What Are You Reading July 2011

What the hey, since I'm up, I might as well start a new thread. I ended June, actually about an hour before the end of June, reading 84 Charing Cross Road a charming book about books and friendship. I think it's 40 years old now, good writing endures. Now I'll start the first of many Orange Prize nominees I have planned for Orange July, Annabel by Kathleen Winter which I think is about a transsexual woman. Sounds interesting. I'm also almost to the end of the last Dorothy L. Sayers I plan to read for a while, Have His Carcase. It's witty and feminist but I've pretty much had my fill of 1930's British mysteries. One thing that gets me, I had heard accusations of antisemitism in regards to her work, which I don't find there, but she frequently uses the word Dago, and I haven't heard any complaints about that. Could she mean something other than an Italian disparagement?

I'm reading Dusty answer by Rosamond Lehmann. I'm not as emotionally involved with the heroine as I was with Olivia in Invitation to the waltz and The weather in the streets, but it is a good read and the prose is beautiful. It evokes summer evenings by the river so well.

Currently reading Bride of New France, a historical fiction by Suzanne Desrochers. So far, it is really good!

ETA: completely forget to mention, I will also be starting Andrea Levy's Small Island today.

After numerous comments on this monthly thread, I read The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender. What a charming, bittersweet novel. And a perfect coming of age story. Thanks to many for the suggestion.

Just Finished:
Naamah's Blessing by Jacqueline Carey. I found this slightly more emotionally satisfying than the second book in the trilogy, but extremely problematic. I think Carey overreached herself in this latest trilogy rather badly, and I really hope she does something entirely different with her writing for the next several years -- I love this world, but she appear to be tapped out in terms of coming up with new and interesting plots for it.

Currently Reading:
Let's Play White by Chesya Burke
Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor

Up Next:
The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge
Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (not a girlybook, but hopefully funny!)

I'm currently reading Let's Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell, an excellent (though sad) look at a close female friendship.

Reading Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects, a rather dark crime novel which I'm really liking so far.

I finished a couple of books for Orange July this weekend. Annable, short listed for this year's prize, is about an intersexed baby who was interfered with to no end and raised as a boy. Aside from a strange detour into the physically impossible, the book was an excellent study of individuality vs conformity and order vs ambiguity. It also talked about the love of art in various forms. I liked it very much. I also finished The Seas which was long listed this year. It was in a way an exploration of the same ideas of loneliness, barren landscapes, and yearning but the style was annoyingly pseudo schizophrenic. I liked Samantha Hunt's other novel, The Invention of Everything Else, but this one left me cold. Shearon, at times it reminded me of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, but Aimee Bender was far more successful.

The little audiobook I finished was Incantation by Alice Hoffman a story about Spanish Jews during the Inquisition - well done but rather graphically disturbing.

Continuing my reading of Barbara Comyns, I've finished and reviewed the subtly unsettling The Juniper Tree, a novel that is almost a fairy tale.

If anyone wants to join me, I added a topic to another group for my Orange July reading:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/120083

These books are so thought provoking, it would be good to have a bigger discussion. The more I think about Annabel the better a book I think it is.

Looks like I have another Barbara Comyns to look forward to.

Citizenjoyce, I'm looking forward to Annabel! I'm about to start As the Earth Turns Silver by Alison Wong which won the big NZ literary prize last year. It's a book group read that I've been looking forward to, comments have been positive so far.

I'm 50 pages from finishing The Memory of Love, my first read for Orange July. It's fabulous.

I am also looking forward to Annabel which I downloaded recently. However, I can't imagine it topping The Memory of Love which is my favorite book of the year so far.

I'm reading The Informationist by Taylor Stevens. It is fun to have a capable, angry and mysterious female protagonist, but I have to think of it more as an amusement park ride than anything from which I'll get emotional resonance or satisfaction. If I do that, it's pretty good.

I just started reading The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party, not written by a woman but with a woman as the main character. That character, Mma Ramotswe, often muses throughout the series, this is the 12th book, I think on women and men. In this one, she thinks: "Such men who put women down were really rather weak themselves, building themselves up by belittling women. A truly strong man would never want that." I love that quote - it so succinctly says what I feel.

#3 I loved Small Island.

However, I'm on a comfort kick, and have just re-read To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis. For those who haven't read it, the characterisation is wonderful.

I love To Say Nothing of the Dog! Connie Willis in general is a great comfort read. . . well, except for her tragedies of course. :)

Ah yes, To Say Nothing Of The Dog is great fun.

I have just finished an enjoyably chilling novella, The Victorian Chaise-Longue.

Add me to the Connie Willis fans. She's just great fun.

