Rebeccanyc's 2011 Reading, PART 2

Today is my fifth LT anniversary, and I am starting my second reading thread of the year in its honor.

It is hard for me to believe that five years have gone by, five years that have been enriched by "meeting" many of you and learning about books and authors I never would have read otherwise. Thank you, Lois/avaland, for encouraging me to join the 75 Book group several years ago, and to all the rest of you, too numerous for me to mention individually, for sharing your reading and thoughts with me. Here's to the next five years!

Congrats on the Thingaversary! Looking forward to visiting you for another five.

Congratulations, Rebecca. You're a real asset to the 75ers!

Congratulations! Time to celebrate!

Thanks! I just treated myself to five new books for my five years of LT. Not sure when I'll get around to reading them, though, since I have so many other books on the TBR.

The Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum
News from the World by Paula Fox
When the World Spoke French by Marc Fumaroli
The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky
The Antichrist by Joseph Roth

Happy Thingaversary Rebecca!

Happy Thingaversary and enjoy your new acquisitions!

Happy Thingaversary, Rebecca! Nice haul!

Thanks, everyone!

Happy Thingaversary Rebecca! I recently enjoyed reading The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine.

That's good to know, Bonnie. It looked like a fun read, something I could always use!

55. We, the Drowned by Carsten Jensen

Oh, how this book went on and on and on . . . a frustrating mixture of fascinating, exciting adventure and boring looks at small town life, interesting portrayals of the world and unrealistic, overly analyzed characters, insight into life as a sailor and unbelievably coincidental plot elements.

Part of the problem stems from Jensen's goal of telling the story of a town, Marstal, a small island that produced many of Denmark's sailors and ships, over the course of a century from the 1840s through the end of the second world war, through the stories of some its residents, while at the same time recreating the world of sail and its conversion to the world of steam. It is an ambitious idea, but it doesn't quite work. The most engaging moments are the tales of seafaring -- to Australia, Tasmania, Samoa on the one hand and to Newfoundland and Greenland on the other -- and the depiction of the work of sailors, life aboard ship, and the roles of the captain, first mate, and other ranks. These parts were compelling and un-put-downable.

These tales over the century are linked through a few characters, and by Jensen's use of the first person plural, "we," to create a kind of Greek chorus of the townspeople, observing and commenting on the characters and their lives in Marstal. This, and a lot of what happens in the town itself, is, for me, where the book breaks down. The beginning of the novel, which deals at length with a sadistic schoolteacher, seemed mostly pointless; the discovery of a human skull in the waters around the island seemed unnecessarily melodramatic (as does the role of a shrunken head earlier in the story); and the difficult-to-believe but endlessly explained psychology of one of the women in town and her actions a distraction. All of these (and more) detracted from the rest of the book for me, as did the author's attempts at character analysis in general, the feeling that he was trying to create a plot that could encompass all the interesting stories he found out about late 19th and early 20th century shipping and sailing, and his frequent and obvious foreshadowing. He can hit you over the head making his points.

I don't mean to completely knock this book, because I did read the whole thing and I found parts of it, especially the parts about the sea, truly compelling. I just wish the author had had a good tough editor.

#12: I think I will give that one a pass. I do not want someone hitting me over the head while making points :)

Wow! Five Years! Time does fly when you're having fun, doesn't it? Your five books look very interesting. I have The Hottest Dishes of Tartar Cuisine, so will be interested to see what you think.

I'm disappointed that you didn't like We, The Drowned better. It's one of the few books I've bought recently new and in hardback. I still plan to read it, though, for the Reading Globally Sea unit.

Thanks, Deborah. I'll be interested in what you think of We, the Drowned as it was a sensation, apparently, in Europe, so I can see my reaction was atypical.

Happy Belated Thingaversary, Rebecca! I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed learning about new books from you. I always find something interesting on your thread!

Thanks, porch_reader; that's good to hear!

56. Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York by Luc Sante

This is a lively, informative, and fun look at the underside of downtown New York City from approximately 1840 to 1920, chock full of gangs, corrupt politicians and policemen, bars, drugs, prostitutes, theaters of varying degrees of nonrespectablility, graft, crime, cons, would-be reformers, and more. Sante combines detailed research, including many quotes from writers and songs of the period, with compassion for the lack of choices facing poor people and a feeling for the continuity between then and now. Both the people and the gangs had fabulous nicknames: one of my favorites was the Dead Rabbits gang, "dead" being slang for "best" and "rabbit' for "tough guy." On the other hand, we continue to use a lot of the slang that originated then: Sante cites blarney, kicking the bucket, pal, and swag, among others.

I find New York City history endlessly fascinating, and one of the things that most intrigued me about this book was that the author and I both lived on the old lower east side (renamed by the real estate business as the East Village and Alphabet City and now hopelessly gentrified, largely by the expansion of NYU) in the late 70s and the 80s, a time when change was beginning there. He explains that living there, among the old tenements, got him interested in the less well known history of the area.

Sante doesn't dwell of the "plus ça change" aspects of the stories he tells, and in fact he is so immersed in the details of the period they aren't obvious, and yet . . . we still have poor people, criminals, corruption, theater, bars, drugs, prostitutes, gangs and would-be reformers. The form may change, technology may intervene, but human nature and social realities are still with us.

The latter book looks like one I'd enjoy; I was ambivalent about the previous one when I first spotted it, and now am even more so...

Are you surviving this sweatbox heat????

Barely surviving, thanks to an air conditioner, but my windows face west/southwest, so this is the worst part of the day. Shades all the way down. And I think you would enjoy Low Life. Its fun AND informative.

#18: I will look for that one. Thanks for the review and recommendation, Rebecca.

57. Manhattan Noir edited by Lawrence Block

A nice light antidote to the heat, this collection contains stories, mostly but not exclusively crime stories, connected to different neighborhoods of Manhattan -- although, to my way of thinking, most didn't capture the feel of the neighborhood but just took place there. As with any collection, I liked some stories better than others, but some were really gripping.

I'll need to get that one. I have San Francisco Noir on my summer TBR pile.

58. Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes

Over the years, I've read many books about war, both fiction and nonfiction, and some of them remain among my favorite books: War and Peace, Life and Fate, The Guns of August, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, for example. But this is the first book I've read that made me feel I was trudging along with the soldier on the ground (or, in this case, the Marine), in his muddy boots, with feet eaten up by jungle rot, without enough food or water, on and on through the buffalo grass, up the ridges, down into the valleys, with fear if not downright terror in every step.

But the book is so much more than a vivid description of the horrific reality of jungle warfare. Despite the dozens of characters, Marlantes brings several key ones to life, fears, flaws, nobility, and all, and allows them to develop and grow as the novel proceeds. He dramatically illustrates the lunacy of ordering missions that will look better to the powers-that-be in Washington and to the media, rather than ones that might achieve a military objective (whatever that might be in the context of the Vietnam war), including the variety of ways in which higher-up officers in the field, many with experience in Korea or even World War II, react to these pressures. He portrays the proud heritage of the Marine Corps, and how it does or doesn't play out in the mud and jungle of Vietnam. He doesn't shy away from showing the racial and class divides that were as prevalent in the armed forces as they were back at home, or the practice of fragging (killing officers). Perhaps most compellingly, he shows men fearing death, watching their friends die, and wondering about what it means to kill. This is a very rich, complex novel.

Thanks to Lisa/labsf39, I learned that Marlantes was using the Parzifal myth to structure the novel. I read up on Parzifal and that definitely helped me understand some of the plot developments, as well as the theme of the growth of the warrior into manhood. I think I would have enjoyed reading the book almost as much without knowing this, but it definitely added to my appreciation.

#24: This is a very rich, complex novel.

Heartily agreed with. I really want to get a copy of Matterhorn for my personaly library because it is a book that can be read on so many levels and bears re-reading.

59. The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum

A lively and informative book about the origins of forensic medicine in New York City in the early years of the 20th century, The Poisoner's Handbook interweaves the story of two crusading and pioneering men, the city's first chief medical examiner Charles Norris and his deputy, toxicologist Alexander Gettler, with stories of classic murders by poison and information about the chemistry of a variety of poisons, including chloroform, cyanide, arsenic, mercury, carbon monoxide and more. Blum is an award-winning science journalist, and she skillfully juggles these elements against a backdrop of what was happening in the larger world, most prominently Prohibition which dramatically increased the number of deaths from alcohol, both standard alcohol when it could be obtained and the plethora of alcohols contaminated, accidentally or deliberately, with other substances.

Blum shows how what we now take for granted as forensic medicine came into being as the science of chemistry developed and as Norris and Gettler steadfastly learned about different poisons and established systems and standards for integrating scientific information into trials. In the chapter on radium, and in various other places, she touches on the failure of government to regulate the chemicals of the era, despite evidence that they were killing workers and consumers. In that respect, we still have far to go. Although we no longer find arsenic, radium, and other such poisons in our cosmetics or over-the-counter medicines, do we really know what today's chemicals are doing to us?

Excellent review of and comments about The Poisoner's Handbook, Rebecca; I'll look for it ASAP.

Looks so interesting especially if you enjoy mysteries from that era. Thanks for the review!

Congratulations on five years of LT. This is truly an amazing group of people and I'm glad a co-worker pointed me in the direction of LT.

26: Huh. Science entwined with history is a pretty unbeatable combo IMO, and I especially appreciate books that show how things we take for granted now (it seems so easy on CSI) were truly heroic accomplishments.

Arghhh. So many book bullets!

Marlantes has a new nonfiction book scheduled for release this fall, What It Is Like to Go to War. I've not yet read Matterhorn but have the new book hanging around, thanks to NetGalley, so I'll have to read it. But for now, I'm engrossed in Under the Frangipani by Mia Couto, which I think you might find appealing, Rebecca, if you haven't already read it...

I enjoyed The Poisoner's Handbook too, Rebecca. Glad to see you did too.

