My categories are kind of broad, maybe kind of boring compared to some, but they give me some wiggle room. So far this year...

a. 19th century lit FINISHED
1. The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope 1/9/09
2. Wylder's Hand by J. Sheridan Le Fanu 1/26/09
3. Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev 2/20/09
4. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens 3/3/09
5. Washington Square by Henry James 4/6/09
6. Michael Kohlhaas by Heinrich von Kleist 4/21/09
7. Daniel Deronda by George Eliot 4/13/09
8. The Doctor's Wife by Mary Elizabeth Braddon 6/27/09
9. The Warden by Anthony Trollope 8/5/09

b. 20th century lit FINISHED
1. The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold by Evelyn Waugh 2/9/09
2. The Comedians by Graham Greene 2/13/09
3. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith 3/27/09
4. A Fine and Private Place by Peter S. Beagle 4/30/09
5. The Prisoner: Shattered Visage by Dean Motter and Mark Askwith 5/5/09
6. A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett 6/30/09
7. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald 7/5/09
8. Anglo-Saxon Attitudes by Angus Wilson 7/18/09
9. Summer by Edith Wharton 7/31/09

c. 21st century lit FINISHED
1. The Rotters' Club by Jonathan Coe 1/26/09
2. The Keep by Jennifer Egan 2/4/09
3. Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris 4/3/09
4. The Painting by Nina Schuyler 4/27/09
5. Labyrinth by Kate Mosse 6/4/09
6. The Portrait by Iain Pears 6/30/09
7. The Closed Circle by Jonathan Coe 7/20/09
8. A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby 8/7/09
9. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday 8/25/09

d. historical fiction FINISHED
1. Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess 3/10/09
2. The Red and the Green by Iris Murdoch 3/18/09
3. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro 3/21/09
4. Falstaff by Robert Nye 4/20/09
5. The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl 6/7/09
6. When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro 7/5/09
7. The Unburied by Charles Palliser 7/21/09
8. The Late Mr. Shakespeare by Robert Nye 8/11/09
9. Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson 8/16/09

e. mystery FINISHED
1. Death in Holy Orders by P.D. James 2/11/09
2. Vintage Murder by Ngaio Marsh 2/21/09
3. A Wreath for Rivera by Marsh 3/28/09
4. The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey 4/1/09
5. The Sittaford Mystery by Agatha Christie 4/2/09
6. Thirteen at Dinner or Lord Edgeware Dies by Christie 4/17/09
7. Overture to Death by Marsh 5/16/09
8. End in Tears by Ruth Rendell 5/25/09
9. A Taste for Death by P.D. James 7/14/09

f. plays
1. Antigone by Sophocles 3/31/09
2. Another version of Antigone by Bertolt Brecht 4/8/09
3. Antony and Cleopatra by Shakespeare 4/27/09
4. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard 8/2/09

g. history FINISHED
1. An Elegant Madness: High Society in Regency England by Venetia Murray 4/30/09
2. Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of our Most Primal Fear by Jan Bondeson 5/14/09
3. The Republic in Print: Print Culture in the Age of U.S. Nation Building, 1770-1870 by Trish Loughran 7/21/09
4. Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850 by Sean Wilentz 8/11/09
5. Hind Swaraj by M.K. Ganhdi 4/27/09
6. Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered by Ruth Kluger 5/21/09
7. An American Icon: Brother Jonathan and American Identity by Winifred Morgan
8. Class and Community: The Industrial Revolution in Lynn by Alan Dawley
9. Modernization: The Transformation of American Life by Richard D. Brown

h. art/art history FINISHED
1. The Devil's Cloth: A History of Stripes by Michel Pastoureau 5/6/09
2. And When Did You Last See Your Father?: The Victorian Painter and British History by Roy Strong 5/12/09
3. Beyond the Lines: Pictorial Reporting, Everyday Life, and the Crisis of Gilded Age America by Joshua Brown 7/23/09
4. Industry in Art by Rina C. Youngner 7/31/09
5. The Printed Image and the Transformation of Popular Culture, 1790-1860 by Patricia Anderson 8/11/09
6. The Artist as Anthropologist: The Representation of Type and Character in Victorian Art by Mary Cowling
7. The Recollections of John Ferguson Weir by John Ferguson Weir 8/12/09
8. A World Worth While by William Allen Rogers 8/24/09
9. The Art and Politics of Thomas Nast by Morton Keller

i. other (overflow category)
1. Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
2. The Crime at Black Dudley by margery Allingham
3. Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell
4. Maurice by E.M. Forster

Message edited by its author, Sep 9, 2009, 6:25pm.

