Tom Kitten's 2011 Reading Log for the 75 Challenge

1. Michael Caine, The Elephant to Hollywood
2. Keigo Higashino, The Devotion of Suspect X
3. Lisa See, Shanghai Girls
4. Antonia Fraser, Must You Go?
5. Marc Camoletti, Boeing - Boeing
6. Brenda Withers, What Is the Penalty in Portugal?
7. Yussef El Guindi, Jihad Jones and the Kalashnikov Babes
8. Peter Carey, Parrot and Olivier in America
9. Belinda Rathbone, The Guynd: A Scottish Journal
10. Deborah Larsen, The White
11. David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
12. Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants
13. Arthur Ransome, The War of the Birds and the Beasts and Other Russian Tales
14. Charles Todd, The Red Door
15. Chizuko Kuratomi, Mr. Bear and the Robbers
16. Claire Tomalin, Thomas Hardy
17. Marilynne Robinson, Home
18. Joyce Dennys, Henrietta's War
19. Joyce Dennys, Henrietta Sees It Through
20. Steig Larsson, The Girl Who Played With Fire
21. Samantha Hunts, The Seas
22. Tina Fey, Bossypants
23. David Grann, The Lost City of Z
24. Louis Bayard, Mr. Timothy
25. Carol Birch, Jamrach's Menagerie
26. Charles Portis, True Grit
27. Zachary Mason, The Lost Books of the Odyssey
28. Jacqueline Winspear, Among the Mad
29. Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic
30. Paul Zollo, Hollywood Remembered: An Oral History of It's Golden Age
31. David Abbott, The Upright Piano Player
32. Kevin Rice, Hopper's Ghosts
33. Steig Larsson, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
34. Arthur Phillips, The Tragedy of Arthur
35. Katie Roiphe, Still She Haunts Me
36. Franklin Toker, Fallingwater Rising
37. B. Traven, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
38. Will Self, Great Apes
39. Duncan McLean, Lone Star Swing
40. Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
41. Yannick Murphy, The Call
42. Geraldine Brooks, March
43. Anne Fadiman, Ex Libris: Confessions of A Common Reader
44. Alison Weir, The Life of Elizabeth I
45. Philip Van Doren Stern The Greatest Gift
46. Phil Ressner, August Explains
47. Phil Ressner, Dudley Pippin
48. Philip Ressner, At Night
49. Philip Ressner, Jerome
50. Philip Ressner, The Park In the City
51. Philip Ressner, Dudley Pippin's Summer
52. M. T. Anderson, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to The Nation: Volume 1, The Pox Party
53. Steven Canny and John Nicholson The Hound of the Baskervilles
54. M. T. Anderson, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: Volume 2, The Kingdom On the Waves
55. Carol Ann Duffy Mean Time
56. Emma Donoghue, Room
57. Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake
58. Kate Atkinson, When Will There Be Good News?
59. David Yeadon Seasons On Harris: A Year In Scotland's Outer Hebrides
60. Carol Ann Duffy, Rapture
61. Robin Robertson, ed., Mortification: Writers' Stories of Their Public Shame
62. Jon Clinch, Finn
63. A.R. Gurney, Buffalo Gal
64. Joanna Briscoe, You, A Novel
65. William B. Jones, Jr., Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History

I have found you and you are starred. Welcome! I think LizzieD might be reading War and Peace too, along with nine or ten others...... Do you know how to turn things blue and get them on the.... the..... touchstones, phew? Two brackets around the author, one around the book title.

Hello TomKitten! I read your introduction and said to myself, any friend of Lucy's is a friend of mine. And Tom Kitten is my absolute favorite Beatrix Potter character. And your favorite books are similar to mine.

So ... your thread is duly starred. Welcome to the group!
Laura

Hi Stephen! I'm also a friend of Lucy's and loved your introduction. Welcome to the 75ers. I'm looking forward to following your reading. What did you think of Shanghai Girls?

Here I am again to say that I love Mr. Benjamin Bunny and have a handsome "statue" of him carved by my DH. But TK is a handsome fellow too!
Lucy says that you're reading War and Peace. I'm not actively rereading it but keep it on my list to remind me to pick it up. I have the Maude's translation from the 40's and have found it (about 200 pp in when I put it down) much, much more readable than the Modern Library version I struggled through in the 80's. Several of us in the 75 group have it in our sights for '11, so you may eventually have some fellow-travelers if you want us.

Just logged:
4. Antonia Fraser, Must You Go: My Life With Harold Pinter
which I enjoyed immensely. Much sadness in the life but much joy as well.
#2 and # 5.
Lucy and Lizzie, I must admit that my reading of War and Peace is stalled at the moment. I joined the group reading it along with dovegreyreader this year and did quite well for the first month but I've fallen well and truly behind. I hope to get caught up this month. I actually won my copy of the new OUP edition of the Maude translation via a contest that dgr sponsored so I feel doubly obligated to continue with this project, though, I confess, it's magic is eluding me.
# 3
Thanks for the welcome, Laura. I look forward to perusing your collection. I'm glad to know you appreciate my namesake and muse.
#4
Thanks for your message, Pat. I'm sorry to say that Shanghai Girls just didn't work for me, though, to be honest, I did not actually read the book but listened to it on CD and I'm always a bit suspicious of my own ability to adequately critique an audiobook. I'm pretty picky when it comes to voices and readers, so my dissatisfaction probably had as much to do with the performance as it did with the book itself. Suffice to say I was extremely glad when it was over.

Thanks to all for being so welcoming. This seems like a very congenial group.
TK

How was the Michael Caine book, Stephen?

#7 Good fun, for the most part. I think I read it in one day, so it certainly moves along well. Actor memoirs always disappoint me on some level though and this one was no exception. What I'd like to know about is the work as opposed to who they had lunch with in 1974. Caine's, Acting in Film is one of the more useful books on the subject and I had rather hoped this new memoir (his second, actually) would be similarly enlightening. But that's just my expectations getting in the way of Mr. Caine's story. Given what he set out to do, he did that very well indeed.

I'm trying to think if I've ever read a really good memoir by an actor..... it seems to me they do tend to be laundry lists of 'other celebs who loved me' -- I would read them, TK, back in Cape Cod daze when patrons would get all excited about so and so's memoir coming out -- waiting lists and all, so I would look it over and then I would think, why?

But I had a little bit of this recently reading the Mary Wesley bio......

#8: Thanks for the input, Stephen!

One of my favorite memoirs is by playwright Moss Hart, Act One (1904-1961). Of course he was a writer, not an actor, and on Broadway, not Hollywood, but it's an excellent read. I also like Voices Offstage: A Book of Memoirs by Mark Connelly, another playwright, director, producer. Since I've gone this far afield from the original "actor" topic already, I'll also mention Edna Ferber's memoirs, A Peculiar Treasure and A Kind of Magic. "Ferb" was hilarious (not always intentionally) and knew everyone in the 1930s-era theater.

BTW, Hi TK and welcome to the 75 group. I think someone else already said it: any friend of Lucy's is a friend of mine.

Believe it or not I read Act One in eighth grade! Loved it! Playwrights can, one hopes, write well. But actors? I have a feeling I haven't read enough to really have any idea about any good ones.

Oh *here* you are! I got confused with the multiple threads - sorry that I was stuck over there.
Did I mention that my toddler's room is decorated in a Peter Rabbit theme? So we're well versed in the ways of Tom Kitten in this house...

#11 I completely agree about Act One but I confess I don't know the Marc Connelly or either of the Edna Ferber titles. Thanks for your welcome. I'm not surprised to find that friendship with Lucy opens a lot of doors.

#13 My compliments to your son's decorator - such exquisite taste! And thanks for taking the trouble to find me here.
TK

Mrs. Tiggy Winkle, just for the record!

I read Michael Caine's first memoir (What's It All About?---what else?) recently. I enjoyed it, and learned some interesting things about movie making, along with the celebrity stuff. About what I expected, and I do intend to read The Elephant to Hollywood as well. I kind of like his style (personal, not authorial, although that was OK).

Just finished reading a brilliant new play (still just in manuscript) by Brenda Withers, who I mostly know as an actor and a very fine one indeed. What Is the Penalty in Portugal is a long one act, very Pinteresque in it's blend of humor and menace and quite the best new play I've read in some time.

So it hasn't been on the stage yet (or however you say it)?

BTW We loved Slings and Arrows and I've been recommending it with wild abandon. I forget what your other recommends were....... if there are any rattling around in yr. head I sure would love to hear what they are.

Hi TomKitten, I'm a newbie to the 75 Challenge, too. I work for a non-profit organization teaching theatre, so I've got your thread starred. I don't read that many new plays, actually, I'm always telling myself that I need to read more plays, PERIOD, but there are just so many wonderful books out there in the world clamoring for my attention. I think that the last contemporary play that I read was August: Osage County by Tracy Letts, which blew me away. I was lucky enough to see the touring company with Estelle Parsons when they came to Cleveland this year.

I have to admit, I read a LOT of actor biographies and memoirs and I do like the gossipy stuff. But, I greatly enjoy insight into the work as well. This past summer I read an old paperback that I had on my TBR shelves for years about Bette Davis. The biographer went through each of her films in chronological order and then Davis wrote her comments about each film after his. Very interesting and fun.

Sandy K

#18 Titles, titles! What was the Bette Davis book called? Sounds like one to search out. *grimaces with dread that Sandy's going to say "I don't remember!"*

I read Must You Go late last year, and also enjoyed it immensely. I did find the description of Pinter's illness very difficult, but enjoyed his acerbic humour to the last (to friends trying to get tickets to his last performances: "I'm not a fucking box office.") I trailed around after my husband for some days, watching him for signs of impending mortal illness. :-)

#19 Sorry, laytonwoman3rd! I knew as I typed my message that I should go to my profile and find the title of the Bette Davis book, lazy me! It is Mother Goddam by Whitney Stine. Mine was a paperback copy from 1986, so I don't know if it's still in print, but probably available at the library or used.

Sandy K

Thank you! My husband and I have been watching old Dick Cavett show interviews, available from Netflix, and last week we were looking at one of his interviews with Bette Davis. She went on about what a blessing it was to be a mother, as if that were the most important thing in her life. I think this interview was in the late '70's, long before her daughter had written her awful "Mommie Dearest" sort of book. I actually met her daughter and son-in-law in a business context years ago. There was dysfunction enough to spare on all sides, I think, and none of them would ever make it to one of my fantasy dinner parties. But Davis's WORK---now that's a different story.

Hi TomKitten - lovely profile pic! My son used to have that picture in his bedroom, and we still read quite a bit of Beatrix Potter.

I set up a group read thread for War and Peace a few days ago if you want to have a look - it's over here:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/108451

We would love more people to join in! Where are you up to? I've just finished Part 1: 100 pages down, 1100 to go! I must go and check out Dovegreyreader's site... I like her blog but have enough trouble keeping up on here.

#17 Hi Lucy - Nope, Brenda's play hasn't been produced yet and, in fact, the title may be changing but I hope it will be coming to a theatre near you this Summer.

