Rebeccanyc Reads in 2014, Volume II: Spring Is Here!

This is supposed to be Volume III, but I forgot to change the title and it's too late now.

Currently Reading



Discussed on This Thread
Read in June
59. Reading Chekhov: A Critical Journey by Janet Malcolm
58. Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
57. The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin
56. Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers by Janet Malcolm*
55. Terra Nullius: A Journey through No One's Land by Sven Lindqvist
54. The White Rock: An Exploration of the Inca Heartland by Hugh Thomson*
53. Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives edited by Sarah Weinman
52. Murder in the Central Committee by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán
51. Time Present and Time Past by Deirdre Madden
50. The Forbidden Kingdom by jan Jacob Slauerhoff
49. In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin*
48. Deep History: The Architecture of Past and Present edited by Andrew Shryock and Daniel Lord Smail
47. American Innovations by Rivka Galchen
46. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino

Read in May
45. Autonauts of the Cosmoroute by Julio Cortázar and Carol Dunlop*
44. Middle Passage by Charles Johnson*
43. The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999 by Timothy Snyder
42. The Bird's Nest by Shirley Jackson*
41. The Quality of Mercy by Barry Unsworth
40. Money by Émile Zola
39. The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard*
38. Death in Venice and Other Tales by Thomas Mann

Read Earlier This Year/Discussed on Previous Threads

Read in April
37. Southern Seas by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán
36. The Black Sheep by Honoré de Balzac
35. Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth*
34. Journey to a War by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood
33. Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes by Svante Pääbo*
32. Oliver VII by Antal Szerb*
31. Hunting Season by Andrea Camilleri
30. Captains of the Sands by Jorge Amado

Read in March
29. The Sundial by Shirley Jackson*
28. The Saga of Gösta Berling by Selma Lagerlöf
27. The Angst-Ridden Executive by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán
26. The Queen's Necklace by Alexandre Dumas
25. Mastermind: How To Think Like Sherlock Holmes by Maria Konnikova
24. Tattoo by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán
23. The Interpreters by Wole Soyinka
22. Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security, and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance by Julia Angwin
21. Boy Snow Bird by Helen Oyeyemi
20. The Pendragon Legend by Antal Szerb*
19. Landscapes of Fear by Yi-Fu Tuan
18. Home Is the Sailor by Jorge Amado

Read in February
17. The Queen's Necklace by Antal Szerb*
16. Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe*
15. No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe
14. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe*
13. The Human Comedy: Selected Stories by Honoré de Balzac
12. The Wine-Dark Sea by Leonardo Sciascia
11. The Beast Within by Émile Zola*
10. Tent of Miracles by Jorge Amado

Read in January
9. New Grub Street by George Gissing
8. The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 by Margaret MacMillan
7. The Radiance of the King by Camara Laye*
6. The Dead Hour by Denise Mina
5. Autobiography of a Corpse by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
4. Field of Blood by Denise Mina
3. Forest of a Thousand Daemons: A Hunter's Saga by D.O. Fagunwa
2. Showdown by Jorge Amado*
1. The Road through the Wall by Shirley Jackson

List by Country of Books Read (Nationality of Author)

Africa
Guinea
The Radiance of the King by Camara Laye

Nigeria
The Interpreters by Wole Soyinka
The African Trilogy: Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease, Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe
Forest of a Thousand Daemons: A Hunter's Saga by D.O. Fagunwa

Europe
England and the UK
Fiction
The Quality of Mercy by Barry Unsworth
Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth
Journey to a War by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood
Boy Snow Bird by Helen Oyeyemi
New Grub Street by George Gissing
The Dead Hour by Denise Mina
Field of Blood by Denise Mina

Nonfiction
The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin
The White Rock: An Exploration of the Inca Heartland by Hugh Thomson
In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin
The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard
Journey to a War by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood

France
Money by Émile Zola
The Black Sheep by Honoré de Balzac
The Queen's Necklace by Alexandre Dumas
The Human Comedy: Selected Stories by Honoré de Balzac
The Beast Within by Émile Zola

Germany
Death in Venice and Other Tales by Thomas Mann

Hungary
Oliver VII by Antal Szerb
The Pendragon Legend by Antal Szerb
The Queen's Necklace by Antal Szerb

Italy
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
Hunting Season by Andrea Camilleri
The Wine-Dark Sea by Leonardo Sciascia

Ireland
Time Present and Time Past by Deirdre Madden

The Netherlands
The Forbidden Kingdom by jan Jacob Slauerhoff

Russia and the Soviet Union
Autobiography of a Corpse by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

Spain
Murder in the Central Committee by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán
Southern Seas by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán
The Angst-Ridden Executive by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán
Tattoo by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

Sweden
Terra Nullius: A Journey through No One's Land by Sven Lindquist
Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes by Svante Pääbo
The Saga of Gösta Berling by Selma Lagerlöf

South America
Argentina
Autonauts of the Cosmoroute by Julio Cortázar and Carol Dunlop

Brazil
Captains of the Sands by Jorge Amado
Home Is The Sailor by Jorge Amado
Tent of Miracles by Jorge Amado
Showdown by Jorge Amado

US and Canada
US Fiction
Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives edited by Sarah Weinman
American Innovations by Rivka Galchen
Middle Passage by Charles Johnson
The Bird's Nest by Shirley Jackson
The Sundial by Shirley Jackson
The Road through the Wall by Shirley Jackson

US Nonfiction
Reading Chekhov: A Critical Journey by Janet Malcolm
Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers by Janet Malcolm
Deep History: The Architecture of Past and Present edited by Andrew Shryockand Daniel Lord Smail
The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999 by Timothy Snyder
Mastermind: How To Think Like Sherlock Holmes by Maria Konnikova
Dragnet Nation by Julia Angwin
Landscapes of Fear by Yi-Fu Tuan

Canada
The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 by Margaret MacMillan

Books Recommended by Others
(Idea for this stolen from Deebee's thread)

Carried Over from 2013

Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Age by Jonathon Keats Recommended by RidgewayGirl
The Recognitions by William Gaddis Recommended by EnriqueFreeque
The Song of Everlasting Sorrow by Wang Anyi Recommended by steven03tx
Country of My Skull by Antjie Krog Recommended bymkboylan
Arabian Sands and The Marsh Arabs by Wilfred Thesiger Recommended by Linda92007
Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion Recommended by MJ/detailmuse and SassyLassy
The Universe Within: Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets, and People by Neil Shubin Recommended by detailmuse
Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton Recommended by RidgewayGirl
Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street by Neil Barofsky Recommended by Chris/cabegley
The Czar's Madman by Jaan Kross Recommended by SassyLassy
Imperium (recommended by SassyLassy) and Shah of Shahs (recommended by Cyrel/torontoc) by Ryszard Kapuściński
Rough-Hewn Land: A Geologic Journey from California to the Rocky Mountains by Keith Heyer Mehldahl Recommended by stretch/Kevin
Resistance a Woman's Journal of Struggle and Defiance in Occupied France by Agnes Humbert Recommended by Merrikay/mkboylan
Outwitting the Gestapo by Lucie Aubrac Recommended by Merrikay/mkboylan
The Exile Book of Yiddish Women Writers and Found Treasures edited by Frieda Johles Forman Recommended by Cyrel/torontoc
Mao's Last Revolution by Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals Recommended by Edwin
The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough Recommended by Colleen/NanaCC
The Informant by Kurt Eichenwald Recommended by Deborah/arubabookwoman
My War Gone By, I Miss It So by Anthony Lloyd Recommended by Paul/Polaris

New Recommendations for 2014

In the Beginning: A Short History of the Hebrew Language by Joel Hoffman Recommended by Jonathan
A Natural History of Latin by Tore Janson Recommended by Jonathan
The Blue Fox by Sjon Recommended by UraniaBought 1/22
Double Negative by Ivan Vladislavic Recommended by SassyLassy
The Consolations of the Forest: Alone in a Cabin on the Siberian Taiga by Sylvain Tesson Recommended by Merrikay
The Enchanted by Rene Denfield Recommended by urania
Through the Language Glass by Guy Deutscher Recommended by bragan Bought 4/23/14
Story of a Secret State by Jan Karski Recommended by Lisa
Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives edited by Sarah Weinman Recommended by Kay/RidgewayGirl Bought 6/6
Kicking the Sky by Anthony De Sa Recommended by Darryl/kidzdoc
Atlas of Remote Islands by Judith Schalansky Recommended by Suzanne/Poquette Bought 6/6
Twelve Who Don't Agree by Valery Panyushkin Recommended by Suzanne/Chatterbox
In the Days of the Comet by H. G. Wells Recommended by Barry/baswood

I had a little extra time this weekend, so I decided to start a new thread even though I don't have any new reviews to post. As you can see from my first post, I'm reading four books right now: two serious, slow-to-read books, one lively but long book, and one deeply depressing book. Maybe I should concentrate on one and try to finish it . . .

Making sure I don't lose your thread! Hope you're having a good weekend.

Claiming a spot in the new digs...

Looks like four good books, not sure how you would give one up to focus on another.

>1 rebeccanyc: Nice new thread, with lots of ideas!

Interesting books and to be reading them simultaneously too. How did you decide upon these?

Thanks for visiting my new thread, Merrikay, Linda, Dan, Vivienne, and Lisa!

>10 labfs39: As you might imagine, Lisa, there's a story behind all of them.

Deep History: The Architecture of Past and Present, which refers basically to what non-specialists might call prehistory, is a book that interested me when I saw it at the Harvard Coop in Cambridge because I'm interested in prehistory. After I finished Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes, it felt like time to read this one. It is pretty academic -- more about how we study prehistory (at least so far) than about prehistory itself.

The Worst Journey in the World is a book I've wanted to read for some time because of my interest in polar exploration, and this quarter's Reading Globally theme read on travel literature seemed a good time to do it. I did go and buy a Penguin edition of it because the edition I had of it was exceedingly big and bulky, not suitable for a subway read. I'm definitely enjoying it, but it's long.

The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999 is a book I snapped up when I heard about it recently both because I'm a Snyder fan (from Bloodlands, of course, but originally from his articles in The New York Review of Books) and because I'm eager to know more about Ukraine for obvious reasons. So far, it is a much more academic book than Bloodlands, and I've been working my way through detailed discussions of languages and the politics associated with them.

Death in Venice and Other Tales is a book I bought because I had a discussion at the Passover Seder I went to about some of Mann's short stories, and despite the fact that I've read a lot of Mann, I've never read his stories or novellas. I've read five stories so far and they're uniformly extremely dark, depressing, and a tad creepy. They seem to be presented in chronological order in this collection, so these are early stories -- they don't seem a lot like the novels I've read. Mann is also this year's year-long author in the Author Theme Reads group.

Needless to say, I don't usually read four books at once, and it's a little challenging, but I somehow fell into it. Usually I have two books going, one fiction, one nonfiction; one a subway read, one an at-home read. So I'm not sure how this is going to work out.

Made me smile - I was a German major in college, so that's when I read Death in Venice and Other Tales. Been meaning to get back to Thomas Mann at some point. Love your thread for the good suggestions for international reads.

I'll add The Worst Journey in the World to my list for summer reading. My parents say they used to read The Long Winter in the summer when it got really hot and humid as a way to chill themselves, so I've been trying that with polar exploration books since last year.

That's so funny, Meredith, because my father used to look at a photo of penguins in the summer and say it had a cooling effect! I think he got it from his mother.

Or watch Dr. Zhivago.

I find it hard to read books (or see movies) out of season. If it's cold to me, and everyone in my fantasy world is wearing bikini's and tank tops, it just makes me colder.

Ha, yes on Dr. Zhivago!

Yeah, I'm not sure it actually helps me to read cold books in summer, but it's worth a try. My parents dislike the cold a lot more than I do, so that might have helped them.

Hi Rebecca, I enjoyed catching up with your whole last thread. Dragnet Nation interests me, it’s been a few years since I read about privacy issues and I’m sure there’s quite an update.

Related: we met several interesting couples on vacation last month and exchanged business cards with one. On reflection at home, it felt weird -- it’s not just a phone# to possibly call if we’re ever in each other’s “neighborhoods”; it’s full names and the power of Google.

Thanks for stopping by, everyone, even though reading four books at once means I'm not finishing any of them!

>18 detailmuse: Interesting thought, MJ, about business cards. Just last week someone was showing me an iphone app that scans business cards right into your phone's address book.

Well, it's the end of a couple of busy weeks, and while I haven't made as much progress as I would like with reading four books at once, I've finished Death in Venice and Other Tales and am almost finished with The Worst Journey in the World. I hope to review one or both of them over the weekend -- and catch up with all your threads too.

In the meantime, I treated myself to a visit to the bookstore today, and was thrilled to find a new translation of Zola's Money; as the back of the Oxford World's Classics edition I bought says, this is the first new English translation in more than 100 years, and the first unabridged one. It gives me hope that perhaps Oxford World's Classics will undertake the translation of other Zolas that have only the original bowdlerized translations.

The other books I bought are Going to the Dogs by Erich Kästner, Time Present and Time Past by Deirdre Madden and Forty-One False Starts by Janet Malcolm.

I still have some other things I have to catch up with, but I'm going to dedicate part of tomorrow to catching up with Club Read (and LT in general).

Catching up slowly here on LT since the end of the semester. I think I do much better with Mann's shorter works than the long ones -- I've yet to make it through one of his novels. I've taught Death in Venice a number of times. Have you seen Visconti's film with Dirk Bogarde? Aschenbach is transformed into a Mahleresque composer.

Hi Rebecca! It's been a while. I've just been catching up with your threads — all three of them — and have particularly enjoyed your reviews, especially The Human Comedy: Selected Stories by Balzac, which I definitely want to read. I read Death in Venice a couple of years ago in preparation for the group read of The Magic Mountain over in the Salon. I think I have the same collection of Mann's short fiction that you do but I have never gotten around to reading the other stories. —>Making a mental note to do so.

>21 janeajones: That's interesting, Jane, because one of the things I'm going to comment on when I write my review, later this morning, I hope, is that I enjoy Mann's longer works much better. And also interesting that you've taught Death in Venice, as I feel I missed a lot of the philosophical references, being too lazy to Google everything. I haven't seen the film, but I'm going to look for it on Netflix.

