kidzdoc's Assault on Mount TBR in 2012

The books in my home are multiplying like Tribbles, and I can hardly take 10 steps without tripping over a pile of them. Enough is enough. This year I am determined to read at least 75 books from my current collection, and to end the year with less books in my library than I had on January 1st. I plan to give away books that I've read and don't plan to keep, along with unread books that I'm no longer interested in.

Inspired by Cait's new thread, I've come up with a tentative list of 75 TBR books that I intend to read in 2012:

Patrick White, The Vivisector {Patrick White 100th Anniversary Challenge}
Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar, A Mind at Peace {Reading Globally 1Q}
Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence {Reading Globally 1Q}
Orhan Pamuk, Snow {Reading Globally 1Q}
Yashar Kemal, Memed, My Hawk {Reading Globally 1Q}

Stefan Zweig, Beware of Pity {Reading Globally Classics}
Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita {Reading Globally Classics}
Louis Couperus, Eline Vere {Reading Globally Classics}
Edward Said, Orientalism {Reading Globally 3rd Q}
Naguib Mahfouz, The Cairo Trilogy {Reading Globally 3rd Q}

David Grossman, To the End of the Land {Reading Globally 3rd Q}
A.B. Yehoshua, Friendly Fire {Reading Globally 3rd Q}
Amos Oz, My Michael {Reading Globally 3rd Q}
Amos Oz, The Same Sea {Reading Globally 3rd Q}
Michael Ondaatje, Anil’s Ghost

Nicola Barker, Darkmans
Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety
Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (re-read)
Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention

Natsume Soseki, Kokoro
Natsume Soseki, The Three-Cornered World
Rohinton Mistry, Family Matters
Elias Khoury, Gate of the Sun (re-read) {Reading Globally 3rd Q}
Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, The Colonel

Ma Jian, Beijing Coma {Reading Globally 4th Q}
Mo Yan, Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out {Reading Globally 4th Q}
Jiang Rong, Wolf Totem {Reading Globally 4th Q}
Ruiyan Yu, The Lost and Forgotten Languages of Shanghai {Reading Globally 4th Q}
J.G. Farrell, The Singapore Grip

Jean Echenoz, I’m Off + One Year
Abdulrazak Gurnah, Paradise
Edward St Aubyn, Some Hope
Andrew Miller, Pure
Roy Porter, Madmen

Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
Ian McEwan, Atonement
Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder
Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns
Edward Said, Out of Place

Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic
Tony Gould, A Disease Apart: Leprosy in the Modern World
Alice LaPlante, Turn of Mind {2011 Wellcome Trust Book Prize winner}
Ann Patchett, State of Wonder {2011 Wellcome Trust Book Prize finalist}
Louisa Young, My Dear I Wanted to Tell You {2011 Wellcome Trust Book Prize finalist}

Helen Dunmore, The Siege {Orange January/July}
Helen Dunmore, The Betrayal {Orange January/July}
Jane Harris, Gillespie and I
Abraham Verghese, The Tennis Partner
Boualem Sansal, The German Mujahid {Reading Globally 3rdQ}

Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita {Nabokov in 2012}
Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin {Nabokov in 2012}
Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire {Nabokov in 2012}
Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory {Nabokov in 2012}
Simon Mawer, Mendel’s Dwarf

Amitav Ghosh, The Calcutta Chromosome
Colson Whitehead, Sag Harbor
Colson Whitehead, Zone One
Victor LaValle, Big Machine
Ernesto Sabato, The Tunnel

Roma Tearne, Mosquito
Kamila Shamsie, Broken Verses
James Kelman, How Late It Was, How Late
William Trevor, Selected Stories
Jaimy Gordon, Lord of Misrule

Karen Russell, Swamplandia! {Orange January/July}
Eleanor Catton, The Rehearsal {Orange January/July}
Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin {Orange January/July}
Rose Tremain, The Road Home {Orange January/July}
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Purple Hibiscus {Orange January/July}

Patricia Grace, Dogside Story
Keri Hulme, The Bone People
Robert Klitzman, When Doctors Become Patients
Touré, Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness? What it Means to Be Black Now
José Donoso, The Lizard’s Tale

Currently reading:



Gillespie and I by Jane Harris
Maimonides by Sherwin Nuland
The Map and the Territory by Michel Houellebecq
Splay Anthem by Nathaniel Mackey

Completed books:

January:
1. Volcano by Shusaku Endo (review)
2. False Friends: Book Two by Ellie Malet Spradbery (review)
3. A Disease Apart: Leprosy in the Modern World by Tony Gould (review)
4. Best Mets: Fifty Years of Highs and Lows from New York's Most Agonizingly Amazin' Team by Matthew Silverman (review)
5. Walkabout by James Vance Marshall (review)
6. Swamplandia! by Karen Russell (review)
7. Letter from the Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King, Jr.
8. Mister Blue by Jacques Poulin (review)
9. Stained Glass Elegies by Shusaku Endo (review)
10. Botchan (Master Darling) by Natsume Soseki (review)
11. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
12. Guadalajara by Quim Monzó (review)

February:
13. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
14. Erasure by Percival Everett
15. Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness?: What It Means to Be Black Now by Touré
16. Memed, My Hawk by Yashar Kemal
17. India Becoming: A Portrait of Life in Modern India by Akash Kapur (review)
18. The Three-Cornered World by Natsume Soseki
19. Angel by Elizabeth Taylor
20. Kokoro by Natsume Soseki
21. The Golden Country by Shusaku Endo
22. The Patience Stone by Atiq Rahimi

March:
23. Professor Andersen's Night by Dag Solstad
24. Amsterdam Stories by Nescio
25. Your New Baby: A Guide to Newborn Care by Roy Benaroch, MD (review)
26. Fragile Beginnings: Discoveries and Triumphs in the Newborn ICU by Adam Wolfberg, MD (review)
27. There but for the by Ali Smith
28. The Deportees and Other Stories by Roddy Doyle
29. When the Garden Was Eden: Clyde, the Captain, Dollar Bill, and the Glory Days of the New York Knicks by Harvey Araton (review)
30. Walk on Water: Inside an Elite Pediatric Surgical Unit by Michael Rudman (review)
31. Suffer the Children: Flaws, Foibles, Fallacies and the Grave Shortcomings of Pediatric Care by Peter Palmieri (review)
32. Tonight No Poetry Will Serve by Adrienne Rich

April:
33. Little Misunderstandings of No Importance by Antonio Tabucchi
34. One with Others by C.D. Wright (review)
35. The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro by Antonio Tabucchi (review)
36. Boundaries by Elizabeth Nunez (to be reviewed in issue 17 of Belletrista)
37. Panther Baby by Jamal Joseph

TBR books read in 2012 (books on my shelf for ≥6 months):

1. A Disease Apart: Leprosy in the Modern World by Tony Gould
2. Swamplandia! by Karen Russell
3. Botchan (Master Darling) by Natsume Soseki
4. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
5. Guadalajara by Quim Monzó
6. Memed, My Hawk by Yashar Kemal
7. The Three-Cornered World by Natsume Soseki
8. Kokoro by Natsume Soseki
9. The Patience Stone by Atiq Rahimi
10. The Deportees and Other Stories by Roddy Doyle
11. Little Misunderstandings of No Importance by Antonio Tabucchi
12. One with Others by C.D. Wright
13. The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro by Antonio Tabucchi

Books purchased in 2012:

1. The Map and the Territory by Michel Houellebecq ($13.99)
2. Fragile Beginnings: Discoveries and Triumphs in the Newborn ICU by Adam Wolfberg, MD ($9.99) √
3. The Irish Americans: A History by Jay P. Dolan ($0.99)
4. The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God and Other Stories by Etgar Keret ($8.70 (partial purchase))
5. The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright ($12.99)
6. Suffer the Children: Flaws, Foibles, Fallacies and the Grave Shortcomings of Pediatric Care by Peter Palmieri ($3.99) √
7. The King of Kahel by Tierno Monénembo ($0.99)
8. The Secret Piano: From Mao's Labor Camps to Bach's Goldberg Variations by Zhu Xiao-Mei ($0.99)
9. The Greenhouse by Audur Ava Olafsdottir ($0.99)
10. Thirst by Andrei Gelasimov ($0.99)
11. Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick ($9.99)
12. Painter of Silence by Georgina Harding ($9.99)

Books acquired in 2012:

January:
1. Best Mets: Fifty Years of Highs and Lows from New York's Most Agonizingly Amazin' Team by Matthew Silverman (2 Jan; LT Early Reviewer book) √
2. The Map and the Territory by Michel Houellebecq (3 Jan; Kindle purchase)
3. The Lepers of Molokai by Charles Warren Stoddard (7 Jan; free Kindle download)
4. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt (8 Jan; gift book)
5. Walkabout by James Vance Marshall (8 Jan; NYRB Book Club) √
6. There but for the by Ali Smith (9 Jan; ordered from Alibris 30 Jan) √
7. I Am a Cat by Natsume Soseki (9 Jan; ordered from Alibris 30 Jan)
8. The Samurai by Shusaku Endo (9 Jan; ordered from Alibris 30 Jan)
9. Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima ((9 Jan; ordered from Alibris 30 Jan)
10. Coin Locker Babies by Ryu Murakami (9 Jan; ordered from Alibris 30 Jan)
11. Black Talk, Blue Thoughts, and Walking the Color Line: Dispatches from a Black Journalista by Erin Aubry Kaplan (10 Jan; LT Early Reviewer book)
12. Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell (11 Jan; ordered from Strand Book Store on 27 Dec)
13. Runaway Horses by Yukio Mishima (11 Jan; ordered from Strand Book Store on 27 Dec)
14. The Temple of Dawn by Yukio Mishima (11 Jan; ordered from Strand Book Store on 27 Dec)
15. The Golden Country by Shusaku Endo (11 Jan; ordered from Strand Book Store on 27 Dec) √
16. Deep River by Shusaku Endo (11 Jan; ordered from Strand Book Store on 27 Dec)
17. Letter from the Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King, Jr. (15 Jan; free download) √

February:
18. Panther Baby by Jamal Joseph (2 Feb; free ARC) √
19. Angel by Elizabeth Taylor (4 Feb; NYRB Book Club) √
20. Class War?: What Americans Really Think about Economic Inequality by Benjamin I. Page (10 Feb; free e-book from U of Chicago Press)
21. India Becoming: A Portrait of Life in Modern India by Akash Kapur (15 Feb; LT Early Reviewer book) √
22. Amsterdam Stories by Nescio (29 Feb; NYRB Book Club) √

March:
23. Your new baby: A guide to newborn care by Roy Benaroch (6 Mar; free Kindle download) √
24. Fragile Beginnings: Discoveries and Triumphs in the Newborn ICU by Adam Wolfberg, MD (11 Mar; Kindle purchase) √
25. The Irish Americans: A History by Jay P. Dolan (17 Mar; Kindle purchase)
26. The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God & Other Stories by Etgar Keret (17 Mar; partial book purchase from Barnes & Noble gift order)
27. The Grief of Others by Leah Hager Cohen (17 Mar; Barnes & Noble gift order)
28. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (17 Mar; Barnes & Noble gift order)
29. Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now--As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It by Craig Taylor (17 Mar; Barnes & Noble gift order)
30. The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright (17 Mar; iBooks order)
31. When the Garden Was Eden: Clyde, the Captain, Dollar Bill, and the Glory Days of the New York Knicks by Harvey Araton (20 Mar; Kindle gift book) √
32. Assumption by Percival Everett (20 Mar; Kindle gift book)
33. The Barbarian Nurseries by Héctor Tobar (20 Mar; Kindle gift book)
34. A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes (22 Mar; Kindle gift book)
35. The Man Within My Head by Pico Iyer (25 Mar; Kindle gift book)
36. Walk on Water: Inside an Elite Pediatric Surgical Unit by Michael Rudman (25 Mar; borrowed book)
37. Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete by Washington Irving (26 Mar; free Kindle download)
38. Suffer the Children: Flaws, Foibles, Fallacies and the Grave Shortcomings of Pediatric Care by Peter Palmieri (26 Mar; Kindle purchase) √

April:
39. Store of the Worlds: The Stories of Robert Sheckley (3 Apr; NYRB Book Club)
40. The King of Kahel by Tierno Monénembo (15 Apr; Kindle e-book)
41. The Secret Piano: From Mao's Labor Camps to Bach's Goldberg Variations by Zhu Xiao-Mei (15 Apr; Kindle e-book)
42. The Greenhouse by Audur Ava Olafsdottir (15 Apr; Kindle e-book)
43. Thirst by Andrei Gelasimov (15 Apr; Kindle e-book)
44. Book of My Mother by Albert Cohen (16 Apr; Archipelago Books 2011 subscription)
45. My Struggle: Book One by Karl Ove Knausgaard (16 Apr; Archipelago Books 2011 subscription)
46. As Though She Were Sleeping by Elias Khoury (16 Apr; Archipelago Books 2011 subscription)
47. Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick (17 Apr; Kindle e-book)
48. Painter of Silence by Georgina Harding (17 Apr; Kindle e-book)

I love your picture at the top of the thread! Goes for me too, except the books would be sliding down to begin engulfing me. I would still be smiling though, oblivious to my impending doom of death by books.

There are some excellent books on your TBR pile and more books that I'll be looking forward to seeing your opinions on. I'm also hoping that the Japanese challenge will knock off more books from my TBR without having me add more. That pile is physically at 101 and I'd like it to never get above 90 at the very least after this year.

>5 Thanks, Lisa. Several of the 75ers, including myself and Caroline (cameling), are making a concerted and formal effort to decrease the numbers of unread books we already own, and limit our book purchases for the year. I have several hundred books that I've purchased in the past few years that I'm very eager to read but haven't gotten to yet, due to the massive number of books I buy every year. My partners at work didn't like my idea of taking a 3-5 year paid sabbatical to catch up on my reading, and I'm too young to retire, so my only option is to stop buying so many books!

Having said that, several of the 75ers are getting together in NYC on Boxing Day (12/26), and we're planning a last minute book buying binge before the 2012 restrictions take effect. BTW, if anyone is interested in joining us, please let us know at the meet up thread: NYC Meet up - December 26

>6 Thanks, lilisin. I'll read at least a dozen Japanese novels from my TBR pile for your Japanese challenge, although I may buy nearly as many books on Boxing Day. BTW, I would be thrilled if I could get my TBR pile down to 101 books; it won't be anytime soon!

Here are my planned reads for January, and the groups that I'm reading them for:

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami {Author Theme Reads group read} (Mount TBR)
Silence by Shusaku Endo {Author Theme Reads major author} (Christmas gift from best friends)
Kokoro by Natsume Soseki {Author Theme Reads mini author} (Mount TBR)
Botchan (Master Darling) by Natsume Soseki {Author Theme Reads mini author} (Mount TBR)
We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver {Orange January} (Mount TBR)
Swamplandia! by Karen Russell {Orange January} (Mount TBR)
A Mind at Peace by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar {Reading Globally 1stQ} (Mount TBR)
Snow by Orhan Pamuk {Reading Globally 1stQ} (Mount TBR)
Zone One by Colson Whitehead {African/African American Literature} (Mount TBR)
Open Wound: The Tragic Obsession of Dr. William Beaumont by Jason Karlawish {Medicine} (Christmas gift from best friends)
Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante {Medicine} (Mount TBR)

BTW, Botchan (Master Darling) is available as a free e-book, for those who are participating in the Author Theme Reads group.

I might make a head start on one or two of these books before the New Year, since January will likely be an extremely busy month at work.

One of my goals for this year that I failed to accomplish was to make an attempt to revive the moribund Medicine group on LT. I've just posted two new threads there, Can we revive the Medicine group?, and Darryl's (kidzdoc's) books and thoughts about Medicine, in which I intend to post book reviews and other topics related to medicine and books (fiction and nonfiction). If you have any interest in this topic I would encourage you to consider joining me there.

I had a last-minute book-buying binge last year! It was fun. I wish I could join you in all the great NYC bookshops, but I will be there in spirit.

I too will be along in spirit on the book buying binge. Enjoy!