I picked up one of your recommendations at the library the other day, Low Life by Luc Sante. I will be reading it in the next week or so. I am hoping I like it as much as you did.

Thanks, everyone, for stopping by.

Suzanne, I read an earlier work by Couto, Sleepwalking Land, and while I thought he showed a deep understanding of the myths and culture of the native Mozambicans, I was pretty overwhelmed by the magical realism and felt I was missing a lot.

Stasia, I hope you enjoy Low Life too. It was a lot of fun. I had forgotten that you had read The Poisoner's Handbook; just can't keep up with all your reads!

Fantastic review of Matterhorn! It is an amazing book. Your review reflects my feelings about it, but you said it so much better than I ever could.

Lisa was going to go hear Marlantes speak (I wasn't able to go), so I'm interested to hear what he said from her. Haven't checked her thread yet though.

Thanks, Deborah, but it was your review and others that made me go out and get Matterhorn; I hadn't heard about it until then. And Lisa does have some very interesting notes on her thread about the talk, so they're well worth reading.

60. The Moldavian Pimp by Edgardo Cozarinksy

This delightfully written and yet sobering novella, harking back to the 1920s yet utterly modern, was recommended to me when I read Jewish Gauchos of the Pampas last year, and I am sorry it took me so long to get it and read it. The tales within tales start when a contemporary Argentinian student meets a dying man and acquires a treasure trove of old theater posters. This leads him to a 1920s Yiddish musical entitled "The Moldavian Pimp," and the story morphs to that of the dying man when he was young, a tango musician and possibly a gangster and pimp as well, and the two young women who were his girlfriends/wives, then switches to his son, now middle-aged and living in contemporary Paris, and then back to the student. Through these different tales, all told in beautiful, spare, elliptical prose, as well as the different times and different people, a picture of a period of Argentinian Jewish history, little known and considered shameful by the Argentinian Jewish community, comes alive, as full of questions as it is of answers, and connects to questions of prostitution today. It is a meditation, as well, on how we try to understand a history we can never really know.

In fact, there was a large and thriving group of Jewish gangsters, known as Zwi Migdal, which imported thousands of young eastern European Jewish girls to Argentina to work in brothels, many if not most under false pretenses. Who knew?

There was a terrific book on the subject of Jewish prostitutes written a few years ago by Isabel Vincent-Bodies and Souls: The Tragic Plight of Three Jewish women Forced into Prostititution in the Americas. She writes how the women organized and created their own cemeteries and synagogues.
I will have to look out for The Moldavian Pimp

Cyrel, that sounds interesting -- someone else mentioned it on another thread too.

61. The Skin Chairs by Barbara Comyns

This novel contains many of the ingredients I've come to recognize as typical of much of Barbara Comyns's work: a rural setting, a large family with lots of children, children left to their own devices, a mother who can't cope, lovely descriptions of nature and animals, demanding and conventional relatives, eccentric characters, weird and unsettling accidents and deaths. And yet, it is different in some ways too: longer, more complex, and more containing more character growth and even happiness. The novel takes its title from a set of chairs in the home of a neighboring general, chairs covered with human skin. The narrator, 10-year-old Frances (but clearly looking back when she is older), is both horrified and fascinated by them, wondering about the people whose skin was used. Although they only appear on a few occasions in the book, they serve as a metaphor throughout. Of course, what's always typical of Comyns's work is her psychological perceptiveness and her eye for character and natural detail. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

62. Manhattan Noir 2: The Classics edited by Lawrence Block

They're classics for a reason: this collection, unlike the first Manhattan Noir, includes stories (and poems) that were all previously published, rather than commissioned for the anthology. While, as with any collection, I didn't like all the selections, I was impressed by a much higher percentage in this second volume. Some stories were by authors I knew, and knew it would be hard to go wrong with, like Edith Wharton, O. Henry, Langston Hughes, and more, but there were others by authors I was unfamiliar with (although I had heard of some of them) but whose work stunned me, such as amazing stories by Cornell Woolrich and Evan Hunter and others by Irwin Shaw and Donald E. Westlake. As with the earlier volume, the conceit is that each story represents a Manhattan neighborhood and, as with it, in most cases the story is just located in that neighborhood rather than being specific to it in some way. But, all in all, a fun collection.

Two nice reviews, Rebecca; I may check out Manhattan Noir 2.

There's a Paris Noir and two San Francisco Noirs (as well as a whole bunch of others), Darryl, in case you're interested.

Adding The Moldavian Pimp to the BlackHole. Thanks for that recommendation, Rebecca!

Two more Hilary Mantels.

63. A Change of Climate by Hilary Mantel

One of Hilary Mantel's achievements in this stunning novel that is partly about secrets and their repercussions within a family and across time is her ability not only to keep the major secret for more than half the book but also to show how it affects members of the family without their even knowing that there is a secret, much less what it is. The reader is puzzled and disturbed but, like the family members, doesn't know why.

A Change of Climate is the story of the Eldred family. Parents Ralph and Anna, after spending the earliest years of their marriage trying to do good in colonial Africa, return to Norfolk, close to where both grew up; Ralph continues to try to do good, bringing "Sad Cases" and "Good Souls" back to the rambling Red House where he and Anna live with their four children, one born in Africa and three in England. The novel jumps back and forth between the present (around 1980), the time in Africa, and Ralph's childhood, bringing in his sister Emma and various other characters including one daughter's boyfriend and a son's girlfriend. After Emma's married lover dies, and the elder two children return from college to the family home, secrets start to unravel, as the characters confront issues of evil and forgiveness, loss, and the present versus the past. Each character is sharply and perceptively drawn, as are their interactions.

I am a Hilary Mantel fan, and one of the things I like best about her work is that she writes a huge variety of books, not sticking to the tried and true, and inevitably some are better than others. This complex, thought-provoking novel is one of her best.

64. An Experiment in Love by Hilary Mantel

One of the strongest parts in this somewhat harrowing coming-of-age story is Mantel's continuing ability to highlight and dramatize the indignities of poverty, the constant awareness of poor people of class differences, and the almost complete obliviousness of richer people to them. The narrator, Carmel McBain, comes from a poor Catholic family in the north of England. We see her overbearing mother whose life's ambition is Carmel's success, her difficult friendship with Karina, a neighbor girl whose family is even poorer than hers, their escape through academic achievement first to an elite Catholic school, where they meet Julianne, a girl from a much richer family, and then to London for university where all three girls, now young women, live in the same bleak residence hall. The present of the novel is their first few months in this hall, in the early 1960s, as they confront issues of friendship, religion, boyfriends, sex, the rigors of meager meals in the residence hall and, for Carmel, the challenges of having almost no money beyond that which pays for her tuition and board. The climax is almost melodramatic, shocking, but not completely unexpected. This isn't one of my favorites of Mantel's, but it is well worth reading.

I am so pleased to see your excellent review of A Change of Climate, Rebecca. I have that book on my shelves, having purchased it on impulse in a used bookshop shortly after reading Wolf Hall.

Thanks, Laura. It was Wolf Hall that got me started reading as much Mantel as I could. Now I see you're starting down the same path . . .

Unfortunately for me, my local library still does not have any Mantel's beyond Wolf Hall. She is rather hit-or-miss with me as an author, but I am willing to keep reading her stuff.

Both Mantel novels sound interesting. I've thumbed both reviews, and added A Change of Climate to my Kindle wish list.

65. Classic Crimes by William Roughead

William Roughead was a Scottish lawyer who practiced at the end of the 19th century and the early 20th century. But what really fascinated him was crime, especially murder, and especially the drama of the trials, and he became a connoisseur of Scottish murder trials, attending as many as he could and writing detailed descriptions of them for a series called Notable British Trials, as well as shorter but perhaps more literary versions, aimed at a more general audience, of ones that struck his fancy for one reason or another. This volume collects twelve of those tales, ranging from ones Roughead only read about because they happened before his time to ones he not only attended but in at least one case participated in.

In most of the stories, Roughead briefly describes the people involved in the crime and the crime itself, and its aftermath, and then devotes most of his time to how the case unfolded at the trial. What makes these stories much more than a legal tale is how Roughead tells them: he brings his "characters" to life, with insight into their personalities; he makes wonderful biting remarks that reveal pretension and stupidity; he is content to leave threads untied, as they are in real life but rarely in fictional mysteries; and his point of view is clearly though largely obliquely expressed, especially in the several cases that involve miscarriages of justice. The cases vary widely, and some are inevitably more interesting than others, but I found the book as a whole fascinating for what it revealed about life in earlier times, and how in some ways things never change. In particular, aside from the fact that people still murder for money or to get rid of their husbands or wives, I was fascinated by the way the news media of the day -- dozens and dozens of newspaper reporters, first without and then with photographers -- crowded the trials and relayed the proceedings to large and eager audiences. Sound familiar?

Roughead's writing style takes getting used to. It is old-fashioned, filled with words, and occasionally discursive and, as Luc Sante says in the introduction to the edition I read, Roughead "seldom fails to introduce a barrister without summarizing the now obscure highlights of his illustrious later career," but after a while I got into the rhythm of his prose and rather enjoyed it.

A Change of Climate was the first Mantel I read some years ago and An Experiment in Love the second- I still haven't read Wolf Hall. I didn't know anything about Mantel at the time and was wowed by the complexity and depth of the characters and their interactions in A Change of Climate.

I also liked Experiment in Love at lot, despite that ending!

Classic Crimes sounds like my type of book. I used to love Scotland Yard casebooks from the library when I was a kid. Thanks for the rec!

#65: I need to find a copy of that one. I own one of the books in the Notable British Trials series, but the name escapes me at the moment and since I am at work, I cannot readily find it. Anyway, thanks for the recommendation of the Roughead book, Rebecca.

I remember being mesmerized by the O.J. Simpson trial, which I think was one of the first (if not the first) criminal trial to be televised in full. There was a certain amount of voyeurism, but the legal maneuverings and strategies were fascinating. I'm sure I'll also be fascinated by Classic Crimes. (I'm an attorney, but not a criminal attorney).

