Cushla's 2011 books - Chapter 2

Welcome to my second thread for 2011!

This thread's full up. New one's over here:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/118903

Currently reading:
A History of Modern Britain by Andrew Marr - p 140 of 600


____________________

I'm leaving in this list of books I made at the start of the year. I won't get through all of them this year, but they're on my radar.

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy FINISHED JUNE 2011
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel
Nixonland by Rick Perlstein
Rough Crossings by Simon Schama
Citizens by Simon Schama
This time is different by Carmen Reinhardt and Kenneth Rogoff
Life and Fate by Vassily Grossman
Testament of Experience by Vera Brittain
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The rise and fall of the 3rd Reich by William Shirer
Germany 1945 by Richard Bessel
Masters and Commanders by Andrew Roberts
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
The Children's Book by A S Byatt
Death by a Thousand Cuts by Michael Graetz and Ian Shapiro READ IN DECEMBER 2010

January
1. Case Histories by Kate Atkinson - 4 1/2 stars - Orange January and TIOLI first in series
2. As Always, Julia by Joan Reardon - TIOLI Christmas present - 4 stars
3. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot - TIOLI top LT books of 2010 - 4 stars
4. A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo - 1 star
5. Manhattan, When I was Young by Mary Cantwell - 3 1/2 stars
6. Dissolution by CJ Sansom - 4 1/2 stars

February
7. Dark Fire by C J Sansom - 4 1/2 stars
8. A Fork in the Road: A Memoir by Andre Brink - 4 stars
9. An Unfinished Business by Boualem Sansal - 4 1/2 stars
10. God's Philosophers by James Hannam - 3 1/2 stars

March
11. Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa - 4 1/2 stars (TIOLI Middle East challenge)
12. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson - 4 1/2 stars - TIOLI City on p 17 (Split)
13. Black Mamba Boy by Nadifa Mohamed - 3 1/2 stars - TIOLI City on p 17 (Aden)
14. February by Lisa Moore - 4 1/2 stars

April
15. Sovereign by C J Sansom - 5 stars
16. Revelation by C J Sansom - 4 stars
17. The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives - Lola Shoneyin - 3 1/2 stars - TIOLI Orange longlist
18. The Pleasure Seekers by Tishani Doshi - 4 stars - TIOLI Orange longlist
19. A Month in the Country by J L Carr - 4 stars
20. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins - 4 1/2 stars
21. The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis - 3 stars

May
22. Children of the Revolution - also known as The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears - by Denaw Mengistu - 4 stars
23. The Terracotta Dog by Andrea Camilleri - 4 stars

June
24. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy - 5 stars
25. Miss Buncle's Book by D E Stevenson - 5 stars
26. Henrietta's War by Joyce Dennys - 3 1/2 stars
27. The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman - 4 stars
28. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather - 5 stars
29. Every Light in the House Burnin' by Andrea Levy - 3 1/2 stars

Source of books:
1. Bought in 2010 - 3 books (1, 4, 8)
2. Presents - 3 books (2,5, 21)
3. Bought in 2011 for book club - 1 book (3)
4. Bought in 2011 for no good reason... 18 books (6,7,9,10, 11,12,13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27,28)
5. Bought before 2010 - 4 books (19, 20, 24, 29)

*saving room for later *

*saving even more room for later, because I always forget*

Book 12 was the excellent Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson.



There are 150 reviews on LT of this one already, so you probably know the story. Major Pettigrew is a 68 year-old curmudgeon whose wife Nancy died 6 years ago. He's lived in Edgecombe St Mary, a quiet village in Sussex, all his life, and Mrs Ali is the shopkeeper. Her parents left Pakistan way back when, and Mrs Ali's never set foot there, but that's besides the point to some of the locals. Both the main characters are so likable (and both love reading) and I just wanted them to get together from about page 3. The secondary characters were also really well written. I'm sure it'll get made into a movie soon and am looking forward to Simonson's second book.

Can't believe I'm here first!

And I enjoyed your review, being one of the very few who doesn't know this story. It does sound good though and I will most likely hunt it down sooner rather than later.

Drive by starring :)

Hello both of you!

Leonie, I hope you like it. I wouldn't have bought it if I'd just seen it in the shop because it could have been really cheesy in the wrong author's hands, but it wasn't.

Bekka how are you? Isn't your baby a month old tomorrow?

The Major Pettigrew book was such a nice read! I gave it to a friend to read after I finished it.

Following your recommendation and now your review I read the Major Pettigrew Kindle sample this morning and then bought the book right away, because the sample stopped half-way in the second chapter and I just had to know what happens next (amazon knows how to tease the readers...).

I have to force myself to finish that dreaded Wilhelm Meister today, but then the Major will be the next one I'll pick up as my main read.

I haven't added W&P to the TIOLI yet because I doubt I'll finish it this month. I kind of 'overate' on it last weekend when I was catching up the 'lost part 3' and read something close to 150 pages in 2 days. I had to take a short digestion break at the beginning of volume 3 and picked it up again on Friday.
It really felt like overeating - too much of a good thing. There are books you can read in a rush (I did that with Anna Karenina), but somehow for me this doesn't apply to W&P.
Btw, I am now starting to see the pseudo(?)-parallels to "Freedom", but I am not convinced. I know which one I like infinitely better!

#7 Wow good memory! Yes, he's 4 weeks today. Little pickle... well nto really, he's pretty good. It's juggling the two of them that's a problem. Cass is still playing up a lot which is exhausting. Nursery told me she was breastfeeding a doll on Friday though, which is hilarious. There are lots of pics on Facebook (Bekka Graham) but I'm having probs uploading onto LT.

Cushla, I can't believe I got so far behind on your thread. I'm glad to hear you have fixed a date for visiting London; I've been trying to work out if I can manage to get down south for a day or two then also. I have already got a weekend off planned, and was due to be going to Sheffield, but perhaps can do an extra leg to the journey...

I've finally got round to reading Dissolution a week or so ago, and have Dark Fire and Sovereign lined up to read soon. The presentation of Cromwell was so different after Wolf Hall that it was quite difficult to adjust at first, but I did enjoy the book.

I've been off LT - reading, but not posting much - because we've had school holidays. We've had the Basel Fasnacht celebrations this week and I'll post some photos in a few days. Today we're off to stay with our German teacher and her husband in France (near the border with Baden-Baden) for the weekend.

Nathalie, I'd never heard of Wilhelm Meister till I read that awful short bio of Goethe last year (ER book) and you're not tempting me at all! I have had a slack W&P week here but got finished Vol 2 Part 1 and it feels like eating a big box of chocolates - I like sneaking off to my favourite chair to read another few parts. (Hasn't happened since Monday though!). Hope you're enjoying Major Pettigrew. One of my RL friends did the same as you - downloaded the first chapter and had to find out what happened!

Genny, it's really nice to see you back here. I've caught up with your thread but haven't posted anything yet - I liked your Lent ideas a lot. Glad you liked Dissolution. I'm just working out what to take away for the weekend and Sovereign is one of the options.

I finally finished Book 13 - Black Mamba Boy by Nadifa Mohamed. I heard about this one on the Guardian Books podcast earlier this year, and it was longlisted for the Orange Prize last year. I liked it enough to recommend it for the interesting setting (Yemen, Eritrea, Somaliland mainly) but found it hard going, didn't love the style, and gave it 3 1/2 stars. I'll be back after I've had a coffee to get my thoughts together and put the picture of the cover in!

Morning Cushla, I'm looking forward to the pictures. I've never been to the Alemannische Fasnacht, I'd love to see it one day. I've grown up in the region where Mainzer (Meenzer) Fassenacht is celebrated. As a child I loved it, but now I don't really miss it. I used to go to the Frankfurt parade, but always avoided the big one in Mainz - too many people, far too many drunks. I loved the Thursday though, the 'Weiberfassenacht' when women cut off mens' ties. I remember the surprise of my uninformed colleagues fresh from the UK one year when they were 'attacked' by a hoard of office women with scissors. Good old times....

I finished Major Pettigrew, and it was just the book I needed. Great recommendation! I'll start Dissolution today.

W&P: I finished volume 3 part I. Part II will take a while. The parts are getting longer and 15 pages is now my daily limit.

Nathalie, pictures coming when I find the camera somewhere in the car!! the Basler Fasnacht parades that we went to were remarkably civilised (well maybe not remarkably) but I wasn't there at night. And I'd never heard of the tie-cutting-off thing in Mainz - that's funny. Glad you liked Major Pettigrew and hope you are another Dissolution fan. I'm hoping to read some more W&P today to catch up a bit with you.

I'm still thinking about what to say about Black Mamba Boy. Now I'm halfway through February by Lisa Moore, another of the books i bought in Zuerich in my splurge a while back. I am LOVING it - it might be worth 5 stars if it stays this good. It's the first Canadian book I've read in ages too, even though I usually like the ones I pick up.

I thought it was a bit strange that your thread had been inactive for a while on my starred list. Finally thought to double check just in case you'd started Chapter 2 :-)

#15 Alana, I'm glad you found me again!

It's spring here now and it's meant I've spent more time out in the sun than on LT. And I'm doing a lot more German homework, because I'm definitely doing an exam in October and it's going to require a ton of work... so my reading is slowing down.

Book 13: Black Mamba Boy by Nadifa Mohamed - 3 1/2 stars



I finished this last week and gave it 3 1/2 stars. Nadifa Mohamed is a Somali author and this novel is based on her father's amazing life, I think pretty closely. I first heard of it when Darryl read it last year, and then it was one of the books on the shortlist for the Guardian first novel award - there was an interesting interview with Mohamed on their books podcast.

It's set in the 1930s and 1940s. Jama, the main character, is a 10 year old boy from Somalia and living in total poverty with his mother in Aden, Yemen. When Ambaro, his mother, was pregnant with him, a black mamba crawled over her stomach and this was taken as a good omen. The book goes from one harrowing event to the next and Jama is desperate to find his father, who left Somalia to go to Sudan. Jama travels back to Somalia, Eritrea, Abyssinia, Sudan, Egypt, Palestine, and further afield. The settings and the material about the Italian occupation of Ethiopia/Eritrea and their terrible treatment of the locals were really interesting but awful to read. This definitely is not a book if you're squeamish about reading about torture and terrible violence. I really liked Jama, and wanted to see something good happen to him, and spoiler was so glad when it did all work out

I gave it only 3 1/2 stars because it felt like there was just too much in the book and because her writing style drove me mad. Her use of commas instead of full stops or semicolons started off as an interesting style thing, then just annoyed me. Here's one example of hundreds:

"He reached a ruined Oromo town, its once grand buildings fallen down and forgotten, after waiting hundreds of years for their inhabitants to return, the grief-stricken edifices finally fell apart."

Anyway, as Suzanne sometimes says, guardedly recommended if you'd like to read a book set in countries that we don't get to read about.

OK, I'm on a roll today and German homework is just not getting done.

Book 14 was February by Lisa Moore.



I really loved this book and nearly gave it 5 stars, but settled for 4 1/2. It was on the Booker longlist last year and I liked it more than The Finkler Question, which won.

In February 1982 the Ocean Ranger, an oil rig, sank off the coast of St John's. All 84 crew members died. February tells the story of Helen, whose husband Cal O'Mara was one of those who died, and her 4 kids. It jumps backwards and forwards from before 1982 to 2008, and I really liked this - it felt like I was slowly seeing more of her life before and after Cal's death. The writing was beautiful, and despite the main subject it wasn't unrelentingly sad. I also thought Lisa Moore captured what it's like to be married and bring up kids really well. It wasn't just a novel about grieving, because there was a second main story line about her son John, who ends up working in the oil industry like his father.

There were some really funny bits too - like when she was learning to drive, or doing yoga. I have survived 2 yoga classes in my life and am just too uptight for it - one of them was a class for pregnant women and when the instructor suggested we speak to our babies I told mine not to worry, we would be out of there very very soon. {Waiting for everyone who loves yoga to tell me it's worth another try...}

Hi Cushla. Your latest read looks pretty wonderful. I hope my library has it because I'm done buying books until the library book sale at the end of April.

I need to explore those longlists better...for both the Booker and the Orange Prize. There are some real winners there that don't get the recognition they deserve.

Last two reads look interesting, although I've got to confess, on the cover of February, it looks like she's getting ready to, um, be sick.

(Did I use enough commas for you? Hee, hee)

#18 Donna, I think you'd liked February - hope your library has it.

#19 Lisa, your commas at least do what commas are meant to do! I hadn't noticed her looking like she's about to be sick but it's either that or they're feeling her tummy because she's pregnant, which would fit the story well. I like this cover more than the other one, which has a woman looking the other way (there was just a whole conversation about it but I can't remember whose thread it was on!).

Both these last 2 books were from my splurge in Zuerich a while back. I've been good since then but have 3 of the Orange longlist coming from Book Depository soon. I got out of Bider & Tanner unscathed today so my discipline is still better than last year!

Hi Cushla. Your review of February is making me reconsider it. I have a dim memory of a couple of LTers who didn't like it but I think I'll try it from the library.

