Chatterbox Indulges Her Bibliomania: The First Episode

Let the fun and games begin!

Here's a running tally of the total number of books read in 2011:




And here's the number read for this challenge:




(I don't count books read for the 11 in 11 challenge toward this, though they will show up in my overall ranking.)

As before, I'm going to try to balance my reading between non-fiction and fiction; expect to see a VERY eclectic list, ranging from "brain candy" to some serious classic and contemporary fiction; foreign novels and new new things; history, science, biography, current affairs, etc. etc. I'm omnivorous when it comes to books: they can simply be "thumping good reads" or can be life changing. My only demand is that they be well written within their genre.

I rate my reading using fractions (eg 1.7, 3.9, etc.) and it's basically to try and capture the nuances. Some guidelines:
1.5 or less: A tree gave its life so that this book could be printed and distributed?
1.5 to 2.7: Are you really prepared to give up hours of your life for this?? I wouldn't recommend doing that...
2.8 to 3.3: Do you need something to fill in some time waiting to see the dentist? Either reasonably good within a ho-hum genre (chick lit or thrillers), something that's OK to read when you've nothing else with you, or that you'll find adequate to pass the time and forget later on.
3.4 to 3.8: Want to know what a thumping good read is like, or a book that has a fascinating premise, but doesn't quite deliver? This is where you'll find 'em.
3.9 to 4.4: So, you want a hearty endorsement? These books have what it takes to make me happy I read them.
4.5 to 5: The books that I wish I hadn't read yet, so I could experience the joy of discovering them again for the first time. Sometimes disquieting, sometimes sentimental faves, sometimes dramatic -- they are a highly personal/subjective group at the top of the pile in my judgment.

Here's the list...:

1. Party of One by Anneli Rufus, **** STARTED 1/1/11, FINISHED 1/3/11 (non-fiction)
2. The Wolves of Andover by Kathleen Kent, **** STARTED 1/1/11, FINISHED 1/2/11 (fiction)
3. The Three Weissmanns of Westport by Cathleen Schine, ***, STARTED 1/2/11, FINISHED 1/3/11 (fiction)
4. Pierre Elliott Trudeau by Nino Ricci, ****, STARTED 1/6/11, FINISHED 1/7/11 (non-fiction)
5. Kean by Jean-Paul Sartre, ****1/2, STARTED 1/6/11, FINISHED 1/7/11 (drama)
6. A Flaw in the Blood by Stephanie Barron, ***, STARTED 1/9/11, FINISHED 1/10/11 (fiction)
7. Crash of the Titans by Greg Farrell, ****, STARTED 1/6/11, FINISHED 1/11/11 (non-fiction)
8. Die with Me by Elena Forbes, ****, STARTED 1/10/11, FINISHED 1/12/11 (fiction)
9. The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place by Maryrose Wood, ***1/2, STARTED 1/11/11, FINISHED 1/12/11 (fiction)
10. The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer, ****1/2, STARTED 1/4/11, FINISHED 1/13/11 (fiction)
11. My Reading Life by Pat Conroy, ****, STARTED 1/14/11, FINISHED 1/15/11 (non-fiction)
12. By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham, ****, STARTED 1/13/11, FINISHED 1/15/11 (fiction)
13. The True Memoirs of Little K by Adrienne Sharp, ***1/2, STARTED 1/15/11, FINISHED 1/16/11 (fiction)
14. The Trinity Six by Charles Cumming, ****1/2, STARTED 1/15/11, FINISHED 1/17/11 (fiction)
15. Fly by Wire by William Langewiesche, ****, STARTED 1/16/11, FINISHED 1/17/11 (non-fiction)
16. He Who Fears the Wolf by Karin Fossum, ***1/2, STARTED 1/17/11, FINISHED 1/18/11 (fiction)
17. Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household, ****, STARTED 1/18/11, FINISHED 1/19/11 (fiction)
18. The Great Silence by Juliet Nicolson, ****, STARTED 12/10, FINISHED 1/20/11 (non-fiction)
19. Welcome to Utopia: Notes from a Small Town by Karen Valby, ***1/2, STARTED 1/17/11, FINISHED 1/19/11 (non-fiction)
20. Left Neglected by Lisa Genova, ***, STARTED 1/19/11, FINISHED 1/21/11 (fiction)
21. Forty Words for Sorrow by Giles Blunt, **** 1/2, STARTED 1/17/11, FINISHED 1/22/11 (fiction)

Glad to see you back, Suz! I look forward to stealing tons of titles from your list this year.

Here you are! And off we go, into the eleven...

*smooch*

Welcome back!

I'm super impressed that you're aiming for 500. Awesome!

4.5 to 5: The books that I wish I hadn't read yet, so I could experience the joy of discovering them again for the first time.

I like that description!

Since I own about 127 lend-able Kindle books, I've decided to break them into monthly groups of 25 or so. This will be the January list! Remember, each book can only be loaned ONCE -- first come, first served. (I'm going to cross-post on my own thread.) Will delete books as they are requested. Also, since the lending period is only two weeks long, if you want to read one but don't want it until February, send me a PM telling me that, and I'll reserve it for you. The lists will exclude free books and 99 cent books.

Here are my lending ground rules:

first come, first served.
PM me (don't reply on the threads) and tell me what date you want me to send it. I'll try to accommodate those requests as best I can.
I will remove a title from the lend-able list when someone else has requested it.
I'll post the next one in early February.

So here's the January list:

1.The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal
2.The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins -- SPOKEN FOR -- 2/1
3.February by Lisa Moore
4.Roma by Steven Saylor
5.Random Violence by Jassy Mackenzie
6.Murder on the Cliffs by Joanna Challis
7.Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
8.My Man Jeeves by PG Wodehouse
9. Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer
10. Murder in the Latin Quarter by Cara Black
11. Capital Ideas Evolving by Peter Bernstein
12. Farthing by Jo Walton
13. Firemaker by Peter May
14. Devil's Trill by Gerald Elias
15. Ice Blink by Scott Cookman -- LOANED
16. The Grave Tattoo by Val McDermid
17. Descartes: A Short Introduction by Tom Sorrell
18. Zoo Station by David Downing
19. Dreaming in Chinese by Deborah Fallows
20. A Corpse in the Koryo by James Church
21. To Begin the World Over Again by John Hulsman
22. The Memoirs of Mary Queen of Scots by Carolly Erickson (dreadful, but...)
23. The Watcher in the Pine by Rebecca Pawel
24. Seeds of Terror by Gretchen Peters
25. The Seven Sins by Jon Land

Wow, Luxx, those are some monsters you're raising...

I am going to try to get a list together of my 2010 reading, but it's a fairly mammoth one. Officially, I read 506 books, but the Excel spreadsheet I just put together tells me it's closer to 509/510. I wasn't keeping track in the first half of the year across all my challenges. About a third were non-fiction, and the rest fiction. I'm not going to manage to break it down by region, gender or other considerations, just offer some thoughts on the list.

For anyone who wants to see a nearly-complete list of my best books of the year, it's on my profile page.

Happy New Year to you Suz!

So good to see you back where you belong, sharing your incredible reads.

Ah ha.. here you are. Found and starred you again, of course Suz. Hope you're having a good start to the year.

How's Jasper doing today?

I see that you have a Lawrence of Arabia book there..
I am thinking of reading Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia ..
I heard a review on NPR a few weeks ago and added it to my wish list..

Did you enjoy the one you read?

>9 Chatterbox: That is such a lovely, generous gesture. *smooch*

Confess that I have yet to stick a pin in Jasper's ear to test his blood glucose. It is merely one of many things that I have not felt able to cope with today, sadly, after a rather, ahem, turbulent week.

Kath, I quite liked the Hulsman book. If you look at the conversations links on the book's page, you can probably find my contemporaneous comments about it.

One note re Kindle loans -- you can read these on your computer or your iPad if you don't have a Kindle device. I just can't transfer to a Nook or other e-Reader.

Off to order me some takeout/delivery. If I can.

OK, free Kindle book alert. There are some new freebies out there:
The Queen's Dollmaker by Christine Trent. (I couldn't read it, but if you like HF, hey, it's free...)
Medicus by Ruth Downie. Historical mystery set in Roman Britain. I paid for it, but still haven't read it.
Millie's Fling by Jill Mansell. Quite acceptable chick lit.

16 - Thanks! I downloaded Medicus. The other two didn't seem like my taste, but that one looks good...

Whoo, Suzanne! Thank you for the Medicus alert. I was already interested in it, and now it's mine, it's mine!!
ETA: Thank you for your generous Kindle offer. I'm greatly tempted, but the 2-week limit would kill me every time. That's a great idea though, and I'll see what I have available to lend.

Thanks for the free Kindle book alert, Suz. I downloaded Medicus and The Queen's Dollmaker ... not sure if they're going to be up my alley, but they sound interesting.

I'm so grateful for the Kindle alert. I've downloaded Medicus. I'm sorry you've already paid for it though.

Aren't you generous, Suzanne. So, if I buy a book from Amazon for my iPad, will I be able to lend it to someone else with a Kindle or another iPad? I'll have to check that out. Probably will buy most of my books through independent stores via Google though. Happy reading, Suzanne--your friends are sure lucky to have such a voracious reader with so many books to share.

Bonnie, I think it depends on on whether the publisher has agreed to make it available for lending. Only about 1/5 of my books (rough calculation) seem to be available, and it's a rather odd list. You can see on your online Kindle library (I'm assuming you're buying a Kindle version of the book, not just an e-book?) whether or not the book is available to lend. There are some instructions on the site, and I think Linda (lindapanzo) reprinted them on the dedicated Kindle-book lending thread here.

Wow, two days and no completed books to report on! Sigh. Well, I've nearly finished two...

For those who are interested in free and cheap Kindle books, there's also a great price watch site that allows you to sign up for alerts based on your own price drop criteria (or you can just visit the site). I've used it for a while now and it's on top of the newest price changes very quickly.

Debbie, thanks for posting that!! I just spent an enjoyable half-hour over there, pre-ordered a free book and changed a hardcover novel preorder to a (cheaper) Kindle preorder!! Chortle chortle.

#24 I am constantly changing book pre-orders to cheaper Kindle pre-orders.

23- That's a great website! Thanks. I signed up for free Kindle book updates. Very helpful, since I don't always get a chance to check Amazon.com for them.

Books du jour:

1. Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto by Anneli Rufus. This was a re-read for me, prompted by spending some time over the last week or two pondering why on earth I need so much "alone time" and why excessive socializing (in my terms; probably normal level in anyone else's view) is so draining. I remembered reading this book in 2003 or so, when it first came out, and went back to take a second look. It's a good book for loners and those trying to understand why often we just want/need to be alone. As Rufus writes, while loners are often viewed as nuts, "I am not crazy now, but forced to act like a nonloner for an extended period, I might go crazy." She does a great job of debunking myths about loners (most of the nuts out there that go postal are actually social misfits, not real loners) and of looking at all the good things that are associated with loner-dom -- extensive creativity, for instance. She has a sometimes felicitous but occasionally irritating style -- the highlights include comments like this one, about one typical loner: "He had social graces, knew his manners, but chose not to be in situations where these would be called upon." Overall verdict? This is a book that will appeal to loners (reminding them that just because others think they are eccentric, that doesn't matter), those who love them and those simply trying to figure out what makes them tick. If you're not a loner, don't have any in your life, and aren't curious about why someone can amble along the beach alone for hours in midwinter, well, don't bother. Re-reading it, I did mark it down, from about 4.8 stars to 4 stars. The first time around the fresh content masked the occasionally repetitive and stilted writing; this time, those niggled more. TIOLI for category #1. Additional rumination: if I weren't a loner, would I have read 500-plus books last year? And is there a happy medium????

2. The Wolves of Andover by Kathleen Kent. Recommended by a friend; a library book due back this week. This is the prequel to The Heretic's Daughter; being curmudgeonly, I opted to read this first. The story moves back and forth, between the seemingly mundane events in a tiny Massachussets settlement in 1673, where obstreperous Martha Allen goes to work in her cousin's home as a servant. There she meets Thomas, a tall Welshman who hopes soon to be able to buy his own land and settle down. That narrative is interrupted by segues into the lives of a handful of paid assassins in London, about to be dispatched to the colonies in pursuit of the handful of remaining regicides -- those who took a role in the trial and execution of Charles I. The link between Thomas and that pursuit becomes clear (and isn't really that surprising...) as the novel progresses and the two groups come closer together. This is a very gritty novel, with descriptions of bear-baiting, illnesses, poisonings, violence, etc. that don't spare the reader. Anyone who can get through that, however, will find an interesting story about the aftermath of the Restoration of Charles II. I was much more intrigued by the colonial setting and the story of Martha and Thomas than I was in the "pursuit", simply because the posse members were all so deeply repugnant in Kent's telling. On the other hand -- especially given that I was reading Anneli Rufus's book at the same time! -- I developed a soft spot for Martha, whose father tells her late in the book: "I didna' raise ye to be well regarded. To be liked. Any puny, weak-waisted sl*t can be liked. I raised ye to be reckoned with. To be fierce in the face of others' pridefulness." 4.1 stars, TIOLI for my own "proper noun" challenge. Recommended to those interested in the period or historical fiction fans.

Party of One looks interesting. I had read at some point that introverts (like me) shouldn't really be considered shy because socializing is still fun, it just takes more energy than for extroverts.