>22 Poquette: Nice to see you back, Suzanne. I did enjoy the Balzac -- and more than the Mann! My collection of the Mann was a Penguin edition translated by Joachim Neugroschel.

>20 rebeccanyc: That's great news about Zola's Money. I just checked the Oxford University Press website; it shows a new translation of The Conquest of Plassans coming out in September.

ETA: The Conquest of Plassans is actually available now for the Kindle. It's the print edition that is being released in September.

>24 StevenTX: That's great, Steven. I read a 1957 translation of The Conquest of Plassans that was called A Priest in the House (a mind-boggling title, by the way). I will probably start Money this weekend.

38. Death in Venice and Other Tales by Thomas Mann



In this collection of stories, and two novellas, by Mann, the mood is almost uniformly grim, sometimes even horrifying, and often claustrophobic. Most of the stories deal with people who are in some way misfits, at time physically stunted, at times psychologically stunted, and of course at times both, and the ways they are tormented by others and by their own minds. For example, in the stunningly depressing "Little Herr Friedemann" (a story that led me to buy this book because it was recommended by a friend), the protagonist winds up deformed after he is dropped on his head as an infant. As the story progresses, he falls in love with a beautiful woman who toys with him by encouraging him to play the violin for her, leading to a shocking, but foreshadowed, conclusion. In "Little Lizzy," a woman and her lover torment her fat and hated husband by making him sing wearing women's clothes at a community party they are sponsoring. The unpleasantness just doesn't stop in these stories.

Like these two stories, many of the tales in this collection involve music. In "Tristan," which takes place at a sanatorium (giving some idea of where Mann might got with The Magic Mountain), a patient falls in love with a new patient, schemes to be able to be with her, and convinces her to play the piano (something the doctors have forbidden her to do). As she plays music stacked on the piano, she comes upon the music for Wagner's Tristan, specifically a piece called the Liebstod (as a non-opera lover, I had to resort to Google) -- their emotions build to a climax, and tragedy results. In "The Blood of the Walsungs," a thoroughly creepy and borderline anti-Semitic story, a twin brother and sister, named after the twins in Die Walküre (another trip to Google), and who treat each other very inappropriately for a brother and sister, go to a performance of that opera just before she is to get married. And more.

Other tales, including the two novellas, "Tonio Kröger" and "Death in Venice," focus on writers, and the distance they feel from ordinary people. In both of these novellas, the protagonists feel compelled to take journeys away from the places they live and work, seeking some comfort they are unable to find at home. In "Death in Venice," the writer, who has always prided himself on his austerity and self-control, finds himself enraptured by a young boy and tormented by complex and unbidden feelings he has never experienced before, or has always repressed. He is both confused and entranced. There is a lot of philosophy in this novella, and I don't think I understood it all.

I found it interesting that Mann transformed some of his personal history in some of these stories; in "Tonio Kröger," Tonio's mother came from Italy, and much is made of this mixture in his parentage, while Mann's mother was half Brazilian. The contrast between the north and the south, in atmosphere and personality, is another theme of some of these stories.

I had never read any of Mann's shorter works before I picked up this book, and I have to say I much prefer his longer works. Although these tales were intense, they didn't engage me as much as Buddenbrooks, Joseph and His Brothers, and The Magic Mountain did. They seemed claustrophobic and, even in the claustrophobic atmosphere of The Magic Mountain, Mann has more room for expansiveness and complexity. I'm glad I read his novels first, because reading this collection would not have inspired me to read more Mann.

Too grim and depressing for Rebecca? I'll pass, for now. Because despite your dislike of them, your review makes the stories seem interesting! I need to read the Mann novels I already have first.

Great review of Death in Venice and other Tales. The Magic Mountain is one of my all time favourite novels and so I will get around to reading the shorter stories. I will be prepared for the grimness. It is good you made some trips to Google because Mann does link his writing to classical music; Did google help in that respect?

>27 labfs39: Not TOO grim and depressing for me, Lisa, but they mostly just didn't grab me.

>28 baswood: Thanks, Barry. Yes, Google helped because it led me to Wikipedia (where I should have started), and I found a version of the Liebstod on YouTube (however, I've never been an opera fan).

>29 rebeccanyc: I feel that the English language has too few words to describe degrees and varieties of depressing or grim literature. Holocaust or gulag reading is certainly depressing, but in a different way than other types of literature that is depressing but in a slightly absurd way. Then there is crime fiction, which is also depressing (serial killers, rape, torture), but in a this-could-happen to you way that I find off putting, as well as being alluring to those who see it as an outlet for nature aggressive feelings in a way that I find frightening. It is hard to discuss depressing literature, because how can you say you enjoyed a book about something horrible? There is something about Holocaust/gulag/genocide books that resonates with me: a sense of sharing the worst that has happened, of atoning for a life free of those horrors, of remembering and commemorating, of wondering how I would act in such morally difficult situations, and of sharing in a part of the human experience that can bring out the best and the worst in people. I'm frequently asked how I can I read about such things, I think, how can I not?

>30 labfs39:. Very well put Lisa.

>30 labfs39: >31 baswood: I agree with Barry, Lisa. I struggle with how to compare different kinds of grim and depressing books, since I along with you am a member of the Grim Book Club. It's one kind of grim and depressing, as you say, when it deals with the horrors that human beings have inflicted on each other (even when there are opportunities for people with moral courage to shine), and it's another kind when it's crime fiction, and it's another kind when the author has a dark outlook on life and his or her fellow human beings, as in these stories. I guess for the most part these books attract me because I'm a pretty pessimistic person to begin with, although I certainly enjoy a fun book as much as anyone, but even the fun books I read have to have some depth to them and more often than not that may include people not treating each other as well as they should.

>30 labfs39: great post. It is a wonder we find extreme horrors such fascinating reading.

>26 rebeccanyc: terrific review and very interesting last paragraph. I find myself most interested in the title story, quite fascinated, if I can reuse that word again. I suspect it was one of the novellas and hence a little longer. I also think that Mann may just need a lot of space to explain himself.

Great review of Death in Venice and Other Tales, Rebecca. I'm not sure that I'll read anything by Thomas Mann this year, but I'll definitely stay away from this one if I do.

>33 dchaikin: Thanks, Dan. Yes, Death in Venice is one of the novellas, and I agree that Mann needs more space.

>34 kidzdoc: Thanks, Darryl. I am a Mann fan (that does sound funny as I reread it) and I am hoping to reread Doctor Faustus this year (when Mann is the year long author for Author Theme Reads) and maybe get more out of it than I did when it mystified me the first time I read it.

Excellent review of Death in Venice and Other Tales, Rebecca. It may just motivate me to return to trying to finish this book. For some reason, I have had difficulty getting seriously started with anything by Thomas Mann, but I am determined to do so.

>30 labfs39: I agree with Barry, Rebecca and Dan, Lisa. Very well said.

39. The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard



"Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time that has ever been devised." Thus begins this remarkable book by a remarkable man about a remarkable multiyear group of journeys made just over 100 years ago. As is well known, Robert Scott lost both the "race" to the South Pole and his life in the trip to Antarctica that began in 1910 and ended in 1913. Cherry-Garrard was the youngest member of the team, a kind of utility player selected for general aptitude (and his ability to contribute to the expedition) rather than the specific skills of the other participants, whether they were prior experience with polar exploration, scientific expertise, medical knowledge, dog- or pony-handling experience, logistical skills, or whatever. Soon after his return, he was thrust into the carnage of World War I, so it wasn't until almost 10 years later that he completed this wonderful book.

A war is like the Antarctic in one respect. There is no getting out of it with honour as long as you can put one foot in front of the other. p. lxv

In the book, he combines his own general reportage with excerpts from his diary as well as the diaries of Scott and Wilson, and excerpts from Bowers' letters to his mother. Wilson and Bowers were his companions on "the worst journey in the world," an expedition in the middle of the winter (i.e., total darkness, temperatures routinely in the range of -50°F) to observe and obtain eggs from the Emperor Penguin (but more on that later). His writing includes vivid descriptions of the beauties and harshness of the Antarctic environment, penetrating analysis of the factors contributing to success and failure, and deep insight into human (and dog/pony/mule) behavior.

The expedition consisted of several phases. Arriving in Antarctica after traveling by ship first to South Africa and then to New Zealand, the explorers began a series of journeys to set up depots with food and fuel before winter came, so they would be there the following spring when they undertook their 800-mile journey to the Pole (and 800 miles back). They brought ponies and dogs to pull sledges, but there were drawbacks to both, and very often the men had to pull the sledges laden with goods themselves. During the first winter, the journey to the penguins took place. Then in the spring the polar journey itself began; three teams set out, but two returned at various points along the route, so only Scott and four others continued to the Pole. Cherry-Garrard was in the second group to return. When Scott didn't return, they realized he and his team must have died, but winter came and they couldn't search for the bodies until the following spring. After they find the bodies, Cherry-Garrard fills in the narrative of the polar team from their diaries, and the continues to their return by ship to New Zealand.

The expedition was not only designed to reach the South Pole, although it was that goal that attracted the funding necessary to undertake it; it was also, very importantly, a scientific expedition, with people exploring geology, meteorology, snow and ice movement, and marine life, as well as the seals and penguins that inhabit the Antarctic. The winter journey to find the eggs of the Emperor Penguin was based on two scientific misconceptions: first, that the penguin was a very primitive bird, and second that ontogeny (or embryonic/fetal development) recapitulates phylogeny (or evolutionary changes that led to the specific animal). Nonetheless, the three men set off in the pitch dark, facing crevasses they couldn't see, hauling the sledges themselves, sleeping in frozen sleeping bags, experiencing blizzards and their tent being carried off by the wind, and so much more. The descriptions of what they went through are astounding, and horrifying.

"The horror of the nineteen days it took us to travel from Cape Evans to Cape Crozier would have to be re-experienced to be appreciate it; and anyone would be a fool who went again; it is not possible to describe it. The weeks which followed were comparative bliss, not because later our conditions were better -- they were far worse -- but because we were callous. I for one had come to that point of suffering at which I did not care if only I could die without much pain. The talk of the heroism of the dying -- they little know -- it would be so easy to die, a dose of morphia, a friendly crevasse, and blissful sleep. The trouble is to go on . . ." pp. 229-230

"Antarctic exploration is seldom as bad as you imagine, seldom as bad as it sounds. But this journey had beggared our language: no words could express its horror." p. 288

He speaks of his companions, Wilson and Bowers.

"In civilization men are taken at their own valuation because there are so many ways of concealment, and there is so little time, perhaps even so little understanding. Not so down South. These two men went through the Winter Journey and lived; later they went through the Polar Journey and died. There were gold, pure, shining, unalloyed. Words cannot express how good their companionship was." p. 239

Part of the book is devoted to what life is like in their camp over the winter, how the men entertain each other with lectures on various topics, and part is devoted to discussions of how to deal with ponies and dogs in the Antarctic (Cherry-Garrard and, indeed, the other men, have what I consider a very English fondness for their animals, although I suppose this is a much more widespread feeling), the effect of different kinds of snow and ice on the runners of the sledges and on sledging itself, the fierceness of the winds and the bitterness of the cold, the signs and "progress" of frostbite and scurvy, the moral qualities of the men with their emphasis on always appearing cheery no matter how terrible the conditions (that "stiff upper lip"), and almost anything else you can think of that plays a role in polar exploration. Yet Cherry-Garrard has the ability to fold all these topics into a compelling narrative, a narrative that benefits greatly from the excerpts from diaries and letters. At the end, in a chapter entitled "Never Again," he reflects on what has been learned from the expedition, what could be done better in the future (vitamins, significantly larger food rations, and the potential for air exploration, to name a few).

I could go on and on, but I will close with a quote about the majesty of the Antarctic.

"Of course for the most part the land is covered to such a depth by glaciers and snow that no wind will do more than pack the snow or expose the ice beneath. At the same time, to visualize the Antarctic as a white land is a mistake, for, not only is there much rock projecting wherever mountains or rocky capes and islands rise, but the snow seldom looks white, and if carefully looked at will be found to be shaded with many colors, but chiefly with cobalt blue or rose-madder, and all the graduations of lilac and mauve which the mixture of these colors will produce. A White Day is so rare that I have recollections of going out from the hut or the tent and being impressed by the fact that the snow really looked white. When to the beautiful tints of the sky and the delicate shading of the snow are added perhaps the deep colours of the open sea, with reflections from the ice foot and ice-cliffs in it, all brilliant blues and emerald greens, then indeed a man may realize how beautiful this world can be, and how clean.

Though I may struggle with inadequate expression to show the reader that this pure Land of the South has many gifts to squander on those who woo her, chiefest of these gifts is that of her beauty. Next, perhaps, is that of grandeur and immensity, of giant mountains and limitless spaces, which must awe the most casual, and may well terrify the least imaginative of mortals. p. 181

ETA I became interested in reading this book after I read, several years ago, The Coldest March by Susan Solomon, in which she interweaves excerpts from the diaries of men on the trip with modern scientific data on the unusually extreme conditions the expedition encountered.

Excellent review of The Worst Journey, Rebecca. I've added it to to my wishlist. I also have South on my shelf unread.

>37 rebeccanyc: Nice review. I have that on the pile to read. I visited the Oates museum last year and came away with a selection of reading material, including The Worst Journey.

>38 labfs39: Thanks, Lisa. I don't have Shackleton's South, but I do have Amundsen's The South Pole which I'm now eager to read, but the edition I have is a real tome, so it will have to wait -- maybe over the summer. I also have a book called Cold: The Record of an Antarctic Sledge Journey by Laurence McKinley Gould, a man who participated in an Antarctic expedition in the late 1920s; it was on my father's shelves. And I have various other books about the Arctic. Eventually I'll read them.

>39 Helenliz: I didn't know there was an Oates Museum -- where is it?

>39 Helenliz: Great review! I've added The Worst Journey in the World to my wishlist.

It's an odd museum, it's in Selbourne, in the South Downs and is in the house of Gilbert White, the naturalist. It seems that a later resident of the house was an Oates relation, so he set up a museum to Gilbert White and two of his relations, Captain Oates and another naturalist.
Linky thing

Ever since I read the superb The Birthday Boys I have not been able to read about Antarctic expeditions or anything by Beryl Bainbridge for fear she would hurt me. Your review of The Worst Journey in the World has confirmed my attitude.