I hated my first yoga class but eventually found one I really liked when I lived in NY. I've tried a couple in Idaho that haven't worked out. So much of it depends on the teacher, the style of yoga and the other students for me.

What I have liked out here is a Tai Chi/Qigong class I've taken. Lots of layers to it physically and mentally that keep it interesting and challenging.

Hi Cushla, I loved your Yoga story, it made me giggle. I agree that it really depends on the teacher for yoga classes and the style they teach. I have such weak hands and wrists that I find many positions difficult and slow to get in and out of. The first class I went to, the teacher moved from one position to the next so fast that I gave up and just did my own thing. I did try a body combat class and loved it though. It's a mixture of all martial arts as well as tai chi and yoga.

Hi Cushla, great thread. I'm starring it so I can find you again : ). I love your Yoga story too ... made me laugh!

Cushla: Loved your review of February ..definitely one for my obese wish list. I'm so glad you enjoyed Major Pettigrew. That was a real mood-uplifter for me when I read it.

I'm hopeless at yoga except for the stretching bits. I have no balance to speak of, and a pathetic inability to turn myself into a human pretzel.

>20 cushlareads:: Oh, I remember that conversation; I think I was even part of that conversation. I don't like to see specific photos of faces on novels. I agree, this cover is much more appealing to me, and it seems like it fits the mood of the book better as you describe it. The other one looked too "romantic" to me. Let's see, younger woman, Canadian...was that conversation on Nickelini's thread? Doesn't matter, I guess, and, btw, I'm still laughing about your conversation with your baby during your yoga class. Anyway, I'm going to start looking at more of the Booker and Orange Prize longlists too, as I don't always agree on the one the judges give top billing to (or, "...to whom the judges give top billing," for those of you who are into being grammatically correct--though I've heard that the 'experts' have decided we can dangle our participles now!)

P.S. That last bit sounds a little nasty, doesn't it? Cushla, I haven't gotten very far reading Winnie the Pooh in German, so you've impressed me that you're going to be taking an exam in German. Is it on economics?

Oooh, visitors! Hi Nancy and Caroline. Caroline, from your hilarious stories of mishaps, I suspected you might not have much balance. I'm the same - a klutz from an early age.

Pat, I'm sure if I found the right class and went with some friends I'd like it more. I'm really inflexible and should do something about it some time. Being 6 months pregnant did not help! Interesting reading your yoga stories - Leonie, your class sounds much more like what I'd like.

Bonnie no it didn't sound nasty to me! I would still say "to whom" and am pretty crusty about relaxing some of the grammar rules. The exam is a German one. The Goethe Institut offer a series of exams and it's one of theirs. My reading and listening comprehension are good enough but it's the 3-4 minute speech on pretty much any topic with corrrect grammar and good vocab etc and the essay that are going to keep me working till October.

I really love the long lists for the prizes and have started paying much more attention to them. One of my Orange LL books arrived yesterday - The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives.

#25 I went to college with a very tall basketball player. He went on to play a season or two with the Utah Jazz. I love the "quote of the day" captured by Newsweek. It went something like, "What do you think of all your fan support?" (and there was a picture of a sign saying Put Walt In!) He replied, "I love the support, but I wish they wouldn't end their sentences with a preposition." Still cracks me up.

#26 The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives has gotten a very mixed set of reviews. I'll look forward to hearing your take.

Lisa, I really should have read the LT reviews before I ordered the book. I chose 3 off the longlist based on the Guardian blurbs. The reviews for TSLOBSW do look, uh, mixed, and the first 5 pages of the book aren't promising. This is the main character talking about his future wife to his mates: "...how Bolanle was tight as a bottleneck, how he pounded her till she was cross-eyed; and how she took the length of her manhood on her back - splayed out and submissive". It's going to have to improve VERY quickly for me to bother.

On a happier reading note, Sovereign is still fantastic - just long! 660 or so pages of un-put-downable. I'm learning lots more about Henry VIII.

That's a shame about TSLOBSW as the premise sounded interesting. Hopefully the author's just trying shock tactics to get your attention and it will improve later!

I really enjoyed Dissolution so it's good to hear the later books are just as good. I also appreciated learning more about a period of history where I've always felt I should know more than I do!

I have The Secret Lives - from what I understand about the book and the author, this sounds likely to be shock tactics and the author making it clear how vile the bloke in question is - I understand she's very much against polygamy as it affects Nigerian women.

I also have The Swimmer and the one I'm most wary of reading, Repeat It Today with Tears about incest - I won it in a Twitter competition to celebrate the publisher getting two titles on the OP longlist, and feel I have to try to read it now. Be careful what you enter....

I've ordered the Aminatta Fornatta book too.

I'm going to be really interested to hear what everyone thinks of the new Orange contenders! The Aminatta Forna book sounds really good.

Chiming in to say that I've always mined the Booker and Orange longlists because, well, the judges very often don't get it right. But i haven't read February which somehow just jumped onto my teetering tower after reading your excellent review Cushla. How'd that happen?

Dreaded double posting.

32: It's odd, February seems to have got very overlooked generally. I read and reviewed it for the Bookbag but it was this year's mass market paperback edition - it was published here in trade paperback last year and when it came up as one of the review books available, I was like, but that was on the Booker longlist, and how come we didn't already review it? I also thought it was excellent (4.5*).

@32,34 I agree it's odd that February seems generally to have been overlooked. I only heard about it here. I was shocked when it was readily available at our public library; other recent Canadian reads which I'd put in the same category (Annabel, The Sentamentalists, The Matter with Morris, etc) have LONG queues and long wait times.

**Touchstones not working this morning

Luci, I've been meaning to say that I like the Book Bag - have finally set up FeedDemon to keep track of feeds, so I can follow a few more book blogs. Am surprised it got missed in the UK and even more in Canada! I first heard about it on the Guardian books podcast - one of the people on it really liked it, then I saw it floating around on here. And thanks for the explanation about Baba Segi. It's working - I don't like him. But I also haven't wanted to pick it up again!

No way am I reading the incest Orange LL book. Too ick. I haven't even read Room.

Bonnie, I hope you like February too.

Nancy, did The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon get much publicity over there? I bought it a while ago based on nothing except the blurb and the fact that I usually like Canadian authors, even though it's got nothing to do with Canada. I'm doing the Canadian book challenge on here veeeeeeery slowly and trying to colour in the map - but I keep doubling up when I *do* get to a Canadian book.

36 Cushla, Annabel Lyon did create something of a press frenzy here. The Golden Mean made three shortlists: Governor General's Literary Awards, Giller Prize, Writers' Trust Fiction Awards; it won the latter prize. Interesting article from The Globe and Mail here. I see she's on the jury for the 2011 Giller Prize.

Belatedly saying I liked your yoga story too, Cushla! And thanks for alerting me to February.

Lit_chick, thanks for that article link - I enjoyed it and will have to get to the book soon. I liked the sound of her.

Genny, nice to see you on my thread! I think you'd like February.

Today I'm having a Swiss adventure - am about to get on the tram then train over to St Gallen to visit the abbey library. I will post a photo from their website till I have one of my own to put up:

Sooooo pretty... have fun!

I am not going to try and catch up, Cushla, but I will try and stay with you from here on out.

The trip to the abbey library sounds lovely! I do hope you will post a picture.

#17 Yoga is worth another try, Cushla! For me it releases stress, tones muscles and just plain exilerates me. But I do think you need to be in the right frame of mind for it and like your instructor.
I hope to join a group by our beach this summer for early morning yoga.

Oh how wonderful to see a glimpse of the St Gallen library. When I was working on my doctoral thesis, which was all about early Irish and Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, St Gallen kept cropping up because quite a few of the surviving mss are located there (because of the Irish monks who went off all over Europe founding monasteries in the 7th and 8th centuries).

Here's a picture of one of them:



(from an Irish Gospel book c AD 750, Matthew chapter 1 verse 18 "Christi autem generatio sic erat" - The birth of Christ was thus.)

Did they have some interesting books/manuscripts out on display?

#43 I love illuminated books. Thank you for sharing the photo of this one.

Genny, it was wonderful - the exhibition was on music manuscripts, but there were also some books around the room. No photos allowed, so I can't show you any of them, but the earliest one was in the 900s.

-- interrupting this (overdue) broadcast because the 6 yaer old insists on going on the Charlie Small website. Not about to get in the way of a book-related internet thing!! Back when they are asleep. --

I love illuminated books too! Lovely photo.

The job of a scribe must've been quite sought after back then, the results would be so satisfying.

Sigh. I've been neglecting my own thread again - I have been doing oodles of German grammar exercises though!

Stasia and Leonie, the whole St Gallen library made me feel like re-reading The Name of the Rose. There was a map in the library showing how big the abbey was back in its hey day. It fitted really well with the C J Sansom books too, especially Dissolution.

I'm going to try to catch up on the last 3 books I've finished. The first two were books 3 and 4 in the Matthew Shardlake series, Sovereign and Revelation.

Books 15 and 16


Both were well over 600 pages and hard to stop reading, which is a good reason for being behind on everyone's threads!

The only spoilers below concern Henry VIII's wives and what happened to them, but I don't think that's really a spoiler.

Sovereign is my favourite of the series so far and I gave it 5 stars. There was tons of history woven into the crime-busting. Henry VIII is now married to Catherine Howard. Thomas Cromwell is dead and Cranmer is the Archbishop of Canterbury. Most of the book is set in York at the time of Henry VIII's progress there with his court, and Sansom really brings the city to life. I'm not going to say any more because I don't want to give any of the plot away (and there is tons of it).

Revelation wasn't quite as good because there was a bit less history and politics and a bit more straight-up crime. Henry VIII is finished with Wife #5 (Catherine Howard, executed in Sovereign) and chasing Katherine Parr. There were times when I felt like I was reading a Patricia Cornwell thriller (one of her early ones, not the crappy later ones). Shardlake is now an advocate in the Court of Requests so has lots of poor clients, which he really likes. He's acting for a couple whose son has been put into Bedlam for madness - there was lots of interesting material in the book about both mental health treatment in the 1500s and also the religious sects known as "hot gospellers", whose beliefs were based on literal readings of the bible. The second story line concerns some of the most gruesome deaths in the series.

I gave Revelation 4 stars and am looking forward to Heartstone, which I bought last weekend in Zuerich, but am having a break first.

3 1/2 stars, nearly 4.

Book 17 was The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives by Lola Shoneyin. I read this because it was on the Orange long list and I'm glad I did, but I also am not surprised it didn't make the shortlist. It's a fast read, which was just what the doctor ordered after the 2 C J Sansom books I'd just finished. It's also surprisingly funny in places and the plot twist, although really obvious, makes you want to keep reading.

Baba Segi is a Nigerian businessman and from the very first chapter his attitude to women will make you want to throw the book across the room. He has four wives and 7 kids. His fourth wife, Bolanle, is trying to get pregnant. She's an outcast in the family - the first wife and the third wife hate her because... well, I 'm trying to think why - they are threatened by her university education, her attempts to teach their kids to read, and her general lack of caring what they think of her. And now they're reduced to having their plonker of a husband have sex with them 1.75 nights a week instead of 2.33, but considering Baba Segi's prowess I can't see why this would be bad!

Baba Segi and Bolanle go to see a doctor about their fertility problems. Meanwhile, the other wives get nastier and nastier. The chapters have different narrators, and I really liked this and didn't find it confusing at all. Slowly you come to see why some of them are how they are, although I didn't think the author did a very good job at explaining why Bolanle really did want to marry Baba Segi to start with.

I liked this enough to look for more books by Shoneyin, and it's the first novel that I've read set in Nigeria.

The St Gallen library sounds like a must-see. Not this year though, but maybe 2012? No travels planned for 2011... *sigh* (but I shouldn't complain - I am living in Italian "Heidiland")

I am exactly 1/4 into Dissolution but haven't picked it up for several days now, because I wanted to finish some other books first. And I really need to get through W&P. Another tough history section coming up in 4/2 and I am getting tired of those. For Dissolution I am hoping for a rainy and boring Saturday or Sunday. It seems wasted if I can only ever spare 15 minutes or so in between other activities.
Reading your reviews I fear a new series addiction is unavoidable once I get really into it? How many books are there in the Shardlake series?

Cushla

I'm far behind on the threads and trying to spend a bit of time each day catching up. I'm sorry to have missed your posts primarily because you read such great books and write wonderful descriptions.

I am a Tudophobe and the C.J. Samson books have long been on my tbr pile.

I must get to them soon.

All good wishes!

Nathalie, I think you would love the St Gallen library when you have time for some more travel. And yes I suspect you'll get addicted to the Shardlake books, but so far there are only 5 (Heartstone is the latest) so for once I am nearly up to date!! I don't know if he is still writing them and I don't want to google in case there are spoilers.

Linda, it's really nice to see you on here. I'm trying to do the same with catching up on a few threads today...we'll see how far I get!

I've only read the first 3 of the Matthew Shardlake books. I loved Sovereign and thought it was the best in the series so far, so your assessment of the 4th book in the series will help me go into it with realistic expectations.

More good reviews, those Henry VIII ones look especially good.