Here's my year end summary for 2011:

Total books read: 166 (the most number of books I've read in a year)
Fiction: 108
Nonfiction: 44
Poetry: 14

TBR* books read in 2011: 39 (*using avaland's definition of a book purchased at least 6 months ago)
New books read in 2011: 127 (books read within 6 months of the date of purchase)
Avaland TBR score: 147 (critically ill, in need of intensive care)

Number left on TBR pile: TNTC (a medical abbreviation for "too numerous to count")

Male authors: 115 (69%)
Female authors: 47 (28%)
Other: 4 (two books of anthologies, two art books with multiple contributors) (3%)

Authors new to me: 112 (too many to list here!)
More than 1 work by an author (15):
4 books: Amélie Nothomb, Mario Vargas Llosa
3 books: Javier Cercas, Tove Jansson, Michael Ondaatje
2 books: Julian Barnes, Jean Echenoz, Damon Galgut, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Joy Harjo, Elias Khoury, Hisham Matar, Amos Oz, José Saramago, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

Country of origin:
United States: 45
Britain: 30
France: 7
Peru: 5
Spain: 5
Sri Lanka: 5
Belgium: 4
Canada: 4
India: 4
Egypt: 3
Finland: 3
Japan: 3
Portugal, South Africa, Lebanon, Algeria, Colombia, Libya, Palestine, Tanzania, Barbados, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, Pakistan, Kenya: 2
Togo, Argentina, Iran, Germany, Norway, Santa Lucia, Martinique, Haiti, China, Jamaica, Argentina, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Kyrgyzstan, Bangladesh, Wales: 1

Favorite books of the year:

Fiction:
The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes (favorite novel published in 2011)
The War of the End of the World by Mario Vargas Llosa (favorite novel of the year)
The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna
Monsieur Linh and His Child by Philippe Claudel
Hearts and Minds by Amanda Craig
The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst
The Good Muslim by Tahmima Anam
The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje
Scenes from Village Life by Amos Oz
River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh

Nonfiction:
The Memory Chalet by Tony Judt
Colour Me English by Caryl Phillips (favorite nonfiction book of the year)
Seeing Patients: Unconscious Bias in Health Care by Augustus A. White III, M.D.
A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz
I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor's Journey by Izzeldin Abuelaish
An African in Greenland by Tété-Michel Kpomassie
Angel of Death: The Story of Smallpox by Gareth Williams
A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 by Alistair Horne
The Boy in the Moon: A Father's Search for His Disabled Son by Ian Brown
Real Bloomsbury by Nicholas Murray

Poetry:
I Love a Broad Margin to My Life by Maxine Hong Kingston (favorite work of poetry of the year)
The Broken Word by Adam Foulds

Least favorite books of the year:
No More Mr. Nice Guy by Howard Jacobson
The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers
A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
Snowdrops by A.D. Miller

Favorite author of the year: Amos Oz
Least favorite author of the year: Stella Rimington, for being the worst Booker Prize chair of judges in the award's history

Best book cover: The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes



Worst book cover: The Elected Member by Bernice Rubens



Analysis soon.

You are a brave man to tackle that TBR pile. I am afraid if I follow your thread, I too will develop an enormous TBR pile! My strategy at the moment is to divide my TBR books between LT, my Amazon wishlist and samples on my kindle. That way it doesn't seem quite so big.

k4k

Congratulations on setting a new personal best for number of books read! Amazing number of new authors, but where are the women? ;-)

Happy New Year!

A simple request from the owner of this thread:

>15, ha, so true. I'm pondering right now whether to even make any.

No 75 thread?

Well, I'll wish you a Happy New Year over here. You are in so many places...

>10 I did engage in a serious book buying blitz from Boxing Day to New Year's Eve, wandering_star, including the 11 books I bought at Strand Book Store, and online purchases from the Strand and Alibris, along with a 12-month subscription to the NYRB Book Club. That will be it for a while, though; I probably won't buy any books before the Orange Prize longlist is announced in mid-March.

>11 Thanks, Joyce! I'll be interested to see how well other Club Readers are doing with their TBR reduction plans, particularly you and Cait.

>13 Thanks k4k. My TBR pile exceeds 1000 books at the moment, and I have been disappointed that I haven't been able to get to some of those books that I want to read the most, such as A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel. In addition to reading these books, I'll give away or sell some of the older books in my pile that I have much less interest in reading now, particularly as my reading tastes have changed.

>14 Thanks, Lisa! I agree that my male:female ratio of books was less balanced than I had thought or hoped it would be; I'll have to look back at 2010 to see if I read a greater percentage of books by women that year (I suspect that I did). However, how many guys on LT read 47 books written by women?

>16 Yes, make those New Year plans! I made a half-hearted effort to reduce my TBR pile in 2011, which was doomed to failure because I didn't formulate a thorough plan. I have done so this year, and I think I'll be successful this time around.

>17 I created a 75 Books thread last night: kidzdoc is cutting down the mountain of unread books in 2012: part 1

I posted a message in that thread which lists the groups and challenges I'm involved in. I'll include it here, as well.

Have just been looking at your best-of-the-year. Colour Me English looks fascinating. I think I missed your review of this during the year, but it's the first addition to the wishlist in 2012!

1, 7> Ah, Darryl, I made the same resolution last year: to acquire fewer books and to make a dent in the many shelves, stacks, bags, boxes, and drawers of books that are pushing me out of my home. Since I don't often reread books, I'm very good at giving away anything I read that isn't an absolute favorite or that I might at some point teach. But it's really hard to give away unread books. I start to skim and end up sticking with them. I did, however, give away over 40 books since I went on medical leave in mid-October. Sadly, that made only a small dent . . . I figure I have plenty of books to get me through my retirement years.

Great reading list, BTW. I'm too much of an impulse reader to plan so far ahead.

>19 Actually, you didn't miss my review of Colour Me English; I never wrote one. I'll try to post a short one sometime this week.

>20 But it's really hard to give away unread books.

I agree. However, my reading tastes have changed significantly in the past few years, and several of the books that I bought five or more years ago are of little interest to me now. I'd rather spend my time on books I want to read the most, instead of reading ones that are less compelling that happen to be in my library.

I finished Volcano by Shusaku Endo (4 stars), and False Friends: Book Two by Ellie Malet Spradbery (3½ stars); I'll review both books in the next day or two, since it's after midnight.

That's a great list of books for intended reads for 2012.

Book #1: Volcano by Shūsaku Endō, translated from the Japanese by Richard A. Schuchert



My rating:

Purchased at Strand Book Store, NYC on 12/26/11

Shūsaku Endō (1923-1996) is widely considered to be one of Japan's greatest 20th century writers, both within and outside of his country. He was born in Tokyo, grew up in Manchuria, and moved back to Japan with his mother after his parents divorced in 1933. The two initially lived with an aunt, who was one of the small minority of practicing Japanese Catholics. Endō was baptized the following year, and remained a practicing Catholic throughout his life. He was ostracized by his classmates for his religious beliefs during the wave of ultranationalism that swept the country, and he struggled with guilt due to his lack of deep faith. He graduated from Keio University with a degree in French literature, and then studied medicine at Waseda University, but he did not complete his training. Instead, he opted to study 20th century French Catholic literature at the University of Lyon in France. He returned to Japan, where he lectured and began to write.

Endō published his first novel, Shiroi Hito (White Men) in 1954, which was awarded the prestigious Akutagawa Prize the following year. His most famous novel, Silence, was published in 1966. Endō was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1994, which was awarded to his countryman Kenzaburō Ōe; it is said that Catholic groups successfully lobbied against his nomination.

Endō was plagued by illness throughout his adult life, as he probably contracted tuberculosis as a teenager. The themes of his novels frequently include chronic illness, along with personal guilt and responsibility, Christianity, and the attempt to reconcile Western religious beliefs within traditional Japanese culture:

I felt that I had hit upon a theme peculiar to myself, which I would assume as the work of a lifetime. The theme is: To take the Christian religion which was so uncongenial to me as a Japanese, analyze why it was so uncongenial, and in some way to make it something more compatible — in other words, with my own hand I would remodel the ill-fitting suit of European clothes that my mother had dressed me in, and I would make of it a kimono more becoming in me as a Japanese.

Shusaku Endō is the featured author in this year's Author Theme Reads group, and I plan to read eight of his books this year: Volcano, Silence, Stained Glass Elegies, When I Whistle, Scandal, The Golden Country: A Play About Christian Martyrs in Japan, The Samurai and Deep River. I read The Sea and Poison last year, which was excellent.

So, with that background in mind, here's my review of Volcano.

Volcano was originally published in 1959, and is set the town of Kagoshima on Kyushu Island, which is situated at the edge of a dormant volcano, Akadaké. Suda Kun has just retired after a long career as the Section Chief of the Surveillance Section of the regional Weather Bureau. He was called the "Akadaké Demon", as he claimed to know more about the volcano than anyone else on the island, despite his lack of a formal education. He wishes to publish a book about his research in order to cement his reputation, and agrees to help Aiba, a local city councilman, in a profit making scheme in exchange for financial support of his book.

Father Sato is the popular leader of a small but growing Catholic church in town, who has replaced Father Durand, a Frenchman who was removed for committing apostasy. Durand, embittered by his fall, receives frequent visits by Sato, but he belittles his former assistant and his plans to build a sanctuary for his followers on the side of the volcano.

Suda and Durand are felled by serious illness, and are faced with their own mortality. At the same time Akadaké is showing signs of renewed life after decades of dormancy, which threaten the plans of Aiba and Father Sato. Suda, who has proclaimed that the volcano is permanently dormant, chooses to ignore clues which indicate that it is becoming active. Durand actively tries to undermine Sato's position and the faith of the people he formerly ministered to. Both men face their own mortality and guilt about their past behavior, while the smoking volcano towers over them ominously, as if in judgment of them.

Volcano is a superbly written and dark yet hopeful novel, whose two main characters experience torment and guilt in the face of imminent death. Suda's lack of compassion toward his wife and sons and Durand's lack of belief in the faith of his parishioners lead directly to the fall of each man, as the volcano serves as a metaphor for both good and evil, and as a symbol of the unchanging power of Nature and God.

Book #2: False Friends: Book Two by Ellie Malet Spradbery



My rating:

False Friends: Book Two is a follow up to the author's first book, which serves as a guide to French and English words which are similar in appearance and spelling to each other, but have different meanings. For example, deride in English means to ridicule, whereas the French word dérider has almost the opposite meaning, 'to cheer (somebody) up.' Other sections describe common French expressions (e.g., une araignée au plafond refers to 'bats in the belfry', which can be useful for insulting someone without their knowledge), lists of words with multiple meanings (un bourdon can mean a bumblebee or a typo), lists of birds and maladies, miscellaneous words, and the French equivalent of common English expressions (e.g., 'all things considered' in French is tout compte fait).

The book and the first one in the series are not meant for the novice speaker, but they would be a good travel companions for someone with at least an intermediate knowledge of the French language.

Oooh, False Friends is one for me - thanks!

Looking forward to following your reading for another year...

Thanks, Rachel! I'm eager to see what books you'll be reading, as well.

I finished A Disease Apart: Leprosy in the Modern World earlier this morning. I'll review it this afternoon, after I have dim sum with friends in a little while.

Impressive review of Volcano, Darryl. Thank you for including so much background information. It greatly informs the book. I still have The Sea and Poison on my list from last year that I need to get to.

I've accumulated several of Endo's books for our Author Theme Reads, but Volcano is not among them. I'll have to look for it now, as it sounds very interesting. Guilt seems to be a recurring theme in his writing.

>27 Thanks, Lisa. Volcano was nearly as good as The Sea and Poison. Interestingly, the physician assistant in my group that joined us for dim sum today recently read (and loved) Silence, and her boyfriend, who also came, is eager to read it after a friend recommended it to him yesterday.

>28 I bought Volcano at Strand Book Store on Boxing Day, for half price ($7.95). The Strand's online bookshop has it and several other similarly discounted books by Endo in stock.

Yes, guilt was definitely a major theme in both Volcano and The Sea and Poison. I'll be interested to see if his later books continue in the same vein. I'll read his short story collection Stained Glass Elegies, which was also published in 1959, followed by Silence later this month or early in February.

Book #3: A Disease Apart: Leprosy in the Modern World by Tony Gould



My rating:

Purchased at A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books, San Francisco on 9/5/05

In A Disease Apart, Tony Gould describes the history of leprosy, also known as Hansen's disease, over the past 200 years, with a focus on the devastating effects of the disease, the often inhumane conditions in which people infected with Mycobacterium leprae were forced to live, and selected missionaries, physicians and especially patients themselves whose efforts led to improved care and living conditions for people afflicted with leprosy worldwide.

Leprosy has been a feared illness since antiquity, due to the havoc it wreaks upon the body. Unlike infections or illnesses that ravage internal organs, such as its closely related cousin tuberculosis, which is caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, leprosy preferentially infects cooler parts of the body, particularly as the fingers, toes, eyes, nose and testes. The immune system's response to the infection often leads to an intense inflammatory response, which causes severe damage to the superficial nerves in these areas, leading to peripheral neuropathy. As a result, the afflicted person progressively loses sensation in these areas, which ultimately leads to tissue breakdown, ulceration and bacterial superinfection, followed by the loss of fingers and toes, destruction of the structure of the nose, and, in some cases, blindness.

Leprosy remains the most common infection that leads to disability, and its elimination has proven to be difficult, with nearly 250,000 new cases worldwide annually, including approximately 100 new cases in the United States each year. The prevalence (total number of cases) has declined dramatically, due to the introduction of the antibiotic dapsone in the 1940s, widespread distribution of the BCG vaccine for tuberculosis (which also provides protection against Mycobacterium leprae), free distribution of multidrug therapy to all newly diagnosed patients worldwide, and improved recognition and diagnostic techniques. However, in recent years, the incidence (the number of new cases) has not changed significantly. Leprosy is a disease of poverty, and 90% of cases occur in the poorest regions of Brazil, Madagascar, Mozambique, Tanzania and Nepal, which suffer from poor health care and access to medical resources. One to two million people are permanently disabled by the disease, many of whom continue to suffer from ostracism and inadequate care.

In the pre-antibiotic era, the most successful technique to prevent the spread of leprosy was compulsory segregation of those afflicted with the disease. Due largely to the fear of transmission of the disease to healthy individuals, people infected with leprosy were treated as badly if not worse than criminals: they were housed in the most decrepit settlements, which were often ringed with walls and barbed wires, with no protection from the elements, inadequate food and water, and little if any medical care. Those who sought to leave the leprosariums were hunted down like escaped convicts, and forcibly returned. In some extreme cases, the afflicted were gathered under false pretenses, and shot or burned alive en masse.

Gould thoroughly though repetitively describes the barbarous treatment that people infected with leprosy received in countries throughout the world, which differed little from one country to the next, particularly in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The strongest sections of the book are those in which he recounts the lives of those who sacrificed and dedicated their lives to the improvement of leprosy sufferers, particularly Father Damien, a Roman Catholic priest from Belgium who ministered to the colony of lepers in Molokai, Hawai'i before succumbing to the illness himself; John Ruskin Early, a leprous 'religious fanatic, a bigot, and exhibitionist' who tormented public health and government officials with his 'psychotic' behavior, but who also was instrumental in the creation of the national hospital for leprosy victims in Carville, Louisiana; and Stanley Stein, a long term resident at Carville, whose newspaper and frequent articles about the conditions there led to greater public awareness and government support for the disease and its sufferers.

A Disease Apart is a valuable addition to the history of medicine, which describes past and present challenges to the care of those afflicted with leprosy. Although written for the lay public it would be of most interest to those who have a strong interest in the disease or the individuals who were most influential in the advances made in its treatment.

Interesting review and mini-history -- thanks, Darryl.

Excellent reviews Darryl, especially with all the background information.

Fascinating. I had no idea that it was so closely related to tuberculosis or that it is still so prevalent. It's amazing how the heroic work of a few can change the lives of many.

>31-32 You're welcome, Jane and Barry.

>33 I majored in Microbiology as an undergraduate, so I knew that the tuberculosis and leprosy bacilli were both members of the genus Mycobacterium, but it didn't dawn on me that protection against one species might also protect against the other. I also didn't realize that the incidence was still so high, both worldwide and in the United States.

>18 >14 Progress not perfection, I think.

>35 Agreed.

Just catching up; all very interesting reviews.

Book #4: Best Mets: Fifty Years of Highs and Lows from New York's Most Agonizingly Amazin' Team by Matthew Silverman



My rating:

Meet the Mets, meet the Mets
Step right up and greet the Mets
Bring your kiddies, bring your wife
Guaranteed you'll have the time of your life
Because the Mets are really socking the ball
Knocking those home runs over the wall
East side, west side
Everybody's coming down
To meet the M-E-T-S, Mets
Of New York town

If you are of middle age and know the lyrics to this song by heart, this book is definitely for you!

For the rest of you, a little background is in order. The New York Mets (short for Metropolitans) are a professional baseball team which is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its inaugural season in 1962. During the 1940s and 1950s, New York was the center of baseball, which featured three outstanding teams who often faced each other in the World Series: the New York Yankees of the American League, and the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers of the National League. Unfortunately, the Giants and Dodgers were lured away to San Francisco and Los Angeles respectively after the 1957 season, a loss which is still felt by fans of both teams. The city was awarded a new National League team to replace the departed ones, which opened the 1962 season in the dilapidated Polo Grounds, the former home of the Giants.