Nice review of Party of One, Suz. Your comments remind me why I get along with my best friends here in Madison; we (my friends and their daughter, but not their son) are comfortable being alone, especially with a good book, but enjoy each other's company. I'll add this book to my (2012) wish list.

I'll look for Party of One too. Sometimes I'm not sure how much a loner I am versus how I shy I am but I do know I'm almost always more comfortable by myself or a very few other people. My husband is probably more a true loner--he seems to be drained by social functions where I often get into them once I get there. Always nice to know us loners are not alone!

30- Wow. My thoughts are pretty much exactly what you just said!

#31 LOL

Additions to my library so far this month, now that the "ban" is over:

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner -- for the book circle, arrived today.
The Queen of Last Hopes by Susan Higginbotham -- Historical fiction, book by a friend, Kindle
Case Histories by Kate Atkinson -- LT recommendation, on Kindle.

I've got a bunch of books overdue from Amazon.co.uk...

Add me to the Party of One crowd!

#23 : Debbie - you are a gem. Thank you for posting this site .. I have just spent a very pleasurable 20 mins perusing the site and downloading a number of free books on my Kindle.

Also adding Party of One to the wishlist: I am an almost-off-the-scale introvert.

(I'm finding the irony of a large group of us all simultaneously expressing interest in Party of One mildly amusing.)

I suspect it's our biblioholic status. To be a really engaged reader means being able to immerse oneself completely in the written word, for hours at a time. Not something that is compatible with being hyper-gregarious.

But yes, it's rather funny that we're all joining this "club" -- multiple parties of one dining at the same restaurant! But then -- isn't that what LT is about??

I ordered Quirkyalone from Amazon; will report back on that when it arrives and I have read it.

>24 Chatterbox:, 26, 35 My pleasure. I love sharing great websites and free books!

I'll let you decide for me whether to get Quirkyalone, but not until after you've read it.

Robert

OK, one more book to report on today, but a very underwhelming one, so it shouldn't be a book bullet for anyone.

Finished The Three Weissmanns of Westport. It's another library book due back this week, so I bumped it to the top of the list, and then struggled through it. It's a loose contemporary riff on Sense and Sensibility, the fact that the heroines are middle-aged (my age!) and that their mother isn't technically widowed (her septugenerian husband decides to shack up with someone younger) was mildly interesting. So mother and daughters go to live in a beach house in Westport, Connecticut. But nothing in this book every really came alive for me. Sure, there were some witty lines here and there, and a few poignant moments, but overall I found it dull and the writing irritating. (Schine seems never to have heard the dictum, "show, don't tell", and insisted on telling me how I, the reader, should respond to every detail of her characters acts and thoughts.) Nothing subtle, no lines left to read between. Disappointing. 2.9 stars. Not really recommended.

I took The Three Weissmanns of Westport out of the library last year and could never get into it. I remember it got a fantastic (cover) review in the Sunday NYT book review and I could never figure out why. Of course, I've never read Sense and Sensibility so I didn't get any of those references. When you said you were going to read it, I was wondering what you'd think. Glad I didn't spend any more time on it than I did.

Suzanne

Since I am trying to limit by book buying to ten books this year, I hope my public library has a copy of Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto.

Will would be quite content living on a desert island. I'm much more extroverted than he and it causes difficulty for both of us.

There are times when I feel as though I'm the only one he allows in his world, and it does feel like both a blessing and a burden.

I need to understand more about his excessive need for solitude.

Thanks for the heads up re. this book.

Linda, I know I have a dead-tree version of this somewhere; I just don't know where!! When it resurfaces, I'll pop it in the mail to you, assuming that it's in readable condition. I know exactly what you mean -- although I suspect, as one of those loners, that there's no intent of being a burden. I'd be horrified to be a burden. When I connect with people IRL, it's only with those I feel a connection to, and I want to focus just on that connection. It doesn't bother me that the number is relatively small, and I would hate to feel that because that number is small, one of the number feels burdened. If I had no one to allow into my world for a while, that would simply be the fact of my existence, not something to agonize over. Because loners don't agonize over being alone. I simply don't do lonely any more. So yes, I think you should probably read this book...

(And yes, I can see that you are an extrovert, having met you in person!!)

Pat, I don't care about Austen references (yes, I got them, but really exasperating -- and some are red herrings) -- but you can't build a book around an Austen hommage, IMO, unless you happen to be an excellent writer. And I found Schine's prose actively annoying.

I've read Medicus, in the trade paperback, and seem to recall liking it enough to want to slap the odd character in aid of the protagonist. My dad might have my copy right now though, it seems to have gone AWOL .....

ROTFL at the concept of slapping characters to help the protagonist out -- that's a good tribute to the author & the writing!!!

Suz

Thanks for the offer of sending this book to me. I checked and none of my local libraries has a copy. Since I'm trying to limit my book buying to ten books this year, I appreciate your kindness. I'll be sure to return it when I'm finished.

Like you, Will is very sociable. He is easy to get along with and people like him when they meet him. He has a small group of wonderful friends. My friends enjoy him and we are now at the point where his friends are mine and mine are his. He is a great conversationalist and is a wonderful listener.

The burden I feel is self imposed. Again, I think I need to understand him more. He had two very successful practices and dealt with the public very well. But, I've come to realize that it was difficult for him to interact with patients all day. In addition, he raised his three children when his wife left for a life of freedom. I can only imagine what all the noise and chaos did to his psyche.

One of our standard jokes is that when I'm chatty, he looks at me and smiles while saying "Linda, sometimes a little quiet is good!"

Interestingly, most of my friends are introverts.

*waves* Heya Suz!

Hi Suzanne! Just checking by to say Happy New Year, pending a proper catch up of your thread!

Tamara!! Fliss!! *waves enthusiastically* *falls backwards off chair* Whoops...

The Invisible Bridge is shaping up as a "thumping good read"...

#49: LOL! Watch that hip!

I'm also joining the Party of One group. I'm not sure if I do a lot of things by myselft because I'm a loner, self-sufficient or people just don't care to hang with me. Maybe this will shed some light on a thought provoking situation.

The Invisible Bridge is shaping up as a "thumping good read"...

Uh huh, oh yes it is!

>49 Chatterbox:: Hi there, Suz, and Happy New Year. You added substantially to my wish list last year so I'm expecting more of the same from your book du jours. I have a lovely HC of The Invisible Bridge waiting for a thump from me...probably in February unless I start reading faster.

Hey ho, Suz ... how's Jasper?

Well, here's another book du jour for you Donna -- and it's the first really memorable book of the year for me!

Ravel by Jean Echenoz is, I suppose, technically a novella, but in actual fact it's more a series of vignettes or impressions: suitable, given that many of the subject's best works are episodic piano works such as Le Tombeau de Couperin and Valses nobles et sentimentales. I loved this book, not just because I enjoy Ravel's music, but because of the way Echenoz deftly weaves together minor themes -- the composer's patent-leather shoes ("without which he is nothing") and passion for very rare steaks -- with the major ones of creativity and mortality. Echenoz chose to skim over the last decade of Ravel's life; after showing the reader the composer about to embark on a triumphal tour of the United States at the outset, he states bluntly that Ravel would live for only another decade. And the final third of the book, indeed, shows us his gradual mental and physical deterioration and the impact of frustrated creativity in a few heartbreakingly well-chosen words. The writing is sometimes jarringly vivid, as when Echenoz describes Ravel's hands ("too-short, gnarled, somewhat squared-off fingers" and "exceptionally powerful thumbs, the thumbs of a strangler, easily dislocated and set high on the palm"), sometimes laugh-out-loud witty, as when several young women, acolytes, hoist Ravel's suitcase into a first-class train carriage ("The luggage is quite heavy, but these young women are so very fond of music") or a pianist's mangling of Ravel's careful composition (he was "ornamenting phrases that never hurt a soul.") Echenoz describes the composition of some of Ravel's latest and best-known works, including Bolero ("a thing that self-destructs, a score without music, an orchestral factory without a purpose, a suicide whose weapon is the simple swelling of sound"), but what he is really describing is the slow death of a creative genius. At first the topic is that of insomnia and Ravel's battles with it, such as his attempts to find "the best position, the ideal accomodation of the organism called Ravel to the piece of furniture called Ravel's bed". But really, sleep is a proxy for death, which also elude Ravel as his creative faculties fade. Like sleep, of which Echenoz writes "In a pinch you can feel it settling in, but you can't any more see it than you can look directly at the sun. It will be sleep that grabs you from behind, or from just out of sight", death is an elusive surcease. An impressive and beautifully-written book; I'm off to seek out more of Echenoz's work. 4.6 stars, highly recommended, TIOLI for my "proper nouns" challenge. (This book belongs in my 11 in 11 challenge, and will be logged there.)

Great review, Suz. Definitely adding this to my obese wish list. I love Ravel's music.

That was a great review, Suzanne. You should post it on the book's work page. I'm going to look for that one.

Great review of "Ravel", Suz. I enjoyed it as much as you did, and I liked his later novel, "Running", even more.

Review duly posted to the page, Pat; thanks...

Yes, Caro -- do read it with musical accompaniment!

The Jasper Report: His blood glucose is hovering in the mid-300s; he is being very clingy, however. I suspect him of malingering in an attempt to get more attention, or convince me to let him occupy the chair at my desk in the office on a permanent basis. SO not happening...

#60: Glad to hear that the glucose level is staying down to a more manageable level than those 400+ he was at there for a while!

Still baffled over those numbers :(
I am sure that you are feeding carefully and testing ..
it is just one of those cases of what should be just isn't.

Linda. I suspect that I understand your husbands need for solitude a bit.
I have it myself.. If I never had to leave my home, I would be perfectly happy.
I just do not deal well with meeting people. Some of the reasons are touched on in my thread... and some are just impossible to explain.

I imagine though, that it is difficult for someone as outgoing and bouncy as you appear to be :) to have someone quiet and a bit of a loner as a partner.
I am also sure that you make his life much brighter than it would be otherwise !

Hi Suz, I saw your hot review for Ravel and realized I didn't have a tab on your thread. I'm glad you liked it more than I did. I'm guessing being familiar with the music heightens a person's enjoyment of the book, I suppose I probably read it too soon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-4J5j74VPw

Anyone who remembers the movie 10 from the 1980's will remember this tune.

The Ravel book sounds interesting. I'll have to check it out.

The defining "Ravel" moment in my memory is Torvill & Dean's ice dancing performance to Bolero at the 1984 Olympics. It still gives me goosebumps just thinking about it.

#65 -- yes, wow -- that was astounding! I was studying in Japan at the time, and remember trying toss other grad students out of the lounge so I could watch the repeats. It was in the earliest days of VCRs, and we failed miserably to record a version. Then Torvill & Dean turned pro, and were in Tokyo in early '85 and I got to see them live, which was electrifying. Though I now wonder how tedious it must be to repeat the same routine over and over and over... like a singer whose audience only wants the song that made them famous eons ago. But I confess that when I watch ice-dancing today, I don't see anything that compares...

Stephen, I don't think knowing the details of the music are vital; I think having an interest in music/composition/creativity generally definitely helped me. Also, probably, being older helped!!! To me, this was a book about the peak and gradual decline of a creative genius. There is a quasi-omniscient style which I could also see would be irritating to some readers, but which I quite liked. Here, knowing a little bit about Ravel did help; he was a bit of an enigma himself, so it made sense that the narrator would be "external" rather than putting himself into Ravel's deepest thoughts. One thing I recalled late last night was that throughout, there is NO reference to Ravel's first name -- he is always referred to as Ravel. (It's Maurice.) Another distancing trick.

But if I could write like that, I'd die happy.

I agree Suz, once I wrapped my head around the author's style and intent I really enjoyed the book. It was in the beginning, however, where the author was basically saying "Hey look, here's Ravel, he's brilliant y'know..." that I found myself uninteresting at first.

Had I known more about the man and his music the book might have started off a bit better for me, but as it was it took me awhile to get into it.

Ravel. Huh! I don't remember ever knowing a single thing about the man himself. I dislike his music too much to be more than passingly interested in him.

Like Mahler. *ew* Or Schoenberg *ewew*. Or Debussy *eeweew*.

*grumps off to eat unbaptised Christian babies for breakfast*

Don't forget to put sugar on them, Richard...

Really, no cats, no Ravel, no Mahler... *tsk tsk tsk*

Just came home to find a big fat Archipelago book waiting for me. That compensates -- slightly -- for the several packages from Amazon UK that SHOULD have been here weeks ago. The book, you ask? It's Stone Upon Stone, by Wieslaw Mysliewski. Translated from the Polish (perhaps needless to say...)

That's interesting about Amazon UK, because I've had VERY late and VERY erratic service from the Book Depository over the past month. For example, one book took over a month to get here, another book more than 3 weeks, and one book from an order arrived in the usual week to 10 days but the other has yet to arrive (times based on shipping dates shown on BD website). Sounds like there's a problem in UK-US mail.

They are blaming the weather. *eyes roll*
That would make a little more sense had I not just received one massive tome -- Amanda Foreman's new book -- quite safely and relatively promptly, or at least only with the slower speed to be expected given the weather and holidays. But I've got six missing books now... including another Helen Dunmore novel I wanted to read. Sigh.

They are blaming the weather. *eyes roll*

I remember Pres. Obama's shock when DC schools shut down for a couple of inches...