I returned to Dissolution last night and I fear I am now officially hooked (I have a suspect!).
They have all been translated into German and Italian, so there's a chance I will find them in my library and won't have to buy them all. As usual with historical novels the titles of the translations are so trashy that I normally wouldn't touch any of them (Dissolution is "Pforte der Verdammnis", Revelation is "Das Buch des Teufels").

I bet your suspect is the wrong one, if it's the same suspect I had. But I'm not going to say another word!! (And I am bad at always picking the wrong person.)

I am about to sit down in my red chair and read War and Peace for half an hour - don't collapse in shock!

How did you do with your half hour of W&P, Cushla? Wait.... Cushla? Cushla .... you still there? Quick, someone pop over and resuscitate Cushla!

>57 cameling:: LOL!

Ha - I'm alive! - but I spent most of it remembering what the heck had happened to everyone!!

#56: Usually my suspects are killed off in the next chapter. So far not. I'll tell you in the end if I was right (and sure without giving any more hints).

W&P: I missed the entire part 3 when I was reading volume 2 and only noticed it towards the end of part 5. At first I was wondering about my memory gaps, but then thought it was just a nice stylistic trick. Maybe the same happened to you? :-)

No it's just my brain - I forgot who had proposed marriage to whom! I just read another 20 pages and am about to start Part 3 (which i think is the bit you lost for a few days!)
But I'm tramming into town now, and W&P is no good to take with me. I'm taking my Ipod and the German news instead.

Glad your suspect is still alive.

I heard Lisa Moore read when February came out. I have liked all her books and really liked February.
I am waiting for the next Shardlake mystery! ( and envy your trip to St. Gallen.

Well, rats. The local library does not carry the Lola Shoneyin book yet.

Cyrel, I think your comments about February were part of the reason I bought it (but sometimes everyone's comments go into a LibraryThing soup in my brain). Am looking forward to reading more by her once I'm near a good English library again. So have you read Heartstone yet or is that the one you're waiting for?

Stasia, you are doing so well with your book buying ban considering the library system you have and your rate of devouring books. I'll post it when the kids have gone back to school.

I just popped in to my thread to say that Master Georgie, one of the books I put on my clunkers of 2010 list, has won the "Best of Beryl" prize for Beryl Bainbridge's best novel. She was shortlisted for the Booker 5 times. When she died last year the Booker organisers decided to get the public to vote for her best novel.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/apr/19/beryl-bainbridge-best-of-beryl-booke...

Wow - I really couldn't get into Master Georgie and struggled to keep going. Its main virtue was its length. Anyone else read it and love it?

Book 18: The Pleasure Seekers by Tishani Doshi - 4 stars - TIOLI Orange longlist challenge



This is the second 2011 Orange Prize longlist novel I've read and I enjoyed it. In 1968 Babo Patel leaves his close-knit family in Madras (now Chennai) to go to London. His father, Prem Kumar, owns a paint business and has organised a job for Babo with his cement supplier and a place in a polytechnic course. The Patel family are strict observers of the Jain religion, so alcohol and meat are off limits for Babo. Within a few months, Babo meets Sian, who's from a small village in Wales and whose mother hasn't even been to London.

slight spoiler but nothing you wouldn't guess anyway!

There are no tricks in this novel - it follows Babo and Sian and their families in a straightforward narrative from 1968 to 2003. I thought Doshi did a great job making all the characters jump off the page. The book slowed down a bit in the middle and could have done with a little less in it, but I really picked up for me near the end. The themes in here were ones that I could relate to a lot - moving around the world at 21, cross-cultural relationships, and watching your kids grow up. I've just had a look at her webpage and am not surprised to see that the story's based on her parents' relationship.

This was Tishani Doshi's first novel and I will definitely look out for her second.

Nice reveiw, glad you liked it. I have it on my Mount TBR, and I'll probably (hopefully, finally) get to it in the next month.

OMG I just changed my username, and it took 2 minutes to do!! I hit request, thought it'd take weeks, then tried to go back to adding books and it went funny. Then I logged back in as the new me - yay!!!

Woo hoo! New name, same great thread. I'm glad to see the LT wizards have made the name game easier. Weren't you considering this last year and gave it up because of the red tape involved?

I've been enjoying your reviews of the Orange Prize longlist books. I was a little disappointed with the short list but then I haven't read many of them. Loved The Invisible Bridge, though.

My library has all the C.J. Sansom books except the first - it's labeled as "Lost!". I think I'll put in an ILL request for it because of you and the others here that are raving about this series. I don't need more books to read, but sometimes you just gotta go with the flow!

I was JUST going to ask you if you changed your username...or if you had a 2nd LT account.

Congratulations, and I'm glad it was so easy for you. I suspect that my name change was more of an effort because the person I asked became a new Daddy that month. :)

#67 Like the new user name Cushla!

Oooh, a new name!!

#35 -- February has been out much longer -- about a year now, I bought it in paperback last summer in Canada, so it may even have been longer -- than the other books you mention.

I have to say I didn't love the book. I thought the writing was great, the idea interesting, but I never connected emotionally. I can't recall precisely why -- I read it in August, I think -- but I certainly didn't like it nearly as much as I did several of the other Booker nominees.

Cushla,

I think anyone adult or child who has emigrated can relate to this book, additionally is beautifully written, you can see why she is also known for poetry.

I like the sound of The Pleasure Seekers, good review and hope you had a great easter.

Nice new name, Cushla! Good to know about Georgie. Hmmm..can't decide about Pleasure Seekers. I'm so behind in my reading that I guess it will come up again if it's meant to be. You sound like you're managing really well. How did the exams go? Kids doing well?

Hi everyone - I caught up then I got behind again! Glad you like the name. It's so much better.

We have 2 weeks of school holidays here and have been busy - we spent Friday-Sunday at Legoland in Germany again. I just love that place - it's so relaxing and the kids adore it, even just the big playgrounds and hot dogs. Then yesterday we drove to Lucerne and went up Mt Pilatus in the cable car, 2100 metres up. And last night I decided to take Teresa down to the Italian part of Switzerland this morning for 2 nights, so we're getting on a train to Lugano in 4 hours. I love travelling over here - it is SO easy to get around. I'll put some pics up when we're back if the weather stays good.

Donna, I haven't read The Invisible Bridge but will definitely get it out of the library next year. Hope you can track down Dissolution.

Suzanne, I remember that you didn't really love February. I love that there's still a random element to whether I'll like a book, even now that I have so much more information to go on when I start a new one.

Bonnie, the exam is only in September now - I'm just going to do the second, harder one not the first one in June/July - and I have been really slack with studying while the kids are home... it's going well though.

I'm halfway through Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, which will probably be going on my top books of the year if it stays as good as it is. I know it won't be everyone's thing but it's like he's articulating what I've been thinking for 20 years. I hope Teresa sleeps on the train so that i can get a bit more read!



Book 19 was A Month in the Country by J. L. Carr and at last, a book that wasn't bought this year or last! I mooched it a few years ago after reading some good reviews on here. I really enjoyed it and at 110 pages, it was the perfect size to carry around Legoland.

It's set in Oxgodby, a village in northern England, a short time after World War 1. Tom Birkin, the narrator and main character, arrives in the village to uncover, clean and restore a wall in the church. It's July, and he sleeps up in the belfry. There's another man in the churchyard who's being paid to see if he can find someone's grave, and they become friends. We slowly learn more about Tom and the other characters in the village. As the summer goes on and he keeps going on his church project he becomes more involved in the lives of the villagers and starts to heal from his experiences at Passchendaele. A happy, thoughtful book.

I have great memories of Lucerne and Mt Pilatus - I spent a holiday in that region as a child and then a long weekend many years later. Loved it! I remember that wooden bridge with the Wilhelm Tell motives. The first visit was before it burned down, and I was impressed how well it was restored.

Lugano was an optional location for my company. It's a beautiful place. I'm sure you'll like it and I hope you'll have sunny weather and can enjoy the lake.

I'll take a closer look at The God Delusion, there's a Kindle version and it might just fit my mood.

Nathalie, Lucerne is my favourite place to take visitors (or just us, like yesterday). Last week we did a boat trip on the lake with friends from NZ and it was stunning.

Am really looking forward to Lugano, if I can convince somebody that she needs to put her shoes on...

Hi Cushla, well I'm happy about one thing re: the Bainbridge award. Somebody must have liked the book. Since I already have it, I'll probably read it at some point but right now it's way down the list. I'm looking forward to Dissolution but other books are crowding it out right now.

There are some well written (and contradictory) LT reviews on The God Delusion. I will look forward to your comments.

P.S. You've got me thinking about changing my name too. labfs39 is not very interesting...

Hi cushlareads! Like your new name. Lots of awesome reading going on over here, I see : ). Make me laugh with your reading War and Peace; it does get to be TOO many characters to keep track of ... who propsed, accepted, refused, died ...

Good conversation here about February too! Our local library has Alligator and I haven't started it yet, but it looks interesting.

Hi cushlareads! Like your new name. Lots of awesome reading going on over here, I see : ). Make me laugh with your reading War and Peace; it does get to be TOO many characters to keep track of ... who proposed, accepted, refused, died ...

Good conversation here about February too! Our local library has Alligator and I haven't started it yet, but it looks interesting.

Sorry, that's a double.

Nice review of The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives, Cushla. I have it on my Kindle, and I'll probably read it for Orange July.

I'm back from Lugano and I've finished 2 books in days, yay! And they made an interesting pair - The God Delusion then the first Narnia book, The Magician's Nephew, for the TIOLI tag mirror challenge. I'm still thinking about The God Delusion but will try to do a review on Monday when the kids are back at school. The brief review is that I loved it.

Bonnie, I hope you like the Bainbridge much more than I did when you get around to it. As usual, it might have been a wrong-time-wrong-book thing. I think I have Every Man for Himself in a box in NZ, so will try that next year.

Lisa, changing your name used to be a pain in the neck but is so easy now! I suspect a few people on whose threads I post sometimes will be confused if they didn't know my real name.

Litchick, I am going to crank into War and Peace now and try to get to p 500. Hopefully the characters are settling down now - I have most of them sorted out, but just when I do a random one pops up from waaaaay back at the soiree in the first chapter or somewhere like that.

Darryl, I hope you like Baba Segi's Wives too.

Cushla, I am determined to bash through War and Peace this week, too - the time just seems right. I have just read Book III Part I and it was great - I read 100 pages in just one day, very rare for me! Good luck.

Wow, too very different books. I can't wait to read what you thought of them.

Hi Cushla! I'm sure we've run across one another somewhere or other, but thank you for stopping by my thread! I am certain you will enjoy Small Island by Andrea Levy! I enjoyed her other book, The Long Song nearly as much! Thanks for your kind words re my review. February is one of those books I've been uncertain about - glad to to know that you enjoyed it! Eventually I've got another book short- listed for the Orange Prize - The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna. It certainly looks promising! First though, I've got a few other books ahead in the queue. Thanks again for stopping by!

Looking forward to the review on The God Delusion--might even make me dig it out to read some more.

Just checking in Cushla I guess this is where I saw a review about The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives which I just received as an ARC. I didn't realize it was on the Orange shortlist. Better yet.

Secret Lives was on the longlist (not the shortlist). I will post a link to my Bookbag review of The Memory of Love tonight for anyone interested - I have to run and do stuff now as it's time to start on tea, bath and bedtime.

Janet, you are hooning through W&P! I got a bit read yesterday and would like to crack the halfway mark this week...

Vancouverdeb, I used to be cmt on here! I loved Small Island too.

Bonnie, I hope you like The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives too. Good score getting it as an ARC! I've given up with that - the range available for Switzerland is very limited (still better than NZ though) and some have been a chore to read...

I still haven't written a review of The God Delusion but I've been thinking about it. I was somewhat gobsmacked yesterday when I was chatting at school with the receptionist and a teacher - we got talking about the Pope's beatification process. None of us were Catholic (I'm ex) and were explaining what we believed - they were both Christian. So I said politely enough that I'd just read Richard Dawkins' book and had loved it, and the teacher said "oh he's an idiot." I said uh well I liked it... to which she replied "My husband's a Christian and a scientist and he says everything that guy wrote should go in the rubbish bin." I just smiled and we all kind of changed the subject. I would never say that to an acquaintance who was religious, but it's fine to say that to me about atheism!!

Right, back to W&P at 6.30 am before the kids wake up...

Cushla, any chance of you (and I) finishing W&P before you come to London? Now THAT would be a good excuse for a celebratory drink!

As for The God Delusion, I think it's disgusting that people think he is fair game in a way that you're right, no one would insult the "other side". My daughter's school went on a great music tour to Memphis last year, staying with local families. The week included a Sunday at an Evangelical church - I doubt a single one of our kids is from that tradition, or even particularly strongly Christian, but they poliltely went, enjoyed the spectacle and the music, learned a few things, etc. But then the "sermon" was all about how Dawkins was evil and should rot in hell. What were these London teenagers, trying so hard to be culturally open, supposed to think about that? My daughter came back quite upset about it.

Hi Cushla, Just a flyby wave.