Good luck! I just discovered this group myself. I have to figure out what my book group read this year so I can add a few titles to my list.

I don't think your categories are boring. Mine are pretty boring, but I'm livening it up by trying to read authors I've never read before. Like Agatha Christie!

Welcome to the group!

I'll be reading Gentlemen and Players soon. Did you enjoy it?

Trying to figure out how to do this...maybe I'll address the books I just read now, and gradually go back and discuss some highlights of what I've read earlier in the year.

The Painting by Nina Schuyler--Historical fiction about VERY loosely connected stories in Japan and Paris during the Franco-Prussian war. Characters connected (sort of) through a beautiful painting that is sent as packing materials around Japanese pottery.
I thought this book was dreadful! For one thing, I don't know that much about Japanese history during the Meiji restoration, but I'm pretty sure there were some anachronisms on that end of things. And I'm positive that women in 1870 France didn't wear "bras"! Beyond this, the writing was very "pretty" but nothing spectacular, and I found it hard to care about any of the characters.

Antony and Cleopatra by Shakespeare--Not my favorite of his tragedies, but I had never read it before, and I was interested... My husband LOVES this play. I thought it was fine, but give me Macbeth or Hamlet any day!

Hind Swaraj by M.K. Gandhi--Very enjoyable for a political science text. Interesting, and gave me some things to think about. I don't always agree with MKG, and I find his requirements for true satyagraha a bit extreme and almost impossible (i.e., not workable for the average type like me...but then G. would probably say I've become softened by my easy access to food and luxuries and lack of self-locomotion). The interesting thing was that he described a lot of things people think of as recent developments of western civilization (such as processed food, high % of car ownership, overly litigious and overly medicated populations, people increasingly reliant on technology, and lack of strong religious beliefs) in 1909!

Message edited by its author, Apr 27, 2009, 2:19am.

Highlights from list a (19th century lit) that I read earlier in the year before joining the group.
The Eustace Diamonds was pretty awesome. I think it was the first book I finished in 2009. It was my first Trollope, and I'm sure I'll be reading more in the future. It's not really a mystery (some editions describe it that way), though it does revolve around the loss of some valuable diamonds. It's more of a social novel which asks interesting questions about property and place in society. I really disliked the main character, but I couldn't stop reading!

Oliver Twist was of course very enjoyable. I have always loved 19th century English lit, but I realized last fall that I had not read any Dickens except A Tale of Two Cities and A Christmas Carol, neither of which are really typical of his work. In the fall I read Great Expectations, which was great, and I recently finished Twist, which I liked even better, though it had some irritating issues: 1) yes, the middle class are skewered, and some of the more likable and heroic characters, like Nancy, are of the working class, but there's a class-based essentialism and rigidity that bothers me. (semi-spoilers) ie., the fact that Oliver turns out actually NOT to be working class shines through in his excellent manners and finer sensibilities, despite his upbringing in poverty and abuse. It's his blood that makes him exceptional, not anything inherently good about him. At least that's how I read it. 2) too many freakin' coincidences! I'll leave it at that. However, that said, it was a great and exciting read.

Something I've been thinking about: Twist is known for its anti-Semitism, but of these two books, I thought the anti-Semitism in the Trollope was much more pronounced than in Dickens. I've always heard Fagin referred to as a horrible caricature, but I actually thought he was one of the more complex characters (more complicated than Sykes, who is just cruel and violent, and more complicated than Oliver, who's sort of a milksop; I thought Fagin had an interesting sort of passive-aggression and a sometimes winning humor despite his villainy). In the Eustace Diamonds, Jewish characters are reviled and depicted as greedy/scheming/ugly/greasy/etc. because they're Jewish, while it seemed to me that Fagin was bad because he was bad, not because he was Jewish. Just something I've been considering since I read the two book very close to each other.