I finished As the Earth Turns Silver and it was a good read, but not as good as I'd been hoping. I like my plots more complex, and thought the ending was a bit of a cop out. Not a bad book by any means (the characters were good and believable, the background of New Zealand in the early 20th century was interesting, and there was a veracity to the tale of Chinese immigrants to NZ). I think it's just a case of it being oversold to me.

Moving on to a non-girly book...

I just finished Night Waking by Sarah Moss, which I enjoyed a lot. I read it because it is set on a remote Scottish island, similar to the one I went to for my holiday this year. The novel tackles issues relating to motherhood, both in the present day where our narrator is juggling writing her book with caring for her 7 and 2 year old boys, and in the past via letters from an English midwife sent to the island to educate the women about modern hygiene practices. The two time periods connect towards the end of the book, and made me think about the history of the island which I visited, and how life would have been there in the past. I recommend the book highly. It may be easier to get into if you are a parent though; I had trouble relating to the minutiae of childcare that are detailed.

I ran across this article today and although it's about "chick lit" on the surface, there was one line in particular that reminded me of some conversations that I think were going around in this group on some thread or another.

“Men write domestic books, too, and as a woman writer I can’t help suspect that men writing about these issues are taken more seriously by taste-makers – critics, members of awards committees – than their women counterparts,” Grodstein says, citing Jonathan Franzen as one successful male writer who chronicles family life in his books.

Here's the full article for anyone who is interested: http://news.rutgers.edu/focus/issue.2011-07-01.3152348531/article.2011-07-08.710...

I'm now reading The Tiger's Wife, my second Orange July read. I'm not enjoying it as much as The Memory of Love, but I may have just turned the corner from "meh" to "like".

I finished The Memory of Love and haven't yet reviewed it. I started out really disliking it, a book called The Memory of Love begins with the story of a stalker. I knew nothing about Aminatta Forna and thought it was possible she really did think stalking had something to do with love, but I forced my self to finish becase it was short listed for the Orange Prize and people whose literary opinion I respect seem to love it. I finished thinking it was a great book, but unlike Annabel which rises in my esteem the more I think about it, The Memory of Love falls. It's a perfect story of the effects of war and this point redeems it as a good to great novel. But the story of 3 men and their actions and 2 women and their position as objects of love, lust, and desire falls as I think of what it has to say about the position of women in the world. I'll just say, I can see why it didn't win the Orange.

I've just finished and reviewed what to me is an uncatogoricalizable book, Michelle Tea's The Passionate Mistakes and Intricate Corruption of One Girl in America. Tea starts of talking about her time as a goth, punk groupie then goes on to discuss her succession of a few boyfriends and girl friends to her time as a prostitute. She doesn't say how she goes from prostitute to author, but she doesn't leave you thinking you'd much want to enter the profession. There are some great quotes, and it's a fast read, but the mother in me kept saying Get yourself together, and get out of there!

Now I start The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford.

Ah ha! The first time I've heard anything negative about the Memory of Love. I knew someone somewhere would find something to critique about this book. And very interesting comments they were! Anyway, I tend to be disappointed by books that are universally raved about (unless the book has been around for a number of years and the ruckus has calmed down), so this one was only at the bottom of my wish list. (I'll read it in 5 or 6 years if it's still winning praises). Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Other Joyce, The Memory of Love is a great story of war and its aftermath. I wouldn't want to disualde anyone from reading it, but a study of women it is not.

Oh, you're not. I've just been disappointed with books that were universally-lauded here at LT, so I'm going to wait with this one.

I just finished another Barbara Comyns, the largely autobiographical Sisters by a River; written mostly in the voice of a child, it provides a lot of insight into her other novels.

I can only imagine how interesting something biographical by Barbara Comyns would be. I hope I can find Sisters by a River.

>22 Citizenjoyce:: I absolutely loved The Memory of Love, and so join the hordes of LTers raving about it. But I find your comments about the women pretty thought-provoking. Thanks for sharing them !

>17 wandering_star:, I read The Victorian Chaise-Longue recently - it's a bit odd, isn't it!

I'm reading a biography of the author Jean Rhys by Carole Angier. Rhys seems like a very frustrating (and frustrated) woman. She spent most of her life in poverty and drinking heavily, always feeling that she couldn't fit into English society (she was born in Dominica). Her short stories and novels reflect this sense of not belonging.

Angier's writing has also been frustrating; she assumes that her readers have a wide knowledge of French, of English literary circles and of Rhys's writing which often left me feeling baffled in the early parts of the book. I'm over 400 pages in now and it is getting better now though.

#27 I got Sisters by a River from one of the booksellers on ABE Books.

