Chatterbox Indulges Her Bibliomania -- The Eleventh Episode!

Ode to Solitude

by Alexander Pope
1688-1744

How happy he, who free from care
The rage of courts, and noise of towns;
Contented breathes his native air,
In his own grounds.

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire,
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.

Blest! who can unconcern'dly find
Hours, days, and years slide swift away,
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day,

Sound sleep by night; study and ease
Together mix'd; sweet recreation,
And innocence, which most does please,
With meditation.

Thus let me live, unheard, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.

This month's choice prompted by my starting to read Ethan Frome, which features a very, very solitary farm and isolated farmer...
I'm wondering if Pope really believed what he wrote -- he was known for being the center of a circle of poets, wits, men of letters, from Swift to Addison, despite the TB variant that left him deformed, and despite his Catholicism at a time (the first Jacobite revolt) when that was socially crippling.

Here's my second thread for the fourth batch of 75 books for 2011; anyone wondering what I read in prior batches can turn to my previous thread here and wend your way back...

Here's a running tally of the total number of books I've read so far in 2011:




Last year's tally hit 506 books; you can see the highlights on my profile page, along with the highlights of this year to date (a shorter list, sadly, at least thus far.)

And here's the new ticker for the fourth 75-book challenge of 2011. As always, I'll comment on everything I've read in these threads (one-stop shopping...) you won't find the books for my 11 in 11 challenge on the list below. You can make your way over to that group and peruse my thread if you're curious...




1. The Irish Princess by Karen Harper, ***1/2, STARTED 8/26/11, FINISHED 8/27/11 (fiction)
2. Rip Tide by Stella Rimington, ****, STARTED 8/27/11, FINISHED 8/28/11 (fiction)
3. Silver Girl by Elin Hilderbrand, ****, STARTED 8/28/11, FINISHED 8/29/11 (fiction)
4. The Lady of the Rivers by Philippa Gregory, **1/2, STARTED 8/18/11, FINISHED 8/30/11 (fiction)
5. Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood, ****, READ 8/30/11 (fiction)
6. The House of the Hanged by Mark Mills, ***1/2, STARTED 8/30/11, FINISHED 8/31/11 (fiction)
7. Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman, ***1/2, STARTED 8/20/11, FINISHED 8/31/11 (fiction)
8. Symphony by Jude Morgan, ***1/2, STARTED 8/27/11, FINISHED 8/31/11 (fiction)
9. Moscow, December 25, 1991 by Conor O'Clery, ****, STARTED 9/1/11, FINISHED 9/2/11 (non-fiction)
10. The Silent Girl by Tess Gerritsen, ***1/2, STARTED 9/2/11, FINISHED 9/3/11 (fiction)
11. The Things We Cherished by Pam Jenoff, ***, STARTED 9/2/11, FINISHED 9/3/11 (fiction)
12. Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer, ****1/2, STARTED 9/3/11, FINISHED 9/4/11 (non-fiction)
13. The Vault by Ruth Rendell, ****, STARTED 9/3/11, FINISHED 9/4/11 (fiction)
14. A Train in Winter by Caroline Moorehead, ***1/2, STARTED 9/4/11, FINISHED 9/5/11 (non-fiction)
15. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, ****1/2, STARTED 9/5/11, FINISHED 9/6/11 (fiction)*
16. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins, ****, STARTED 9/6/11, FINISHED 9/7/11 (fiction)*
17. Murder on Sisters' Row by Victoria Thompson, ***, STARTED 9/6/11, FINISHED 9/7/11 (fiction)
18. The Sixes by Kate White, ***, STARTED 9/7/11, FINISHED 9/8/11 (fiction)
19. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins, ****, STARTED 9/7/11, FINISHED 9/9/11 (fiction)*
20. Miss Timmins' School for Girls by Nayana Currimbhoy, **1/2, STARTED 9/8/11, FINISHED 9/10/11 (fiction)
21. The China Lover by Ian Buruma, ****, STARTED 9/10/11, FINISHED 9/12/11 (fiction)
22. Portrait of a Spy by Daniel Silva, ***1/2, STARTED 9/12/11, FINISHED 9/13/11 (fiction)
23. Lionheart by Sharon Kay Penman, ****, STARTED 9/2/11, FINISHED 9/13/11 (fiction)
24. The White Devil by Justin Evans, ***1/2, STARTED 9/13/11, FINISHED 9/14/11 (fiction)
25. American Heiress by Daisy Goodwin, ***, STARTED 9/13/11, FINISHED 9/14/11 (fiction)
26. No Mark Upon Her by Deborah Crombie, ****, STARTED 9/14/11, FINISHED 9/15/11 (fiction)
27. A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute, ****, READ 9/16/11 (fiction)*
28. The Retribution by Val McDermid, ****, STARTED 9/13/11, FINISHED 9/18/11 (fiction)
29. Jane Austen Made Me Do It -- anthology -- **1/2, STARTED 9/16/11, FINISHED 9/19/11 (fiction)
30. Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch, ****, STARTED 9/12/11, FINISHED 9/20/11 (fiction)
31. Brotherly Love by Elizabeth Pewsey, ****, STARTED 9/21/11, FINISHED 9/23/11 (fiction)*
32. The Submission by Amy Waldman, ****, STARTED July 2011, FINISHED 9/24/11 (fiction)
33. The Dead Sea Cipher by Elizabeth Peters, ***1/2, STARTED 9/21/11, FINISHED 9/25/11 (fiction)*
34. A Double Death on the Black Isle by A.D. Scott, ****, STARTED 9/25/11, FINISHED 9/26/11 (fiction)
35. Reign of Madness by Lynn Cullen, ***, STARTED 9/12/11, FINISHED 9/26/11 (fiction)
36. Anatomy of a Disappearance by Hisham Matar, ***1/2, STARTED 9/28/11, FINISHED 9/29/11 (fiction)
37. The Soldier's Wife by Margaret Leroy, ***, STARTED 9/26/11, FINISHED 9/28/11 (fiction)
38. The Burning by Jane Casey, ****, STARTED 9/25/11, FINISHED 9/28/11 (fiction)
39. The Good Muslim by Tahmima Anam, ****1/2, STARTED 9/29/11, FINISHED 9/30/11 (fiction)
40. Running: A Novel by Jean Echenoz, ***1/2, READ 9/30/11 (fiction)
41. Becoming Marie Antoinette by Juliet Grey, ***, STARTED 9/28/11, FINISHED 10/1/11 (fiction)
42. The Law of Angels by Cassandra Clark, ***, STARTED 9/30/11, FINISHED 10/2/11 (fiction)
43. The Revisionists by Thomas Mullen, ****1/2, STARTED 10/1/11, FINISHED 10/3/11 (fiction)
44. The Fatal Gift of Beauty by Nina Burleigh, ****, STARTED 9/30/11, FINISHED 10/3/11 (non-fiction)
45. The Executor by Jesse Kellerman, ***1/2, STARTED 10/3/11, FINISHED 10/4/11 (fiction)
46. The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston, ****, STARTED 10/4/11, FINISHED 10/5/11 (non-fiction)
47. Never Can Say Goodbye by Christina Jones, ***1/2, STARTED 10/2/11, FINISHED 10/6/11
48. The Cloud Messenger by Aamer Hussein, ***, STARTED 10/1/11, FINISHED 10/7/11 (fiction)
49. A Small Death in the Great Glen by A.D. Scott, ***, STARTED 10/3/11, FINISHED 10/7/11 (fiction)
50. The Blood Royal by Barbara Cleverly, ****, STARTED 10/6/11, FINISHED 10/8/11 (fiction)
51. The Crowded Grave by Martin Walker, ****, STARTED 10/8/11, FINISHED 10/10/11 (fiction)
52. When She Woke by Hillary Jordan, ****, STARTED 10/9/11, FINISHED 10/10/11 (fiction)
53. The Villa in Italy by Elizabeth Edmundson, ***1/2, STARTED 10/9/11, FINISHED 10/11/11 (fiction)*
54. Pulse by Julian Barnes, ****, STARTED 10/9/11, FINISHED 10/12/11 (fiction)
55. Cavalier Queen by Fiona Mountain, **, STARTED 10/10/11, FINISHED 10/14/11 (fiction)
56. Naughty in Nice by Rhys Bowen, ***1/2, STARTED 10/13/11, FINISHED 10/15/11 (fiction)
57. The Betrayal of Trust by Susan Hill, **** 1/2, STARTED 10/15/11, FINISHED 10/16/11 (fiction)
58. Nanjing Requiem by Ha Jin, *** 1/2, STARTEd 10/15/11, FINISHED 10/18/11 (fiction)
59. Brava, Valentine by Adrian Trigiani, **, STARTED 10/16/11, FINISHED 10/19/11 (fiction)
60. What It Is Like to Go to War by Karl Marlantes, *****, STARTED 10/18/11, FINISHED 10/20 (non-fiction)
61. Growing Up Amish by Ira Wagler, ***, STARTED 10/20/11, FINISHED 10/21/11 (non-fiction)
62. Now You See Her by James Patterson, **1/2, READ 10/21/11 (fiction)
63. A Gathering Storm by Rachel Hore, ***1/2, STARTED 10/22/11, FINISHED 10/23/11 (fiction)
64. The Accident by Linwood Barclay, *1/2, STARTED 10/04/11, FINISHED 10/24/11 (fiction)
65. The Dark Enquiry by Deanna Raybourn, ***1/2, STARTED 10/23/11, FINISHED 10/25/11 (fiction)
66. Wicked Autumn by G.M. Malliet, ***, STARTEd 10/23/11, FINISHED 10/25/11 (fiction)
67. The Novel in the Viola by Natasha Solomons, ***1/2, STARTED 10/25/11, FINISHED 10/26/11 (fiction)
68. A Jealous Ghost by A.N. Wilson, ****1/2, STARTED 10/26/11, FINISHED 10/27/11 (fiction)
69. Hotwire by Alex Kava, **1/2, STARTED 10/27/11, FINISHED 10/28/11 (fiction)
70. The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje, *****, STARTED 10/25/11, FINISHED 10/29/11 (fiction)
71. The Kashmir Shawl by Rosie Thomas, ***1/2, STARTED 10/29/11, FINISHED 10/30/11 (fiction)
72. Eternity Ring by Patricia Wentworth, ***1/2, STARTED 10/31/11, FINISHED 11/2/11 (fiction)*
73. Long Gone by Alafair Burke, ***, STARTED 11/1/11, FINISHED 11/3/11 (fiction)
74. Blood and Judgment by Michael Gilbert, ****, STARTED 11/1/11, FINISHED 11/4/11 (fiction)*
75. The Talisman Ring by Georgette Heyer, ****, STARTED 11/4/11, FINISHED 11/5/11 (fiction)

* Re-reads

Ummm, loveycuddles? A Small Death in the Great Glen could eaisly prove a disappointment too...just sayin'

I liked the sequel... Not astonishing, but a solid mystery with a great sense of time and place. So there... Am not in the mood for Classics. Really!