Dunno who Ravel is. Or Torvill & Dean. But I live in a hole.

>70 rebeccanyc:, 71: I ordered something from another UK book site yesterday and their ordering page included a warning about extended shipping times to other countries, due to the inclement weather over there. *eye rolling with Suz*

Of course it can happen anywhere. FedEx lost a non-book package between WV and PA, was most unhelpful about it, so the merchant shipped new items express which will be delivered today. The original package turned up yesterday (it left WV on 12/15)!!

#73 -- Obviously was shipped using camel express... *nods wisely*

Going to buy skates this afternoon. Going to go ice skating tomorrow afternoon. *grin*

Going to go ice skating tomorrow afternoon

*goggles*

Are you *daft*?! That's the short road to the ER! *worries for Suz's sanity*

Well, there was a big to-do about Heathrow being closed for days, so maybe there is something to this weather thing, although it sounds like there's a delay on the things that were shipped just around the time of that snow-related closure, since I got something last week that I ordered after all the books that are just trickling in, including one I really wanted to read NOW.

I used to love ice skating; maybe I'll try it again, although I think I would just rent skates the first time to make sure I like it.

Daft? Entirely possible... But I really enjoy skating, and my skates died of old age two years ago. And I hate rental skates. So....

And I do have to get out of the house tomorrow as they'll be doing a lot more noisy construction work on the place next door. It was OK yesterday, but today and Monday have been a bit nightmarish, and they told me tomorrow also will be bad. So I've given myself a mental health day.

Quirkyalone just arrived. But that's a US book. I have visions of Zennor in Darkness being stranded all alone in a snowbank along the M25...

Adding Ravel to the wishlist. He's not one of my favourite composers, but I don't dislike him and the book sounds wonderful.

I don't remember Torvill and Dean at the Sarajevo Olympics, but I did see them perform Bolero (amongst other things) when my grandmother took me to see their show (I think with the Russian All Stars) for my birthday in about 1990. It was a pretty spectacular show.

Shall we each take a borough and start making calls round to the hospitals before Suz gets her skates on? They ought to at least be warned of an impending emergency after Ms Suz Accident McGee throws herself onto the ice with wild abandon. ;-)

Coming from Caro, that comment leaves me divided as to whether to collapse in hilarity or roll my eyes bemusedly. Default option is doing both simultaneously...

Piffle. I have skated a lot, just not in the last few years (no skates of my own until TODAY for several years.) And this is Wollman rink NOT the Rideau canal or some deserted frozen lake, for heaven's sake!!

My Canadian book order arrived today, so I've been caught up in reading Nino Ricci's take on Pierre Trudeau. When that's done, I'll be turning to the book about the Group of Seven that Richard provoked me to buy by posting a pic by Emily Carr. Not a member of the group, but still... Defiant Spirits: The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven is by Ross King (although the touchstone appears to be on strike), and while I've been ogling the paintings (esp. those by Jackson and Tom Thomson) most of my life, I've never read about the group beyond what is readily available in museums. I admit I'm addicted to the paintings.

Have been skimming Quirkyalone and so far am underwhelmed. Not in a big rush to read it, really.

Happy skating, Suz! Do not fall down too much :)

Please, whatever you do, put down the book while skating! I see how you love to rack up those TIOLI's but....ya know.....

LOL you go Suz. Have fun!

#79: I worked at NYU Medical Center, so I'll choose Manhattan. And, if we're concerned that Suz is becoming daft, Bellevue Hospital is nearby...

I'm offended. Very offended. Really...

As it happens I fell ONCE. Ok, am slightly damp (sigh) and my dignity is injured, but other than that am completely fine! In fact, that's pretty good for someone on a new pair of skates, on ice for the first time in four years, and on rather chopped-up ice (a fair number of people really hacking into it...) And it was fun -- dusk/twilight; Central Park, view of the trees and the buildings' lights, some goofy music and lots of fresh air. (Bliss after inhaling all the dust from the construction next door this morning...) The muscles and stuff at the front of my legs (not my calves -- what are they, Darryl??) are protesting a bit and I suspect my right hip will be having stern words with me in the morning, but for now all is hunky dory, if a bit damp.

ETA: Oh, and I'm reading some good books. :-) Including a play by Sartre, Kean, that I saw on stage in London eons ago and found in the depths of the library system. It's possibly even wittier than I remember. Must obtain a copy for my permanent bookshelf.

I for one am glad you had fun skating Suzanne. I can remember skating as a child almost everyday because we had a skating rink w/in walking distance of our house. We always had so much fun. I've never skated as an adult though. Good for you.

dusk/twilight; Central Park, view of the trees and the buildings' lights, some goofy music and lots of fresh air

That does sound like bliss. One of my goals this year is to savor winter (I usually loathe it) and so far it's been working. So I'm vicariously enjoying your skating in Central Park.

Too bad about the shin splints, Suz .. but falling only once is impressive, especially since you haven't been on skates for a number of years. Ok, we can call off the emergency standby staff for today. Everyone relax .. Suz is safe and back home, with just sore shins and a bruised hip.

I'm actually hoping that we get a decent fall of snow this weekend because I'd like to do some xcountry skiing. I would have gone out during last week's blizzard if I'd been home and not holed up at my in-laws.

Suz, I haven't a hope in Hades of keeping up here but just wanted to say Happy 2011. And that I really need to get these glasses checked, as I read your thread as Chatterbox Indulges her Bulimia, her first episode. Good grief! Anyway, hope you have a stellar year in every way.

Oh I love ice skating! So glad you had fun. I always fall at least once and it's not the falling that bothers me so much as trying to get back up. Sometimes I can bounce right up and sometimes it's just so awkwardly embarrassing when I can't!

Nope, no one named McGee came to the Bellevue or NYU Tisch Hospital ERs last night.

There are several muscles in the front of your lower leg, Suz:



I had to look this up; anatomy is not one of my strong points.

I'm eager to get your take on Kean; I like Sartre's plays, especially No Exit and The Flies, but I've never heard of that one.

I had meant to say that there are few things better than walking through the lower portion of Central Park on a snowy night, especially with a loved one.

You guys were checking up on me, were you?? :-)

Nope, survived to have a lovely Italian dinner. Didn't get much reading done, as it's considered rude to read when there is someone opposite you at a table, but I'm really enjoying Kean. It's based on a Dumas play, which I'm going to have to take a look at, too, and there some very funny lines and intriguing concepts that didn't fully register when I saw it on stage (with Derek Jacobi in the title role, once at the Old Vic and once at one of the Mirvish theaters in Toronto.)

One of the muscles in my right thigh started acting up and giving me some grief later on. I figured it was from the fall, then later accepted that it's much more likely that I'm just paying for years of not using muscles in that way. It sounds logical actually, since the skating was clockwise, and I can't do the left over right foot corner-turning manoeuver (I can do right over left when I'm circling counterclockwise, oddly). So I may have been overcompensating but putting more weight on my left leg at an angle when my right leg was pushing out on the ice to make the turn. If you can follow that. Anyway, slapped ice packs on it, and it's much better -- or, at least not painful. Though I won't be entering the Olympics as a gymnast any time soon...

No skating today, as it's snowing to beat the band. Not too bad yet, but...

*snerk*

Just the once, oh mmm-hmmm, good! No, really! I'm *delighted* it was just the once!

*gales of suppressed laughter*

So! Yes! Kean! I stick to my damn-close-to-life-long refrain: "plays, blech."

Well, all I can say is you're turning up your nose at some good writing just because it HAPPENS to be written in dialogue, Richard. Very, very silly. Deeply silly.

Darryl, it didn't start snowing until sometime overnight. Woke up in the morning and *poof* there it was. Magic. (Esp. since it's not deep enough for me to have to shovel, yet!!)

I'll have to check in with my parents in Bucks County, PA; they seem to be getting a fair amount of snow, too.

Okay, your comments are good enough for me; I'm adding it to my wish list. Amazon is selling The Devil and The Good Lord and Two Other Plays, which include Kean and Nekrassov, for $3.00.

Party of One looks enjoyable and possibly useful; a confirmation, probably of things I've already figured out. But I have an introverted teenaged daughter so she might get a lot of reassurance from it, no? -- Someone back there commented that introverts do like to socialize, but it exhausts them -- she has a huge problem with that, can't seem to protect herself or pace herself. She hurls herself into things and then gets completely wiped out.

I've more or less given up on skating -- after a certain age falling on the ice is no joke. I'd consider doing it in padding but then of course one can't move.....

Skating in Cental Park sounds so delightful. Far better than my usual skating venue. It's an indoor facility that doubles for youth hockey leagues. The whole place smells like a locker room. Blah :P

Glad you're (mostly) unbruised from the skating, Suzanne!

Enjoy the snow.

I haven't skated in 25 years.. I am a little envious ... :)
Sorry about todays snow keeping you off the ice.

Isn't there a new tv show where authors skate with skaters?

*grin*

Hey, Suzanne, finally getting around to the Cs for this year, but I've got you starred now. I've added Party of One to the wishlist--another introvert checking in here. I had a job requiring lots of interaction at work, which HAD to be balanced with a lot of quiet time outside of work.

I ice-skated as a kid but never well--my ankles were always too weak, and having a dislocating knee cut out on the spontaneity needed to enjoy oneself. But it's a lot of fun and great exercise--you go, girl!

Hey Suz, received mail from you today. Thank you.

#100 : Oh that's a great one about authors skating with skaters, Kath..... LOL... then again, if Mark Salzman was one of the skaters ... mmm..mmmm...

Wow!! Skating in Central Park. That's great. Have you ever skated at Rockefeller Center, Suz?

I would love to be able to skate but always had weak ankles.

Hmmm, which skater would I pick to twirl around with?? LOL!

I haven't ever skated at Rock Center, Linda. The crowds to get in irritate me, and it's like skating in a fishbowl. My all-time fave skating place is the Rideau Canal in Ottawa, because you can skate and go somewhere, as opposed to skating in circles...

Oof, I'm tired. But I have finished the two books I've been reading, so the only dilemma is which book takes priority as the next to be read!

1. Kean by Sartre is the play I've been reading since I picked it up at the library yesterday and it was a delightful romp, witty and thought-provoking at the same time. I had never even heard of this until I was in London when it was at the Old Vic, and I was at a loose end on my last night there. Ended up with 1/2 price tickets, and was blown away, by the play and by Derek Jacobi in the lead role. 1990 or 1991, perhaps?? It's based on something by Dumas, so perhaps that accounts for the lightness of touch that is there that doesn't feature in Sartre's better-known works, like Huis clos. As the drama opens, Kean is in love with an ambassador's wife -- and a young woman runs away from her guardians, enamored of the stage and of Kean himself. The two relationships collide, and Kean's fragile ego and sense of self take a beating at the hands of all, including that of the Prince Regent. (the future George IV.) There's a lot of truth in this -- Kean did drink too much, he led a scandalous life, he did travel to NY in the 1820s -- but Sartre takes liberties with history by introducing the character of Anna Danby, the impeturbable young woman who appears to be incapable of playing off-stage tragedies in the way that others in his life does. In one scene she taxes him with his drunkenness, reeling off a list of his mishpas. "You were drunk again on December 18th, and you spoke the Fortinbras soliloquoy so beautifully you had the whole house in tears." KEAN: "You see!" ANNA: "Yes. Only that night, the play was Lear." Sartre uses the play to explore issues of class and role-playing, which come out much more clearly reading the text than they did watching it. There's a hilarious recurring riff on the idea of cheese as a proxy for social status: Denmark, home to Kean's innamorata, is a nation of cheesemongers; Anna's father made a fortune from cheese. Ultimately, Kean cries out of exasperation, "Now I know: Shakespeare is a cheese ... and I sell him by the pound." Ultimately, Kean reaches a kind of epiphany, telling Elena they are all victims, she as a woman, the prince as too highly born, and Kean because he was born a bastard. "We live all three on the loves of others, and we are all three incapable of loving ourselves." Decompensating on the stage, he tells his audience, "I am a character who has found himself in the wrong part." I'm so glad I re-read this, and will hunt down a copy for myself, as my bday prez to myself!! 4.5 stars, TIOLI for my own "proper nouns" challenge.

2. OK, after that loooong comment -- read a quasi-memoir of Pierre Elliott Trudeau by Canadian novelist Nino Ricci. This is a books in the series edited by John Ralston Saul of the lives of "eminent Canadians", and I liked the fact that Ricci concentrated on Trudeau's legacy and essential character, only sketching the history of his 16 years as Canada's prime minister as a backdrop. The October crisis gets a decent chunk of space, as does the debate over repatriating the constitution, but the rest is dealt with in passing and even the highlights are set in the context of the ongoing debate over what Canada is or could be, both in terms of structure and 'national character'. An extraordinarily intellectual and cerebral man, Trudeau didn't tolerate fools gladly and had a knack for the right phrase at the right time. When Nixon referred to him as an a**hole, Trudeau retorted "I've been called worse things by better people." This is a great chronicle of the evolution of Trudeau's thinking from an insular Quebec nationalism/corporatism in the 1940s to his ability to walk away from a narrow world view and embrace something altogether broader, something more inspiring (at its best, when he wasn't undermining it himself by his arrogance). It's a thoughtful book, although it will appeal primarily to Canadians who know the history of Trudeau's times and who don't need to be informed of issues like the Quiet Revolution and Quebec separatism. Ultimately, Ricci concludes, "he showed us how to be ourselves, but to do it with style." And, left unstated, he laid the groundwork for what Canada and Quebec did become -- a successful Quebec (one where "allophones" will ultimately become the majority) within a Canada that had acquired a true sense of self during his years at the helm. 4.1 stars, recommended as a good alternative to more weighty biographies (on which Ricci draws) for Canadians who have no first-hand memories of the man and his era, as I do. Another one for my own TIOLI "proper nouns" challenge!