66. They Were Counted by Miklós Bánffy

I almost gave up on this book soon after I started it, because I wasn't that interested in the big party of aristocrats at a Hungarian castle in the early years of the 20th century with which it begins. But I kept at it and soon I was hooked, because Bánffy is a marvelous story teller. It is a sprawling tale, with two cousins at its center, but involving dozens of other characters and their relationships, romantic and otherwise, and politics. What makes the book so fascinating, aside from or despite the almost soap-opera-ish aspects of some of the subplots, is the look at the vanished (perhaps deservedly so) world of pre-World War I Hungary and, in particular, the often fought-over province of Transylvania, then under Hungarian rule but largely peopled by ethnic Romanians. These were the waning years of the Austro-Hungarian empire, much written about by Austrians such as Joseph Roth, but this book is told from the Hungarian perspective, and the Hungarians very much felt themselves second-class citizens in the empire. The descriptions of political events, many presumably based on real ones, since Bánffy had himself been a politician from an ancient aristocratic family, show the futility of the political arguments of the time, all focused on the Hungarians' resentment of the Austrian rulers, completely oblivious to the changes in the world outside. (It is my understanding that the next two volumes of this trilogy lead up to and end with the killing of Archduke Ferdinand and the beginning of first world war, which was the death knell of the Austro-Hungarian empire.)

While the stories of the cousins and their families, their lovers and those they want to to be their lovers, their land and their financial issues are, along with the politics, the heart of the novel, I also found the parts dealing with the beauty of the Transylvanian landscape and the lives of peasants, especially those in the mountains, very interesting. What was also interesting, and depressing, was the extremely limited lives women had to lead in those times, the still existing emphasis on the role and importance of the hereditary aristocracy, and the power those aristocrats had over the lives of others.

Despite the blurbs on the copy I have, which compare Bánffy to Tolstoy, this isn't in the same literary league. Part of this may be due to the translation since the English translator (who worked with Bánffy's daughter) says in his introduction that he not only cut parts of the book because it was so long and politically detailed, but also that he realized that "a literal translation in English would give none of the quality of the original and would fail completely to give any idea of the idiom and feeling of the first years of this century in Central Europe . . . anyone tackling it would have to make an English version rather than a literal translation." Nonetheless, it is a compellingly readable story and I am eager to read the next two volumes.

Finally, the edition I read is marred by sloppy proofreading -- words missing, words where they don't belong, typos and/or missed punctuation. It's a shame.

#54 A friend was raving about this book last year and sent me a copy. I've not tried reading it yet, the size of it makes me keep saving it for when I've got the energy and time for a longer book. Your review is helpful, especially re not giving up if it doesn't grab at first - I'll give it a go for the storytelling, and to find out more about Hungary/Transylvania in that period.

Nice review of They Were Counted, Rebecca.

Someone else here in the group recommended They Were Counted too. I am going to have to get my hands on a copy.

Nice review, Rebecca!

Thanks, Genny, Darryl, and Stasia.

Another book to add to my wish list- thank you!

Also adding to my tbr list, sounds too interesting not to.

67. The Mangan Inheritance by Brian Moore

I wish I liked this book better than I did. Brian Moore is an excellent writer and knows how to pace his story and keep the reader intrigued, and for much of the novel I was right there with him as he takes the protagonist, insecure lapsed poet James Mangan, from New York City and the end of his marriage to movie star Beatrice Abbot (which led the doorman to call him "Mr. Abbot") to Montreal, where he grew up, where his father still lives, and where he finds a trove of information about his family history including his possible relationship to noted 19th century Irish poet James Clarence Mangan, and from there to Ireland where he encounters the contemporary Mangans, two families who have little but contempt for each other. As Mangan gets involved in the life of remote Drishane, where everybody knows everybody's business, it becomes clear that there's a lot he doesn't know and that some people don't want him to know it, especially when they meet him and see his face which, as he discovered in Montreal, is practically a double of that shown in an old photo that may be of the poet. The plot, with sidetracks into Mangan's erotic obsession with his 18-year-old distant cousin, then becomes distinctly melodramatic as the main secret is dramatically revealed (and somewhat credulity-stretching it is) and Mangan returns to Montreal where his search for identity comes to a close. I didn't dislike this book; in fact, it was a fun read in some ways, and maybe I just wasn't in the right mood for it.

Nice review, Rebecca, but it doesn't sound like my kind of book.

Probably not, Darryl, but thanks.

Hmmm, I hadn't heard of this one but I've liked the other books by Moore that I've read. I think I'll wishlist it but not trouble myself by actively searching for this one. Thanks for the review!

68. The Bride from Odessa by Edgardo Cozarinsky

This collection of stories highlights many of the themes and ideas expressed in Cozarinsky's novel, The Moldavian Pimp, which I read and loved earlier this month. Characters move from country to country, search for their true identity and their ancestors, sometimes change their identity, feel lost in a new (or old) land, obsess over the past, and find or lose love. Like Cozarinksy himself, many character are, or were once, Jewish Argentinians, but nearly all of them (or their ancestors) wander between Europe and the "new" world. Some of the stories, such as the title one, are extremely compelling, others less so, but it is overall a fine collection and Cozarinsky is an excellent writer.

That's too bad about the Brian Moore. He's an author I like, but find sometimes uneven. Which of his other books have you read? I really liked The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne and Cold Heaven, and enjoyed The Statement as well, but found a couple of others not so good.

Deborah, I didn't completely dislike The Mangan Inheritance and I do think Moore is a good writer. I haven't read anything else by him but am open to trying some, especially the ones you mention.

69. The Factory of Facts by Luc Sante

Before reading this book, I rarely thought about Belgium: perhaps in the context of its residents using mayonnaise on their frites or of its being geographically susceptible to invasion. But thanks to the power of Luc Sante's writing in this loosely termed memoir, I've now learned about Belgium's history, geography, art, writing, food, language(s), national character, and more, as well as about Sante's early life in Belgium and how the country stayed with him after his family immigrated to the United States, specifically to New Jersey, when he was a child. Along with all the information about Belgium (as with his Low Life, which I read and loved earlier this summer, Sante loves to pile on fact after fact, name after name, much more than the reader can retain, yet absorbing nonetheless), Sante gives lovely portraits of his parents, extended family, and the Belgian built environment; plays with language; explores the duality of immigration, part here, part there; and is generally witty and fun to read. I have become an admirer of his writing.

That's going on the list! I've wanted to go to Belgium for a couple of years now. *mainly for the chocolate.*

#68 and #69 - The beer is amazing too!

Now you're both making me hungry and thirsty!

>68 rebeccanyc: Ooh, that goes to the top of the must buy list. There is a travel bookstore in Notting Hill that is in danger of going out of business, so I think I'll go there tomorrow to look for The Factory of Facts. Thanks, Rebecca!

I don't know if it would be in a travel bookstore, Darryl; it's billed as a memoir.

#68: Another one for the BlackHole. Thanks, Rebecca!

Thanks for that clarification, Rebecca. I found out that The Factory of Facts wasn't in stock at Foyles, so I thought about Daunt Books in Marylebone or The Travel Bookshop in Notting Hill, which both reportedly stock non-travel books by country or region. Actually, Daunt Books might be a better place to look, as The Travel Bookshop is the one that is in danger of closing. If I can't find it there I'll probably order it from Amazon after I return.

70. They Were Found Wanting by Miklós Bánffy
71. They Were Divided by Miklós Bánffy

These two novels complete the trilogy begun with They Were Counted and everything I said in my review of that book holds true for these as well.

They Were Found Wanting takes the protagonist, Balint Abady, his cousin Laszlo, and dozens of other characters from the years 1906 to about 1909. As with the earlier volume, their stories and romances are mixed with set pieces of huge parties and hunts, politics within Hungary and in the broader Austro-Hungarian empire, and vivid descriptions of natural environments around the country. What comes out more strongly in this volume is the self-centeredness of Hungarian politics and the internal conflicts that blind people to the larger world outside, as well as Bánffy's goal of painting a complete portrait of a complex world that no longer existed by the time he wrote the novels in the 1930s.

The final, slimmer volume, They Were Divided, covers the period up until the first world war. In this novel, the personal stories continue, as do the political maneuverings and the portraits of nature, but there is also an overwhelming sense of loss and of a period ending, both for individuals and for the country. Bánffy completed this novel in 1940, as a second world war, which would destroy what the first one hadn't, was starting to ravage Europe.

One of Bánffy's points throughout these novels is the impotence of the Hungarian legislature, tied up in partisan politics and obstructionist policies that ignore the good of the country. A reader in the US can't help but see parallels to our own Congress.

72. The Girl in the Polka-Dot Dress by Beryl Bainbridge

This short, puzzling novel follows Rose, an enigmatic young English woman, and Harold, a slightly less enigmatic middle-aged American man, as they take a road trip across the United States in the fraught months in 1968 between the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, in search of the mysterious Mr. Wheeler. Rose, who seems damaged in some way but is occasionally surprisingly perceptive, is looking for Mr. Wheeler because he was kind and helpful to her in her troubled teenage years; Harold for reasons of his own. As they travel, they encounter a variety of people and are involved in a variety of incidents; some seem shocking to the reader, but almost bounce off Rose, who lives more in the past than in the present. Although the novel reveals how much our pasts affect our present, the lasting impacts of neglect if not abuse, and how difficult it can be for people to understand and communicate with each other, it is as much about the US, and the craziness of 1968, as it is about the main characters.

The striking part of this novel for me was how Bainbridge writes. Characters act and speak as they would in real life, without any explanations to the reader, who is mystified for much of the novel as to what happened in the past and why the characters behave as they do. Even at the end, as the reader realizes we are heading straight to the Kennedy assassination (the novel stops just before it), much is still unclear.