ETA: Although I could convince myself to read straight through my ER book from August, The Cloud Messenger by Aamer Hussein.

Might I make so bold as to offer an unsolicited countersuggestion for some extra-pleasant reading? Brighton Rock. I was so swept away that I read it in one day, charging through Greene's handsomely proportioned sentences and gazing admiringly at his warmly burnished misanthropy. Just...wow.

It's not scheduled to arrive until tomorrow or Tuesday, Richard, so I'll get to it then. Had to order a copy... If I'm going to spend $$ on it for book circle reading, it's going to be a tangible book, not an e-book.

"warmly burnished misanthropy"??? Holy Toledo...

It is! It really is warmly burnished, like a beeswax shine on a cheap pine dresser...why on EARTH would anyone go to the trouble?! But style aside, it's the Greene-ness of the vision that makes it so easy to lose one's self in. Travels with my Aunt was the same sort of thing for me.

Is it after midnight yet?

Robert

Not here, I guess! It's 8:11 AM where I am, and time to leave for work.

Oh that is the perfect poem for me! I'd forgotten all about it. Bliss.

Well, depends on which midnight you were thinking about! (But aren't there simpler ways to check the time??)

Stomach is being obnoxious today, so I'm going to have a very quiet Monday.

Got hooked on The Revisionists, which I think is fabulously creative. Yumm....

Books du jour:

The Revisionists by Thomas Mullen will end the year ranking waaaay up on top of my list of "thumping good reads". It isn't literary fiction, full of oblique references and exceptionally creative writing, or symbolic characters. Rather, it reads as if Connie Willis had suddenly become crossed with Kazuo Ishiguro and produced a fascinating genre-bending novel that, while it owes a lot to classics like Fahrenheit 451 and 1984, manages to hold its own. "Zed", who goes by the name Troy Jones in part of this book, is part of an elite group who travels back in time from "the Perfect Present" to times that are "pre-Conflagration". The reader waits and waits to learn about the nature of that conflagration, but that's not the point of Mullen's novel, any more than he sets out to make this an action novel about Zed's assignment, to murder the "hags" (aka historical agitators), who seek to change the course of history by such ploys as trying to ensure Hitler is never born. The new world order can't tolerate that, as it would mean the "perfect present", born out of a lot of struggle, would cease to exist. But now Zed has been sent back to a different "beat" than his normal one, and is charged with ensuring the conflagration takes place as scheduled. Only he himself begins to get involved with the "contemps", and to question his mandate and his perception of truth and reality... Mullen copes masterfully with a complex narrative that involves not only Zed but also Leo, a former CIA agent; Tasha, a young lawyer whose brother has died in combat; and Sari, an Indonesian maid toiling in essential slavery in the home of a Korean diplomat. While Zed muses on his past life in the Perfect Present, the novel's action revolves around the Washington of today, sometime seen through Zed's eyes, which makes a fascinating contrast with what we assume to be "normal". I don't know how you'd categorize this novel - sci-fi? fantasy? dystopian? It has elements of all of these, but at its heart it's an excellent psychological thriller that draws on familiar themes. What is dissidence, and what makes someone become a dissident? What compromises are humans willing to make to live in peace and comfort? What is cause, and what is effect? Whatever genre this does or doesn't belong to, it's an unputdownable novel. 4.5 stars. This was a NetGalley book.

In an amazingly timely move, I'd started reading The Fatal Gift of Beauty: The trials of Amanda Knox by Nina Burleigh late last week, without knowing that an appeals hearing was to be held today in Italy for Knox, convicted two years ago of murdering her English roommate in Perugia. I finished it today, a few hours after hearing that her conviction and that of her boyfriend had been overturned and am glad that I knew that before reading details of the investigation and trial, which seem kind of surreal. Burleigh does a very good job of this book, going beyond the breathless tone of many true crime books to probe into the history of Perugia, the kind of milieu international students inhabit in Europe, Italian culture and social mores, etc. Had Knox been more familiar with a lot of this stuff before her trial, she may well never have been condemned; in this narrative (which did strike me as fair) Knox emerges as an emotionally stunted 20 year old with very poor judgment who alienated those who should have been willing to overlook their prejudices in the quest of justice. Interestingly, one of the major figures here is the magistrate obsessed with Masonic rituals and satanic conspiracies who features prominently in The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston. This account didn't make me find Knox likable, and I ended up rather irritable that so much attention has been focused on her at the expense of her equally-innocent Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, and the young woman who was unquestionably the ultimate victim, Meredith Kercher. And yes, the identity of the real killer is very clear in the book, and the evidence supporting it -- as even the prosecutor knew at the time. 3.9 stars, recommended if you like true crime books. Got this one from Crown, who are my publishers & Burleigh's.

Sigh. Now I have to decide what to read next!

My ER copy of The Revisionists arrived late last week. Your review makes me want to move it up the queue but I have 3 other earlier ER books to get to first. Bummer.

Hello! Great review of The Revisionists! Sounds like a great read

Katie, do move it up -- you won't regret it!!

Am becoming immersed in Accident in August by Laurence Cosse, the author of A Novel Bookstore. It's another Europa translation by the wonderful Alison Anderson.

OK, finished one more, thanks to the jackhammers in the street outside.

An Accident in August is a very imaginative "what if" novel by Laurence Cosse in which she tries to get inside the head of someone who might have been driving the slow-moving car in the place d'Alma tunnel on the night Princess Diana died. To this day, no one knows who that was or what happened to him/her afterwards, so Cosse is free to do whatever she can devise, and she starts in the logical place -- how might a young woman, driving home from work, react when she realizes next morning that the horrible accident from which she fled in terror killed the princess? Well, logically, she'd go off to get her car repaired before anyone could put two and two together... and that is where Lou starts on her own path to a different kind of destruction... This is very creative and plausible; it's unnerving and scary, as well. The world might consider her guilty of playing a role in the very public tragedy, but what other tragedies might follow her effort to cover up that initial one? Cosse does an excellent job of developing a hypothetical scenario, although there are one or two steps in this that didn't convince me. Still a 4 star book; recommended. For my 11 in 11 challenge.

That does sound like a good read.....the kind you can't put down!

>12 Chatterbox: Thanks for the tip about Fatal Gift. The history/culture of Perugia, particularly, looks fascinating. I put this one on my Kindle.

Ooohhh The Fatal Gift of Beauty sounds good and actually so does The Revisionists so onto the pile they go. As usual this thread is a dangerous place to be.

But they are just books, Bonnie, not explosive devices, so your life is safe...

The jackhammers started up at 10:49 p.m. tonight and I have a migraine. I suspect the latter is due to Chinese food -- went with my upstairs neighbor and his three-year-old, Theo, to buy cat food and gawk at the cats, the mice, the hamsters, the gerbils, the parrots, cockatiels, tortoises, turtles, chinchillas, rabbits... etc. you get the picture! and then ate at a Chinese restaurant I'd never been to before. I failed to ask about MSG...

Book du jour: The Executor by Jesse Kellerman. I'm still on my light reading kick, and this fit the bill. The plot is simultaneously predictable and intriguing -- I knew what was going to happen, roughly, 175 pages into it, but the writing is pretty good for the genre and situation that Kellerman creates - a philosophy student trying in vain to finish his PhD at Harvard breaks up with his girlfriend; his advisor boots him out of the library. He spots an ad in the paper for a conversationalist, and ends up forming a close friendship with an elderly wealthy Viennese woman, who like Joseph has a fascination with the philosophical concept of free will. After a few months of conversation, she suggests he move into the spare room and becomes a kind of best friend/surrogate grandchild. I won't spoil it by revealing any more, but if you like this kind of suspense story, it's definitely worth a try.

Have started reading The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston, about the smallpox virus. I remember getting vaccinations (other things were shots; this was "the vaccination") as a child and teen and think I still have a scar on my arm. Preston's descriptions of what smallpox can do to a body are so gruesome I may never leave home again, especially if, as I suspect, he's about to argue that it's possible to do with smallpox what a lunatic did with anthrax in late 2001.

Sorry to hear about the migraine (and the jackhammers!)
The Demon in the Freezer sounds interesting!

Am I wrong in my memory that smallpox vaccination gives lifelong immunity? It's our younger friends, born after the virus was eliminated and thus unvaccinated, that us oldies will have to bury.

Gee...now *I* have a migraine....

BTW, The Revisionists reflects very accurately my own world-view....