The team was abysmal in its first six years of existence (1962-1967), finishing in last place all but once during that time. Despite their ineptitude on the field, the team was beloved by its fans, and the Mets developed a sort of cult following. The 1968 team was significantly improved, but still only managed to finish 9th out of the 10 National League clubs. Then came the "Amazin'" season of 1969: the Mets won 100 games, finishing first in the National League, and they earned a ticket to the World Series after defeating the Atlanta Braves. Next up was the mighty Baltimore Orioles, who were heavily favored to win the Series. However, the Mets won the best of seven series in five games, in one of the biggest upsets in sports history. I was eight years old at that time, and had attended several Mets games that season and the two preceding ones with my church's youth group, so I was a fan of the team, and went bonkers during their impossible championship run.

Matthew Silverman, who is clearly a diehard and lifelong Mets fan, has compiled a history of the best and worst of the New York Mets over their first 50 seasons in Best Mets, including brief descriptions of the most memorable and best forgotten players, coaches, broadcasters, teams and games for the club that has won two World Series (in 1969 and 1986) and appeared in two other ones (in 1973 and 2000). The book would be best appreciated by readers who are familiar with the team and grew up watching the Mets on WOR television and at Shea Stadium over the years.

Hi Daryl. Certainly a book I would buy for some friends of mine. When Shea closed they bought their seats, which are proudly placed in their living room. Their youngest son has his painted his room in Mets colors. Their Christmas cards display Mets colors. These are not things I understand, but they seem to be very happy people.

Yes, your friends would certainly appreciate this book, Teresa!

Darryl - back when I was in middle school, and Florida didn't have a baseball team a friend from New York turned me into a Mets fan...that year just happened to be 1986.

Anyway, finally catching up here. Love your Mets summary. Wonderful intro to Shūsaku Endō, and terrific review of A Disease Apart (which I actually read a few days ago.) Leprosy is a big topic in Hawaiian history. I was wondering whether native Hawaiians are more susceptible to it than other old-worlders. Maybe Gould touches on that. ??

>41 You were in middle school in 1986, Dan??? I feel very old all of a sudden...

Thanks for your kind compliments. Regarding leprosy in Hawai'i, Gould doesn't mention whether natives there are more suspectible to it than others. He does say that it is a disease of poverty, though. I do have another book about the Molokai leprosy settlement, The Colony by John Tayman, which may shed some light on your question. I'll probably read it later this year.

The latest issue of Belletrista is out! I reviewed two books for that issue:

The Leper Compound by Paula Nangle



My rating:

In The Leper Compound, Paula Nangle draws from her childhood spent in southern Africa and her experiences as a psychiatric nurse to craft this insightful debut novel about pre- and postcolonial Zimbabwe and South Africa. The story traces a European girl's maturation to adulthood, compounded by her shifting sense of identity and belonging, and illnesses that affect both her and those who are closest to her.

You can read the rest of the review here: http://www.belletrista.com/2012/Issue15/reviews_11.php

The Good Muslim by Tahmima Anam



My rating:

This brilliant novel about the Bangladeshi independence movement, its aftermath, and the subsequent Islamic movement is one of my ten favorite novels of 2011. It is centered around the relationship of two siblings, each of whom made significant decisions before and after the war of independence that affected their individual lives, their close relationship with each other, and the fates of those closest to them.

You can read the rest of my review here: http://www.belletrista.com/2012/Issue15/reviews_13.php

The Good Muslim sounds absolutely fascinating!! I will definitely have to read this one. I know absolutely nothing about Bangladesh.

Thanks,

k4k

Always glad to find your new threads, Darryl.

The Good Muslim sounds wonderful. Darn, and here I thought I'd be adding books to the TBR more slowly this year.

Great review of The Good Muslim its now on my to buy list. It sounds like you really enjoyed Best Mets. There is nothing like reading about 'your team'. people who are not sports fans miss out a bit I think.

Excellent pair of reviews in Belletrista.

Regarding leprosy & Hawaii, I really hope to one day get to Molokai by O. A. Bushnell, which some consider THE Hawaii book.

>42 - Haha - I was born in 1986!

Now I feel old!

OK, if you folks are going to post your birth dates, I am not reading this thread anymore.
(...totters off to find a chair so that she can sit down and be grumpy...)

k4k

Pulls reading glasses down on nose... did you say 1986?

Excellent reviews in Belle, Darryl. The Good Muslim has been on my radar screen, but for some reason, I thought it was a sequel to A Golden Age.

Thanks for your kind compliments about my review of The Good Muslim. I also enjoyed watching two YouTube videos, in which the author talks about her book, the Bangladeshi war for independence, and modern day Dhaka:

Tahmima Anam talks about her new novel THE GOOD MUSLIM

The Review Show: The Good Muslim by Tahmima Anam (BBC)

I just looked at the description of A Golden Age, and The Good Muslim is the sequel to it, and it's the second book in a proposed trilogy, which I didn't realize until now. The main characters in A Golden Age are the brother and sister that are the central characters in The Good Muslim, along with their widowed mother, and the story takes place in 1971, during the height of the Bangladeshi civil war. So, A Golden Age jumps to the top of my wish list, along with the new Gil Scott-Heron memoir, The Last Holiday.

>45 I did like Best Mets, Barry, mainly because I was a fan of the team for most of my childhood. I doubt that anyone who didn't follow the team closely would enjoy the book as much as I did.

>46 I own two other books about Molokai, The Colony by John Tayman, and The Lepers of Molokai by Charles Warren Stoddard (which is a free e-book). I'll read those two in the near future, but I'll hold off on Bushnell's book for now.

>47 Now you've made all of us feel ancient, Cait. I was born in 1961, so I'm old enough to be your father!

Well, Darryl, if it makes you feel any better, I'm old enough to have been your babysitter.

>53 I was an easy kid to babysit, as long as I had a couple of books and a tasty snack.

Book #5: Walkabout by James Vance Marshall



My rating:

Purchased 12/31/11 (NYRB Book Club subscription), received 1/8/12

This novel was written by Donald G. Payne by 1959, who used the pseudonym James Vance Marshall, in honor of a man who lived in the outback of Australia and collaborated with Payne in its creation. Walkabout did not receive much attention until 1971, after a movie based on the book, but not faithful to it, was released, to critical acclaim.

Eleven year old Mary and her eight year old brother Peter are residents of Charleston, South Carolina who find themselves stranded after their Adelaide-bound plane has crashed and exploded in the desert of the Northern Territory of Australia. They are only lightly injured, but the captain and navigating officer, the only other people on the plane, were killed. The two struggle to find water or food, until they encounter a naked Aborigine boy, who is performing a walkabout, a ritual essential for manhood in his tribe. The unnamed boy has never seen white people, and is fascinated by them. Peter almost immediately bonds with the Aborigine, despite their lack of a shared language; the older Mary, who is more familiar with the customs of the Jim Crow South, is repulsed by the strange black boy, but she realizes that he and her brother must rely on him in order to survive.

Peter and Mary follow the boy, who takes them under his wing and shows the "amazingly helpless" pair how to search for water, and hunt for and cook food. The boys become playmates and comrades, while the half-child half-adult Mary maintains her distance while harboring jealousy for her brother's attachment to the Aborigine, his lack of reliance upon her, and her desire to join them in their childish games. A simple misunderstanding between Mary and the Aborigine leads to a tragic consequence, which places all of their lives in jeopardy.

I found Walkabout to be a mildly enjoyable though repetitive and heavy-handed story about cultural misunderstandings and similarities, which can best be thought of as a dated young adult novel. The novel shines in its descriptions of the flora and fauna of the Australian outback, but the structure of the story and the portrayal of the three characters was overly simplified and ultimately disappointing.

I was just looking at an email sent by NYRB pushing this book. Think I will pass on it!

That's one of the reasons why I like being able to find most NYRBs easily in my favorite bookstores in NYC; I can look at them and decide which ones I want to buy. Much harder for those of you who don't have such good bookstores nearby.

I was wondering if the Nicholas Roeg film; Walkabout (1971) was based on Donald G Payne's book.

You know Darryl I only stop by to see how many books you have bought this year.

>57 Ha ha! So far only one, Barry; I pre-ordered the Kindle version of The Map and the Territory by Michel Houellebecq at the end of December, but I wasn't charged for it until it came out on January 3rd.

Great review. Disappointing that the book isn't as could as we might like to imagine it could be.

>59 Kerry (avatiakh) in the 75 Books group also read Walkabout this weekend, and she had the same opinion about it.

Very informative review of Walkabout - I'll probably stay away from that one. Do you know what other books will be coming for your subscription or is it a surprise?

>61 NYRB has a list of forthcoming titles through June, and the members of the NYRB Book Club will receive one book each month, selected from among the newest titles by the editors. From what I can tell, NYRB publishes 1-3 books a month, so there is still an element of surprise as to which book the club members will receive. I would assume that the next book I'll receive will be one of the two books by Elizabeth Taylor that will be published next month, Angel or A Game of Hide and Seek. However, it's also possible that I could receive An Ermine in Czernopol by Gregor von Rezzori, which was published earlier this month.

>62

Exciting choices! I have nearly finished reading Gregor von Rezzori's Flamme die sich verzehrt as part of my German Literature of the 1930s + 40s focus, and still have a German edition of An Ermine in Czernopol on the shelf. Last week, I bought Angel, following other members recommendations here on the board.

>63 I (selfishly) hope that you decide to read An Ermine in Czernopol soon! I wish I had received that book instead of Walkabout.

That enticing list of forthcoming NYRB books is the main reason I decided to subscribe to the NYRB Book Club, instead of renewing my subscription to Archipelago Books.

Not wanting to read any spoilers, the first and final paragraphs of your review of The Good Muslim by Tahmima Anam finally decided what I would read next - I'm happily into the first chapters of A Golden Age and am really enjoying it. Thank you, Darryl :)

#62 I recently bought An Ermine in Czernopol because I greatly enjoyed his The Snows of Yesteryear. I've also have his Memoirs of an Anti-Semite on the TBR for several years. Hope to read Ermine when I go on a trip at the end of the month.

I have Memoirs of an Anti-Semite on the TBR pile also - should bump that up. I quite liked Angel - a gripping but somewhat horrifying portrait of a narcissistic author. Been meaning to read more Elizabeth Taylor for awhile now. A Game of Hide and Seek also sounds interesting.

>65 I'm glad that you're enjoying A Golden Age, Akeela. I'll definitely read it, but I'll probably hold off buying it for a while.

>66 I look forward to your comments about An Ermine in Czernopol, Rebecca.

>67 I'm glad to hear that you liked Angel. Hopefully that will be the next book I receive from NYRB.

Book #6: Swamplandia! by Karen Russell



My rating:

2011 Orange Prize longlist
Purchased 3/28/11 at Borders Books & Music, Atlanta

Thirteen year old Ava is the youngest member of the Bigtree tribe, who lives on an isolated south Florida island along the Gulf Coast, and operates the Swamplandia! theme park, which is dedicated to the 98 gators, or Seths, that live in its large tank. Ava's mother Hilola, the star of the daily performances, has died, leaving Ava and her two older siblings Ossie and Kiwi rudderless, as the show loses its appeal and fan base to the nearby World of Darkness amusement park. Their father, known to them and visitors as Chief, hatches a plan to revive the flagging show, and leaves the three to fend for themselves as the park temporarily suspends its operations.

The brainy but naïve Kiwi leaves for the mainland to earn money for the family and seek an education at Harvard. Ossie is influenced by the occult, and meets a ghost boyfriend who meets her in the surrounding swamps. Ava, the most grounded of the four Bigtrees, is left to care for the Seths and watch over the increasingly erratic behavior of her sister.

Swamplandia! was a disturbing novel, which was filled with characters that were too strange to be likeable, and plots that were too odd to be believable. The best parts of the book were the superb painting on the front of the dust jacket, and the enticing reviews on the back. Karen Russell is clearly a very talented writer, and many readers will enjoy this book far better than I did, so I would not want to discourage anyone from giving this book a try.

Hmm. There was a Karen Russell story in the anthology that I reviewed recently for www.Belletrista.com (Fantastic Women). It was intriguing, but made me think that I might not want to read Swamplandia. It was just too odd. Your review fits what I experienced.

69. 70> Yep, kind of what I figured, which is why that one isn't on my list. I had a similar response to St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. At least that one played on some well-known myths.

Darryl, a controversial low rating for Swamplandia, which has received some rave reviews on LT. I have not read it.

I almost hate to admit it, but your low rating of Swamplandia makes me perversely more interested in reading it just to see what's so disturbing and controversial about it. I hadn't paid much attention to it before.

Sorry you didn't like Swamplandia, Darryl. It is disturbing, but I found it a fascinating mixture of Florida weird, Florida history and psychological gothic -- maybe it helps to live in Florida to appreciate it.

I've finally been able to catch up on your thread! Great reviews, as always. I've read a few on your planned reading list and am looking forward to seeing what you make of them.

>70 'Too odd' is right, Joyce. I like quirky books and ones that take big risks, such as The Flying Troutmans by Miriam Toews, The Obscene Bird of Night by José Donoso, and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, but Swamplandia! didn't do it for me.

>71 I expected to like Swamplandia!, and was prepared to get St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, but I'll stay away from Karen Russell's books for the time being.

>72 a controversial low rating for Swamplandia!, which has received some rave reviews on LT.

It has received some stellar reviews, particularly the most recent ones, but there are quite a few one and two star reviews and negative comments among the older reviews on LT. It seems as though the majority of reviewers loved it or disliked it.

>73 I'd encourage you to read it, Steven, especially because so many people did like it.

>74 I found it a fascinating mixture of Florida weird, Florida history and psychological gothic -- maybe it helps to live in Florida to appreciate it.

You may be right about that, Jane. Jill (mrstreme), who lives in Florida, loved it, and she thought I would, too (and she's usually right about what books I would like and loathe). I was disappointed that I liked it less and less as the story progressed.

Oddly enough, I've never been to Florida, even though I live nearby. I can't think of anyone I know who hasn't been yet.

>75 Hi Char! I'm glad to see you here; thanks for the kind compliment.

Oddly enough, I've never been to Florida, even though I live nearby. I can't think of anyone I know, who hasn't been yet.

Indeed! Hard to believe, when you live so close . . . but then an awful lot of people have been there only because of Disney (waving hand in the air here--and only because my husband had a conference there). You're just too busy with London and San Fransisco (and all those glamorous places adults go . . . )

>77 Right. I missed out on going to Disney World in high school, and I can't think of a good reason to go there now. I don't like hot and humid weather; I'm not fond of crowded beaches (although I love the ocean); none of my family members or close friends live there; and the major cities and destination points in Florida (Miami, Orlando, Tampa, etc.) aren't enticing to me. If I go it will probably be for a medical conference.

I've never been to Florida and have no desire to go, for the same reasons you state. Hearing about the bugs blocking up the grill of your car was anough for me.

Give Sarasota a try -- not only do we have the #1 beach (Siesta Key), but we have two professional theatres, dozens of community theatres, an opera company, a ballet company, a world class museum, beautiful botanical gardens, spring training baseball, great restaurants, a film festival, only one teeny-tiny old theme park (Jungle Gardens) and gorgeous weather from the end of October until May (avoid August and September).

Darryl, I thought of you when I saw this article: Florida gun owners up in arms over attempt to prevent patients from carrying firearms. I'm not sure why someone in the hospital needs a gun, but maybe as a doctor you understand. ;-)

>79 I hate hot and humid weather. Of course, this begs the question of why I've chosen to live in Atlanta for nearly 15 years.

>80 Thanks, Jane. I'll keep that in mind...

>81 ...or not. WTH???

just another example of Florida weird......

It may be deep South weird; Georgia is, I think, equally as bad when it comes to gun laws. I know that you can carry a concealed weapon in the Atlanta airport if it is legally registered, although I don't think you're allowed to do so on public transit. I don't know about hospitals, but I would tend to doubt it, as Grady Memorial Hospital, the city's main public hospital, has metal detectors at its entrances.

Cold and snowy here in WI, just for your visit Darryl.

I'm ready. Can I wear my Giants parka and scarf?

Hmmm. Some of us are over it, but I won't speak for all Packers fans. They can be a little rabid.