More highlights of my reading from earlier in the year. List b (20th century lit):

The Comedians by Graham Greene was amazing. It was one of the most depressing books I've ever read, but not in a way that hits you over the head. Much more subtly. Basically it's about two opposing worldviews: having convictions and not. That sounds really vague. More concretely, it's about some expats in Haiti during the early years of the oppressive regime of Papa Doc Duvalier. Beautifully written (as always with Greene, I find). It's also kind of (darkly) funny, which seems to underline rather than alleviate the oppressiveness of the whole thing. Definitely one of my favorites of 2009 so far, and may make it onto the list of all-time favorites.

I Capture the Castle is about as different from The Comedians as two books could be! This is the sort of book I think I would have read over and over again when I was about 17. It's kind of like The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim in that it's a feel-good book without being sappy. Both Smith's and von Arnim's wonderful books about British women haunted me for days afterwards with a kind of happy yet nostalgic feeling. I like the German word Sehnsucht, because it can mean nostalgia but also (slightly painful) yearning. That is kind of how I felt after reading this book. It so powerfully captured the many trials and joys of being in your late teens.

Both highly recommended!

Finished two new books, A Fine and Private Place, a sad but redeeming fantasy/ghost story. What I really like about the two books I have read by Beagle is his sarcastic humor. Human characters were interesting and fun; ghosts were less engaging and I didn't really care about their story as much, even though it was beautifully written.

An Elegant Madness, a popular history of the Regency period in England that covers a large swathe of cultural and social mores from the late 18th century to about 1820. I really enjoyed reading about the changing fashions, changing roles of different groups of people in society, clubs, theatre, and country house parties. I wasn't as interested in all the bed-swapping, but Murray doesn't focus on that aspect too much. I could have also used a bit more historical background about the Napoleonic wars--I know some, but not really enough to know what was happening when. From reading this book you could almost think the wars made no effect on society at all, which can't be true. I know it is a cultural history, but I did still want a bit more on the political angle, just to situate me.

Completed two more books, both somewhat disappointing.

The Devil's Cloth: A History of Stripes by Michel Pastoureau is a lightweight academic book (more of a long essay) about the history of stripes, striped cloth and clothing, and the representation of stripes in visual culture from the medieval period to the 20th century. It was amusing, I guess, but nothing too special. I categorized it under art history because that seemed like the best fit, but it's not really classifiable. It's just a fluff project by a very prolific specialist in medieval heraldry, which I think was written for kicks rather than serious scholarly inquiry. The whole thing is written in a lovely, breezy tone and can be read in a day. Kind of episodic and not very fulfilling, though.

The Prisoner: Shattered Visage is a pretty cheesy late 1980s graphic novel spinoff/sequel of the cult 1960s TV show The Prisoner, starring Patrick McGoohan. I bought this book used (our price: cheap!) several years ago. Well, I'm moving house and getting rid of some things, so I thought it was finally time to read it. Only took a couple hours. I haven't seen the original show in years, so it was kind of confusing. Reviewers other places have complained about the art being bad or 2-D, but I actually really liked the visual style (more so than the text).

Just finished (finally!) Daniel Deronda. It took me almost a month. Mixed review. First and final 1/3s of the book were great; middle 1/3 dragged for me. Same problems as with Twist: essentialism (of religion this time) and irritating coincidences. Pretty good, didn't enjoy as much as Middlemarch, which I read a few years ago. I think the problem was that the middle third was where a lot of the religious and political issues are worked through, and I found them somewhat uninteresting, as well as finding Deronda's sudden interest in Ezra/Mordecai unbelievable. But overall it was pretty good.

Also read Buried Alive, a fun popular history about the historical and literary reactions (mainly late 18th and 19th centuries) to the fear of being buried alive. By turns gruesome and amusing. It seems very well researched, but I found some inconsistencies in the text that make me wonder how many errors there might be. However, since I'm not basing a dissertation on it or anything, this doesn't matter to me much. I was reading it purely for fun, and it served its purpose admirably.

I read my first Anthony Trollope this year Barchester Towers and I really enjoyed it. I will have to look for The Eustace Diamonds.

And I'm glad to see someone else with a play category. So far I've only read Waiting for Godot, but I have A Comedy of Errors coming up next.

Finished three more!
Overture to Death by Ngaio Marsh is pretty much what you would expect from an Inspector Alleyn mystery. I am pretty thick, so I usually can't figure out whodunit, but this time I figured it out pretty early on, and just had to finish reading to verify that I was right and hear how. So, not that much fun. I like being stumped.

Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered by Ruth Kluger. A very different kind of Holocaust memoir. What I liked were Kluger's explorations and musings on memory, the structure, which doesn't follow a strict chronology, and the absolute honesty. What I didn't like were the boring fourth section set in New York (seemed tacked-on), and occasionally the tone. A lot of my students complained about how negative Kluger's tone is, and I see where they are coming from. She does tend to berate readers, visitors to concentration camp sites, politicians, and members of society for their sentimentalized visions of the Holocaust, a sentimentality without depth or understanding (there is something to be said for this, and I think it's probably most common in movies). But occasionally she crossed a line for me--I have visited Holocaust memorial sites to honor my family. It's not always about making ourselves feel better/superior. Still on the whole I did admire the book and would recommend it.

And When Did You Last See Your Father?: The Victorian Painter and British History by Roy Strong is a somewhat dull look at the representation of British history (medieval and early modern, but a lot focused around the Civil War as well) in academic painting of the late 19th century. I was disappointed in the book, which doesn't give much attempt to offer a social interpretation of the reasons why British history became so interesting to many painters (not all of whom were British) around this time. I was looking for something that might address contemporary 19th-c. politics and values in an attempt to explain or understand this phenomenon. There hasn't been much written on what I think is a pretty interesting subgroup (painting of British history) of what is now considered "bad" art (academic painting in general) but was extremely popular at the time.

A mixed bag.
End in Tears by Ruth Rendell was a pretty good contemporary procedural with Wexford et. al. I don't remember a lot about it, since it's already been about a month since I finished it, but I thought it was pretty good. I like her Wexford books generally. In the past I have tried to read the non-Wexford and didn't like them at all.

Labyrinth by Kate Mosse was also a while ago now. For the kind of thing it was (literary/grail thriller), it was pretty good, but this genre is really hard to do well and credibly. I thought it was OK. Nothing too glaringly horrible about it, but nothing especially memorable, either. I really disliked the historical character, Alais, and I'm not sure why. But it was fast-paced and kept me reading.

The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl was pretty awful. The whole time I just kept thinking "WHO CARES???!!!" But I finished it to the end (mostly because I was trapped in a car from California to Texas). Not recommended, though I did like his first The Dante Club.

Just finished The Doctor's Wife by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. It was good, bordering on just OK. I thought it relied too heavily on references to literature contemporary with or just prior to Braddon. Some of the references were major literature (Byron, Dickens), while others have become pretty obscure (minor characters from novels by Bulwer-Lytton, eg.), but the references weren't always well explained by the explanatory notes in the Oxford edition. Yes, I got the general gist, that Izzie had a rich imaginary life fueled by romantic notions from contemporary fiction and Romantic poetry, which her quotidian existence failed to live up to. But that was kind of the whole substance of her--she wasn't too interesting, nor too well characterized, and constantly repeating that she fantasized about being just like Edith Dombey didn't help round out the character, in my opinion.

That said, it had some merits--primarily a good understanding of the youthful mind (18-19, not a child, but not really an adult). Silly Dickensian plot twist/coincidence added just the right amount of pathos, in this case. Character of Sigismund added some self-deprecating humor about the authorial profession. So...not a complete loss, but not as good as her more sensationalist novel Lady Audley's Secret.

The Portrait by Iain Pears was, luckily, a quick read. I didn't like it much at all. There was nothing really wrong with it, but I just could not force myself to care about anything that was happening. Grating narrative voice/technique. I couldn't keep track of who anyone was, even though there were only five characters in the whole thing. Also, I thought part of the twist ending was homophobic and offensive, which left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I have liked Pears in the past, especially An Instance of the Fingerpost and, somewhat to my shame, the art history mysteries with Jonathan Argyll. This just did not do it for me.

On the other hand, A Little Princess by Frances H. Burnett was a real pleasure. I can't believe I had never read it before! I loved The Secret Garden growing up, read it several times, and remember going to see the movie which came out around 1993 and loving that, too. It (much like SG) has a good message for kids about the transformative power of friendship and imagination, even under less-than-ideal circumstances, and is charmingly told. I picked it up for a couple dollars at a used bookstore, thinking "why not?" Well, "why not earlier?" is now a better question to ask myself.