Janet, that was terrible for your daughter. Hardly a suitable sermon topic for any age group. I hope she bounced back quickly.

91: Hi, Cushla. It's another example of how/when people in the majority don't even realize when they're offending people, or how much they share their religious beliefs as a matter of course--and without the least worry. For example, when the leaders of our countries' refer to God when good or bad things happen to people, or when they're justifying their actions for all the people. I can appreciate the good intentions behind people's comments, but it's hard to be in the minority.

#94 - luckily the kids were pretty robust. It led to an interesting discussion of why in fact we in our house like Dawkins, but why other people might not, and how important religious tolerance is, but NOT tolerance of hate.

Janet, that's awful about the sermon your daughter got to listen to. I'm glad you had a good talk about it later. On a happier note, we can celebrate with a drink for you finishing W&P at the rate you're blasting through it, and me hitting halfway (SURELY i will manage that in the next few days)!! I am speeding up too, but am also freaking about my German exam (in September, not exactly around the corner but still...) and limiting all reading and doing a lot of study. I've been getting up early and getting the school lunches made by 6 or so and trying to read before the kids wake up.

Hi Lynda - good luck for your husband's surgery today. You are having a rough time at the moment - hope you're ok.

#93 Bonnie, you're right about being in the minority - it's something I'm not used to. I also think New Zealanders are much less "in your face" about religion and politics. It's not so unusual not to believe in God of some kind at home, and religion has a much more limited public role.

I am envying you the German. I've read quite a few good books in German the last year or so (Zweig, Erpenbeck, Sebald) that I'd love to try them in German, but I know it's way too rusty and the struggle just wouldn't be worth it. Well, maybe.....

I read your review of Visitation earlier today and am going to look for it soon in Bider & Tanner. It sounded really good. If you have leo.org or another online dictionary next to you, you might enjoy reading in German though - it's so good. But I read to relax so I am really good at buying German books then reading my English ones!

Hi Cushla, thanks for adding me to your interesting libraries! Actually, I see we have some big books in common. I also have A History of Modern Britain, Life and Fate and A Place of Greater Safety at home, waiting (im)patiently to be read.

I responded to your comment about reading in German over on my thread, but it looks, from your profile, as if you read more challenging fare than me!

I really need to read A Month in the Country. Thanks for the reminder!

#91 & 92 Ouch! I'm sorry both of you had such a bad experience. Both of those things would have flabbergasted me as well.

I hope you do write up your thoughts on Dawkins' book Cushla. I read The Selfish Gene ages ago and thought it was fantastic. He writes really well and I came away very enthused about the subject. I don't think I want to read The God Delusion but I would be interested in your thoughts on it.

Edited to correct spelling :-(

Hi Heather, Stasia, and Rebeki!

Rebeki, that big list of books at the top should be called "Books that will still be in my first LT post of the year in 2030". But W&P is a good start! We should read one of the other chunksters together.

Heather, I am going to write up what I thought of the God Delusion, I am I am. But in shocking news, I have got so into W&P that I'm spending any free time reading the thing! At this rate I might actually finish it in 2011. The Selfish Gene is on my WL after reading it so it's good to hear you liked it.

The God Delusion was an interesting read, in a good way -- at least for me as an agnostic!

I started reading Visitation but couldn't get into it after the first major story, so put it aside. Will have to pick it up again shortly (as it's due back at the library...)

#103 Good idea! Life and Fate has actually been calling to me for longer than War and Peace and one of my aims this year is to read most of the Russia-related books I have at home, though I'm not sure how realistic that is...

Looking forward to your review of The God Delusion. I have the test sample on my Kindle. I am still short on non-fiction this year and need some recommendations.

I'll be looking forward to your review of The God Delusion, Cushla. I thought it an interesting book and it raised some, IMO, good questions.

OK, I finally wrote down some thoughts about The God Delusion. I finished it over 2 weeks ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. I gave it 4 1/2 stars, and wish I hadn't let it sit on the bookshelf for 3 years since I bought it.



This book sets out the reasons why Dawkins does not believe in a supernatural God - either a personal God who can intervene to do miracles today, or a God who created the world then stepped back from actively changing what happened after he was finished creating.
The biggest surprise was how readable it all was, even the bits about cosmology - I really like his writing style, even though I don't agree with him on everything in the book.

Early in the book, he sets out a spectrum of belief from 1 to 7 that I've quoted below. How much you enjoy this book will probably depend where you fit on the spectrum.

1. Strong theist. 100 per cent probability of God. In the words of C.G. Jung, "I do not believe, I know ."

2. Very high probability but short of 100%. De facto theist. "I cannot know for certain, but I strongly believe in God and live my life on the assumption that he is there."

3. Higher than 50 per cent but not very high. Technically agnostic but leaning towards theism. "I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God."

4. Exactly 50 per cent. Completely impartial agnostic.

5. Lower than 50 per cent but not very low. Technically agnostic but leaning towards atheism. "I don't know whether God exists but I'm inclined to be sceptical."

6. Very low probability, but short of zero. De facto atheist. "I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbably, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there."

7. Strong atheist. "I know there is no God, with the same conviction as Jung "knows" there is one."

I think that if you're in the first 2 categories, you would not like this book, just as I would probably not like reading a papal encyclical or the book of Mormon. Otherwise, I think it's worth a go - it's what Suzanne would call a Thumping Good Read.

I'm a 6 on his scale - a de facto atheist - and I have been for many years, but I grew up Catholic. I stopped going to church when I was 18 because a) I didn't believe any of the doctrine and b) I had some pretty big problems with some of the social messages. I remember Mum looking very worried that I was going to get up in the middle of a sermon in which we were told the father was the head of the family and should decide how much TV got watched. I sat there, but that was near the end of my attendance at Mass. For me, reading this book was like putting on a pair of snuggly pajamas and drinking hot chocolate - Dawkins articulates some of my problems with most religions much better than I can. He also makes a strong case (which I'd have thought would be obvious to most people, but apparently not) that it is possible to be an atheist and lead a moral life that leaves the world a better place. I'd like to think that's how my kids are growing up, heathens though they are.

There is so much stuff in here - why it does not make sense to take the Bible literally, the push against teaching evolution in some schools in the US and UK, why creationism does not fit the evidence, Thomas Jefferson and secularism, the beauty and power of natural selection. But most of all, his message to atheists is to be proud instead of apologetic that you don't believe in God.
(I also don't see any reason to be rude to my friends who do believe - I know that lots of my LT friends are religious, and I do not want to shove this book down your throats.)

As usual after a good non-fiction read, I have a huge list of new ideas for reading. High on the list is the King James Bible or one of the books about it that has recently been published. One of my criticisms or our religious education in school is that we read precious little out of theold testament and had no historical context for what was happening. There's a good reading list at the back.

I am skipping The God Delusion as I am thoroughly a number 1 on Dawkins scale. Nice review though, Cushla!

ETA: I appreciate your comment I also don't see any reason to be rude to my friends who do believe - I know that lots of my LT friends are religious, and I do not want to shove this book down your throats.

I am of the same mind in the other direction - I do not want to be rude to my friends who do not believe when I am reading books that have a religious bent to them.

I really must read this. I am seeing myself as a 6 as well, never had to attend church, even as a child and kind of formed my own ideas though I am officially a Protestant. Great review!!

Excellent review, Cushla. I think the main thing is to accept that some of us believe and some don't, but we all have the capacity to be "good" people, help others, try to make the world a better place, so we shouldn't care about others' beliefs, but rather about their actions - I don't mean their private behavior (as long as it hurts no one), but their active good deeds in the world.

Great reveiw Cushla, I'm another who would be a 6. I got about half way through The God Delusion about 2-3 years back before getting distracted, but I've always meant to go back and reread it.

I'm glad Dawkins makes the argument that people are capable of being good, moral people without needing a religious structure spelling out right and wrong. When it comes to religion, that particular school of thought is one that gets to me everytime - I believe in Janet's view of things.

Nice review of The God Delusion, Cushla. I'm closer to a 3 than a 2 on his scale, so I would be interested in reading it (and I think I own it, although it's not listed in my LT library).

I'm probably a 6 maybe between 5 and 6, but don't have any great desire to read Richard Dawkins. My dad's father was a vicar, neither my dad or his brother are religious, my mum's parents were lapsed Catholics, and I think I've been surrounded all my childhood by adults with a religious upbringing who'd rebelled against it. (dad, high church Anglican, mum's boyfriend when I was young, Coptic Christian, stepdad, Welsh chapel, mum's husband now, Quaker). Mike's mum was a Methodist lay preacher.

Oh this is quite interesting. I think I'm a 3 or 4, but got there via 1 & 2 in my younger years. Like you Cushla, I grew up Roman Catholic and it sounds like I moved away from it for many of the same reasons you did. My father is Presbyterian and I got involved in his church in my teens, was married in that church, and considered myself Presbyterian until recent years. I now attend a Quaker Meeting where the emphasis is on "the light within," the idea of divinity in all of us.

I think I'd enjoy Dawkins' book. It is now the first book purchased for my new Kindle! Thanks for the review!

Thanks everyone for the nice comments - I hesitated before reviewing this book and am not posting the review on the work page, because there is too much background on me in it, the book has already got 200 reviews, and books on religion generate heat. And there *are* some things in there that I don't agree with - the review was already a bit long. For example, he compares bringing up kids in religious environments with child abuse, and I think he generalises far too much. He also comes out strongly in favour of things like bans on burqas, whereas I waver depending on what argument I read last, but overall think that unless women are really coerced into wearing them (and maybe some are - worth a book in itself) then they have some right to choose how to dress. So I do think he sets up some stark contrasts, but I think he does it on purpose because he's writing a polemic. And I'd still like to sit next to him at dinner.

#109 Stasia, you definitely would not like it!! And I always notice how respectful you (and large parts of the LT community) are.

#111 Janet, you have such a great way with words.

#114 Luci that is an interesting list of religious backgrounds in your family! My husband's Dad is a retired Presbyterian minister and my parents and brother are still Catholic (and a couple of my closest friends).

Nathalie, Darryl, and Alana, I hope you like some of it at least if you read it.

And now I am going back to a very exciting bit of War and Peace, which I am loving. The French are about to get wiped out I think... but there are 320 pages left to go. Janet, I might get it finished before my London trip at the rate I'm going now!

#116: Thanks for the kind words, Cushla.

I am glad you are enjoying War and Peace so much. I loved it too!

Cushla, it would be fantastic if you finished W&P this week! I have finished Epilogue 1 and should finish the rest today!

108 Awesome review of The God Delusion, Cushla. Thank you for posting! Equally as impressive as your review is the civilized discussion on your thread of differing beliefs/religions.

Wow, you go!!! I'm racing towards page 800 and the kids are playing nicely (there are 3 here - an extra for the afternoon - probably not a good look for his Mum to appear and see the kitchen as it is and me sitting with W&P...). It's like the book suddenly took off for me 550 pages in.

#119 Lit_chick ,that "you go" was directed towards London, not Canada! Glad you liked the review and that everyone who visits this thread is so civilised... {awaits arrival of tomato-throwing yobbos any minute}.

Wow, what a thoughtful (and thought-provoking) review. I find myself having a debate with myself over whether I want to read the book or not. I think I probably will (maybe after I get to The Selfish Gene which has been reproaching me for years) but I'll save it for a time when I'm really in the mood to think and question myself.

I'd say I'm a 4, but I think more accurately I'm a 3 on some days and a 5 on others, leaning more toward the 3, or maybe wishing to lean more toward 3.
Like you I grew up Roman Catholic, and finally broke with it in my early 20's. Now I am a very happy Unitarian Universalist, which I think draws in people from virtually every place on Dawkins' spectrum, though probably not many 1's or 7's. Your point, or his point, about being an atheist and living a moral life also seems perfectly obvious to me, and has for a long time.

Thanks for sharing such a great review!

>119 lit_chick:: Equally as impressive as your review is the civilized discussion on your thread of differing beliefs/religions. Yes isn't it marvelous? If there are "tomato-throwing yobbos" on LT, I haven't met them yet (thank goodness).

I'm always up for some tomato throwing if such an activity is desired??

Ha, no I wasn't thinking of over here Laura, but some of the other groups can be less, um, civilised. And I just don't post there!!

Jenny, maybe you could teach your duck to throw tomatoes?

Hmmm.........perhaps.....although I'm concerned that if we give her too many skills, she will overrun the house. The plotting that is already occurring between her and the guinea-pig is a growing worry.

You need this book: Click, Clack, Moo. It'll help you sort them out.

Hi. Just stopping by to say I have finished War and Peace! Hope you had a good run at it today.

Congratulations Janet, fantastic effort! Can't wait to see all your comments on the threads. I'm going well - am up to the end of the Battle of Borodino - and we'll see how far I get tomorrow.

Very interesting review, Cushla, and I agree with your general conclusions. I'd put myself somewhere at around 5.5 on the Dawkins scale -- I got there as soon as I started reading widely and thinking for myself about what I read, rather than as a reaction to what I was taught to believe. (My parents drifted to the Unitarian church, but my father today would call himself an atheist; I did get formal religious training in the Church of England as a child in London, though my father refused to allow me to be baptized or confirmed.) My sis-in-law is a non-practicing Catholic, although she did have all three children baptized. (I've never seen my brother quite as uncomfortable as when he had to vow to renounce the devil...)