Robert

Great review of The worst Journey in the World I definitely want to read that book

>26 rebeccanyc: Despite the grimness, and having read Death in Venice, I am now even more determined to read Mann's other short fiction thanks to your review, which offers some very intriguing propositions. Thanks!

>30 labfs39: Your post resonated with me in that I too have difficulty discussing depressing literature. Most of it leaves me in a very bad frame of mind and so I avoid it unless it has some redeeming qualities that transcend baseness or downright evil. Holocaust literature in particular makes me squirm but I feel it is very important. As for the rest, we can only hope it contributes to enlightenment in some way for the people who will benefit from it most. I hope that despite the grimness Rebecca has described, that Mann's short fiction contains an element of irony — expressed or unexpressed — that we saw in The Magic Mountain.

Wonderful review of The Worst Journey in the World, Rebecca. I have read a number of books related to Arctic expeditions, but less on Antarctica. This one sounds fascinating.

>37 rebeccanyc: Already wishlisted and of course I'm surrounded by formerly wishlisted books yet to be read... The penguins might tip the balance though.

>42 Helenliz: Thanks for the info!

>43 Mr.Durick: I loved The Birthday Boys too, and I read it after reading The Coldest March, so I was already familiar with the story and the cast of characters. I don't feel my love for the Bainbridge stopped me from enjoying The Worst Journey in the World or, in fact, other books by Bainbridge (although it is one of her best, in my opinion).

>41 VivienneR: >44 baswood: >46 Linda92007:, >47 qebo: Thanks, Vivienne, Barry, Linda, and qebo. I encourage everyone who reads The Worst Journey in the World to also read The Coldest March, which includes modern scientific data to explain some of the abnormally extreme weather Scott encountered on the polar journey.

>45 Poquette: Suzanne, The ideas of the short fiction are intriguing, but I just wasn't that taken with how Mann wrote the stories/novellas. I feel he does much better in his longer works. It isn't that they were grim; it was that they didn't grab me.

Fabulous and heartfelt review of The Worst Journey in the World, Rebecca! That definitely goes onto the wish list.

Rebecca, adding my kudos re your review of The Worst Journey in the World. It's been on and off my list for years but I somehow keep putting it off. Now I wish I hadn't procrastinated!

For those interested in Antarctic, the collapse of parts of its ice sheet, from the New York Times.

Great review of The Worst Journey in the World, Rebecca. I am adding to my wishlist. I loved the book I read last year about two shipwrecked expeditions that had been headed to the Antarctic. It was called Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World. It is amazing to think about the hardships these men were willing to face in order to achieve a goal.

To these recommendations of books about the Antarctic - and I strongly endorse Ernest Shackleton's South - I would add I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination by Francis Spufford which is a very interesting look at the relationship between England, English mores, and polar exploration, and also Improbable Eden: The Dry Valleys of Antarctica by Bill Green, and the excellent anthology of fiction and poetry about Antarctica, The Wide White Page edited by Bill Manhire - which might admittedly be a bit hard to get hold of outside New Zealand.

>52 NanaCC:, Thanks, Colleen. I remember your review of Island of the Lost because I bought a copy of the book after reading it! Will have to move it up on the TBR.

>53 timjones: Thanks, Tim, for the recommendations. I'll look for them. I also have an anthology edited by Elizabeth Kolbert (for the Arctic) and Francis Spufford (for the Antarctic) called The Ends of the Earth. (It's cutely designed, because the Arctic starts from one side and the Antarctic from the other, flipped over.) I think it's mostly nonfiction, though. I can see from the Cherry-Garrard book how vital a role New Zealand played in Antarctic exploration, so I can see why a book would only be available there.

>52 NanaCC:, >54 rebeccanyc: I bought a copy too, but haven't yet read it. I am cold at the moment though, reading about Sakhalin Island.

I've had The Worst Journey in the World Sitting on the TBR Pile for ages, and have been looking forward to reading it, but its sheer size keeps putting me off. I really should get to it soon. After all, if the author wasn't daunted by an Antarctic journey, why should I let myself be daunted by a long book?

>56 bragan:: Apsley Cherry-Garrard is a fine prose stylist, which makes the length of The Worst Journey In The World seem less.

>54 rebeccanyc:: Cute concept! I will keep a lookout for that one - thanks.

Great review of The Worst Journey in the World. It sounds like the author speaks with more candor about his fears and feelings than most explorer-authors.

>56 bragan: I had an older edition that was a real doorstopper, so when I decided I wanted to read it I looked around and found a Penguin edition that was much more manageable -- it even became a subway read, which is my definition of a portable book.

>58 StevenTX: Thanks, Steven. Much of it is very British "stiff upper lip," especially in the diaries and letters he quotes, but Cherry-Garrard is a wonderful observer of everything he sees. He was clearly scarred by this trip, and presumably afterwards by the war.

>59 rebeccanyc: Thanks for the tip. I find doorstopper books daunting, so I'll make sure I get the more manageable Penguin edition of The Worst Journey in the World.

Great review of The Worst Journey in the World. Now it's wishlisted!

40. Money by Émile Zola



This novel continues the story of Saccard, born Rougon, the whirlwind of real estate speculation, money obsession, and sexual drive who, along with his wife Renée, now dead, made reading The Kill such an anticipation of a train wreck. As this book starts, Saccard has fallen on hard times, no longer living in his magnificently gaudy house, but instead renting in the home of princess who has devoted herself to good works after the death of her philandering and corrupt husband. Saccard becomes the manager of one of those good works, the Work Foundation, a combination of a beautifully designed home for children otherwise living troubled lives on the streets of Paris with a conviction that a life of work will enable them to become productive citizens. In the home of the princess, he meets a brother and sister who also live there and who had traveled in the Middle East. Looking at the drawings and paintings the sister, Madame Caroline, made of the sights they saw while the brother, Hamelin, was working as an engineer, he starts dreaming of a bank that could make development possible there: steamer lines, silver mines, train systems. With his vivid imagination, his natural salesman abilities, his temperamental optimism, and his never-ending persistence, he raises the capital for a bank, the Universal, finding rich people of various sorts to participate. As time passes, Hamelin starts building the proposed projects using these investments; Saccard raises additional capital again and again (with a lot of wheeler-dealering and a little illegality); and the share prices keep rising on the Bourse. Both Madame Caroline and Hamelin have some reservations about Saccard's methods but, with his visions of creating good through money they largely keep them to themselves; indeed, for a time, Caroline becomes his mistress.

The subplots in this book introduce not only other characters, but also other ways people are obsessed with money. A thoroughly unpleasant pair consists of Busch and La Méchain: he combs through documents to find ways to blackmail people and she is his spy, tracking people down, gathering documents, and being thoroughly nasty. When she first sees Saccard, she sees a resemblance between him and her cousin's son, a boy she conceived after being brutally raped; on the cousin's behalf, Busch has been holding notes promising payments of 600 francs to the mother. The tale of Victor, now a teenager, who later Madame Caroline finds living in conditions of unbelievable squalor in a vividly described slum, and who is a completely vicious boy, is a thread that runs through the book.

Another important character is Gundermann, an elderly man who is "king" of the Bourse and, importantly for Saccard, who is violently antisemitic, Jewish. Part of the reason he wants to overthrow Gundermann is because he wants his bank, a "Catholic" bank to rule the world of finance. He and other characters frequently make antisemitic remarks or have antisemitic thoughts. With this angle, Zola was reflecting the antisemitism of the time, largely based on the idea that Jews had a natural talent for finance and ruled the financial world, without of course believing this himself.

Many other permutations of the raging desire for money -- and a few variations on rejecting money -- occur in this book. There are people from all walks of life who gamble all their money on the Universal stock, and by and large they are people who can ill afford it, although they are seduced by Saccard's vision and by the fact that the share price keeps rising. Some people are smart enough to sell, but they are far and few between. In addition, Zola examines the issue of capitalism itself: Busch has a brother Sigismund of whom he is extremely fond, who is dying of tuberculosis and who is a committed socialist, working away on a book that will convince its readers that the abolition of money will bring in a new world of harmony and justice.

Of course, being a book by Zola, this isn't just a novel of ideas, but a novel of characters and action and of course a few sexual adventures, most of them sleazy and not a little mean. It is a complex book, and I probably haven't done it justice here.

As a side note, I was delighted to find this Oxford World Classics edition in a bookstore; as the cover notes, this is the first translation in more than a hundred years, and the only unabridged translation. (It is easy to see why the original translator would have cut some of the material in this book.) It also had a helpful introduction and useful endnotes.

Wonderful review of "Money", Rebecca. Have you read all of the previous books in the series? LT has this one listed as #18. I was wondering if they can be read as stand alone books, or do they depend upon the previous books for clarity.

>63 NanaCC: You can definitely read them out of order, Colleen. I started with Germinal and read one or two others before deciding to read them in order. However, the order in which they were written (i.e., the order that makes this #18) is not Zola's recommended reading order, which can be found by scrolling down on this Wikipedia page. This page also shows which titles are available in relatively recent English translations, as the original translations were heavily bowdlerized. I read this title "out of order" because the new translation only recently became available.

Thoughtful review, Rebecca -- I admire your obsession with Zola, though I don't share it. ;-)

>64 rebeccanyc: Thank you, Rebecca. What has been your favorite so far?

>65 janeajones: Thanks, Jane! I've become quite obsessed with 19th century French writers in general, thanks to the Author Theme Reads group.

>66 NanaCC: My favorite remains Germinal, Colleen, but I also loved L'assommoir, The Beast Within, Nana, and The Kill. I liked several of the others I've read a lot too, but a couple of them I wouldn't have finished if they hadn't been by Zola.

Good to see new translations of Zola's novels. You are the first to review this one Rebecca. Enjoyed the review.

Thanks, Barry. It is my fervent hope that Oxford World Classics will commission new reviews of the the Zolas that haven't been translated since the bowdlerized translations of the the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There is a nice note by the translator in this edition about the history of translations. And I can see from this book (and others) why they were bowdlerized; there is a surprisingly explicit (although discreet, if one can be both) scene in this novel.

Great review of Money. With these new translations my Zola reading list keeps growing.

Thanks, Steven. Me too (or three) about the new translations.

Rebecca, am intrigued by your comments re Zola's Money. I have The Kill on my Kindle which is also an Oxford World Classics edition. I should move it up on my TBR and see if I want to tackle the other 17!

41. The Quality of Mercy by Barry Unsworth



There was a lot I liked in this sequel to Sacred Hunger, but there were also aspects I didn't like. As the novel opens, the surviving crew members of the slave ship have been brought back to London in chains to await trial, the surviving Africans having been sold as slaves in Jamaica on the trip home from Florida. Erasmus Kent, son of the original ship owner, is seeking revenge and money: he wants to see the crew members hang and he wants the insurance company to reimburse him for the ship and the "cargo" (i.e., the enslaved Africans who were thrown overboard or died of "natural" causes). In the meantime, he has been approached by Lord Spenton, a coal mine owner from the north of England. for a loan, and is developing an interest in modernizing the mine operations himself. He is also becoming interested in the sister of a leading abolitionist lawyer.

At the same time, the reader learns that one of the imprisoned crew members, Sullivan the fiddler, has escaped and is heading north to keep his promise to let the family of Billy Blair know what happened to him. Coincidentally, the Blair family hails from the same town as the mine owner, and the reader is introduced to the Bordon family, all of whom work in the mine, except the youngest, seven-year-old Percy, who will start work there in the next year. The grim, back-breaking work of coal mining is presented in detail through the lives of the family (although not quite as horrifically as in Germinal or GB84).

I really enjoyed the story of Sullivan's journey north through England, and the lives of the Bordon men and boys, and what develops between one of them and Lord Spenton. For me, these were the strongest parts of the novel. I was less enamored of the story of Erasmus Kemp and the story of Frederick Ashton, the abolitionist lawyer, and his sister Jane, who returns Kemp's interest. These characters didn't come alive for me in the same way that Sullivan and the Bordons did, I had trouble believing the changes in Kemp's outlook on life, and I wanted to slap Jane for thinking she could change him. I found the look to the future at the end of the book a little abbreviated, and I think I would have preferred it if Unsworth had left the future a mystery.

While I had reservations about this book, I found it hard to put down, and I will definitely be reading more Unsworth.

Good review of the Unsworth -- I need to read some more of him.

I loved Sacred Hunger when I read it a very long time ago. I may need to check out The Quality of Mercy. I enjoyed your review.

Thanks, Jane and Colleen. So far, my favorite Unsworth was the first I read, Morality Play.

Enjoyed your review of The quality of Mercy, Barry Unsworth It would seem that Unsworth writes with more insight on some subjects than on others. I think you found Sacred Hunger a little uneven as well. Morality Play would seem to be less ambitious in that the subject matter is based around the central group of players throughout the book and so Unsworth can make it all coalesce.

That's an interesting observation, Barry. With Morality Play, I felt completely immersed in medieval times; with parts of Sacred Hunger and more of The Quality of Mercy, I felt the authorial hand; I felt Unsworth showing how much he knew about the period.

Wow, two weeks away from LT and 59 posts to catch up with on just this one thread! Not only that, but four more likely reading candidates. Interesting point that baswood made about Unsworth and Morality Play which may be his best work. Having read Sacred Hunger though, I'm sure I'll read the follow up as well. I wonder why he waited so long to write the sequel.

Echoing everyone else on the good news about Zola translations.

Nice review of The Quality of Mercy, Rebecca. I still think I have Sacred Hunger somewhere, although it isn't in my LT library. I'll read it, and get to The Quality of Mercy if I like that book.

Nice to see you, Sassy, and thanks, Darryl.

Sigh. I finished Shirley Jackson's The Bird's Nest, which was un-put-downable (probably will have time to review it tomorrow), and now I can't decide what to read next. But, since I'll have no reading time until this evening, as we're going to a family birthday party, maybe I can mull this over during the trip.

So behind with catching up. >37 rebeccanyc: I am certainly going to nudge The Worst Journey in the world up the pile Rebecca. Maybe if we have the bolstering summer promised, it will be the perfect antidote!