Just an added note -- scored Alex Berenson's new thriller/novel from the December ER list! That's great, as it was the only one I requested... The Secret Soldier.

Oh my. Too much going on for a late-comer to process. If I'm a loner, DH is --- even lonerier. I probably won't read that book or Ravel although I love the music and aspire to play some someday. And *sigh* I ice-skated once in my teens and loved it. There was no ice in S.E. N.C. in the 60's, so I never had another opportunity, and now I don't do anything to invite a fall.

#105 Suz, have you tried that new feature letting you see your ER request/success numbers, as well as the books you asked for but didn't get?

http://www.librarything.com/topic/106598

I will have to look for the Sartre play as I enjoyed his No Exit so much. Thanks, Suz!

Glad to know you are not permanently injured from your skating in the park :)

now I don't do anything to invite a fall

Same here.. yet they show up uninvited. It is no fun to be klutzy.

Yes, I'm with Kath on this one! I know I'll trip over my own two feet occasionally, and sometimes those are the worst accidents. In hindsight, it was a little silly to have charged off to go skating without having spent any time in the gym recently -- but I had fun, and I'll accept the aches and pains. It would be different if I knew that a fall was likely to have more serious consequences, or was more probable. That day will come, but until then...

Interesting ER list -- 35 books requested in 15 batches; 13 wins. Of which, two books have never materialized, and two others remain unreviewed. Gulp. I'm falling behind on my ER/Amazon Vine reviewing! The fun thing was the reminder of books that had interested me enough to request, but that I didn't get. One was a Canadian novel that appears to be completely unavailable - Drive-by Saviours. Another is a short book by G.K. Chesterton, a collection of articles he wrote, which is a Kindle freebie that I went off and downloaded. And then I bought The Melancholy Fate of Capt. Lewis for my Kindle. And no, I have NO idea what has happened to my touchstones... or why I woke up so early. But I have to try for a few extra hours of zzzzs or I will be a basket case, and I'm off to see some friends this afternoon.

How did I end up on page three -- and so far behind on everyone else's thread??? Catching up will have to wait for tomorrow as I'm too dozy and lazy to do a lot today, alas...

Did manage to finish another book, though. City of Thieves by David Benioff is another story set during the Second World War in Leningrad, and although I confess that I didn't relish it as much as I did The Siege by Helen Dunmore, it was very good. Perhaps it's just that the story of a quixotic quest for a dozen eggs didn't resonate as much as the people story at the heart of Dunmore's novel? Anyway -- this one entertained me, I think it's very well-written and draws on the horrors of the time (encounters with cannibals and vicious Nazis as well as intriguing yet vicious partisan snipers...) to portray a compelling picture of life during the war. It was good, not great. A solid 4.1 stars, recommended. Am still feeling like reading more "fuzzy" brain candy books, so I've started on A Flaw in the Blood by Stephanie Barron. (which is due back at the library shortly...)

ETA: This one was for my 1010 Challenge, and a TIOLI book for Madeline's challenge there.

Hi Suzanne, I enjoyed City of Thieves in 2009 well before I read The Siege. You're right, they both deal with the same time period in Leningrad, but The Siege was the more gripping, gut wrenching read. It had much more passion.

I liked City of Thieves less than you did, Suz, but it was still a decent read for me.

I hope you catch up on your sleep!

I loved City of Thieves and just put The Siege on hold at the library. There is no hope for me.

Stasia, at this point it's not technically lack of sleep. Just the kind of day when it would be soooo nice to curl up by a fire and snooze with a book. Did get the fire yesterday evening, along with a good day with friends, so I absolutely cannot grumble. Nearly finished with Where the God of Love Hangs Out, which I'm enjoying a lot, and then will go back to The Invisible Bridge, ditto. Then on to read the book borrowed via Kindle from Linda (lindapanzo), Fly by Wire. I think. Who knows? Or maybe some more de-cluttering, and some work!

Hi Suz, just trying to catch up with you :)

I have been reading nothing but fluff and farb, myself.. nothing too challenging.
Hope to change that, but will not force it.. I will just toddle along until I feel like a change...

Where the God of Love Hangs Out is a collection of beautifully-crafted stories by Amy Bloom, which varied in the degree to which they really resonated with me. I immensely enjoyed those "linked" series, one of which explored the relationship between a stepmother and her stepson after the death of her husband and his father, the stories taking place over decades; the other focusing on two late middle-aged people who unexpectedly transform decades of friendship into a love affair in front of a CNN news broadcast as their spouses sleep upstairs. Bloom casts no glamorous veil over the perils of middle-aged love; Clare falls and breaks her leg; William bumbles around on canes and is on a rigid diet to control his health. Again, these stories follow the characters over the course of several years. Some of the stories in this collection remind me of the late, great Laurie Colwin, deftly analyzing the idiosyncracies of human beings with both compassion and affection. But a few just didn't work for me at all -- I finished them thinking "what???" to myself, unable to understand what the point was in putting all those words down on paper. It's as if Bloom was telling a story simply to tell a story, and that story itself just wasn't that interesting, at its heart. So I have to stick with a 4.3 star rating -- good, but uneven and therefore not great. Recommended, however, and I'll look for more by her. This was for my 11 in 11 challenge; TIOLI for the popularity below 10,000 LT rank challenge.

>111 Chatterbox:: I too loved The Siege. I finished it yesterday and picked up Dunmore's The Betrayal today. My, that ten years went by quickly!

I may take a pass on City of Thieves with both you and Bonnie saying that The Siege was by far the better book of this time in history. That will put me that much closer to reading Unbroken and The Invisible Bridge. It looks like WWII will be this month's theme for me.

I used to ice skate in northern Michigan until I broke my ankle (not ice skating!) at age 16 and haven't been on skates since then. I still remember the magical feeling of floating on the ice.

I at least own a copy of The Siege - and the Touchstone first comes up for The Siege of Krishnapur which I also haven't read. So why am I here?????

Hmmm, not at all sure I could claim to be "floating" on ice! Stumbling around, perchance? I was going through some old photos my father sent me, and found one of me aged perhaps two or three, on ice skates. I'm going to try and post it... Fingers crossed...

Bugger, didn't work. Would someone kindly PM me the instructions for doing this??? Thank you in advance... (it's a jpg file on my desktop.)

OK, one more book du jour to report on:

The Flaw in the Blood is a kind of stab at a Victorian melodrama (pun intentional), complete with a moustache twirling villain with an eyepatch. The mystery is negligible and unconvincing; the characters are rather banal. The whole thing reminded me of a performance appraisal excerpt I once read somewhere -- "his men would follow him anywhere, but only out of morbid curiosity." Replace "his men" with "this reader", and "him" with the author, Stephanie Barron, and you've got the picture. A perspective on Queen Victoria that is utterly novel and so deeply bizarre as to be laughable, and a plot that revolves around the royal family's hemophilia. Back to the library this one goes, lickety-split. 2.8 stars, because I did finish it and because the melodramatic flourishes were unintentionally amusing; not recommended. TIOLI for the "not so popular" category -- I can see why that might be.

#107 : Thanks for pointing me to the link, Linda. I hadn't realized that for 2010, I was successfully receiving an ER book each month. Not quite as frequently in 2009, but that was the year I joined LT.

Where the God of Love Hangs Out sounds good, Suz. Off to the obese wish list it goes.

Are you ready for the storm that's targeted our way tomorrow?

Caro, not ready AT ALL. Am about to schlep my clothes to the laundromat now, so that I have a fighting chance of getting them back before the snow makes it technically impossible to navigate the cart to and from the laundromat.

The only month I didn't get an ER book last year was February, I think. There are some decent offerings this month; I think I've requested two and will pre-order Let's Kill Uncle.

I've requested Let's Kill Uncle too.. it sounds fun.

I'm going to stock up on some things tomorrow on my way home from work just in case our office is closed on Wednesday.

Ewwww shinsplints. . .I sympathize! *shudders*

*drum roll*

Chatterbox's Best of 2010

Top Ten Novels (in no particular order)

The Siege by Helen Dunmore
The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore
Room by Emma Donoghue
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
Madame Proust and the Kosher Kitchen by Kate Taylor
The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson
The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas
The Bishop's Man by Linden MacIntyre
Les derniers jours de Stefan Zweig by Laurent Seksik

Honorable Mention: A Novel Bookstore by Laurent Cosse, Brooklyn by Colm Toibin and Still Alice by Lisa Genova.

Top Ten Non-Fiction Books (in no particular order)

Mrs. Adams in Winter: a Journey in the Last Days of Napoleon by Michael O'Brien
Cain's Field by Matt Beynon Rees
The Cello Suites by Eric Siblin
The Last Stand by Nathaniel Philbrick
Every Man in This Village is a Liar by Megan Stack
The Memory Chalet by Tony Judt
Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty by Scott Kilman and Roger Thurow
In Pursuit of Silence by George Prochnik
On the Spartacus Road by Peter Stothard
Passionate Minds: A Love Story of the Enlightenment by David Bodanis (no touchstone)

Honorable Mention: Atlantic by Simon Winchester, Provenance by Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo and Packing for Mars by Mary Roach.

Five Great Mysteries (in no particular order):

Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde
Death of a Red Heroine by Qiu Xiaolong
Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths
Bruno, Chief of Police by Martin Walker
Shadows in the Street by Susan Hill

This is a great list and I'm even copying it and pasting it my OFF LT book file... I've read fewer than I want to admit....

Suz
I own City of Thieves. It is somewhere on one of my shelves. I must dig it out. I had an excellent prof. in college who taught Russian history. He was incredible and I grew to love the history of that country.

Have you read Harrison Salisbury's book The 900 Day Siege. If not, I highly recommend it. IMHO, it is one of the best regarding Germany's attempt to conquer Russia.

Suzanne, I am a little ticked. I am not all too pleased with their top ten non fiction choices for 2010. I'd cancel my subscription if my hubsters wasn's so addicted to it. :(

Lynda, whose top ten??? What subscription?? *scratching head bemusedly*

(The list above was my own...)

Suzanne, I've saved your list. I've only read The Reluctant Fundamentalist and The Memory Chalet both of which I loved so I have lot to look forward to.

ETA: I'm really sorry that Zweig book is not available in English.

Pat, so am I... I'd make a stab at translating it, but I couldn't do justice to it.

Book du jour: Crash of the Titans by Greg Farrell is the up-close, scarily detailed story of the collapse of Merrill Lynch and its acquisition by Bank of America; it starts with the bizarre and dysfunctional rule of Stan O'Neal at the helm of Merrill, under whose eyes the whole mess began, and concludes with the departures of O'Neal's successor, John Thain, and Ken Lewis at Bank of America, from their respective institutions post-merger. The real hero in Farrell's narrative is Greg Fleming, who battled ferociously for a good outcome for Merrill shareholders and to save the bank -- before it became clear that the best outcome was a sale at a price nobody but he believed was possible. In many ways, this is more a classic tale of corporate skulduggery and stupidity, a la Enron, than yet another saga of the financial crisis. Unfortunately, anyone who has read a couple of books about the crisis will find that the only thing that is new is the incredibly detailed fly-on-the-wall narrative Farrell was able to craft. That's worth the price of admission for any business or markets junkie -- it's rare to have that so consistently and authoritatively on display -- but it may not be enough to appeal to a general reader more than two years post crash. I enjoyed it, but found it disappointing that Farrell stored up his own righteous fury with those that ruined Merrill Lynch, and let it loose only in the epilogue. It's in that epilogue that he really crafts an overall conclusion about the importance of the story he's telling: that the demise of Merrill was more than just part of the bigger picture. I understand he probably didn't want to distract any one from the details of the catastrophe taking shape within Merrill, or turn the book into a management tome. Still, the epilogue told me it could have been an even better book. His conclusion: "The sinking of this great American institution, one that restored the nation's faith in the capital markets following the Great Depression, demands notoriety. To the individuals responsible for this travesty, the infamy of their deeds will attach forever." Recommended, but with reservations: you won't want to read it if you've already tackled other financial crisis books, I suspect, and it is a bit wordy and repetitive in spots. TIOLI for the "ranking below 10,000".
Full disclosure: Farrell and I share a publisher & editor; the latter sent me a copy of the book.

Sorry Suzanne, I was so obviously ticked that I forgot to mention it was the NF top 10 list in WSJ. It neglected to include a book that I feel should have been there. Your list is perfectly fine and many are already on my wishlist.

Terrific list Suzanne. I've read some of them but there are some gems on there that I'd like to read.

I liked the first 3 of your top 10 a lot and at least 2 would probably be in mine when I get round to it. I didn't like The Finkler Question much.

I have The Reluctant Fundamentalist out of the library as his name caught my eye - he wrote the introduction to the Canongate edition of Pereira Maintains which I finally wrote my ER review for.

I haven't read any of the non-fiction you list and should probably investigate further some time.

