raidergirl3's Orange July

My list looks like this:
The Memory of Love (shortlist 2011) - any time now, it's due back at the library before July

and since the Canadian Book Challenge starts July 1st, I'm looking for Canadian women on the Orange list, like:

Annabel by Kathleen Winter (shortlist 2011)
Larry's Party by Carol Shields (winner 1998)
Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O'Neill (

also Prep by Curtis Sittenfield (2006 longlist)
A Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore (winner 1996)

and I have a whole pile of other Orange books that I'd like to get to, like,
Lark and Termite (thanks Jill! I won that in January)
Small Island, Old Filth, Beyond Black,

but they'll probably get bumped to another time.

Elizabeth

Love the graphic! =) And yay to your Canadian challenge!

Love your graphic too!

Where is the Canadian challenge going on? I hadn't heard about that one. Might not be able to participate, but I can follow along and pipe up with my 2 cents (worth almost 3 cents in US dollars last I checked!)

I've read all three of the Canadian books you have, and I have to say they're all good but Lullabies for Little Criminals was by far my favourite.

The Canadian Challenge is the one john mutford at thebookmineset hosts. It's not on LT at all. It's the CBC 5 (Canadian Book challenge) and it runs from July 1 - June 30 and you read 13 books over the year. Let me know if you can't find it.

Good to know that they are all good books. I'm trying to work through most of Carol Shields books. After I read Unless, I really wanted to read all her books, although I wasn't in love with The Stone Diaries.

Great graphic! I will have to look for CBC 5 Canadian Book challenge. I had myself a very Orange May - but I'm sure I'll read more in July.

I enjoyed

Memory of Love
Grace Williams Says it Loud
Annabel
Room

and Small Island was fabulous -as was Long Song

I've got several more Oranges in mind. Enjoy!

I read A spell of Winter in January - a very well written book it got 3 1/2 stars from me

I want to read A Spell of Winter and Annabel too! I read one of Shields' short story collections a couple years ago and really loved one of the stories; I need to give more of her fiction a try. I loved Small Island; didn't love Prep, but didn't hate it either. It's a fast reader: pulls you along.

Hi Elizabeth - Stopping by to wish you Happy Orange Reading. I am hoping to get to Lullabies this month - it is on my short, short list! - and have heard great things about Memory of Love.

.... and, Happy Canada Day! ;-)
~Lori

A slightly belated Happy Canada Day! :) Wishing you a wonderful Orange July! I too am hoping to get to Lullibies later this month -but for I have just begun Case Histories by Kate Atkinson - a long listed Orange a few years ago. Have a great long weekend!

Love the graphic as well and I don't know what it is about Canadian writers but I have always been drawn to them. Perhaps next June we should have a Canadian Reading Month. Wouldn't that be good? How many of us would read Anne of Green Gables again? LOL!~!
I just completed Annabel and A Spell of Winter is on the shelf awaiting it's turn. And I liked Small Island a great deal when I read it some time back.
Enjoy your Orange July.
belva

I saw you gave Prep four stars! That's encouraging news for me! =) Can't wait to hear your thoughts on it, once you're back from your trip.

I'm back! Very tired tonight, but got Prep read and Lullabies for Little Criminals started, plus left Memories of Love started (it was too big to take on a trip). I plan to get rested, get unpacked, and then spend some time on the computer reading all this orange-y news and adding some comments.

thanks for all the comments and for thinking of me on Canada Day.

Ohhh next June a Canadian read!!! :) I'll bet we could get quite a few people on board for that - me included! Great idea, rainpebble!

I finished The Memory of Love. It felt like it took forever to finish. It suffered from over-expectation. It was good and all, but I'm not raving. I've had it out and overdue from the library and trying to finish it.

Now I'll finish Lullabies for Little Criminals which I put down to finish The Memory of Love. Good thing it's summer and all I have to worry about is what to read next.

>14 raidergirl3:: how interesting. The Memory of Love was a 5-star read for me, and I couldn't put it down !

@!4 - The Memory of Love was a 4.5 star read for me -but read it back in May - so at least I did not suffer with that over expectation that you did. I do think that makes it easier.

Oh BTW I noticed your concern on Jill's blog re PM Harper, who I can't abide either!! We definitely share that in common! I hope to read Lullibies for Criminals and have gone to the great expense of purchasing it so as not to have to wait for it in the library. I hope to read it for Orange July . You'll have to let me know how it holds up in the great expectations area! ;) I know I was not thrilled with Room. It was alright - but nothing special - so I really do understand what you mean.

laura - I know! I've been reading at the same time as you, and while I liked it, I just didn't love it. I only liked the Kai story. Adrian was having a midlife crisis, and the sex with the younger girl seemed to solve all his problems. Elias was so naive he was stupid, plus very obsessive about Saffia. If he appeared on Law and Order, the FBI would have been called in for his overall creepiness. Then by the end, he was even creepier. And reading about the war was just so terrible. I remember reading the child soldier book about that war, and it never makes any sense. Just such a horrible, horrible no reason war. So that didn't help either.