This novel was almost but not completely finished when Bainbridge died and has been published posthumously as she left it. Although I haven't read anything else by Bainbridge, I've read a little bit about her and understand that this spare style and the lack of explanation are typical of her writing, and not an artifact of the novel being unfinished. I also read the Paris Review interview with her that is accessible from her LT author page and discovered that some of Rose's experiences come from Bainbridge's own life.

73. Train Dreams by Denis Johnson

In this poetic novella, Johnson tells the tale of Robert Grainier and through him portrays both the wilderness of and the massive building in the American northwest in the early years of the 20th century. A railroad builder, lumberer, and contract hauler, who was raised by an aunt and uncle and doesn't remember his parents or where he lived in early childhood, Grainier experiences a terrible tragedy and builds and lives in a cabin in the remote Idaho mountains. He encounters other people through his work, but never becomes close to them; a dog who adopts him is his only companion for many years and at one point he wonders whether he is a hermit. Although he lives alone, with a pervasive feeling of sadness and loneliness, he is surrounded by the other living creatures of the mountains, by the sights, sounds, and smells of the forest, and by his visions of wolf-people and more. This is a portrait of a time and a place in American history, as well as a story of loss and beauty. The whistle of the train and the howling of the wolf echo through its pages.

#79 - Great review. I've read Already Dead and recently purchased Tree of Smoke. I'll have to check this one out as well.

I'm adding the Beryl Bainbridge to my wishlist. 1968 was a watershed year for me. I was in London at the time of the MLK and RFK assassinations, and experienced these through a British lens. I started college in the US in the fall of 1968. That was an insane year.

I was still in high school, Deborah, but it was certainly a year that shaped a lot of my thinking.

74. The Weather of the Future: Heat Waves, Extreme Storms, and Other Scenes from a Climate-Challenged Planet by Heidi Cullen

Climatologist Heidi Cullen has written a chilling book about global warming by describing the effects climate change will have on people in seven regions around the globe. Although some may have heard of Dr. Cullen because she had a show on climate on the Weather Channel, I picked up the book not because I knew who she was but because the nearby Catskill Mountains had so recently been devastated by Irene, downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm just as it reached New York, but still a tremendous and dangerous rain-maker.

After initially discussing the differences between climate and weather (in a nutshell, timescale), how we can study past climate change, how prediction works, and how by testing models on the past scientists can fine-tune them to look at the future, she turns to the heart of the book: examining how climate change affects seven key regions, each with its own set of problems. In doing so, she is able to introduce the variety of problems global warming will create, and in each profile she interviews people familiar with the area and its issues,not just climate specialists, but engineers, ecologists, water experts, people working with local groups, and more. Each profile first focuses on the issues and then includes a fictional 40-year forecast, based on what is known about the area and its problems. Through this approach, she covers a broad range of impacts of global warming, while giving it a human face.

The areas and issues she profiles are: the Sahel region of Africa (famine, crop losses, water resources), the Great Barrier Reef of Australia (coral bleaching, ocean acidification, and economic challenges), the Central Valley of California (drought, regional water resources, agriculture problems), the Arctic, including both the Inuit area in Canada and Greenland, each with its own challenges (ice melt, mineral resources, a navigable Arctic circle), Dhaka and Bangladesh in general (sea level rise, floods, and what she calls "climate refugees), and New York City (hurricanes, infrastructure, sea level rise).

In her introduction, Cullen says that after one of her seminars a man came up to her, complimented her on her lecture, and asked her whether he should sell his beach house. She realized that "the scientific community had failed to communicate the threat of climate change in a way that made it real for people right now." In trying to to do just that, she has written a readable and important book.

83: Onto the wishlist. I just read an article in Scientific American (January 2011; I'm behind) about expected consequences in three other regions: Mozambique, Mekong Delta, Mexico & Central America.

75. Ice Trilogy by Vladimir Sorokin

I read this stunning trilogy partly because I admired Sorokin's strange novel The Queue, partly because it looked intriguing in the bookstore, and largely because arubabookwoman/Deborah wrote a compelling review of it here. I can add little to her outline of the trilogy, so will only briefly summarize the plot to put the rest of my comments in context.

Basically, a troubled young man with a traumatic history discovers that the meteorite that devastated a remote region of Siberia in 1908 was made of a special kind of ice that can open the hearts of a special 23,000 people -- all blond-haired and blue-eyed -- who really have been created by rays of light, and that once he finds all these people they will be able to leave the world of the earth, which they consider a mistake, and join the light. Hence, he creates the Brotherhood of the Light and over the course of nearly a century, he and his successors gather these men and women and children into the Brotherhood. It is apparently quite blissful to be a brother or sister of the light and to be able to "speak" with one's heart to other brothers and sisters; they can only eat raw foods like fruits and have no sexual desires. However, after the death of the first two children of the light -- the young man, known by the "heart name" of Bro, and his first "sister," Fer -- the ability to sense if someone is one of them is lost, and the only method of discovering if a person can "talk" with his heart involves hitting him or her violently with a hammer made of ice; thus, a lot of people are killed in the process. Not only that, but sisters and brothers seek money and power to accomplish their goal, and that power takes them inside some of the nastier regimes of the 20th century -- Hitler's and Stalin's -- as well as into the corporate hierarchy at the end of the 20th and early 21st century. By the end of the trilogy, the Brotherhood has reached a pinnacle of power and wealth.

Sorokin uses a variety of techniques to tell the story: straight narrative, "testimonies," an at first odd but later meaningful use of italics, sections that seem like reporting, and jumps back and forth in time as well. While at first the reader feels happy for Bro and Fer, gradually the efforts of the Brotherhood begin to seem insidious and their attitudes towards the other people around them cruel. As compelling as the story is on its own, it seems to me that Sorokin meant it as a metaphor for all the political and religious movements that start out with bright ideals and then succumb to the lust for power and money, the use of violence to achieve supposedly worthy goals (the end justifies the means), and the denigration of the other. In that regard, members of the brotherhood start to refer to people as "meat machines" and to make fun of their needs for food, love, friendship, and sex. Sorokin is probably most intensely commenting on the Russian revolution and subsequent events in the Soviet Union, but by putting it in an imaginary context he broadens the perspective. And while, as noted in the earlier review, there are places where the reader has to suspend disbelief, all in all this is a compelling, beautifully crafted, and indeed virtuosic work.

Congrats on reaching 75!!

Glad your 75th was a good one! Congrats!

Congrats!

congratulations!
And thank you for more book titles to put on my wish list.

Thanks, everyone. Glad to be here in the 75 books group.

Congratulations, Rebecca! And thank you for that wonderful review of Ice Trilogy; I'll pick it up in the next month or two.

I'm so glad you liked The Ice Trilogy. It's a very unusual book, and it wouldn't surprise me if some people don't "take" to it. Great review, by the way.

Thanks, both for the recommendation and the compliment. I thought your review was excellent and I was hard-pressed to say anything different.

76. The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay

This book grew on me as I read, as what seemed at first to be a somewhat comic, somewhat dated travel narrative turned into a complex and subtle novel of ideas, about religion, history, what it means to do right or wrong, love, loss, and the fate of empires. Macaulay is a marvelous and bitingly witty writer, weaving long, fascinating sentences that often wind up with surprise endings. Little bits of information scattered throughout the text end up coming together in revealing ways. The book contains a lot of classic and Anglican history, of the type that educated Britons of the first part of the 20th century would have known inside out, but that frequently sent me to Wikipedia.

The time is the early 1950s, and the novel follows the narrator, initially unnamed, as she accompanies her Aunt Dot, her aunt's camel, and her aunt's traveling companion, the Reverend the Honorable Father Hugh Chantry-Pigg, on an expedition to Turkey where they have overlapping but divergent goals: leaving England, converting the Turks, liberating Turkish women, writing and illustrating books. (In fact, Macaulay is very funny about all the English people who travel places to write books about them.) Needless to say, complications ensue.

I have to admit that parts of the book, especially at the beginning, annoyed me, because they were so illustrative of prejudiced colonial attitudes. As I read more, and followed more of the thoughts of the narrator, I began to think, or hope, that she was making fun of these, but if not, they are a relic of a time and a place. There were also a couple of episodes that didn't quite seem to belong in the book, or at least I couldn't figure out why they were there.

Nonetheless, and despite the fact that this ultimately a mournful book, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Great review, Rebecca! The Towers of Trebizond sounds fabulous, so I'll look for it next month.

Came across here after seeing your review on the 'classics' thread. Thank you for reminding me of Towers of Trebizond - I'd quite forgotten about that. I loved it from the opening line about a camel and high mass! But it's so long since I read it, I've forgotten most of what happens and that it is 'ultimately mournful'. I don't think I still have the copy I read, but I shall have to look out for another for a re-read one day.

77. What It Is Like to Go to War by Karl Marlantes

I would not have read What It Is Like to Go to War if I hadn't read Marlantes' stunning novel Matterhorn earlier this year, and I can only admire Matterhorn more now that I've read WITLTGTW. The personal, historical, psychological, spiritual, and mythological perspectives on war and warriors that Marlantes discusses with great perception and great humanity in this book offer another, lens on the themes of the novel, a more explicit and reasoned one; it is a mark of Marlentes' talent as a writer that the important issues of WITLTGTW emerge organically in Matterhorn.

Among the topics that Marlentes covers -- killing, guilt, numbness and violence, the enemy within, lying, loyalty, heroism, home, and the temple of Mars -- perhaps the most important are those affecting the soldier's attitude towards his job and his return to civilian life. Marlantes never loses sight of the fact that our military is made up largely of very young men (and now women), men who need to know what it means to kill as much as what it means to risk being killed, men who need to understand the ethical and spiritual components of being a man and being a warrior, men who have to learn to integrate their strength and violence, thrill-seeking and grief back into life at home, away from the field of battle.