The finalists for this year's National Book Critics Circle Awards were announced last night:

Fiction

Teju Cole, Open City (Random House)
Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Alan Hollinghurst, The Stranger’s Child (Knopf)
Edith Pearlman, Binocular Vision (Lookout Books)
Dana Spiotta, Stone Arabia (Scribner)


Nonfiction

Amanda Foreman, A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War (Random)
James Gleick, The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood (Pantheon)
Adam Hochschild, To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Maya Jasanoff, Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World (Knopf)
John Jeremiah Sullivan, Pulphead: Essays (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux)

Autobiography

Diane Ackerman, One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, A Marriage, and the Language of Healing (W.W. Norton)
Mira Bartók, The Memory Palace (Free Press)
Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, Harlem Is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America (Little, Brown)
Luis J. Rodríguez, It Calls You Back: An Odyssey Through Love, Addiction, Revolutions, and Healing (Touchstone)
Deb Olin Unferth, Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War (Henry Holt)

Biography

Mary Gabriel, Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of the Revolution (Little, Brown)
John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life (Penguin Press)
Paul Hendrickson, Hemingway’s Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934-1961 (Knopf)
Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (Viking)
Ezra F. Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (Belknap Press: Harvard University Press)

Criticism

David Bellos, Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything (Faber & Faber)
Geoff Dyer, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition: Selected Essays and Reviews (Graywolf)
Jonathan Lethem, The Ecstasy of Influence (Doubleday)
Dubravka Ugresic, Karaoke Culture (Open Letter)
Ellen Willis, Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock Music (University of Minnesota Press)

Poetry

Forrest Gander, Core Samples from the World (New Directions)
Aracelis Girmay, Kingdom Animalia (BOA Editions)
Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains (Copper Canyon Press)
Yusef Komunyakaa, The Chameleon Couch (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
Bruce Smith, Devotions (University of Chicago Press)

The winners will be announced on March 8. More info: http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/press-release-draft

Now I'm torn! Was completely won over by your review of The Good Muslim... until I realised it was by the author of A Golden Age, which I seem to recall being distinctly underwhelmed by - don't remember why, though, so if I get a chance I'll have a look back over my old threads. I'll be interested to see what you and Akeela make of it.

One of my unstated goals for this year was to read some of the best articles and short stories that appeared in The New Yorker in years past, particularly those written by legendary authors such as A.J. Liebling, Joseph Mitchell, Lillian Ross, James Baldwin, John Cheever, John Updike, John McPhee, Ann Beattie and others. Subscribers to the magazine can read back issues on line for free, and I own The Complete New Yorker, a compilation of eight DVD-ROMs that contain all of the issues from the first 80 years (I love the ads, cartoons and illustrations from the old issues, which can also be viewed via the digital online edition of the magazine.

I'll review these articles and short stories here as well, starting with:

"The Swimmer" by John Cheever (The New Yorker, July 18, 1964)



Neddy Merrill, a suburbanite blessed by wealth, good looks and an athletic physique, lounges at the edge of a friend's pool on a lazy midsummer afternoon in suburban New York. He is as content as a man can be, and he decides to prolong this perfect day by swimming across the county, from one pool to another, meeting friends and sharing drinks with them.

He is initially greeted warmly by his neighbors and their guests. However, as his journey progresses, several cracks begin to appear in this idyllic setting: "For Sale" signs mysteriously appear, former friends treat him with indifference and disdain and make accusations against him, and the weather takes on an autumnal appearance. Neddy becomes increasingly bewildered and exhausted, until he reaches home, where a final surprise awaits him.

"The Swimmer" is considered to be one of Cheever's best short stories, and it was later made into a 1968 movie that starred Burt Lancaster. I thoroughly enjoyed this dark, surrealist story, which is the first work by John Cheever that I've read. (4½ stars)

Darryl - I'm happy to see your short story and essay project. You may give me some ideas on how to handle my own similar project, which is still in the experimental stages.

Unfortunately, I think it's going to increase my must-read list. That first story sounds really interesting, and I haven't read Cheever either, so . . . .

>91 Joyce, this is new territory for me, but other Club Readers, particularly dchaikin, janepriceestrada (is she joining us this year?), avaland and some of the 75 Books members have been doing this for awhile.

I was inspired and reminded to do this when I read fuzzy_patters's comments about The Stories of John Cheever earlier this morning. I hadn't read anything by Cheever either, but "The Swimmer" has made me eager to read some of his other New Yorker short stories, particularly "The Enormous Radio" and "The Day the Pig Fell into the Well".

You have inspired me to pick up my reading pace so I can hurry up and get to "The Swimmer."

"The Swimmer" is a great story. I have a collection by Cheever, but don't know that I've read a lot in it.

Going back to the National Book Critics Circle, I've only read the Teju Cole, which I didn't like as much as I think you did, Darryl, for the fiction, and I have the Malcolm X bio, Is That a Fish in Your Ear, and Karaoke Culture (as part of my Open Letter subscription) but haven't read them yet.

>93 "The Swimmer" is a quick read, which took me less than a half hour to finish. BTW, for anyone who doesn't have access to this story, The New Yorker has an audio podcast from last year, in which Anne Enright reads "The Swimmer" and discusses it with the magazine's fiction editor, Deborah Treisman, afterward:

Voices Over Water

I've been itching to read Just Enough Liebling, a collection of A. J. Liebling's best New Yorker articles. I'll probably read at least the first article today, "A Good Appetite", which appeared in the April 11, 1959 issue. If I bring this book with me to Madison on Saturday I'll probably read it from cover to cover, and review it as a whole. If I don't, then I might read it sporadically, and post reviews of the articles as I get to them.

Thanks for your comments about The Stories of John Cheever; I wouldn't have otherwise read "The Swimmer" today.

>94 I don't have any of Cheever's books, but I suspect that I'll want to read The Wapshot Chronicle and The Wapshot Scandal in the near future. I'll probably look for John Cheever: Complete Novels, the Library of America edition that contains his five novels, at Book Culture sometime in the near future (I've purchased several deeply discounted LOA books there).

I'm interested to get your take on Karaoke Culture. I also own the Malcolm X biography, which I plan to read next month, and Is That a Fish in Your Ear?, which I'll probably read this spring. As you know, I read and enjoyed Open City and The Stranger's Child, but I was lukewarm about Harlem Is Nowhere. The only other book I have is The Chameleon Couch, which I haven't read yet.

ETA: Now that I think about it, I probably won't bring Just Enough Liebling with me to Madison; several of the 75ers are planning to read God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science by James Hannam next month, in honor of JanetinLondon, who died earlier this month. I'd like to get a head start on it while I'm there, as I should have plenty of reading time next week when my best friends' kids are in school.

The winner of this year's Costa Book Award is Pure by Andrew Miller, a historical novel set on the eve of the French Revolution, which is centered around a young engineer who is ordered by the king to demolish Paris' oldest cemetery. It was one of the novels picked by the Guardian for its prospective Booker Prize longlist last year, which was passed over by the Booker judges in favor of more deserving works of literature, including The Testament of Jessie Lamb and Snowdrops.

Costa book award: Andrew Miller wins for sixth novel, Pure

I bought this in London last summer, and I'll read it soon.

Love the sarcasm, Darryl! I remember well your reviews of those two books.

Hen, heh. That was pretty funny.

I have a book of Cheever's short stories. I'll read The Swimmer tonight.

I hadn't seen the news about Andrew Miller. I really liked his first book, Ingenious Pain, about an eighteenth-century doctor who cannot feel pain. I was slightly less whelmed by his later books, so I'll look out for your review of Pure.

Book #8: Mister Blue by Jacques Poulin



My rating:

Jim, the narrator of this outstanding novel, is a writer and former professor, who lives in his isolated childhood home alongside the St. Lawrence River, close to Quebec City. He lives alone, save for his old feline companion Mister Blue, as he attempts to write a "the most beautiful love story in the world." However, he has never been truly in love, and he struggles to provide a face and a voice to the woman in his novel.

One day Jim walks on the bank of the river, and he is surprised to see footsteps in the sand, leading to a nearby cave. He enters, and finds evidence that someone is living there. A copy of The Arabian Nights is alongside remnants of a campfire, which has been inscribed with the name "Marie K." The novelist changes her name in his mind to "Marika", and she serves as the inspiration for the woman in his novel.

He later meets a matronly woman, who knows Marika and gives him an enticing description of her. As he is befriended by the matron and a young woman, referred to as La Petite, Jim's heart is filled with Marika's presence and his growing love for her, while he awaits a reply to his letters of invitation. His friendship with La Petite deepens, as the two damaged souls find kinship and draw each other out of their emotional shells:

In spite of the difference in age and the other differences, which were many, La Petite and I had several things in common. And the most important of these common points, at least the one that brought me closest to her, was perhaps this: most of the time we were, both of us, walled up inside ourselves and busy trying to stick back together the fragments of our past.

Jim continues to search for the elusive Marika, as his heart progressively fills with love, longing and despair.

Mister Blue is a richly layered, haunting and deeply moving novel of love and memory, in which reality and fantasy blur and merge. It is both beautifully and simply written, and I adored and identified closely with Jim and La Petite, who will reside in my heart for many days. I can't recommend this novel highly enough, and I look forward to reading more of Poulin's translated works.

>97 Right. Although I haven't read it yet, I'm glad that Pure received this award. I own nine of the 13 books that the Guardian felt should be on the longlist, and read four of them, which were all excellent: The Sense of an Ending, The Stranger's Child, The Good Muslim and Chinaman. I also own There but for the, Waterline by Ross Raisin, Pure, Visiting Angel by Paul Wilson, and At Last by Edward St Aubyn. I'll read all but the St Aubyn later this year; At Last is the last book in his semi-autobiographical Melrose trilogy, so I'll read the first two books, Some Hope and Mother's Milk, first.

>98 I look forward to your comments about "The Swimmer", RidgewayGirl.

>99 The only reason I knew that Pure had won the Costa Award was because of a Google alert e-mail that I have for any news articles that contain the phrase "IMPAC Dublin". Ingenious Pain won the 1999 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and your description of it makes me want to read it in the near future.

I'm so glad you liked Mister Blue. I had to laugh at how closely the beginnings of our reviews mirror one another. I must find more of Poulin's works. I've looked in two local stores this week to no avail. I may have to resort to online buying, which I try to avoid, but this is an emergency.

Based on both of your reviews it's on my wish list now. Thanks for sharing. :)

Darryl and Lisa, your reviews of Mister Blue were so similar that I thought I was seeing the same review twice. I am convinced that you both read the same book

Anyway joking aside it is now on my to buy list.

Added Mister Blue to the wish list...

Thanks Rick, Barry and Nancy; I hope that you enjoy Mister Blue as much as Lisa and I did.

Lisa, Archipelago Books has published three of his books so far: Spring Tides, Translation Is a Love Affair and Mister Blue. I have the second of these three books but not the first. I haven't seen his other translated books in my favorite bookshops (the Strand, Book Culture, City Lights, London Review Bookshop, Foyles), but I haven't been actively looking for anything else by him.

Good one, Barry! If you make it to London, the flagship branch of Foyles has a nice selection of Archipelago books on the ground floor, near the side entrance.

Hi Daryl--I don't usually like short stories, but I really like John Cheever's. I read his Collected Stories years ago, and think I will reread it during my 2012 year of rereads.

Based on Lisa's review last year I bought Poulin's Spring Tides, but haven't read it yet. He sounds like an author who is consistently good. Must get to it soon.

Book #9: Stained Glass Elegies by Shusaku Endo



My rating:

Purchased at Strand Bookstore, NYC on 12/26/11

Stained Glass Elegies is a compilation of 11 short stories that Endo wrote between 1959 and 1977, which were largely taken from his earlier short story collections Aika (Elegies) and Juichi no iro garasu (Eleven Stained-Glass Segments). Most of the stories touch on Endo's main themes: chronic illness and death; the indifference and paternalism that patients in the modern hospital are afforded; the effect of barbarism and imperialism on Catholics in feudal and wartime Japan; and the internal struggles of Japanese Catholics, who attempt to reconcile Western religious beliefs in a cultural tradition that is seemingly at odds with it.

Many of the stories, unfortunately, are uneven, repetitive and inferior to the two Endo novels I've read so far, The Sea and Poison and Volcano. The main character of several of the stories was Suguro, which also made subsequent stories more difficult (is this the same Suguro as the one two stories past?). The best stories are A Forty-Year-Old Man (1964), in which (you guessed it) Suguro is a hospitalized invalid with tuberculosis, who faces his own mortality and irrelevance as he undergoes a third major operation which may claim his life; Incredible Voyage (1968), a science fiction tale based on the 1960s American television series Fantastic Voyage, which concerns a newly minted doctor and a team of surgeons, who board a submarine that is shrunken to the size of a flea, in order to perform a life saving operation on a beautiful young woman; and Unzen (1965), in which a tourist from Tokyo visits the site where thousands of Christians were tortured and killed during the 17th century Shimbara Rebellion, which centers on Kichijiro, the main character of Endo's most famous and highly regarded novel Silence.

Although Stained Glass Elegies could be considered a good introduction, I would not recommend it to the reader who has not read Endo before. Those who wish to focus on Endo's works, such as the members of this year's Author Theme Reads group, may wish to purchase it, but I suspect that those readers, and novices to Endo, will be better served by reading his translated novels instead.

Book #10: Botchan (Master Darling) by Natsume Soseki



My review:

Downloaded to my Amazon Kindle on 12/11/11

Botchan was written by Soseki in 1905, and it is widely considered to be one of the most important works of Japanese literature, as it was one of the first modern works that touches on the conflict between traditional values and beliefs found in remote Japanese villages, and the influence of the West and a modern society in a major city such as Tokyo.

The narrator is a young man of slight build but feisty spirit who has recently graduated from university with a degree in physics, who has been hired to teach mathematics in a middle school in a small rural town. Botchan is guided by his personal moral code and sense of duty, which is exceeded only by his self importance and pomposity. Almost immediately he runs afoul of several of the students in his classes, who torment him with blackboard comments and juvenile tricks. He subsequently angers his immediate supervisor, the principal of the school, and several of his fellow teachers, who conspire against him and his supervisor. Botchan strikes out against his accusers and foes, as he longs to return to Tokyo and to the old woman who served as the family maid during his troubled childhood, as she is the only person who nurtured and believed in him.

Despite its short length of 92 pages, Botchan was a tedious read that seemed at least twice as long as its actual length. Not recommended.

Thanks for your helpful reviews.

I had Botchan on my tentative reading list for this quarter, but based on your review I think I'll skip it. I loved Soseki's I am a Cat, and was a bit perplexed by Kokoro.

Similarly, I won't include Stained Glass Elegies on my Endo list this year, but will concentrate on his novels.

I am hoping to read Kokoro when I'm away next week; I've heard good things about it, but perhaps I'll also be perplexed.

>110 You're welcome, Steven. I'm sorry to hear that you found Kokoro perplexing, as I was planning to read it and The Three-Cornered World next month, and I Am a Cat in March.

>111 I hope that you like Kokoro, Rebecca; I've also heard good things about it (and it's one of the books that has sat on my TBR pile for several years).

Just catching up, Darryl. Enjoyed your short story report, but unlike the others, I won't be digging out Cheever to read. I read Botchan some years ago, but depended on the intro to tell me why the story was important (apparently it's a text read often by students).

If you had described Swamplandia! to me before you had read it, I would have warned you off. It seems so obviously not a Darryl-type read (from my perspective).

>113 I haven't read anything by John Cheever before, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed "The Swimmer". I bought The Complete New Yorker: Eighty Years of the Nation's Greatest Magazine in 2005, a collection of 8 DVD-ROMs which contain all of the issues from 1925-2005 as they originally appeared, as I wanted to read some of the classic New Yorker articles and short stories. However, now that subscribers to the magazine have access to the online version of all of the back issues, this collection has become a bit redundant (although I'll still hang on to it).

I looked at several sources to explain why Botchan was an important book. Otherwise I would have only given it two stars at the most.

I thought I would like Swamplandia!, as there are several works of magical realism that I absolutely loved. This just wasn't one of them.

I really enjoyed Kokoro and had been planning to get Botchan next but maybe I'll go with I am a Cat instead. I had heard it's a classic also, so a bit disappointed.

>115 Botchan is a classic work of Japanese literature, but I suspect that this is main;y due of the time in which it was written (1905) rather than the quality of the work when compared to other 20th century novelists. Soseki was one of the first Japanese to spend time in the West and to learn English, and this book contrasts modern Western and traditional Japanese cultures, although I had to read a summary of the book in order to understand this, to a mild degree. Junichiro Tanizaki also contrasts differences between the West and the East in early 20th century Japan, but much more effectively, particularly in his novels Naomi and Some Prefer Nettles.