#18 Hi Sandy - Thanks for your comments. I've not seen or read August Osage County but it does seem to be, by all accounts, an extraordinary piece of work. It's good to have other theatre folks here so welcome! I've got a few other new titles sitting on my desktop that I need to get to and I'll try to write a bit about each one as I check them off.

#23 - Hi cmt - Still stalled on War and Peace at about page 100, I'm afraid. I find myself avoiding it in the way that I used to do with homework assignments which can't be a good sign. I'm months behind the troika on the dgr site.

Hi There

I'm compiling a list of birthdays of our group members. If you haven't done so already, would you mind stopping by this thread and posting yours.

Thanks.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/105833

In general, the only pattern I ever impose on my reading is to alternate fiction and non-fiction, so it came as a bit of a surprise to me to realize, at some point, that I had inadvertently hit on a theme with the four books I recently completed. That theme might best be described as "strangers in strange lands."

In Peter Carey's Parrott and Oliver in America, the strangers are an Englishman and a Frenchman who embark on a tour of early 19th century America. American Belinda Rathbone travels in the opposite direction, at the end of the 20th century, when she marries a Scot and settles down with him in his ancestral home in Northeast Scotland, an adventure she writes about in The Guynd: A Scottish Journal. Deborah Larsen's fictional account of the life of Mary Jemison, enititled The White, is an attempt to understand how and why Mary chose to live out her life with her Native American captors, on the frontiers of a new America, rather than return to the life from which she'd been taken. And David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet has, as it's background, the uneasy relationship between Dutch traders and their wary hosts in Imperial Japan at the turn of the 19th century.

In The Guynd, the one non-fiction book in this group, Belinda Rathbone makes a good story of her time spent playing Lady of the Manor. It's a romantic tale, or at least it starts that way, but by the time the book ends, her romance with both the place and the person have faded considerably and her decision to leave the isolation, the damp and the cold behind strikes one as thoroughly reasonable. I hope she's found happiness in Cambridge, MA, where, according to the dust jacket, she relocated after more than just the brickwork began to fall apart. The Guynd is a fun read and an easy one to boot, but I don't think it will change anyone's life, unless you're contemplating moving to Scotland to take up life in a crumbling manor house. In which case, you'll probably want to pass Scotland and go directly to Cambridge.

Mary Jemison was fifteen years old when a party of French soldiers and Shawnee tribesmen captured her and most of her family near present day Gettysburg, at the height of the French and Indian War. Her parents were killed on the journey West and Mary was eventually given to a party of Senecas and married to a Delaware. She and her new husband traveled over seven hundred miles, from the banks of the Ohio to the valley of the Genessee river, so that they might live in safety in his native land. They became separated on the trip and by the time Mary and their young son, Thomas, arrived in the valley, she was a widow. She eventually remarried a Seneca and she lived out the rest of her life in the valley. Visitors to Letchworth State Park can still see her grave, marked by a lovely, if somewhat fanciful, statue above the Middle Falls, near the charming Glen Iris Inn. When Mary was in her 80's, she told her story to a doctor and writer named James Seaver who published an account her life the following year. Deborah Larsen has used that source material to create a portrait of Mary that focuses as much on the internal life as it does on the facts of the life. Like Seaver's account, The White is a spare book - I think I read it in a single day - but it's also an immensely satisfying one and the language is often lush and poetic.

Now, as to those other two books:
If I'm honest with myself, my reading life usually just drifts along like a slow moving stream. I finish one book, start another, and I think myself largely content to be mildly engaged and to be able to put aside the concerns of my daily life and give over to the lives of those I'm reading about. And then there are those other times, those rare times when I'm jolted out of that complacency by a book, or, in this case two books, that remind me just how enriching, how exhilarating great writing can be.

I've been reading Peter Carey, with great pleasure, for a good number of years now. For my money, he's one of the best writers out there these days and, when he's on his game, he really merits all those comparisons with Dickens. Not to say he hasn't occasionally let me down. I found both Theft and My Life as A Fake disappointing, particularly after the high of The True History of the Kelly Gang. But Parrott & Olivier is not only a return to form, it's far and away the best thing he's produced thus far. It's the kind of book that you want to go back and read all over again as soon as you get to the end. The two title characters are marvelous creations and what the book has to say about America and Europe, old worlds and new, both now and then, lingers in the mind long after the last page is turned. Had I read nothing else so far this year, I would still consider 2011 off to a grand start.

But, of course, I did read something else. And, even though I've had a week to think about it, it's still hard for me to find the words to describe just how much I loved David Mitchell's book, how completely he pulled me into the world he created, how much I admired his use of language and how grateful I am that he chose to tell his story in the way he did. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet contains some of the best writing I've read in years, passages that just left me awestruck or smiling stupidly and shaking my head. But it's also, and this is the real marvel of the thing, a thoroughly ripping yarn, with heroes and villains that could turn Robert Louis Stevenson purple with envy. And when was the last time anyone else gave you all that plus a main character who you could - believe it or not - actually admire. Yes, he's flawed and some of his blunders have terrible consequences, for himself and others, but Jacob de Zoet is fundamentally a decent man and I'm still a bit taken aback to realize both how rare that is in contemporary literature and how refreshing and restorative it was to encounter such a character, in these dark and cynical days.

So now I have a new personal challenge to add to my 75 Books Challenge - will I be able to find any other books this year that will come up to the mark set by Peter Carey and David Mitchell? One can only hope.

#26: will I be able to find any other books this year that will come up to the mark set by Peter Carey and David Mitchell? One can only hope.

I wish you good luck with that, Stephen!

Stephen what a gorgeous entry, a feast of mulling -- For some reason I took a dislike to the title of the Peter Carey's latest, truthfully though he has slipped below (or above, as it may be) my radar screen, but clearly that was silly.

What ARE you going to read next? Indeed. Well I can recommend a book of an entirely different stripe that will keep you out of trouble for a little while -- Porius by John Cowper Powys. There's nothing even remotely like it.

I'm presently reading another JCP A Glastonbury Romance that is almost twice the length of Porius, so I am letting you off easy. I love the Emma Larkin I am reading, Finding George Orwell in Burma although I am dragging my heels on it, mainly I'm drawn to space opera for the nonce, don't ask me why because I can't tell you!

I thought I should catch up a bit, after having limited internet access for far too long, and report in on my reading of late.

Two of my three recent reads were actually audio books and I also attempted a third, Marilynne Robinson's Home, on CD but couldn't really stay with that one. I love Robinson and consider Housekeeping one of the truly great books of the latter half of the 20th century but I'm not sure her writing is best appreciated in this form. Then again, it may have just been the reader, who I found irritatingly over dramatic. I'm rather new to this way of reading but I'm beginning to appreciate how challenging the art of narration can be, how vital it is that one convey the excitement and emotions of a story without crossing into performance mode.

Anyway, on to the books read or heard as it were. Water for Elephants certainly kept me awake for all of a thirteen hour drive but I'm hard pressed to say much more good about it. I think it wants to be The Grapes of Wrath of the circus world but ultimately ends up being a racier version of Toby Tyler. It's a sawdust melodrama, complete with cardboard cut-out noble hero, a villain who might as well have been named Snidely Whiplash and a heroine utterly devoid of character. I can't wait to miss the movie.
On the return trip I listened to Charles Todd's The Red Door which I liked reasonably well. A number of people have suggested I give one of these Ian Rutledge mysteries a try so I was pleased to find this at the library, though I now see it was probably not a good idea to jump in with the 12th book in the series. It took me a while to understand the precise nature of Rutledge's World War I induced PTSD and his peculiar relationship with the long dead Hamish. And I admit I found myself drifting in and out of this and back tracking fairly regularly. No fault of narrator Simon Prebble, however, as he walks that line that lies just this side of performance admirably. Still, I'd not be adverse to trying another Rutledge/Todd mystery at some point, though I think I'll want to go back to the beginning of the series.

The real reading I've done this past month has brought me almost up to date with the other members of Team Tolstoy, as we work our way through War and Peace. I'd fallen quite far behind and I'm now discovering, as I read larger chunks of it at a time, just how rich and enjoyable it can be and much more of a pleasure than the chore I had feared it might be. I abandoned the collection of William Maxwell stories I had started back in January. I know he's a good writer, I just can't seem to connect somehow.

The one book I did manage to get all the way through was Arthur Ransome's The War of the Birds and the Beasts which was a complete delight. I've had this on my shelves for years and, for some reason, just never got around to opening it, despite my great affection for the Swallows and Amazons series and Ransome's earlier book of Russian stories, Old Peter's Russian Tales. Many of these stories are melancholy and even sombre meditations on mortality which might explain why they were left out of the earlier volume, intended primarily for a youthful audience, and yet the droll dialogue and wry humor are the things that linger long after the book is closed. I loved it a lot.

And speaking of drollery, I'm reading something at the moment that contains one of the funniest typos I've encountered in years. But more of that next time.

Master of the cliffhanger, yourself, aren't you?? Very interesting observations about audio books. I've only listened to one, Sissy Spacek reading To Kill a Mockingbird, and I thought she did a very fine job. I would like to try some more, but they don't fit into my life very well....I don't do a lot of long drives alone these days. Maybe next year when my daughter is less than 2 hours away by car...

#30 Hi Linda,
Sorry about the cliffhanger ending. I don't mean to be coy, I'd gone on a little long already with post #29. I promise to reveal all before too long.

Believe me, I'd rather not be doing these 13 hour treks myself but I am grateful to have the audio books to pass the time. I'm not surprised to hear that you enjoyed Sissy Spacek's reading of To Kill a Mockingbird (or Tequila, as we were wont to call it when I worked on a stage production years ago.) I think she's awfully good and a wonderful choice for the voice of the grown Scout looking back.

I've been thinking a lot about the audiobooks, as I'm so new to the form, and I'd be curious to know if any other LTers have had occasion to doubt their own response to a book because they encountered it first in audio format. In thinking about this, I decided to look back and see who narrated The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, which I liked so much. For the record it was Jonathan Aris and Paula Wilcox but I was surprised to discover that not everyone found their performances pleasing. In fact, many of the comments on Audible.com take them to task for the very same transgression that caused me to abandon the audiobook of Home - over dramatizing. Ultimately, I suspect that one's response to a reader is likely to be as individual as one's response to any given singer. There's no accounting for taste, as they say. But I do wonder if I might have liked Shanghai Girls or Water for Elephants had I read them for myself, and, conversely, if I would have liked The Thousand Autumns so much if I had only ever encountered it on the page.

Oh, you are such a tease!