Tender is the Night was excellent. I read a couple other books by Fitzgerald a long time ago (like in high school). Loved Gatsby, didn't like anything else. Decided to try again, and I'm glad I did. This was really beautiful and sad and lingers in my mind. The main characters were well-drawn (peripheral characters were more 2-D) and all relatable in different ways. It reminds me for some reason of The Sun Also Rises. I'm not sure why, but I guess they're both about the neuroses behind the party facade of US expats between the wars.

When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro was just OK. It was undoubtedly beautifully written, but I kept getting the feeling that the narrator was insane and I was the only one who noticed. It was interesting to read these two books at the same time, because now I'm wondering if the unsatisfying elements of the Ishiguro (oblique conversations between characters that seem strangely meaningful to them but not quite clear to the reader, for example) are modeled after expat fiction of the interwar period? Don't know. In any case, I liked reading about Shanghai between the wars, after going there last summer on a vacation. But I was not drawn in by the central story. So though this was, truly, gorgeously written, I just could not get too into it.

Four new books added.

A Taste for Death by P.D. James. Typical OK murder procedural. Not my favorite Dalgleish mystery, but good summer reading.

Anglo-Saxon Attitudes by Angus Wilson. Enjoyable and complex social tapestry/satire of mid-century Britain. I thought the characters were very interesting and well written. I especially liked the last spoken line in the book. Some laugh out loud parts, but mostly more mild, realistic satire. Starting to really appreciate Wilson, who is something of a forgotten figure, it seems.

The Closed Circle by Jonathan Coe. Sequel to The Rotters' Club which I read and loved earlier this year. Not quite as good as its predecessor. I loved the humor and tenderness of the first book--this was more bleak and cynical. Probably meant to reflect the changes in the political and social atmosphere as well as the growth of the characters. In any case, I missed a little of the wit of The Rotters' Club, but very much enjoyed returning to these characters who I had seen growing up over the course of the first book.

The Unburied by Charles Palliser. Somewhat disappointing historical mystery (of the fake sensation novel genre). I understood the ending, but there was a bit too much "At last I knew what the Canon was hiding..." Well, OK, tell me, because I have no idea what he was hiding, and it's not THAT enjoyable to speculate about what it could have been, without an eventual payoff. Also, too much similarity between the "twist" in the 17th and 19th century murders. Overall I did keep going and enjoyed the book, but thought it had many weaknesses.

The Republic in Print, an interesting challenge to early republic and print culture studies. Loughran argues that contrary to popular and scholarly belief, and paradoxically, increased communication technologies in the 19th century led to sectional, class, and racial conflict, rather than creating a strong national culture through print. Conversely, in the era when communication and mass production were still in development (say 1770 up to about 1840), it was easier to manufacture a fantasy of political consensus and national unity.

Beyond the Lines by Josh Brown is a re-read, but the first time I read it, I only read certain sections, so I am counting it for this challenge. Brown argues that pictorial newspapers in the mid-late 19th century performed a representational balancing act in order to deal with the complexities of Gilded Age society. This included a reworking of pictorial and physiognomic cues inherited from antebellum print culture, and the development of new visual signs for the increasingly fragmented/niche identities of Americans, according to enclaves of sex, race, region, and class. Brown convincingly argues (though I would have liked to see some consideration of print culture within a larger visual field) that news reporting was one of the most potent, fraught, and complex visual languages of the time period, and was absorbed and interpreted in many different ways by a diverse nineteenth-century viewership.

A good pairing.

Summer by Edith Wharton was a rarely satisfying short novel. The writing is just gorgeous, and the by turns irritating and vulnerable character of Charity Royall is a totally believable picture of a sixteen year old girl who's confused about just about every aspect of life. I have never read a book by Wharton that I didn't like.

Thanks for the reminder. I took a whole course on Edith Wharton in graduate school and loved it. The Reef was one of my favorites. Custom of the Country was great too. I'll have to put Wharton in my classics category.

Three more. I really need to get started on my nonfiction!

Industry in Art by Rina C. Youngner. OK overview of images of Pittsburgh in the 19th century. I thought this book was OK, but didn't really have a central argument or special angle.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard. Brilliant idea. Very enjoyable and funny. Probably not to everyone's taste. Absurdist and serious at the same time.

The Warden by Anthony Trollope. I decided to slowly read the Barchester novels in order. This was the first one. Quite slight, but a nice character study of a good, dim clergyman and what happens to him. Nothing amazing, but certainly enjoyable to read.