For instance, being a history buff, I stumbled over the incredible theological debates over creed in the first millenium and couldn't equate those with the fundamental message of Jesus -- so I went off to find out more about the Bible. What I read about the process by which it became holy writ was enough to convince me that it wasn't first-hand evidence of anything at all. It's like third-hand rumor, in a lot of cases. Then I took an anthropology class in grade 11, and when I started looking at one of the issues -- the relative importance religion is given in every community in the world -- I concluded that religion is something we humans seem to need. What is interesting is what the similarities and differences are between the different theologies that we end up supporting. Which took me to where I am now: that the common element as a base principle in ALL religions has some element of "do unto others". So if I have a creed I try to live by, that's it, and I consider much of the rest superfluous -- how one believes, how one reaches a belief, etc.

Leigh Hunt summed up my views in a poem (forgive me for the hijack, Cushla!!) which I'm sure I've posted elsewhere, but will do so again:

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An Angel writing in a book of gold:

Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the Presence in the room he said,
"What writest thou?" The Vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord
Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."

"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so,"
Replied the Angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerily still; and said, "I pray thee, then,
Write me as one who loves his fellow men."

The Angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And, lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest!

>130 Chatterbox:: your second paragraph ("For instance...") is very much like my own spiritual journey.

Laura, that's interesting, because I wouldn't have described what I went through as a spiritual journey. More a process of inquiry? I had grown up within the generic Protestant Christian tradition (had great- and great-great grandparents who were Baptist ministers, for instance; others who were vehemently Anglican) but never really questioned any of this until I started to examine it. It's not that I believed or didn't believe; it just was not part of my life in any way. So I felt as if I were examining it dispassionately. I suppose I tend to think of a spiritual journey as somehow involving faith -- that intangible stuff without which religion is no more than creed and theological babble. I appear to have been born without the faith gene, however. It's simply not possible to wake up one morning and decide to have faith; that's a fundamental mistake that I believe all proselytizers of any religion completely miss. You can't pick it up in a supermarket, or decide you're going to have it. If it were, I'd probably be up there as a 1 or 2 on the scale, because I don't always agree with Hitchens that religion is a force for bad; I think it CAN be a force for good, or at least for morality, when its practitioners choose to emphasize those elements that bring them together with others rather than those that put them at loggerheads.

It was great to get up this morning and read your post Suzanne and similar to what happened with me (the short version was in my review post). I never had much faith to start with either, if any- yes, we were practising Catholics and went to church every Sunday. I went to Catholic schools and learnt some bits of the Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, and had the "do unto others" rule drummed into me thoroughly. There was no theology that I can remember, or intellectual basis for what we did. In our parish we went to confession at 6 and got confirmed at either 8 or 9, and I really hope that has changed by now, because I think if the whole confirmation process had been more than choosing a favourite saint's name then they might have had a hope of having me learn to believe something.

For my parents, it is part of who they are but they are not ones to discuss religion and I don't even know that my father really does believe in a supernatural God (I am using that for shorthand). I think Mum does, but I have never seen her reading the bible or praying or talking about it - she just believes. I know Dad loves the peace and quiet to sit there and think. He would think about work, and I would think about maths and patterns of prime numbers, and I played the organ for a while, and it was a nice community. Then when I got to university, it took 8 weeks for me to start really thinking about it - one of my law papers, Law and Society, had a chunk of anthropology in it, and I had a good friend who was the first articulate atheist I'd encountered.

That poem is great! I asked my Mormon friend what they believed about non-believers and she explained that they baptise people after they die, so I could be invited to become Mormon when I got to the doors of heaven! But they don't write me off. We've had some really interesting conversations. I think because I don't believe in some other religion she finds it easier to talk about it with me.

I don't agree with Dawkins or Hitchens that religion is always bad either - that just does not fit with what I've seen. But I am relieved that I live in a country where religiosity is not at the forefront of social policy.

Cushla, thanks for reviewing The God Delusion. I haven't actually read much of my copy, so don't know how much I would agree with Dawkins, but can say that I'm a confident 7.

I love Click Clack Moo.

One of our cats sadly died recently, and I was surprised that Mike has opted for telling Conor that Peeky is "in the sky".

#122 Anne, I'm glad you liked the review. I'm going to look out for The Selfish Gene (and also his The Blind Watchmaker) so if I buy it I'll tell you and we can make each other read it...

#135 Bonnie, hi! I remember you bought the God Delusion and started it. Did you not like his tone or was it just the wrong book at the time?

#113 Laura, I think we were posting at the same time because I only just saw your comment now! I want to read a bit more about Quakers - any recommendations? (Not that i will actually *read* the book for another 6 months at the rate the pile by the bed is growing...)

Luci, we don't have pets (I would very vaguely quite like a dog one day but it'd be like having another kid!) so we haven't had to deal with one dying yet. But the kids did say at dinner the other night that when you die the ants eat your body so no thoughts of sky here...

I finished my FIRST book of May yesterday - my slowest month in a long long time, but I blame War and Peace. How can I be reading it non-stop but STILL have 350 pages of it left then 100 pages of epilogue?! And can I get it finished before Thursday morning when I fly to London? (Answer: no. But I'm in denial.)

Book 22 is Children of the Revolution by Denaw Mengestu - 4 stars.



I bought this last week at Bider and Tanner because of LT recommendations (Stasia and Darryl and rebeccanyc and many others!) and by the time I got home on the tram I was well into it. It's published as The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears, and I much prefer that name because it's from a line from Dante's Inferno that really fits the book.

Sepha Stephanos is an Ethiopian immigrant who's been living in DC for 17 years. He runs a corner store at Logan Circle and has 2 good friends, Kenneth, who left the Congo and is now an engineer, and Jospeh, who's originally from Kenya and now works as a waiter at one of the poshest restaurants in the city. One of the big themes in the novel is immigrants' life in the US and how they feel about their home countries and why they left. The other one is gentrification and race (less successful I think - it felt like he was trying to cram a bit much into one short novel.)

It's one of those onion books - Mengestu skips backwards and forwards over the last 17 years. It's not giving too much away to say that life in the US has been difficult for three 3 men and hasn't worked out how they expected. Sepha in particular doesn't have many friends and is very lonely and unsettled, underneath his every day routines. He's also very likable (and he reads lots, which of course makes me like someone more!), which is what kept me turning the pages in what turns out to be a really sad book, first for what happened to make him leave Ethiopia.

The neighbourhood Sepha lives in is changing and Judith moves in with her 11 year old daughter Naomi. Judith's the only white person in the neighbourhood. Naomi's father is black, but not there. The 3 of them become friends, and he and Naomi read The Brothers Karamazov together in the shop. Sepha can see the life he always wanted dangling in front of him... (I really liked Naomi but didn't warm to Judith.)

Mengestu's writing is beautiful and I will look for How to Read the Air, his second book, in the Wellington library next year.

Glad to see you enjoyed the Mengestu book, Cushla!

Nice reviews of both recent books, The God Delusion one was particularly timely for me as I just unpacked my copy (only been in a box for 4 years!). I think I am probably a 5 on the scale but I too grew up in a roman catholic family where we were told what we had to do but we weren't given the meanings behind anything. I stopped going to church at 15 but was at easter mass recently to support my father. I may not be sure what I believe, if anything, but I'll support other people's beliefs and I believe there is room enough in the world for all opinions.

Such interesting reviews and yes, isn't it wonderful that we can all exchange our different religious beliefs in such an objective way?! I don't know where I'd fit on the scale. I am "certain" there is something beyond our current existence but I am not at all certain what form it takes. I have a vague sense of a God/universal oneness and vere towards Zen Buddhism but don't seem to be disciplined enough to live in a completely "mindful" way!

The Mengestu book sounds beautiful. I prefer the title with the Dante quote too.

Soup, the Dante quote makes much more sense because the 3 friends talk about the poem in the book. "Children of the revolution" is a line from a song they love, but it's not as poetic!

>136 cushlareads:: Cushla, I'm fairly new to Quakerism (despite living near Philadelphia, a virtual "hotbed" of Quakerism in the US) and actually haven't read too many books on the subject. But I am working with a member of our meeting to put our library on LT so I may get some recommendations from her!

136: Cushla, I can't remember why I stopped reading it either. It could have been his tone, or maybe he included a lot of information/details I didn't think I needed to hear. For example, if he spent a lot of time in the beginning of the book explaining why there are no gods or afterlife, I could have put it aside, because I don't really need to be convinced. He would have been "preaching to the choir," so to speak, but I like to support authors who can say better than I can what I think or feel.

I was surprised about how much I really enjoyed reading The Beautiful Thing That Heaven Bears.

Nice review of The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, Cushla. (I have that title affixed in my head, as I bought my copy at the London Review Bookshop a couple of years ago.) I liked How to Read the Air, but not as much as his debut novel.

I'm curious, does Dawkins talk about the different reasons people might belong to an organized religion without being a one or two on the scale? For me, I see the two as two separate questions: people can be religious without belonging and people can belong (happily and for their own reasons) without believing in a personal and supernatural god. Many Jews I know fall into this latter category.

I have been waffling on The Beautiful Things Heaven Bears, your review just may tip the balance!

I'm so excited for you for your progress in W&P. I'm trying to get up the umph for The Magic Mountain, which I believe you read last year?

I've got to get to Mengestu sooner rather than later. His books are all so highly rated on LT. Your excellent review makes me want it to be sooner Cushla :)

Sorry for vanishing on my own thread! Thanks for visiting, everyone. I've had a good friend from grad school here this week with her mum and daughter, another New York friend coming for dinner tonight, my husband away in London till tonight and now me leaving tomorrow morning! I think I've read about 2 pages of W&P all week and nothing else. But 900 pages through is so much better than a few weeks ago.

Lisa, I don't think Dawkins talked about that much but there was a chapter on the origins of religion. Are you thinking of Reform Jews as opposed to Orthodox? I have quite a few Anglican friends who nearly fit your description too.

Edited to add that I haven't read the Magic Mountain yet, but want to this year... but not till I've had a break from tomes after W&P!!

I'm really excited about the London LT meetup and will post some pics when I get back.

Have a great time in London, Cushla! Say hi to Luci for me. Will Fliss and Rachael be joining the meetup?

Have a great time Cushla!

Just checking in to say also looking forward to London!

I enjoyed your review of the Dawkins' book (and would be in favour of you posting it on the work page although I understand your reluctance to do so). I think like Stasia I am a one on his scale although I'm not sure I would put it quite the way Dawkins or Jung puts it. (Saying 'I just know' seems to sound quite arrogant when I try it out in my head.) Also strongly seconding what Stasia said about not wanting to seem rude and appreciating your comment.

I've also enjoyed reading everyone's comments and the different belief journeys. I think being able to challenge and question the beliefs we're taught is very important although I find the more I find out the more questions I have...

#148 Fliss is in Helsinki unfortunately and I don't think Rachael can make it but I can't remember why.

Hi, Cushla, I hope you had/are still having a great weekend with your friends in London. I was so happy to meet you yesterday, and I hope you bought a LOT of books. We enjoyed the chocolates (I was forced to share them with my husband!)

Hi Cushla, I saw the pictures on the meetup thread, and it looks like you all had a great time.

Nathalie we had a fantastic time!! I'm at London City Airport waiting for the plane home. I haven't seen the meet up thread yet and have 3 minutes till I get booted off this computer... I came on to see if Donna was ok because I woke up this morning and heard the tornado news, and thought she lived in Joplin.

Janet it was great to meet you and I hope you're enjoying being home. I bought gazillions of books and needed to borrow my friends' suitcase... list coming when I'm not paying £1 for 10 minutes!

Funny coincidence... I had a work dinner to go to last night (monday) and the person we were there to meet has a five-year-old son whose "non-godparent" (her words!) is Dawkins. Hilarious what a small world it is. The other non-godparent is the dean (I think) of the Cathedral of St John the Divine in NYC.

Looking forward to your book list -- if I drool over my keyboard, I'll be invoicing you for the repair bill!

Hope you got home safe - and without ash cloud related interference!

I'm home and Bekka, no ash cloud - I made it to school to get the kids with 2 minutes to spare!

Suzanne, that's funny about the person you were meeting knowing Richard Dawkins. No responsibility will be taken for drooling!! But I think you'll be safe.

Will enter the booklist when the kids are in bed...

Sounds like a great time was had by all in London. Can't wait to read your list of books acquired!

Ditto, sounds like a great time, I might go find those photos now..

>153 cushlareads:: Again, I am touched by your concern. I loved "meeting" you through the pictures at the London meetup. What a lovely group you guys made!

Maybe life will settle down for you and you can get back to reading now. I'm in with you guys whenever you get around to reading The Magic Mountain.