Just a brief word about my fifteenth book of the year. It had been almost thirty years since I'd laid eyes on a copy of Mr. Bear and the Robbers but I've never forgotten this very funny picture book, so I was delighted to have a chance to read it once again this week. Our story: One night, Mr. Bear happens upon a gang of rabbit robbers burgling a house while the residents are sleeping. The robbers tell him they're taking the things to "fix up as a surprise for the rabbits who live in the cottage." Mr. Bear offers to help and finishes cleaning out the house, "even the kitchen stove." He then hauls the robbers' cart, laden with the stolen goods and the robbers themselves, to their mountain lair. There he spends the night cleaning, repairing and painting every last item. In the morning he insists the robbers accompany him back to the house to return everything. The homeowners are so grateful to Mr. Bear and the robbers that they throw a party for them. And, in a wonderful two page spread, we see, the residents of the house and Mr. Bear celebrating with abandon while the robbers look as guilty and chagrined as any rabbits could ever be. The caption reads, "So they all stayed for the party. Mr. Bear had a wonderful time."
In the somewhat limited hall of fame of hilarious picture books about burglary, restoration and redemption, this one's right up there with Janet and Allan Ahlberg's Burglar Bill.

#32 Now I'm beginning to worry that I may be setting folks up for disappointment. It probably bears mentioning that, like most males, my sense of humor is permanently stuck in the fifth grade. There now, you can't say you weren't warned.

>33 TomKitten:: n the somewhat limited hall of fame of hilarious picture books about burglary, restoration and redemption -- that's a hoot !
>34 TomKitten:: it bears mentioning ?!!! *groan*

TK's in fine fettle I see! Unbearably so.

Seriously, the audio book thing is mysterious. Our whole fam LOVED Alan Rickman reading The Return of the Native. He brought Hardy's wit, compassion, and love of the heath to life for us -- I listened to it twice in a row and could easily listen to it twice more. Obviously others loved it as well since he won an award, but I have also read comments excoriating Rickman for his utter blah unlistenable lousiness.....

Anyway that is the best listen I've had yet.

Most of the time the reader 'will do'. Once in awhile I find the person grating. I have found that I can't listen to B-grade fiction (too slow) nor can I listen to anything with too much gore or violence..... too vivid and upsetting. Travel books can work pretty well if I like the reader..... I listened to a lot of Bryson reading his own stuff recently -- a lot of the time I was simply enjoying his peculiar Mid-west/British accent hybrid, but then I couldn't take it anymore.

I could ramble on, but I won't.

Funny that you should mention Thomas Hardy, but more about that later. As for Alan Rickman, the man can clearly do no wrong and that's all there is to that.

And please ramble on. Always interesting to catch up with you here.

comments excoriating Rickman for his utter blah unlistenable lousiness.....

Does - not - compute.

I'm with you, Stephen. I am unable to even to begin to imagine how that could be so. Personally, I could happily listen to the man reading the phonebook.

Ditto on Rickman!

As I believe I've said somewhere before, I'd even listen to Rickman reading Henry James! Coincidentally, I just received an audiobook passed on from a friend---Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, read by the author himself. I'm told he does a good job, and I like him, so we'll see.

I'm not sure where I read the pans on the Rickman audio -- I thought it was here, but no. I am relieved to hear this chorus of ayes.

Anyway that is the greatest audio 'read' ever in my book.

Delurking to say that based on this conversation I just bought the Rickman Return of the Native audiobook.

Now see what you've done, Lucy. I think Alan Rickman has hijacked my thread! It may be the proudest moment of my life.

Linda, your Henry James remark made me laugh out loud. I suspect it would take Emma Thompson to get me to listen to HJ and I'm not even sure she would be sufficient.

Anne, I'm delighted you delurked and I hope you find Return of the Native delicious.

I can't really imagine anyone being able to read Henry the J..... it's an interesting thing to contemplate.....zzzzzzz.... oh, what was I saying?

And I love James, mind you, but aloud might lead to fatal accidents.

Hi Stephen. Lucy sent me a link to your thread so I just stopped in to say hello and see what you were reading.

#45 And hello back to you, Ruth. I'm glad to make your acquaintance. This month has been all about catching up with the War and Peace reading group, aka Team Tolstoy, over at Dove Grey Reader's site. (http://dovegreyreader.typepad.com/dovegreyreader_scribbles/2011/03/team-tolstoy-troika-stop-six.html) Happy to say I'm back on the troika now and enjoying the ride immensely.

Loving the Rickman adulation on here. I could listen to (and watch) him for hours! But maybe not Henry James even so....

Thomas Hardy (poet, novelist, writer of material for Alan Rickman to read) was an early obsession of mine and I'm not ashamed to admit that it all began with the 1967 John Schlesinger film of Far From the Madding Crowd with Julie Christie, Alan Bates, Terence Stamp and Peter Finch, superb in the role that, would probably go to Alan Rickman were it to be remade today. Much as I loved the movie, I found I loved the book even more and I went on to read all the major novels and a fair amount of the poetry as well. I think Hardy was the first writer who made me want to read absolutely everything he wrote, though I still haven't met that goal. The project was abandoned shortly after finishing Jude the Obscure for reasons which will probably be obvious to anyone who has read this masterpiece of gloom and doom.

I can't say I've followed Claire Tomalin's writing with the same sort of devotion but I have really enjoyed almost everything I've read by her, beginning with the wonderful Mrs. Jordan's Profession and, most especially The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens, which is as much literary detective story as biography. Her Samuel Pepys: The Unequaled Self is also terrific.

So, as you can imagine, my expectations were rather high when I began Claire Tomalin's Thomas Hardy. For that reason I feel I need to be somewhat forgiving in my assessment of the biography for, as I've often said, the secret to happiness in life is to keep one's expectations in check. Be that as it may, I was disappointed and I'm hard pressed to say exactly why. It's a good biography. It's thorough, well-researched, economical and covers just about everything that needs to be covered. But it just sort of plods along and rarely leaps to the level of insight and empathy I've come to expect from this author. Had I no prior interest in either the subject or the writer I'm not sure I would have continued with this. However, she does manage to bring it all home in fine style with this wonderful summation:

"He knew the past like a man who has lived more than one span of life, and he understood how difficult it is to cast aside the beliefs of your forebears. At the same time he faced his own extinction with no wish to be comforted and no hope of immortality. He wrote honest poems, almost every one shaped and structured with its own thoughts and its own music. They remind us that he was a fiddler's son, with music in his blood and bone, who danced to his father's playing before he learnt to write. This is how I like to think of him, a boy dancing on the stone cottage floor, outside time, oblivious, ecstatic, with his future greatness as unimaginable as the sorrows that came with it."

Reading that made me glad I had persevered.

And now, about that typo. (See end of post 29 and caveat in post 34). On page 177, we read about Hardy and Tennyson spending a jolly afternoon together wherein the latter "told him stories about misprints in his own work, 'airy' changed to 'hairy' pleasing him particularly." I wonder what the great men would have thought of the misprint that appears two pages later, on 179. In the midst of a paragraph about problems in the Hardy marriage, the word "entertain" is split due to a line break and the last syllable, clearly intended to be included, is not, so that we get a rather different reading of the situation, best appreciated by including the sentence that precedes the sentence with the omission. I'll attempt to preserve the layout on the page (pun only slightly intended.)

"Emma still
had nothing to do except embroidery, keeping a cat, ordering
about a servant or two and shopping. Hardy did his best to enter-
her, escorting her to the Lord Mayor's show …"

That is indeed a pun that opens the door to all sorts of misunderstanding!

Brilliant.

(chortle)

So here we are in the second quarter and, at this rate, 75 books by the end of the year will be a bit of a scramble. Ah well, it's still a fun journey and a worthy goal.

Time to get caught up reporting on the latest three. Earlier this year, I tried listening to the audio version of Marilynne Robinson's Home and abandoned it almost immediately. (Message 29) I was probably too quick to blame the reader for I'm now forced to admit that it really didn't do much for me on the page, either. I kept waiting to love it as much as I loved Housekeeping or even like it as much as I did Gilead but the rewards, for me, were few and far between.

On the other hand, the Joyce Dennys books, Henrietta's War and Henrietta Sees It Through go right to the head of the class. I was sent the latter as an Early Review book and got a copy of the former on interlibrary loan so I could read them in order. These books are collections of columns written by Dennys during World War II and originally published, along with her wonderful illustrations, in the magazine Sketch. Each column is in the form of a letter, written by Dennys' alter ego, Henrietta, to her childhood friend Robert who is off fighting on one front or another. Henrietta and her doctor husband Charles live in an unnamed seaside village in Devonshire and, despite the constant threat of bombs, rockets and invasion, somehow manage to shop, garden, attend dog shows, take in kittens and evacuees with equal aplomb and mix with a cast of characters who would feel right at home in an episode of The Vicar of Dibley. This is English comic writing of the highest order, on a par with Wodehouse or the best of Jerome K. Jerome. Henrietta, or, rather, Dennys made me laugh out loud at least once per column and, had that been all she set out to do the books would still be worth reading. But Dennys had so much more on her mind and the brilliance of these books is that, in between the many moments of mirth, she makes us look long and hard at the cost of war, it's effect on those far from the front lines, how problems of gender and class may mutate during a war but certainly never go away. One gets a real sense of how exhausting it must have been to "keep calm and carry on," to maintain that famous stiff upper lip even while it was trembling.
I'm enormously grateful to Library Thing and to Bloomsbury for getting the second book into my hands. I've already ordered a copy of the first one to join it in a place of honor on my shelves. If I could afford it, I'd buy both of these books in bulk and press copies of them into the hands of everyone I know and care about.

I just finished Henrietta's War too, and I found it just as delightful as you did. I am in awe of the sort of mind that can take such trying circumstances and make us smile, even laugh out loud, just before that tickly thing happens in the nose that means tears are about to spill. Wonderful stuff. Sorry you didn't "get" Home. That was the first Robinson I read, and it really moved me. Gilead was very fine too. I haven't read Housekeeping yet.

I am very behind on threads, Stephen, so I am just going to try and keep current with you from here on out :)

#30 - Hi Linda,
I'm so glad to hear you've been reading Henrietta, too. I'll freely confess to a bit of mistyness myself, especially while reading the very last letter in Henrietta's War.
I'm also really glad to know you were moved by Home. I do still think Robinson, at her best, is as good as anyone out there and I actually feel somewhat guilty that she failed to reach me with this one. Every now and again I'd read a passage that would remind me of the Marilynne Robinson who so impressed me with her debut but those moments were few indeed. It was frustrating, really, because I so wanted to be moved by it but it just never happened.

Sometimes our expectations thwart us, I think. I read Home first, actually. But I have occasionally hesitated to read a second book by an author who blew me away the first time, fearful of the "sophomore jinx".

I loved Housekeeping and was utterly untouched by Gilead -- so haven't even tried Home although I would look at it in a library to see if I'm wrong..... but I wouldn't just buy it sight unseen.

I should add -- I recognized the 'good writing' of Gilead, I was unmoved inwardly by it, for whatever reason, perhaps my failing.

Although each stands alone, I found reading Home and Gilead as companion pieces was very rewarding.

I echo Linda's thoughts ... Had the same experience with Home and Gilead.

I was a little nervous, Mr. Kitten, while reading about the Thomas Hardy biography. I have one sitting in my TBR stacks and I was a little concerned that it might be the same one, but no, it's a different one.