I also liked Death of a Red Heroine and #2 in that series, and must catch up with the rest (4 more that I know of to date). Problem: #3 is in the shed, not sure if it's in my box of Soho books (they publish a lot of crime in interesting settings and/or in translation). Qiu writes in English as he's been a professor in the US for some years.

Tigger-the-terror-cat caught another mouse. At least, I assume it was Tigger. I just found the corpse, carefully located to blend in against the pattern of the rug in my living room...

#135 Tigger obviously has untapped interior design talents, as well as superior hunting skills.

Way to go Tigger! Tigger probably is very proud of himself for 'slaying' one for you. (Although disposing of it? Yuck!)

I finally got a chance to read this thread. Hello to you this snowy day.

You pleased me immensely when you mentioned Laurie Colwin. I discovered her quite a number of years ago, and remember reading the Lone Pilgrim to my mother, in its entirety, one wintry day, because I couldn't believe how beautiful it was.

Nice lists! And I think I'll look for Crash of the Titans, with your reservations noted. (Look for is NOT a euphemism for buy. It means look for in the Wellington library in a year...although I am buying economics books still, so maybe this one kind of counts.) I might also buy Enough from Book Depository one of these days.

Hope the snow's manageable...

Our driveway is about a foot deep. Our front lawn's about the same. The street's about four inches, and the whole thing failed to be a huge snow event here. How 'bout you on this sunstruck midweek?

We have ice, and I stay in!
I just popped up to say that I'm glad that you didn't find the mouse that was slain with your foot.

In NYC, just enough (about 5 inches, i think) to be immediately turned into ugly slush at all the corners. Not the pretty stuff I've been dreaming about, except perhaps in the parks.

Ha, yes, more of a slush event than a snow event, I must say...

Went out to have lunch at a nearby fish restaurant, and change library books, and found myself navigating slush puddles rather than snowbanks. Eerily quiet, however, which is delightful; everyone prepared for Armageddon and there is hardly anyone on the roads.

Maybe about 5 inches? Nothing major at all. May get a bit more, however...

About 6 inches in my part of Chicagoland (north and close enough to the lake but not too close) so it was mostly a non-event.

It's very pretty out, especially this morning when the sun was shining.

Argh, just got my lease renewal. Usually, my landlord raises the rent $150 over two years; this time he's going for $250. Which means sometime in the next 14 months I'll need to move. Bad news.

Onto more pleasant topics -- the books du jour.

1. Die With Me by Elena Forbes is a solid mystery/police procedural that begins with a man tempting a young teenage girl into a church -- in order to do her harm. Sure enough, the police are later called out to investigate the girl's death -- accident? suicide? or foul play? -- when her body is found on the church floor, having fallen from a gallery. Then they find some lookalike crimes, written off as suicides, and the hunt is on, complete with red herrings galore. Forbes isn't the most accomplished crime novelist around -- I identified red herrings and the culprit relatively speedily -- but she's very good at character and the interpersonal dynamics of the Barnes murder squad (Barnes being a community in outer London.) Recommended, if not enthusiastically brandished in the air as a must-read. 3.8 stars, TIOLI for a first novel in a new series.

2. The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: The Mysterious Howling is the first in a new series of books by Maryrose Wood focusing three children who have been found in the forest surrounding a stately home, apparently having been (literally) raised by wolves. After finding them, Lord Frederick Ashton resolves to give them a home, and hires Miss Penelope Lumly, an alumna of the Swanburne Academy for Poor Bright Females, to instruct them in civilized behavior. Of course, it soon becomes clear that the howling children may in fact be far more civilized than some of the adults in their new world... This is an amusing-enough tale, although I'd hoped for something slightly darker. I was intrigued by the premise, but it's probably closer to being a children's book for a 9 or 10 year old (the governess narrating it is a sometimes precious, sometimes naive 15 year old) than a crossover YA title. For instance, it's pretty clear of what Lord Frederick is up to during his disappearances... Recommended only to those who enjoy children's books; it's amusing and light in tone. 3.3 stars, for the "below 10,000 ranking" TIOLI challenge.

Where the God of Love Hangs Out is already in the BlackHole. A Flaw in the Blood is already on the 'Do Not Read' list, so obviously someone forewarned me about that one! Die with Me sounds pretty good, so I will give it a shot too.

Sorry to hear about your rent situation, Suz. I do hope you can find another place to live fairly quickly!

Thought I'd de-lurk for once and say hi. I need to catch up with all your great reviews. I'm sorry to hear about your rent raise. I didn't know they could raise it that much without any special justification.

#145 Wouldn't it be nice if there was a vacancy at the Tome Home? Wouldn't it be nice if there was a Tome Home?

Ugh! Sorry about the lease raise. Ditto what Stas said about finding another place soon. Still looking to stay in Brooklyn or will you consider somewhere else in NY?

Sorry to hear about your increase in rent: I hope you manage to find somewhere pleasant and affordable, and soon.

Was the lunch at the fish restaurant nice?

Die with me sounds intriguing. I'm going to have to see if I can hunt it down.

**I knew it would be a mistake to start that TIOLI Challenge for new series, how many have I wish listed so far? DUMB GIRL, DUMB! Smacks herself in the head.**

Eek, sorry to hear about that rent rise.

136 lolol

14 !!!!!! terrible news, but hey! It could be that you will find a better and cozier place ... fingers crossed for that :)

OOOOPH. That's a big increase in rent. I hope you find something you like. If you aren't committed to Brooklyn, a friend of mine has become very happily ensconced in the far north of Manhattan. I'd be glad to put you in touch.

Lizzie, going back to the mouse display -- yes that rug is directly on the route from my bedroom to the bathroom at night... *eyes roll*

The fish restaurant was lovely, and I made a possible work connection there! So that was good.

Judy, yes, I adore Laurie Colwin... Stumbled over her by accident (well, her books) and became addicted instantly.

Lynda, time to find an architect and settle on a locale for the tome home, methinks...!!

>125 Chatterbox:: Suz, I'm so glad you started off your Top Ten list with two of my favorites from this year...The Siege and The Betrayal. I love Dunmore's writing. Now that's how historical fiction should be done. I feel as if I'd lived through the siege of Leningrad and now (I'm not quite finished with the second one) I'm looking over my shoulder to see if I'm being watched by Stalin's henchmen! I see a few others on your lists that I'll be checking out in the near future.

Here's hoping that your bad news about the rent increase will turn into good news about a new, improved place to live in the next year. Can you tell I'm an optimist?

>156 Donna828:: glad to hear you're loving The Betrayal, Donna. That's next up for me, and I really liked The Siege.

Thanks for the good wishes, Donna! It's not going to be easy to find a new place, for many reasons, including the fact that my income is very erratic as a freelancer and likely to be significantly lower this year than in recent ones. Then there are all the cats... So I've decided to renew for the full two years, which at least gives me a cushion, although I'm really going to have to focus on this as a challenge, and even be prepared to move back to Toronto.

OK, that aside, I have finally finished The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer, begun early in the new year. Wow, what an accomplishment! OK, I wouldn't classify this as "literary" fiction, but it's a very accomplished and thoughtful saga/novel of the kind that I thought wasn't being written any more. It dealt in a straightforward manner with people and characters and historic events, with love, war and death; and yet never lapsed into cheap sentiment or glib recitations. If anything, it's a non-Holocaust focused Holocaust novel; while the two main families, the Levis and the Haszs, are Hungarian Jews and most of their friends are Jewish as well, and all are caught up in the turmoil of the period from 1938 until 1945, the story is exceptionally well-told on a very human level. I don't know how she did it, but Orringer managed to keep all the threads of a long and complex novel organized and well managed, in much the same way that a composer might conduct a Mahler symphony. No mean feat, especially when she also managed to maintain a sense of time and place.

A few words about the plot: at the outset, we meet Andras Levi, the central character, about to embark on the adventure of his life: studying architecture in Paris. Within the first few pages, we encounter everyone who will play a critical role in his world throughout the next several years, from Novak, the fellow Hungarian who befriends him on the train and offers him a job; the Hasz family, who ask him to deliver a box to their son Jozsef, also in Paris; his brothers, Tibor and Matyas; his circle of Jewish friends at the architecture school. It's a vivid portrayal of a world on the verge of disappearing and crumbling; as it does, Andras clings as long as he can to his dreams of building, in particular building a dream house that he and the woman he loves, Klara, can share. "In his mind he could page through a deep stack of them, those ghostly blueprints of a life they had not yet lived and might never" share.

The only major flaw with this novel, in my eyes at least, is that the ending felt rushed and was recounted indirectly -- almost as if the author became exhausted with her leisurely pace earlier on (this is a long novel...) and just really wanted it to be done, or because she couldn't figure out a way to tell the story she needed to about the eventual fate of many of the characters. It's OK, I suppose, but the big jump covers the most traumatic period for Hungary's Jews, from the summer of 1944 until the end of the war, and it's told after the event, mostly, by some characters to others. That's all that stopped this "thumping good read" from being a five-star book for me -- as it is, I'm awarding it 4.7 stars, a place on my memorable reads for the year and a recommendation to run out and read it, if historical sagas are your cup of tea.

Not sure what to read now. Accidentally left Defiant Spirits by Ross King (no touchstone), my book about the Group of Seven, at a friend's place. Not quite feeling like reading about Venice (the Peter Ackroyd book) and Fly by Wire seems a bit too pedestrian after such a dramatic book. May have to turn to chick lit until I recover!

Another review you should post on the book's LT work page, Suzanne. I WL'd The Invisible Bridge after Bonnie's review but now I want to read it even more.

And, as someone who made a move I wasn't expecting to work out as well as it did, it could very well turn out to be a good thing if circumstances force you to make a change.

#159 -- review duly posted! I do need to be prodded to do this, sometimes; I'm usually just writing them for people who follow my thread, and don't often post anything unless there is a dearth of reviews on a book.

I've lived here for 8 years, longer than I have lived in the same place at any time in my life; I hate moving (after doing waaaay too much of it in my life) and am very worried about finding something livable/affordable that is cat-friendly. Don't want to leave NYC, but it may become necessary. Anyway, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof... and my "evil du jour" is the size of my electricity bill. In the absence of upstairs heat, I've been running space heaters of various kinds, and so my consumption is double last year's level. Gah.

Buggeration, migraine struck this morning, exacerbated tremendously by the drilling/banging/hammering from next-door construction. Not much reading completed, but I've been dipping into By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham, My Reading Life by Pat Conroy and some chick lit. Managed to retrieve Defiant Spirits by Ross King, but that's going to require more brain capacity than I am able to spare until this evil headache exits stage left.

Definitely another day of being nibbled to death by ducks. Hopefully, I will regain some perspective by morning.

Oh, and while I was lying in bed, Tigger pounced on another mouse UNDER the bed and bore it off in triumph. To where, I don't know. So tomorrow I have to embark on a mouse corpse hunt. I can think of more amusing things to do, quite frankly.

Everyone has such high praise for The Invisible Bridge. I hope to get to it soon. I saw it sitting on the shelf at the library this afternoon and almost picked it up, but I ended up picking up Pat Conroy's My Reading Life instead which was also there. I'm already in the midst of two books and had just requested some NetGalley books as well, so I decided I'd better just stick with one library book!

Hi, Suzanne. Sorry to hear about the migraine and the construction. Either one is bad enough but I can't imagine both at the same time. Ouch!

I'll be interested to hear what you think of Pat Conroy's My Reading Life. I bought a copy after reading so many favorable LT reviews but haven't gotten to it yet.

I know the mousecapades are probably not funny to you but it's actually pretty amusing to read about. Go Tigger! (How's Jasper, btw?)

Suz, I second Judy's far-upper-Manhattan idea. Lovely place, affordable (moreso than your part of Brooklyn). Maybe even buyable, given some breaks your way in income this coming year. Give it a look.

UGH on migraine! Feel better.

Hi Suzanne, love the way you summed up The Invisible Bridge which as you know I also loved. There was so much happening in that book that it's unbelievable the way she kept everything as you said---"organized." And for me, I learned a lot about Hungary's role in the war that I didn't know.

Rent issues and migraines...no fun to deal with either. I keep getting pulled towards The Invisible Bridge. Thanks for the great review. I'm currently reading My Reading Life along with a few other books. Last week I discovered it on audio, read by Pat Conroy himself, and couldn't resist trying it. I'm really enjoying it.

I hope the migraine has cleared by now, Suz!

My Reading Life is one that I want to get to...

Hope the migraine is soon gone, and you find the mouse corpse quickly.

166 -- i'm going to have to look for that - Conroy reading My Reading Life himself, as a reward if I ever finish Mayflower which I am still staggering through ten minutes (all I can take) at a time.

Tigger sounds worth his weight in gold. If you like where you are, sometimes landlords are willing to negotiate to keep a good tenant.

Still have not found the mouse corpse... So, in a few days, as I proceed with the two month-long decluttering process, I'll probably get an unpleasant shock. As long as I don't step on it or sit down on it or accidentally touch it, I'll be OK... The score so far? Tigger 3, Mice, 0.

Headache is marginally better, but I'm in a funk so will just quickly update my reading.