Here are my planned reads for February, and the groups and challenges that I'm reading them for (as always, subject to revision). Books marked with an asterisk are books I'm currently reading, which may or may not be completed by the end of this month. I'll bring those books with me to Madison, WI on Saturday.

* The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson (Non-Fiction)
* A Mind at Peace by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar (Reading Globally)
* 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami (Author Theme Reads)
God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science by James Hannam (JanetinLondon memorial thread group read)
Snow by Orhan Pamuk (Reading Globally)
Kokoro by Natsume Soseki (Author Theme Reads)
The Three-Cornered World by Natsume Soseki (Author Theme Reads)
Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon (Black History Month/Club Read Jan-Feb theme: Read a book in the year that you were born)
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable (Black History Month)
Death in a Small Package: A Short History of Anthrax by Susan D. Jones (Medicine)
Erasure by Percival Everett (African/African American Literature)

This may be an overly optimistic list, as I'll have an exceptionally busy month in the hospital. I'll work at least a portion of all four weekends, including at least two Sunday overnight calls.

#106 Yes, I have all three Archipelago books by Poulin, too. I want to read Autumn Rounds next.

>116 - I did read and enjoy Naomi. Doing my best not to buy more Tanizakis but I do want to read Some Prefer Nettles. I'll be interested to see what you think of The Three-Cornered World. Pretty ambitious list.

My absolute favorite Tanizaki is The Makioka Sisters, a lovely family story depicting the falling away of the old traditional ways of living. I'm going to try to reread it this year.

I also quite liked The Makioka Sisters although I read somewhere that it was an atypical novel for Tanizaki. I think his usual stories were described as 'a man's search for the perfect woman to torment him' which is an apt description of Naomi.

Ditto to #119 about The Makioka Sisters. I would put it among my top 20 favorite novels of all time. I haven't, though, read anything else by Tanizaki. I'm hoping to read at least Some Prefer Nettles in the coming weeks.

Darryl, I am sorry to hear that you did not care for Botchan, as I also have it sitting on my Kindle.

>117 I only own Mister Blue and Translation Is a Love Affair by Poulin. I'll request Spring Tides if I decide to renew my Archipelago Books subscription; otherwise I'll pick it up at some point. I'll look for Autumn Rounds and his other translated books, as well.

>118 I liked the book Naomi, although she and the spineless narrator were not very likable characters. I preferred Some Prefer Nettles to Naomi, and I hope to read The Makioka Sisters later this year.

>119 Let me know when you plan to read The Makioka Sisters, Deborah, as I may want to join you.

>120 '{A} man's search for the perfect woman to torment him' is a perfect description for Naomi! Been there...

>121 Thanks for that glowing recommendation of The Makioka Sisters, Steven. I'll definitely get to it this year.

>122 I probably wouldn't have finished Botchan if it wasn't a short novel, and if I wasn't planning to read it for the Author Theme Reads group.

I finished The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson on Monday, which was superb, and Guadalajara, an entertaining and surreal collection of short stories by Catalunan author Quim Monzó, which was very good. I'll review both books in the next day or two. I'm halfway through Book 1 of 1Q84, and I'm hooked. I'll probably finish it by Saturday.

Book #12: Guadalajara by Quim Monzó



My rating:

Quim Monzó (1952-) is an award winning Catalan novelist, short story writer and journalist who was born in Barcelona, where he continues to reside. This collection of short stories was originally published in 1996, and was subsequently translated into English by Peter Bush for Open Letter Books, who published it last year.

Guadalajara consists of a mixture of surreal, sometimes grotesque, and occasionally wickedly funny tales about the absurdities of everyday life and past and present customs. In the first story, "Family Life", a nine year old boy openly questions a longstanding family ritual on the eve of his ceremony, which leads to unexpected consequences. "Life Is So Short" concerns a chance meeting between a man and a woman who find themselves alone and attracted to each in a temporarily disabled elevator. In "Centripetal Force", a man is unable to leave his apartment on an ordinary day, and his subsequent attempts draw his girlfriend, neighbors and others into his plight.

Also included are several satirical tales about well known characters and stories. In "Gregor", a beetle is suddenly transformed into a boy; in "Outside the Gates of Troy" the Greeks within the Trojan horse are faced with an unexpected complication to their plan to enter the city; and "A Hunger and Thirst for Justice" concerns Robin Hood's attempts to rob the rich, who are increasingly bored by his exploits, and help the local peasants, who question his ethics and are unappreciative of his efforts.

I enjoyed this clever collection of stories, and I look forward to reading his novel Gasoline, which has also been recently published by Open Letter Press.

> 120 I agree that The Makioka Sisters is not "typical" of Tanizaki. Your description of his usual stories matches my own reaction to the other novels I've read by him.

Glad to read you enjoyed Guadalajara. It's on my TBR, since I received it as part of my Open Letter subscription.

Exhibit #257,139 of why pediatric medicine is better than adult medicine: Adult patients usually don't give you handmade cards to express their gratitude.

That is just precious, Darryl. How wonderful to have such a rewarding occupation.

Ahhhh, that's a keeper!

>124 - I saw a used copy of Guadalajara at the bookstore - sounds fascinating, I think I'll have to get it.

Adorable card!

Flavorwire has an online photo gallery of 20 of the most spectacular personal and private libraries:

20 Beautiful Private and Personal Libraries

I'd gladly take any of them, but these are my favorites:

Lovely site, Darryl. I agree with your top two choices for sure. Lagerfeld's library was rather odd; all of the books are in horizontal piles.

I have an idea of my dream library, and it's different from this, but I'd take any of these in a heartbeat. And yes, I'd fix Karl Lagerfeld's--he's so very pretentious. I was sort of surprised that he actually had a library. I just thought he swished around holding a small ugly dog in his arm, fanning himself, and making catty remarks.

Great pictures Darryl. Some of the massive older libraries look a little forbidding. My favourites are the Paris loft library; this is because of the handy bed nearby so that when your eyes close from too much reading there is not far to go to get to bed. I like the staircase library because it is such a neat idea. Some of the ultra modern ones seem a little cool for my taste and any library with superb views through massive picture windows is just too distracting.

Finally, finally catching up here. Few thoughts.

Great review of A Disease Apart. The hospital at Carville is fascinating to me, especially since it wasn't closed that long ago. They have a museum there now that I unfortunately never made it to.

My sister got me Swamplandia! for Christmas, and I think I'll start it soon despite your reservations. Florida is a wacky place. Every time there is a discussion of regions of the US, I always feel like there are a few states that don't really fit with any others. Florida is one of those.

I also enjoyedy our review of the Mets book. I prefer going to their games over the Yankees when we get the chance. However, as a lifelong Saints fan I tend to roll my eyes at all of these 'long suffering' fanbases. :)

I have The Master and Margarita, Atonement, and Pale Fire on my TBR as well. Let me know if you get to them this year, and I might be able to join you.

>133 Thanks, Deborah. I agree; Lagerfeld's library is sterile and strange, with the horizontally piled books. I suspect that his library is meant to be a fashion statement rather than one that is actually used.

>134 I don't know much about Lagerfeld, but I have an impression of him as a self absorbed and flamboyant artiste. I think I'd rather have dinner with Rick Santorum, Sarah Palin or Jean-Marie Le Pen instead of him.

>135 I like the bed and the comfy looking chair in the Paris loft library, along with the spiral staircase, but I prefer the rich wood and large windows of the first library I posted. I agree with you about the ultra modern libraries, which I find to be sterile and too similar to college libraries (and memories of too many hours spent studying Anatomy, Neuroscience and Biochemistry in them). I prefer reading in the company of other readers, or in public settings that are conducive to reading (park, beach, cafe or book shop), especially if these settings aren't too quiet or too noisy, so I like those libraries that have vivid scenery.

>136 I would love to go to that museum in Carville, Jane; I might go the next time I go to New Orleans (it's fairly close to Baton Rouge, right?).

I'd definitely encourage you to read Swamplandia!, as many people liked it far better than I did.

I agree with you about 'long suffering' fan bases. Fans of the Chicago Cubs, the Philadelphia Eagles, the Northwestern men's basketball team (the only Division I team that has never been selected for the NCAA tournamaent), and a few other teams can make that claim. The Mets won the World Series in their eighth year of existence, and they've been to the World Series several times since then, so their fans can't complain. I'm more of a Phillies fan than a Mets fan now, but I have a split loyalty between New York and Philadelphia sports teams, since I lived in North Jersey until I was 13, then moved with my family to suburban Philadelphia.

I am planning to read those three books this year, but I doubt I'll get to any of them before April.

I finished two books yesterday: India Becoming: A Portrait of Modern India by Akash Kapur, my LT Early Reviewer book for January, which was very good (4 stars); and The Three-Cornered World by Natsume Soseki, which was a painful slog (a generous 2 stars). I'll review these books later today.

I think I'd rather have dinner with Rick Santorum, Sarah Palin or Jean-Marie Le Pen instead of him.

Yikes! Although that COULD be entertaining!

137 - Yeah, Carville is on the other side of the river from BR. Near one of my favorite named towns in LA - Grosse Tete.

My buddy is a big Cubs fan and has made this elaborate argument that I should convert. Something to the effect that as a Saints fan I'm in a unique position to understand the fanbase's feelings. And now that we've won one, I should bring that enthusiasm to a much needed place. :)

Wow. You guys are all amazing with your reading. Kidzdoc, I think you must be one of those genius types, like Crichton or Canin or Turow (although he's a lawyer)... there are others. How does one practice medicine and have time to read 166 books in one year?!

>139 I think it's going to take a lot more than your enthusiasm to help the Cubs, Jane. ;-)

>140 Ha! I'm definitely not a genius, not even close. And, in this group of erudite readers, I'm probably a bit below average. I am 80% of a full time equivalent, and I work 14-16 days per month, which give me plenty of time for pleasure reading.

Yep, there's the proof: modest. And don't doctors work 18-hr days?

What was Swamplandia like? I love the cover of that book. I have her first outing, the collection of short stories, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. She's another precocious one.

Book #17: India Becoming: A Portrait of Modern India by Akash Kapur



My rating:

Akash Kapur is a prolific writer who has written for several of the world's leading publications, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Economist and Granta. He was born in India, was educated at Harvard and Oxford, and worked in New York for over a decade before he and his wife returned to India in 2003.

Starting in 1991, India underwent a dramatic transformation in response to financial crisis, from a socialist system plagued by nepotism, corruption and underdevelopment to a Western based capitalist system, in which government and private investors worked together to create a rapidly growing economy based largely on information technology, start up companies and real estate development in large cities such as Bangalore and Chennai, and in suburbs and smaller cities.

Kapur describes the transformed country in India Becoming through the lives of several people: Sathy, the descendant of a powerful landowning family, whose influence and importance wane as his region changes from an agricultural economy to one based on real estate and the purchase of cows for consumption; his wife Banu, a well educated woman who moves to Bangalore to take advantage of better schools for their children and to work as a professional; Das, a Dalit man born in extreme poverty as a member of the untouchable class, who became an independent businessman and rose to the middle class; Hari, a young man who uses his education and knowledge of English to flourish in the booming IT based economy and finds freedom as a gay man in the city; and Selvi, a naïve young woman from a rural town who works at a call center for American credit card holders, who experiences independence and tragedy in her daily struggles.

Through them, other characters, and Kapur's personal accounts, we learn about the often devastating effects that the new India has upon individuals, towns and cities, and the environment. The country's agriculture and small farmers suffer mightily, as farmers are forced out of business and their lands are purchased by real estate developers, who employ mobs of young men to intimidate and assault those who aren't willing to sell their property. Disputes are increasingly settled by violence and murder, as the police are ineffective or collusory and village leaders no longer command respect. Cheap disposable plastic is used increasingly by residents of large cities and is burned in large landfills in smaller towns, whose residents, including Kapur, suffer from the fumes they generate. Worst of all, the plight of the most impoverished does not improve, as the new economy favors the most entrepreneurial and well educated individuals.

Kapur's initial excitement and optimism about the new India are progressively dampened with time, and many of the individuals chronicled in the book suffer as a result of the decline of global economy in the late 2000s.

India Becoming is a superb and enlightening look into the new India, whose narrative style and interesting characters captivated me from the first page onward. The people that Kapur features are mainly privileged middle class people and educated young professionals, and it is not until the end that he describes, briefly, the life of several people who live alongside the landfill that spews toxic fumes onto his community. This lack of balance makes me that much more eager to read Katherine Boo's new book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, to learn more about the lives of the poorest members of Indian society.

>142 And don't doctors work 18-hr days?

I haven't worked an 18 hour day (e.g., 8 am to 2 am) in a very long time, before we instituted a night shift system (8 pm to 8 am). I worked for 15 hours earlier this week, from 8 pm Sunday to 11 am on Monday, as I had 19 admissions to the hospital in that time and needed a few hours to catch up on my admission notes and billing. I'll occasionally work a 15-16 hour day if I'm on call and getting slammed with admissions, but fortunately that's quite rare.

I reviewed Swamplandia! in message 69 of this thread. I didn't like it.

India Becoming sounds devastating. But very interesting.

Darryl, I'm sure you've read The White Tiger. How would you compare its depiction of today's India with what you read in India Becoming?

India Becoming has been put on my wish list. Great review, Darryl!

India Becoming does sound like a good companion book to Behind the Beautiful Forevers. On the list it goes!

>145 Yes, India Becoming is a book that could be read at a single sitting. It's one of the few books I've received from the LT Early Reviewer program that I would be willing to buy at full price. It won't be published in the US, UK and Canada until March 15.

>146 I did read The White Tiger in 2008, the year it won the Booker Prize. From what I remember, the narrator is a poor boy from the countryside who moves to a large city (Mumbai? New Delhi? Bangalore?) and works as a driver for a wealthy man. That novel showed the contrast between rich and poor in rural and urban India, so it touches on some similar themes to India Becoming. I liked The White Tiger, but I liked Animal's People by Indra Sinha, which was shortlisted for the 2007 Booker Prize, a bit better.

I own probably two or three dozen or more novels and non-fiction books set in India or Pakistan that I want to get to ASAP, including Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra, The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh, Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry, India: A Wounded Civilization by V.S. Naipaul and The Argumentative Indian by Amartya Sen. I probably won't read more than a couple of these books this year, so I'll probably focus on these books next year, and beyond.

>147 Thanks, Deborah. I hope that you do get to it soon.

>148 Thanks, Jennifer. I may pick up a copy of Behind the Beautiful Forevers as early as next week, and read it in the next month or two.

Great review, kidzdoc. Sounds like a very readable book.

Excellent review of India Becoming. I will be following your India reading with great interest.

The shortlist for this year's Diagram Prize, for the oddest book title of the year, was announced yesterday:

A Century of Sand Dredging in the Bristol Channel: Volume Two by Peter Gosson (wasn't one volume enough?)
Cooking with Poo by Saiyuud Diwong ("Poo" is the nickname of the author, not, um...)
Estonian Sock Patterns All Around the World by Aino Praakli (clearly one for the wish list)
The Great Singapore Penis Panic: And the Future of American Mass Hysteria by Scott D Mendelson (I dare anyone to read this on the subway)
Mr Andoh's Pennine Diary: Memoirs of a Japanese Chicken Sexer in 1935 Hebden Bridge by Stephen Curry and Takayoshi Andoh (some memories are not meant to be shared with others)
A Taxonomy of Office Chairs by Jonathan Olivares (would someone please get this man a wife?)
The Mushroom in Christian Art by John A Rush (a valuable addition to the growing body of work on the role of hallucinogenic mushrooms in the development of Christianity; another one for the wish list)

The winner will be announced on March 30.

#143, 149 Just catching up but great review of what sounds like a fascinating book, and I agree that Behind the Beautiful Forevers could be a good companion read, although I haven't read it.. I was not a fan of The White Tiger, but I really liked Sacred Games (as I think you know), although it is certainly flawed. Over the years, I've read a lot of novels/stories by Indian writers, and don't recall most of them now.

>153 I just noticed that the prologue of Behind the Beautiful Forevers is in the current (March 8) issue of The New York Review of Books:

Between Roses in Mumbai

#152 - Wonderful!

Thanks for the explanation on #2. Actually it might make a great diet book. Just having that title out in the kitchen would curb most appetites (not to mention repelling unwanted houseguests).

152 - Not going to lie, I added A Taxonomy of Office Chairs to my wishlist. :)

#152 - those are great (as are the comments).

The Mushroom in Christian Art sounds quite intriguing. I hadn't run across this theory before but will be on the lookout now.

#152 I am certain I have not read any of these, but I do know Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire. I wonder if Mr Andoh travelled in the same literary circle as Ted Hughes who was born just a couple of miles away.