42. The Bird's Nest by Shirley Jackson



Wow! I could hardly put this book down once I started it; it was equal parts compelling and disturbing. The reader first meets Elizabeth Richmond as a somewhat timid young woman living with her aunt Morgen after her mother has died, working in a low-level, almost clerical position at a local museum, and subject to punishing headaches. But odd things start happening: she receives hand-written letters that meanly poke fun at her, her aunt complains that she has been out all night when she believes she has been home with a headache, and she makes horrifying remarks that she is completely unaware of when she and her aunt visit a neighboring couple. So the family doctor refers her to the local psychotherapist, Dr. Victor Wright.

I am revealing no more than the blurb on the back of my copy does to say that it soon develops that Elizabeth has at least two more personalities, the polite and happy Beth, and the angry and funny Betsy. What makes this book so stunning is the way Jackson gives each personality a life of her own, the way she lets one after the other have a position of some control, the way they are and aren't aware of each other and the gaps that happen in their lives because of this. Equally stunning is the reader's growing awareness that something happened in the past, something relating to Elizabeth's mother, to the relationship between the mother (also named Elizabeth) and her sister Morgen and her husband who died young, to the mother and a man named Robin and to Robin and Elizabeth, to the mother's death, but what that something is is filtered through the very unreliable memories of the personalities making up this troubled girl. When Betsy manages to gain enough control to run away to New York, in search of her mother, the creepiness of her interactions with the people she meets kept me glued to my reading chair. Dr Wright (called Dr. Wrong by Betsy) narrates two of the chapters, starting off somewhat pompously and definitely revealing his own weaknesses and prejudices, but he does seem to want to help, in his own way.

If I have any complaint about the book, it is the ending, which seemed a little more pat and hopeful than I would have preferred. Nonetheless, this is Shirley Jackson at the top of her form.

>83 rebeccanyc: The Bird's Nest has now landed on my wishlist. Thank you, Rebecca. It sounds intriguing.

43. The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999 by Timothy Snyder



Timothy Snyder, the author of the stunning Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin covers a lot of ground in this earlier (2003) book: geographic and temporal, literary and military, diplomatic and genocidal. I am an admirer of Snyder's writing in The New York Review of Books, which was what led me originally to Bloodlands, and when I discovered he had written about the history of Ukraine, naturally this book appealed to me. However, it was a bit of a slog, well written, but with the detail and density of a doctoral dissertation, and I read some parts with more attention than other parts. Surprisingly, since the book was published by Yale University Press, it was also marred by occasional typographical errors that made me have to read a sentence a couple of times to understand what Snyder was trying to say.

The idea behind this book is to look at the area that made up the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth back in 1569 and trace what happened between then and 1999 in terms of changing ideas of what makes a nation a nation. Is it language? If so, is it the language spoken by the peasants or by the political and artistic elite? Is it ethnicity? If so what happens when people are so intermixed that millions of people live in "countries" that aren't their own? What happens when boundaries shift by war or treaty? And what happens to that idea when external powers and armies arrive? Or is it a modern idea of national borders with respect for minorities? A very helpful series of maps keeps the area of the Commonwealth shaded and shows how it overlaps with national boundaries from 1569 to 1914 to 1938 to Nazi control to Soviet control to 1999.

Snyder spends a great deal of time on language, discussing not only the languages spoken by local peasants and the languages spoken in the cities, but also the differing languages used by the varieties of Christianity that spread through these areas, as well as the significance of these languages and these religions. To greatly oversimplify, Poland, with its Roman Catholicism (and thus Latin liturgy), was at odds with Lithuania and others with various forms of Orthodoxy (believe me, Snyder makes it much more complex than this). Polish, and to a lesser extent Lithuanian, became literary languages, but Ukrainian and to a greater extent Belosrussian never achieved this because they weren't spoken by the elites.

The modern history was more interesting to me than the earlier history. Between the wars, particularly in Poland and Lithuania, nationalistic movements came to the fore, with implications for the many millions of "minorities" living in countries they didn't "belong" to. But all this was to fade in comparison to devastation caused by the invasions of first the Soviets, then the Nazis, and then the Soviets again, principally of course for the Jews, always an important if beleaguered component of these areas, but ultimately, once the Jews had been exterminated, for others as well. Polish villagers were massacred in Ukraine, Ukrainians were expelled from Poland, and massacred, and more.

Although I found much of the book interesting (and much of it, as I said, a slog), I was most interested in the relatively recent history of Ukraine. Unlike Poland, which was an independent country (with, nonetheless, constantly changing boundaries due to its more powerful neighbors), and Lithuania, which had some sense of itself as a nation (although, prewar, the city of Vilnius, now its capital, contained more Jews and Poles than Lithuanians), Ukrainians only began to develop nationalistic ideas in the interwar and wartime period. Its eastern areas had been under Russian control, some of its western areas part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and some other areas part of Poland. Several Ukrainian nationalistic groups sprung up and, according to Snyder, during the war, some of these groups, especially the UPA, not only learned from Nazi techniques but also incorporated some former members of the SS into their ranks. Thus, when Ukrainians today cite the UPA and some of its slogans, it is not difficult to see why this would drive the Russians crazy and lead them to call the Ukrainians fascists, however misguided this may be.

Snyder ends the book with a look at Polish foreign policy after the fall of the Soviet Union and its impact on the region and on on "Europe." Basically, he says the Poles promoted an idea of accepting boundaries as they existed post-1945 (to reduce revanchism all around), to support the national aspirations of the new countries that had been part of the Soviet Union, to advance the idea of "European" values, including protection for minority nationalities within a country, and to look forward instead of back at history ("leave history for the historians"). All, no doubt, noble and pragmatic goals, but not ones, as current events show, that the Russians have bought into.

So what did I learn from this book? To oversimplify, it's complicated.

Thanks, Caro and Colleen.

The Bird's Nest sounds fabulous!

And the Snyder book sounds interesting, despite the density.

I must read some Shirley Jackson novels. My only exposure to her is "The Lottery." Thanks for the review of The Bird's Nest.

>88 janeajones: I've read a lot of her, Jane, and my favorite is We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

>87 RidgewayGirl: Thanks, Kay.

Well done for slogging through The reconstruction of Nations. Did it help you to a better understanding of current events?

Congratulations on making it through The Reconstruction of Nations. I've often wished for a book like this, if only as a reference when reading other books, so good to know it's not only out there, but also worth persevering. That's the beauty of LT.

>90 baswood: Not as much as I hoped, Barry, but it is always useful to know the history that led up to the present. I've read some Russian fiction that took place in Ukraine when it was the Ukraine and part of Russia/the Soviet Union (notably Bulgakov's White Guard, which takes place in Kiev, which was where he was born), and I've also read about Stalin's Terror Famine in Ukraine, so I had bits and pieces of ideas in my head. Snyder has been writing a lot in The New York Review of Books about what is happening now in Ukraine, and I am embarrassed to say I'm behind on my reading of those articles, but I expect they would provide a lot of perspective, given his historical immersion in the area.

>91 SassyLassy: It did help me understand some of what was going on in The Issa Valley, with the family living in Lithuania but speaking Polish and considering themselves Polish. I think you might have been the person who recommended the book to me.

44. Middle Passage by Charles Johnson



The Middle Passage was the notoriously deadly second leg of the so-called triangular slave trade, the leg that brought the enslaved Africans from their homes to the US and the Caribbean, and in this book it is not only that but also the passage of the protagonist, freed slave Rutherford Calhoun, from his ne'er-do-well youth to a better understanding of the choices he can make about how he wants to live. Those seeking a traditional historical novel should look elsewhere, because while much of this book is searingly historical, much also springs from the creatively fictional mind of Johnson, so that there are events that are improbable and coincidental and language and words that would not have been around in the 1830s. It seems to me that Johnson, while focusing on the horrors (and some are not for the faint of heart) of the slave trade and telling an engaging story, also wants the book to reflect the African-American experience more broadly. There's a lot going on in this book, including philosophical discussions and a look at (mostly bad) father-son relationships.

Rutherford Calhoun grew up enslaved in Illinois with a slave-owner who educated him in western literature and philosophy and then freed him; he then headed to New Orleans where he lived the life of a thief and a womanizer. When threatened by a local crime king, Papa Zeringue, with a forced marriage to schoolteacher Isadora in exchange for having his many debts forgiven, he gets drunk and stows away on a slaving ship, the interestingly named Republic. Thus, his nightmare begins, for the captain is a psychologically and physically deformed tyrant and the ship is on its last legs. In Africa, they take on a cargo of the Allmuseri, a mysterious (and imaginary) tribe who allegedly have magical powers, along with a special crate acquired by the captain and stored in the hold, the contents of which are subject of much speculation and fear.

As the return voyage begins, there is trouble on the ship: the craziness of the captain, the discontent of the crew, terrible weather, and of course the anger of the captives. Rutherford becomes something of a go-between with the Africans, as the only black man on the ship, especially with a man named Ngonyama who has learned some English and serves as a translator. (One of the improbable aspects of this book is the ease with which everyone communicates.) He is also friendly with Cringle, the first mate, and Squibb, the usually inebriated cook (whose assistant he is), and becomes very fond of a young Allmuseri girl, Baleka. Disasters happen, some gruesome; Rutherford becomes acquainted with the being in the crate in the hold and gets dangerously sick; a big coincidence takes place; and Rutherford, very thoughtfully, comes into his own.

I started out thinking this was a straightforward action and anti-slavery novel, and Johnson certainly keeps the plot moving along, but I gradually realized it was much more complex, philosophical, and psychological, and that it was aiming higher than a traditional historical novel. Additionally I had to suspend disbelief and go with the flow of Johnson's imagination.

As a final note, I've had this book on the TBR since 1991. I decided to read it after reading Sacred Hunger. They are very different books, but complementary.

Lovely thoughts as always, Rebecca, and a great review of The Bird's Nest.

Your ongoing readings in Zola's canon make me want to revisit my favorite, Germinal.

I see you are reading If on a winter's night a traveler, one of my all-time favorite books. I look forward to your thoughts. Calvino is such an interesting author. He was a member of Oulipo, and his works--especially his short stories--incorporate discrete mathematical concepts. He also was a magical realist who wrote in a discursive style and liked to revisit the same idea from multiple angles ad infinitum (which I suppose one could consider similar to the mathematical concept of infinity).

Thanks, Diana. Germinal was the first Zola I read, and it remains my favorite. I just started If on a Winter's Night a Traveler this morning and am entranced by the first chapter. It has been on my TBR since it was published in paperback in 1982, and I finally picked up because of the fascinating discussion about Calvino on Poquette/Suzanne's thread. I also have his Invisible Cities, which I bought because of a discussion on LT a few years ago.

I recently finished If on a Winter's night a traveler and I'm still really unsure what to make of it. I'm still not sure I "got" it, and at times I thought it was about to disappear up its own arse, but there was something about it that I can't quite put my finger on.

Great review of Middle Passage, Rebecca. I am also reading If on a Winter's Night A Traveler, inspired by Suzanne.

Great review of The Middle Passage. I have been meaning to read this for years, but keep putting it off becasue the subject matter is so difficult.

>96 Helenliz: Well, every book isn't for everybody (and a good thing too!), but so far I'm enjoying it.

>97 Linda92007: >98 banjo123: Thanks, Linda and Rhonda.

>93 rebeccanyc:
That looks like quite an old fashioned book cover even for the 1990's

Interesting thought, Barry. What looks old-fashioned about it to you?

45. Autonauts of the Cosmoroute: A Timeless Voyage from Paris to Marseille by Julio Cortázar and Carol Dunlop



At once meditative, playful, literary, quirky, erotic, imaginative, and even modestly paranoic, this delightful book chronicles a journey Cortázar and Dunlop made in May and June of 1982 along the autoroute from Paris to Marseille stopping at every rest stop at the rate of two per day. Why did they do this? Initially, the idea came to them as a way to escape the responsibilities, especially phone calls and mail, that confronted them in Paris, and also perhaps a certain psychological gloom, but as ideas will, it evolved, and they came to see it as a an expedition inspired by those of the early European explorers and resolved to scientifically document their observations. They traveled in their VW van, nicknamed Fafner the dragon, which was outfitted with a refrigerator and a jerry can of water, along with other supplies including food, liquor, books. and cassette tapes. They arranged for a few friends to meet them along the way for companionship and fresh food (they also ate occasionally in restaurants at the rest stops and stayed overnight in hotels at the stops).

What was perhaps most surprising to me is how frequent the rest stops on this highway are. In the logs that detail each day -- times of arising and travel, as well as of other interesting events, information about each rest stop, their meals, the temperature and weather, etc. -- it seems to take about 15 minutes to get from one rest area to another. Thus, they spent most of their time in rest areas, not on the autoroute. This gave them ample time for exploration, reading, writing (they brought two typewriters with them), and enjoying their freedom and the opportunity to be only with each other. In addition to the logs, and the descriptions of what they saw at the rest areas, this book includes forays into fiction, meditations on everything from music to love, visits from imaginary characters, photographs, and illustrations (drawn by Dunlop's son). Every page is both deeply personal and addressed to the reader -- they knew from the beginning that they would write a book about the trip.

Thus their journey was a search for happiness, as well as an exploration of the rest areas. They call each other by their pet names, La Osita (little bear) for her, El Lobo (the wolf) for him, and their affection for each other shines through the writing. At one point they mention a bet two of their friends made about whether they would complete the trip, one hypothesizing that they would squabble and separately return to Paris. Instead, the trip seems to have deepened their love for each other, perhaps (although this isn't clear) knowing that Dunlop was ill and would die, tragically early, the next year, before the book could be completed. While each wrote different sections, it is sometimes difficult to know who wrote what.

In a way, the trip left them suspended in time (thus "timeless" in the subtitle), allowing them the illusion that life, like the autoroute, continues indefinitely. Hence their sadness when they arrived in Marseille and returned to "real" life. Speaking of the deeper meanings some of their friends attempted to hang on the trip upon their return to Paris, Cortázar writes:

"All that dazzled us a bit, but most of all we found it funny, because we'd never conceived nor realized the expedition with underlying intentions. It was a game for a little Bear and a Wolf, and that's what it was for thirty-three wondrous days. Faced with disturbing questions, we said many times that if we'd had those possibilities in mind, the expedition would have been something else, perhaps better or worse but never that advance in happiness and love from which we emerged so fulfilled that nothing, afterwards, even admirable travels and hours of perfect harmony, could surpass that month outside of time, that interior month where we knew for the first and last time what absolute happiness was." pp. 351-352

This one has been on my list for some time. It sounds worth a TBR bump. I like the gentle parody of angsty road trip memoirs this seems to offer (although I love those, too). Thanks for the review, Rebecca.