I've just kicked a pile of books over and made my toe bleed - is that a message that I went a bit mad in London? Anyway here are the books I came home with:

First, the Persephones:
Consequences by E.M. Delafield
Miss Ranskill comes home by Barbara Euphan Todd (Luci's rec)
They were sisters by Dorothy Whipple
A Woman's Place: 1910-1975 by Ruth Adam
Saplings by Noel Streatfeild
Miss Buncle's Book by D E Stevenson

Then the VMCs, mostly second hand:
Familiar Passions by Nina Bawden
O Pioneers by Willa Cather
Fenny by Lettice Cooper
The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy (new edition)
Saraband by Eliot Bliss
Towards another summer by Janet Frame (a new VMC)

2 Andrea Camilleris, August Heat (#10) and The Terracotta Dog (#2, and already read and enjoyed a lot)

Wandering Star by J M Le Clezio
The Blackwater Lightship by Colm Toibin
Henrietta's War by Joyce Dennys
The Brontes went to Woolworths by Rachel Ferguson

Some non-fiction:
The economic consequences of the peace by J M Keynes
The Globalization Paradox by Dani Rodrik - delighted to find this at the London Review shop; Book Depository cancelled my order on me a while ago
The Invention of the Jewish People by Shlomo Sand because of someone on LT... was it Kerry? (off to have a look)
A History of Britain 1603-1776 by Simon Schama (have read Vol 1; this is Vol 2.)

Kids' books:
2 Charlie Smalls, 2 Dirty Berties, What Katy Did. The Magic Faraway Tree, and More about Paddington.

I am home now and going to be very good at avoiding book shops till we go home. Honest.

Hey - this new talk is GREAT!! The touchstones seem to be all going really quickly.

I'm impressed your plane managed to take off with all that lot on board!

Wow - what a great list! Did you have to pay extra on your flight back?

Ignorant me hasn't heard of any of them, but that means that without doubt I'll get some great recommendations soon.
*sigh* how I miss browsing in well-assorted bookshops...

Oh my goodness Cushla! Good for you.

160: Wow! You really went to (London) town! ;-) I'll have to go visit the meet-up thread.

Brilliant book list Cushla. I think I'm already regretting restricting myself to only 3 Persephones but I can get back to the shop a bit more easily than you can!

Wow, a great haul and the London photos are great to see. It is so nice to put faces to names.

Great haul of books.
I haven't read The invention of the jewish people and after reading some reviews such as the one in The Guardian, would say that it looks to be fairly controversial. I read plenty on religious history when I did a couple of World Religions papers at University a few years ago and still have a few too many tomes on Jewish history/politics on my tbr pile. Will be interesting to see what you think of it, I see it garners high praise in LT reviews.

I'd xed the UK meetup thread awhile ago because it was so far afield. Wrong! I revived it today to see the photos. I went to the DC meetup and returned with 5 books. Your haul (on an airplane!) is impressive.

Wow, Cushla! Did you leave any books back in London for other readers? :)

What a Haul! Nice job Cushla and yes, I am extremely jealous.

What an excellent selection- worth travelling to London for alone, I'd say! I loved your photos and hope you're now enjoying life back home with your family and new books!

#160 the only adult book that you got that Ive heard of is the Janet Frame one! Looks like a serious list though, well done.

#91, 108 Loved the discussion up-thread about the Dawkins book, you can always rely on religion to get the people talking! I read God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens a while ago and really enjoyed what he had to say. I loved what you wrote in your review....
But most of all, his message to atheists is to be proud instead of apologetic that you don't believe in God.
(I also don't see any reason to be rude to my friends who do believe - I know that lots of my LT friends are religious, and I do not want to shove this book down your throats.)
As far as I can tell, life is about being happy, being kind and contributing something positive. However people go about that is alright by me.

PS long time no see! I must have missed this thread. (#147) Oh, and you're going to need to read more than 2 pages at a time if you want to finish W&P anytime soon :-)

It's really nice to see all your comments. I am way behind on threads but will try to catch up soon!

OK, I think I overdid it on the book buying if even you guys are telling me it's a lot of books. I had enabling friends who offered on the first night to give me a spare suitcase, and I was flying Swiss so I was allowed up to 32 kg of luggage!! (I got to 22 and there weren't many clothes.) Now I have to read them.

Nathalie, it was the browsing in many bookshops with CHEAP CHEAP books that got to me. Most of them were 4 pounds, some less - the Dani Rodrik at 16 was a splurge so I want to read that soonb instead of having it sit unread for years. You'll have to figure out a work trip to London in the next year or two. I love the 2 or 3 shops over here and am still amazed at how good their English selections are, but they are pricy enough that I only occasionally go wild. Even the 9 pound Persephones were cheap (and in NZ the new books are even dearer than here in Basel.)

No reading happening here - a fridge that isn't cooling down enough, a tax return, German homework, a birthday party tomorrow for our son and mountains of laundry have beaten way into submission. I did get another few pages of W&P read last night but then fell asleep. Today might be better if I get off here!

Kerry, I looked harder at who recommended the Shlomo Sand book and it was a 5 star review from deebee1. It also looks like the hardest to read of the books I bought, but really interesting. Somewhere here I have Chaim Potok's history of the Jewish people, Wanderings and I might need to read them together.

No reading happening here - a fridge that isn't cooling down enough, a tax return, German homework, a birthday party tomorrow for our son and mountains of laundry have beaten way into submission.

Sounds like a lot going on there, Cushla! Too bad none of it involves reading! :)

I hope Fletcher has a wonderful birthday party!

Wow, you do have a lot on your plate at the moment, at least I hope you have a great birthday party today and that your son has a great day.

Very envious of Miss Ranskill. I think I'm going to have to succumb and order it. Sigh...

Fabulous haul, Cushla! I can't wait to return to London (probably in August/September).

Like the others am impressed, with your haul & the fact your plane made home with all those books ...... seriously I know that habit going into bookshops is so dangerous....

Hi Cushla, you are crazy busy! @160 I hope your toe is okay. You made me laugh with kicking over a pile of books. Subliminal message? ... hehe

Hi everyone - thanks for the good wishes for Fletcher's party. We did it at an indoor playland place over in Germany, and it was great fun and very little work for us. It will be nice to be back home for next year's birthday parties where we can do something at home and have the kids running around outside. I am a bit over living in an apartment!

Thankfully, this week is a bit quieter - I'm getting tons of German done and am back into War and Peace (which does not make for very exciting posts on here, but I keep updating the message at the top). My parents arrive from NZ for a week tomorrow and are bringing my beloved Marmite with them (4 jars to last till December).

Suz, I'd never heard of Miss Ranskill but Luci said she'd enjoyed it. It's sitting right here next to the computer, along with the rest of the new stash.

Darryl, I hope you get back to London and take an extra suitcase with you. You'll have to do another LT meet-up. It was so much fun.

Alex, the only time I go so nutty at home is at the Wellington big charity book fair where the books are $2 each...

Lit_chick, my toe has recovered nicely thanks!! Almost all my books are off the floor now but luckily the 5th Shardlake one (Heartstone) was there, so I will be picking that for the June TIOLI challenge.

Hi Cushla, just catching up on some threads and I read a comment of yours that you loved Dogs of Riga. It is one of several books sitting on my table presently ... up the pile a notch, hehe!

Lit_chick, what I didn't say on your thread is that it caused me to go on a hunt for all his books straight away. I found tons of them in the secondhand bookshops around Wellington but not the first, Faceless Killers, so 3 years later I still haven't read the other ones!! And it was never in the library. (But that's ok. It's not like I'm running out of series or anything.)

Am chugging through W&P but would like the French army to get the heck out of Russia now. I have under 100 pages left till I get to the epilogues, then 100 more of those, and might get it finished by the weekend - it's still great but I really want to read something else now!

You are so nearly there with W&P! I know what you mean about just wanting them to get out. We get it, they are in disarray, no one wants to fight except a few generals. It's really really cold. Okay, enough already........

Thanks Janet - today might be the day! (Well, at least the day I make it to the epilogues.)

I hope you finished W&P today, Cushla!

Go Cushla!

I'm in the epilogue!! (p.1130). Should finish it tomorrow... 90 pages left. Thank you for the messages!

So close to the end, well done. That one still makes me nervous when I go near it, still getting over reading Anna Karenina last year I think.

Ha, reading a saga is just that sometimes isn't it! A lengthy business. Go Cushla go!

Continued cheering for Cushla:



Go, Cushla, Go! :)

Good luck getting to the finish line! I am planning to read W&P later this year, maybe in the fall.

I was browsing your thread and liked your review of The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears. Since it seems to be set in my hometown I may try and read it this month as part of a TIOLI challenge.

And, great book haul from London! I will be in London later this month and am thinking some bookstores may be in order...

Finished!!!

A huge thank you to my cheerleading squad here and especially to Nathalie and Janet - reading it together (even if I was slower) made it much more fun.

And now I am going to read something SHORT.

Anne - I am sure you already have great bookshops in DC, but the London shops were something else. Especially the London Review Bookshop and some of the secondhand ones I visited on Charing Cross Road. Hope you like the Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears.

Congrats Cushla!

Congratulations! I'm sure everything you read now is going to seem short!

I'm still not quite at the end of volume one, as I've been overly occupied with real life and Mansfield Park, but I hope that I'll soon be able to pick up the pace...

Well done, Cushla!

Congratulations, Cushla, you did it!!

Thanks for all the congratulations. I see more Tolstoy in my future but not for a while yet.

Rebeki, I took (I think) about 4 months on the first 500 pages, then 1 month on the next 700. I don't know why exactly, but for me the momentum built up slowly till all the characters were well formed in my head and then I couldn't stop reading it. (And that's why I read a PATHETIC 2 books in May! I can't remember the last month I read only 2 books.)

I've just finished Book 25 and it took a bit less time than book 24. It was Miss Buncle's Book, one of the Persephones I bought in London, and it was the perfect book to follow W&P - I loved every page and gave it 5 stars. I'm in reading sync with Heather and she just gave it 5 stars too!



Miss Buncle lives in Silverstream, an English village in the 1930s, with a maid Dorcas) and a dwindling stream of dividends to live off. She writes a book about the village, very thinly disguised as fiction, under the pseudonym of John Smith. The book within a book idea is really well done, the gossip and bitchiness is funny, and you just know it is all going to work out in the end.

**spoiler** I was very pleased to see Mrs Greensleeves get her comeuppance. **end of spoiler**

My parents are visiting and I gave this to Mum as soon as I'd finished - there aren't many books that we both like. She was astonished to see it because Miss Buncle was my Nana's favourite when Mum was growing up. Nana was a huge reader, and Mum says she loved D E Stevenson. I think that's a good enough reason to buy the sequel!

I think my next book might be another light English read, but am starting to eye the Dani Rodrik book I bought in London, The Globalisation Paradox for when my reading-harder-books energy has come back. Plus, it cost 16 whole pounds (most of the others were 4) so it deserves to get read soon!

I loved Miss Buncle's Book when I read it last year, Cushla. I am glad to see that you enjoyed it!

Miss Buncle sounds lovely and I have added that one. You must feel so free with your choices now after having the big W&P on your horizons for so long.

Exciting things happening here: London book buying sprees, birthdays, W&P (wow!), and your parents visiting. You are a multi-tasking inspiration!

I adored Miss Buncle, and yes, that would be the perfect antidote -- ahem, I meant sequel! -- to Tolstoy's magnum opus. Miss Buncle Married isn't quite as much fun, and the final pages had me rolling my eyes, they were so last century in attitudes, but still an entertaining read.

CONGRATS! on finishing War & Peace!!!

Stasia and Suz - I think you were both on the huge list of people who'd recommended it, so thanks. Some books have so much buzz about them on here (I mean good buzz from people who like the same kind of books I do, not just fake hype) that when you get to the bookshop you don't even know why you have to buy it, you just do!

Leonie - I bet you like it and hope you find it soon.

Lisa - thanks for visiting and I hope you're feeling better. Yes, it has been a bit mad here but now we have no visitors (after today) for ages.

For the first time in ages I did a list of possible TIOLI reads for June (most of which will not get read, but hey!)

#1 Low book. Heartstone by C J Sansom (very bottom of the pile on the floor by the bed)
#2 Foreign language title - Potiki by Patricia Grace
Die Heimsuchung by Jennery Erpenbeck (German) (thanks Kerry for letting us do foreign language reads even though it's not really what you meant!)
#3 Caribbean heritage Every Light in the House Burnin' by Andrea Levy
#4 Book set in your locale - the Basel mystery I bought and forgot to enter ... must find it!!
#5
#6
#7 Flower - The Postmistress - have to read this for RL book group, not all that excited at the prospect but Must Make an Effort.
#8 Father or grandfather's name - will find something here after coffee
#9 Food - ooh, I like the sound of this and will have to look.
#10 Single letter - O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
#11 Workplace - The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachmann
#12 Non-fiction book (since I mostly read fiction) - A History of Modern Britain by Andrew Marr or The Globalisation Paradox by Dani Rodrik
#13 Book swap - American Creation by Joseph Ellis or Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi
#17 unseemly occupation: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

OK, now I'm going back to the very easily digested Henrietta's War. Oh, and did I mention it's a glorious 152 pages long?!