1. My Reading Life by Pat Conroy. I enjoyed this, but didn't love it nearly as much as many other LTers, and it certainly won't be on my list of favorite books for the year. Part of the problem for me as a reader is that our tastes in writing diverge soooo dramatically. He relishes convoluted prose for its own sake, admitting "it is a well-known fact that I will carefully select four silvery, difficult-to-digest adjectives when one lean, Anglo-Saxon adjective will suffice." Not only is he scornful about people who take a different tack, and disdainfully prickly about being criticized for this, but he deploys this skill with zeal throughout the book, to the point where even after re-reading a sentence several times, the clutter and ornamentation made his actual meaning opaque. When I have to give up on understanding the meaning of a sentence simply because the language is so flowery as to not show me a clear path to that meaning, but to go on a route march along steep paths that can have multiple different finishing points, I get irritable. This annoyed me more than it might have otherwise, because the topics he tackled are near and dear to my heart, and at times his thoughts and ideas moved me to tears. That happened when he discussed his high school teacher, Gene Norris; and also, to an extent, when he discussed life as a military brat, and how it pushed him into the arms of books. (I had a somewhat similar experience, not quite as peripatetic, but involving completely foreign worlds, as a child and like Conroy, I took refuge in my books.) What does come across strongly here is Conroy the person -- bombastic, a bit insecure and scratchy about his background and lack of educational privileges, fiercely loyal to those he has known and loved, etc. I'm not sure I'd like him, I'm not sure I'll ever really admire his writing (I'd have to try one of his novels to decide that), but I like the way he thinks about both writing and reading. 3.8 stars, recommended.

2. The other book I wrapped up this morning, By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham, is just as tricky to step back and draw conclusions about. The device of telling the story of Peter Harris's existential crisis through Peter's own internal monologue (you know, that little narrative voice that we have running through our brains, chatting away busily to us all day, every day) is daring, but too often annoying. I didn't need to have everything hammered home to me in this manner, and it creates a claustrophobic feeling for the book as a hole. That said, by the time I was about a third of the way into this, I was caught up in the story of Peter and Rebecca Harris, 40-something Manhattanites living in a SoHo loft and with jobs in the arts -- he is a gallery dealer, she runs an arts magazine. And yet, Peter is aware that something is wrong, whether just with his stomach (pains, and inconvenient vomiting), or something more significant, even if it's something he can't define. Even though he is well aware of his good fortune. "Your troubles, little man? Think of them as an appetizer that didn't turn out quite right." He has left Milwaukee far behind him, a world with "all those little satisfactions and no big, dangerous ones; no heroism, no genius, no terrible yearning for anything you can't at least in theory actually have." He may be selling a coveted piece of art to a top client; he may find a way to reconnect to his daughter (though he still doesn't understand the limited life and aspirations she has chosen); he may, if he's lucky, find a way to break into the next tier of art dealers, even if it's peddling art that he doesn't actually adore. But then Mizzy (his young brother in law, Ethan, aka "The Mistake" or Mizzy) reappears in Peter and Rebecca's well-ordered life, and the chaos that Peter seems to have been yearning for, that intensity of feeling that we leave behind us, seems to return. Only to leave Peter, by the end of the book, trying to come to grips with one of the biggest existential puzzles of all: "What do you do when you're no longer the hero of your own story?"

Ultimately, I'm torn about this book. It was sometimes frustrating to read, and doesn't come close to replicating Cunningham's achievement in The Hours, but it does deal in an elegant and oblique way with that classic 20th/21st century literary theme, the mid-life crisis. So I'm coming down with a 3.9 star rating, and a "recommended" for it, but noting that it won't be for all tastes.

Finally got the birthday bestseller list at www.biblioz.com to work (since my b-day is rapidly approaching...) and here's the list. Some books I know and love on the fiction list; some familiar names on the non-fiction list but only two that I actually have read.

FICTION

FRANNY AND ZOOEY by J.D. Salinger
THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY by Irving Stone - READ BITS OF
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee - READ
LITTLE ME by Patrick Dennis
PROLOGUE TO LOVE by Taylor Caldwell - READ
DAUGHTER OF SILENCE by Morris L. West
CHAIRMAN OF THE BORED by Edward Streeter
SPIRIT LAKE by MacKinlay Kantor
THE IVY TREE by Mary Stewart - READ
THE CARPETBAGGERS by Harold Robbins
THE JUDAS TREE A.J. Cronin
THE INCREDIBLE JOURNEY by Sheila Burnford - READ
CAPTAIN NEWMAN M.D. by Leo Calvin Rosten
CLOCK WITHOUT HANDS by Carson McCullers
I MET A LADY by Howard Spring
THE END OF THE BATTLE by Evelyn Waugh - READ

NON-FICTION

MY LIFE IN COURT by Louis Nizer
THE MAKING OF THE PRESIDENT 1960 by Theodore H. White - READ
CALORIES DON'T COUNT by Herman Taller
LIVING FREE by Joy Adamson - READ
THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH by William L. Shirer - READ
NATION OF SHEEP by William J. Lederer
MY SABER IS BENT by Jack Paar
THE COMING FURY by Bruce Catton
CITIZEN HEARST by W.A. Swanberg
BEFORE I SLEEP by James Monahan
I SHOULD HAVE KISSED HER MORE by Alexander King
PT 109 by Robert J. Donovan
RING OF BRIGHT WATER by Gavin Maxwell
THE BLUE OF CAPRICORN by Eugene Burdick
BUT NOT IN SHAME by John Toland

Wow Suz, your list is very, very similar to mine.

Hmm, can I hazard a guess that we were born only a few weeks apart?? LOL! I was Feb 1, 1962.

Yep, Feb 18. :)

Some of those had been bestsellers way back on March 1, 1961.

Just arrived from Amazon.co.uk:

Zennor in Darkness by Helen Dunmore
Hearts and Minds by Amanda Craig
Levant by Philip Mansel (no touchstone...)

I will be interested in seeing what you think of the Dunmore book, Suz. Congrats on the new books!

I'm already about 11% done with the book you loaned me Suz, thanks! (It's really good so far...)

It amazes me that almost 50 years ago people were writing books on how to lose weight. Here we are in 2011 and we've got The 4-hour body, The new! abs diet cookbook and The CarbLovers Diet all on the best seller's list. Doesn't that tell us something?

Hope springs eternal???

>181 Carmenere:: almost 50 years ago ... ouch. I wasn't ready to read that yet.
(just teasing you!)

Will update reading later. Have finished a chick lit book, and am darting back and forth between two others, plus trying to wrap up All the Devils are Here in case there is something I need to know for my own book revisions. So far I'm underwhelmed. Just got a reminder that I need to finish Fly by Wire soon as it goes back to Linda (lindapanzo) from my Kindle in 3 days!! Happily, it's a short book...

(edited to fix touchstones)

Hey ho, Suz ... migraine, mouse, rent hike and now a book funk? Quick...stand up, (hopefully not stepping on a mouse corpse) face south-east, fingers in your ears, turn around 3 times rapidly and recite Three Blind Mice backwards. That should send the bad vibes out of your house.

Fly by Wire is really short. I like to read disaster books (these were a category for me for 999 and 1010 but not 11 in 11). Not sure how you feel about them.

Over the last couple of years we've had two mouse episodes -- and both times, there came a point where, finally, there was a smell epicenter -- I mean it got so horrible that I really could narrow and pinpoint where it was coming from. One, just this fall, was in this box I'd looked at fifty times and dismissed and the earlier one was a mouse that had somehow crawled into this space in the wall-mounted oven, a sort of vent. Below that was the cabinet where we kept pet food (our old house this was) and I kept sniffing my way there and taking everything out and scrubbing, not finding anything...... and one day I noticed the grate and got a flashlight and voila. It was an unbelievable hassle to get it out of there, but we managed.
But both times even though I kept circling around the spot, it took forever to REALLY look, esp. the box mouse. I would MOVE the box, look under the box, behind the box, but it never crossed my mind to look IN the box. As it is, I don't know how that mouse got in it, but it did.

Hope the migraine passes quickly.

#187 Funny mouse story, Lucy. The worst mouse episodes I have to share involve mice deciding to drop dead between the walls. It's no use calling the exterminators because the only advice they offer is knocking a whole through the wall and Hopefully finding the right spot. We have to suffer the mouse smell for days at a time.

ETA: Also hoping your migraine is now history, Suzanne

I'll be interested in your comments on Fly By Wire. I read Miracle On the Hudson which was constructed of interviews with participants, but it left out a lot of factual information. Have you, Suzanne, or Linda read the pilot's book yet?

Thanks for all the entertaining (and dismaying) mouse stories, folks!! No mouse corpses discovered yet, but sometime later this week I will be relocating the bed within my bedroom as part of the ongoing Great Decluttering; I'm a bit worried as to what may be lying around where I can't reach currently. (Happily? there is no heat in the bedroom right now, and with the temperatures there in the 50s, I can't smell anything bad. Yet.) I've been working downstairs, in my home office, and hearing worrying sounds of little animal feet race back and forth above my head, roughly in the part of the bedroom upstairs where mouse activity has been strongest. Hmmm. Not sure who is chasing what or if the rodents have donned hobnailed boots.

I want to read Fly by Wire more because I enjoy Langewiesche's writing and his books (especially American Ground and Atomic Bazaar) and less because of the incident itself. I did find it fascinating, but my curiosity is more about the lessons to be drawn from it than the event itself. Am not really a disaster book fan at all. (Or near-disaster book, or hero book, or...)

Anyway, book update du jour:

1. Finally finished All the Devils Are Here by Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera. I'm not quite sure what makes this book, as the subtitle proclaims, the "hidden" history of the financial crisis -- by now, all the avenues the author explores have been fairly well trodden. Their biggest contribution is probably to pull everything together and synthesize it, thus saving readers from having to wade through what I think are probably smarter and more insightful books, such as The Greatest Trade Ever by Greg Zuckerman, Chain of Blame by two other reporters, and Fool's Gold by Gillian Tett. All of those books came out in late 2009, and genuinely broke new analytical ground. So, this book focuses squarely on the issue of subprime loans, and looks at the ways in which the regulators, investment banks, rating agencies, Fannie/freddie, the derivatives market etc. not only prolonged but exacerbated the subprime bubble, so that the carnage when it burst was much worse. Only it doesn't explain the thesis that forthrightly -- you need to dig through about 150 pages before realizing the picture the authors are slowly drawing for you. It's up to date -- dealing with some of the stuff that came out during the Senate's look at Goldman's trades, for anyone who doesn't want to have wade through 900 pages of exhibits -- but I didn't come away with any fresh "aha" moments, and I don't think that's just because I've been living this stuff for 2.5 years. It's well-written, but not nearly as insider-y as many other books (like Andrew Ross Sorkin's tome, or even the Merrill Lynch book that I just finished reading) so that doesn't add value. While it tries to explain complicated issues like synthetic swaps, it doesn't really do so clearly enough for a general reader, I fear. Recommended only to those who can't get enough financial crisis reading under their belt: 3.9 stars.

For the record, my thoughts on the top crisis books, now that I've read most of them, are:
1. Too Big to Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin -- the chronology
2. The Greatest Trade Ever by Greg Zuckerman -- for the mavericks who saw it coming
3. Fool's Gold by Gillian Tett -- for the derivatives angle
4. Chain of Blame by Paul Muolo and Matthew Padilla -- for the nasty details of the subprime debacle.

I'm not including my own book in there because that would be too self serving! :-)

OK, other books finished in the last 24 hours or so:

2. Promises, Promises by Erica James. (no touchstone) Standard chick lit fare; a group of individuals have intersecting lives and romantic woes. All is sorted out by the final page. Erica James is usually good at delivering what I think of as "comfort reading", but either she's flagging or I just gave up caring, because this book simply irritated me. I kept muttering at the characters, "how come your marriages are THAT bad in the first place??" because the obnoxious spouses are such caricatures that I couldn't suspend disbelief that a sympathetic hero or heroine might have ended up hitched to such a loser. So, only 2.3 stars for this. Avoid it... OK, it passed a few hours, but... TIOLI for repeated words in title category.

3. The True Memoirs of Little K by Adrienne Sharp turned out to be a better novel than I feared in the first 100 pages or so. True, the author makes her real-life narrator, ballerine Mathilde Kschessinska, a rather unsympathetic character: 'Mala' is selfish, self-absorbed, able to juggle romantic dalliances with several Romanov grand dukes simultaneously and unable to see beneath the glittering surface to the ugliness beneath. She's so caught up in her envy of Empress Alexandra (she had been Tsar Nicholas's mistress before his marriage) that she can't see beyond that; similarly, she has such absolute self-confidence as to dismiss anyone who can't appreciate her greatness as silly. As the novel progressed, I never got to like Mala or feel that she was "real" as a character, but I did get swept up in the broader narrative, especially as the tsar's plans for her son become evident to Mala and I ended up racing through the last 100 pages or so to see how Sharp resolved her creative license. While I didn't always enjoy the fact that Mala, as narrator, takes an omniscient view, looking back over her life at age 99 and interrupting her reminiscences with commentary, I found it grew on me and became less jarring as time passed. Cautiously recommended; you'll enjoy it more if you like historical fiction and have a basic familiarity with the time & place. 3.4 stars, TIOLI for a proper known (K stands for her surname.)

Now off to finish The Trinity Six by Charles Cumming, an ER book which is gripping and has the makings of both a "thumping good read" and an addition to my recommended list! Then tomorrow, it's crunch time on book revisions -- argh. yuck. pfooey.