It was on my TBR for years, Diana. I read it now as part of the Reading Globally quarterly theme read on travel and exploration literature.

Autonauts of the Cosmoroute sounds like a wonderful book. It must have taken a lot of patience and self-control to travel such a short distance each day and never venture from the highway. A healthy person could have walked the distance in less time than they took.

There are a lot of rest stops on the highways in France. I think it is because the French could not possibly miss the start of lunch (Midday to 12.30pm.)

For the most part the rest stops are attractive and litter free.

Great review Rebecca and an intriguing scenario on which to base a book.

Great review of Autonauts of the Cosmoroute, Rebecca. I read it in 2009, and absolutely loved it, so much so that I may re-read it soon.

>105 StevenTX: Good point, Steven. I think they initially were caught up their "rules" and then grew to like, romantically, the idea of the road stretching ahead forever.

>106 baswood: Barry, that's interesting. On the road I'm most familiar with, the New York State Thruway, the rest stops are probably about 40 miles apart, so that's the model I'm familiar with. The rest stops Cortazar and Dunlop visited varied in the services they provided and in their general ambiance, but they never mentioned litter!

>107 kidzdoc: I got the book in 2009 and it's taken me this long to read it. Do you reread books? There are a few that I've reread (mostly decades apart), and a few that I reread as comfort reads, but for the most part I feel there are so many books I want to read and haven't read that I can't take the time to reread anything.

>102 rebeccanyc: Fascinating review, Rebecca. It would be unimaginable to me to do the same thing on the NYS Thruway, which I drive all the time. I think I'd die of boredom!

>108 rebeccanyc: I almost never re-read books, Rebecca. The only two books I can think of offhand that I've read at least twice were The Plague and The Stranger. There are some books that are so enjoyable that I'd love to read them again; America Day by Day by Simone de Beauvoir, Don Quixote, Giovanni's Room and A House for Mr. Biswas come to mind immediately, along with Autonauts of the Cosmoroute.

Catching up on a couple of weeks, which means several long thoughtful reviews and nothing original to say to you about them. Enjoyed catching up. I think the book that appeals to me the most is the long boring one on Eastern Europe - The Reconstruction of Nations. I'm really grateful to have read your informative review. It's a regional I've been curious about, probably mainly from the Jewish perspective. But I'm also moved by the quote by the Autonauts at the end of your last review.

>111 dchaikin: Dan, The Reconstruction of Nations doesn't discuss the fate of the Jews in that much detail, as it is peripheral to the focus of the book which is on, well, the reconstruction of nations. Snyder does discuss the impact of their absence on the demographics of various communities. There is much more in Snyder's Bloodlands.

46. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino



I've been puzzling over what to say about this book since I finished it a few days ago. On the one hand, I was entranced especially by the first chapter and dazzled by Calvino's imagination and writing. On the other hand, I felt strangely uninvolved in what happened as the book progressed.

The novel is written in two alternating parts. In the first chapter, the Reader, addressed as "you," but who then becomes a character in the novel, is about to start to read this very book, If on a winter's night a traveler. He then reads first chapter of that book, as does the reader of this book. In the second chapter, the Reader is frustrated, because after the beginning chapter the book is filled with blank pages, and resolves to visit the bookstore to exchange the book. There he meets the Other Reader, Ludmilla, and is attracted to her, and the bookseller gives him what is supposedly a good copy of the book but in fact, in the next chapter, turns out to be the first chapter of another book, called Outside the town of Malbork. Thus the chapters alternate: the even numbers continue the story of the Reader and Other Reader and the many other characters they encounter as they search for a complete book, and the odd chapters are the first chapters of a series of books by different authors. Along the way, the Reader and Other Reader meet professors, writers, translators, and even revolutionaries who ban books.

This is really a book about reading, and also about writing, and a little bit about a lot of other things including academic politics, publishing and bookselling, advertising, and even politics. It is also a little bit about love, or at least sex.
I also enjoyed the first chapters of the books the Reader reads, and Calvino's ability to stop each one just when the Reader (and the reader) are getting interested. He is clever and a great writer who can capture the ambiance of different locations in a few paragraphs.

My absolute favorite part of the book was in the first chapter, where Calvino brilliantly describes a book lover's trip to a bookstore, and the categorization of books into groups that he or she can skip or that intrigue him or her. The section is too long to quote here, but here are a few examples of both sets of categories.

For books that can be skipped: "Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Read But Your Days Are Numbered . . . Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Should Read First . . .Books That Everybody Has Read So It's As If You Read Them Too . . ."

And for books that capture you: "the Books You Want To Own So They'll Be Handy Just In Case, the Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer, the Books To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves, the Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified" and finally "the Books You've Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It's Time To Sit Down And Really Read Them."

This was a book I've Always Pretended To Have Read and I'm glad that, thanks to the encouragement on Poquette/Suzanne's thread, I found Time To Sit Down And Really Read it. My copy dates back 30+ years to when the paperback edition originally came out, and the spine split while I was reading it and I had to tape it up.

Great review for If On a Winter's Night a Traveler. I'm not sure it's for me (I like things more straight forward) but there's no better author for lovely quotes about the nature of books, reading and writing. I run web stuff for my local bookstore and I'm constantly using lines from his books!

>113 rebeccanyc: Interesting review. I'm also not sure this book is for me, but we have a copy at home - a present to my husband from someone who clearly didn't know his reading tastes too well - and I'm curious enough to want to try it.

>113 rebeccanyc: I think you've captured that very well - including the difficulty of putting it into words. I agree, it is clever, but I'm not sure I would describe it as a book I enjoyed. As a bit of a completer/finisher, I struggled with never getting to the end of any of the errant books that were met en route.

Some day I'll get to this book.

That's the problem with old paper back books the spine can crack. Enjoyed your informative review of If On a Winter's Night a Traveller

>114 mabith: I'm sure you've seen Poquette's thread where she quotes Calvino extensively -- that's what spurred me to finally read this.

>115 Rebeki: Thanks, Rebecca. It isn't for everyone, but I enjoyed it.

>116 Helenliz: That's funny, Helen, about struggling with not being able to finish the books!

>117 dchaikin: That's funny too, Dan. I'm sure that was one of Calvino's categories.

>118 baswood: Thanks, Barry. I consider it my punishment for keeping books on the TBR too long!

47. American Innovations by Rivka Galchen



The stories in this collection by Galchen, an imaginative and talented writer whose debut novel I read a few years ago, almost entirely feature young women who are emotionally isolated and adrift, frequently involve things that aren't real (such as objects flying out of an apartment on their own, a woman growing a breast on her back), and are written in a tone that distances the reader just as the women seem distanced from their own lives. They tend to lack much plot as well. There are certain recurring themes in the stories, such as highly educated women with professional jobs feeling disconnected from their husbands and even from their professions, dead fathers reappearing, "outsiders" living in Oklahoma, and these have something of a semiautobiographical feel to them when one reads the whole collections.

Another aspect to this collection, as touted on the cover flap, is that the stories "are secretly in conversation with canonical stories," including ones by Thurber, Borges, and Gogol. Well, not so secretly since we're told that up front. However, not having read any of the stories that these are "in conversation with," I had to read them on their own. Of course, as with any collection, I liked some more than others, and I particularly enjoyed "The Lost Order," "The Entire Northern Side Was Covered by Fire," "Real Estate," "Dean of the Arts," and "The Late Novels of Gene Hackman." I was not as fond of the ones with the unrealistic elements, and I found "Wild Berry Blue" a tad creepy.

This book isn't for everyone, and I wasn't entirely wowed either because of its minimalist and distancing tone. But Galchen is a very interesting writer.

>120 rebeccanyc: I try very hard not to discount an author when their publisher's marketing department compares them to a canonical author, but sometimes it's difficult. And it always makes me roll my eyes.

One wonders if this concept actually increases sales of books. Presumably, the answer is yes, since it's a ubiquitous tactic these days. However, it seems to me that it might create undue expectations on the part of many readers. I always take it for what it is--hyperbolic marketing--but it feels a little unfair to the authors.

48. Deep History: The Architecture of Past and Present edited by Andrew Shryock and Daniel Lord Smail



I have been reading this fascinating book in bits and pieces over the past two months and so I can't go into depth about everything it covers. But I will try to describe the basic ideas it presents. It is a very academic -- but well written -- contributed volume by scholars ("three historians, two cultural anthropologists, a linguist, a primatologist, a geneticist, and three archaeologists") working on the idea of the "deep history" of humanity, a term they prefer to "pre-history" because they want to "remove the barriers that isolate deep histories from temporally shallow ones." Individual chapters address the human body, energy and ecosystems, language, food, kinship, migration, and goods (i.e., decorative and trade goods), bookended by chapters on imagining the human in deep time and scales of change. The governing thesis of the book is that modern tools like genetic mapping and radiocarbon data, combined with others that "are older than written history itself" like "genealogies, bodily analogies, and predictive modeling" enable us to look at the distant past and see the challenges facing early humans and their responses as part of our shared human history.

"paleohistorians must be alert to powerful notions of progress and primitivism that color their work and determine how their findings are received and put to use in wider intellectual circles. The idea that the deep human past is best treated as a variant of biological sciences or natural history, and that evolution describes a strictly biological process rather than a social or cultural one, is another problem that arises in the field. Yet even developments as basic as bipedalism, hairless bodies, or concealed ovulation are implicated in complex assumptions about social life." p. 14

In the chapter on the body, for example, the writers argue that some of the changes in early hominid bodies were the result of cultural advances, including the development of tools and the mastery of fire. In the chapter on energy and ecosystems, one of the points they make is that humans have been exploiting their environment from earliest time "through social, technological, and physiological adaptations." The chapter on food is introduced by the thought that "because humans' relationship with the ecosystems of which we form a part is at its most intimate when we eat from them, the history of food exemplifies perfectly the question at the heart of this book: how and how far human agency combines with environmental or evolutionary influences in effecting change."

The chapter on the origins of ideas of kinship delves into primate kinship, and the chapter on migration notes that "recent claims about the novelty, transformative power, and unprecedented nature of human mobility in the age of globalization sound a bit strange given the more or less relentless movement of humans whenever opportunities for subsistence, political advantage, and the accumulation of wealth appear to have existed." The chapter on goods discussed the difference between prestige goods and "membership" goods, and points out that ornamental goods, like beads made from shells, go back at least 70,000 years to the Paleolithic.

The final chapter, on scale, shows that a typical J-curve, a curve with a long, flat tail to the left and an almost vertical line to the right (such as a graph illustrating human population shooting up starting with the industrial revolution) obscures the variation in that long, flat tail. It shows that "deep human history, too, is punctuated by momentous leaps in population, energy flow, efficiency, levels of political organization, and degrees of connectivity."

The book concludes:

"As we have shown, the data, method, and theory needed to gain access to temporally distant periods already exist in abundance. What is required is a new kind of historical imagination, one that will carry us into areas of our own past that seem extremely remote but to which we are intimately connected. Our passage through deep time is visible in the structure of our minds and our bodies, and in the material and social worlds we have made. Deep history is the architecture of the present. It is the storehouse of the human experience, richly filled, constantly replenished, a resource to carry with us into the future." p. 272.

I find the early history of humanity thrilling, and despite how long it took me to read this book, I learned a lot.

Just catching up on a few threads. Great reviews, as always, Rebecca.

>121 LibraryPerilous: I feel the same way, Diana.

>123 NanaCC: Thanks, Colleen.

>122 rebeccanyc: Deep History
Added to the wishlist of course.

Excellent review of Deep History. Were you convinced that the authors knew as much as they say they do ?

>125 qebo: Of course!

>126 baswood: They all seemed very into the topics they covered (most of the chapters were multi-authored) and they provided a lot of explanation, so while some of the material they discussed is speculative, they did indicate what they really knew and what need further exploration.

I read If on a Winters Night a Traveler a few years ago and I remember thinking pretty much what you said. I just loved the first chapter, and copied out that whole quotation about the book store. It is just brilliant.

Excellent review of Deep History. It sounds fascinating.

>128 Nickelini: Thanks, Joyce. That section on the bookstore kept me reading the the whole book!

>129 VivienneR: Thanks, Vivienne. It was fascinating, even though I only could read a little at a time.

I am currently about a third through If on a Winters Night a Traveler, but couldn't resist reading your review anyway. Very well said and thankfully no spoilers, although it really isn't that kind of book anyway.

If on a winter's night a traveler is one of my favorites. A few years ago my niece changed her major to Literature after reading it on my recommendation. (I think she changed her major two or three more times after that, though.)

Great review of Deep History: The Architecture of Past and Present.

>131 Linda92007: No, it really isn't that kind of book; I'll be interested in your thoughts when you finish it.

>132 StevenTX: Wow, that's quite an enthusiastic response to a book recommendation (even if she did change her mind later)

49. In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin



This book is the delightful, idiosyncratic tale of Chatwin's trip to Patagonia and at the same time a tour of some of his interests. Initially spurred by a desire to find the source of the mylodon skin acquired by his grandmother's sailor cousin Charley Milward, he also explores the fates of Bruce Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, mostly failed revolutions of various kinds, self-appointed kings, Darwin's travels, native language, potential literary sources for Shakespeare (Caliban), Coleridge, and Kipling, "unicorns," the travels of Charley Milward, and much more. All of this is written in a spare and very readable style; Chatwin is a superb story-teller. (In fact, he may have been more of a story-teller than a journalist, as I have read that some of the people he quoted in the book said it didn't quite happen that way.)

Diverse as Chatwin's interests are, he nonetheless focused on the Europeans in Patagonia -- the remnants of immigrants from Wales, England, Russians, Germans, and even Boers from South Africa, among others. These are people not only removed from the countries of their or their ancestors' origins, but also people living at what could be considered the edge of the world. But there is almost no sign of the native people or even the governments of Argentina and Chile.