According to Preston's book, yes, you're wrong, Richard. Almost none of us now have immunity. He does quote some stats about how long it takes before the vaccinations wear off, but I think it's in the vicinity of 5 to 10 years. I definitely recall getting booster shots, and I know there were a couple in my now-antiquated little yellow booklet that showed what I'd been innoculated against, that I had to carry with me whenever I traveled. There may still be some African nations that demand to see it to ensure yellow fever vaccine is up to date. If I recall correctly, it's now no longer necc. to get cholera shots as the infectious disease people believe it doesn't protect enough against the disease. V. glad, as the worst reactions I had were to that and to the typhoid shots. Still vividly remember my last typhoid jab and a whole bunch of stuff I had to get in '73 ahead of my first Middle East/Turkey trip -- I was sore for weeks and was sacked out on the living room sofa for at least a week.

the jackhammers followed by construction on the house next door. Whine, moan, whimper. I've calculated I get about 3 hours in which to sleep in the early morning (5 until 8) and then another 3 or 4 hours in the evenings (6 until jackhammer hour)...

GAWD that typhoid shot!! I was sick for a week too! Aches and fever and misery galore.

I Did Not Hear You re: smallpox. No. Nuh-uh.

I clearly remember getting a 'booster' smallpox inoculation about 20 years ago, in the hope it would combat another related virus that was giving me constant canker sores. Not only did it work, it was a very definite 'take', as the immunologists say.

I think the vaccine probably lasts longer than 10 years, because it must have taken at least that long for smallpox to disappear from even the US. But lifetime? I don't think so. So it's good that at least one of our demons has been caged. Let's hope it stays there.

Have any of you travelers gotten an additional smallpox inoculation before traveling to places that were not yet smallpox-free?

Judy, these days it's not possible to get a smallpox innoculation; there is almost no vaccine and it's all locked up at the WHO and other places. There are no places in the world that are not smallpox-free; the last "in the wild" case was in the horn of Africa in 1977; the last lab-related case was in England in 1978. So unless it escapes or is released from some of the stores that have been preserved (and in some case worked on by bioweapons types...) nobody needs smallpox vaccinations. What I've learned in reading this book is that there would also be a lot of controversy about using the vaccine these days; it's a "live" vaccine that probably would likely kill about 300 people; about 20% of the world's population could NOT be vaccinated, due to compromised immune systems, pregnancy, being a small child, etc. The fuss surrounding MMR would look like amateur hour...

And the MMR kerfuffle is small-time compared to the DPT botheration. I wasn't vaccinated against anything except polio and smallpox. Polio because it scared my mother senseless and smallpox because my doctor simply ignored Mama and vaccinated me in front of her, despite her screeches of fury at being thwarted. As a result, I had measles (two strains), mumps (one side at a time), pertussis (almost died), scarlet fever. It was a horrible way to grow up.

Fear of science is one of my reddest flags.

I nearly died from the whooping cough vaccine (pertussis), but I'd have no hesitation having any children vaccinated; I know that my personal experience was one of those wild card issues. (My arm was so inflamed, it was larger than my torso... and my fever spiked to 105, my mother recalls.)

But reading about smallpox -- wow, what a NASTY disease. And you're completely conscious, unable to sleep or rest, while suffering. How anyone thinks that weaponizing it is a good idea; that they would be immune, boggles my mind. There are apparently folks who believe that the vaccines we have today might be ineffective against some strains of smallpox. Wouldn't that be delightful??

re: smallpox.

You might be interested in a very readable book, Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox, by Jonathan B. Tucker, published 2001. Tucker is an expert on biological and chemical weapons; this is a book about the history of the disease (first recorded 1157 B.C.) through its recent (c.2001) reemergence as a bioterrorist threat. I haven't read this book, but it sits on my shelf waiting for me to pick it up "someday." He has a chapter that discusses global eradication of the disease.

I think chances of picking up this disease because of some "natural" outbreak somewhere are slim to none. But you're right, it's a nasty disease.

I had measles, mumps, scarlet fever, and chickenpox because there were no vaccines against such when I was a kid. I remember being SO miserable with the mumps, but I think the scarlet fever was worse because of the possible sequelae--mainly rheumatic fever. Fortunately, I didn't end up with that. I get absolutely irate about parents these days who refuse to vaccinate their kids, obviously not willing to "risk" the vaccine for their own kids, but depending on most of the other kids their child will come in contact with to be vaccinated. Don't get me started on that one. My mother had polio in 1949 after the birth of my oldest brother, so I think we were probably first in line to get those sugar cubes.

Thanks, Becky! I'm not sure I can face much more detail on the ravages of smallpox just yet, after finishing The Demon in the Freezer. Richard Preston focuses on the details of the great Eradication, and the threat that smallpox probably can escape the freezers in which it is supposed to be confined - he offers some evidence that in the former Soviet Union, researchers worked on smallpox to develop new strains and weaponize it. There was some tough reading in here, such as details of a 1970 outbreak in Germany, or the efforts of scientists to create smallpox in monkeys (the fact that they succeeded has tremendous ramifications for genetically modifying smallpox) and the ultimate scary scenario, the possibility that any escaped smallpox would rampage through our far more urbanized society and be a new variant, modified in labs, for which no vaccine exists. A doomsday scenario, indeed. It's a brisk canter through the issues, pegged to the anthrax attacks of late 2001 and all the kerfuffle over Iraq's possible possession of bioweapons -- the book was published in 2002/2003 -- so I'd like to find something more up to date. Recommended to those who don't mind being scared to death, as Preston ably explains tricky scientific concepts. 4 stars.

>26 Chatterbox: Oh, regarding smallpox immunizations, I didn't mean nowadays, but earlier in our lives. Having traveled pretty much nowhere in my 60+ years, I was wondering if some of us similarly elderly but better traveled have had the experience.

And since when is there only one 'l' in traveled??

I'm old enough to have missed the more modern vaccinations, so I too had rubella, chicken pox, mumps, and what was then called scarletina (why, because it was a mild case???). On my mother's instructions, I tried my best to catch the measles from my sick siblings, but my peculiar immune system declined to attend the party. I've recently asked my doctor about the shingles vaccine, and he's thinking it over - not very enthusiastic. I'll talk to him about measles as well. And, I get my flu shot every year, which my company dispenses for free as a business strategy. It drives me nuts that so few people have been taking advantage of it this year.

There might be a lot of resistance to a smallpox immunization program today - until someone who has the disease is put on the news. Oh brother. The lines would be up and down Broadway in no time. It is the nastiest.

One of the mystery stories I read, maybe a Nevada Barr, centered around an attempt to weaponize smallpox, but the resulting virus was not transmissible in the normal way, at least in the novel!

You would think the world dangerous enough without anyone thinking of making it more dangerous, wouldn't you?

For me, the smallpox booster was simply routine; every four or five years. I know I had one before we moved to Europe in the late 60s; again in '73, and again in perhaps '77 (before I went to India, along with a bunch of other stuff, including my first hepatitis shot.

ETA: I don't get the flu shot, largely because I don't work in an office and don't commute daily on crowded subways -- and because it would have to come out of my pocket... I'm relatively low risk, so no one is egging me on to get it, either.

Traveled is Amurrican spelling; travelled is the British equivalent... It's one of those that trips me up. The criticised/criticized stuff I always catch, but anyone who trusts me to edit an English paper and remove all British spelling is a fool.

A bit anxious, as the jackhammers are back, I've got a headache -- and I've got a 10:30 meeting with someone in midtown Manhattan that might lead to a writing gig. Strikes me as a bad combination.

Yowza, you people! this is a scary thread! I had a zillion boosters before traveling in the Far east about thirty years ago..... but that's it except for flu shots and maybe, once, a tetanus for some obscure forgotten reason.... (that's a nasty little shot too, btw). The WORST shots are for rabies which they give you in your STOMACH. My sister was bitten by a raccoon once (supposedly tame, etc) and had to go through that. Traumatized for life.

So now you people instead of getting to work I have to go read about how smallpox is transmitted...... Here is a link that should comfort a wee bit: here Shucks, it is a sneeze disease, they are more problematical for sure.....

Medical science has come up with a better (i.e. less painful) rabies shot in recent years. Still, I hope never to encounter it, or the animals that might bring me such a gift.

I recall a story from (probably) the New Yorker, about a woman who was bitten by a rabid raccoon, and had great trouble finding the vaccine in time. It's not present in all hospitals, and it seems to be paid for by the county in NY state. The complications were ridiculous and she only had 72 hours to get the shot.

sorry, Suz - we seem to have hijacked your thread for medical purposes. My last, I promise.

Chatterbox - on a different subject: do you enjoy the Silva novels? I have only recently completed The Mark Of The Assassin and The Marching Season and have enjoyed them thoroughly. I'm going to get into the rest of his books soon and was wondering what you thought of them. Thanks.

-utbw42

And THEN there was this time I had....

#35 -- I absolutely LOVED the early Daniel Silva books -- The Unlikely Spy and The Marching Season in particular. But I have become very bored with the newer books in the Gabriel Allon series -- there's little character development -- Allon remains tortured, in between saving the world and being misunderstood and also being manipulated by the head of his secret version of Mossad, etc. I happen to like character-driven books, so whenever a series trots out the same characters behaving the same ways, I get frustrated. Now plenty of people feel otherwise -- Becky (labwriter) and I had a debate about Silva over on her thread back in the summer that prompted me to blog about mystery series I think are underrated, vs those authors who crank out a book a year and feel like they are falling into a formula or else getting more bizarre in their scenarios. You can read that here: http://uncommonreading.blogspot.com/2011/08/mystery-monday-overlooked-and.html

I am hereby declaring an end to the discussion about scary diseases and vaccinations. At least, on this thread... If someone wants to mosey off to discuss this, there's a TIOLI challenge on the subject, and presumably a thread accompanying it... *grin*

As an antidote (pun fully intentional) to toxic diseases, I read a very silly chick lit with a twist book last night, to the accompaniment of the jackhammer chorus. Never Can Say Goodbye is the improbable but still endearing/warm-and-fuzzy story of Frankie (Francesca} whose friend and employer leaves her her business after she (the employer) runs off to live in Greece. Frankie turns it into a vintage dress emporium -- and then discovers she is being haunted by the ghost of an elderly man whose wife's wedding dress has ended up in the shop. She meets a cute guy, has to help the ghost reunite in the afterlife with his beloved, etc. etc. It would all be nauseating if it weren't also witty. Eg, when a medium messes up, and Ernie the ghost doesn't vanish but other spirits materialize, he's a bit irritable. "I'm still here, and I"m not alone. Now I'm sharing me haunting space with a lot of flaming half-dressed dead shopaholics." 3.5 stars, recommended only if you like the genre. This is part of a series of novels by Christina Jones that involve magical elements & potions. More goofy than anything else.