Oh yes, and an editor I work with wants me to call -- among other commentators -- the blogger who panned my book in the NY Times for a comment on Obama's handling of the economy in his second year, for a story I'm writing. Please keep your fingers and toes crossed that I don't have to do this...

Fingers and toes duly crossed, Suz!

uh oh ... I am going to have to add The Trinity Six to my wish list. drat!
and oh noz!!! That sounds awful.. but Suz.. if you have to call that blogger..
I suspect that s/he will be more stressed than you are. Stand strong and be nice if it kills you! Ha! That will fix them!

Boo to making the call on the blogger!

On a positive note, a 900 page book seems much less intimidating when read on a Kindle. I'm 25% done already - yay!

You don't have to do anything of that ilk that you don't want. That's unreasonable.

A mouse got into my sunflower seeds that I had in a plastic mesh bag in a bin in the garage. Alerted by the smell when we were Spring cleaning, we discovered that all the seeds had been eaten, it was just husks in the tightly closed mesh bag and that there was a very dead mouse inside. I'm assuming he died happy because he obviously ate himself to death.

#194, sadly, it's not unreasonable. They have an absolute right to request that I do reach out to certain people. (What's unreasonable is them penalizing me if those folks don't call me back by deadline, as sometimes happens.) So the trick is to find people who will be MUCH harder to get hold of in enough time to fill up all the slots in the story before I have to call twitface.

Kath, yup, you're going to have to add it -- it's great. So tired today, due to staying up last night to finish it.

Book du jour:

The Trinity Six by Charles Cumming proves that sometimes the old-fashioned plot ideas make the best rattling good suspense novels. In some ways, the plotline of Cumming's latest spy thriller owes a lot to Hitchcock -- an ordinary guy, a university lecturer in London specializing in Russian history, is under financial pressure from his ex-wife and the Inland Revenue, when an old friend suggests they collaborate on a bestseller about the possible identity of a "Sixth Man" -- another Soviet spy in the group that included Burgess, Maclean and Philby. Then the friend suddenly dies of a heart attack and Sam, picking up the threads of her investigation, realizes that others who have been on the trail of the mysterious Edward Crane have also been found dead. There are plenty of great twists and turns in this story -- is the peril that Sam finds himself in really because of a decades-old spy or something altogether more modern-day than that? That is what makes up the suspense in this "thumping good read" -- what is it, exactly, that Sam has stumbled across? This isn't a flawless book -- there are some improbable coincidences and at heart it's really a very familiar kind of story -- but after reading plenty of far less accomplished efforts to produce just this kind of book as well as lots of other noirish, spare, bleak spy stories with far-too convoluted narratives and far too unsympathetic characters, it was a pleasant relief to discover this. No, Sam Gaddis is no Smiley, but I didn't care. The book kept my attention late into the night; I kept turning the pages and saying "just one more chapter" until suddenly it was 4 a.m. and I was finished. Rated 4.3 stars, adding it to my favorite books of the year list and recommending it to anyone looking for a decent spy novel. Some of Cummings's other books aren't bad; the most recent, Typhoon, wasn't as good as this, however. This was an ER book that will be out in March (and is, I think, already available in the UK.) TIOLI for the vowels in order challenge. (Helps when there are only two vowels, doesn't it...??)

I also read half of Fly by Wire last night, which is so deadpan in places as to be laugh-out-loud funny. Will probably wrap it up tonight, before it vanishes from my Kindle...

Even for a disaster book fan like me, Fly by Wire was no great shakes. I think I gave it 2.5 stars.

Double whammy today Suz

*evil chortle*

I think I like Fly by Wire much better than you, perhaps because it's about more than just the events -- he uses the events to explore everything from the dynamics of flight to the changes in the economics of air travel. And I do like the tongue-in-cheek style.

OK, finished Fly by Wire by William Langewiesche, with big thanks to Linda (lindapanzo) for the Kindle loan! I had wavered over buying this since, while I have enjoyed Langewiesche's other books, I wasn't in the mood for an inspirational "miracle story" or a hyper-technical book. Now that I've read it, I can say that I enjoyed it far more than expected, and certainly far more than Linda!

Part of the pleasure came from Langewiesche's effortless ability to segue from the details of the bird crash and the emergency landing of Sullenberger's plane on the Hudson to the back story of everything from airplane design to bird strikes and the nuances of pilot and passenger behavior. I never knew where he was going to take me next as a reader, but I happily went along for the ride. Sure, there were technicalities, particularly when the discussion of what it means to "fly by wire" -- or rely on an aircraft's automatic computerized processes to restrict the plane from doing dumb things even if a pilot wants it to -- kicked in. But I followed along easily, and found myself fascinated with all the insights into the debate over gassing geese to the ways in which pilots have ALMOST become superfluous, and chilled by the kinds of accidents that Langewiesche cites to make his points.

I particularly enjoyed Langeiwesche's style and tone, which verged on the flippant sometimes. He takes visible pleasure in recounting all the kinds of birds and other creatures with which planes have collided over the years: not only geese, but also crows, magpies, starlings, chickadees, hummingbirds -- but only a single parakeet -- and, on the ground, iguanas, moose, a caribou (twice), and once apiece with a wild pig and a donkey. There was even an official collision with a fish "although it was in the grasp of an osprey at the time." He puzzles over what these particular ex-geese were up to at the time of the collision -- just going about their business, with nothing much on their minds? "Their stupidity cannot be held against them, since they were just birds, after all... (still) it is hard not to think that they should have had better sense than to go blithely wandering through New York City's skies." He even manages to inject some humor into the deadly serious matters of crash and ditchings (when appropriate), noting that "experience shows that in the rush to escape from crashed airliners, some passsengers cluster-f*ck when they should cluster-flock" and that one particularly anxious passenger on the downed Hudson River flight set "the seat-climbing record for the event" by the speed with which she vaulted the seats separating her from a life raft at the front of the plane.

Overall, an intriguing read that has made me think seriously about all kinds of aviation issues. I probably will never take for granted that an Airbus and a Boeing are pretty much interchangeable again, or look at geese in quite the same manner. 4.1 stars, TIOLI (rank below 10,000), recommended.

You know I could never pass up a thumping good read, Suz ... and you wrote a thumpingly good review of the Trinity Six.

Hmm... given how often I fly I wonder if reading Fly by Wire would raise some anxiety in me before my next flight. Maybe I'll keep this in my KIV list for when I no longer fly so much for work.

I don't know how much you worry when flying as it is, Caro. I will say that I was actually reassured by it -- ended up feeling like catastrophic accidents are utter flukes and rare flukes at that.

Reminder: I've got a bunch of lendable Kindle titles posted above and on the Kindle-lending-wiki... as does Linda. Have now borrowed one and loaned two, and the process seems fairly seamless and easy.

OK, can someone look at this and tell me what I'm doing wrong?? I'm following all the instructions after uploading pic to my profile...

Gah, technology...

It never works for me either suz... whixh is why I just do the photobucket thing.
not worth the aggravation to me.

#204 OK, that looks like what had happened to me the first time. So let me ask, from where did you pull your photo and did you use the following to link it using (img src="URL for pic including jpg at the end").
You would use sideways carrots instead of the brackets. Good luck, Suz.

ETA: I just registered with photobucket per Kath's suggestion. But haven't experimented with it as yet.

Lynda, I had moved the photo onto my profile page and pulled it from there, and yup, that was the link I used -- with jpg at the end. Basically, I just did a c&p of the instructions, changed the round brackets to the sideways carrots, and posted....

Hmmm, let's see........

Ok, #208 is from my profile page. Did you right click on the picture you want to use? Window with properties pops up, click on properties copy that url and post as I mentioned before. Did you use " " on each side of the url and incase the complete line with carrots?
If still unsuccessful PM Dr. Neutron or TadAD, they will probably be more helpful than I.

Yup, that's exactly what I did. I am obviously cursed. But thanks for the voodoo kitty, who brightened my bleak morning!!

Book du jour:
He Who Fears the Wolf by Karin Fossum. I succumbed to this as a library book after Caro read it or another book in the series. Unfortunately, I was left underwhelmed. It was good enough, but nowhere near as good as it could have been -- perhaps because I like my mysteries with a good dollop of character and background and context, in other words novels that happen to be mysteries. (Another reason is that so much of the book involved three deeply unappealing protagonists interacting with each other, which I simply disliked completely.) Fossum was obviously trying to create a psychological suspense mystery, but she left me underwhelmed. The police never emerged as real characters, and the criminal oddball types felt more like "types" than real people -- they were TOO odd to identify with and even letting us inside their brains didn't help me relate. I wanted to like the series, but ended up canceling a library hold on another book by Fossum after reading this. There are too many other series that I DO really enjoy or that I want to read to follow this one at present. A lukewarm 3.3 star rating. Happily, Forty Words for Sorrow looks as if it will be more to my taste. TIOLI for the new mysteries challenge.

I am very pleased and excited because as a result of reading about the picture posting biz I went back to my group read where I've been trying to post a pic of Glastonbury Abbey ruins, and this time I succeeded!

I also wonder whether you read (and remember) anything about the book Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt. It was a present, and frankly, I just don't feel all that interested, but it's been on my shelf for SO LONG now that I feel guilty and I read a little and it's not so bad, I just don't feel sufficiently interested. The reviews on here seem about what I would expect.... it is well written and 'interesting' but..... I saw your name listed Possibly it is on your tbr shelf too.... I think I've pretty much figured it out though, into the library sale pile it goes. It will make someone very happy. It's just stupid it took me three years.....

It is indeed languishing on my Kindle shelf... I recall getting it because I'm interested in the American obsession with the automobile, and do still plan to read it -- but nothing has jumped it to the top of the TBR, or as I'm tempted to rename it, the TTTT. (Tottering Tower of To-be-read Tomes).

I've decided to let it go unread. I read the first chapter and then leafed through the others and just thought, I truly don't feel excited by the idea of spending time on this. It felt like a chore, not like fun. Anyhow, I also decided it is not a bad thing, every once in awhile, to decide not to diligently read something..... At least for you it isn't taking up actual bookshelf space!

That's the rationale for the Kindle... :-) I do still have teetering towers of tomes everywhere, however.

For anyone who's interested: I'll be talking about Goldman Sachs's earnings for 2010 and the whole investment banking picture tomorrow at 1:30 p.m. Eastern. I think you can listen to it online via streaming audio as well -- the show is the Hays Advantage. No brickbats, please...

Oooh, "brickbats" is one of my favorite words. I try to sprinkle it into conversation whenever possible.

Schadenfreude is another.

Mine is recrudesce.

A 4T entry: In the Courts of the Sun. Thriller, time-travel done plausibly, end of the world story seen through a smartass Maya Mormon geek/gamer's eyes, with a love story.

Likin' it. Put everything else down to read all 659pp of it.

Oooo, Hays Advantage has a podcast. I'll be sure to listen in eventually (probably not at work, however).

I like "serendipity". Both the word and the phenomenon. Also "opalescent". And many, many, many others.

darnit rd

>215 lindapanzo: & 216: You both should read Richard Bangs' Adventures with a Purpose. He likes: fetial, feculence, fuscous, heteroclite, quondam, fissiparous, proceleusmatic, entrepôts, synecdoche, irredentism, apologues and tardigrade.

Actually, I'm kidding. You shouldn't read it because Mr. Bangs is so in love with his own vocabulary that it overwhelms the story. It wouldn't have killed him to say "glimpse" instead of "aperçu" or "goosebumps" instead of "horripilation".

a propos, Tad, I'm also fond of prolix.

Hi! I'm getting a new project started to get together great recommendations for books by themes. I've called it Books By Themes (BBT) and your suggestions are most welcome! Here's the link.

#201: Fly by Wire sounds great. I read Langewiesche's The Outlaw Sea last year and was happy to see that he had written other books on a variety of topics.

I like the name TTTT instead of TBR! I might use that sometime...

>220 TadAD:: ...so in love with his own vocabulary that it overwhelms the story.

I enjoy learning new words from my reading, but that sort of pretentiousness drives me crazy.

I'm also fond of the word "serendipity," Suz. It makes me happy to both say the word and think about how it impacts my life on a daily basis if I keep my awareness open and let it happen.

Suz darling, come visit my new thread again. I think the bridge pic will come up this time.

Book du jour:

Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household. I've got a chunk of library books due back NOW! so I bumped this to the top of the reading list, and am pushing forward with another one. So... I had heard of this first when I ran across the 1976 or so movie with Peter O'Toole on late-night TV -- and found it so chilling that I had to turn it off. And then I never knew what had happened! Then caught the 1942 version of it ("Man Hunt"), which was a good noirish movie, although (understandably) propagandistic, since it was filmed during the war. Household's book was first published in 1939, and it's a first-person chronicle by an unnamed narrator of what he describes as a "sporting stalk" of a famous dictator personage in a country adjacent to Poland. Well, a bit of a no-brainer to figure out who that might have been in 1938/39... He's caught, tortured, and left for dead -- until the evildoers figure out that he survived and is making his way home. It's a great chase novel that turns into a game of wits as the narrator (a famous sportsman) turns to his hunting skills to protect himself from his pursuers and literally goes to ground in a burrow in Dorset. Even knowing the story, there were times when I found myself holding my breath. This isn't a great suspense novel, and I wouldn't have thought it warranted an NYRB seal of approval, but it's a brisk and entertaining read that sometimes requires the reader to suspense incredulity and remind him/herself that this was the 1930s, when the narrator might reasonably not want to have taken what appear today to be the logical steps to protect himself by going public. The final third of the book contains some intriguing twists, as the narrator admits some things to us for the first time -- and realizes some things about himself, his motivations and his next steps. That added some nuance which I don't recall being part of the more straightforward movie versions. 3.8 stars, recommended, TIOLI for the #1 challenge, a book rated 3.8 to 4.2 stars on LT.