This book has sat on my TBR for 31 years, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

50. The Forbidden Kingdom by Jan Jacob Slauerhoff



This is a strange book that mixes history and imagined history with the magical (?)/psychological (?) merging of an early 20th century Irish ship's radio operator with a 16th century Portuguese poet imprisoned in Macao. The novel starts with a history that alludes to the "founding" of Macao, and then shifts to the story of the Portuguese poet, Camões (a real, and famous, poet, although the novel's story doesn't match his real life, at least as described by Wikipedia). With his story told both in the third and first persons, he is introduced as a courtier in love with the fiancee of the prince; exiled, and at odds with his dying father, he sets out to Macao but, when the sealed ship's orders are opened partway through the journey, he is arrested by order of the king. Thanks to a shipwreck*, he escapes and is thrown into a series of troubles and adventures; throughout, he attempts to keep writing poetry. At the same time, the novel introduces various characters in the colonial ruling elite of Macao, their uneasy relationships with each other and with European religious movements, and their harsh rule over the Chinese populace. The story also turns on the estranged, half-Chinese daughter of the colonial ruler and on a grueling and ultimately failed trip into the interior of China, until then unexplored by Europeans.

Then, a little more than half-way through the book, the 20th century radio operator is introduced. His back story reveals that he has always felt like an outsider because he and his family looked like the ancient Celts, not the contemporary Irish. He signs on to a ship headed for Macao and begins to hear signals over the radio that are coming not from other radio operators but from elsewhere. When the ship is attacked by pirates, he is captured and, with others from the ship, marched to the desert and left there to die. Somehow he begins to merge with the historic figure of Camões.

Slauerhoff is an excellent writer, and I was totally absorbed in the tale, even when I was mystified by it and even when it bordered on the melodramatic and romanticization of the exotic. In fact, the novel relies a lot on the romantic tradition, at the same time that is resolutely modern in its approach to what is in essence a kind of time travel and a search for identity. The forbidden kingdom is not only the interior of China but also cross-cultural merging and the poetic as compared to the "real".

In her helpful afterword to my Pushkin Press edition, Jane Fenhoulet mentions that Slauerhoff wrote a "sequel" that continues the story of the radio operator; I would definitely read it if it too is translated into English, as I found this novel fascinating and thought-provoking.

*I seem to have been reading a lot of shipwreck narratives lately!

>135 rebeccanyc: This book sounds fantastic!

Really enjoyed your review of The Forbidden Realm. Not sure if I will ever get to it, but it sounds fascinating.

I love Bruce Chatwins stories, and I mean stories.

Thanks, Diana and Barry. Barry, what other books would you recommend by Chatwin?

51. Time Present and Time Past by Deirdre Madden



Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present

T. S. Eliot, from the Four Quartets

This book grew on me as I read it. On the surface the story of the extended Buckley family, a story in which very little happens but the reader learns about the complex interconnections of the members of the family and their meditations on time, memory, and history. The father, Fintan, is undergoing some mid-life changes, becoming somewhat detached from his job and developing an interest in old photographs and their relationship to reality; in the course of the novel, some family secrets are ultimately revealed. However, the pleasure of this book derives from Madden's writing talent, the reader's gradually developing familiarity with each of the distinctly drawn characters, and the fondness the members of this mostly happy family have for each other and their life together (so much for Tolstoy). I had never heard of Madden before I spotted this book on the display table at my favorite bookstore, but I'll look for more of her work.

>138 rebeccanyc: The Songlines is the one that I remember most, see Dan's review.

Thanks, Barry. I have that somewhere, but my TBR shelves have gotten so out of control I'm not sure where.

52. Murder in the Central Committee by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán



Another Pepe Carvalho mystery. When the general secretary of the Spanish Communist party is stabbed to death when the lights go out in the closed room where the central committee is meeting, Pepe is asked to fly to Madrid to solve the case, based on his early membership in the party and despite that having being superseded by a stint working for the CIA. However, there are mysterious (and violent) people who don't want the murderer to be found (or who perhaps want the person they want to be the murderer to be fingered for the culprit) -- are they CIA, KGB, somebody else? It is often not clear who is who, perhaps for Pepe as well. Of course, there are the de rigueur explorations of cuisine, sexual encounters, and brutal attacks on Pepe (the last of which I skim rapidly as they are a little too gruesome for me). However, the plot allows Vázquez Montalbán to satirize the self-importance, bureaucracy, and stilted language of the communist party, and Madrid as opposed to his home of Barcelona, as well as allude to the continuing influence of the KGB and the CIA.

Catching up. Nice to see Chatwin pop up here. His stories are more than manipulated, and the most fictional character is Chatwin himself who acts quite different on his books then he did in reality. But they are terrific stories. I love Songlines, but it's a picture if Australia by someone who never got to know the Australian natives well enough to write about them as he does. But that's only part of the story. Chatwin's broken and and incomplete exploration into nomadism as some kind iof romantic ideal he holds - it's an enjoyable journey. So I can highly recommend it to someone willing to be patient with some inacuacy and doctored experience.

>139 rebeccanyc: what a great find in Time Present And Time Past

>135 rebeccanyc: The Forbidden Kingdom sounds terrific.

>122 rebeccanyc: I'm a little concerned about where they are going with their data, but might want to read these essays on Deep History.

As usual, I enjoyed all your reviews.

Rebecca, I had not heard of Pepe Carvalho but it sounds like Murder in the Central Committee might be a fun read. Making a note . . .

>133 rebeccanyc: Thanks for "catching up," Dan, and for your nice comments. Why are you a "little concerned" about the data in Deep History?

>134 rebeccanyc:, Suzanne, I hadn't heard of him either until someone on LT mentioned that Andrea Camilleri took the name of his wonderful detective Montalbano from Manuel Vázquez Montalbán (and made him a food connoisseur like Carvalho). So since I became totally addicted to the Montalbano series a few years ago, I had to turn to the Pepe Carvalho series. They aren't all translated into English, but I'm trying to read them in order. I still like Montalbano better, but I'm enjoying Carvalho enough to keep at them.

Rebecca, I have only seen the Detective Montalbano series in Italian on TV. Didn't even know they were based on books! After awhile I got tired of the highjinx and quit watching. Maybe the books hold up better. Have you seen what I'm talking about?

>145 rebeccanyc: well...i went back to the review to find what bothered me, and... I just misunderstood the quotes. The phrase "a new kind of historical imagination" had me concerned, but actually the way they are using it is not the way I understood the first time and not at all something to be concerned about. Feeling a little silly, but I take back the concern.

>146 Poquette: I've been eager to see the Montalbano TV series, but haven't been able to get it from Netflix and haven't wanted to break down and buy the DVDs. Rather than plot, which probably is the focus of the TV series, the charm of the books is the character of Montalbano, his frequent stops to eat and discuss food, and the group of other characters who hang around over the course of the novels. I'd start at the beginning if you want to read them, because Montalbano does develop and change throughout the series.

>147 dchaikin: I can see how that phrase might jump out at you!

i keep meaning to get to the Detective Montalbano books. And now you have me intrigued by another series. :)

Rebecca, you would love Montalbano on TV. I want to eat in his favourite restaurant and I want to live in his apartment.
The series is all about the characters, the plots are fairly incidental.

Oh, you are tempting me to buy them, Barry! And the books are the same way (character-wise and plot-wise).

>148 rebeccanyc: and >150 baswood: I'll take your advice, Rebecca, and start at the beginning. And I second Barry's comment about Montalbano's apartment! It's right on the Mediterranean — he goes swimming before breakfast! What a life!

He does that in the books too, Suzanne!

I have the first 10 Montalbano's in a parcel, winking at me.

>153 rebeccanyc: He does that in the books too, Suzanne!

Now you've really caught my interest!

Loving your reviews after a trip-absence. I've ordered Autonauts of the Cosmoroute and downloaded Deep History on my Kindle as it sounds like a book to dip in and out of.

I've just been cleaning up my wishlist, which often has titles placed there as a reminder to investigate further. And so I came upon your excellent review of The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard. Just thought I'd mention it here. Having previously worked in a polar research library I have a great interest in the subject. This is one title that remains wishlisted. Well done!

Thanks for visiting, Jane and Vivienne. Vivienne, what cool (pun intended) job! Are there any books you'd recommend from your time at the polar research library?

I remember more of the reference questions I handled rather than book titles, but I am particularly partial to Frozen in Time: the Fate of the Franklin Expedition by Owen Beattie. He is an excellent lecturer, very personable, and the acclaim the book received took him by surprise. Since publication (late 1980s), there have naturally been rebuttals to some of the claims, but having spoken to him and other members of the team (at the time) about the research I've remained confident in his findings.

Every time I come here I hope to see a review of Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives..what a title!

>159 VivienneR: Thanks for the recommendation, Vivienne. I read a really boring book about the Franklin expedition a few years ago (The Gates of Hell by Andrew Lambert), so I would definitely be up for a good book about it. I have another book about the search for the Northwest Passage called Arctic Labyrinth, but I haven't read it yet.

>160 laytonwoman3rd: Linda, I heard about this book here in Club Read on Kay/RidgewayGirl's thread, and it sounded so great I had to buy it. I started it when I was waiting for my car to have its annual inspection earlier this week, and have been trying to read a story each night. Will probably finish it over the weekend.

>161 rebeccanyc: One of the books up next for me is also about the Franklin Expedition - A Discovery of Strangers by Rudy Wiebe. I've had it on the tbr shelf for too long.

I didn't know Rudy Wiebe wrote a book about the Franklin Expedition. That's interesting. I'm going to put that on my wishlist. I was chatting with my aunt about him a few months ago and well into the conversation she told me he came to her house once for dinner. She is loosely in his circles at the time, but still, I thought it was an odd comment to bring in that late in the conversation.

>163 Nickelini: Intriguing, at least you know now and can put that interesting tidbit in the family history. I used to see him around but never met him.

>160 laytonwoman3rd: I've put Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives on my wishlist too. With that title how can it miss?

Rudy Wiebe is a new name for me, but he sounds interesting.

Interesting "Deep History" article on the discovery of a trove of Neanderthal skulls: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2662701/Treasure-trove-skulls-rev...

Thanks for the link, Jane. It's interesting to me also because of having read Neanderthal Man earlier this year. I also found this news article from Science, the journal that published the scientific paper: http://www.aaas.org/news/science-faces-were-first-change-neandertal-evolution.

And while we're on the subject of links, I found this article from yesterday's New York Times about efforts to preserve the Inca Road fascinating, because of the wonderful book I'm currently reading about the Inca, The White Rock.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/19/arts/design/protection-sought-for-vast-and-anc...

53. Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives: Stories from the Trailblazers of Domestic Suspense edited by Sarah Weinman



This anthology collects fourteen stories by women writers from the mid-20th century, writers hailed as the forebears of the many women writing mysteries today. Of course, there were many women writing mysteries back in the 30s, 40s, and 50s also, but these authors were among the first women writing for the pulp mystery magazines. Most of the stories were at a minimum entertaining and often creepy and scary.

Some of the writers are better known, like Patricia Highsmith, Shirley Jackson, and Dorothy B. Hughes (with a somewhat odd tale), but others were new to me. I was particularly glad to make the acquaintance of Nedra Tyre (with the creepy and pointed "A Nice Place to Stay"), Helen Nielsen (there's quite a twist in "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree") and Elisabeth Sanxay Holding and Charlotte Armstrong, in both of whose stories the reader suspects more than at least some of the characters. I enjoyed several of the other stories too, but of course no reader likes every story in an anthology. This was a fun read.

54. The White Rock: An Exploration of the Inca Heartland by Hugh Thomson



This wonderful book combines the author's descriptions of his travels through a broad swath of Inca territory, deep insights into what's true and what's not true about Inca cultures and history, thoughtful comments on various explorers, anthropologists, and artists, and a lively writing style and interesting characters. It is a great introduction to the Inca world, and I was pleased to find an extensive glossary and bibliography, as well as a chronology, an Inca genealogy, photographs, and helpful maps.

At the age of 21, in 1981, and somewhat on a whim, Thomson traveled to Peru to find one of the "lost" cities of the Incas. Traveling the length and breadth of the Inca empire (which at its height stretched from Ecuador to Bolivia, although centered in the Andean heights of Peru), he met anthropologists, the local people, explorers, and more, and needless to say encountered various challenges. Some of the people he met were fascinating, such as the daughter of a photographer who took thousands of images of Inca ruins and people from the 20s up to 1950 when an earthquake destroyed many of his glass plates. As he recounts his travels, Thompson comes to realize that much of what we "know" about the Inca is not supported by evidence. As he says in his introduction (written after a return trip to the area many years later):

"As a powerful mythopoeic base on which to build fantasies of confrontation with an alien culture, the Inca world has few rivals. But just as the lure of the Inca myth has increased, so any actual understanding of the Inca themselves has become obscured, let alone of the nature of exploration in the Andes.

The White Rock is an attempt to present a clear-sighted view of that Inca culture, drawing on my journeys throughout the Inca heartland near Cuzco and across the vast empire they created. Along the way I travelled to some of the most remote Inca sites and talked to leading archaeologists and explorers working in the area.

As I did so, I became more and more aware of the discrepancy between popular preconceptions about the Inca and the actual evidence on the ground. . .
The very familiarity of Machu Picchu causes problems and can lead us to forget how very little we know about the people who built the place . . . I have taken Chuquipalta -- the "White Rock" of the title, deep in the Vilcabamba -- as being emblematic of that hidden and lost Inca world which is rarely visited and which I have tried to explore."

Throughout the book, Thomson emphasizes the people who built the famous and forgotten sites -- and in many cases their exploitation. For the Inca achieved their empire as so many others have, by conquering other tribes and then moving their members around to do the heavy lifting for them (and in the case of the Inca, moving huge rocks was literally heavy lifting). Among the building tasks were the famous Inca highway, stone roads, occasionally 10 feet wide, that snaked up and down the mountains and along ridges over hundreds of miles, a network of roads that the Andean nations are today trying to preserve (see this recent New York Times article.) Needless to say, the conquered tribes hated the Inca and thus tended to side with the Spanish conquistadors. Thompson has nothing good to say about the conquistadors, who were particularly brutal in Peru (although the Inca didn't take enough advantage of their high ground and the difficulty of bringing the Spanish horses up stone steps), and their successors who exploited the remaining Indians for mining under horrific conditions.