Am also reading The Cloud Messenger by Aamer Hussein, and becoming very irritable. It's rambling, very beautiful writing -- but is there a story here, or just the author and the narrator musing about stuff that happened over a period of years that is very loosely related to the theme of displacement/alienation?? 5 star writing; at best 3 stars for the "plot" halfway through. Bah, humbug.

Books du jour:

Oh dear, oh dear. What do you do when a book is so beautifully written that it makes you want to cry -- but the story is almost absent?? That's the problem with The Cloud Messenger by Aamer Hussein, whose sentences sound like poetry (suitably, since the main character's fascination with Urdu and Persian poesy is partly at the heart of the narrative) but that ultimately ends up feeling like a series of poetic vignettes stapled together. It's the story of Mehran's life, but one that ranges from the pedantic ("He teaches for 15, sometimes 02 hours a week -- he is, again, teaching large groups on Mondays and Thursdays, and also an Indian History module to undergraduates. He's often too tired to do anything but read a few pages of a novel in the evenings. ... His job at the university, though he's a dutiful and conscientious teacher, is only a job, and he would have been as diligent at any other...") The narrator coyly refers in the book to Mehran's efforts at autobiographical writings -- Hussein himself notes in an afterward that this is "the story of some of the paths I might have taken" and reflects his own fascination with Urdu literature. Ultimately, I ended up wanting to read some of the poets he quotes liberally in the book, but after two readings of the story itself, remained feeling very distanced from Mehran and unimpressed with his creator's effort to build a narrative out of emotions and fleeting events and encounters, however beautifully observed. Fabulous writing needs a structure and the very loosely interwoven tale of Mehran's encounters with Riccarda, Marvi and Marco never add up to a convincing set of characters. This is a work of art, perhaps, but not a story. 3 stars.

ETA: My full review is up on the book's page. Almost caught up on my ER reads! So it's time to turn my attention to the Amazon Vine books...

At least A Small Death in the Great Glen had no pretensions at all. I read the sequel to this first, and really enjoyed the author's portrayal of life in the far Highlands, all the social dynamics from the laird's home to the lives of the tinkers. The mystery element was rather meh. The same is true in this book, which isn't as good as the first, but which I still enjoyed for what it was, a reasonably adequate book about the Highlands in an era when the memory of World War II was still vivid. A Polish man jumps from a Russian ship in the town's harbor; a young boy is murdered. The local policeman is very eager to connect the two and convict the stranger of the crime. Some elements are predictable, and in other places the author doesn't give the reader enough background information to make final plot twists plausible. Still, I really like the characters and the setting. Only somewhat recommended; the second book is stronger, but even so, if you like unraveling mystery puzzles alongside the author and characters, this isn't the book for you. It's more like a cozy, and that's the audience I'd recommend.

I'm excited as I have two new mysteries by favorite authors sitting here! One is the newest in the Joe Sandilands series by Barbara Cleverly, which I got from the library; the other is book #4 in the "Bruno, chief of police" series by Martin Walker, which I splurged on early as one of my Thingaversary choices. The Thingaversary itself is coming up on Sunday, so...

My other Thingaversary choices (total of five allowed!):
-- a pre-order for Verdi's Shakespeare by Gary Wills, for my Kindle
-- Karaoke Culture by Dubravka Ugresic
-- The Noble Assassin by Christie Dickason (from the UK)
-- Prague Fatale by Philip Kerr (ditto)

One of last year's Thingaversary pre-orders, the new Susan Hill mystery, is finally en route to me!! (There was a delay in publication...)

Happy (early) Thingaversary, Suz! Sounds like you have a good selection lined up.

Have a good weekend.

I have been caught up in Norman Lebrecht's book about Mahler, both the man and his music, and stumbled upon a wonderful anecdote to share. It's the late 1940s in Dusseldorf; an art student is making some money on the side (and getting some food) by playing washboard in a 3-person group -- something from Mahler's Knaben Wunderhorn, probably. As Lebrecht writes, they must have been good because one of the guests sends for his suitcase from his hotel, pulls out a golden trumpet, and joins in. And that's how Louis Armstrong and future Nobel literature laureate Gunter Grass ended up jamming together. Wouldn't you have LOVED to be a fly on that wall that night?!?!

#40 Lovely story. I must listen to some Mahler again. Boyfriend long ago was mad about him and we listened all the time... Sounds like the book is good?

Suz, my 5-year Thingaversary is next week (Oct 13) and I've already ordered my "required" books ... which reminds me, I should post about them on my thread!

A for your review of The Cloud Messenger by Aamer Hussein.

Happy Thingaversary

The Mahler book sounds interesting.

HTIA (Happy Thingaversary in Advance)!

I was going to bring The Cloud Messenger on the plane with me tomorrow, but I think I'll leave it here and review it next month.

Yes, the Mahler book is great, so far -- I'm about 1/3 of the way into it right now. Lebrecht alternates his take on Mahler's life with anecdotes about the music over time (as in the above anecdote). If you have very firm views about what a biography should feel like/sound like, this might not fit the bill. But I'm enjoying the present tense narration; the movement from a discussion of the music to a jump forward to someone who played the music later, etc. There's also a chapter later in the book in which Lebrecht (always opinionated!) discusses the Mahler discography -- I'm far from a purist on this, but it's interesting to see the comments and I admit I jumped ahead as I've been looking for a recording of the second symphony; I ended up order the Klaus Tennstedt recording, which Lebrecht thinks is very distinctive but also immensely moving. Wow, just realized I literally can't recall the last time I ordered a real CD vs downloading music onto iTunes...

I'm also very much enjoying Absolute Monarchs by John Julius Norwich; his history of the papacy. Some critics have noted that it's a brisk epoch-by-epoch survey, but I've no quibbles with that. Norwich is such an effortless scholar, and I'm finding it fascinating to fit in my knowledge of some of the history with the detail he provides. He is especially good at boiling down what now seem like deeply arcane theological debates that led led up to the schism between the Roman and Byzantine churches into digestible form. It may be the first time I've understood the core of the various heresies and the issues involving the filioloque (sp?) and the monophysite arguments. I'm no theologian (how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? who cares?) but it's nice to read an analysis of this that I feel I can trust and grasp without multiple re-reads. And Norwich is brilliant at tossing in just the right detail to make everything vivid and alive.

My current two novels are fine for what they are. I like The Sisters Brothers but don't love it (I'm halfway through) - I appreciate it, but never really engage with it emotionally. The Blood Royal is what it is, a series mystery, but she's doing something new with the series, so that makes it more fun to read.

On deck: Brighton Rock, for RL book circle, and The Hypnotist, the latest Scandi-crime book, which is due back at the library next week. When I finish The Sisters Brothers, I still need to read Half Blood Blues to wrap up my reading of the Man Booker shortlist. But I'm sure all my best-laid reading plans will come to naught! For starters, there are a few books waiting for me at the library -- another Europa, The Sexual Life of an Islamist in Paris and A More Perfect Heaven, Dava Sobel's book about Copernicus. There's also the new Stephen O'Shea book in the stacks, The Friar of Carcassonne. He's another historian whose books I really like, especially Back to the Front, about his walking trip along the Western Front some 75 years after the guns stopped firing.

Yesterday I watched "The Girl by the Lake", an Italianization of Karin Fossum's Don't Look Back. Transposed to northern Italy, Inspector Sejer becomes Commissario Sanzio, and the story stays mostly the same. It was truly brain-bending to watch, in Italian, the story I'd read in English as translated from Norwegian.

Ain't the 21st century grand?

REading your posts reminded me that MY Thingaversary is coming up this month on the 24th--I'd better make plans! Thanks for the prompt. And I'll look into Absolute Monarchs--it sounds interesting.

Richard, I was very meh about the Fossum novel that I did read sometime over the winter -- perhaps I should try again with this one? I did notice that the DVD of the film you mention is available via the library.

Book du jour: The Blood Royal by Barbara Cleverly was an interesting twist in her Joe Sandilands mysteries. The first few books were set in British-ruled India; she then moved to the jazz age in London, and the most recent was set about 1926. But now it's only 1922, and Sandilands is investigating a murderous plot targeting military and political leaders, and perhaps even the royal family. Is it Irish Fenians? Communists? Or something more unlikely still? There are some interesting twists suggesting that crimes may not be what they appear to be -- or even what they later seem to be -- and Cleverly introduces a new character in the shape of WPC Lily Wentworth, smart and sharp-tongued and a natural detective with not all that much awe for the British establishment. The ending hints that readers will see the duo in action again, and I for one would welcome that. I admit that the preface perhaps tipped the author's hand too much -- what does it mean that a young Russian refugee has made it safely to London; how does that relate to the crimes committed two years later? Still, I didn't mind. This feels like a particularly good Agatha Christie, with far more attention to character than Christie ever managed (she seemed to stop after doing the basics, like having Hercule Poirot pay lots of attention to his moustaches, etc.) 3.9 stars, recommended. (Incidentally, I noticed that Tug of War, a particularly good entry in this series, is now available on Kindle for a mere $4.44 -- a bargain.) I'd start this series with the Indian novels, like Ragtime in Simla or The Palace Tiger, but you could skip some of the others and move straight to this one if you're tempted.

Dunno what light fiction to add to the mix now. Will keep going with Mahler & the papacy, and probably finish The Sisters Brothers over the weekend, but need to find some fluff to fill in the gaps!