I'm about to start Grace Williams Says it Loud for the Orange July read, it was short listed this year, and I've heard only good about it.

The other day I read and reviewe the children's picture book biography of Audrey Hepburn, Just Being Audrey. If there are little ones in your life, this is a good book to share. It has a great message of being true to yourself and valuing kindness over fame. And besides the strong female role model of Ms. Hepburn, the book is relevant to this group as it was written and illustrated by women.

#32 - I saw that at a bookshop about six months ago and I've been meaning to buy it (for myself) ever since. Good to hear it gets a recommendation.

>33 Nickelini: At the risk of sounding too stalker-y, I did notice that it was in your collection also. I definitely recommend.

I finished Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice by Janet Malcolm. Recommended for folks who are familiar with their lives and want to delve a little deeper via this well-written literary biography. Quickie review here

A few chapters into Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck. It promises to be dark and haunting.

Just from the little I read about Gertrude Stein in A Moveable Feast she seemed horrendously sexist always making Alice visit with the "wives" while she kept all the artists to herself. Was that really true or just Hemingway's perspective on things?

It seems a little more complex than that, but there is some truth to it. Read the book, and you'll probably think that Alice had strength to spare...

I have that out from the library and am a bit afraid to start it. I do not want to feel depressed, the desert is hard enough in summer as it is. Does it leave the reader sad without hope?

I love Dorthy L. Sayers more now than I did when I first read her in the 70's. She is an incredibly good writer, although I agree too much at a time would decrease my pleasure. After reading a couple of hers I started reading about England and Paris at that time between the wars. Sort of a strange time, the 'war to end all wars' is over, and many people realize there is more to come. The gas used in WW1 was horrible, and I think changed people's feeling about war. Meanwhile in France two lesbian cultural groups are hopping, one outrageous even by today's standards and on more sedate and will influence art for many decades to come.
Feminism is there in may different ways, women's roles are changing.

Thanks for posting this. I like books with many themes, complex, set in cultures I know little about. Is this chick lit. I think so because I greatly prefer women writers, and like to read about women's lives. I am interested in the everyday life of a woman in another country, another century. I simply like women more than men feeling they are more complex, think more about the consequences of their actions after their teens, and are often have more compassion. I do not feel others should share my preferences, this is an acknowledgment of preference.

I finished Grace Williams Says it Loud and reviewed it on the book's main page. It was really quite an undertaking for Emma Henderson who was trying to fictionalize the inner life of her sister, Clare who was institutionalized for 35 years. I'd recommend it to anyone, but it takes a strong stomach to get through many of the parts.

It was short listed for this years Orange Prize, now I start on The Outcast by Sadie Jones which was short listed for the prize in 2008.

39. Not sure if you were referring to Visitation, but, yes, it is quite bleak.

I finished I think my 4th Orange Prize book for the month, The Outcast, and I'm suffering from Orange overload. So much writing about so much evil, I can't take any more right now, so I've started Alone in the Kitchen With An Eggplant an anthology of essays about cooking and dining alone edited by Jenni Ferrari-Adler. Not all of the contributors are women, but more than half are including Ann Patchett, M. F. . Fisher and Laurie Colwin. What a pleasant change this is.

Harry Potter

Alone in the Kitchen With An Eggplant was great, full of good recipes and interesting ideas about cooking and/or eating alone. One essay by Holly Hughes about a ditsy woman's trying to please 3 children and her husband while evidently loosing the ability to do anything competently for herself was grating, but I enjoyed the rest.

Now I'm about 3/4 of the way through another Orange nominee The Tenderness of Wolves. What a great book about a strong woman character in cold, cold late 19th century Canada. The author, Stef Penney got a degree in philosophy and theology and it shows, then she became a filmmaker, and that shows too. The main character, Mrs. Ross, due possibly to horrible earlier years views life in very practical terms, including her early life. She sees what has to be done and does it. Here's a quote. She's in a mental institution and the new superintendent has taken a shining to her. He wants to photograph her as a romantic representation of various female mental disorders.

And so it began. To start with I would go to his office perhaps once or twice a month. Watson would have gathered a number of costumes and props to create the scenario. The first one was to be called, apparently, Melancholia, which I felt more than qualified to portray. He had arranged a chair by a window, at which I was to sit, in a somber dress, holding a book and gazing longingly out, as though, as he put it, I was dreaming of my lost love. I could have told him that there are worse troubles in life than an errant suitor, but I held my tongue and stared out of the window, dreaming instead of braised venison with port sauce, curried chicken, and trifle with nutmeg.

I think I've found a new character to add to my list of favorites.

I just finished The Scarlet Letter 42 years after it was assigned to me in the 10th grade. I wonder if Mr. Peltier will still let me hand in my paper ...