I too, date my interest in Hardy from the time of that Julie Christie film. The acting and just the over-all look of it were so amazing to me. I'd never seen anything like it before then. I agree that Rickman would make a great Boldwood, but I don't know as I'd really want to see that movie re-done.
Oh, and I'm afraid I am one of those awful people who really like Jude the Obscure although it isn't my favorite.

Thanks for so many enjoyable comments about your books, Stephen. Too many to try to keep up with, but I love to eavesdrop on booklovers loving their reading. So what I want to know is whether you've started Jamrach's Menagerie yet.... Have you? I'm badly in need of somebody to talk with about it. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but this ain't it.

#60 Hi Fourpawz,
I do think Jude the Obscure is a fine piece of work. I just would never want to read it again and I remember finishing it and thinking, right, that's enough of Mr. Hardy for a while. And, speaking of films based on the Hardy novels, the movie of Jude is certainly one of the most depressing films I've ever seen, though exceptionally well done. Kate Winslet is superb in it. One thing the Tomalin book did for me was send me to Hardy's poetry and it really is quite wonderful.

#61 Hi Peggy,
Good to hear from you. I've started Jamrach's Menagerie but haven't gotten very far with it. That's not for lack of interest, though. I seem to be in restless reading mode this month, moving from book to book and never landing anywhere for very long. I do want to get back to it before the end of the month, though, and I look forward to talking to you about it once I've finished. I was interested to see that it did not make it on to the Orange Prize shortlist.

Recent Reading Report:
I managed to get through another long car trip with The Girl Who Played With Fire and, I must say, I enjoyed it enough to probably listen to the third one at some point, despite the crying need for editing. Simon Vance is a really wonderful reader and the story actually made driving on Route 80 through Pennsylvania almost fun.

I know Tina Fey would back me up on the tediousness of said route through the keystone state, for, in her new book, Bossypants, she devotes almost an entire chapter to the subject. I kid you not. I think 30 Rock is one of the smartest and funniest thing on television these days. Some nights I watch in wonder at all the cultural and political references they manage to squeeze into a single episode, all the while chomping on the hand that feeds them. Tina Fey well deserves all the awards and accolades that have come her way over the years and I'm sure there will be many more to follow. She is a brilliant actor, producer and writer and I'm of the opinion that writing for television is some of the most difficult writing one can do. So I'll just say I'm willing to give her a pass if Bossypants wasn't all I had hoped it would be.
It's fun, it reads quickly and there are more than a few good laughs in it. However, just like the Michael Caine book I read earlier this year, there's frustratingly little about the process. I am intrigued, though, by her idea of cutting the holiday trek in half by arranging for everyone to celebrate at a hotel in Williamsport. I also look forward to the day when I run into Tina Fey at one of those god-awful vending-machine-only rest stops on 80. I'd be happy to buy her a Snickers bar and a cup of instant coffee. That's how much I liked her book.

I did read one proper novel in the past week - Samantha Hunt's The Seas, which was longlisted for this year's Orange Prize. How and why a novel published in 2005 made it onto this year's list I can't say, but I was intrigued by a description that referred to it as being based on Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid or words to that effect. Well, it is but it also draws on Undine and other mermaid stories as well. There's nothing terribly wrong with the book. It, too, reads quickly. How could it not when some pages contain only a single sentence? But I found Ms Hunt's attention to atmosphere and imagery at the expense of story ultimately distancing.

And now for this week's trivia question: If you've read or listened to any of the Larsson books, you may have noticed that a great deal of coffee is consumed by the characters. Mrs. Kitten and I listened to the first Larsson on another Route 80 excursion last summer and, by the time we finished the book, we were laughing hysterically every time Simon Vance said the word coffee. So I decided that I would count the cups of coffee consumed in volume 2 on this trip. To my surprise, I counted only 67. I would have guessed twice that, based on the first book. So what I want to know now is, how many cups of coffee, total, are consumed in the Millennium trilogy and which of the three books boasts the highest caffeine consumption?

You are such a naughty kitten! I haven't read any of them yet and am thus in a position to possibly answer this question.....

For a while, my daughter sat next to me while I was reading one of the Larsson books. Every time someone did something with coffee I muttered, "Coffee!" She finally gave up and left. I wonder why.

About the coffee, I was simply envious. I have to limit myself to a couple of cups a day.
I finished *Jamrach* without retching; I'll be interested to know what you make of it, TK. Now I'm off to read The Seas. I think it's on this year's Orange list because it wasn't published in the UK until last year. Or maybe I'll try *Goon Squad*. Anyway, I need a palate cleanser at the very least.

#64 - You need to do that, Lucy. (Otherwise I might have to and I don't need, really to commit myself to counting anymore stuff.) You know, of course, that now I will not be able to keep myself from noticeing (why does this word look so wrong??) all those cups of coffee. I like real-life stuff in a book, but where there is a lot of it I begin to think that it is an attempt by the author to fill up space with references meant to pin down the book's time and place. Stephen King used to have that effect on me - one of the things I disliked about his stuff.

Yes, one of the tricky things about detail: not enough and the character isn't grounded, too much and you think, am I reading a catalog or what?

Catching Up at the One Third Marker - The Lost City of Z, Mr. Timothy and Jamrach's Menagerie

Spring fever, a bit of travel and the start of baseball season have all conspired to limit recent reading time. It's been even harder to find time to write about reading, so, even though it feels like I've been away from my own thread for ages, I still only have three books to report on, and one of them an audio book at that. I'm afraid it's going to be like this for the next few months.

I enjoyed The Lost City of Z though it didn't quite measure up to my admittedly extravagant expectations. What I had read about the book just seemed so much more interesting than the book itself. An ancient city in the jungle! The inspiration for Conan Doyle's The Lost World! The origins of the Eldorado myth! How could it not be thrilling?
I'm still trying to answer that question.

A friend recommended Mr. Timothy to me and I'm awfully glad she did, for, in one reading, I've discovered a new writer I know I'll enjoy following, but, more importantly, I now have another source of recommendations I know I can trust. The Timothy of the title is our old friend Tiny Tim, now fully grown, no longer Tiny and pretty much cured of whatever it was that ailed him. It's now the 1860's, he's boarding in a brothel (like you do) and spending his evenings helping a colorful old salt haul dead bodies from the Thames. Not for profit, mind you, more just for the company. That's just the kind of cheerful young chap he's become. Scrooge is still around, too, and still keeping Christmas 365 days of the year and still generously supporting young Tim. But it's Tim who's seeing spirits these days and talking to them as well. Bob Cratchitt, in particular, can't seem to get free of this earth and Tim finds dear old Dad turning up in doorknockers, on street corners and in the picture frames on display at his brother's photography studio. So, though he himself is very much alive, death seems to be hovering around Tim at every turn and we're not too surprised, therefore, when dead bodies start turning up on dry land, too. Tim finds himself investigating a mystery that owes as much to Hollywood convention as to Dickens, with the aid of a pair of junior partners straight out of central casting. (If you've ever seen the movie Young Sherlock Holmes you'll know what I mean when I say that this book is to Dickens, what that film was to Conan Doyle.) But it's all good fun, will undoubtedly make a terrific movie and I'm looking forward to reading Bayard's new book, The School of Night.

Then, for something completely different, I decided to go back to a book I'd started some time ago, one about a girl and two boys, one of whom is also named Tim, running around the streets of 19th century London. No difficulty at all keeping the two stories straight, no siree.
However, Jaff and Tim soon leave Ishbel and the animals of Jamrach's Menagerie behind and sign on to a whaling ship that will take them half way 'round the world in search of a dragon.
I was quite pleased when I learned I'd be getting Jamrach's Menagerie as an ER book. Comparisons to Great Expectations and Moby Dick and the fact that it was longlisted for this year's Orange Prize gave me great expectations of my own. And I actually ended up liking it quite a lot. I was able to accept the more horrific moments as necessary to the story being told, stomach churning as they may have been. Jaffy Brown is an engaging narrator and his story is both fantastic and completely believable. Birch gilds her considerable period detail with just enough of the haze of mysticism to keep the reader slightly off balance in the best sort of way. When Jaffy does finally make it back home again, he finds his way back into the world in a way that feels so right that it makes one glad to have gone on the journey with him, in spite of all the horrors. The final chapters are tender and luminous.

On a side note, the one thing that did make me slightly uncomfortable about Jamrach's Menagerie was the nagging feeling that I'd read quite a lot of this before and, at first, I couldn't remember where or when. It was the reference to the Nantucketer Owen Coffin that brought it back to me. Coffin was aboard the whaleship Essex when it was rammed and sunk by what has often been called a "rogue" whale though I would argue it was simply a whale with a keen sense of justice. Coffin, who seems to have been star-crossed from the moment of his christening, survived the whale attack only to die some weeks later when he and his starving comrades drew lots to determine who would die so that the others might live. One can't help but wonder what might have become of him had his name been Smith or Johnson. All this is chronicled in Nathaniel Philbrick's superb work of non-fiction, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, but that's not the book that was nagging at me while I was reading Jamrach.
The captain of the Essex was another Nantucketer, George Pollard, who just happened to be Coffin's first cousin. He was one of two survivors ultimately rescued at sea. He ended his days as a night watchman on Nantucket, shunned by most of the community. His story is richly imagined in Henry Carlisle's 1984 novel, The Jonah Man. (I can't seem to make this title work as a touchstone, sorry.) I don't mean to suggest that Carol Birch has borrowed anything from that earlier novel. The sinking of the Essex has provided inspiration for writers since the story was first known. But I do wonder if Jamrach's Menagerie will still be haunting me, as the Jonah Man still does, twenty-seven years from now.

I enjoyed Mr. Timothy a lot when I read it several years ago, Stephen. I am glad to see you liked it. I really need to track down some of Bayard's other books. Thanks for the reminder!

>69 TomKitten:: he's boarding in a brothel (like you do) ... -- that made me laugh!

Me too --

I found the story of the man himself in Z to be what kept me reading. Indestructible and so strange.

#'s 70 -72 Thanks for the feedback!
Lucy,
I'm glad to know you survived your own encounter with angry members of the animal kingdom attacking modes of transportation. I hope you arrive home safely and without further mishap.
S.

thanks -- I'm home (1 a.m.) Tired. But I know you just have to go about and have a day, get as much stupid stuff done as possible, so the next day might be reasonable.

#71 Me too!

I enjoyed reading your reviews on the last 3 books. I'll have to add Mr. Timothy to the wishlist. I'm a big Dickens fan. I loved your comparison to the movie Young Sherlock Holmes, lol! I enjoyed that film, so I'm thinking I would like Mr. Timothy, sounds fun.

Sandy K

#76 Thanks, Sandy!

Travel reading/listening

Another 24 hours of driving took me through all of True Grit and The Lost Books of the Odyssey, as read by Donna Tarrt and Simon Vance respectively. I liked much of Zachary Mason's book and probably would have found it more compelling had I consumed it in smaller portions. Simon Vance's reading is excellent, as usual. Of True Grit I can only say, where have I been all this book's life? Suffice to say that upon finishing listening to the book, I wanted to run right out and buy a copy and read it all over again for myself. Add my name to the legion of true believers - it's everything it's devotees say it is.