As is now well known, Marlantes is a Yale-educated Rhodes scholar and much decorated Marine who served in Vietnam and then spent forty years working on Matterhorn and, presumably, this book too, forty years in which he eventually learned to deal with his own PTSD and thought deeply about the meaning of war and the nature of warriors. Much influenced by ideas of Jungian psychology, he focuses also on the meaning of manhood and spiritual issues. Another focus is the changing nature of war, in which soldiers are ever more removed from direct contact with the enemy, killing them from behind computer screens half a world away or, when in the actual battlefield, can hours later be talking on the phone, or e-mailing, or posting to Facebook, maintaining a kind of contact with home, and dual reality, that was unheard of in earlier conflicts.

This is a moving, personal, and yet rigorous look at important issues, especially for we in the US where we've been at war for 10 years with almost no impact on the substantial percentage of the population who live outside the regions of the country from which the volunteer army is largely drawn. Many people, as noted in other reviews here on LT, should read this book. It is clear, well written, and compelling. Nonetheless, Matterhorn, covering the same territory in fictional form, is for me a greater accomplishment.

Very much enjoyed your reviews of the Miklós Bánffy books. I have been wanting to learn more about Hungary in the first half of the 20th century since reading The Invisible Bridge and feeling so ill informed of its history. I am adding them and thanks.

Rebecca both your reviews of Marlantes work to date are excellent and I've moved up Matterhorn nearer the top of the mountain to fit in this year.

78. I Was an Elephant Salesman: Adventures between Dakar, Paris, and Milan by Pap Khouma

This autobiographical novel takes the reader on a journey with the narrator from his home in Senegal, where he studied pottery, despite this being considered inappropriate for someone with his traditional family background, but then followed some cousins to the Ivory Coast, where he first started selling trinkets to tourists, and finally to Italy, en route, he thought, to Germany where a Senagalese fortune teller told him he should go. Through Khouma's first person tale, the reader experiences the hectic pace of the illegal immigrant's life. Even when he is not traveling to Paris, trying and failing to get into Germany, having difficulty getting back into Italy, returning briefly to Senegal, and then coming back to Italy, he is on the go: trying to buy the elephant sculptures, jewelry, shirts, and other objects; traveling to beaches and cafés and metro stations to sell them; searching for places to live that are cheap and safe; moving from town to town to find customers and escape the police. It is a hard, difficult, dangerous life, especially because Khouma and his narrator were among the first Senegalese to travel to Italy (the novel takes place in the mid-1980s and was published in 1990). Khouma also gives the reader a real sense of the brotherhood among the Senegalese immigrants, how they will mostly try to help each other even if they didn't know each other back home, although everyone is more or less equally poor and struggling. Their friendships and support of each other are largely what keep them all going. Towards the end of the novel, the Italian government gives the Senegalese immigrants papers that allow them to be documented immigrants and legally stay in Italy, but then the police oppression picks up.

I enjoyed this book for its vivid depiction of the life of these immigrants and the ways they try to stay beneath the radar of the authorities, including arriving places separately, traveling in different cars on trains, and more. I also appreciated the way it illustrates the mixed relationships between the Senegalese and the Italians, the tourists who want to buy the items the vendors are selling while the police not only try to stop them from selling (confiscating their merchandise, threatening them with jail or deportation), but also suspect them all of selling drugs; the terrible lack of treatment the narrator receives when he is very ill and goes to a hospital versus the kindness of some Italian café owners and others. Above all, the reader gets a real sense of what it is like to be very hard-working but very poor and very black and very undocumented.

In the introductory notes to the translation I read, both the translator and a Dartmouth Italian professor point out that Khouma was not only one of the first Senegalese to come to Italy but one of the first to write about the experience of African immigrants there. When he wrote the book, which was published in Italy in 1990, he had the help of an Italian journalist in shaping the stories, but he has since gone on to write other books without that kind of editorial assistance. They also point out that he was a trailblazer: other immigrants have followed in his footsteps and written perhaps more complex and novelistic works. Nonetheless, this was a compelling read.

Very nice review, Rebecca.

79. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

A reread, and as enjoyable as ever. Comfort (no pun intended) reading at its best.

And, thanks, Darryl.

Rebecca must say that your must be the most considered and articulate reviews being posted presently. Wonderful review and I was an Elephant Salesman goes straight into my TBR forest.

Blushing! But, thank you, Paul.

80, Yalta: The Price of Peace by S. M. Plokhy

In this readable, yet information-packed story of the Yalta conference that brought the aging Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin together in the waning days of the second world war, S. M. Plokhy mines newly available Soviet as well as British and US archives to provide insight into the differing perspectives on what was taking place. The heart of the book takes readers day by day through the conference, but Plokhy intersperses this with the background of issues being discussed -- from the progress of the war to the potential dismemberment of Germany to the fate of Poland and other eastern and central European countries to the war with Japan to the return of POWs to zones of influence and much more -- and some of the post-conference results.

For me, the most fascinating part was the portraits of the leaders and how they interacted with each other: Churchill sticking to some principled stands but grumpy because he thought Roosevelt and Stalin were ganging up on him and because he could see the power of the British empire fading; Roosevelt ailing but wanting to serve as the honest broker, "the judge," and committed to the creation of the United Nations; Stalin, turning on the charm with Churchill and Roosevelt while knowing all their foreign and military policies in advance through both his ongoing spying and his bugging of the palaces in which they and their advisers stayed, and while being the only one who could make decisions for the Soviet Union, not even Molotov, not even Beria, not even top generals, all of whom accompanied him to Yalta. I also found it fascinating to see the shifting alliances and to gain an understanding of how Stalin fundamentally didn't understand or trust democratic electoral systems and Churchill and Roosevelt fundamentally didn't understand Stalin and his total control over the USSR. I also was glad to learn a lot more about the conference that shaped a lot of the world I grew up in, including some of the "secret" agreements of the conference and the betrayal of some allies (especially Poland and China).

Plokhy explicitly aims to dispel some of the myths that have grown up around Yalta. He points out that with the success of the Red Army, there was probably little the US and UK could have done about Poland and the rest of eastern and central Europe at the conference or on the ground, but that it was later actions and reactions, particularly after Truman succeeded Roosevelt, that led to the harder edge of the cold war. He also points out that although it may have appeared that the Soviet Union got more of what it wanted than the US and the UK, the US did succeed on the issues that were most important to Roosevelt: the creation of the UN and the commitment of the Soviet Union to enter the war with Japan (it could not have been known, at the time of the conference in February 1945 that the creation of the atomic bomb would be successful and that it would end the war almost before the USSR had time to enter it).

There's a lot more to this book than I've had time to go into, including the portraits of the various advisers and assistants and the way Plokhy situates the conference in a longer history, but all in all it was an interesting and thought-provoking read.

Great review on a fascinating topic Rebecca. Especially enjoyed your second paragraph with the insights into the wiles of Mr. Stalin. Will definitely try to hunt this one down.

105: Oh, that looks useful. Wishlisted.

Michael Dobbs wrote a rather interesting novel based on Churchill, in old age, being forced to look back at the events of Yalta. I've always been startled by the scale of the betrayals that came out of that, such as the forced repatriations of Russian/Soviet POWs, many of whom were shot out of hand or deported to Siberia. There were mass suicides on the part of those who dreaded the return. And yet... in other ways, as you point out, it was the ultimate in realpolitik, creating a bipolar world and one that was perhaps as stable as could be hoped. Interested that within a year, Stalin was dealing with two newbies, Attlee and Truman.

I def. want to read Matterhorn if it's even better than the non-fiction book, which I thought was startlingly good. Not sure about Sorokin, though; not sure I'm up to doing battle with that much symbolism right now, just for the sake of it. The Banffy trilogy now resides on my Kindle...

Great review of Yalta, Rebecca!

Yes, Suzanne, some of those POW issues are discussed in this book, and of course I've read a lot about Stalin before. You should definitely read Matterhorn; I think you'll enjoy the Banffy; and I agree that the Sorokin may not be your cup of tea.

Darryl, Paul, and qebo, thanks!

81. The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

This was a reread for me, and I decided to reread it now because they are having a group read of it over in Le Salon and I thought I could learn a lot from them since I've felt I missed a lot the first time I read it all the way through (four years ago). Indeed, I have found the chapter by chapter introductions there fascinating, as well as many of the comments, and thought-provoking, but I raced ahead and both started and finished it ahead of the group because there are just so many other books I want to read.

I definitely gained more insight into this dense novel both by rereading it and by having the benefit of others' comments (on the whole, more erudite than mine would have been), and particularly appreciated recognizing Mann's sly humor and seeing more complexity in the protagonist, Hans Castorp's, character. Much has been written about it, so I'm not going to say much here, except that as a novel that can be read on many levels (straightforward, psychological, political, philosophical, allegorical, etc.) it was certainly worth rereading.

I'm going to have to read this at some stage, I got to the halfway point a few years ago. I'll have to remember to check out the thread on Le Salon.

Kerry, I tried reading The Magic Mountain in my teens, 20s, and 30s, but never got very far. It finally clicked when I read it in my 50s (after reading, and loving, the much more accessible Buddenbrooks).

I'm going to try to reread The Magic Mountain too. I read it in my early 20's and I know I missed a lot. It's also nice to know that there are resources over at the Salon to help.

I've also come across the well-reviewed book Castorp by Pawel Huelle, which imagines Castorp's life before the mountain. I might try to track that one down.

eta--the first time I posted this touchstones worked. They disappeared after I edited.

The Magic Mountain is on my list for next year. Again. I've had the book on my shelves for at least 25 years...

82. Arthurian Romances by Chrétien de Troyes

I was inspired to read this book after reading baswood/Barry's excellent review because I had been interested in reading Parzival since reading Matterhorn and this seemed like a good introduction, as it includes one of the earliest versions of the Parzival story. Barry summarized each of the five stories in the collection, so I won't repeat that here.