>48 Chatterbox: I myownself wouldn't urge this course upon you. Just not that revved up about the whole thing...it's the meta-ness of it all that makes me feel like a true cosmopolite.

I got very ~meh~ about Cleverly after The Palace Tiger, couldn't express exactly why. I like the Colonial India setting. Just not all bouncy over the books, and all indicators were that I should be. What did you pick as your fill-in farb?

I read the first 3 #Cleverlys from the library ages ago then forgot all about them. I then remembered and bought them all secondhand a few months ago (the first 8). Interestingly, 1 and 6 Tug of War are available quite cheaply here too, and this new one is available for £6 on Kindle. I'm not going to get it now because I think I should catch up with the others in the series first (trying to remember if that's one of the boxes in the shed).

I've had my issues with some of the Cleverly books, as well, which is why this was a library book for me. There are still some flaws here -- at times she takes an oddly distanced view of Sandilands, and we see events more through the eyes of Lily, which makes it not "fit" into the series, but I still found it an enjoyable read and one that I found hart to put down.

I'm going to dig into The Crowded Grave, the new "Bruno" mystery from Martin Walker, #4 in a series I was introduced to last year. It's one of my Thingaversary books, and thus very appropriate to read on my Thingaversary! I also have a historical novel and a kinda feel good "woman's book" in reserve. And the John Julius Norwich and the Mahler book.

Now, how do I make time for writing my column???

Did I properly wish you a happy Thinga? If not HAPPY THINGA!

LOL, thanks, Lucy!!

I read a link on Darryl's thread to a Guardian interview with Dame Stella Rimington, chair of this year's much-criticized Man Booker panel of judges. I was going to post this over there, but felt it would have been blatant thread-jacking, so am moving it here instead. I find myself rather troubled by both sides of the argument -- really troubled, I mean. On the one hand, Rimington's camp insists that general readers (i.e. popularity and accessibility) should triumph, which I find worrying: often the best novels are those that challenge us in some way. On the other, the criticism also worries me. There's a sense that dissing Hollinghurst, and having other authors not make the longlist, means that the judges are racist, homophobic, etc. etc. Or that they don't appreciate REAL literature -- i.e. the kind of books that receive respectful attention and acclaim from a relatively small coterie of critics. Picking the "best book" of the year? I think that's impossible to live up to, in any event, because one person's "best book" is always going to be different from that of someone else. I do believe there are basic standards as to what kind of book should be considered for this kind of prize. But after that is met, all bets are off. And authors who are already in the canon are quite capable of writing an underwhelming book, and judges are quite able to say to themselves "this didn't have the same impact on me as that book over there that someone I'd never heard of wrote." That's what happened to me last year, when I read the tedious Parrot and Olivier in America and tried and failed to read C, but loved Room, In a Strange Room (I'd never heard of Galgut before), not to mention The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore and The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas. I'm at a loss to understand how Brooklyn by Colm Toibin didn't make it on to the shortlist the prior year when The Quickening Maze did. Etc.

Anyway: Here is what I was thinking of posting on Darryl's thread:
Re the interview with Stella Rimington. I enjoy her books for what they are, and obviously they'll never make the Man Booker list. But -- is that a relevant point?? After all, the vast majority of critics are not literary novelists; if any of us turned to novel-writing, would we be great at it? Is that a precondition for being a judge of a literary competition? (Based on prior year's Booker panels, evidently not -- last year, we had Andrew Motion, true, but that's an anomaly. Looking through the last decade, the panels have been pretty much akin to this one, with the possible exception of the years when Hermione Lee -- biographer -- and Lisa Jardine -- an historian) were in the chair.) Because, essentially, those of us following it are at some level suggesting that we have the capacity to judge the same issues that we criticize others for judging. The comment that grabbed my eyes was: "How dare these interlopers into literature's sacred groves judge what is beyond their competence?" I also think it's important to note that Rimington is one of five people on the panel, and despite her former tenure at MI-5, couldn't have bulldozed over four others to get a book onto the longlist or shortlist. We can criticize the panel's abilities and judgment, but these are panel decisions, especially the call on which longlist books make the next cut, and the final decision on an award. Or, if we take it a step further, it's the decisions made by the whole prize organization -- the people charged with carrying out the mandate. They screen the books submitted (assume every single qualifying novel is submitted by its publisher) and winnow it down to 135 or so. They choose the judges.

I do think that Julian Barnes's comments about the Man Booker quoted in the article are hilarious, given that he's now the favorite to win. Will that change his mind about it??? Will he reject the award on principle because it's "posh bingo" these days? I do think it's a bit of a travesty that Flaubert's Parrot was overlooked in favor of Hotel du Lac. I've read both novels (although a while ago, back in the late 80s) and while the latter was a perfectly good book, it was nowhere near as innovative or fresh as Barnes. (Which may, of course, have been the problem...) Brookner has gone on to a career of writing clones of that kind of novel. Ironically, this is my least favorite Barnes novel (despite the elegant writing), because it was the least innovative, fresh and convincing of anything he's ever written. Should he win, I'd argue that it's at least as likely to be because he has relatively weak competition as due to the merits of the book. (I've now got only one longlist book to finish reading.) Up against the shortlist from last year or the year before? Not a chance.

Going back to Barnes vs Brookner, to me this really clarifies the need for prizes to focus on careers as much as "books of the year". Someone can cruise for decades on having been a "prize-winning" author -- how many times have we all bought books on the strength of the author having won a "name" prize that we recognize, only to be disappointed? That publishing industry phenom irritates me more than the fact of an underwhelming novel winning in the first place. I'm much more interested in what authors like Brink and Barnes have done over their careers -- both have built up a substantial body of work, with its high and low points. What they do with any given book is more of a data point in that broader picture.

The best thing about this year's Man Booker long and shortlists is that has propelled a lot of new authors into the spotlight. Hollinghurst is a fave of those in "literature's sacred groves" and was always going to get a lot of respectful attention; ditto Michael Ondaatje. (I confess I struggle with the latter as his elder brother is such an obnoxious (multiple expletives deleted) and self-important twit; is that a family trait?? I realize I should focus on the work, but the only one of his novels that I've tried and liked was The English Patient -- The Cat's Table will arrive at the library for me next week.) So I like the idea of a periodic shakeup, even if the results are meh, and there are authors from this crop of whom I'd definitely read more. Especially the first-time novelists, who are really just starting out. (In past years, this list is how I've become aware of novelists I should have stumbled over before, like John Banville and Damon Galgut.)

That said, I'm kinda wondering about first-time writers as award-winners after reading the utterly dire/dreadful yet uber-literary The Sentimentalists, which won the last Giller Prize. On the one hand, a triumph can put a deserving writer's career into fast forward, which is great. On the other hand, with the exception of genre fiction, most first novels aren't the best exemplars of an author's work. Hmmm, lots to mull over here.

Based on what I've read, there's nothing on either the longlist or shortlist that I've read that I'd be happy to give a literary award to, given the kind of adulation that follows a literary award. In contrast to last year, where I think I had four or five books from the longlist that I loved, for me, this year's books are all better/worse than the average of nominated books, rather than books I would admire when read in any context. So I'm going to sit on the sidelines, not really cheering for anything in particular. Especially because of the rather nasty nature of this criticism of the judges and the process, that has left a kind of nasty taste in my mouth with the sometimes vituperative comments. Above a certain point, literary criticism is a subjective art, and we forget that at our peril. I'm not arguing that Stella Rimington's books should be measured against Ondaatje or Barnes. But nor would I argue that Rimington is any less equipped to judge what she reads than any of us are. And some of the judges may be thinking to themselves, hmm, Pigeon English, a debut novel, strikes me as more accomplished than (say) Hollinghurst because the author is taking more risks, whereas Hollinghurst is writing essentially the same KIND of novel he has been writing for years. Anyway, I feel sorry for all the authors caught up in this. If anything but Barnes gets picked at this stage, its hapless author will have to endure a lot of criticism and opprobrium that is now flowing primarily at the panel, and his/her book will forever be known as the book that shouldn't have won. I do think Barnes will probably win, as his novel is simply the most technically accomplished. Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch was far more interesting a book for me, however.

Does anyone know whether Hand Me Down World by Lloyd Jones missed this year's prize deadline. Even on quickly dipping into it (got it from the library this week), it is looking very impressive... Hoping to get to it after I finish a re-read of Brighton Rock for my RL book circle.

Thanks for your musings, Suze - and HAPPY THINGA!!!

Happy Thinga Suzanne. I appreciate your comments on the Booker, it does seem to be a controversial year. Hand Me Down World was first published in November last year in New Zealand.

>53 Chatterbox: On the one hand, Rimington's camp insists that general readers (i.e. popularity and accessibility) should triumph

Don't general readers triumph by reading the books on the best sellers lists? I expect the Mann Booker prize nominees to offer me something more than that, something that isn't likely to land on the best sellers list. If the Booker is going to make a change like that I'll reconsider reading the list.

Oh and Happy Thingaversary!

Yay fifth Thinga!

All of the prizes leave me a bit jaundiced. Anointing the best? Ha. Impossible at best and invidious at worst.

Bonnie, yes -- although I'm not trying to equate novels like The Sisters Brothers and Snowdrops with those that actually do populate the bestseller lists. These are solid novels that probably wouldn't reach many readers normally; they fall between the twin camps of basic commercial genre fiction and works by "acclaimed literary novelists" whose novels people love to have on their shelves, even if they don't always read them, as it shows how erudite they are. (Cynical? You betcha. I've encountered a lot of that...) Would Room have landed on bestseller lists had it not been nominated for major prizes, despite being eminently readable? I don't think it's automatic bestseller fodder, and yet it's definitely accessible. What I want from Man Booker judges is a list of what they consider to be (note the they consider to be; I'm quite happy to quibble and second guess, as that's the fun, but I haven't had the experience of reading 135 books in 2 months or so and comparing them all in my mind, so I really can't put myself in their shoes) the best novels they have read. They may even apply different criteria than I do; that's fine, as I don't think there is a single absolute set of criteria as to what is "good"; there are simply some accepted ways to determine what makes a novel "better" than others. What makes it "best"? Well, I'd hate to be on that jury...