I already have both of those in the BlackHole. Glad to see you enjoyed them, especially True Grit!

I read a book!! Actually, I read more than one! And now I even have a few minutes to write about them! This, more than anything, marks a major change in the seasons of my year. I do love summer, I really do but this one left little time for anything other than work so it really is nice to have a bit of reading time again. And though, at this point, the seventy-five mark seems hopelessly out of reach, it's also nice to have a couple of minutes to jot down some impressions of this month's reading.

I finally finished the Steig Larsson trilogy by listening to The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest over the course of several weeks driving the short distance between my home and one of my summer jobs. I found it not nearly as engaging as the first two, but the completist in me was glad to have done with the series. And Simon Vance remains the gold standard of narrators.

The Katie Roiphe book, Still She Haunts Me, has been in the queue since I picked it up at a library book sale a few years back. It's a novel that attempts to fill in some of the unknowns about the relationship between C.L. Dodgson, the shy, stuttering mathematics lecturer who the world came to know as Lewis Carroll and his youthful muse, Alice Liddell. In particular, Roiphe tries to explain why the family broke off communication between Dodgson and Alice as she was entering adolescence. It's a novel so liberties are, of course, taken with the facts, but, despite generally sympathetic portraits of all parties involved the novel fails to convince.

On the other hand Arthur Phillips' witty and daring novel and play, The Tragedy of Arthur may fail at aping Shakespeare but it's just so much fun that one happily goes along for the ride. The conceit of the novel is that it's an introduction to a newly discovered Shakespeare play and one can almost hear Phillips chuckling as he gets in dig after dig at the Bard, the writing life, the whims of publishing, academia and even himself, going so far as to quote scathing reviews of his own work. And, for those of us who love Shakespeare, it's good to be reminded, every now and again, that he, too, had his off-days, one of which might have even resulted in something as awkward and disjointed as The Tragedy of Arthur.

It was a visit to Fallingwater last Spring that lead me to Franklin Tober's excellent Fallingwater Rising: Frank Lloyd Wright, E. J. Kaufmann and America's Most Extraordinary House, one of the best works of non-fiction I've read in many a year and certainly the best thing I've ever read about the complex relationship between an architect and his client. Actually, Kaufmann was more patron and partner than client and it's entirely likely that Fallingwater would have fallen into the waters of Bear Run had Kaufmann not played such an integral role in it's engineering and construction. The revelation is that Fallingwater is not the product of one great man, but of two determined, headstrong, egotistical and visionary geniuses, often working at odds, but ultimately working together to create one great building.

B. Traven's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre ended up in my baggage on a recent trip because of it's size and weight, more than anything else, but it came with a fair amount of baggage of it's own. Even though it's been years since I've seen the film, it was hard to get some of those images and oft-quoted lines out of my head. ("Nobody gets the best of Fred C. Dobbs." "Badges? We don't need no stinkin' badges!") Truth to tell, the dialogue in the film is far more convincing than most of that in the book. Still, it's a cracking good read and I'm glad I finally got around to it.

TK

So glad to see you around again! Now I know that summer is truly over. Hooray for audio books also.

I lost track of you for awhile, somehow, but now that I've rediscovered your thread I'd like to chime in as another huge fan of Tina Fey - I haven't read her book yet, but I'm looking forward to it. I never go in expecting too much on these sorts of books, so I'm sure I won't be disappointed.

81 - Hi Lucy,
Oh, yes, summer is well and truly over, especially after last night's ignominious end to the Red Sox season. Ah, well, there's always next year.

82 - You didn't so much lose me, I was rather lost myself in work for for the last few months. Good to be back reading and writing again and, of course, looking forward to more 30 Rock!

A great week for reading, with two books that made me laugh out loud, repeatedly.

If Will Self's Great Apes isn't the best satirical novel ever written it can at least lay claim to being one of the most ingeniously rude. After a night of sex, drugs and rocky London art openings, artist Simon Dykes wakes up to discover that, not only has he turned into a chimpanzee but so has everyone else in the world, including his lover, his ex-wife and his children. Needless to say, he does not take the news well. He's carted off by the little chimps in white coats and eventually put in the care of the renowned Oliver Sacks-like psychiatrist Zack Busner, who attempts to cure Simon of his delusion that he is actually a human. Self has a great deal of fun with language and just about everything else and, if the energy flags a bit toward the end, all is forgiven by the time one reaches the last chapter, where Simon finally encounters humans in the wild. In fact, this may be the longest shaggy dog, or, more accurately, shagging monkey, story ever put down on paper, but, unlike most such things, the end enduced guffawing, not groaning. More fun than a barrel of humans.

I think I'm going to have to try a Self -- or put one or two into K's stocking for xmas and then sneak off with them.....

#85 - Hi Lucy,
Good to hear from you. Sounds like an excellent plan. I've been enjoying reading about the SEL cataloging adventure.

More of this week's fun reading:

I love good books about music and musicians almost as much as I love good music. I particularly appreciate a writer who's able to show me a how a certain style of music develops over time, as Gary Giddins did in his excellent biography, Bing Crosby: Pocketful of Dreams and Peter Guralnick did in Last Train to Memphis, the first of his two volume biography of Elvis Presley. Both writers understand what all real musicians know, that great music knows no boundaries and is not confined to any one genre or style and both do a splendid job of teasing out all the many musical and social influences that helped Harry become Bing and Elvis become King. In Lone Star Swing, Duncan McLean does much the same for Western Swing pioneer Bob Wills, though his approach is more personal, more of a fan's notes than the previously mentioned books. McLean, a Scot, from Orkney, journeyed to Texas in 1995 to try to track down the remaining members of Bob's band, the Texas Playboys, as well as other pioneers of Western Swing, a musical tradition he'd come to know and love from afar. It was his first time in the South, in fact, he'd only recently learned to drive and Texas was sure different from anyplace he'd ever known or been. He was none too systematic in his search, either, wandering from East to West Texas, down to Austin and then back up North to end at the annual Bob Wills celebration in Bob's hometown of Turkey, Texas.

Though his name is virtually synonymous with the form, Bob Wills certainly didn't invent Western Swing. In fact, there were many midwives to this music, working the dance halls of cow country from the '20's through the beginnings of the rock 'n' roll era. An extraordinary blend of jazz, blues, gospel, folk, pop, country, swing, German polkas and Tex-Mex cojunto, Western Swing is the American musical melting pot on high boil. But it was Wills who took it out of Texas and brought it to the attention of the rest of the world, so much so that two of the Playboys biggest hits, "New San Antonio Rose" and "Faded Love," are still known the world over. By all accounts, Wills was not even an especially skilled musician, but what he lacked in technique he more than made up for in showmanship and his uncanny ability to recruit the best players and meld them into bands that were far greater than the sum of their considerable parts. At one time his touring band was larger than Ellington's or Basies's and featured just as many horns as guitars and fiddles. Changing tastes and Wills' own erratic behavior eventually doomed the Playboys, but Western Swing has had a bit of a renaissance in recent years, thanks to bands like Asleep at the Wheel, who have recorded two Bob Wills tribute albums, and Hot Club of Cowtown, who go even further in blurring the line between Django and jingle-jangle.

But, there's nothing like the original, as Duncan McLean knows, so off he went, in his red rental Chevy, to look for this particular slice of America. The result is one of the most delightful books I've read in years. In fact, I can't remember when I've devoured a book at such a ferocious pace. Couldn't stop reading it, didn't want to stop reading it, and couldn't stop smiling at almost every page. He's a great guide, Mr. McLean, whether he's taking you to an onion festival on the Mexican border or describing a night spent in a low-rent motel, the kind of place that makes you glad you only had to read about it. Highly, highly recommended. Enjoy it with a cold one and a vintage recording of "Big Balls in Cowtown."

The McLean sounds great -- I'm collecting books now for K's xmas list....... so that looks like a real winner!

It's so nice to have you back!

And, coming home last week, we finally finished listening to ...

Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go which I liked fairly well. Narrator Rosalyn Landor finds exactly the right tone to echo Ishiguro's minimalist storytelling. I can't remember whether this one was mentioned in all the discussion on Sibyx's thread about dystopian fiction but I'd say it more than qualifies.

Not mine, although it is on my wishlist.... it was on someone's thread, for sure.

Just finished reading a very fine and very moving novel by Yannick Murphy entitled The Call, about a year in the life of a Vermont veterinarian and his family. It sneaks up on you, this one does, but by the end I was so grateful that a friend put this in my hands, as I might have otherwise missed it.

Mrs. Kitten and I finished listening to March by Geraldine Brooks over the weekend. While it was certainly engaging and Richard Easton's narration is very good indeed, something about it didn't quite work for me. The beginning is so strong and as long as we're with Mr. March in the there-and-then of the border states in 1862 things clip along at a fine pace. But the flashbacks to dear old Concord and Emerson and Thoreau set my mind a wandering. (I've always had a fairly low tolerance for that set anyway so perhaps it only required the mention of their names for me to tune out.) And then the ending just kind of dribbles away. Still, a worthy effort and a great performance by Mr. Easton.

March is coming up soon for me, I think, in my arbitrary and impenetrable queue. None of Brook's books work perfectly for me, but they are very good and offer something, so I keep reading them. I'll have to look for the Murphy, I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff.

Here's the correct link to Yannick Murphy's novel, The Call. There are many books with that title or one very similar and the link in #91 goes to one by John Hersey. The Murphy does sound good. I'm still wondering about trying March. I have the same ambivalent feeling about Brooks, Lucy. And I am reminded that I need to get to her husband Tony Horwitz's latest, Midnight Rising, which I'm supposed to be reviewing for the ER program. Him, I like.

93 I think you'd find a lot to like in the Yannick Murphy book, Lucy. Certainly the terrain will be very familiar to you.

94 Linda, thanks for supplying the correct link. I've really enjoyed everything I've read by Tony Horwitz, too, and I'm curious about this new book. John Brown dominates one of the flashback chapters of March so I'm sure there were many interesting conversations about this engimatic character in the Brooks/Horwitz household. For better or worse, Cloudsplitter has forever colored everything I'll ever see or read about John Brown.

It's been several years since I read Cloudsplitter, and I hope I can remember enough to compare the factual account to the fictional one when I read Midnight Rising.

Hey, TK! Just thought I should stop by and say "Hi" - so, "Hi"!

(You make me jealous with all these "boxes of books" stories you tell, y'know...)

Liz, I wouldn't be too jealous. The treasures were few and far between, unless Frank Yerby happens to be one of your passions. He certainly was popular for a long time in central New York State. Half of every box, I swear! Still, for an average of a buck a box, it was good fun. We'd buy at auctions and estate sales on Saturday and take what we thought would sell to the flea market on Sunday, thus financing the next Saturday's shopping expedition. Happy days.

Hi! I'm reading Midnight Rising, the Horwitz book about John Brown, and it's quite good. Lots of detail.