Catching up on threads after almost a week's absence and the first thing I see on yours is W&P marked as 'finished'. You did it - Congratulations!! :-)

Looking forward to your thoughts on Henrietta's War, Cushla. The book is patiently sitting at my house waiting for me to get to it!

Nathalie - thanks and I hope your week off has been good. No wonder I haven't seen your thread pop up on my list!!

Edited to say Stasia, wait no longer!

Book 26: Henrietta's War by Joyce Dennys - 3 1/2 stars



This series of fictional letters about life in a village in Devon during World War 2 was first published during the war in Sketch magazine. Henrietta, the letter writer, is the doctor's wife and mother of 2 grown up children - one is a nurse and the other has enlisted and is somewhere in the north of England. It really gives you an idea of daily life waiting for the invasion that never came and the bombs that did - rationing, sticking pieces of linen on the windows, and trying to make sure no light gets through the windows are all in here. I enjoyed this and will look for the 2nd one, Henrietta Sees it Through, which has the letters from 1942-1945.

I gave it 3 1/2 stars, not more, but that's because I kept comparing it to 2 very similar books that I'd enjoyed a bit more - Mrs Miniver and The Diary of a Provincial Lady. I felt that the writing in those was funnier and the characters better fleshed out, but if I'd read this one first I would probably be saying that about whichever one I'd read 3rd!

OK, I will look for my copy when I am home from work. You have convinced me!

#206 Glad to hear you enjoyed Mrs Miniver. I have a VMC edition of Mrs M that I'm hoping to read this month.

#198 Well, if you read the best part of 700 pages of War and Peace in May, then I'd argue that you read more than two books!

I also managed to finish just two books in May, but I only finish four in a particularly good month. I'm hoping not to drag W&P out for too long, as I start forgetting what I've read so far. What I keep telling myself is that it's only the equivalent of four books, so perfectly manageable really! Still, I'm glad to see you've been enjoying some lighter fare since...

Cushla, belated congrats on finishing War and Peace. That's one book I'll probably never reread because of its length, but I must say I enjoyed it almost as much as Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Have you read that one yet? I don't think it's quite as long as W & P. ;-)

I just read good things about Miss Buncle on Heather's thread. It looks like it would be good to have some of these books on hand for book emergencies... after a really good (but long) book like W&P or when a dreaded book funk emerges.

>203 cushlareads:: O Pioneers is one of my favorite Cather books. Right up there with My Antonia. I hope you like it as much as I did. I know American pioneer books might be difficult for a New Zealander living in Switzerland to get into!

Hi Cushla

Now that the semester is ended and summer is beginning, I hope to keep more in touch with you via your thread.

Please add my congratulations to others who are in awe of your reading War and Peace!

Miss Buncle's Book was one of my mother's favorites. I read it for the first time last year and loved it. I'm glad you enjoyed it, too! I've got my mother's copy of Miss Buncle, Married and hope to get it read later this year.

If you liked the Miss Buncle books, D. E. Stevenson's Mrs. Tim series of four is also quite enjoyable.

They're similar, though not quite the same—British life but amidst the lead up to and early days of World War II. The first one is Mrs. Tim of the Regiment or Mrs. Tim, depending upon which edition you get.

As for War and Peace, I read it last year and can't, for the life of me, think why I waited so long. What a wonderful book it was!

Tad, I am kicking myself because I nearly bought Mrs Tim of the Regiment in the new Bloomsbury edition for 4 pounds in London, but instead I bought The Brontes Came from Woolworths. I like reading about the whole period from early 1900s right through to after WW2. I am keen to read more D E Stevenson and I am a Mrs Tim too so I really should get that book!

And yes, W&P was wonderful (now that I have recovered from Epilogue 2 and have had a few days to contemplate the whole thing). It has been good for me too because I really have not read that many classics, but will be less daunted now.

cbl_tn, isn't it great when you find books that your parents read? I've given Mum Miss Buncle's Book to take home with her - we don't have much overlap in reading taste and it was nice to have something to recommend without wondering if she'll like it.

Stasia, I hope you like it and it will take you no time at all!

Heather, you made me go hunting for what I said about Mrs Miniver and I re-discovered my 2009 thread. That's 10 minutes of my life gone - it was fun to read the old stuff. And I didn't put in a single comment on Mrs Miniver except to give it 4 stars! Useless. But in my defence it was about the week we found out about moving over here so I was a bit ditzy.

Linda, good to see you back everywhere now that you're home from New Orleans.

Rebeki, I have got to find your thread again...ok, I will keep up now (have just found it). I'm adding the Herr Lehman book that you mentioned on there to my WL now too. If I start reading more in German it will count as German study for the exam, kind of... Good luck with finishing Mansfield Park and then W&P! I bought Northanger Abbey a few months ago and might join in the Austenathon for that one (if I haven't missed it!)

And Donna, no I haven't read Anna K yet but will be up for it quite soon. My husband read it last year and liked it a lot. And I have started O pioneers! because you said it was good, and the first chapter is excellent! I've been to downtown Minneapolis in January, which is not quite Nebraska and the prairies, but it was exceedingly snowy, cold and flat so I have a good picture in my head. (edited to say Nebraska not Nevada - brain on holiday!! I know Nevada is not in the midwest, really I do...)

I finished Book #27... The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman.



I couldn't put it down, and loved both the structure and the subject matter - journalism, getting a newspaper out every day, and all the drama and bitchiness of the workplace.

The book is a series of short stories about the people who work at an international newspaper based in Rome. The newspaper isn't doing too well, and none of the people are very likable, but they were engrossing. Each chapter has a newspaper headline, and I really liked how the headlines tied into the ending of the stories. Interspersed at the end of each story is the story of how the paper got started and what happened over the last 40 years. (I am trying not to give away anything as usual but it is making my comments boring.)

The stories are linked, so by the end of the book you're reading about a cast of characters that you know.

I dinged this a star because the characters were almost all screwed up and cynical. Or dopy - like Hardy, the business reporter, who really really really annoyed me. The exception was Herman, the corrections editor, who had a happy family life and wrote such entries in the paper's style guide as this one on "literally":

literally: this word should be deleted. All too often, actions described as "literally" did not happen at all. As in, "He literally jumped out of his skin." No, he did not. ... Inserting "literally"willy-nilly reinforces the notion that breathless nitwits lurk within this newsroom. Eliminate on sight - the usage, not the nitwits. The nitwits are to be captuerd and placed in the cages I have set up in the subbasement. See also: Excessive Dashes; Exclamation points; and Nitwits.

Recommended as long as you don't mind reading about losers.

Edited to say that I put this one on my WL because of Suzanne, Bonnie R and Joanne, so thank you!

Hi Cushla, just dropped in to say I'm reading The God Delusion on my Kindle as lunchtime reading (which realistically is 15-20 min on a good day, and sometimes not at all). I'm only on chapter 2 but it's fascinating! Thanks for the recommendation ...

That one looks like a bit of a fun read, wishlisted. Have you written your thoughts on war and Peace yet? I'm looking forward to that, having only read AK and it was not all that I'd thought it would be.

#215, its at a library near me, I'm there this morning to go get it out, there's nothing like being impulsive is there! I think I kind of like reading about losers.... lol

Hi Cushla, you're right about the losers in The Imperfectionists but I just couldn't stop laughing at that book especially the story about the Cairo stringer. **Snort!**

So glad you enjoyed The Imperfectionists, Cushla, it was easily one of my faves from last year. Light and with a serious undertone, and a lot of wit. Reminds me I need some nitwit cages, though I'm not sure where I'd find space for them amidst all the books! Esp. given the number of nitwits one encounters on a daily basis...

Looks like I'll have to keep an eye out for The Imperfectionists, sounds like a lot of fun.

And to the wishlist it goes... :-)

The Imperfectionists is already on my wishlist. Glad you enjoyed it :-)

I really enjoyed The Imperfectionists, Cushla. I am glad to see you did too!

Thumbs-upped your review, Cushla! I think The Imperfectionists was fun. Somehow I've never written a review. Huh...now I guess I don't need to!

Im half way through The Imperfectionists already thanks to me being speedy at my jobs this morning. Dinner made, fire stoked, kindling chopped, washing out, dishes done, house tidy (enough) and now me well rested too. All good.

Eek I am behind on my own thread again! I've been reading, that's why. No housework going on here... And ordering an ipad. Eeeeeee!!! 1-2 weeks till it arrives. I hope you all like The Imperfectionists too, and Bonnie is right, the short story with the Cairo stringer is one of the funniest.

(Everyone else who has not read it yet shut your eyes.) I tried to avoid spoilers but I also liked the ending of the story about the CFO in the aeroplane. I didn't find it entirely believable that they'd have ended up in the situation they did, and she irritated the cr*p out of me, but I liked the revenge ending!

OK open your eyes now people. Megan, impulse books can be so much fun! When's the baby due? You sure you're not nesting? Sounds like an awfully productive morning...I'm glad you're enjoying the book.

Suzanne, maybe you could use cat boxes instead? Might not be big enough though. Richard, thanks for the thumb.

Leonie, no I haven't written anything about W&P yet. I want to spend some time reading a few blogs and other websites to see what I missed and how other people liked different bits. Overall I loved it, but it took a long time to get into.

Laura, I'm glad you're enjoying The God Delusion so far. Hope your week of graduation activities with your daughter is going well.

And now for the latest book - O Pioneers! by Willa Cather, another 5 star read, which makes 3 so far this month! (I did have a look to see if I had grade inflation problems, but I don't think so. I've just been lucky.)



I bought O Pioneers! second hand in London because it's a Virago Modern Classic and I collect them. I'm much less good at reading them, though, even though I usually enjoy them. But there were 2 TIOLI challenges where this book fits, and then Donna said it was really good, so I picked it up on Sunday. The only other Willa Cather I'd read was Alexander's Bridge, for one of last year's TIOLIs, and that had been oooookay. This had a good plot, a great main character and some of the most beautiful writing about the American midwest that must exist. If it's sitting on your bookshelf, move it up your TBR mountain!!!

John Bergson and his wife emigrated from Sweden to Nebraska, where they became farmers. Right at the start of the book, after 5 years on the farm, John dies and leaves his daughter Alexandra in charge of all decisions concerning the farm and effectively the family - her 2 older brothers, Oscar and Lou, and Emil, who is much younger. Alexandra is smart, brave, calm, takes calculated risks, and looks after the family well. The book follows the Bergsons, their family dramas and their Bohemian and French immigrant neighbours over the next 20 years. This is definitely a book I want my daughter to read when she's old enough.

*spoilers* I thought about dinging this half a star because I found Alexandra's reaction to what happened unbelievable. What, what her friend and brother were doing was WORSE than what Frank did? Um, hellooo. But I think it probably fitted in with attitudes to infidelity and morality at the time Cather was writing, and it felt plausible, so I left it at 5 stars .

*Adding Willa Cather to the list of authors I must read*

Your thread is very dangerous to my (already) tottering towers of TBR books!

Ha - I think the scales are a fair way off being even!! A good few kg of books on my overloaded bookshelves are because of you! (Like the 6 not yet read Philip Kerrs. )

I downloaded the audio version of O Pioneers! from the library last night. I'll be spending several hours in the car over the next week and I decided I needed one more audiobook to make sure I don't run out of listening material. Your comments have me anxious to get started on it!

This had . . . some of the most beautiful writing about the American midwest that must exist. If it's sitting on your bookshelf, move it up your TBR mountain!!!

Cushla, this is exactly why I've loved the books of Willa Cather that I've read--My Antonia and Death Comes for the Archbishop--although DCftA is set in the American southwest. Truly haunting descriptions of landscape that I've never forgotten. I own a copy of O Pioneers and will take your advice and get to it soon. Off to thumb your review.

>228 cushlareads: Oh boy, Cushla I have to agree with you about the spoiler. I read that part a couple of times when I was reading the book because I thought No, she can't have just said that. Really?? But you're right, at that time adultery was much more sinful than it was today. And anyway, Cather's writing was just so good.

Pat, I have My Antonia somewhere - either here (but can't see it...) or in a box at home in NZ, and I'm going to look for DCftA in the Basel library on my next trip. I started My Antonia last year and read about 2 pages before something happened - probably another book grabbed me more - but now I'm going back to find it!

*SPOILERS AGAIN, sorry everyone except Bonnie!* Bonnie, the other funny thing was that she said it over and over and over! At one stage I was worried she was going to try to marry him to get him out of there. But luckily Carl appeared - I really liked him. I've seen a couple of comments saying he wasn't up to much, or dopy, but I didn't think so. SPOILERS FINISHED**

And now I'm going back to the very sad Every Light in the House Burnin', Andrea Levy's first book (or one of her first, not sure yet). Not recommended if you have any sick loved ones or anyone who's recently been very ill in hospital - I keep having to put it down.

Carrie, I hope you like the audio book. I've listed it as a TIOLI ! challenge (it also fits the single letter one) so if you do get to it, I think we'd get 3 points. Also, I have just managed to mooch the first 3 Ellis Peters Brother Cadfael books and will try to read one soon and see if I like them as much as you. Am really pleased - they're coming from a brand new Bookmoocher and she's happy to send over here.