I'd think twice about not reading the list... First of all, any list of books is going to contain winners and duds for any reader. Secondly, reading by prescription is always going to be more problematic. Time is too short; there are too many books out there. For instance, I don't care that Sebastian Barry's new novel was on the longlist; I've read too many of his before and they have all fused in my brain as essentially manifestations of one major theme; a theme he can't seem to develop diverse enough narratives around to satisfy me as a reader. But the emphasis there is satisfying "me". If the Man Booker finds merit in Barry that I don't, God bless them. And for someone else, Barry will be a new find, a discovery. And that's why I'll continue to look at the list and cherry-pick what seems interesting to me, focusing on the books and authors I'm not familiar with or that seem interesting to me. Personally, I wouldn't consider not looking at the list in quest of things to read any more than I would consider a disciplined program of reading that takes in the whole list, to be thorough. New discoveries are fab, and some of them I wouldn't have made without the lists, even when I disagreed with some of the actual choices. The one shortlist book I was mildly curious about but didn't think might appeal to me, but eventually decided to read is also one I felt very lukewarm about after completing -- The Sisters Brothers. Do I wish I hadn't bought it? Yup. But that doesn't mean I regret reading it, or I didn't take away some thoughts about narrative from it. So even though it's not what some might see as a "Booker worthy" novel, and I doubt I'll read more by the author any time soon, that didn't make it a not-worthwhile use of my time. Reading more Barry or more Hollinghurst, authors I don't really like after multiple reads of prior books, simply because they were on the longlist, would have been had I discovered that I didn't like the new books either. I may get both from the library over the winter -- or maybe not. I don't feel under any compulsion to read or not read the list, but am eager to turn to it for ideas.

The doorbell just rang, and my dinner (shrimps 'n chips from the English Chip Shop, which has just opened a branch barely within delivery distance) is here, so I'll defer comments on books until I have relished every bite...

English Chip Shop. That delivers. I am moving in with you. Tell the cats.

Richard, the cats know you don't like them, and tell me I'm not allowed to let you over the threshold. We can, however, make an expedition down Atlantic Avenue to Clinton Street one day...

Nearly forgot to come back for the books du jour report; got caught up in reading Martin Walker's account of Bruno's adventures, which I'm nearly finished. The two books I have finished are both for my 11 in 11 challenge.

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt. Hmmm, what to say. On the one hand, I could appreciate the writing and the almost picaresque nature of Eli Sisters's adventures (it's not truly picaresque, but the series of encounters he and Charlie have along their way make it resemble that in form at least.) And I thought the ending -- the final 10% or so of the novel -- was nearly pitch-perfect, both in the writing style and the plot developments. But I never fell in love with the book or the characters; I always felt distanced from them and it was never a problem for me to put the Kindle down and go read something else for a while. Indeed, sometimes I felt I needed to. I'm unclear whether that's because it's a Western, whether it's because of deWitt's somewhat deadpan writing style, carefully designed to mirror how someone like Eli Sisters might have spoken in his era. I'm not unhappy I read it, but it wasn't a great novel for me and I wish I'd had the patience for a copy to wend its way to me from the library rather than blowing some of my skimpy book budget on buying it. Oh well, live and learn. 4 stars, bumped up a bit because of the ending.

In contrast, I was wowed by Why Mahler? by Norman Lebrecht. Now, Lebrecht often comes across as an opinionated curmudgeon, and he must be an occasional thorn in the side of the musical "establishment". But in this book, he's writing about someone he reveres -- Gustav Mahler -- and doing so in a highly personal way, combining his own observations about the music and its impact on those who have performed it; details of the music itself and how it fits in to the course of music history; the context in which Mahler lived and worked, particularly in Vienna which alternately embraced him and kicked him to the curb. There are all kinds of fascinating vignettes -- imagine a teenage Hitler, in standing room, watching as the Jewish-born Mahler conducted one of the landmark performances of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde... -- and oodles of detail (Mahler's grave unlike that of other Viennese greats, is on the outskirts; to get there, the author walks past the Albanian embassy -- outcasts of the world, unite!), insight and emotion. Above all, Lebrecht's passion for Mahler comes across loud and clear: he was "a rock of verity in a sea of illusions, an idealist among pragmatists, a doer as well as a dreamer, a redeemer of truth from lies. His music can mean many things at once, bu tit cannot equivocate. It comes at you from afar like the light at the end of the tunnel, an irresistible destination." He shows how Mahler's music bridged the gap between Wagner, who had opened the door to new horizons in music, and the atonality of Schonberg (who was a friend) and Webern, whose work he didn't always understand but still promoted. Mahler "invites us into his life, asks us to share his struggles, his torments, his doubts, as if they were our own, as they often are. And then he withdraws, lost to the world, and leaves the rest to us." 4.6 stars, marred only by Lebrecht's decision to use his chapter on Mahler interpretations to lambaste some conductors (more boring than a hundred metronomes) gratuitously; rather than just a brief whistle-stop tour, it would have been more interesting had he focused on the interpretations he liked and why, in the same way he discusses how the posthumous 10th symphony came to be. This is a must-read for any classical music afficionado, and anyone curious about Mahler, his era and his music will find plenty to interest them even if they don't have a musical background.

I first really listened to Mahler, ironically, while watching a ballet -- a duet set against his Songs of a Wayfarer (Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen), sung by a baritone. I was blown away by the emotion in the music, and now own at least three recordings (one by the inimitable Thomas Hampson.) I moved on to his symphonies, but have paid more attention to some (#1, 4, 5, 9) than others. After reading about #2, I had to dash off and order the Tennstedt recording...

OK, back to Bruno and his adventures with anti-foie gras campaigners in the Perigord, and Basque terrorists to boot.

Thomas Hampson *swoon*

Mahler's Fourth *fantods*

Mean cats. Clinton Street ho!

Mean cats??? Heavens, you have banished them from your thread, where you run an anti-cat crusade!! They are simply respectfully requesting that humans of that persuasion not intrude on their space... *grin*

Finished The Crowded Grave by Martin Walker, a worthy addition to the adventures of Bruno, chief of police. I know a lot of folks here want to move to Three Pines, but me, I'm heading for St. Denis. The locals aren't quite as eccentric and the food is every bit as yummy. I love these characters and the setting; the novels are just as much about food and friendship as about mysteries, without relapsing into cozy territory. In this outing, Bruno has a lot to deal with: a big discovery has been made at a local archaeological dig, along with the digging up of a more recent corpse by a student. Then some of the students on the dig are suspected of some PETA-style actions against local farmers that raise ducks and geese. Bruno has to go head to head with a new, green & Green magistrate, who wants his scalp, even as he's under pressure to help former flame Isabelle identify possible Basque sympathizers ahead of a big ministerial summit meeting on combating ETA terrorism. Somehow, he pulls all these threads together. I admit I had tears in my eyes at the denouement, but I'm not going to give you any hints. Read the series for yourself... 4.2 stars, recommended, can't wait for installment #5!

>58 Chatterbox:: liked the paragraph about reading the list. I felt an OCD-like need to read all the Booker and Orange Prize winners (and now, having done so, am equally obsessed with reading each year's winner into perpetuity). But the shortlists? No such compulsion. I do, however, consider the lists as a source of "things to read" (like I really need help with that, LOL) and enjoy events like Orange January/July where I can really dive into the prize backlist.

I only read the books I want to on prize lists. What I like about them, and I think the Orange does this better than the Booker, is that they give longlist/shortlist books a bit of publicity, and also libraries often buy books that they might not have otherwise.

I don't think looking back over old Booker lists bears out any idea of some heyday where books were in fact more challenging and cutting edge in literary terms. How challenging, cutting edge and innovative are shortlists packed wtih writers who were already really well known?

Luci, excellent point! How many established authors take creative risks? I can think of David Mitchell, for instance, whose novels seem to be quite different in subject and tone. But even at the literary end of the market, it sometimes feels as if authors are sticking to the tried and true -- or their publishers are asking them to stay within boundaries, as one novelist friend of mine contends is the case. (She is part of a writer's co-op; her first novel was published by Farrar Strauss & Giroux; the second was self-published via the coop and a new breed of publishing firm, which edited the MS.) Innovation for innovation's sake doesn't work, of course, but remaining artistically creative? That's got to be a challenge.

The thread is now open for recommendations of authors you feel have done this in a significant way... I'd say that Emma Donoghue did, after writing Room instead of another book like The Sealed Letter.

Anyway -- started reading When She Woke last night, with a big thanks to Bonnie (brenzi) just before I went to bed. Bad choice, on two levels! Firstly, the novel proved fast-paced enough that it kept me reading for a few hours; secondly, I ended up having dystopian dreams -- horrible!!

Oooh, I have When She Woke out from the library - also thanks to Bonnie's rec. Hillary Jordan is speaking at a local B&N next week, so I plan to read the book before going to that. Glad to hear it's so good from another source!

Emma Donoghue also sprung to my mind in answer to your question. I'll have to think of others (I understand When She Woke is a definite departure from Jordan's first (?) book Mudbound but she's probably not established enough yet to determine if it's a rule or an exception in her case).