The one minus of getting it as an ER book of uncorrected proofs is that the endnotes are sitting there at the back of the book but there are no numbers. When reading non-fiction, I do like to refer to the notes at times. It's a lot tougher this way.

The book about Fallingwater sounds interesting.

Very positive review of the new Horwitz book in today's NYT Book Review.

And another good one in the Boston Globe, I find.

43. Anne Fadiman, Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

Returning home from North Adams last weekend, Mrs. Kitten and I stopped for lunch in lovely Shelburne Falls, MA, as we have often done before. Shelburne Falls is best known for the Bridge of Flowers, created atop an abandoned trolly bridge that spans the Deerfield River.

http://www.bridgeofflowersmass.org/

Much of this corner of Massachusetts was hard hit by hurricane Irene. The Deerfield crested the Bridge of Flowers on August 28 and some businesses right on the river suffered heavy flood damage, but we were pleased to find the bridge still open and many things in bloom on October 22. Our usual lunch stop, The West End Pub, was one of the places hardest hit by the storm but they have a sister establishment, The Cafe Martin, across the river and on higher ground that was open and doing a roaring business. Easy to see why, too. Can't remember when I've had a better bowl of soup in a restaurant.

http://www.cafemartinsf.com/

After lunch we decided to look into a nearby second floor bookstore we'd not visited before. Named for the owner, Nancy L. Dole, Books & Ephemera, is a smallish shop, just a couple of rooms but with an excellent hand-chosen selection of books in every field. Nancy's passions are early technology, local history and the paper ephemera in evidence throughout the shop. Nancy is a real old school bookseller, in the shop seven days a week, buying and selling in person, and she told us that she really doesn't do much on-line at all. You can visit her at 32 Bridge Street in Shelburne Falls, MA.

We were running short of time so we promised ourselves a return visit next time we passed through the area, but I did find a signed paperback copy of Anne Fadiman's Ex Libris, which, I suspect, some of you will know. If you don't you should. Bibliomania, of a very personal kind, was never so lovingly portrayed. In one essay, Fadiman writes about reading, in desperation and in the absence of other reading material, a 1974 Toyota Corrolla manual. I was reminded of Sibyx and her profile statement about reading a pony club manual if there was nothing else available.

Not wanting to get too far behind in reading the biography of Elizabeth in which I'm immersed, I had to dole this one out to myself in small portions or I could have devoured it all in one sitting - much like the Tuscan bean soup at Cafe Martin. Having now polished off both, I can say they were equally delicious, equally satisfying.

Shelburne Falls was once again walloped by the weather two days ago when 20 inches of snow fell on Franklin County, compelling the guardians of the Bridge of Flowers to close it a couple of days early this year. It will re-open in the Spring. The Cafe Martin and Nancy L. Dole are open year 'round.

what a delightful excursion, Tom. Thanks so much for sharing it with us.

Ha ha! I can tell you in loving detail exactly how to use a hoofpick.

I don't often use a pick myself but when I do I prefer a Fender medium.

I'm assuming a hoofpick is best suited for country music, yes?

44 - 51 Clearing the decks, padding the list.

A busy Guy Fawkes day today. I finally finished the Alison Weir biography of Elizabeth I this morning. Actually, the last half of this really galloped along and I only use the word "finally" because this has been sitting on my bedside table, (which I like to think of as the on-deck circle for my TBRs) for at least two years. All this time I've been reading around it, worried that the author might have little new to add to a story I already know fairly well. To my surprise and delight, this proved not to be the case at all. This is certainly the most intimate biography of the VQ I've ever read and I finished it with a great sympathy and even sadness for Elizabeth. She's easy to admire but, I think, much more difficult to understand as a person so I'm grateful that Weir allowed me to do just that. She even makes it comparatively easy to keep all the other players straight. So a tip of the hat to Alison Weir's The Life of Elizabeth I.

The rest of the day's reading I'm slightly embarrassed to include here, not because there's anything particularly wrong with any of the books but just because they're all so short. But having already included Mr. Bear and the Robbers on this list and recognizing that, at this rate, I'll never make it to 75 without a bit of padding, I felt somewhat justified, if also still somewhat guilty, in listing them. These were all loaners, too, so I wanted to get them read and returned to their owners before they disappeared into the maelstrom.

A friend loaned me the Philip Van Doren Stern book, The Greatest Gift, which is the story that inspired the movie It's A Wonderful Life. This was originally a privately printed Christmas card, so you can imagine how little time it took to finish. It's the rare book I sit down to with a cup of coffee and finish before the coffee gets cold. It's also the rare book that I finish and say to myself, "What do you know, for once the movie was better!" You do get the central idea of the movie - how one person's life effects so many others - but what's missing are all the terrific supporting players. There's no Mr. Potter, no Mr. Gower, no Martini, no Bert, no Ernie, no Zuzu. In fact, George's crisis at the bridge feels a bit unmotivated in the story, where he's just kind of disgruntled that his life has never amounted to much. Capra's film wisely raises the stakes in so many ways, culminating with the arrival of the bank examiner and George's panic over the missing money. So I'll call this one an interesting artifact and I look forward to watching the film again with a new appreciation for Capra's storytelling abilities.

Another friend loaned me a pile of picture books, all by Phillip Ressner, a writer I had not known before but one who clearly had a quirky, sly mischievous sense of fun. I'm glad to have made his acquaintance. Dudley Pippin and Dudley Pippin's Summer were my favorites.

Penny for the Guy?

104 - Schumann'w Wild Horseman might have a pick in his pocket -- really anything equine-inspired will do!

Capra was a genius. I went through a Capra mania in college.

# 52 - M. T. Anderson, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to The Nation: Volume 1, The Pox Party

I have, at times, gone off on a bit of a tear about the arbitrary dividing of literature into reading groups by age and how that does a disservice to both readers and books. One of the questions that used to drive me nuts, both as a children's librarian and a bookseller was the old, "For what age group would you say this book is appropriate?" or some variation thereof. I always wanted to reply, but seldom did, "I wouldn't say. Let the reader look at it. If he or she likes it then it's appropriate. If they don't, bring it back and try something else." Such is the utopian world in my head in which I sometimes live. But I've often suspected that this ghetto-izing of literature by age group keeps many great books from finding the wider audience they deserve.
I'm off on this tear again today because I very nearly fell into that trap myself and missed reading a superb book simply because of its marketing segment. This book, specifically. I had looked at it a couple of times in shops, when it first came out but always put it back because it was labeled a YA book and, I confess, I think of myself as someone not all that interested in reading what I imagine most YA books to be about - troubled contemporary teens doing troubled contemporary teen things. You know, S. E. Hinton, M. E. Kerr, J. D. Salinger and the like.
So it's a real pleasure to report that this is one brilliant piece of fiction, no matter who it's supposedly for. Anderson is a masterful storyteller, with a supple ear for voices. His setting is Boston and environs immediately before and during the American Revolution. We meet his protagonist, Octavian, as a young resident of a somewhat unorthodox institution of learning. As we learn more about the place and the conditions of Octavian's residency the aims of the masters become clearer and more sinister and Anderson allows us to come to this awareness along with Octavian. If this is a coming of age story it is coming of age under the most brutal conditions, under tyrrany disguised as kindness. Yet when the metaphor is turned on it's head and Octavian finally escapes to join the side that he feels offers the greatest hope of liberty, the choice seems not just right but inevitable.
I look forward to diving into volume 2 tonight.

Whoa! I'm going to have to look for this one.

+1 on the love for Octavian Nothing.

I wasn't as fond of vol. 2 ... but that was probably only because it was a pretty good book that followed a terrific one.

108 - I'll be happy to share my copy with you next time I see you, Lucy.

109 - Hi Swynn,
I've just started Volume 2 so, based on your note, I'll try to keep my expectations in check. (I find that's the secret to happiness in life anyway.)

It was fun watching the National Book Awards webcast tonight. I was very grateful we didn't have to sit through those hideous dance numbers again.

Hi Stephen - just found your thread.

You've reminded me that I have had David Starkey's biography of Elizabeth I sitting unread on my shelf for years. Perhaps next year? I'm always meaning to read more history books and then I pick up another novel instead.

*Heads off to check out Octavian Nothing*

# 53 The Hound of the Baskervilles, a play by Steven Canny and John Nicholson.
An extremely funny adaptation of the Holmes classic. Three actors play all the roles. Much hilarity ensues. I'm about to start directing a production of this and very much looking forward to the journey. I've been wanting to work on it since seeing it two years ago at Shakespeare & Co.

#54 M.T. Anderson, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: Volume II, The Kingdom On the Waves

Well, I can't say I wasn't warned. (109, above.) In fact, Swynn nicely sums up the problem in this post. The first volume sets such a high mark that it would be nearly impossible to repeat, though a bit more editing might have helped. At 560 some pages, the narrative loses it's drive, sputters and stalls at about the mid-way point and never really regains the kind of momentum that kept volume 1 clipping along at such a nice pace.

>113 TomKitten:: Agreed on the pacing problems. Sorry your experience wasn't better than mine.

#55 Carol Ann Duffy Mean Time

Dovegreyreader wrote about some lovely Carol Ann Duffy Christmas books in a post earlier this month so I decided to see what I could find of Duffy's in our splendid local library. Mean Time is one of two non-Christmas books that found their way home with me. I don't read a lot of poetry but every now and again I'll pick something up and I'll be reminded of how powerful it can be and how much I really do like it. There's a directness, a clarity in Duffy's writing that I find very appealing. Beautiful stuff.

And speaking of poetry ..... We're just back from another trip to Western Massachusetts, where we got to see the eldest of the Kitten kittens in a brilliant production of Urinetown, a musical I quite like anyway. On the way home, we decided to try to find the Old Book Mill in Montague, MA. It's a place I've always wanted to visit, in part because I love their bumper sticker "Books You Don't Need In A Place You Can't Find." (Lucy wrote about this in one of her threads earlier this year). Well, we did find it, after a few wrong turns, and, among the books I didn't need, I found, on the "Just Arrived" table, a collection called Mortification: Writers' Stories of Their Public Shame. I picked it up and read the following piece, written in dialogue, by the poet Glyn Maxwell (who, I confess, I've never heard of):

Library Lady: So. Excellent. Are there any questions for our poets? Yes? .... From anyone?
........ about anything? ....... in the, the, the poetry? We've heard today?

Long pause

Library Lady: Really, anything ....

Long pause

Library Lady: Actually I - oh, yes?
Schoolgirl: Like to ask Glen Maxwell something.
Poet: Yep. Sure. Great.
Schoolgirl: That last poem.
Poet: "Seventh Day?"
Schoolgirl: Yeah.
Poet: What would you like to ask?
Schoolgirl: Well. What's it about?
Poet: What's the poem about?
Schoolgirl: Yeah. What's it about?
Poet: Hmmm ..... I suppose you could say it's about it's about it's about let's see. The speaker or narrator, who may or may not be me ...

And this explanation goes on for two pages, ending with

......and he takes a you know a pill to sleep which ends his his consciousness his awareness as it indeed it ends the poem at that very exact point because beyond it there's only the see for yourself the well the the whiteness.