I hadn't read any medieval literature since high school, so I had to get used to being thrust back into the world of courtly love and knightly tournaments. I mostly really enjoyed this book once I got into the swing of things, although I did tend to find the descriptions of knightly battles a tad repetitive. One thing that surprised me was how much freedom women had; although they needed knights to defend their honor, they went riding off on their own through unfamiliar lands and received men in their bedrooms. Another thing that struck me was the social system/economics of the time: all of these knights and kings were in essence being supported by the work of people we never see in these tales. Of course, this is not unexpected since the stories were written with support from royal and noble patrons.

All of the stories are well paced, with many twists and turns as the heroes and heroines face a variety of trials. The tale I enjoyed the most was "The Knight and the Lion (Yvain)" which I felt had the most well-developed psychological insight as well as the most enjoyable use of magic and the wonderful character of the lion. Other stories introduce familiar Arthurian characters, including Lancelot and Gawain, as well as Guinevere and Arthur. The story of Parzival is unfinished, and I'm looking forward to reading the von Eschenbach version in an upcoming Club Read group read and to reading more medieval literature over the coming year.

83. Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi

In English folklore, "Mr. Fox" is a variant of the Bluebeard story in which the man who kills his wives is outwitted by Lady Mary, a courageous and smart woman whose tale of a "dream" traps him into acknowledging his evil ways. In Helen Oyeymi's novel, St. John Fox, a writer who routinely kills off the women in his books, is visited by his imaginary "muse," Mary Foxe, who takes him to task for this violence and challenges him to change. And then Oyeyemi takes the reader on a magical journey through time and space as the stories written by by both Fox and Foxe explore love, violence against women and women's strength, cunning, and courage, creativity and imagination, European and African folklore, and the power of storytelling, while at the same time the the imaginary Mary becomes more real and the "real" Mr. Fox confronts his wife Daphne's jealousy of the imaginary, or not so imaginary, Mary.

I found this book confusing at the beginning, but I was drawn into it by the power of Oyeyemi's writing and my curiosity about what was going on (just as the women in another variant of the Bluebeard story are drawn by curiosity to open the door of the room they're forbidden to enter). Some of the stories the Fox(e)s write are better than others, but all are though-provoking. I did have a little problem with the time-shifting, in which the "real" protagonists live in the 1930s but some of their stories take place in the contemporary world, but I understand I'm not supposed to take the "reality" of this novel so literally.

Oyeyemi, age 26, is a much heralded British writer of Yoruban heritage, famous for publishing her first novel while still a teenage student at Cambridge. I was very impressed with this book, and Oyeyemi's ability not only to write beautifully but also to take such an imaginative idea and see where it leads and to create such varied and interesting characters, even the ones who only appear briefly. I probably would benefit by reading the novel again more slowly.

Edited to fix touchstone.

Another book to put on the wish list! I'll have to read Oyeyemi's work!

>117 rebeccanyc: rebeccanyc, Mr Fox and Oyeyemi sound quite fascinating. Published at 26! I had to wait until my 65th year to be published. A late flowering of my genius! I wish!

Intriguing, Rebecca...

Have you read Christine de Pisan, perchance? I'm thinking of doing that next year.

84. Devil on the Cross by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

Ngũgĩ was imprisoned by the post-independence government of Kenya when he wrote this satirical and allegorical indictment of the rulers of that government and the business leaders in cahoots with them and US and European corporations. (He wrote it on the only medium available to him, toilet paper.) He also explores the exploitation of women by men. A young woman, Warĩĩnga, who had dreamed of a career as an engineer but has fallen on hard times, thanks to that exploitation, is preparing to journey to her family home when she receives a mysterious card from a mysterious man, advertising a Devil's Feast and competition to select the seven cleverest thieves and robbers -- and it will be held the next day in the very town she is headed for. Along the way she meets several other people, and the bulk of the novel concerns them and their interactions with the thieves and robbers, who turn out to be businessmen competing to steal the most from the people and enter the good graces of the foreign corporations. After a dramatic ending, we see Warĩĩnga creating a new life for herself.

This is an angry novel, illustrating the bitterness and frustration of the Kenyan people who saw their hopes of independence dashed as the new leaders of the country concentrated on getting rich and collaborating with foreign corporations to exploit the people. The story is mixed with African poetry and songs, and with a lot of Christian symbolism that I couldn't completely understand. In places, it is perhaps a little didactic, but overall it is impassioned, brave, and important.

Excellent review of Devil on the Cross, Rebecca. I'll plan to read it next month.

I had considered re-reading Wizard of the Crow for the Author Theme reads mini author theme, but I don't think I'll have time to get to it by the end of December.

Bought Wizard of the Crow based on Darryl's impassioned advocacy. Your thorough and provoking review will probably do the same for this same work by the author Rebecca - another strong review.

#85 Parzival and Titurel by Wolfram von Eschenbach

I'm glad I read this book for several reasons. First, I had wanted to read Parzival since learning that it had influenced the wonderful novel Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes which I read earlier this year. Second, I had the advantage of reading it as part of a group read, and I benefited from the comments, insights, and encouragement of my fellow readers. And finally, I had recently finished Chrétien de Troyes's version in Arthurian Romances and was interested in comparing them.

And there's the rub. I much preferred Chrétien's version, even though it was unfinished, possibly because I really loved all of his tales. Chrétien is a considerably livelier writer, and has deeper psychological insight -- maybe he just seems more modern. Wolfram's writing is, dare I say it, Germanic -- heavy, convoluted, and occasionally confusing (the book's introduction and translator both address the difficult of Wolfram's style). But even more than that, which I got used to, he is obsessed with the names and provenance of dozens and dozens and dozens of characters. Even with a list of people and places that runs to 16 pages in the edition I read (as well as a somewhat illegible family tree), it was impossible to keep track of who everyone was or where they came from. I wonder whether all this information was meaningful to medieval readers or whether it was just something that Wolfram loved. And, as in Chrétien, the jousts can come to seem endless and interchangeable.

There were things I liked about this book. Wolfram has a sly habit of injecting himself into the story, mostly in a deprecating way, but it was fun when he did. His writing, occasionally, is poetic, and thanks are due to the translator (in my edition, Cyril Edwards) for this because I've seen corresponding sections from other translators and they are different. For example, at the very beginning, Edwards's translation rhymes "There is both scorning and adorning" and uses alliteration in "The flying image is far too fleet for fools." I again enjoyed seeing the relative personal and sexual freedom of upper class medieval women. And finally, I was glad to have the tale finished, and to understand this early version of the grail legend.

My edition also include excerpts from Titurel; that is, my edition is Parzival and Titurel. I confess I skimmed through this, essentially a "prequel" to Parzival, in that it deals with the childhood of his mother and some of her relatives.

86. Red Shift by Alan Garner

In this strange and haunting novel, Alan Garner weaves together three stories, far apart in time, yet linked by place and themes. Near Mow Cop, a rocky outcrop in Cheshire, England, topped by a ruined castle, a troubled if not mentally ill teenager confronts the reality of his girlfriend's moving to London to study and his appalling parents. Mixed in with their story, told almost entirely in dialogue (as is the whole book), are the stories of a young man, encouraged and stimulated to kill, who is part of a small group of deserters from the Roman army occupying the same area in the 2nd century, a band fighting to stay alive among warring tribes, and another young man, troubled, struggling with his own demons as the Royalists attack his village of Parliament supporters during the 17th century civil war. In addition to being linked by place, all the interwoven tales involve a mysterious stone axe head that assumes importance for all three young men.

Initially, it was difficult to understand what was going on, and I might have been more lost without Garner's introduction to the edition I read. But I was swept up by the lives and struggles of the characters as they face love and destruction, trust and betrayal, madness and reality, as well as by Garner's amazing ability, through dialogue and allusion and imagery, to find the heart and soul of characters who may appear crazy or damaged to the outside world. He is also interested in exploring the power of place and the connections over time among people under the influence of that place and its history.

Alan Garner is often considered a young adult or fantasy writer, genres I don't generally read, but this novel, reissued by New York Review Books, was rich and complex and real enough for me.

Very nice review of Red Shift, Rebecca. I'll add it to my "to be read when my TBR pile is manageable" list.

87. The Adventures of Sindbad by Gyula Krúdy

As Sindbad, an inveterate seducer and lover of women, travels (largely as a ghost), searching for his lost loves, and loving and erotically recalls their appearances and personalities, Krúdy is really exploring the loss of a centuries-old culture. It is the waning days of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and change is accelerating and inevitable, but the ancestors whose portraits hang on the walls of ancient homes and the dead in their graves are almost as real as the living.

As in his fascinating and mysterious Sunflower, Krúdy brilliantly evokes the beauty of the Hungarian countryside, the almost soporific quality of life in small villages, the bustling activity in Budapest (or, Buda and Pest) and, in this work, the characters of a huge number of women. As with Sunflower, very little is straightforward. At various times, Sindbad is alive and 300 years old, buried in a grave, traveling as a ghost in a carriage, and even transformed into a sprig of mistletoe. The boundary between life and death is porous, connected by love and longing.

Above all, there is a feeling of melancholy and loss. The stories abound with autumn leaves, dark nights illuminated by the moon, misty landscapes, rivers begging to be jumped into, men and women who have killed themselves for love. Musing about one of his loves, Sindbad recalls that she called him not "to the enjoyments of a quiet life, but rather to death, decay and annihilation, to the dance to exhaustion at the ball of life where the masked guests are encouraged to lie, cheat and steal, to push old people aside, to mislead the inexperienced young, and always to lie and weep alone . ."

88. Count Magnus and Other Ghost Stories by M. R. James

Although I'm not a connoisseur of ghost stories, I decided to get this book after I read and really enjoyed an M. R. James story online after learning about it on this thread. M. R. James was a scholar of church history, medieval manuscripts, cathedrals, and more, writing ghost stories for amusement, and these scholarly subjects find their way into his stories. Some of these stories are quite creepy, although ultimately predictable. I didn't dislike the stories, but I think I would have enjoyed it more if I had dipped into the book off an on, instead of reading one story after another. As with any collection, some stories are better than others, and I think I still like "Casting the Runes," the story that was posted online, the best.