Finished When She Woke today... An unputdownable dystopian novel, one that is more nuanced than it at first seems. It's still not an uber-literary work, but it works fine as a thumping good read; well-written, intriguing, etc. Although it's very much in the vein of The Handmaid's Tale, set in a future after various conflagrations and plagues have reshaped society and religious faith dominates politics (there's even a Secretary of Faith...), that is really the background to one woman's story. You'll have a lot more fun with this novel if you've read The Scarlet Letter; Hester Prynne, who wears that letter in Hawthorne's classic, here is Hannah Payne; Arthur Dimmesdale becomes Aidan Dale, a married superchurch pastor. Only instead of carrying her child to term, Hannah chooses now-illegal abortion -- had she given birth, she would have been forced to name the father of her child. As it is her refusal to name either Aidan or the abortionist means that she is sentenced to serve 18 months as a "Chrome" -- her skin is tinted red, and after 30 days isolated in detention, she is released to serve out the remainder of her sentence amid the general public -- if she can survive. Shunned by some members of her family, she has to try to atone for her sin at a church-run center -- or perhaps there is another way? The story shifts into action mode, as Hannah tries to figure out what she wants for herself rather than what others insist she should want. The pace is so fast and the premise so intriguing that it does kind of mask some of the book's weaknesses. For instance, Hannah's apparent knowledge of the world is wildly uneven -- at one point, she compares someone she meets to a James Bond character, and I wondered how on earth she'd know 007 if she hadn't seen movies or read many books -- she doesn't know the basics of the Iliad or who Helen of Troy was, or William Faulkner, for instance. Another character is rather blatantly a no-good type, yet is trusted by Hannah for most of her time with the person, even though she has shown by then that she is above-average in gauging who can and can't be trusted. So this isn't flawless, but it is guaranteed to keep you reading and your pulse thumping! 4.2 stars, recommended to dystopian fans in particular. Big thanks to Bonnie for the loan of the ARC, which will be winging its way back to you shortly along with your loan!!

So I need some really good vibes or whatever, folks. Barron's, for whom I do the bulk of my writing these days, has told me they want to diversify their stable of writers, meaning I won't be collecting a penny from them for the rest of the year. That means zero income, pretty much, for the next 10/12 weeks, absent a miracle. (I am still not being paid for my weekly columns, for some reason.) It's nothing to do with me or my writing, but it's very bad news, both for the cash flow immediately and longer-term for my credibility/position in the market. Still no word re the new book, no offer, etc. So things look/feel fairly dire right now.

So sorry to hear that, Suzanne--I know it has to be a significant worry for you. I wish you best of luck in finding some new contacts and, more importantly, contracts.

That sounds scary, Suzanne, and disgusting since it's undeserved. Good vibes headed your way, and wake-up-and-look-at-Suzanne vibes for the people thinking about your new book and in charge of your columns.
I can never decide whether I prefer Mahler 3 or Mahler 4. Love and adore them both. I prescribe one or the other for you right now.

Oh boo! Oh hiss! *whammy* for Suz's income to recover and increase in the next 12 hours

I hope that your forthcoming paperback draws some favorable attention to you, and that that gets you position and money.

Robert

Oh, ugh, Suzanne - very sorry to hear about this undeserved worry for you. Good vibes winging their way to you! And I am confident your experience and talent will carry the day.

>67 Chatterbox:: I just listened to a Books on the Nightstand podcast on my way to work this morning, that heartily recommended When She Woke, and I also knew I'd heard good things on LT (probably from Bonnie). Your review is timely!
>68 Chatterbox:: VERY sorry to hear about this nasty news. Sending vibes ...

65 How many established authors take creative risks?

I would add Hilary Mantel to this list. Many of her books are wildly different from each other, both in subject and in approach; some work better than others, but I admire her for trying.

Agree that it's scary about Barrons; hope some other work shows up and surprises you.

Well I'm really glad you liked When She Woke. I'm not a dystopian fan in the least but that book really clicked for me and has me thinking I should seek out others. I think I was afraid, at the beginning of the book, that it would be a cheesy take off on Hester Prinn and The Scarlet Letter but not at all. Yep, thumping good read.

It's disturbing that your column doesn't carry you along since your writing is so good. Let's hope things turn around for you right away.

More positive vibes coming your way across the Atlantic!

And I agree with Rebeccanyc re Hilary Mantel - I've only read two of hers so far but they were very different, she doesn't seem to be stuck in a creative comfort zone at all.

>76 brenzi:: ah yes, so it WAS you. This confirms that When She Woke needs to go on my wishlist.

#76, Bonnie, if I relied on my column to earn a living, I would be earning less than I have in 25 years, alas. The bottom line is that I need new work -- and new markets. And there's the poss. of doing this book -- but that isn't moving. And there are two other projects that could be good but could also take a long time to materialize. And the cash reserves continue to shrink, as they have done all year, but at a much faster pace. Oh yeah, and my vacuum cleaner died today. And I found a dead mouse under the sofa. (not related facts.)

Right now, I don't even have enough of an attention span to read, or even an interest in reading. Scary, no?? Thanks for all the moral support.

Rebecca, you're absolutely right about Hilary Mantel. You never know when you finish one of her novels, what the next one will be -- she genre hops and while her writing is consistently good, the style seems infinitely flexible.

OK, am off to have a nervous breakdown.

Back again. Creative risks? Rose Tremain doesn't write the same book twice either, but I'm not sure that she takes creative risks. The quality is not even, but she's still better than most people, I think.

So, I was chatting via Facebook IM with a venture capital investor buddy of mine, who is relocating to Montana where he will have a big library in his house for the first time. He says he's willing to build book yurts on his 42 acres there, where readers could come and stay for a few weeks or a month in exchange for 2 or so hours of help daily with the sheep & goats... The first step towards a Tome Home??? LOL!

Book yurts... where do the bookshelves go in a yurt?

Around the edges is one option -- round shelves are possible in larger yurts. The other option is using them as room dividers!

I'm game! Never been to Montana, and would love the experience with the animals - at least once.

Rats, rats, rats about Barrons. I was going to say I can't imagine the income uncertainty you live with, but actually I CAN imagine it. That's one of the reasons I gave up freelancing and signed on the dotted line 16 years ago. Here's hoping multiple projects come through and/or someone drops a winning lottery ticket in your mailbox.

# Hi Suz: I'm adding Why Mahler? to my 12 in 12 music category list. Sounds great.

Book yurts! Love that idea!

68, 79: Doing my bit... My order for the Chasing Goldman Sachs paperback shipped today.
I was going to say I can't imagine the income uncertainty you live with, but actually I CAN imagine it. Ditto. I was unemployed for 6 months, and my current contract job is dependent on a mysterious source of funding that I don't trust to continue forever. It'd be nice if the free time of unemployment could be dedicated to life-enhancing activities, but anxiety takes such a toll that nothing is relaxing, and there's a continuous nagging thought: "I should be looking..." I'm sorry you're in this position, wish I could offer more than sympathy.

I'd go to Montana for book yurts!

qebo, thanks!! I had completely forgotten until late afternoon that today is paperback publication day...

Still heard nothing from publishers about the book proposal; agent wants to start sending it out more broadly next week, so I'll have some work to do.

I think these days living with job uncertainty or income uncertainty is the norm. Which is better than complacency, I suppose??

Am listening to 1776 by David McCullough while I try to get this apartment pristine ahead of visitation from landlord. Tough task. Found a dead mouse that a cat had batted waaaay under a sofa that is v. hard to move and thus only gets moved twice a year...

Yay to book yurts and down with job woes. Hope something positive will happen and so wish I had a magic wand.

Finished the re-read of The Villa in Italy by Elizabeth Edmondson. It's a warm & fuzzy, feel-good chick lit novel set in the late 1950s. Four very disparate people are informed that they have received some kind of inheritance from a woman they have never met, Beatrice Malaspina, and must travel to Italy and stay in the Villa Dante and solve a puzzle to discover what it is. Of course, this being warm & fuzzy and chick lit, they all discover transformative stuff about themselves. If only real life were so easy... This is the author who also writes as Elizabeth Pewsey and Elizabeth Aston; I enjoy this novel but would only recommend it to chick lit fans. 3.7 stars.

It takes a certain kind of person (or personality) to live with the economic uncertainty that goes along with the work you do. From reading your posts over the past year, I have every confidence in you, Suzanne, that you're that type of person. You work hard and you're smart and you not only know how to take advantage of the opportunities, but you also know how to make opportunities. My father was in sales most of his adult life, and he almost always worked commission only. He loved the challenge of it; it was a far from easy life (for his family, mainly), but he wouldn't have had it any other way.

Sending good work vibes your way!

Sorry to hear about the bad news re work, hope something comes up.

I just read another Elizabeth Edmondson book, Voyage of Innocence, and I have a copy of The Villa in Italy which I bought on Amazon marketplace. I enjoyed VOI but didn't really believe in this particular spy story - the changes of political conviction all seemed a bit sudden.

Plenty of room around the perimeter for bookshelves, up to about waist level..... best to have them on wheels, I expect, though. I love the idea of a book yurt.

I am sorry about the gloomy outlook Suzanne. Don't want to jinx anything, so will say no more.

I've put When She Woke on the wishlist.

Hi Suzanne--delurking for a moment to let you know how much I enjoyed Chasing Goldman Sachs. I didn't quite finish it in September as planned (but deviously created a challenge to enable me to count it for October).

I do hope the paperback release nets you lots more readers as well as some relief on the cash-flow front, and that other work falls into place soon.

Fingers crossed for new job opportunities!

88> 1776 dissapointed me - didn't have a lot to say and didn't have a very interesting way to say it.

McCullough has always depended on the kindness of his researchers but this book seems more so than in the past.

The book seems to me more a collection of footnotes to a better book than a book itself, if that makes any sense.

Be curious to know what you make of it.

BTW who is reading it? Not McCullough, I'll wager.

Actually, it is McCullough himself, doing a much better job than I might have expected. The best element of this is that I'm getting to understand at least this part of the revolutionary campaigns; since I didn't study US history in school, my knowledge remains very full of gaps & holes.

Glad you liked the book, Anne, and that you found a way to squeeze it into a TIOLI category!!

Becky, thanks so much for the vote of support...

Luci, I actually found the political switch reasonably convincing, given the character of the individual, who was always fairly independent-minded, and the spirit of the times. I quite liked the book, although I find her Pewsey novels far more amusing.