Long Pause.

Schoolgirl: Why didn't you just write that, then.

Needless to say I now own this book. Delicious.

Also picked up a copies of The Paris Wife, Emily Alone by Stewart O'Nan and Julian Barnes' Love, Etc.. And a bumper sticker, of course. Now all I need is a car.

Ok that is a snort coffee out my nose.

Isn't that store incrediby aesthetically appealing? We were there on a warm early summer day and everyone was milling around outside and all the doors and windows were open. But it looks too like it would have a cosy quality in the winter.

>116 sibylline:
It is very much as you say, though our experience of the place wasn't all that different from yours. By the time we got to the Book Mill last Sunday the day had turned almost balmy. People were having lunch outside, wandering out on to the porch overlooking the stream and basking in corners flooded with bright sunlight. We'll both have to go back to check your warm/cozy/winter theory but I can't imagine that it would be otherwise.

Mortification: Writers' Stories of Their Public Shame

I read that book! It was hilarious.

>118 Cynara:
Hi Cynara,
It really is great fun. I'm limiting myself to one or two mortifications per day as I find I want to prolong the fun as much as possible. Though I would like to assure all those who submitted that book parties where absolutely no one shows up are almost as agonizing for the bookseller as the writer. Imagine a small bookstore, really no more than two rooms, in a seaside resort. Now imagine an unknown writer, an esoteric subject and a perfect beach day in mid-August. What did we manage to talk about for two hours?

And oh, god, the one by the author who drank too much at his reading....

Pat Conroy told the story in his My Reading Life of being at a book signing and finding his father in another room happily autographing copies of Pat's The Great Santini: "Donald Conroy, Col. USMC Ret. The Great Santini"

> 120 That one's pretty wonderful, but then I'm finding that most of the best ones seem to involve some form of gastric distress.

> 121 Love that Conroy story!

>119 TomKitten: Tom, I have recently been invited to a book party, and I agree with you about a party where no one shows up. It happened to me and my wife in South Africa. We hired a disco, bought in lots of food and we waited and waited and waited and not a single soul showed up! Talk about mortifying! :)

Alan/TT

# 56 - 58: Two hits and a miss - Emma Donoghue's Room, Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and Kate Atkinson's When Will There Be Good News?

Another twenty-four hours in a car last week, which was almost enough time to finish two audio books. (The last disc of the Atkinson I parceled out over several runs of much shorter duration.) In between the voyage out and the return home I finished a proper book, too, so a good week, all in all. At this rate I just might make it to 65, which still gives me something to strive for next year.

I had heard so much about Room that I debated whether or not I really needed to read or listen to it at all. I'm so glad I decided to give it a go. If you've been avoiding this for similar reasons you might want to rethink that. A couple of months ago a friend said to me, "The one thing you should know - and this isn't giving anything away - is that it ends well." You should also know, I would add, that well before the half-way mark it takes a turn that I really did not see coming and the rest of the book is quite different from what I had been expecting. The primary narrator for the audiobook does a remarkable job of voicing this particular five year old. I did have a few quibbles with some of the other performances, particularly the choice to play a 59 old woman as if she were 89. But the writing, the characters and the inventiveness with which Donoghue carries her conceit to it's logical conclusion are all most impressive. Very highly recommended.

Oryx and Crake, on the other hand, just didn't work at all for me. I always approach a Margaret Atwood book in the hope that this will be another Surfacing or The Blind Assassin. And if she were to never write another word, I would still count her one of my favorite writers on the strength of those two books and a couple of others that did come close to those lofty heights. But she has, on occasion, sorely tested my loyalty, seldom more so than with this one. I cared about no one, I lost interest in the plot within the first fifty pages, found myself counting pages obsessively, and no matter how much research Atwood may have done I found her science unconvincing. I will admit, I'm not much for science fiction, though I don't mind a good dystopian romp every now and again, but the problems here were more with character and plot than with genre. I've sort of been collecting Atwood since the early '80's but I'll probably give this one back to the library sale from whence it came.

When Will There Be Good News? is the third Kate Atkinson I've read/listened to and I'm not sure I would have ever picked this up had it not been for the recent showing of Case Histories, on Masterpiece Mystery, which I quite enjoyed. I've been lukewarm about the non-mystery titles I've read, though they've all had their moments. So perhaps you'll appreciate how truly astonished I was to get half way through the first disc and feel like I was listening to a book that was written just for me. And I'm perfectly aware how egotistical that probably reads, but I hope I'll be forgiven if I say that I can't remember when, if ever, I've felt that way before. (Maybe The Tale of Tom Kitten?) Her sense of humor falls very close to my own and I laughed out loud at least five times on every major highway between here and there. Her cultural references were similarly synchronistic, to the point where, when one of my favorite characters happened to mention that a film I love and would certainly say is in my top five of all time, was her favorite, too - and we're talking something fairly off the beaten track here - I was no longer even mildly surprised. And if her dialogue isn't about as pitch perfect, as honest and as clever as can be you couldn't prove it by me. But most of all, I just loved, loved, loved her cast of messy, complicated and very human characters. I came to care deeply about so many of them.
A word about the Audio book: it seems there are at least three different recordings of this title, one narrated by Jason Isaacs, one by Ellen Archer and, the one that I heard, narrated by Steven Crossley.
I've no idea what the other two are like but it would be difficult to top Crossley's performance.
And if any further proof of how much I enjoyed this is needed, I offer as evidence the fifteen minutes I spent sitting in the car in my driveway, having already driven six hundred miles that day.

And if any further proof of how much I enjoyed this is needed, I offer as evidence the fifteen minutes I spent sitting in the car in my driveway, having already driven six hundred miles that day.

That alone is pretty good evidence of a worthwhile audio book! It's already on my list, or I'd add it right now!

At least you didn't end up in the wrong state on that long drive, which is what happened to me the last time I tried long-distance driving accompanied by an audio book. Sailed right past my exit and nearly 40 miles on down the road the "Welcome to New Jersey" sign brought me back to reality!

126! Oh yes I've done that when listening! Ha! I'm so glad you loved the Atkinson!!!!!!! Remind me of what movie it was so I don't have to page through the whole book.

As for the Atwood -- You know they are making the prototype for 'chickie nobs' meat in a petri dish? That science is, at least, spot on. And weren't the waving blue...... well, you know. I thought those 'new' people were unbelievable as people, yes, but allegorically? Cracked me up every time they sang their way into the book. But you don't like SF or dystopic much as a rule? Am I remembering correctly, so it makes sense you wouldn't care for it.

> 126, 127 Now I'm curious to know which audiobooks were responsible for transporting both of you across state lines?

> 127 The film is The Railway Children.

Yeah, the Atwood, was actually one of my least favorite reads in recent memory. Just dropped it off at the library for the book sale, in fact. Ah, well, experiences of the kind just make the ones that work that much richer.

For me, it was To Kill a Mockingbird read by Sissy Spacek. And I was in unfamiliar territory. I can listen OK driving back and forth to work, where the car knows where it's going without my help.

>129 laytonwoman3rd: Looking back, I see that you did tell me in March that To Kill A Mockingbird was the only audio book you had tried so far, Linda. My apologies for not remembering. They certainly help pass the time on otherwise tedious journeys but they can also be incredibly distracting. For years I couldn't listen to them at all. A line of dialogue or a description would trigger a chain of free associations and a half an hour later I'd have no idea where I was anymore in the story.

I think we were listening to Edith Wharton - the end of Lily Bart's life and we blew past our exit to get off 95 for the New London ferry to Orient Point...... no harm done. We were both kind of sobbing, I think, though. Anyway, we got turned around and back in time. I don't know who the reader was, it was ages ago.

Ah the Railway Children. I liked that one. Little Dog Lost was HUGE with me and you can't find a copy now and also a Disney movie about a cat with Patrick McGoohan as a crabby vet...... I can't remember the title right now, Thomasina? That is the cat's name, I know..... anyhow I went to great lengths to find it for the LD and she was indifferent. HER movie was That Darn Cat which I know parts of by heart. And, strangely, the old Robin Hood. Or not so strangely.

#59. David Yeadon, Seasons On Harris: A Year in Scotland's Outer Hebrides

Whenever I hear Tony Bennett sing "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" - and it happens to be one of those songs that pops up fairly regularly on my iPod, for some reason - I start mentally cataloging all the places where little bits of my own heart contentedly wait for my return. I haven't traveled a great deal, in fact, some would say hardly at all, but I have been fortunate enough to spend at least a small amount of time in places that, in one way or another, have become an essential part of who I think I am. They speak to me in words that say: this place is a part of you and a you that you need to know better is part of this place. These are the places that regularly crop up in dreams and even haunt my daytime hours. Places that I'll drive hundreds of miles out of my way just to glimpse again for half an hour. Often water is involved - a lake, a beach, a stream at the bottom of a gorge - but more often than not I find myself at a loss to identify precisely the particular characteristics of the place that effect me so profoundly.

I have a friend, a reluctant traveler, who once he is finally persuaded to visit a new place, invariably falls in love with it and begins dreaming up plans to buy or build a new home in his new found land.
My connections are more tentative. Even in this place where I live now and have lived for more than thirty years, I'm acutely aware that I am and always will be an outsider, the proverbial stranger in a strange land. I have few illusions about "belonging" in any of these places that speak to me. So whereas my reluctant traveler friend, once enamored, rushes to give his whole heart, body and soul to his new love, I long to go back to one of my special places not to join but to retrieve what I've left behind, to examine it again and understand how this place has shaped and altered this particular corner of my heart.

I spent most of August of 2000 living and working in Edinburgh. Well, sort of working. A couple of friends had decided to take an original play to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and I was hired to be one of the four actors in the piece. Mrs. Kitten and I decided we should make a proper family vacation of this opportunity so we found a flat we thought we could afford in the Polwarth area of Edinburgh, packed up the two Kitten kittens, then ages 11 and 9, and off we went. Once the show opened, my duties consisted of getting to the theatre about 6:30 every evening, performing to an audience that usually consisted of my family, the playwright and, at most, six other people and then clearing out as fast as possible so the next company could load-in their show, scheduled to start ten minutes after ours ended. The rest of the day and night I had to myself so all us Kittens had plenty of time to get to know Edinburgh and experience all that city has to offer during the festival season, from street performers to the Tattoo, from Sean Connery's birthday party (no, he didn't show) to film premieres and every kind of theatre - good, bad and really, really bad. We spent many very pleasant days at the Book Festival where the boys got to meet and talk to quite a few of their favorite writers including J.K. Rowling, Michael Morpurgo, Brian Jacques, Terry Jones and Phillip Pullman. At the end of the four weeks, we rented a car and drove from Edinburgh up into the Highlands, stopping at Doune Castle, where much of Monty Python and the Holy Grail was filmed and where the boys got to play with the hallowed hollowed coconut halves that were used in the film. (They keep them behind the counter in the gift shop. Or they did at that time, anyway.) Traveling on through some of the most spectacular scenery I've ever seen, we eventually crossed over the new bridge and spent our first night out in a B&B on Skye, then got up the next morning and caught a ferry from Uig to Tarbert on the Island of Harris in the Outer Hebrides. All this had been planned before we even left the States, as I really wanted to see the Callanais standing stones on Lewis. (Lewis and Harris are really all one island, though a mountain range divides the two.) We had a little more than two days on Harris and Lewis, during which we saw more than one stone circle, as it turned out, as well as other antiquities that fascinated at least one of us, spent an afternoon on a stunningly gorgeous white sand beach, visited a weaver's studio and tried desperately to find something for four vegetarians to consume. It was not an entirely jolly trip. This was the longest the boys had ever been away from home, from friends and the familiar, and they were pretty much ready to go home even before we left Edinburgh. I confess to being a bit impatient with their waning curiosity and their whining about having to look at "more big rocks."