I've been wanting to talk with you about the book, because I knew how much you loved it.

deb- it probably is the same as Room was for you. Knowing that people loved it makes me read it a touch differently, wondering why. Then I started picking at all the reasons why I didn't *love* it.

Harper - blech! I'm from PEI and the Conservatives haven't done well here in a long while.

Congrats on your win Elizabeth. Enjoy. I am pea green.

>18 raidergirl3:: You are right on all points although I think I found Adrian's story a bit more credible than you did. I thought it was interesting to contrast Elias with someone like Agnes. Both lived through the war but had very different experiences. Both ended up with lives that were pretty much a mess. For me all those elements came together in a way that worked. I read the child soldier book too (A Long Way Gone, right?) which was horrifying, and so were the war stories in this book. You're right it was a "horrible, horrible no reason war," but then I feel that way about all wars. Books like these remove any glamor associated with war as a way of solving world problems. If more people read them, would we stop trying to kill each other?

I have yet to write my review because all of this is swimming around in my head and I can't quite get it into cogent points. Writing this helped though!

Get some water wings and just dive in Laura. We want to see what you thought. ;-)

Adrian wasn't that bad. But he was as bad as Elias with loving the woman for no particular reason. He was as obsessed as Elias over her beauty and never seemed to really know the woman. Or maybe just the author never seemed to give the women any character except through the men's eyes.

War never has a good reason, but this one didn't even have an enemy, just the 'rebels'. And I haven't read in either book, or got any kind of sense of what they were fighting and who they were. Maybe if they had a name. The rebels just seemed like anarchists, and mercenaries terrorizing the citizens.

I liked Agnes, but Adrian's interactions were so colonial - the saviour who knows best, when he clearly didn't understand her or her experience. Was Adrian meant to represent the British colonists?

>21 rainpebble:: water wings are ready, now just need to find some time. Having a bit of a busy day today!
>22 raidergirl3:: very interesting comments on both the portrayal of women and colonialism.

Probably need to move this over to the book thread, except I haven't read it yet. I want to write my review first. Ah, catch-22.

Oh and there was me just saying on Laura's thread that we all loved MoL!

Actually though, I do know what you mean about Adrian and I'm glad somebody mentioned it! I almost talked about it in my review earlier this year but it was one of the first reviews and I didn't want to overstate it and put people off, as overall I loved the book.

I did struggle with Adrian at times because of his relationship at home. When he said towards the end of the book that he thought about his young daughter "all the time", I wanted to shout hypocrite!- because we had been privvy to his innermost thoughts for the rest of the book and he didn't seem to be thinking about her at all!

I had no problem at all with the character of Elias as I quickly "got" him as psychologically disturbed and sinister. I think Adrian was ultimately portrayed as a bit weak but it took me a while to accept that as I'd been relating to him to some degree and depending on him to show me around! Finally all our sympathy goes to Kai and Adrian does start looking like another white guy with colonialist tendancies.

I did wonder at one point if Forna was going to develop a parallel between Adrian leaving his home country and the individuals who left their homes through PTSD but that never went anywhere so it was probably just in my head!

Regarding the women in the book, I thought it was quite clever how we did get a sense of them, through the eyes of the men. Reading between the lines, I thought they came across as the strongest characters!

>24 Soupdragon:: very interesting points all, Dee!

I didn't really have a big problem with Adrian -because if memory serves - he reasons for leaving his home country were with mixed motives.

I also sympathized with Adrian because he arrived as a psychologist and none of the doctor's or any or the people accorded him any respect - whereas in fact the majority of the people Adrian met had PTSD as a result of the war.

I did write a bit of review if you want to read my thinking at the time.

That said - Elizabeth - of course I totally understand your feelings towards Adrian. Sometimes I felt Kai was a bit full of himself!;)

Sometimes I felt Kai was a bit full of himself!

That made me laugh! Well everyone seemed to be in love with him including the author herself so perhaps it turned his head! ;)

Kai represented Sierra Leone, right? Which is why the author loved him best. He had lived through the worst of it, but still survived and stayed.

The discussions here make even a book that I didn't love all the better. Being able to explain and hear counter points deepens the whole experience. Thanks everybody!