Three more...

The Printed Image and the Transformation of Popular Culture by Patricia Anderson. A little earlier than the time period I was really interested in, but gives a good overview of the history of illustrated papers/miscellanies in the UK during the first half of the 19th century. Anderson is good at qualifying categories such as "working class" or "mass culture" in ways that I have difficulty doing, so in that sense it is a good model, though most of the factual information and the specific journals she discusses will not be useful to me.

Ditto (time-period wise) with Sean Wilentz's Chants Democratic, a classic of history/Am. Studies that's just a little too early for the period I really want to look at. I skimmed some of this book because it wasn't that relevant to what I am working on. However, Wilentz, like Anderson, does a good job of avoiding blanket statements and gives good, specific, quantifiable evidence for his claims. It does help me rethink about how uneven economic and manufacturing development really were prior to (and even after) the Civil War, rather than focusing on the old saw that the Industrial Revolution uniformly destroyed a handcraft-based economy and replaced it with a slave-like system of unskilled wage capitalism.

A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby was an enjoyable book, but like his other works that I have read, I felt that it lacked something. Substance, maybe? There is a lot of substance to this book in some ways, but just as with his other books, at the end I kind of think "so...?" What is my take-away message? The books seem cynical and postmodern, but they're actually not. They're sappy underneath it all, which somehow seems untruthful to me. Just be sappy, and be OK with it.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is one of my favorite plays. So brilliant.

First, the good. The Late Mr. Shakespeare by Robert Nye. I just discovered Nye this year. My first attempt to read Falstaff was abortive. I got to about page 10, where he talks about figs and farting for three pages, and I threw up my hands and said, "This is silly!" Then I came back to it a few months later with a better sense of humor and loved it. Mr. Shakespeare is every bit as good as Falstaff. I am looking forward to reading more of his books. I don't know much about him, but I really feel he must be an underappreciated master, because it took me so long to discover him--and I know a lot of people who are very into fiction (and this kind of fiction, too), and none of them have ever mentioned him. I just happened to buy one of his books on a whim at the Strand and now I'm going to shout his praises to anyone who will listen.

Next, more good. The Artist as Anthropologist is actually a very enjoyable scholarly work about the impact of physiognomy and phrenology on visual representation during the Victorian period (used to connote all kinds of traits and social positions so that characters in cartoons and paintings would be easily legible to viewers). The only problem is that there were only about 10 pages that were really relevant to what I was looking for, and the book was so readable that I wasted half a day when I should have been working reading the rest of the book!

Finally, the bad, but necessary. The Recollections of John Ferguson Weir is a dull, episodic autobiography by a minor American artist. I had to read it for some research I am doing.

Behind the Scenes at the Museum was the first book I have ever read for a book club. I don't think that really changed my impression of it while I was reading it, but I think I liked it a little less after our discussion! Partially because some group members had good critiques of the book, that I really hadn't thought about.

I liked it VERY much up until about 50 pages from the end. Then it lost me. I mean, I lost interest in it. The big reveal was exactly what it was obvious that it would be, I guess with a slight twist--and it made NO difference to me. I could have cared less. I also could have cared less what happened to Ruby in her own boring romantic life, in which 20 years were covered in about 3 pages.

BUT I really enjoyed the "footnotes" about the past of the family members. It reminded me a lot of other multi-generational, somewhat magical-realist family sagas that I have read in the past, and the writing was really strong. I guess I am just not a fan of the psychobabble and the wussy ending.

OH, and am I just totally cruel and insensitive? So many comments about how depressing this book was. I thought it was hilarious! I didn't find its unrelenting tragedy sad so much as darkly funny, in the way that Alec Guinness playing a bunch of different characters who all try to murder each other in the movie Kind Hearts and Coronets is funny. But then again, I might be the only person alive who thought the movie They Shoot Horses Don't They? was a comedy.

Message edited by its author, Aug 20, 2009, 6:34pm.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday. Eh. Cutesy. I thought it was an interesting way to tell the story--a kind of updated epistolary novel, but it just didn't really work for me. I thought it was kind of boring, and I found it hard to believe that this boring, practical man would have been talked into this crazy idea by the "holy" sheikh. I kind of liked the ending, though.

A World Worth While by W.A. Rogers. Another autobiography of a 19th century illustrator, which I had to read for my research.