, Inspector Colbeck's leaps of intuition are a bit unconvincing and I found the dialog slightly unnatural.

On the whole, a pleasant-enough mystery with which to while away a few hours—I'll probably read the next one in the series though there's no sense of urgency.

A long-time friend, who shares my enjoyment of stories with a folk tale air about them, accepted a copy of Jamilia from me. The next weekend, he repaid it, stopping by with the following book, "I just got this, read it after dinner last night, and think you will like it very much."



Translation is a Love Affair by Jacques Poulin, translated from the French by Sheila Fischman



In part, this is a story about Monsieur Waterman, an older author, whose shyness and reclusive work habits have caused him to set aside his friends. Mostly, it is a story about Marine, a young woman, somewhat troubled by sorrows from her past, "who had always been a nomad, who did whatever came into my head, who had already taken the first plane for anywhere, who didn't become attached to anything or anyone..." Almost by chance, they enter a relationship as author and translator and then, gradually, as each other's intimate friend, until their peaceful life is disturbed by hints of a young girl in a trouble that brought echoes from Martine's past.

The resulting story had a simple beauty that I found captivating. I'm not able to read Poulin's original text, but Fischman's smooth rendering was full of a love for language, for selecting the exact word to capture a note. I found myself listening to the murmurings under the story and reflecting on the various meanings of "translation", especially moving from one state or place to another, as I watched each person's life shift and move.

Looking back, it does, indeed, resemble a folk tale, not only in length and its neat little parcel of an ending, but also in its imagery—the wise, old man whose abode is described as a tower or the young woman living in the woodland cottage surrounded by animals. It even has a witch...or so the very young children call her. And, like a folk tale, it exuded that sense of familiar and human that I enjoy.

Recommended.

The Vintage Caper by Peter Mayle



A rather typical Mayle novel—which is to say, not as much deeply humorous as his A Year in Provence series of memoirs, but still possessing the light touch that makes them easy reads.

This one was even frothier than his usual fare and I can only give it a "it passed the afternoon." If you read all of Mayle's stuff, go ahead. If you're looking to try one of his non-memoirs, I'd recommend something like the somewhat similar Anything Considered before this one.

I thought this would interest you.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703932904574510623644044770.html