I'm admiring your Renaissance and Medieval reading, which is far beyond my skill level as a reader. However, I'm adding Red Shift to the tbr, where Sunflower and Adventures of Sinbad also reside.

89. In Red by Magdalena Tulli

I nearly missed my subway stop two days in a row because I was so caught up in the unreal world Magdalena Tulli creates in this gem of a novella that is nonetheless very hard to describe. At the start, the Polish town of Stitchings is always cold and snowy and almost always dark, and it is suspended in an unclear time. Gradually, some of the people of the town come into focus, and the time resolves to around the time of the first world war (although Stitichings is part of a mythical fourth partition of Poland, ruled by the Swedes who are said to be better than the Germans and the Russians). People die but stay alive, businesses thrive and then fall apart, grudges are held for a long time, circus monkeys pass out counterfeit bills, what seems at first to be a small town apparently grows to include many more people of varying kinds, time passes and times get hard and then better and then hard again, the weather changes and it is hot and sunny all day and all night, a bustling port appears but then disappears . . . and so on. Overall, the tone is gloomy, and much that happens is grim, as many characters die, but fun and mysterious things happen too.

What makes this book so remarkable is Tulli's writing. She meshes crystal clear descriptions of people, their actions, and their environment with illusion and allusion, in prose that flows so naturally that even completely unnatural events seem perfectly believable. People can seem real and ephemeral at the same time, even as people who die don't necessarily stay dead. Music plays an important role in the book too, with the sounds of different instruments adding insight into what is going on with different characters. Tulli creates a story that seems grounded in some ways in Poland in the first half of the 20th century but then takes off from there into an into an alternate world of imagination. Having finished this book, I could easily start it all over again, and I'll be looking for other works by Tulli.

I am currently reading The Count of Monte Cristo. Edmund sometimes calls himself Sinbad the Sailor. I knew that was from Arabian Nights, but I did not know anything about the character. I am I right in thinking that Sindbad and Sinbad are the essentially the same character?

BTW, that really thick Hungarian book you read a few of months ago is available on Nook now. I have it on my wish list, but I cannot purchase it before Christmas. (I am banned from book buying for 4-6 weeks before Christmas.) So one of these days I will get to it.

Rebecca - Your reviews of the Garner and Hall books are interesting. I'm also not usually comfortable with Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror writing but occasionally it can strike a chord.

Books 85, 87 and 89 find visitors to your thread in more familiar territory - normally rushing to add the titles to one's hitlist and find out more about the writers. Keep up the profound eclecticism - visits to your thread are an education as well as a pleasure, but not too good for my bank balance as Book Depository will invariably get more of my business pursuant to a Rebecca review. Perhaps you should contact them regarding a share of profits?

90. Shipwrecks by Akira Yoshimura

This is a beautifully written, haunting book, and yet I didn't love it as much as I hoped to based on lilisin's glowing recommendation. Through the story of a nine-year-old boy, Isaku, whose father, like many others in the village, has sold himself into bondage for three years to provide grain for his family, Yoshimura paints a picture of a small medieval village, perched on the rocky coast of an island off the coast of Japan, isolated from the nearest town by mountains that can only be traversed on foot. His descriptions of the natural world, both its beauty and its harshness, and the villager's dependence on it and the drudgery of their lives, are delicate and illuminating. From early in this slim novel, a sense of danger and even horror intrudes, as the reader learns of a man whose family stopped feeding him because he was dying; in this village, there is a fine line between finding enough food, largely from the sea, and starving to death.

Part of the novel is the beginning of a coming-of-age story. Isaku struggles with going out fishing by himself to provide food for his mother and younger siblings, takes pride in being invited into the company of the adults of the village, misses his father, has complicated feelings about his mother, and starts to notice the attractions of a girl. But the other part of the novel deals with the village's secret way of providing more for itself, by plundering ships that are wrecked on the rocks in stormy winter weather. More than that, they work to attract these ships to danger, and carry out rituals to ensure that they will do so. In the end, this brings unanticipated danger and sorrow to the village.

There are two reasons why I'm not wholeheartedly enthusiastic about this book, one having to do with the novel itself and one with the translation. First, even given the fact that children grew up faster and had to take on adult responsibilities earlier in medieval times, I had a difficult time picturing a nine-year-old doing everything Isaku did, although I could envision more of it as he grew older over the approximately three-year span of the book. Secondly, sometimes the translation used contemporary expressions that I found jarring in the context of both the medieval time period and the Japanese location (as has been noted by other reviewers): for example, he uses the terms "tying the knot" and "breadwinner". Additionally, the book uses traditional ways to describe time, for example, the Hour of the Horse; at one point in the middle of the book, the translator parenthetically inserts approximately what time that corresponds to, and it seemed strange to do it in one place but not elsewhere (and I would have preferred it not to be done at all).

Despite these caveats, I really enjoyed this book; I just wish I liked it more.

I really liked Shipwrecks, probably as much as lillisin. I read it a long time ago, and I don't remember the age the boy was supposed to be; I think I must have assumed he was older than 9.

I've read 2 other books by Yoshimura, (On Parole and One Man's Justice), and they are very different from Shipwrecks. I liked them just as much though.

#125 Glad to read your positive review of Red Shift. That was one of my favourite and frequently re-read book in mid-teens into early adulthood - and I'd love to go back and read it again. Garner's earlier books were both more typical fantasy and typical children's adventure stories, but with The Owl Service while still playing with ancient myths in contemporary settings he went to a darker, more grown up place, and this trend continued with Red Shift, where his characteristic themes of the sense of place and the depth and repeating patterns of troubled emotions are very evident.

Garner is himself somewhat frustrated at being pigeonholed as a children's writer because of those early books - he expresses his views on this any many fascinating topics in a collection of essays, The voice that thunders, which you might find of interest as you enjoyed Red Shift.

I remember reading Owl Service, and loving it.

Thanks, Genny and Suzanne. I'll look for both those books.

Rebecca - happy festive season and a peaceful 2012 to you. hope to get to know you a little better next year. Your musings on books are usually insightful and your independence of mind and spirit is to be admired.

Happy Holidays!!

Thanks, Paul, for your kind and thoughtful comments. I hope to have more time in 2012 to visit your thread, and others, and to expand my reading conversations. Wishing you too, and your family, a "happy festive season and a peaceful 2012."

And than you, Gogs81, also.

Just stopping by with wishes for a very happy holiday season and a great New Year!

Wishing you all the very best Rebecca!

91. Mr. Fortune's Maggot and The Salutation by Sylvia Townsend Warner

The novel, "Mr. Fortune's Maggot," grew on me as I read it and began to appreciate the subtly different levels at which Sylvia Townsend Warner was writing. It tells the tale of Timothy Fortune, a bank clerk who becomes a minister and, after spending a decade in a missionary community on a South Sea island, feels compelled to travel to Fanua, an island that has no experience with western settlement and "civilizations" and whose denizens lead a life of leisure and pleasure since the climate is benign and food is readily at hand, to try his hand at converting these happy people to Christianity. Naive and psychologically somewhat crippled, Mr. Fortune thinks he has made a convert when a young boy, Lueili, comes to observe his religious rites and then stays. As time passes, Mr. Fortune thinks he is teaching him Christianity, having no other way to understand the boy's interest in spending time with him. Then, as more time goes on, Mr. Fortune grows to enjoy his life of relative leisure and his friendship with Lueli, becoming less interested in converting the other Fanuans, until he makes a discovery that shocks him about Lueli, followed immediately by other disasters. Through this process, Mr. Fortune learns a lot about himself, his faith, love, and the pleasure of enjoying life instead of following what is perceived as duty. Subtly, Townsend Warner is also commenting on colonialism and the English approach to people of other countries.

As a reader, I had to suspend disbelief that the Fanuans obviously speak and understand English. And although I found the novel not as wickedly funny as Lolly Willowes, I did enjoy it.

In the novella, "The Salutation," we find Mr. Fortune, tormented by his thoughts and memories, turning up in South America, and finding a measure of comfort.

(Note: This book, published by NYRB, includes both the novel "Mr. Fortune's Maggot" and the novella "The Salutation." NYRB has recently reissued the same combination under the title "Mr. Fortune.")

92. Weep Not, Child by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

In his first novel, Ngũgĩ tells the story of a village boy, Njoroge, hungry for education, growing up at the time of the fight for independence from the British known by the Kenyans as "the Emergency" and by the British as the "Mau Mau rebellion." Through the different members of his family and their histories (in which some of them were forced to fight for the British during the second world war) and their relationships with a neighboring African who has ingratiated himself with the British rulers and the main British farmer in the area who owns land that used to belong to Njoroge's family, the conflicts of the time emerge, as well as Njoroge's own intellectual and psychological development. This brief novel, although a little schematic at times, and not as complex as Ngũgĩ's later work, nevertheless paints a moving and powerful portrait of a time, a place, and a young person who may in some respects resemble Ngũgĩ himself.

Happy Holidays, Rebecca! I look forward to more great book recommendations and reviews from you in 2012.

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays, Rebecca!

Thanks, Darryl, Katherine, Laura, and Monica! Hope you had lovely holidays too.

93 Three Novellas by Joseph Roth
94 The Leviathan by Joseph Roth

Of the three novellas, almost long short stories, in this collection, the second, "The Bust of the Emperor," treads the most familiar Joseph Roth territory: the end of the Austro-Hungarian empire, the change in borders, the rise of "nationalities," and the longing for what is lost. Both of the other venture into less familiar ground: "Fallmereyer the Stationmaster," while providing a vivid portrait of the far reaches of the empire, also shows a man obsessed by and transformed by love, while "The Legend of the Holy Drinker," my favorite of the three, portrays a poverty-stricken drunkard who, enobled by kindness, transforms himself, at least for a while. It is an unusual sign of hope in Roth's work, and was one of the last things he wrote before essentially dying of alcoholism himself.