Among the interesting topics Thomson discusses are the role of the cities the Inca built; they were not mostly religious, as is commonly thought, but were often created because each new emperor had to build a new palace (the old emperor remained, mummified, in his old palace) and as vacation spots for the rulers. He also meditates on the stupendous views at many of these sites, and why the Incas may have chosen them, and their talented and magnificent use of stone work. He discusses the trading networks, with high-altitude crops exchanged for those from lower down from both the jungle and the sea, and explores why people now can't attain the level of agricultural productivity enjoyed by the Inca. He notes that no explorer would have "discovered" any of these ancient sites without the assistant of local guides who always knew they were there; talks about the work of various archaeologists including one, who he spent some time with on his initial journey, who helped local people rebuild the old irrigation canals; discusses the history of the Inca as they maintained their last stand against the conquistadors in a remote ares; and describes his travels, including adventures with buses, trucks, mules, people, food, and drink vividly.

This is a very rich book, filled with all kinds of information about the Inca and their culture, mixed with a lively appreciation of all the people who helped the young explorer. I learned a lot and I thoroughly enjoyed the journey.

The White Rock is definitely going on my list, sounds great. (though PSST, you've got the author's last name spelled wrong in your review)

Great review of the White Rock; An Exploration of the Inca Heartland

Thanks, Meredith (and thanks for the correction!) and thanks, Barry.

I also finished Terra Nullius: A Journey through No One's Land by Sven Lindqvist but I've started Chatwin's The Songlines and I want to be able to think about both of them before I write anything about either of them. It took me a while to find The Songlines on my TBR shelves, or I would have read it first.

Great review of The White Rock, Rebecca. Would love to read it, but it is so far afield of my current interests I am unlikely to. It (the Incas) sounds like a fascinating subject, however.

Loved your review of The White Rock -- the cascades of Andean civilizations are truly remarkable.

>174 Poquette: Thanks, Suzanne. I've been interested in the Maya for decades and this book made me more interested in the Incas. I have a more scholarly book on them on the TBR, and I now I have more inclination to tackle it. After all, I'd had The White Rock on the TBR for about a decade, so I guess I have time!

>175 janeajones: Thanks, Jane. One of the other things Thomson discusses is that there were other Andean civilizations and empires before the Inca; they just happened to be in power when the conquistadors arrived.

Another interesting aspect of reading this book was that it shed an historical light on some of the books I've read by Mario Vargas Llosa, in terms of the differences between people who lived in the mountains, the jungle, and by the sea, and in terms of the preference of the colonizers for the coast (except of course when they wanted to exploit mining and other resources).

Fascinating review of The White Rock, Rebecca. Your comment in your last message about its role in shedding light on MVL's novels has pushed it onto my wish list.

>169 rebeccanyc: this definitely goes on the list Rebecca. Fascinating.

I see you are also reading Invisible Cities by Calvino, one of my favourites.

>177 kidzdoc:, 178 Thanks, Darryl and Caro. Caro, I haven't actually started it yet, but it is on the reading pile -- I think I need to read it in just a few sittings and I've been running around so that hasn't seemed possible.

The White Rock went straight to the wishlist just from your comment in the what are you reading now thread. Fascinated by the review.

Enjoy The Songlines. There is an aborted salon discussion on it. I'll look for a link when I have more time.

For those of you who are keeping track, I'm skipping book #55, Terra Nullius, for now, so I can talk about it along with The Songlines, which I anticipate will be book #57.

56. Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers by Janet Malcolm



Janet Malcolm is a wonderful writer who uses no words lightly and who casts a clear unblinking on the painters, photographers, and writers she discusses in these essays, written over several decades and collected here for the first time. For the painters and photographers, the internet was a great resource for me as I was able to look at some of the art Malcolm wrote about.

Of course, some of the pieces spoke to me more than others. The centerpiece of the volume is "A Girl of the Zeitgeist," a 75-page essay on Ingrid Sischy and her editorship of Artforum; Malcolm interviewed her and met with her and artists and writers over the course of a year. She writes about Sischy: "She sees moral dilemmas everywhere -- and of course there are moral dilemmas everywhere, only most of us prefer not to see them as such and simply accept the little evasions, equivocations, and compromises that soften the fabric of social life, that grease the machinery of living and working, that make reality less of a constant struggle with ourselves and with others." But the essay is not just "about" Sischy (in fact, many pages go by before the reader "meets" Sischy); it is also about the New York art world (and art criticism world) of the 80s, about differences of opinions, about controversies (one in particular) over public art, about styles of criticism and styles of editing, and about clashing personalities. "I ponder anew the question of authenticity that has been reverberating through the art world of the eighties." It is a tour de force.

But so are many of the other, shorter pieces. In the first, title piece, Malcolm "starts" her portrait of painter David Salle in 41 different ways. In "A House of One's Own," her portrait of Bloomsbury but particularly of Vanessa, she addresses the challenges of writing biography: "Life is infinitely less orderly and more bafflingly ambiguous than any novel . . . we have to face the problem that every biographer faces and none can solve; namely that he is standing on quicksand as he writes. There is no floor under his enterprise, no basis for moral certainty." Among the other authors she writes about are Salinger and Wharton ("The Woman Who Hated Women"); among the photographers, Julia Margaret Cameron, Diane Arbus, and Edward Weston.

I like that she doesn't restrict to her focus to "high art" -- for example, she discusses the "capitalist pastorale" of Gene Stratton-Porter whose A Girl of the Limberlost she loved as a girl of 10. But it is her essay about the Gossip Girls series that is truly delightful, starting from its opening line which references Lolita commenting on the moccasin worn the victim when she and Humbert drive past a terrible accident. As she writes about the author of the series:

"The heartlessness of youth is von Ziegesar's double-edged theme, the object of her mockery -- and sympathy. She understands that children are a pleasure-seeking species, and that adolescence is a delicious last gasp (the light is most golden just before the shadows fall) of rightful selfishness and cluelessness. . . Von Ziegesar pulls off the tour de force of wickedly satirizing the young while amusing them. Her designated audience is an adolescent girl, but the reader she seems to have firmly in mind as she writes is a literate, even literary, adult." p. 275.

And "What makes classic children's literature so appealing (to all ages) is its undeviating loyalty to the world of the child. In the best children's books, parents never share the limelight with their children; if they are not killed off on page 1, they are cast in the pitifully minor roles that actual parents play in their children's imaginative lives. That von Ziegesar's parents are as ridiculous as they are insignificant in the eyes of their children only adds to the sly truthfulness of her comic fairy tale." p. 282.

Malcolm almost (that's almost) makes me want to read Gossip Girls, but I would definitely read anything Malcolm herself writes.

Threads on The Songlines from Le Salon

http://www.librarything.com/topic/131908#3226167
http://www.librarything.com/topic/132440 => see link in post #44
http://www.librarything.com/topic/133994
http://www.librarything.com/topic/134759

Note - even though there are four threads, all were aborted...

Great review of the Malcolm book -- must look this one up.

>182 dchaikin: Thanks, Dan. I'll definitely check those threads out. I am probably going to finish The Songlines today, and I am very frustrated by it.

>183 janeajones: Thanks, Jane. I'm a Malcolm fan (as you can probably tell).

Rebecca, I Would love to read Forty-One False Starts! Since I left San Francisco I have lost touch completely with the art world and your excellent review indicates there is a lot in Malcolm's book that would interest me.

Rebecca, I'm looking forward to your discussion of Terra Nullius and The Songlines. I am not familiar with Lindqvist, but his books do look interesting. My past attempts to read Chatwin never got very far, although I can't really remember why and I have always felt like l was missing something.

55. Terra Nullius: A Journey through No One's Land by Sven Lindqvist



The term "terra nulllius," for "land belonging to no one," refers to the legal fiction used by the European colonizers of Australia to take the land belonging to the various groups of Aborigines who already lived there and, not so incidentally, for whom the land had very deep significance, reflecting (to oversimplify) the creation of the world. In the book Terra Nullius, Lindqvist combines a travelogue with a look at some highlights (lowlights?) of European interaction with Aborigines: outright massacres, rape, introduction of diseases including venereal diseases, land theft, imprisonment, stealing half-white and other children, breaking up families, testing of nuclear weapons without moving people away, and of course, underlying everything, breathtaking racism. Towards the end of the book, he introduces a little hope with an exploration of the success (i.e., in the white art market) of Aboriginal art and music.

Lindqvist has an amazing talent to blend his travelogue with historical information, which tends to speak for itself, and with examples from fiction written by colonizers (including a book he read as a child in Sweden which characterizes Aborigines as cannibals), which also tend to speak for themselves. He also devotes some space to an analysis of the the thinking of early 20th century European psychologists and anthropologists who hypothesized freely (and incorrectly) about the origins of humanity based on what they "knew" about the Australian Aborigines. I hadn't heard of Lindqvist before learning about this book from another LTer, but apparently he has made a career of traveling to places to understand the European/white impact on the people of color living in the lands they colonized. This is a compellingly readable, if borderline polemical, book, and it spurs the reader to anger. Many of the stories he tells are appalling.

Some examples of Lindqvist's writing.

"When the natives deny the occupiers access to their records and traditions, scholarship declares they don't exist. . .

When the settler community has stolen the land from its original owners, scholarship finds the natives have no land rights." pp. 38-39

So the Aborigines were constantly being moved, not only to allow for atom-bomb tests, but also because the whites' cattle needed a particular pool of water or because the whites' company had found new mineral deposits -- or simply for their own good, so they could be looked after and learn the whites' table manners, the whites' good home cooking, the whites' working hours. The new policy after the second world war was aimed at 'assimilating' the Aborigines, which didn't imply the whites thought they had anything to learn from black people, but meant black people were to be trained to be steady wage earners and consumers on the fringes of white society." p. 163

Lindqvist makes the case for meaningful apologies from the descendents of colonizers by recounting his own encounter, as a young man, with Norwegians who accused him of benefiting from the Swedish policy of allowing the Nazis to march across Sweden to Norway. At first, he was taken aback by this, since he was only 10 in 1942, but comes to realize that "it was my own country's cowardly appeasement policy I had to thank for never having been bombed or shot at or even gone to bed hungry." He also discusses how countries can effectively make amends for past misdeeds; needless to say, saying "I'm sorry" isn't enough.

He ends the book with a broader look at the world.

"Three hundred million human beings on this planet are members of indigenous peoples who have been, or are on the way to being, robbed of their land. They are generally among the poorest and most scorned minorities in the countries where they live. Not long ago, they were considered doomed to die out. But in recent decades the indigenous peoples have seized back the initiative on a global scale." p.204

He then goes on to discuss some of these efforts, what Australia is doing, the fight to obtain German reparations for the Holocaust, and other claims for reparations. He concludes:

"When the misdeeds of the past are brought to light, when the perpetrators and their heirs confess and ask forgiveness, when we do penance and mend our ways and pay the price -- then the crime committed has a new setting and a new significance. No longer the inescapable extinction of a people, but its ability to survive and eventually have the justice of its claim acknowledged." p. 213

57. The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin



Although I really enjoyed Chatwin's In Patagonia, and I enjoyed aspects of this book too, overall I found it irritating. Let me count the ways.

First, I have learned that Chatwin made up a lot of what he wrote as travelogue, although perhaps to be kinder it is "based on a true story" as movie publicists claim. This didn't bother me as much in the Patagonia book, possibly because he interspersed some real history and possibly because it involved largely people of European heritage and not the indigenous people. It is widely claimed that Chatwin, in The Songlines, is retelling stories about the Aborigines second hand and that he didn't actually meet the ones he describes encounters with, and that they never would have shared with him the details of their Songlines and Dreamings.

Second, a large part of this book is excerpts from Chatwin's notebooks, stories from his travels around much of the world, quotations from writers, conversations with various scientists interested in human evolution, and more. Apparently, Chatwin was in his final illness as he was writing this book, and may have even wanted to write a different book, as I will discuss below.

Finally, I found many of his descriptions of the Aborigines he "met," and of people he describes from his other travels (which he references in this book), condescending, although he probably would not recognize his perspective as such.

And that leads me to the book Chatwin apparently wanted to write, one that he thought he could hang his travels to Australia and his interest in Aboriginal origin myths and culture on. As emerges from his notebook excerpts, Chatwin is obsessed with nomadism -- as humanity's original way of life, as the best way of life, as the way of life whose loss has led to all the evils "civilized" humanity is now prey to.

"My two most recent notebooks were crammed with jottings taken in South Africa, where I examined, at first hand, certain evidence on the origin of our species. What I learned there -- together with what I now knew about the Songlines -- seemed to confirm the conjecture I had tied with for so long, that Natural Selection has designed us -- from the structure our brain-cells to the structure of our big toe -- for a career of seasonal journeys on foot through a blistering land of thornbush or desert.

If this were so; if the desert were 'home'; if our instincts were forged in the desert; to survive the rigours of the desert -- then it is easier to understand why greener pastures pall on us; why possessions exhaust us, and why Pascal's imaginary man found his comfortable lodgings in a desert." p. 162

The breadth of topics covered in Chatwin's notebooks is remarkable, his writing sparkling, and his fictional (?) description of Aboriginal Songlines and Dreamings fascinating -- but all in all I found the book frustrating,

Having read these two books about the Aboriginal people of Australia almost back-to-back, I find myself thinking about a number of topics.

First, I would like to read books by Aborigines themselves, hoping that in adopting a western style of book writing they have simultaneously adapted that style to their own needs. I have in fact read Carpentaria by Alexis Wright, who is a member of the Waanyi people, although her father was white. I appreciated its deep connection to the land and the sea, and its depiction of contemporary Aborginal life, although I found the plot a tad melodramatic. I also read Potiki by Patricia Grace, who is a Maori from New Zealand, but I read it so long ago I really don't remember it very well (pre-LT reviews to aid my aging memory!). But I will look for more books by indigenous people -- any recommendations?

Second, as Lindqvist points out, European colonizers wrought havoc with the local people whenever they invaded other countries, and I've certainly read other works by colonized and post-colonial writers, especially from Africa and South America.

But third, and perhaps most to the point, I live in the US which has its own terrible record, not only with respect to our indigenous peoples, the Native Americans, and to contemporary immigrants, but also, hugely, involving the facts and the repercussions of slavery. Thus when Lindqvist wrote about reparations, and to the benefits descendents of those who committed the crimes derive from the crimes having been committed, I thought about the so far futile attempt to even get white Americans to think about reparations for slavery, despite the many benefits they have derived from slavery and its consequences. To that end, the recent article in The Atlantic by Ta-Nehisi Coates about the case for reparations is if not a call to action, at least a call to a new way of thinking. It is compelling. As the subhead to the article title says "Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole." (For those who don't want to read the whole article, here is a link to the interview with Coates on my local public radio station that led me to the article itself.)