Cooking with Poo is merely a sad imitation of Cooking with Pooh...

kidzdoc added a new title, Amsterdam Stories. This one is so obscure that there aren't even any reviews at Amazon. Looks interesting, though, considering who the author was. Can we get a review of it here? 5 members own it.

Darryl has an NYRB subscription and I guess he gets their books before they're released. Per the NYRB web site, it's scheduled for March 20 publication.

>

Member Boekenwijs has written a short review about the three main novellas, i.e. The Freeloader (previously translated as The Moocher), Young Titans and Little Poet, the titles of which are De uitvreter, Titaantjes and Dichtertje in Dutch respectively. You can also look at the wikipedia author page on these three works.

I own the complete works (of course), and it's on my TBR pilr (of course).

>163: And where can we find this review?

The review can be found here:

http://www.librarything.com/work/3821275/reviews

Just poppin' in to catch up on your reading, Darryl.

I see that The Great Singapore Penis Panic is currently very reasonably priced on Kindle...

Sorry; I've been absent from my own thread for a couple of weeks, as I'm just finishing a hideous five week stretch at work, including being on hospital call for five straight weekends and much of the days in between. Fortunately I'm off from work all of this week, and the next two months should be far easier than the first two months were.

>155 I think that "Cooking with Poo" would repel all house guests, unwanted or not.

>156 Jane, you're not the only one who added a book from the Diagram shortlist to your wish list. I'll be looking for your review of A Taxonomy of Office Chairs.

Hold it a sec...the Orange Prize longlist has just been announced:

Island of Wings by Karin Altenberg (Quercus) - Swedish; 1st Novel
On the Floor by Aifric Campbell (Serpent's Tail) - Irish; 3rd Novel
The Grief of Others by Leah Hager Cohen (The Clerkenwell Press) - American; 4th Novel
The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue (Picador) - Irish; 7th Novel
Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan (Serpent's Tail) - Canadian; 2nd Novel
The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright (Jonathan Cape) - Irish; 5th Novel
The Flying Man by Roopa Farooki (Headline Review) - British; 5th Novel
Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon (Quercus) - American; 4th Novel
Painter of Silence by Georgina Harding (Bloomsbury) - British; 3rd Novel
Gillespie and I by Jane Harris (Faber & Faber) - British; 2nd Novel
The Translation of the Bones by Francesca Kay (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) - British; 2nd Novel
The Blue Book by A.L. Kennedy (Jonathan Cape) - British; 6th Novel
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (Harvill Secker) - American; 1st Novel
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (Bloomsbury) - American; 1st Novel
Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick (Atlantic Books) - American; 7th Novel
State of Wonder by Ann Patchett (Bloomsbury) - American; 6th Novel
There but for the by Ali Smith (Hamish Hamilton) - British; 5th Novel
The Pink Hotel by Anna Stothard (Alma Books) - British; 2nd Novel
Tides of War by Stella Tillyard (Chatto & Windus) - British; 1st Novel
The Submission by Amy Waldman (William Heinemann) - American; 1st Novel

More info: http://www.orangeprize.co.uk/prize.html

A reversal of Canadian publication rights coming long after a book is first published; The Sealed Letter was published here in 2008. It must be because Emma Donoghue lives in Canada now. Usually it takes months for a book to appear here and then everyone else has read it. So sad!

Looks like a good year for books, but not very inclusive in terms of all the countries where a novel would be likely to be published in English.

Thanks for posting the Orange Longlist! I've not read any of those books, but several are on my TBR pile. Have you read any of the nominees?

Yes! Two of my favorite books of last year are on the list: There But for the and Gillespie and I. I started both Tides of War and The Sealed Letter; they weren't bad, but I wasn't grabbed by either and put them aside.

I thought The Night Circus was delightful -- haven't read any of the others....

Just catching up. Great reading, as usual (and that shortlist made me giggle).

>169 This year's Orange Prize longlist includes eight British writers, seven American, three Irish, one Swedish and one Canadian author, according to this article in yesterday's Guardian. I was very surprised that one of my favorite books of 2011, The Good Muslim by Bangladeshi author Tahmima Anam, didn't make the longlist. It's disappointing that there aren't any novels by Indian or Pakistani authors; Roopa Farooki was born in Pakistan, but moved to England with her parents at a young age, which is why she is listed as a British author. There aren't any books by Australian or New Zealand authors, nor any from the English speaking Caribbean or African countries.

>170 I've read Half Blood Blues and The Submission, and I won There but for the (which I'll start today), Gillespie and I, State of Wonder and Lord of Misrule. I liked The Submission, but I was lukewarm about Half Blood Blues.

>171 I knew you'd be happy to see There but for the and Gillespie and I on the longlist, Deborah. I'll read There but for the this month, and Gillespie and I in April. I'd like to read all of the shortlisted books, so I'll probably hold off buying any other books until the shortlist is announced on April 17th.

>172 The Night Circus has received a lot of highly positive reviews on LT, especially in the 75 Books club. I'll definitely read it if it makes the shortlist.

>173 I assume that you mean the Diagram shortlist, Rachel. I was also tickled that several people expressed interest in these books!

This year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize longlist has been announced:

1Q84: Books 1 and 2 by Haruki Murakami, translated from the Japanese by Jay Rubin
Alice by Judith Hermann, translated from the German by Margot Bettauer Dembo
Blooms of Darkness by Aharon Appelfeld, translated from the Hebrew by Jeffrey M. Green
Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke, translated from the Chinese by Cindy Carter
The Emperor of Lies by Steve Sem-Sandberg, translated from the Swedish by Sarah Death
From the Mouth of the Whale by Sjón, translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb
Hate: A Romance by Tristan Garcia, translated from the French by Marion Duvert and Lorin Stein
New Finnish Grammar by Diego Marani, translated from the Italian by Judith Landry
Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki, translated from the German by Anthea Bell
Parallel Stories by Peter Nadas, translated from the Hungarian by Imre Goldstein
Please Look After Mother by Kyung-sook Shin, translated from the Korean by Shin Chi-Young Kim
The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco, translated from the Italian by Richard Dixon
Professor Andersen's Night by Dag Solstad, translated from the Norwegian by Agnes Scott Langeland
Seven Houses in France by Bernardo Atxaga, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa

This is also one of my favorite literary prizes, so I'll be on the lookout for some of these books, especially Blooms of Darkness, The Prague Cemetery and Seven Houses in France. The selection of 1Q84: Books 1 and 2 is an interesting, and probably unique one, as the entire novel was not selected for the prize. 1Q84: Book 3 was translated by Philip Gabriel instead of Jay Rubin, and it was released seperately from 1Q84: Books 1 and 2.

From this list, I've read 1Q84: Books 1 and 2, which I enjoyed, and I just read Professor Andersen's Night, which was confusing and pointless, IMO. I also have Dream of Ding Village, but I haven't read it yet.

From the Orange list, the only one I've read (and loved!) was Lord of Misrule -- it came out two years ago, though, so I'm surprised to see it on the list.

On the Foreign Fiction list, I have The Prague Cemetery but haven't read it yet, and am interested in exploring several of the others. I did read Novel 11, Book 18 by Dag Solstad some years ago and found it extremely disturbing, and by Serve the People by Yan Lianke, which I found a little obvious, although mildly enjoyable. It is interesting that the languages translated are largely European (with several exceptions).

Two prize-worthy lists of which I have read none and only own one! Oh my. Thanks for posting them, Darryl.

>176 I remember that Lord of Misrule was released in the UK when I was there last summer, which would make it eligible for this year's Orange Prize.

I look forward to your comments about The Prague Cemetery. I liked Novel 11, Book 18 a lot, and Shyness & Dignity was nearly as good (although both books were at least unsettling, if not disturbing). Serve the People! was minimally amusing, but not a memorable book for me.

From the foreign fiction list: Please Look After Mom--I read it not once, but twice, and HATED it. Horrible, manipulative, whiney book. Blech.

175> I haven't read any of these books. Something to look forward to!

175> That's kind of what I thought from the blurbs, and why I've avoided it.

Definitely interesting that they split up the translations of 1Q84 but it does actually make sense. I'm not familiar with any of the other books.

The winners of this year's National Book Critics Circle Awards are:

Fiction: Edith Pearlman, Binocular Vision

Nonfiction: Maya Jasanoff, Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World

Autobiography: Mira Bartók, The Memory Palace

Biography: John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life

Criticism: Geoff Dyer, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition: Selected Essays and Reviews

Poetry: Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains

I was in a creative writing class with Laura Kasischke in grad school. Glad to see her win a big award!

>168 I noticed there are 3 titles on the list which have publication dates in the UK of March 2012 (I've seen them in the pub. catalogs). I can only assume the dates were before the announcement and that they, of course, had review or manuscript copies to work with. It's just interesting...

The list doesn't include Salvage the Bones, which is too bad. Her receiving the NBA shouldn't exclude her from being on this list, but maybe it wasn't published in the UK.

>172 The Gordon was probably published later in the UK. The prize is only books published in the UK in the last 12 months (April 2011 to March 2010, I think).

Book #25: Your New Baby: A Guide to Newborn Care by Roy Benaroch, MD



My rating:

The first time parents of a newborn baby face several challenges in caring for the most complex device they will ever own. The baby does not come with an instruction manual. It is not equipped with indicator or warning lights, and it can only cry or shriek when something isn't quite right. It requires constant attention, and its toxic emissions must be removed promptly and thoroughly. Worst of all, it does not come with a money back guarantee or exchange policy after 30 days.

In an effort to help maintain the sanity of the new mother and father, Dr. Roy Benaroch and his partners at Pediatric Physicians P.C. in metropolitan Atlanta have created an introductory manual for the newborn baby, which covers the basic parts and normal function of this bewildering apparatus, starting from the moment of birth. Parents are taught about breast feeding, circumcision care, bowel movements, head shape, and other essential topics. Most importantly, the authors provide a troubleshooting guide for the newborn with a fever, vomiting, diarrhea or other minor and more serious problems. The book is mainly designed for the families in their practice, but all new and experienced parents and other caregivers will find this to be a useful and handy guide, which I highly recommend.

Disclaimer: Roy Benaroch and I are good friends. However, I have not been asked to review this book, and I have no financial ties to it.

186 - Love that review!

Hmm. Haven't heard of most of the books that won the NBCC awards this year. Guess I haven't been paying enough attention!

Book #26: Fragile Beginnings: Discoveries and Triumphs in the Newborn ICU by Adam Wolfberg, MD



My rating:

Adam Wolfberg was an OB-GYN intern at Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital when his wife, Kelly, was pregnant with their third child, a girl who would be named Larissa. Her previous two pregnancies were uneventful, and all indicators pointed to another straightforward one. However, Kelly suddenly developed contractions when Larissa reached 26 weeks of gestation, 14 weeks before her due date. Despite the Wolfbergs' proximity to one of the leading obstetric and neonatal centers in the world, Kelly's labor could not be reversed, and Larissa was born after a very traumatic and stressful delivery. She was stabilized in the delivery room, placed on a mechanical ventilator due to her inability to breathe on her own, and whisked away to the NICU (or neonatal ICU; a neonate is a baby 0-28 days of age) at Brigham and Women's. Her birth weight was 1 lb 15 oz, making her tiny enough to fit into the palm of her father's hand.

From his training, Adam knew that a baby as premature as Larissa faced serious complications, including cerebral palsy; epilepsy; severe developmental delay that could prevent her from being able to walk, talk, eat by mouth or function independently; and death. One of his greatest fears was realized within days of Larissa's birth, when she developed a severe intracranial hemorrhage, or brain bleed, within the first week of life, due to the trauma of her labor. This injury is always associated with some degree of impairment; however, the extent of the damage is often not known for a year or more, once the baby begins to sit, crawl, walk and perform routine activities of daily living. Thus, the neonatologists and neurologists caring for Larissa could not give the Wolfbergs a definite answer on her future prognosis, leaving them with the difficult decision to withdraw care, or to continue to do everything possible for her.

In Fragile Beginnings, Dr. Wolfberg discusses his daughter's early years and how her premature birth has affected her and his family, while discussing the history, politics and ethics of the care of severely (less than 32 weeks of gestation) and extremely (less than 28 weeks) premature infants born in the United States. Normal gestational age is 37-42 weeks, dating from the first day of the last menstrual period. These babies normally don't have any complications during or after birth. Babies born at 32-36 weeks of gestation generally do well, although a small percentage have minor complications, particularly infant respiratory distress syndrome or chronic lung disease, due to the immaturity of the lungs and the relative lack of surfactant, a substance that keeps the alveoli (air sacs) in the deepest parts of the lungs from collapsing. Many of you will remember that John F. and Jacqueline Kennedy's last child, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, born 5½ weeks premature (or 34½ weeks of gestation), died on his second day of life in 1963 due to hyaline membrane disease, the old name for respiratory distress syndrome, due to a lack of surfactant in his lungs. In 2012, the mother of a baby born at this age would receive a corticosteroid injection to increase the production of surfactant in her baby's lungs, and he would likely survive his premature birth with few if any complications. The author discusses the discovery of surfactant, along with the major developments that have allowed thousands of babies similar to and much worse off than Patrick survive and have meaningful and healthy lives.

Needless to say, the more premature a neonate is at the time of birth, the greater is the chance of significant morbidity or mortality. However, as mentioned above, it is impossible to determine which extremely premature infants will do relatively well, and which will suffer severe complications. Doctors generally consider 22-23 weeks of gestational age or those who weigh 400 grams to be the limits of viability, and those who are less than this age or weight are normally delivered and handed to the mother by the pediatrician to die naturally in her arms. The obstetrician, pediatrician and parents can find themselves in an extremely difficult position in the case of infants who are at these limits, as they must decide which infant should live and which should be allowed to die. In most cases the doctors follow the wishes of the parents, once they are provided with information about the medical possibilities and probabilities for their child. However, there are times in which the parents and medical staff do not agree with each other; some families wish to do everything possible for a babies that the doctors believe are nonviable, and other families wish to withdraw or withhold care for babies that the doctors expect will have a relatively good outcome. Dr. Wolfberg discusses several famous cases and subsequent government laws passed in the 1980s and 1990s that have affected how obstetricians and neonatologists manage the extremely premature infant on the edge of viability.

Finally but most significantly, Dr. Wolfberg discusses new developments in the field of neuroplasticity, in which the central nervous system makes new connections in order to overcome injury. The highly educated and motivated—and financially stable—Wolfbergs were able to travel to get the best and most advanced therapies for Larissa, and work with her for several hours every day to maximize her physical and intellectual development.

Fragile Beginnings is a superb book about severely and extremely premature infants, their care, and the challenges they, their families, and their caregivers face. The author's own experience as a father of an extremely premature infant and as an obstetrician who provides care to mothers of high risk pregnancies greatly enhances and humanizes this important topic. Although designed for the lay reader, there is a good amount of medicine and neuroanatomy that may challenge the average reader without a strong science background at certain points in the book. However, I would still highly recommend this book to all readers, as the story of Larissa and her family is both riveting and highly inspirational.

>187 Thanks, Jane!

>188 The only winner I'm remotely familiar with is Binocular Vision, which was a finalist for last year's National Book Award for Fiction. If I remember correctly, RidgewayGirl was very high on that book, and Chatterbox in the 75 Books group claimed that it was one of her favorite books of 2011. So, I'll add it to my wish list.

Darryl Fragile beginnings You write so well and so I feel I have learned a little bit from your review

I heard the author of Fragile Beginnings interviewed on NPR -- sounds like an important contribution to the medical history of premature care as well as a moving personal story.

Thanks, kidzdoc. Fragile Beginnings is going on my wishlist now too. Quite a few of the students in the high school classes that I work in are interested in becoming neonatal nurses. Do you think a high school student who has some A&P under their belt could handle the book?

>191 Thanks, Barry. I spent several months of my pediatric residency caring for severely and extremely premature infants in a large NICU in a big city hospital, many of whom were smaller and worse off than Larissa. I attended several dozen deliveries of these babies and, sadly, several other neonates who were too young or small to survive. So, it was easier to write a review of this book than most books I've read recently.

>192 Right, Jane. I read the transcript of the story about Fragile Beginnings on NPR's Morning Edition, after I received an e-mail from NPR Books last week. Here's the link to the story, if anyone is interested:

'Fragile Beginnings': When Babies Are Born Too Soon

>193 You're welcome, avidmom. I assume that A&P is Anatomy & Physiology; if so, I think the students could handle this book, and would find it quite interesting and very informative.

I've decided to read considerably more books about medicine, science and public health this year, as I have a sizable backlog of TBR books in these areas that I've put off for a year or more.