Cushla, My Antonia was the first book of Cather's I read and I remember it started out slowly and I might have put it aside if it wasn't for a book group. I had a similar experience when starting Death Comes for the Archbishop. But in both cases, the books grew on me and by the time I had finished I loved them. I'm looking forward to reading O Pioneers.

I've only read Small Island by Andrea Levy so I'll be interested to hear what you final take is on Every Light in the House Burnin'.

I might not get it finished on my trip, but I ought to be able to finish it by the end of June. It's only about a 6 hour recording and I'll surely spend that much time doing housework and dishes before the end of the month.

I love My Antonia, Cushla. I really hope you enjoy it!

#214 - My thread is moving very slowly at the moment, so there's not much to keep up with! Reading in German definitely counts as exam revision if it's any kind of language exam! I gather you're in Switzerland at the moment - are you studying German in order to improve your general proficiency or is it a prerequisite for something else, i.e. a university course?

According to the main Austenathon thread, the Northanger Abbey read isn't until September, so you have plenty of time! I've read that one, and really enjoyed it, though I know it tends not to be a favourite. Actually, the same can be said of Mansfield Park. One of things I like(d) about both books is that I read/am reading them without knowing the outcome of the story beforehand. Emma and Sense and Sensibility were very enjoyable, but I'd already seen the film versions when I read them and it's just not the same...

Stasia and Pat, I'm putting My Antonia high up on my WL... bummer that it is in Nebraska though because I have rediscovered my 50 state challenge thread and would like to colour in somewhere else on the map!

Rebeki, yes we're in Basel till the end of this year, been here since the start of 2010. The language exam is just because we're here. I studied French and German at school then to 2nd year at university, and loved both of them, so when we got a chance to move over here we grabbed it! Being surrounded by German, even if it's the Swiss kind which I don't speak AT ALL, is wonderful and I have time to really work on it now that both kids are at preschool and school. The exam is the C1 level Goethe Institut one, and I have tons of vocab that I still don't know! I love it but I am going to have to get more disciplined about not reading books and English newspapers if I want to do well in September... I'm going through your 2009 and 2010 threads at the moment - you are BAD BAD BAD for my wishlist!

Carrie, good idea about the dishes and housework. I sometimes listen to podcasts when I'm cleaning up and the kids aren't here but have yet to try an audiobook.

I finished Book 29: Every Light in the House Burnin' by Andrea Levy - 4 stars (just) .



I've owned this book for 3 years and I've read it at last, thanks to Darryl's June TIOLI challenge to read a book by an author who was born in the Caribbean, or has at least one parent born there. Levy is a Londoner whose parents emigrated from Jamaica in 1948. I bought Every Light in the House Burnin' as soon as I'd finished Small Island, which I loved, and I have no idea why it's taken me this long to pick it up. I think it's because I knew it was going to be a pretty sad book, but I didn't know how sad till yesterday. It's Levy's first novel, and it's semi-autobiographical.

Angela, the narrator, is the youngest of 4 kids. Her Mum and Dad, Beryl and Winston but called Mum and Dad even by each other, emigrated from Jamaica just after the war. Dad works at the post office, and Mum was a well-educated teacher in Jamaica but has to start from scratch in London. Mum eventually gets her UK teaching qualifications and does an Open University degree at night time. Money is very tight.

The story flips between Angela's childhood and the present time. Dad is terminally ill with lung cancer. The book is about Dad's treatment under the NHS and tells a grim story of the frustration with the system's lack of coordination, the condescending attitudes of many of the medics they encounter, and the lack of dignity that comes at the end of life. The GP treats them like rubbish, the district nurse is rude and won't help with anything useful, the hospice provider is lovely but not allowed to visit him in the hospital, etc. The book is full of scenes like this one at the hospital, where they are trying to get her Dad's slippers onto his feet:

" I put my hand around my dad's calf. ... I lifted it and let it gently down on to the stool. I sat down again. I was now close to my dad's feet. They were swollen, dirty and black on the bottom. And they smelt of decay, not rotting flesh. I looked at the toenails, no longer transparent but opaque and brown, curled and full of dirt, like walnut shells on the ends of his toes. He couldn't have cut them since the last time he could bend in the middle, which was a history ago. I tried to look away, look round the ward, listen to other conversations, but the smell began to make me feel sick."

There needed to be more genuinely happy bits for me to enjoy it more - I just knew that it was going to get sadder and sadder, and even the childhood stories are about a family trying to fit in to the community. Angela is under strict instructions at Sunday school not to let on that they have sausages for Sunday dinner. There's a cringe-making scene when Dad's sister and her husband from Jamaica come to visit, and Angela keeps giving away that things are not qutie as ritzy as Dad's making them out to be - and the power runs out halfway through their visit and they don't have 2 shillings to put into the meter. There's some funny stuff too - Angela comes out of the hairdresser done up like Cilla Black - but not enough. The last chapters are really well written but very upsetting. I gave it 4 stars, but as I said yesterday recommend it only if you haven't got someone close to you who's recently died or is very sick.

I am on the hunt for a happy book and I have started one that I know LOTS of people are going to be racing out to buy. It's a recommendation from petermc and it's called the Calculus Gallery by William Dunham. It's going to take me forever but it is very soothing sitting here doing binomial expansions!


EDITED TO ADD : oh dear, sorry guys, that must be the longest and waffliest review I've ever written!!

#239: LOL at 'waffliest,' Cushla :)

Wonderful review, but I fear right now it'd be too sad for me - thanks for the warning!

Thumb up from me, Cushla, on Every Light in the House Burnin' by Andrea Levy. I've just loved both Long Song and Small Island.Just so you know, Small Island is not a sad book. I've seen Every Light in the House Burnin and despite the sorrow that you mention- I think I want to read it.

I lost my dad to cancer 4 years ago - and he was just 66. He got very good care here in Canada - but he wanted to die at home -and so he did. It took a lot out of us as a family, but I can think of nothing more wonderful than my dad being able to die at home with his family. It was very sad and exhausting, but I am blessed to have 4 siblings and their spouses, and we all banded together along with my mom to make his days the best that we could.

Vancouverdeb, I've read Small Island - that's why i bought this one - and loved it! Haven't read The Long Song yet.

That is a really lovely story about your Dad. I've lost 3 grandparents in the last 5 years and all died in rest homes. The nursing care was good but even so, there was nothing uplifting or dignified about their last weeks. The end of the book was enough to make me make an imediate donation to one of our local hospices in Wellington! (Which reminds me, i have not done that yet because I finished it about 11 pm last night.)

Well, as I'm sure you can imagine, the Levy is not going onto my list. But the Calculus book might! I am aiming to do a "math and science mini-challenge" later this year, so might look at it then.....

Janet - at least you have a GOOD NHS story to tell!

The calculus book is great. I nearly missed the tram because I was reading the details of Newton and his first foray into integration.

Yes, I do. I have great doctors, and almost without exception I have been treated caringly (if that's a word), professionally, pleasantly, etc., by nurses, health care assistants, food servers, physios, dieticians, pharmacists, cleaners, volunteers, receptionists, drivers, district (community) nurses, and everyone else I have come across. And of course I haven't paid a penny, not even for medicine, except when Rich needs to park to take me to appointments (I get my congestion charge refunded, but not parking), and the occasional taxi when the logistics get complicated. But UCH IS one of the top hospitals in Europe, so unlikely that everyone can say the same. I know I have been really really lucky.

239,244: Hah! I already have The Calculus Gallery, and I can see reading it for the biographies, but I haven't been feeling terribly mathy lately (too similar to my regular job) and I'd probably skim too much to count it as read. I'd be up for a math/science group read though, if anyone's so inclined.

Great review, Cushla.... and thanks for the heads up that this isn't the most uplifting book, but I'm still adding it to my obese wish list.

Cushla, I've been missing out on so much on this thread! I don't know why I've not checked in for so long - since well before the London meet up. I tend to either read the threads with very few unread posts, or start at the other end with the ones with 250+ unread - I think yours must have been hovering in-between the two extremes, until finally tonight it emerged at the top of my unread/messages list with 201 posts!

As for being in-between extremes, that is where I feel I fit in on the religion/faith front. Thank you for posting your thoughts about the Dawkins book, and for allowing such a thoughtful sharing of views on the subject of religion. Like you, I usually stay away from the groups and discussions that focus on this, as they tend to be so ill-tempered. I haven't read The God Delusion myself, or any of Dawkins writings so far, but as one who has to preach sermons myself I am appalled at the idea of the sermon which Janet's daughter had inflicted on her, condemning Dawkins to hell. That sort of behaviour and attitude is entirely counterproductive in my mind. (Had the preacher even read the book, I wonder?). From what I understand of Dawkins' arguments that I've gleaned from TV programmes and debates, I have the impression that the religion he is describing is very much at the extreme - and to my mind distorted - end of the spectrum. I'd like to think he is setting up Aunt Sallys, and to say most religion is not like this, but Janet's daughter's experience, and far too many people's experiences past and present, force me to realise that there is more of such extreme, restrictive and negative religion around than I like to think. However I would want to speak up for what I believe to be the silent majority rather than a minority of believers who are not like this. If I had to place myself on Dawkins' scale, I guess would be between a 2 and a 3, definitely not a 1 because for me it's not about certainty at all, and certainly not about intellectual proofs either way. I have a bit of a problem with the definitions in the scale altogether. For me faith is about trust - to believe is not to know as a fact but to put my trust in something/someone. And for me, just as in any relationship, there are times when that trust is easy, and times when it is sorely tested and I wonder if what I am putting my trust in is nothing but an illusion.

Reversing the journey that some of you have described, I came to faith slowly, and mainly through books, conversation and a longing to belong somewhere and find community. I was brought up by a Christian mother with whom I felt I had little in common, and an atheist father who loved the same fantasy and fairy tale books as I did as a child and so introduced me to Tolkien and Lewis, whose medievalism affected me profoundly and influenced my choice of undergraduate study. We rarely went to church when I was a child (we lived in Holland a long way from the nearest English church and mum did not drive; when we went at Christmas and Easter dad would drive us and would wait outside in the car). I loved the singing but questioned and felt patronised by the sermons. Yet I thought there must be something to it and decided to be confirmed at 15 in the hope that I would find faith in the process. It didn't work at the time! The teaching for the confirmation class was simplistic and mechanistic. But then at college I spent 3 years studying medieval literature and poetry, not going to church at all but happily exploring profound, challenging, complex and beautiful ideas and learning of some of the ways those ideas and ideals have been both inspired and been betrayed by humankind. I eventually found that faith had crept up on me when I stopped looking for it, and it has everything to do with making connections across the most profound barriers of isolation and being open to the Other. Which is why for me faith is as much about how we relate to other people as how we relate to the divine other. (Sometimes the pettyness of church life and politics make me despair on this front - though other moments in my experience as a vicar redeem this!) And that is why reading and questioning and stretching one's imagination and encountering people of different as well as similar views and experiences is so vital to living a good life. And why this LT group is such a good thing!

I really should read Dawkins book myself and see if I can articulate a response from a liberal, inclusive Anglican perspective without falling into the trap of becoming intolerant of those fellow believers with whom I disagree profoundly, never mind Dawkins!

Oh, and congratulations on finishing W&P - that was quite a marathon! As was this post - sorry, got carried away, inspired by all the various contributions above.

>249 gennyt:: Genny, that's a lovely post. Absolutely lovely. I really enjoyed reading it.

249 (gennyt): I really should read Dawkins book myself and see if I can articulate a response from a liberal, inclusive Anglican perspective

I'd be really interested in this. I suppose that I fall on the other end of Dawkins' spectrum, but as I commented to Cushla on another thread, I think the fact that he places everyone along a line ("how much" rather than "what") suggests that his concept of God is rather narrow.

Cushla, you are on a roll with all these great books!

Genny, I loved reading your post, thanks so much for writing it - what a great way to start Saturday morning. I would love it if you read the book and wrote a response. Laura's reading it at the moment too.

I didn't feel like his conception of God was narrow but then I probably wouldn't notice as much as you would. But by pulling the spectrum out of the book and plonking in my thread (and it certainly generated discussion!) I think I've made it look narrow. (He certainly isn't envisaging that God has to be someone who intervenes in daily life, for example.)

Caroline, glad you liked the review. I haven't stopped by your thread for ages so don't even know if you're home or away. I'm going to try to catch up on threads later tonight.

Linda - yes I've been having a great run. I'm going to be slowing down now though for a while - end of term madness here for the next few weeks and some slow non-fictions coming up...

Eek time for a new thread, but after I've made a coffee.

Cushla, I've got Every Light in the House Burnin' by Andrea Levy on hold at my local bookstore. So -thanks so much for your review! I'm in the midst of Excellent Womenby Barbara Pym - and then I'm starting a group read of Thousand Autumns by David Mitchell soon - so I may take me a week or so to read it.. But thanks for the encouragement with your review.

Deb I'm pretty sure you'll really like it! I liked Excellent Women too.

My new thread's over here:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/118903