I love Hawthorne's short stories, particularly "Young Goodman Brown" and "The Black Veil," but, sadly, I didn't find TSL any more appealing at 57 than I did at 15. It not only stalls badly in places (like the first chapter, "The Custom House"), but wallows around in the Land of Tortured Souls too long. Also a somewhat unsuccessful mix of allegory and realism.

Also in July:

Finished my re-read of Jane Eyre, which I have done every few years since I first read it at age 12. I always see something new in it, and this time around it seemed to be an exploration of various types of mental illness.

Almost done with A Super Sad True Love Story.

May get to The Cookbook Collector before the end of the month.

I am going to read Good to a Fault next I think.

I just changed the group picture because I figured we needed an update (and I must admit, I really hated the monkey in the old picture). If anyone was particularly attached to the old one, please feel free to change it back. :)

#47> Fabulous new image, no complaints from me. I hope you like Good to a Fault, I read that last year and thought it was a good read.

>47 Yells: - LOL, I had to go investigate the old picture to see what monkey you were referring to. Love the new picture and look forward to seeing your comments on Good to a Fault. I second Tania.... I also thought it was a good read.

> 47 Thanks! Like the new picture; the monkey in the old picture bothered me also.

I prefer the new picture too. Thanks.

I'm just finishing Please Look After Mom, by Kyung-sook Shin and then I will finally get around to an Orange book. I think it will be The Swimmer by Roma Tearne.

Started Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal, which appears to be a Regency-set novel with a supernatural twist, in which people use "glamor" for decoration and general enhancement of the home (thus glamor is an additional domestic skill in which young ladies can become proficient, or a male glamorist who has trained can become a professional, as it were). At it's core the story seems like it will be a romance, and the problem is that two sisters--beautiful Melody, and plain but accomplished Jane--are after the same man, kind Mr. Dunkirk. Enjoying it very much so far.

@52 Geez, poor Mr. Dunkirk.

I don't want to go feminist critic without having read the book, but does something like "Shades of Milk and Honey" perpetuate notions of women as manipulative and underhanded?

I always thought the TV show "Bewitched" was sort of a nice metaphor for women trying to struggle out of that stereotype (though relying on magic/manipulation occasionally to accomplish some good with usually ambiguous results).

Makes me want to read Kowal's book, though!

Just started reading Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage, another memoir from the author of Eat, Pray, Love. We'll see how it goes!

>52 SaraHope:: That is on my wishlist; I look forward to hearing your thoughts on it.

#53 I don't think my phrasing was apt there! They're not really both "after" Mr. Dunkirk, exactly. It's more that both sisters like the same man, but everybody assumes that he's interested in the pretty one, so the plain one resigns herself to watching her sister snag the guy. Jane is the heroine, so I assume she ends happily ever after with somebody, if not Mr. Dunkirk.

The glamor aspect is really more of a interior decorating and performing thing as far as I can tell--though it can be used to enhance appearance, everybody knows when that is happening (for instance, in the book there is another girl in town who obviously uses glamor to hide buckteeth, but everybody knows she's doing it. Neither the heroine nor her sister use glamors in that way). The glamors are visible, so people can actually examine someone else's glamor to see how it was done, sort of like looking at brushstrokes in a painting or the mechanisms of a machine. In the context of the book it's just another talent that people (both men and women) can weave.

@56. Ah, thanks. It doesn't sound nearly so interesting now. More like me and my old lady friends getting together to admire each other's latest knitting projects or kitchen makeovers and bitching about our husbands.

Now have moved onto The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney.

I see Stef Penney has a new book coming out next month The Invisible Ones, and it appears to have nothing to do with The Tenderness of Wolves. It's terrible to be left to our own imagination like that. I hope you like it as much, or maybe more, than I did, Sara.

Shades of Milk and Honey has been on my wishlist for a while, after a friend (who does good recommendations) read it and enjoyed it.

I'm currently reading The Tiger's Wife.

#59 I'm not very far in and am liking it a lot so far, but I tend to gravitate toward literary and up-market mysteries (i.e. in the vein of Tana French, Erin Hart, Jacqueline Winspear) and historical novels anyway, so it's pretty much directly up my alley.

#60 I did enjoy Shades of Milk and Honey. It has an interesting premise that is nicely executed, and is a pleasant and light read -- it's an homage to the Jane Austen tradition, with a slightly magical twist.

Still Harry Potter.

I just finished Amy and Isabelle, my last book for the month and agree with the person who gave it to me, it is better than Olive Kitteridge. What a great read about a repressed mother and daughter with some pretty good foreshadowing of her later book.