The baby does not come with an instruction manual. It is not equipped with indicator or warning lights, and it can only cry or shriek when something isn't quite right. It requires constant attention, and its toxic emissions must be removed promptly and thoroughly. Worst of all, it does not come with a money back guarantee or exchange policy after 30 days.

This made me laugh.

Was Fragile Beginnings originally a New Yorker article? I remember reading one that covered similar material a couple months back (though maybe that would be too late) - I thought it was a very interesting article.

I think you might be thinking of a heart-rending article by Aleksander Hemon about his very young daughter's brain tumor. My recollection is it was published last summer.

195,196: There was also an article by Jerome Groopman: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/10/24/111024fa_fact_groopman.

196: Oh my, that one was heart-rending, wasn't it?

#189 - I'm glad I'm not planning on having any more children.

Happy Birthday to you, too, Darryl!

A bit of sad news: Italian author Antonio Tabucchi died in Lisbon today, after a long battle with cancer. Several of us read and loved his most famous novel, Pereira Declares, and I own two of his other books, The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro and Little Misunderstandings of No Importance. I'll read one or both books next month.

Italian novelist Antonio Tabucchi dies

That is sad. I did enjoy Pereira Declares and I'll now look for his other books. Too bad it took his death to make me do that.

Book #29: When the Garden Was Eden: Clyde, the Captain, Dollar Bill, and the Glory Days of the New York Knicks by Harvey Araton



My rating:

Warning: This review is sullied by shameless and completely biased hero worship. Non-sports fans or fans of the Baltimore Bullets, Boston Celtics or Los Angeles Lakers are advised to move on to the next message.

The New York Knickerbockers or Knicks (named after the fictional narrator in Washington Irving's satirical novel Knickerbocker's History of New York), one of the original teams of the National Basketball Association (NBA), has been in continuous existence since 1946. The early Knicks teams were competitive, playing in three consecutive NBA Finals from 1951-1953, but lost each series to a superior foe. The Knicks then sunk into mediocrity from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, playing before sparse and largely uninterested crowds at the old Madison Square Garden and the 69th Regiment Armory. The low point of the franchise occurred 50 years ago this month, when Philadelphia Warriors center Wilt Chamberlain set an as yet unbroken NBA record by scoring 100 points against the Knicks in a 169-147 shellacking on March 2, 1962.

New Yorkers were avid basketball fans in the mid-20th century, but they reserved their passion for the powerful local college teams at City College (CCNY), St. John's, LIU, NYU, Fordham and Manhattan, until a notorious point shaving scandal in 1951 led to the de-emphasis of basketball at several schools.

Beginning in 1964, the Knicks' fortune would begin to change. Willis Reed, a center from historically black Grambling College in Louisiana, was selected in the second round. Reed would later be named captain of the Knicks, and served as the team's linchpin during its glory years from 1967-1973. Unorthodox and brash shooting guard Dick Barnett joined the team the following year. Coach Red Holzman assumed responsibility for the flagging team midway through the 1967-68 season; his steady hand and willingness to allow his savvy and highly intelligent team to run its own plays and determine how it should attack each opponent's best players directly led to the team's success and the loyalty his players afforded him. The Knicks acquired two essential players in the 1967 draft: Walt Frazier, a superb shooting guard and defensive wizard from Southern Illinois, and Phil Jackson, a long and lanky defensive specialist from North Dakota, who would become famous as the coach of the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers, winning 11 NBA titles. The All-American and future New Jersey senator and presidential candidate Bill Bradley, who was drafted in 1965 but left Princeton to attend Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, also began his NBA career that season. The following season brought forward Dave DeBusschere from the Detroit Pistons, a blue collar scorer and defender who also served as the Pistons' coach and as a pitcher for the Chicago White Sox.

With the essential pieces in place, the team improved dramatically over the next two seasons, as regular fans, along with celebrities such as Woody Allen, Elliott Gould and Dustin Hoffman, packed the new Madison Square Garden. The Knicks' success energized and united New Yorkers, who often found themselves divided over the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, and the city's growing financial crisis.

The 1969-70 team burst out of the gate, winning 23 of its first 24 games en route to a 60-22 regular season. The Knicks defeated the Baltimore Bullets and the Milwaukee Bucks in the first and second rounds of the NBA playoffs, and then faced the powerful Los Angeles Lakers, led by future Hall of Famers Elgin Baylor, Jerry West and Wilt Chamberlin. Both teams were hungry for a championship; the Knicks had never won an NBA title and hadn't been to the Finals since 1953, whereas the Lakers hadn't earned hardware since 1954, losing in the Finals in six of the previous eight seasons. The teams split the first four games of the series, and appeared to be evenly matched until Game 5, when Willis Reed tore a thigh muscle. Somehow the Knicks battled back from a 10 point deficit without Reed to defeat the Lakers. With Reed on the bench, the New Yorkers were thoroughly outclassed in Game 6, setting up a deciding Game 7 in Madison Square Garden before 19,500 partisan spectators and a national television audience. One question resided on the lips of everyone who watched, listened to or participated in that game (including this 9 year old diehard Knicks fan and his father): would Willis Reed play?

When the Garden Was Eden, written by a long time sports reporter for the Post, the Daily News and the New York Times, is at heart a love story about the great Knicks teams of the late 1960s to early 1970s, who overcame a lack of height and team speed by playing unselfish basketball that is almost foreign to the current crop of highly paid, self centered superstars who would rather take a contested shot than throw a pass to an open teammate. Araton's 40+ year career following the Knicks, many of whom remain close friends, allows the reader to learn about the lives of its stars and supporting players, the coaches and owners, the supporting staff of broadcasters, trainers, and office workers, and the fans who supported the "Old Knicks" and the newer, less talented and successful, versions that followed. Araton places his book in the context of the societal strife that surrounded and touched the players, and shows how racial differences affected many of them personally, but did not affect their relationships with each other or the chemistry of the team, unlike many other collegiate and professional teams during that time. Fans of the Knicks, especially those like me who grew up watching these great teams at MSG or on television or listening to Marv Albert's radio broadcasts on WNEW ("Yes! And it counts!"), will love and cherish this book. However, other sports fans, especially those interested in or familiar with the history of the NBA during that period, will also find a lot to enjoy in this engaging and inspirational work.

>200 I haven't read any Tabucchi, but will look for his books, as they sound interesting. Death is always sad, but seems particularly poignant when it is someone talented who still has much to offer.

A timely and fun review of the Nicks book. I had not heard Tabucchi, sad.

ETA - posting during a commercial break in the KU-UNC game.

>199 Thanks, Cait!

>201 Agreed, Rebecca. Fortunately, several of his other books are available in English translation.

>203 Pereira Declares was a 5 star read for me. I haven't read anything else by him, though. Has anyone else?

>204 Thanks, Dan. I watched a bit of the YouTube video of the ABC broadcast of Game 7 of the 1970 NBA Finals while I was reading When the Garden Was Eden, for possibly the first time since I watched the actual game with my father on TV. The Knicks ran rings around the Lakers, and their passing and shooting in the first two quarters is beautiful beyond words.

I rarely watch NBA games now, as I don't like the one-on-one isolation plays and the lack of teamwork. Araton, the players from the past, and many of the fans of the Old Knicks also bemoan the current state of professional basketball. However, he did favorably compare the recent San Antonio Spurs teams to the great Knicks teams, along with the Celtics and Lakers of the 1980s and early 1990s. He doesn't hide his disdain for LeBron James, though.

I'm also watching the KU-UNC game with interest. I was in great shape in my group's tournament pool, until Syracuse lost to Ohio State last night. I can't finish any higher than second, as the person ahead of me picked Ohio State, Kansas and Kentucky, and also picked Kentucky to beat Kansas in the championship game. I trail her by 50 points, and only KU and UK are left in my bracket; being a Big East guy, I chose Marquette and Syracuse as my other Final Four teams.

Hmm, I wonder if I'm ahead of President Obama? Let's see...no. He has 860 points to my 780 points, but he picked UNC over KU. If KU beats Ohio State then I'll beat him!

You're doing well for a tough year. I didn't do a pool, but I probably would have had done something weird like put Missouri in the final. Anyway, that was a great win for KU.

>197 - The Groopman article was the one I was thinking of. I don't think I read the Hemon article though I do have one of his books on the pile.

Very sad about Tabucchi - I've been meaning to get Pereira Declares for a long time.

Book #30: Walk on Water: Inside an Elite Pediatric Surgical Unit by Michael Ruhlman



My rating:

Author and journalist Michael Ruhlman's fascination with people at the top of their professions, who seek perfection in themselves and those around them, led a friend of his to refer him to Dr. Roger Mee, the head of pediatric cardiothoracic surgery at the Cleveland Clinic and one of the world's best heart surgeons. Ruhlman spent two months shadowing Dr. Mee, his colleagues and assistants in the OR and the PICU (pediatric intensive care unit), and the parents who entrusted him with the lives of their very sick children.

The children chronicled in Walk on Water are young infants born with complex congenital heart defects, who are gravely ill and have been referred to Dr. Mee in a last ditch effort to save their lives. Ruhlman observes and effectively describes the preoperative angst and despair of the parents, the drama during these babies' difficult surgeries, which are fraught with unforeseeable challenges and unexpected consequences, and the occasionally uncertain postoperative recovery of the sickest patients.

Ruhlman also attempts to understand and describe what makes Mee and other leading pediatric cardiac surgeons and heart centers as good as they are, and compares them to other surgeons and centers who have markedly higher perioperative and postoperative morbidity and mortality rates. He also gives the reader a history of pediatric cardiothoracic surgery, by depicting the leading surgeons and groundbreaking procedures that permitted the field to make tremendous advances over the past 75 years.

Unfortunately, the author is not as successful in these goals. He does portray Mee as a complex man, who is perceived by his peers as arrogant and difficult, but a man who beats up on himself and becomes depressed whenever he doesn't live up to his lofty standards, and looks forward to a time when his services are no longer required. He also paints a compelling portrait of Mike Fackelmann, the physician assistant and right hand man to Mee, whose presence in the OR is invaluable to the great surgeon. However, Ruhlman frequently gets caught up in the cowboy mentality of the all male enclave of cardiothoracic surgeons, whose descriptions of themselves and Mee as God like figures and star athletes were repetitive and often in poor taste, and detracted from the far more effective narratives of the main characters in the book. Ruhlman's lack of medical training is most apparent when he attempts to describe the surgical procedures, which made these sections boring and overly lengthy.

Walk on Water is an interesting but somewhat disappointing look into the field of pediatric cardiothoracic surgery and the career of one of its leading practitioners. The excellent narratives of those featured in this book are diminished by the author's lack of detailed medical knowledge of the pathophysiology of complex congenital heart defects and his tendency to repeat points that were previously covered. Ruhlman is to be commended for tackling a difficult topic, and I would marginally recommend this book for anyone who is interested in this field.

More sad news: I just received a tweet from @nationalbook that the National Book Award winning poet Adrienne Rich has died at the age of 82. I have her most recent poetry collection Tonight No Poetry Will Serve, which was a finalist for last year's National Book Award. I'll plan to read it this weekend.

Poet Adrienne Rich, 82, has died

Poetry Foundation page: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/adrienne-rich

An era passes .... I've been reading Adrienne Rich for 40 years.

Here's the NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/books/adrienne-rich-feminist-poet-and-author-d...

This longlist for this year's Orwell Prize, Britain’s most prestigious prize for political writing, has been announced:

Afgansty: The Russians in Afghanistan, 1979-89>, by Rodric Braithwaite
Cables from Kabul: The Inside Story of the West's Afghanistan Campaign, Sherard Cowper-Cowles
The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India, by Siddhartha Deb
Dark Market: CyberThieves, CyberCops and You, by Misha Glenny
The Conservatives: A History, by Robin Harris
Dead Men Risen: The Welsh Guards in Afghanistan, by Toby Harnden
Arguably: Essays, by Christopher Hitchens
Hood Rat, by Gavin Knight
Pakistan: A Hard Country, by Anatol Lieven
People Who Eat Darkness: The Fate of Lucie Blackman, by Richard Lloyd Parry
The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China, by Julia Lovell
A Train in Winter: A Story of Resistance, Friendship and Survival, by Caroline Moorehead
Bloody Sunday: Truths, Lies and The Saville Inquiry, by Douglas Murray
Just Boris: The Irresistible Rise of a Political Celebrity by Sonia Purnell
The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity by Jeffrey Sachs
To Die For: Is Fashion Wearing Out the World? by Lucy Siegle
Adventures in the Orgasmatron: Wilhelm Reich and the Invention of Sex by Christopher Turner
Unfair Trade: The Truth Behind Big Business, Politics and Fair Trade by Conor Woodman

The shortlist will be released on April 25, and the winner will be announced on May 23.

More info:

The Orwell Prize 2012 longlist (official web site, which includes summaries of each book)

Christopher Hitchens longlisted for the Orwell prize (The Guardian)

>210, 211 Thanks for the NYT link, Jane. The obituary is on the front page of today's paper, below the fold; I'll read it now. Which books of hers do you like best?

Front page of the NYT! Impressive for any writer, I say. I referenced her quite often in my university papers. Thanks for the help, Adrienne Rich.

213> Of Woman Born was really important to me as I faced motherhood for the first time. Diving Into the Wreck is seminal. Lots of my other encounters have been via anthologies used for various courses over the years. The last volume of hers that I read was Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth -- one of the first LTERs that I received. I described it then as

at once cynical, nostalgic, and keenly observant of both the passage of time and the daily events of ordinary life. Highly imagistic, the poems reflect an old and wise sensibility:

"Dreamfaces blurring horrorlands: the border of poetry.

Ebb tide sucks out clinging rockpool creatures, no swimming back into sleep.

Clockface says too early, body prideful and humble shambles into another day, reclaiming itself piecemeal in private ritual acts.

Reassembling the anagram scattered nightly, rebuilding daily the sand city."

Book #31: Suffer the Children: Flaws, Foibles, Fallacies and the Grave Shortcomings of Pediatric Care by Dr. Peter Palmieri, M.D., M.B.A., F.A.A.P.



My rating:

Peter Palmieri is an American pediatrician who has worked as a primary care physician and as a pediatric hospitalist, a pediatrician who, like myself, treats hospitalized children. He bemoans the current state of pediatric medicine in America, and wrote this book as a wake up call to his fellow pediatricians and to parents about his concerns.

When I read his opening salvo, which claimed that primary care pediatricians "frequently mismanage the most common conditions that bring children to medical attention", including the use of antibiotics, which are "routinely prescribed inappropriately to treat viral infections", and the treatment of asthma, which "is mishandled with...stunning regularity", I was ready to join him on his soapbox, although I wouldn't have been quite as harsh in my assessment. My partners and I routinely take care of kids who were prescribed an antibiotic for a reason unknown to the parents or to us. And, hardly a week goes by that I don't treat an asthmatic child that has been hospitalized for a severe asthma attack, whose pediatrician or family practitioner who did not want to label the child as asthmatic, or has told his parents that the child is "too young to be diagnosed with asthma", which is not true. As a result, the child is undertreated and poorly managed, which significantly increases the likelihood of hospitalization for an attack.

Dr. Palmieri lambasts his fellow pediatricians for practicing medicine based not on clinical evidence, but on a "laxity of discipline", including illogical patient management (such as the routine ordering of laboratory tests and administration of medications such as albuterol and dexamethasone for benign, self-limited conditions such as the common cold), parental pressure (e.g., prescribing an antibiotic when a child clearly has a viral infection, due to the parent's demand for an antibiotic), and routine referrals to specialists for conditions that a good pediatrician should be able to manage without assistance. He elucidates, presumably for the sake of parents, common conditions which he feels are frequently mismanaged by primary care pediatricians, such as ear infections, purulent rhinitis (mucus in the nasal passages, whose yellow or green in color is often incorrectly thought to indicate a bacterial infection), and pharyngitis, which is most often caused by a viral infection but is frequently mislabeled as strep throat by physicians based on the appearance of the throat rather than the performance of a rapid strep test.

He gives numerous examples of patients who were horribly mismanaged by incompetent primary care or emergency physicians, until they were fortunate enough to come to him. He, of course, never makes a mistake, and the child always makes a full recovery thanks to his brilliant diagnostic skills.

He closes the book by providing a list of recommendations for physicians to provide better care for their patients. These points are well intentioned, though well known to most physicians, mostly correct, and fortunately less caustic than his previous comments, although this reader felt as if Moses had descended from Mount Sinai to read the "Ten Commandments of Pediatrics" to the masses.