But it was a stand-alone novella, "The Leviathan," which really grabbed me. In it, Roth makes the world of the protagonist, Nissen Piczenik, a Jewish coral dealer in a small town in eastern Europe, come alive; his descriptions of the corals, and Nissen's thoughts and feelings about them, are stunning, and so is the story of Niseen's temptation by his desire to see the sea, which leads to many other temptations and to his ultimate downfall. The writing is beautiful, and I couldn't put this book down.

95. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

This fascinating book by Kahneman, a psychologist who won the Nobel Prize in Economics, explores how our minds work, especially as we make decisions. He uses a construct of two "systems" of thinking to explain many of his ideas: System 1 is our quick, intuitive, method of thinking, which gets us through the vast majority of our daily activities and choices, although not always in the best way, and System 2 is our more thoughtful, logical, bigger picture way of thinking and making decisions, a system which we unconsciously avoid using a great deal of the time. His research, much with his colleague, the late Amos Tversky, to whom he dedicates the book, identified many of the ways our "System 1" deceives us, and opened up new ways of thinking about decisions to economists (who often resisted), and people in business, marketing, medicine, and many other fields.

So how do our minds keep us from making the best decisions? After noting that our mind is designed for making sense out what we encounter and thus for jumping to conclusions, and that something he calls WYSIATI, for "what you see is all there is, helps us do this, Kahneman describes a whole slew of ways. For example, faced with a complex question like "how happy are you?,' we tend to answer an easier but related question like "how do I feel right now?" We try to make coherent stories out of statistics we hear; to pay more attention to the content of stories than to their reliability; to focus on a number presented to us as an "anchor" for answering questions or making decisions; to be deceived by the availability of information in our minds (for example, if we heard of two plane crashes in the past month, we are likely to overestimate the frequency of plane crashes); to be influenced by details and causes more than statistics; to completely ignore the law of regression to the mean; to overly trust our intuition; to be overconfident about our ability to make predictions as compared to relying on statistical probabilities and formulas; and to be swayed, when making choices, both by risk aversion and risk seeking.

What makes this book so much fun to read, aside from the ideas, is that Kahneman introduces his concepts by posing the kinds of problems he posed to students and sample groups, so that the reader can see how he or she would answer them. Even knowing that there is some "catch," it is difficult not to answer spontaneously. By engaging the reader in this way, Kahneman makes the examples and ideas much more personally interesting.

Towards the end of the book, Kahneman introduces two other ideas: Econs versus Humans and the experiencing mind versus the remembering mind. Econs, as he describes them, are the ideally logical thinkers posited by economic models, people who always answer consistently and in agreement with whatever is the statistically better choice; Humans are real people who are influenced by how their minds work, by their feelings, and by other factors such as those explored earlier in the book. Kahneman discusses how an understanding of how Humans respond can help businesses, government, and others solve problems better than by assuming we can be trained to be like Econs. In the exploration of the experiencing and the remembering minds, he shows that people rely on their memories of events, both painful and pleasant, more than on the actual experience. In one example, people who endured an painful, but short, medical procedure described it as worse than people who had a slightly less painful procedure that went on for much longer, and people whose pain tapered off before its end found it more endurable than people whose pain ended abruptly, even if the pain went on for a longer period of time. He also explores how people can experience greater well-being.

This is a book filled with ideas, and what could be more fascinating than learning about how our minds work?

96. Houseboy by Ferdinand Oyono

This short but powerful novel explores the evils of colonialism through the story of a young Cameroonian man, Toundi, who becomes the "houseboy" first for a priest and then for the French "commandant" in the area. He is initially both attracted and repelled by the Europeans he works for, even as we know, because the novel begins with his death by violence, that things will get bad quickly. Oyono depicts the interactions among the Africans in the story, as well as their perceptive observations of life within white households, including all their bad behavior; of course, the whites don't really think the Africans notice what they do, because they don't notice the Africans except when they displease them. And then, the violence, cruelty, and randomness of the colonial power comes into play. Oyono is a terrific writer (parts of this book are quite funny), with a great sense of pacing, and has a keen eye for hypocrisy and racism. I got this book because of an enthusiastic review here on LT, and I'm glad I finally read it.

151: My mother, philosophy major turned librarian, was promoting this this book to the entire extended family at Christmas. I'd better read it.

Well, I think I may finish one more book tomorrow, but it won't be a favorite, so I can now post my best of 2011 list. In the next post, I'll include that book in my analysis.

These are more or less in reverse order of when I read them.

Best of the Best (fiction)

In Red by Magdalena Tulli
Ice Trilogy by Vladimir Sorokin
Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
A Change of Climate and Vacant Possession by Hilary Mantel
The Foundation Pit by Andrey Platonov
The History of the Siege of Lisbon by José Saramago
The Red Riding Quartet: Nineteen Seventy-Four/Nineteen Seventy-Seven/Nineteen Eighty/Nineteen Eighty-Three by David Peace
Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, The Vet's Daughter, and Our Spoons Came from Woolworths by Barbara Comyns
The Lost Steps by Alejo Carpentier
Wandering Stars by Sholem Aleichem
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

The Best of the Rest (fiction)
God's Bits of Wood by Ousmane Sembène
Houseboy by Ferdinand Oyono
Once upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell
Devil on the Cross, A Grain of Wheat, Weep Not, Child, and Matigari by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay
They Were Counted/They Were Found Wanting/They Were Divided by Miklós Bánffy
The Adventures of Sindbad by Gyula Krúdy
Red Shift by Alan Garner
Arthurian Romances by Chrétien de Troyes
Train Dreams by Denis Johnson
The Moldavian Pimp by Edgardo Cozarinsky
The Skin Chairs, Sisters by a River, and The Juniper Tree by Barbara Comyns
The Prospector by J.M.G. LeClezio
Soul and Other Stories by Andrey Platonov
Favourite Sherlock Holmes Stories by Arthur Conan Doyle
She Drove without Stopping by Jaimy Gordon
The Pumpkin Eater by Penelope Mortimer
Conquered City by Victor Serge

Favorite Non-Fiction
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
What It Is Like to Go to War by Karl Marlantes
Classic Crimes by William Roughead
Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York by Luc Sante
Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza by Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole
The Eichmann Trial by Deborah Lipstadt
Gulag by Anne Applebaum
Just Kids by Patti Smith

Now, the analysis.

Out of 97 books read:

84 fiction (87%)/13 nonfiction (13%)
32 female authors (33%)/65 male authors (67%)
42 by authors not from the USA or the UK (43%)

Countries represented (19)

Europe
Russia 6
Hungary 4
Germany 3
France 3
Portugal 2
Austria 2
Eastern Europe (Yiddish) 1
Denmark 1
Poland 1

Africa
Kenya 4
Senegal 2
Cameroon 1
Congo 1

Asia
Japan 2
India 1

Australia 1

South America
Peru 4
Argentina 2
Cuba 1

46 authors were new to me this year (i.e., I had never read anything by them, not that I'd never heard of them) (can't calculate percentage because I didn't add up the number of different authors)

Authors I read multiple books by (13)
Hilary Mantel
Jaimy Gordon
Barbara Comyns
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
David Peace
Andrey Platonov
Luc Sante
Miklós Bánffy
Mario Vargas Llosa
John le Carré
Edgardo Cozarinsky
Karl Marlantes
Joseph Roth

So, what do I make of all this?

I would have read fewer female authors if I hadn't become enamored of Barbara Comyns and continued my love of Hilary Mantel; I read multiple books by both of them. In 2012, I probably need to make an effort to read more books by women -- Belletrista, here I come!

My global reading was focused mostly on Europe, especially Russia, and the higher numbers from Kenya and Peru reflect individual authors (Ngũgĩ and Vargas Llosa). With the Reading Globally group focusing on China, the Balkans, and the Middle East in 2012, and the Author Theme Reads group concentrating on Japan, I should be able to expand my reach, but would like to make an effort to read more from different parts of Africa.

I am very excited about some of my new discoveries of 2011, especially Barbara Comyns, José Saramago, Alejo Carpentier,and Edgardo Cozarinsky, all of whom I learned about through LT. I hope to read more books by them, but also to discover more new exciting writers through LT.

More thoughts may come later.

If I finish the book I'm reading tomorrow, I'll post it here, but as of January 1 you can find me in the 2012 75 Books Challenge. Thanks to everyone for visiting me here, and I'm looking forward to another great year of reading and conversation.

Here is my last book of 2011, which I finished last night before the ball dropped.

97. God's Bits of Wood by Ousmane Sembène

This book grew on me as I read it: at first it seemed like a relatively straightforward account, with political overtones, of a strike on the Dakar-Niger railway in 1947-1948, in which the African workers demanded higher wages, pensions, and more from the colonial French managers, but gradually I was drawn in by the perceptive portraits of a whole variety of characters and the more subtle interactions among them and by the portrait of changes in the society as the impact of western "civilization" made itself felt on traditional ways of life. As other reviewers have noted, one of the most interesting aspects of the book is the way the women take on new power as the story develops. Ousmane portrays not only the suffering caused by the strike, but also the suffering that made the strike necessary, and the strengths and weaknesses of the men and women who must deal with the consequences of the strike. He also illustrates the complex relationship between the colonizers and the colonized, some of whom take pride in having learned French, and how to read and write, while resenting the fact that they must speak French to the French, who have never taken the time to learn the African languages spoken by the people they control. Although the French characters are not as fully developed as the African ones, they too differ from each other and narrowly escape being stereotypes.

Ousmane immigrated to France where he became a union organizer and a member of the Communist party. At times in this book the political message borders on the obvious, but for the most part this is a story of people struggling to put food and water on the table and live in dignity.

I read God's Bits of Wood last year ( I think), and will be reading Houseboy soon. Since both qualify as classics in their own countries it would be nice if you posted your comments on that thread when it opens. :)

Good idea, Deborah. Thanks for thinking of that. It might have been your recommendation that led me to buy it.