All of which is to say that of all that we saw, all that we experienced in that embarrassment of riches that was our August of 2000, I'm still a bit surprised to note that it wasn't until we reached Lewis that I managed to lose another sizable chunk of my heart. Can't even say exactly where, let alone why. There's no hereditary connection that I'm aware of. Parts of the island are downright bleak and forbidding. But the fact remains, I think about it often and long to see it again.

So perhaps you can imagine how pleased I was to find David Yeadon's book, Seasons on Harris: A Year In Scotland's Outer Hebrides at the library book sale last year. I read sections from it that same day, then, reluctantly, slipped it into the TBR queue, knowing that when it's number finally came up, that day would be a fine day indeed.

And so it was. Mr. Yeadon and his wife, Anne, seem to have made somewhat of a career of living for extended periods of time in interesting places, to which I can only say, with no little envy, nice work if you can get it. I very much appreciate that, in writing about the Island, he never allows himself to forget that he's an outsider. But he also doesn't let that stand in his way either. He's definitely a people person and seems to have the ability to charm almost everyone with whom he comes in contact. Friends are made at the drop of a scone and it would be hard to calculate the number of cups of tea or drams drunk in this book. Much of what we learn about Harris - and we learn a great deal - comes from Mr. Yeadon's meticulous recording of his conversations with his new friends. He has a great ear for both dialogue and dialect and he allows his friends to tell their stories, give their impressions of island life, express their fears and desires, with a minimum of editorializing. We get to see quite a lot of Lewis and Harris in the company of the Yeadons and, in one of my favorite chapters, we even go with them to one of the most hauntingly remote spots on earth, the island of St. Kilda.

As the book ends, and the Yeadons prepare to leave the island, it seems that the tweed industry, which has been so vital to the island's economy, may, once again be on the rise. It's a hopeful note to end on, for a place where hope has often been in short supply.

And now that little piece of my heart is calling even louder.

What a delightful post, Stephen. Those first two paragraphs really speak to me (I'm married to a "reluctant traveler" like your friend, who also tends to fall in love with places once he's been badgered into getting there at last). I believe that if I were blindfolded and set down on the road to my family's ancestral home a certain feeling would come into my heart, and I would know exactly where I was. With my eyes open, I can feel the world drop away from me about the time we leave the black top and start down that three miles of red dirt road that leads to that farm.

> 133 Thank you, Linda. I completely understand what you're saying about the road to the family farm. There is one heart-place I try to go back to every few years and every road that leads me there glows with the anticipation of the destination.

#60 Carol Ann Duffy, Rapture

In the afterglow of reading someone who uses words so sparingly yet with such precision and power, it's hard for me to find words to express how much I loved this book. The Times quote on the cover will have to suffice: "Brilliant, beautiful and heart-aching."

I loved yr. post so much TK -- I knew a fair amount abt. the trip before, but not quite in this way.

Even in this place where I live now and have lived for more than thirty years, I'm acutely aware that I am and always will be an outsider, the proverbial stranger in a strange land.
I love visiting other places but I am always happy to return to my present location. I was born on the Chesapeake Bay, grew up in the Caribbean and now live in California, married to a Californian and mother to two Californians. I feel like the Caribbean was where I truly developed but I was totally aware that I would never be considered a native. I also am always reminded (by Monsieur on a regular basis) that I am not, nor will ever be a Californian. I always felt an empathy for those people who were born in one country, to parents from another country, and then move to a third country and somehow not be a citizen of any one of them.

> 136 Thanks so much, Lucy. That means a lot to me.

> 137 I think this feeling of not belonging is far more common than it's opposite, Mamzel. Maybe that's part of what makes a place like Harris or your Caribbean home so attractive -the sense one gets that here is a place where real community is still possible.

# 61. Robin Robertson, editor. Mortification: Writers' Stories of Their Public Shame

"Writer's trousers are famously unpredictable in many ways," writes A.L. Kennedy and that sets the tone for the best and funniest of these stories of gastric distress, over imbibing, conspicuous misbehaving and disintegrating pants on the author appearance circuit. The misery of others was never so enjoyable.

#62. Jon Clinch, Finn
Linda's five star review of Kings of the Earth sent me to the stacks at my local to see if either of Jon Clinch's books were to be found there. I really hadn't intended to take anything home, just to sample and get a sense of his writing. One page later and there I was, waiting in line at the circulation desk, book in hand.

Unlike Linda, whose review of Finn I agree with in every other respect, I do rather like novels that recycle characters from other works. (Mr. Timothy and Jack Maggs are two that come to mind.) This is certainly a major tonal shift from Twain's masterpiece but there's nothing about Clinch's book that feels false or contrived. Not for the squeamish but highly recommended nonetheless.

Well, what a coincidence. I came home after being out for the evening last night to find my husband "sampling" Kings of the Earth, after he had read my review and questioned what he called my "fascination" with "those men in New York". Now, understand we had watched the documentary about the real brothers this book is based on a few years ago, and he was only mildly interested in it. I told him I wasn't fascinated by those men in particular, but that Clinch's storytelling ability just lays me out. He had decided to read Finn as soon as he finishes what he's currently reading, but now he is "intrigued" by Kings of the Earth as well. I keep telling him good things happen when he listens to me!

Linda, I learned a long time ago that good things invariably happen when I listen to Mrs. Kitten. Thanks so much for introducing me to Jon Clinch. I look forward to reading Kings of the Earth in the new year. Do you recall the name of the documentary?

The documentary was called My Brother's Keeper. I find that ironic, because there was a novel years ago about those other odd brothers, the Collyers, with that same title. I don't know whether you've read E. L . Doctorow's recent fictionalization of that pair, but if not you might want to put it on your list as well--it's called Homer and Langley.

Thanks for the information, Linda. I'll have a look for the film. I'm very familiar with the Collyer story, having once unsuccessfully auditioned for a really wonderful play by Richard Greenberg called The Dazzle which is based on their lives. I had forgotten about the Doctorow book, though, and, you're right I really should put that on my list.
Again, thanks!

Merry Christmas, Stephen!

Stephen,


glitter-graphics.com

Wishing you all the very best Stephen!

64. Joanna Briscoe, You, A Novel

An Early Reviewer book from the July list that finally arrived in October and has been hanging over me ever since.

It's probably not a good sign when I begin counting pages before I'm even a quarter of the way through a book, but the characters and the complicated web of relationships Ms Briscoe presents here simply failed to engage me. The setting, in Dartmoor National Park, is another matter entirely. Ms Briscoe obviously knows whereof she writes and perfectly captures the alluring, eerie and forbidding nature of that singular landscape of moor and tor, of bog and stream. I'm afraid I'm on the side of the dissenters on this one.

I've just spent five minutes studying your reading list this year TK, Bravo, it's such a fine one.

Thank you, Lucy! And may I say the same for your reading list?
I'm a bit chagrined that I'm going to fall ten books shy of the goal but I suppose that only serves to make 2012 more of a true challenge. I certainly already have at least 75 books lined up and ready to go among the TBR's.
Here's to a happy and prosperous New Year to all your household!

#65 William B. Jones, Jr., Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History

Comic books were just one of many forbidden fruits of my childhood - along with rock 'n' roll records, cleats on heels and any hair style longer than a crew cut. Oddly enough, my brothers and I were allowed to have comic books during those blissful ten days we spent at the lake cottage every summer, which, of course, made them all the more wonderful in our eyes. But during the school year? Never! Is it any wonder I hated school as much as I did?
In the hierarchy of acceptable and unacceptable comics, the books that were truly intended to be comic were deemed safest. Superhero comics were frowned upon but still managed to infiltrate the comic pile on the shelf above the kitchen table at the lake. As that house was shared by various members of my extended family, the comic pile even grew to include a few romance numbers, purchased, we assumed, by one or more of my female cousins. But the most forbidden of all fruits were Classics Illustrated comics, which dared to reduce great works of literature to the level of Superman. Under no circumstances were we permitted to purchase or read those. And, honestly, we didn't mind that much, as most of them looked pretty boring. I mean, Silas Marner or The House of the Seven Gables vs. Spiderman? No contest. Every now and again there'd be one that looked kind of interesting, like The Food of the Gods, with that giant chicken on the cover but we were largely content to leave Mom's defense of Great Literature unchallenged. "Well, gee, okay, Mom, I guess if I can't have Jane Eyre, I'll settle for The Silver Surfer."
It's somewhat surprising to me then, to note that so many of the covers and interior pages that appear in this copiously illustrated history are more than a little familiar. I can only conclude that Classics Illustrated comics were so much a part of the Zeitgeist of that era that even those of us who were forbidden to own them have them ingrained in our psyches.
Mr. Jones' passion for Classics Illustrated comics has inspired him to produce an exhaustive and, at times, exhausting, survey of the entire history of the books. Everything one could possibly want to know about the writers, artists, editors and publishers of the books is here included to the extent that if often becomes too much of a muchness. For the ardent collector or student of comic book art I'm sure this is would be a gold mine. For the general reader it's a bit of a slog, frankly, so intent is Mr. Jones on cataloging every contribution, great and small, to the development of the books. Still, it's great fun for casual browsing. The amount of material reproduced allows one to see, first hand, how the books developed and which artists really excelled at the form. I'm glad I had a chance to look at it.

Tom Kitten's Best of 2011 (The Cat's Meow)

A good year overall with some truly outstanding fiction titles.

Fiction
Kate Atkinson When Will There Be Good News?
Carol Birch, Jamrach's Menagerie
Peter Carey, Parrot and Olivier in America
Joyce Dennys, Henrietta's War and Henrietta Sees It Through
Emma Donoghue Room
David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
Charles Portis, True Grit

Non-Fiction
Franklin Toker, Fallingwater Rising
Alison Weir, The Life of Elizabeth I
David Yeadon, Seasons on Harris

Children's
Chizuko Kuratomi, Mr. Bear and the Robbers

Play
Kevin Rice, Hopper's Ghosts
Brenda Withers, The Ding Dongs or What's the Penalty in Portugal

Poetry
Carol Ann Duffy, Rapture

Fine list! We share the Atkinson. I liked Zoet, but I liked Cloud Atlas better.

Skibbling through for one last hello in 2011. See you in 2012!

New 2012 thread is here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/129618