Interesting review, and thumbs up. ETA Or it *will* be when you post it on the work page!!

I observe that NYRB publishes some very odd things. Ones that don't seem to me to be the sort of books they'd review were these self-same books to be published today. F/ex, the New York Review of Books never reviewed a thriller called The Ark, which is approximately equivalent to Rogue Male...does this mean that, in 2079, when that book is 70, NYRB will be publishing it? It was a very good thriller....

Oh -- I love it! The NYRB does it to keep you off-balance; to make sure you don't ever get complacent that you know what's what, eh? Anyhow I'm glad you like The Ark because I gave it to my spousal unit for xmas, thinking, he'll like it and then I'll like it too......

I loved The Ark! Lucy, I hope you like it too..
Glad to see that you liked it Suz

OK, Richard, the review is posted! (sigh, I can take a pointed hint when accompanied with a sharp stick...)

Am off to immerse self in doldrums once more.

Am off to immerse self in doldrums once more

see ya there

*moving over in the doldrums to make room for Suz and Kath*
I'm not sure why I bought Rogue Male, but I've had it around since at least the 80's - unread, of course.

Woooo! I'm caught up!

#49 *belatedly waves back extra vigorously to make up for the delayed response*

#55 Great review of Ravel, may just have to add that to the list...

Following all the chat about skating, here's Torvill & Dean at the 1984 Olympics for you ;o) (skip 1min in, if you want to avoid lots of preamble chat). It was my first thought when you mentioned Ravel too, even though I was only 7 at the time... I have to confess that it the first minute or so made me giggle quite a lot. It's all the arm waving...

I read White Boots around about the same time and it made me desperate to learn to skate, but I never did properly (I can go round without holding the side, but that's about it). There never used to be anywhere nearby to actually do the skating...

#104 Excellent review of Kean - you made me go straight online to buy a copy (how odd that it's either available at 1p or £17 on Amazon!). Post please, so I can thumb it ;o) - But how wonderful to have seen Derek Jacobi in it. I'm very jealous.

#107 lindapanzo - thank you for the link to the ER thingy - it's something that's always irked me that I can never quite remember which books I've requested, in case I want to get them for myself (I know I should write them down, but...).

There's one book on there that I never received and I did receive An Elegy for Easterly even though it says I didn't (mind you, I seem to remember that being a surprise at the time too.)

#135 "I just found the corpse, carefully located to blend in against the pattern of the rug in my living room..." - ah, more proof of the evil genius of cats (I say that with the utmost respect...)

#145/160 Argh to the dreadful rent hike and lack of upstairs heating. Not good news. Still, I suppose, as you say, the advantage of no heating is lack of rancid mouse smell (she asks doubtfully)?

I can definitely sympathise - I'm not someone who feels the cold much, but I have just one storage heater in my bedroom (in a large converted Victorian house - fantastic in the summer, not so great in the winter). This is fine, except when a cold snap comes suddenly (as it did this winter) - it takes quite a while to get in swing - particularly in the evening/night. There was a point at which I could see my breath and was sleeping with a towel wrapped around my head and three hot waterbottles...

#173 You have much more interesting bestsellers in your birth week than I do - I haven't read one of mine... I'd be interested to see the difference between the New York Times bestseller list and a UK based one though.

#218 I like "serendipity" too. And "feral". "Onomatopoeic" is strangely satisfying too.

Fliss, the review of Kean is now posted... I don't usually post them, but this one I should have done because it hadn't been reviewed at all. The horror...

Will be back later, I hope; migraine pounding; sledgehammer pounding; worried about Jasper. His blood glucose is OK, but he's been vomiting a kind of blood-flecked froth. Vet not too worried, sez to give him some Pepto Bismol and pepcid and keep an eye on him; if it doesn't clear up by Sunday, bring him in. Fingers crossed...

May I add.. Chicken broth to boost his electrolytes?

I was a complete failure the only time I tried to skate - my sister is brilliant though.

My birth week bestsellers include Portnoy's Complaint - I've never read it but I remember being quite impressed by the number on the list which are still well known and haven't disappeared into total obscurity.

Excellent thought, Kath; I have some organic stuff that I use for cooking (no time/patience for making from scratch) and will give him some in the a.m. Head hurts too much right now.

Books du jour:

The Great Silence by Juliet Nicolson. Kept meaning to read this all last year for my 1010 challenge; finally started it in December and just finished it. It's a sequel of sorts to her book The Perfect Summer, which is a kind of glorified oral history of England in 1911, featuring debutantes and suffragettes, etc. I wasn't too thrilled by the first book, which had the most simple argument to make (that 1911 was the last "perfect summer", weatherwise, in terms of social life, sense of potential, etc. etc.) and not a terribly robust one, either. That theme was just there, it seemed, for Nicolson to show how many primary sources she could assemble and organize into a coherent narrative. Much the same flaws are present in this book, which focuses on the two years that followed the 1918 Armistice that ended World War I -- the story she is telling ends Nov. 11, 1920, the day the Unknown Soldier was entombed in Westminster Abbey. I preferred this book, because I'm very interested in this postwar period and how people tried to set about crafting new kinds of lives for themselves. There are some familiar faces here, some who popped up in Nicolson's previous book, like her ancestress Vita Sackville West, Virginia Woolf and Lady Diana Manners; others, like Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby, are well-known for their literary output today. Some are utterly unknown; below-stairs figures like Tommy Atkins, who returns from the war to build a new life for himself. (A postcript notes that his daughter is one Eileen Atkins...) I enjoyed this in fits and starts, particularly when Nicolson's narrative took her into unfamiliar territory or wrestled (usually briefly) with bigger issues, such as the beginnings of social mobility and the psychological issues that confronted survivors of the cataclysmic conflict -- in many cases, their entire world had come crashing down. Survival didn't bring joy or even relief. Overall, however, this was still disappointing. I found myself wanting to read more deeply about individual people, or individual ideas, rather than hop, skip and jump from one to the other. So this book would be a great one for someone who has some familiarity with World War I and wants an overview -- it's lively, well-written and thoughtful within its limits -- but I was hoping for something more. I realize this is more my fault than Nicolson's -- I had expectations that I should have known better than to cherish after her first book -- but it's still a 3.75 star book for me. If you've read mysteries by Charles Todd or Jacqueline Winspear, you will really want to read this; if you enjoy history lite as told through people's lives and have an interest in the period, you'll probably relish it. The more familiar the period is, the more frustrating this can be, as it's a "tip of the iceberg" kind of book that simply whets the appetite for more. TIOLI for a book rated below 10,000.

2. Welcome to Utopia: Notes from a Small Town by Karen Valby. Picked this up on a whim from the library a few weeks ago. The author was assigned by her editor at an entertainment magazine to find a community that had been relatively unpenetrated by mass media and contemporary popular culture, and found Utopia, in the Texas Hill Country -- the nearest movie theater is 90 minutes each way, and until the last year or two, residents could only get two TV channels. Not that they care that much; their lives are bound up in the community and the lives of those members -- usually members of the military -- who have left it, at least briefly. I found this fascinating in some ways, but by the end, it was also feeling repetitive. ("Yes, I know this", or "you've made this point before!") Valby does an excellent job of capturing the upside and the downside of the tiny community, where everyone knows everything about you -- the gossip and the caring. (A woman dying of a brain tumor becomes the first Grand Marshal of a town parade, and is thrown a surprise birthday party.) Valby is great at documenting what happens, what she sees, etc., but not on setting this in any bigger picture, or even in a personal context. True, that's not her mandate: but had she decided to branch out a bit, the result would have been a far richer book. As it is, the book is an intriguing look at life inside a tiny town. None of her discoveries are all that surprising to anyone prompted to stop and think about what the issues might be, but she does capture the essence of these individuals and their lives. Would make a great read for anyone who likes to lump small-town folks into categories and dismiss them or for non-Americans who want a glimpse into the kind of America they may well never see or experience first hand. 3.6 stars, TIOLI for my proper nouns challenge.

I'm about 1/3 of the way through Lisa Genova's followup book to Still Alice, about another neurological problem (!) Left Neglected. It doesn't have nearly the same power as the first. Happily, Forty Words for Sorrow is still living up to its early promise, as is Defiant Spirits, the Ross King group biography of Canada's Group of Seven artists. (no touchstone for that...)

#238: I enjoyed Nicolson's The Perfect Summer, so I will give The Great Silence a try.

Book du jour:

Left Neglected by Lisa Genova is a very disappointing follow-up to Still Alice by the same author. The book was generating a lot of buzz at last May's BookExpo, so I thought I'd give it a try, but it ended up feeling like a Jodi Picoult uplifting disease of the week chick lit story. That was a dramatic contrast to Still Alice, in which Genova did something risky and unusual by taking us into the deteriorating brain of a woman who becomes less of an individual and more of an Alzheimer's victim with every successive chapter. That succeeded brilliantly. In contrast, this book, which deals with another neurological trauma (known as "left neglect", it can happen when there's an injury to the right side of the brain, and the individual loses all awareness of the existence of anything on their left side -- imagine believing that the left half of this screen simply doesn't exist...) But the story Genova is telling turns out to be overly familiar: a woman struggles to regain her life, and in the process of doing so, questions all her old assumptions and makes changes. *Yawn* The only saving grace is that the book is well-written. But that's not enough to save it from mediocrity; it was as underwhelming as Still Alice was overwhelming and made me wonder whether the real Lisa Genova is a great novelist who has written a dud sophomore effort, or a bleah novelist who broke out of her limitations because of the focus of her first book. I suppose I'll have to read #3 to find out, but I'm glad it's at least a year away. 2.9 stars, not really recommended. TIOLI for a book about a brain abnormality.

>240 Chatterbox: Ew. Skipping!

Well, you saved me from buying Left Neglected. I loved Still Alice so much I was planning on buying her new book in hardcover.

Hope the migraine is gone and Jasper is feeling better.

Sadly, it's not even lendable via Kindle; that would have restored some of its value in my eyes, Pat. That's why I downloaded it -- I thought that anyone who could write Still Alice would do a great job. The problem is that she was basically trying to repeat the performance, only changing characters and diseases. There are just too many similarities, even to the number of the main character's children. And not enough dramatic power in the brain malfunction to carry the story -- more idle scientific curiosity.

Migraine is gone, thank heavens!! Jasper seems a bit better, but I'm a bit wary... Am basically tired and fed up and curmudgeonly, without really having a good excuse for this mood.

>240 Chatterbox:: Hm, I was intrigued by a recent ad for this book. Not anymore!

Whew... managed to catch up on your thread, Suz.

The Fossum book I read was When the Devil Holds the Candle. I liked it, but I wouldn't put it in the class of Indridason or Vargas even though I think that's the darker side of the psychological thriller she's aiming for.

The next time there's an LT meet up, someone has to bring a laptop and do a demo on how to upload pictures. :-)

Thank you for the heads up on Left Neglected, my obese wish list thanks you too for not adding to its unhealthy girth.

Yes, Fossum was on the dark side, but that's OK with me -- I'm not a cozy fan. But beware, Caro; I do plan to hit you with Giles Blunt when I finish & review it, so brace yourself now... :-)

it ended up feeling like a Jodi Picoult uplifting disease of the week chick lit story. well, it looks like I will definitely wait for the library's copy of Left Neglected. Isn't it disappointing when an author is so good that you expect everything they write will be of the same calibre?

I just received a book (I won it in a blog contest) called Strange relation: A memoir of Marriage, Dementia, and Poetry by Rachel Hadas about a wife's efforts at dealing with a 61 year old husband who has dementia. It appears to be a private pub, - showing on Amazon, but no pub date yet. I'll post a review when I get to it, but it sounds similar to Still Alice except it's told from the spouse's perspective.

Hurrah, de-grayed my hair today. The skunk/badger streak is gone.

Book du jour: Forty Words for Sorrow by Giles Blunt. This is not a mystery that cozy lovers will relish -- we get some insight into the criminals (their identity is unveiled to the reader about 1/3 or half way through the book) and they are deeply disturbed critters. On the other hand, Blunt has crafted an appealing and very human detective in the shape of John Cardinal, still in love with his depressed and often-institutionalized wife; proud of his artistic daughter even when he doesn't understand art and struggles to pay tuition for her MFA at Yale. And now, the body of a young Chippewa girl missing for months has turned up, frozen into the ice outside the Northern Ontario city where he lives -- and Cardinal discovers a link to other missing young people. I relished this book in spite of the violence, and because Blunt does an amazing job in really communicating a sense of place and empathizing with the police who know that community and its malefactors inside and out. A not unpredictable type of book, but a really good mystery, especially for a first novel; I'll be reading the others in this series as soon as I can lay hands on them. (Happily, the library has many.) Recommended, 4.3 stars.

Before the revived thread-police come knocking, I'm off to new quarters here!

#243 How disappointing - I've found that books like that can colour the original for me too if I'm not careful. I hope that it didn't do that for you with Still Alice!

ETA: Oops, new thread!