Suffer the Children is a book with filled with good intentions, but one that is plagued and severely undercut by the author's pomposity, lack of tact, and the absence of a good editor, as it was apparently self published. I think this book would be of some limited benefit to families of young children, although the less sophisticated readers may come away believing that pediatricians, except for Dr. Palmieri of course, are generally incompetent, dishonest, and more interested in making money than in providing good care to their patients.

Oh Dear

echoing bas...I'm not rushing out to buy this.

>217 Oh Dear is right; avoid this book like the plague.

>218 Yep, I'd advise not buying it. I stumbled upon it when I did an Amazon Kindle search for "pediatrics", and thought it would be worth the $3.99 I spent on it. Wrong.

BTW, a good friend of mine, who is also a pediatrician, has read this book and is familiar with the author from a pediatrics BB. This is what he had to say about him:

I know him indirectly-- he participates in a ped bulletin board that I'm active on, tho I've never met him. until the book came out I didn't even know his real name. He is a smart, incisive kind of guy, but as you noticed he's not humble. He "knows what he knows" and doesn't really listen to what others have to say. Honestly, a typical persona one tends to see in comments on bulletin boards!! I can't imagine that he communicates w/ patients or colleagues in a helpful or collaborative way.

So, I don't think my criticism of the book or its author is unfair.

Been enjoying your reviews of various pediatric care books, but Suffer the Children sounds pretty bad (good review though). This is why I'm wary when it comes to self-published books.

One of the most remarkable pediatricians in American history died this past week, Dr. Leila Denmark (1898-2012), who practiced in metro Atlanta continuously for 70 years until she retired at the age of 103, making her the oldest practicing physician in the United States at that time. She graduated from the Medical College of Georgia in 1928, and she won the Fisher Prize in 1935 for co-developing the pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine. After completing her residency, she opened a practice in Atlanta in 1931, and treated countless thousands of Georgians in her career. She also authored two books, Every Child Should Have a Chance in 1971, and Dr. Denmark Said It!: Advice for Mothers from America's Most Experienced Pediatrician in 2002. She was on staff at the children's hospital affilliated with Emory University, where I completed my pediatric training, and I saw her a few times at conferences at the hospital. Unfortunately I never spoke to her personally, as she was always surrounded by a group of well wishers. If ever there was a life well lived, it was that of Dr. Denmark.

Dr. Leila Denmark, 114: Legendary pediatrician, one of the world's oldest people

Interesting! What a great life she led.

Wow 114. I wonder if it was her work that kept her going. Sounds like she deserved to live a long life.

Remarkable. Thanks for letting us know about her!

Amazing -- 114 -- she was born the same year as my grandparents who died decades ago. But what a remarkable career!

Book #34: One with Others by C.D. Wright



My rating:

The setting for this outstanding poetry collection, which won the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, is Forrest City, Arkansas, a small Delta town with nearly equal numbers of black and white residents, who lived in separate and very unequal conditions in 1969. Schools remained segregated, despite the passage of the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision 15 years earlier, and although black residents were not formally excluded from white-owned establishments and neighborhoods, they knew that they were putting their lives at risk if they dared to anger any white person in town.

In March of that year, a school teacher at an all-black school in Forrest City was fired due to his participation in the town's fledgling civil rights movement, which included encouraging his students to engage in peaceful protests. The students, who were tired of attending classes in a decrepit building and having to use torn textbooks discarded by students at the all-white school, responded by nearly destroying the hated building and its contents. The local police, headed by a virulently racist sheriff, beat and arrested the youths, herded them into an empty swimming pool, and threatened to kill them en masse before they were eventually released.

Tension mounted in the broiling summer of 1969, as members of the John Birch Society stirred up extreme racial hatred amongst the town's white residents; most blacks cowed publicly, while a smaller number engaged in limited protests, as community leaders sought to organize a substantial protest movement. Help was requested from a group in nearby Memphis known as the Invaders, which became prominent in the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers' strike that led to Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination on April 4. The Invaders were led by Lance "Sweet Willie Wine" Watson, a former hustler turned community activist and self appointed Messiah, and the group was portrayed as a group of dangerous, violent militants by the white media in Memphis. The group set off on a four day march from West Memphis, Arkansas to Little Rock, Arkansas, which included a stop in Forrest City. Local white officials there learned about the march, and a group of whites awaited their arrival.

C.D. Wright, who grew up in Arkansas and was a young woman in 1969, describes the events that took place in Forrest City that year, mainly through the eyes of her friend and mentor 'V', a white resident of the town who crossed over and supported the marchers, but also through interviews with other residents and information obtained from newspaper clippings. Wright expertly weaves these stories into a unique poetic narrative that brings the story to light and compellingly portrays the town's oppressive atmosphere and its black and white residents, none better than V:

She woke up in a housebound rage, my friend V. Changed diapers. Played poker. Drank bourbon. Played duplicate bridge, made casseroles, grape salad, macaroni and cheese. Played cards with the priest. Made an argument for school uniforms, but the parents were concerned the children would be indistinguishable. She was thinking: affordable, uniforms. You can distinguish them, she argued, by their shoes. It was a mind on fire, a body confined.

And, on the other side of Division, a whole other population in year-round lockdown.

A girl that knew all Dante once
Live{d} to bear children to a dunce.

{Yeats she knew well enough to wield as a weapon. It would pop out when she was put out. Over the ironing board. Over cards. Some years the Big Tree Catholic foursome would all be pregnant at once, playing bridge, their cards propped up on distended stomachs. Laughing their bourbon-logged heads off.}

She had a brain like the Reading Room in the old British Museum. She could have donned fingerless gloves and written Das Kapital while hexagons of snowflakes tumbled by the windowpanes. She could have made it up whole cloth. She could have sewn the cotton out of her own life. While the Thames froze over.

She loved: Words. Cats. Long-playing records. Laughter. Men.

Alcohol. Cigarettes. The supernatural. It makes for a carnal list. Pointless to rank. Five in diapers at once—a stench, she claimed, she never got used to.

One with Others is easily one of the best poetry collections I've ever read, one whose terrifying beauty deserves to be widely appreciated and savored.

Great review!

Excellent review Darryl of a book that looks well worth a read

Thanks, Jane and Barry!

Must get a copy of this one, thanks, Darryl.

Wow. I'm going to get a copy. Thanks for the review.

>230, 231 You're welcome.

The shortlists for two major literary awards were announced today. First, the shortlist for this year's IMPAC Dublin Literary Award:

Rocks in the Belly by Jon Bauer
The Matter with Morris by David Bergen
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
The Memory of Love by Animatta Forna
Even the Dogs by Jon McGregor
Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
Landed by Tim Pears
Limassol by Yishai Sarid
The Eternal Son by Cristovão Tezza
Lean on Pete by Willy Vlautin

The winner will be announced on June 13th.

Press release: www.impacdublinaward.ie/news.htm

The shortlist for this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize was also released:

Alice by Judith Hermann, translated from the German by Margot Bettauer Dembo
Blooms of Darkness by Aharon Appelfeld, translated from the Hebrew by Jeffrey M. Green
Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke, translated from the Chinese by Cindy Carter
From the Mouth of the Whale by Sjón, translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb
New Finnish Grammar by Diego Marani, translated from the Italian by Judith Landry
The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco, translated from the Italian by Richard Dixon

The winner will be announced on May 14th.

Umberto Eco shortlisted for foreign fiction honour

Thanks for these lists, Darryl. Some interesting titles to explore.

Kindle alert: Today's Kindle Daily Deal is eight world literature titles from AmazonCrossing, which are on sale for 99 cents each. I chose The King of Kahel by Tierno Monénembo, which won the 2008 Prix Renaudot, the compliment to the Prix Goncourt. I enjoyed Monénembo's novel The Oldest Orphan, and this book looks interesting as well. Several other books in the Kindle Daily Deal are interesting, so I may go back for one or two more before the deal ends at midnight Pacific Time.

Kindle Daily Deal: Eight World Literature Titles

ETA: I bought three more books: The Secret Piano: From Mao's Labor Camps to Bach's Goldberg Variations by Zhu Xiao-Mei, The Greenhouse by Audur Ava Olafsdottir, and Thirst by Andrei Gelasimov.

Book #35: The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro by Antonio Tabucchi



My rating:

This literary thriller opens in a gypsy settlement outside of Oporto, Portugal. Manolo, one of the older men in the village, takes his usual early morning walk in the woods, and finds a headless body that was not there the day before. He notifies the Guardia Nacional, the police department in Oporto, and the crime is reported by the local media. Firmino, the crime reporter for O Acontecimento, a sensationalist rag in Lisbon, is sent to interview Manolo and investigate the murder. With the help of a local and well connected owner of a pension, he meets Manolo and a witness to the crime, and discovers that their accounts differ significantly from the ones provided by the Guardia Nacional officers that arrested the young man, who is subsequently identified as Damasceno Monteiro. Firmino is subsequently introduced to Loton, a morbidly obese lawyer and polymath, who comes from a wealthy family but has dedicated his life to representing the downtrodden of Oporto in court. Loton serves as an adviser to Firmino and his investigation, while in turn Firmino helps Loton with the case. The two engage in interesting but occasionally obtuse philosophical discussions about society, the unequal distribution of justice, and the use of torture to maintain and control individuals.

While I didn't enjoy Damasceno Monteiro as much Pereira Declares, Tabucchi's masterpiece, it was a very good mystery novel with interesting characters and a solid plot line.

I recently -- after you told us about Tabucchi's death -- bought that, and am glad to hear you liked it so much. I look forward to reading it.

An enticing review, Darryl. I am adding both of the Tabucchi titles to my wishlist. Can't miss with two of your five-star ratings!

Oops. That was meant to be a 4 star rating. I've just corrected it.

Yesterday was the 60th anniversary of the release of Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. In the most recent entry in The Book Bench, one of The New Yorker's online blogs, David Denby wrote a spirited defense of Ellison and his masterpiece.

Justice for Ralph Ellison

Excellent article on Ralph Ellison.

The 2012 Pulitzer Prizes have been announced:

Fiction - No award

Drama - "Water by the Spoonful" by Quiara Alegría Hudes

History - Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by the late Manning Marable

Biography - George F. Kennan: An American Life by John Lewis Gaddis

Poetry - Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith

General Nonfiction - The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt

Music - "Silent Night: Opera in Two Acts" by Kevin Puts

This is the first time since 1977 that an award for Fiction was not announced. According to the Pulitzer Prize web site, "Nominated as finalists in this category {Fiction} were: Train Dreams by Denis Johnson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), a novella about a day laborer in the old American West, bearing witness to terrors and glories with compassionate, heartbreaking calm; Swamplandia! by Karen Russell (Alfred A. Knopf), an adventure tale about an eccentric family adrift in its failing alligator-wrestling theme park, told by a 13-year-old heroine wise beyond her years; and The Pale King by the late David Foster Wallace (Little, Brown and Company), a posthumously completed novel, animated by grand ambition, that explores boredom and bureaucracy in the American workplace."

More info: http://www.pulitzer.org/

I suppose they were too ashamed to award a prize for fiction after last years appalling choice.

For those of us whose mental files are not in entirely good order, last years winner was A Visit from the Goon Squad.

A number of people posting on Barny Noble's Facebook page thought that The Hunger Games should have won it.

Robert

>243 The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction has become an almost forgettable literary award, IMO. I just looked at the finalists since 2000, and only one of the 36 books over a 12 year period was outstanding: Waiting by Ha Jin.

I was very disappointed by Swamplandia!, and I have no interest in reading Train Dreams, which is a novella, or the unfinished The Pale King. These three jurors should be ashamed of themselves for producing such a tepid list, and for not selecting a winner. Can you imagine the furor that would erupt if the judging committees for the Orange or Booker Prizes failed to choose a winning book?

>244 I have no interest in reading A Visit from the Goon Squad; you'd have a far easier time convincing me to read The Hunger Games.

I loved A Visit from the Goon Squad and found it eminently Pulitzer-worthy. Didn't read enough 2011 titles to have an opinion; I did like Train Dreams a lot, but maybe they didn't want to pick a novella.

I have the Malcolm X book but haven't read it yet and, while I haven't read The Swerve, I would have picked either Thinking, Fast and Slow or Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza (probably too specialized, though, although really fascinating) for the general nonfiction.

>245 I seriously doubt that I'll ever read A Visit from the Goon Squad; the book's topic doesn't interest me in the least. I thought I would have read Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by now, but I keep putting it off. I'll almost certainly read it in the next month or two, though.

The Orange Prize shortlist has been announced:

Esi Edugyan - Half Blood Blues
Anne Enright - The Forgotten Waltz
Georgina Harding - Painter of Silence
Madeline Miller - The Song of Achilles
Cynthia Ozick - Foreign Bodies
Ann Patchett - State of Wonder

The winner will be announced on May 30. More info: http://www.orangeprize.co.uk/prize.html

ETA: I've only read Half Blood Blues so far, which I didn't like. I'm disappointed that Gillespie and I wasn't selected, as I was enjoying what little of it I've read so far. I'd like to finish the shortlist by the time of the award ceremony, so I'll put Gillespie and I aside for now, and start reading State of Wonder. I've just downloaded Painter of Silence and Foreign Bodies onto my Kindle, so I have all six shortlisted books.

I'll add my own disappointment about Gillespie and I being omitted. I'm not sure if it met the publication standard, but if so, There But for the should also be on the list.

>248 There but for the made the longlist. I read it earlier this year, and liked it, but not as much as you did. I had planned to re-read it if it made the shortlist, but I'll focus on the five shortlisted books I haven't read yet, along with the other longlisted books I own, first.

>224 I'm surprised to hear you say this. In recent years, I've read Tinkers, Olive Kitteridge, The Road, March, The Known World and Middlesex and 1/2 of Gilead but a few of the nominees, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders and Love in Infant Monkeys ---all before they were awarded the prizes. I thought they were all very good, some even excellent, but I suspect people would disagree on which ones were which.

>247 If the OP picks another first time author, I'll be very disappointed. I think they made a mistake eliminating their separate prize for this.

#246, I wouldn't try to convince you to read A Visit from the Goon Squad but if you are avoiding it because you think the topic is the music industry you are avoiding it for the wrong reason. As I said in my review, "it is a meditation on the passage of time and how human beings connect or fail to connect with each other." It is true that a lot of characters work in the music industry, but that's not really what it's about, although music and art are threads that wind through the book.

>250 I assume that you're referring to message #244, not #224, and my comment that "The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction has become an almost forgettable literary award, IMO." I looked at the winning titles and finalists for the three major US literary awards, the Pulitzer, the NBA and the NBCC, and far more books on the latter two lists were interesting to me than the ones listed as Pulitzer finalists and winners. From the books you mentioned, I own The Known World and Middlesex, which I've read, and Tinkers, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, and (I think) The Road, which reside on my TBR list. I wouldn't call either book I've read excellent, but both were very good.

I did a quick scan of the three major US literary award winners, and compared them with the winners of the two major UK literary prizes, the Booker and the Orange, to see how many winners of each prize I had read. Here's what I came up with:

Pulitzer Prize: 6 (1918-2012)
National Book Award: 5 (1950-2011)
National Book Critics Circle Award: 4 (1975-2011)

Booker Prize: 17 (1969-2011)
Orange Prize: 5 (1996-2011)

So, I've read nearly more Booker winners than Pulitzer, NBA and NBCC winners (15) combined, and I own 10 or 11 others, several of which I'll read this year. Very few of the past Pulitzer winners are ones that I'm more than slightly interested in, and the ones published in the last 20 years seem quite pedestrian and middlebrow compared to any of the other four awards. I'll stand by my comment, then.

If the OP picks another first time author, I'll be very disappointed. I think they made a mistake eliminating their separate prize for this.

I'll have to disagree with your first comment, at least for the moment. The only debut novel on the shortlist, The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, is the one of the five I haven't yet read that I'm most excited about, due to glowing reviews by other LTers in the Orange January/July and the 75 Books group. Gillespie and I is the other Orange book that has received praise from numerous readers, so I'll resume reading that (after I finish The Map and the Territory) before I move onto the remaining shortlisted books.

I loved at least one of the debut novels from last year's short list, Grace Williams Says it Loud by Emma Henderson. I would have been happy to see it selected as the winner, although I liked The Memory of Love a wee bit better.

I do agree with your second comment; eliminating the Orange Award for New Writers was definitely a mistake. Maybe they should have given it an alternative name, to avoid confusion with the Orange Prize itself. Whatever happened to the monthly selection of debut novels? That seems to have quietly disappeared.

>251 Thanks for your plug about A Visit from the Goon Squad, Rebecca. I won't turn it down if it all but falls into my lap again (I avoided buying it several times during Borders' liquidation sales), but I won't pay full price for it, either.

It's time for a new thread, I think.