>189 rebeccanyc: Ta-Nehisi Coates
He also has a blog.

Second, as Lindqvist points out, European colonizers wrought havoc with the local people whenever they invaded other countries, and I've certainly read other works by colonized and post-colonial writers, especially from Africa and South America.

Rebecca - consider Hawaii too. Some great literature available.

Loved your reviews, agree and understand about Chatwin, and sorry you had to suffer. I definitely need to read Malcolm and will consider Lindqvist.

Just quickly to say - I've got some serious catching up to do with your thread Rebecca... but I'm really glad you chose to read Terra Nullius, and I liked your review. I found that book powerful, moving and and very thought provoking. Haven't read Chatwin yet. I'm going to add Carpentaria to the wishlist. I'd also like to see any recommendations for native Australian writing.

Brilliant reviews and thoughts on The Songlines and Terra Nullius. I wonder how many people having read those books would think about reparations, although you point out that it was Lundquist who explores the subject.

I agree with you about Chatwin, I find his writing "bitty" in that he moves from one idea or thought to another and back again inserting examples and quotes as he goes, but when it works it works really well.

But I will look for more books by indigenous people -- any recommendations?

Re: Maori: Although the filmed version of The Whale Rider was a little sappy, I liked the book. One of my favorite films is Once Were Warriors, but I've not read its source book. Keri Hulme's The Bone People is excellent.

Re: Australian Aborigines: I've heard good things about the recently-deceased Doris Pilkington Garimara's Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence. Kim Scott's That Deadman Dance is on my list of books to read this summer. Alexis Wright's most recent novel, The Swan Book was longlisted for this year's Miles Franklin award, as was Melissa Lucashenko's Mullumbimby. Checking out the Franklin award's past winners and longlists might net some other titles: http://www.milesfranklin.com.au/. You might also take a look at past David Unaipon award winners: http://guides.lib.washington.edu/content.php?pid=190771&sid=1600243.

For an excellent one-volume treatment of the white colonization of Australia and the havoc it wrought, albeit one written by a white Australian, Robert Hughes's The Fatal Shore cannot be topped.

>190 qebo: Thanks! One more blog to read . . .

>191 dchaikin: Do you have any Hawaiian literature recommendations, Dan? I wouldn't say I suffered with Chatwin, but that I found the book frustrating, perhaps because it wasn't the book he wanted to write.

>192 Polaris-: Thanks, Paul. I didn't remember that you had recommended Terra Nullius; I bought it after Deborah/arubabookwoman highly recommended it.

>193 baswood: Thanks, Barry. It was because Lindqvist discussed reparations that I thought of them; I don't know if I would have thought of them otherwise. And I didn't find Chatwin's style a problem in In Patagonia; it was the pages and pages of notebook excerpts in The Songlines that drove me a little crazy. I understand that he chose the excerpts to make a point, but it still seemed a little unfinished.

>194 LibraryPerilous: You posted while I was posting, Diana. Thanks for the recommendations.

Interesting reviews and thanks for the link to the Atlantic article. I am going to be interested to see what you end up reading by Maori and aboriginal writers. I was looking for books by aboriginal writers a few years ago, and didn't find anything that worked for me. I could not get into Carpentaria or Kim Scott. But perhaps they could be worth a second try.

One thing that I notice is that there are a lot of difference between indigenous peoples from different areas. And the impact of European contact varies depending on the particulars of the culture and the way that European contact happened. I recently read Blue Latitudes by Tony Horwitz which really highlights this.

I read Songlines years ago, and didn't realize at the time how much of it was fictional. I really liked it, but I don't remember the details very well.

>197 banjo123: Blue Latitudes by Tony Horwitz
Re-reminds me that I want to read this (already have it on a shelf). I read Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell a couple weeks ago, kind of at random, but it’s got me interested in Hawaii. I’d guess too light for rebbeccanyc; worked for me because I was starting from zero.

>195 rebeccanyc: - Rebecca - I posted on Hawaii books back in 2011, see posts 279 & 281 on this thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/104839#2768940 . Reading it over reminds me I still haven't read O. A. Bushnell.

Very interesting discussions of Terra Nullius and The Songlines. I read the latter too many years ago to remember any detail, but I was very struck by it at the time (I was a teenager). Maybe I should pull it out again. I also have Terra Nullius on my TBR, and your review has definitely pushed it up the list, although I generally have a bit of a problem with polemics - even if I agree with the fundamental point of view, polemics make me want to argue against it.

Delurking to mention LTer anzlitlovers / Lisa Hill's wonderful blog ANZ lit lovers - http://anzlitlovers.com/
and her indigenous reading list:
http://anzlitlovers.com/the-anzlitlovers-list-of-books-you-must-read/anzll-indig...
She was active on LT threads for a while but dropped away.
I haven't read much indigenous Australian fiction, but the suggestions above seem to all be good. Not indigenous but worth reading is Thomas Keneally's The chant of Jimmie Blacksmith. For New Zealand, you can't go past The Bone People, it is really a great novel. I really enjoyed Patricia Grace's Tu. A more recent writer is Tina Makareti.

I came to the Montalbano books via the tv series several years ago and love both. Recently I watched the Young Montalbano episodes, where he is young and extremely handsome and it deals with all the back story of how he comes to buy his house, finds his housekeeper, girlfriend and favourite restaurants and first works with Fazio's father. Don't panic, he is still our beloved 'Montalbano' right to the core, just younger and more handsome.
I've only read The Buenos Aires Quintet by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán but have finally got Tattoo ready to read this month.

>197 banjo123: Thanks, Rhonda, for making the point about the differences in indigenous peoples and the impact of European contact on them; I was writing only in general terms but while of course there are as many variations as there are people, there do seem to be common threads. I remember your reading Blue Latitudes and enjoying it.

>198 qebo: I’d guess too light for rebbeccanyc Hey, I read light stuff too! I can't read heavy gloomy books ALL the time!

>199 dchaikin: Thanks, Dan. I've favorited that post so I can come back to it. Rhonda and Katherine, he includes both Blue Latitudes and Unfamiliar Fishes on his list.

>200 wandering_star: I would have been more struck by The Songlines as a teenager (although of course Chatwin still hadn't written it when I was a teenager), because I would have thought including all those excerpts from his notebooks was deep (and because I would have wanted to keep notebooks like that myself). As for polemics, I usually shy away from them myself; that's why I said the polemics were "borderline." It's hard not to get up in arms about massacres, racism, stealing children, and exposing people to radiation from nuclear weapons tests.

>201 avatiakh: Thanks for delurking, Kerry, and thanks for those blog, etc. links. I've bookmarked the list of books by indigenous Australians and New Zealanders.

And about Montalbano . . . I just found the latest book to be translated into English, Angelica's Smile, on display in my local bookstore and am trying (that's trying) to save it for when I really need a delightful book. I can see I'm going to have to break down and buy the DVDs since Netflix has no date for their availability, and I'm definitely intrigued by Young Montalbano. Am I right in thinking that these stories weren't written by Camilleri but are in some way based on Montalbano's character, etc.? Netflix hasn't even heard of Young Montalbano! However, I would say that I am old enough now that I probably prefer the older Montalbano to the young and handsome one!

Thanks for the reviews and discussion of Lindqvist and Chatwin. I read Songlines years ago and remember liking it at the time, bit I didn't know much about his methodology. I seem to remember that the book I read had gorgeous illustrations.

>202 rebeccanyc: - yes, I'm pretty sure that's how I reacted at the time!

>203 janeajones: Thanks, Jane. My edition was a paperback and didn't have any illustrations at all. I would have loved to see some.

Great reviews of Lindqvist and Chatwin, Rebecca. I will be looking for the Lindqvist.

58. Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino



Imaginative, clever, poetic, mathematical, and oh so postmodern -- and yet this at times delightful, at times frustrating book didn't really speak to me. I am hugely impressed by what Calvino set out to do, but it just didn't grab me.

Set off by ongoing conversations between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo about cities Polo has ostensibly visited, Calvino describes a series of cities, each briefly, cities mostly with women's names and all, as the reader finds out, based on Venice. Or are they? Each has some aspects of "real" cities and some completely fanciful and imaginary aspects, and needless to say some are more interesting than others. For example, the citizens of Baucis live on platforms that extend stilt-like into the clouds, from which they look down at the earth, "leaf by leaf, stone by stone, ant by ant, contemplating with fascination their own absence," while the city of Adelma is a city of the dead, where Polo thinks " 'Perhaps Adelma is the city where you arrive dying and where each finds again the people he has known. That means I, too, am dead.' "

One of the most intriguing things about the book is the mathematical logic with which it is organized. The cities are assigned categories, such as "cities and memory," "cities and desire," "thin cities," "trading cities," "continuous cities," "cities and the dead," and so on, and then each of the cities within a category is numbered, so that the first chapter is "Cities and memories 1" and then later iterations are "Cities and memories 2," "Cities and memories 3," and so on. Both the numbers and the categories are arranged mathematically, but I don't know enough mathematics to describe what the sequences are. The numbers go 1, then 2, 1, then 3, 2, 1, then 4, 3, 2, 1, then repeat the sequence 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 for several sections, and then wind down 5, 4, 3, 2, followed by 5, 4, 3, followed by 5, 4, and ending with 5. The categories are grouped so first there is memory, then memory and desire, then memory and desire and signs, then memory and desire and signs and thin, then memory and desire and signs and thin and trading, and then start to drop some categories and add others, but still in a recognizable sequence.

Impressed as I am by this and by other aspects of the book, I really don't know what Calvino was trying to do. Certainly he was speaking about how humans organize themselves in cities, and about the role of imagination, and possibly about history. Interestingly, although Kublai Khan and Marco Polo lived in the 13th century, this book includes references to airplanes and other technologies that first existed in the 20th century, as well as to an atlas that Kublai Khan has that contains maps of cities that didn't yet exist, like New York.

Maybe postmodern writing isn't for me, although I bought this book in response to comments on my review of Magdalena Tulli's Dreams and Stones (which I loved), a book that also deals with a mythical city (and Tulli is apparently a translator of Calvino). However, while illusive and allusive like this work by Calvino, the Tulli has more direction instead of being quite as amorphous as this book is. I'm really left sort of scratching my head and not very engaged.

Despite loving Calvino, I can't say that I love any of his works. Rather, I am bemused by most of them. Invisible Cities is one of my least favorites, because I think he became a little too enamored of the math play at the expense of the point. On the other hand, his work also suffers when he becomes too intent on creating a plot, as in The Castle of Crossed Destinies. Plus, as a map buff, I wanted to like it more than I did. It's been about 15 years, though, since I read it.

For me, I relate better to Calvino when I put him in the experimental author bucket. Rather than viewing him as strictly postmodern, this allows me to be less irritated with the discursiveness of his texts. (Interestingly, that discursiveness also is an attribute of modernist authors, such as Joyce and Proust. In fact, a lot of what Calvino wrote was in direct response to modernist authors he admired, rather than just simply being postmodernist itself.)

Although I don't know very much about math either, I do remember, from a class on Calvino I once took, and a conference on Oulipo I once attended, that he and the other Oulipeans were interested primarily in combinatorics. Calvino liked to then throw a spanner in the works, so to speak, and twist the discrete structures with surprises to see where the math could then go. I seem to remember that Warren F. Motte, Jr.'s introduction to Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature was useful, if you are planning on further readings in Calvino's oeuvre.

The Tulli book looks interesting.

59. Reading Chekhov: A Critical Journey by Janet Malcolm



This delightful, and brief, book combines information Malcolm gleaned on her 1999 trip to Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yalta to visit sites associated with Chekhov (and other Russian literary lights) with forays into Chekhov's life and analysis of some of his stories. It is not a travelogue or a biography or a work of criticism, but combines aspects of these in classic Malcolmian style in which she effortlessly (at least that's how it appears!) merges one topic into another in a way that makes complete sense. Of course, being Malcolm, she includes some perceptive psychological points as well. She seems to have read most of the biographies and critical works about Chekhov, as well as his letters, stories, and plays, and quotes from them aptly. Other writers she discusses briefly in the course of this book are Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Akhmatova.

She comments about Chekhov:

"To be sure, all works of literary realism practice a kind of benevolent deception, lulling us into the state we enter at night when we mistake the fantastic productions of our imagination for actual events. But Chekhov succeeds so well in rendering his illusion of realism and in hiding the traces of his surrealism that he remains the most misunderstood -- as well as the most beloved -- of the nineteenth century Russian geniuses." p. 22

"We do not ask such questions of the other Russian realists, but Chekhov's strange, coded works almost force us to sound them for hidden meanings. Chekhov's irony and good sense put a brake on our speculations. We don't want to get too fancy. But we don't want to miss the clues that Chekhov has scattered about his garden and covered with last year's leaves. These leaves are fixtures of Chekhov's world (I have encountered them in the gardens of no other writers), and exemplify Chekhov's way of endowing some small quiet natural phenomenon with metaphorical meaning. One hears them crunch underfoot as one walks in the allée where this year's leaves have already sprouted." p. 205

About the challenge of biography:

"The letters and journals we leave behind and the impressions we have made on our contemporaries are the mere husk of the kernel of our essential life. When we die, the kernel is buried with us. This is the horror and pity of death and the reason for the inescapable triviality of biography." pp. 35-36

Chekhov was only 44 when he died of tuberculosis.

Just as reading Malcolm's Forty-One False Starts led me to take this book off the TBR shelves where it has languished for nearly 15 years, reading this book has now led me take a book of Chekhov's stories off the shelf too.

>206 Linda92007: Thanks, Linda.

>208 LibraryPerilous: Very interesting comments about Calvino, Diana. I don't feel particularly motivated to read more of him, although I guess that could change, but i might take a look at the Oulipo book you mentioned since I know nothing about Oulipo or Oulipeans.

I'm a big fan of Magdalena Tulli; my favorite book by her is In Red, the first one I read.

I've had time to set up a new thread here, but everyone should feel free to comment on either thread.

Coming late to this discussion from 181 on as I was away, but adding my vote for The Bone People.

The Malcolm books both sound excellent and great incentives to read more..