Finished Lullabies for Little Criminals. Twelve year olds make the best main characters. I think Stephen King wrote about that somewhere. Is it any wonder that junior highs are the cesspools that there are? Children accept their parents and don't even realize there are other options, but by the teenage years, they can see. And understand how life may have dealt them a really bad hand. This isn't really a review, just some observations after reading.

Overall, I liked it. It was tragic and bizarre in many ways. And horrifying to think that people really live in that abject poverty. I thought the last half of the book, as Baby faces her decisions, to be the stronger half. The first half is the random stream of consciousness needed to set the deplorable life Baby and Jules live. And to demonstrate the overall love Jules has for Baby.

Elizabeth, I really agree that being able to discuss the books really deepens the experience. I had not thought of Adrian representing Colonolism as Soup ( I really need to get to know your real name, Soup ) mentioned. That's a really interesting idea and it makes sense. I had thought of Adrian as kind of a vehicle for being able to show how virtually everyone in Sierra Leone - or indeed - any war - all suffered with PTSD.

I have to laugh like you did, Soup, at my comment that Kai was to full of himself!;) It's interesting as we discuss books - at least I'm guilty of it - that I almost forget that the character's are creations of the auther, so I suppose poor Kai couldn't help being full of himself:)

Interesting take of Lullabies for Little Criminals. I can't wait to get reading it. As the mom of two young men -both in their twenties - I must take exception to the idea that junior highschools are cesspools;) Here in BC we only have 8 - 12 - and I felt that both of my sons got great educations from wonderful schools chock full of fabulous young people. But of course, schools do vary - I can only speak from my experience of my sons' schools.

I didn't mean the junior highs are cesspools, more that the age (12-15) is such an awkward and can be a difficult one that putting them all together makes it a hot mess. I teach high school, so I see them when they leave junior high. Plus, I have an 11 and 13 year old, so I see the wonderfulness of so many kids, as well as the awkwardness. Even with wonderful teachers, junior highs are awkward.

It's a good sign when we debate the characters - it means the author did a good job of writing them.

Yes - maybet hat particular age is a difficult one for most kids. If memory serves - I was so glad to move out Jr High to Sr High back in the day! SR High was so much more civilized. Maybe that's why in BC they went back to grades 8 - 12 all in one school. Hopefully the older kids can serve as a model for the younger ones.

(Deb -- not everywhere in BC has 8-12 ... lots of areas have middle school which is 6-8 and then high school from 9-12. Sorry to interrupt, please return to your conversation. Oh, and I agree with your comments that age group, Elizabeth.)

Finished Annabel. I really liked it though it wasn't like I thought it would be. I guess I expected more like Middlesex, and it was as much about Labrador, which was stunning. Having just been in Newfoundland, I really liked the descriptions in St. John's, as I was able to recognize places.

I loved the life & locale descriptive parts of Annabel as well, raider. I thought Kathleen Winter did a marvelous job of allowing the reader to feel the weather and lifestyle of Labrador.

Ohhh I'm loving Lullabies for Criminals so far .

Finished my 5th Orange for July, A Spell of Winter. Great atmosphere and creepy narrator.

You're on a roll, Elizabeth! Must get to A Spell of Winter. I think it's available on Paperbackswap (off to check!)....

Ohhhh a A Spell of Winter arrived from the book depository the other day! :) Can't wait to read it -but I'm booked with a couple of other books first - finishing up When Will There Be Good News - another Kate Atkinson - and Where White Horses Gallop - a Canadian Lit book that I promised a fellow LTer that I would read - and is due back to library. .....Oh - by the way - I wrote up a little on Lullabies for Criminals on my thread - it was a 5 star read for me!

Jill, if you found A Spell of Winter on PBS, I'm going to be mad. I broke down and ordered it from AMP, but it's yet to arrive. Now, my copy of *Lullabies* is coming from PBS. Elizabeth, I think that you were my inspiration for it....

OH dear! I hope you like it, that it's not a recommendud.

I love that 'word' : "recommed'dud'" LOL!~! Literally, very creative raidergirl3.

I wish I could take credit. I used to have a feature on my blog where I took suggestions for words to describe certain features of books, called Book Words. That was the best word, if I do say so myself, because it describes itself. A book that you don't like but other people have raved about.

Love it raidergirl3!~!

"Recommend'dud" just went on my "Use It Often" list!

Catching up on your thread. You've done really well with your Orange book reads.

Hey Mandy, good to see you.

I did great in July, but haven't read any since. There are monthly threads for the people who keep reading Orange books. I'm going to do a Orange January though - already planning my books.

Hey good to see you Elizabeth!