ETA: I had to give up on The Hypnotist by Lars Kepler, the latest "phenom" in the Scandicrime world. After 100 pages, it showed no signs of becoming interesting or readable, and I had zero interest in forcing myself to read another 400 pages just to give it a single star...

Hmmm. Not good news on The Hypnotist. I've got it on reserve at the library...

So which of the three (or is it four?) TIOLI challenges shall we list Brighton Rock under? It could be alliterative, face-to-face, before 1950, or even ends with a vowel.

Ermm... I have to confess that I'm likely not going to read it, Judy... I won't be there on Thursday; I've got my landlord materializing the next day for an inspection, the place is in chaos, I'm trying to line up work and I'm really not sane enough to be anywhere near anyone else...

Jim, you may like it... I just wouldn't recommend buying it.

Book du jour: Pulse by Julian Barnes is another very good collection of short stories from this author. For the most part these are excellent, with a few that didn't work as well for me and a couple that might not work for others but that I found amusing, such as a loosely-linked series of four stories that are really 98% dialogue among a group of friends who meet over the course of a couple of years at regular dinner parties -- part parody, part reality. Amusing, but... Some are excellent, such as the story focusing on two women novelists in their 60s, who have known each other for decades and who, returning from a writer's festival, gradually reveal their views of each other to the reader, or "The Limner", about a deaf artist and his subjects. Some of them, like "Carcassonne", sound more like essays than short stories, but that's OK. He has a knack for teasing out details in just the right way to flesh out the stories and characters. A mixed bag, as are all story collections, and one or two just didn't work at all for me, but definitely worth reading. 4.2 stars, recommended.

I'll miss you tomorrow, Suz. :_(

Really sorry to read about Barron's Suz. Hope the book project takes off in a big way, or something else miraculously drops out of the sky.

I have 1776 in a box in NZ so am glad you're enjoying it.

Sorry you won't be joining us tomorrow.

Good luck with the landlord - do landlords usually do inspections? Sounds odd. The only time they showed up in my place was after an old lady set a fire in her apartment using a space heater - they just wanted to make sure I wasn't a hazard!

Judy, this guy lives in Germany, but has an emotional attachment to his one and only building... It's just a v. weird situation. He comes once or twice a year, hangs out and chats about the state of the world. I'm trying to figure out a way to keep him out of the bedroom, which is not gonna get tidy by Sat a.m.

Straaaange....

Nice review of Pulse, Suz; it moves to the top of my wish list.

Well, the landlord visitation is over. Result: I have been told that the number of books in my home constitutes a fire hazard and must be cut in half or my lease will not be renewed. *eyes roll*

Is there some kind of code about what indicates a fire hazard? Or does the landlord just have cart blanche to deliver whatever sort of edict he feels like at the moment? Seriously, half of "what" constitutes a fire hazard? Can he indicate how he decided how half of your books doesn't constitute a fire hazard? Jeeze, this kind of thing makes my head explode.

I have been told that the number of books in my home constitutes a fire hazard

.........reading that, gave me a scare. My Homeowner's Insurance Agent hasn't been to the house since my dad died....I/We have done many Home Improvements...and I've accumulated a Hell of a lot of Books...which would probably affect my Insurance premiums...but, I'm not telling

Your case is different..I haven't had a Landlord Inspection since 1995...and, I think that his decision is based on the age of the building...and the Insurance he carries...arbitrary to the max!....if he follows building codes (?)...that's another beast......Building codes don't really exist where I live...on a municipal/county level...it's down to the Insurers

Oy.....Might sound stupid...and we don't know each other well, but, I have a big house in SE Ohio...if you ever need a place to live or store your books...I have DSL, but am "a million miles from nowhere".....Hey, it's a thought!

;-p

eeek, when is your lease up for renewal? I feel very indignant reading this on your behalf.

What a horror. Do you have any kind of recourse? Is he going back home and forgetting that he said this? I must say that you sound very calm; I would be rolling more than eyes - starting maybe with the landlord's head.

You might contact the fire department in your area, and get a sense of what the official line is on this. If it's written down, you might forward that to your landlord and imply you might fight him in tenant court if his reasoning is not within the law.

Judy, yes, I have thought of that -- although in the past when I've offered to do things to help (eg, getting someone to fix a back fence that had collapsed and been lying on the ground for five months), it has backfired and he's been really hostile. The problem is that because I live in a two-unit building, I have almost no rights. No, he can't kick me out before the end of next year. But he is under no obligation to offer a lease renewal, regardless of the grounds, and even if he did, he could simply double the rent -- he is entitled to do that. A lot of this is because he's got this weird emotional connection to the building, and likes its inhabitants to live a certain way. He keeps saying things like "I know how this apartment and garden looked 15 years ago" -- and forgetting that it hasn't been painted inside since I moved in 9 years ago. (He got angry when I pointed that out and said that legally it should be done every two years.) He doesn't like the fact that I keep some of my pots on top of the fridge or on the counter (the only cupboard space that fits them properly is also the only place to put glasses, etc.) The silliest things annoy him -- such as when I bought a lateral file cabinet for my work files. On the other hand, he insists that he be told of anything that needs fixing etc. etc. He's incredibly difficult as a person -- he thinks he is very rational and intelligent and really isn't either. Eg, he objected to my library books being stacked in a corner of my office, between my sofa and a wall, saying it's one of the fire hazards -- piles of books would prevent me from getting out of the building in a fire. I pointed out that the books were between the sofa and wall, nowhere near a hallway, pathway, or exit gangway. They are to one side of a window, but it's a window I couldn't get out of because it's barred anyway. I then pointed out that a greater fire hazard was the fact that the front windows (office downstairs, bedroom upstairs) are both barred and unusable in an exit, and there is no fire exit on the back. He then said I shouldn't have a look on the grating that secures my kitchen (it has French doors to the garden). I pointed out that without that lock on the sliding grating, anyone could open them, smash the glass and enter -- it would be utterly unsafe, and no one would want to live here. (the grating has been locked since long before I moved in! Then he said I could just get out of the upper floors in a fire by breaking through the door that separates my apartment from the landing of my neighbor's upper duplex. I noted that I couldn't do that as the neighbors have placed a big bookshelf (!) on the other side of it. At which point he told me I was lying. You get the picture...

Peggy, needless to say I'm not calm. Or rather, I'm in that zone that is beyond anger and into a Zen-like depressed state. You could probably tell me that the world will end in two hours and all I'd say is "oh, ok."

Book update TK later.

The brief book report:

1776 by David McCullough. As others have suggested, this was a triumph of research rather than insight or creativity. It's chock-full of fascinating detail of Washington's campaigns of 1776, but the thesis is presented only at the end in a few sentences and it's too often devoid of any broader political or social context. For an informed reader, familiar with the Revolution and its causes, this may be a better read. Had I been actually reading it, as opposed to listening to it, I may well have given up midway. Fortunately, listening to it put some life into the driest parts and drew attention to those parts that were already vividly described that might otherwise have drowned. 3.2 stars, for my 11 in 11 challenge.

Cavalier Queen by Fiona Mountain. I was intrigued by the idea of a novel about Henrietta Maria, the French Catholic queen of Charles I, who certainly contributed to her husband's problems but then took an unusually active role in helping him wage war against the parliamentary forces led by Oliver Cromwell. Sadly, the author takes this down into the realm of saccharine illicit romance between the queen and one of her courtiers, turning rumor into fact in improbable ways, and downplays the real story that's here to be told. Doesn't help that Mountain gets her facts wrong, eg on Anglican theology and on Henrietta Maria's ancestry (her g-grandfather wasn't Henri II of France, but a king of Navarre -- pretty basic stuff for a novelist to mess up about her real-life main character.) 1.8 stars. Avoid...

Naughty in Nice by Rhys Bowen was an entertaining romp, and an antidote to the above, as it doesn't take itself at all seriously. Bowen's fictional character is a minor royal in the 1930s, impoverished and commissioned to do some sleuthing by Queen Mary (and incidentally try to figure out what's up with the Prince of Wales and that annoying Mrs. Simpson.) This is one in a series; the author has two other series going that don't grab me at all, and this one has its highs and lows. But Georgiana heads off to the Riviera, meets Coco Chanel and a dashing marquis, solves mysteries involving murder and stolen jewels and tries to retrieve the queen's stolen snuff boxes -- that combination makes it fast-paced froth. Recommended to those in the mood for that, although I'd suggest starting earlier in the series. Still this is the strongest book in that series so far. 3.4 stars.

I think you should shoot your landlord. Wear gloves and use a stolen gun; throw them all away after the shooting. Do it out of sight of anybody. That might also lead to a new and prosperous career.

Meanwhile, it is nine months since I read my hardcover copy of Chasing Goldman Sachs, and since yesterday I have a shiny new paperback of it. What did you rewrite? What, if anything, did you add? What in it has special or new relevance now that nine months have passed?

My usual Barny Noble store had three copies of it until I bought mine. I'll probably get there next weekend again and will report back on how many copies are left -- not knowing, of course, how many they have in a back room nor how often they restock the shelves.

Robert

My heart rate soared listening to your tale of your landlord! Wracking my brains for some way to camouflage books. Anyhow -- If they are packed tightly enough together I would expect they would take a bit of time to ignite.... the answer is.....MORE BOOKS!

I don't think books are actually that easy to burn, but that's probably too logical for your crazy landlord. Seems like he hasn't adjusted to the idea that if he rents the house out, people are going to do things their own way, not his. But very worrying, because he can do anything he likes since your building isn't subject to rent regulations.

Robert, you'll want to focus on the introduction, the chapter on regulation in part 2, and the two chapters of part 3 for the new stuff. I tried to blend what was already there with the new stuff, and the basic thesis remains unchanged, so it may not be a matter of "aha, ten pages of new stuff!", but those were substantially rewritten.

Lucy, I've decided I'm going to take all my antique china out of the china cabinet and fill it with books... The china can go into some of the high shelves in the kitchen that I (and cats) can't reach easily. If I put books in the kitchen cupboards, he would probably find a reason to object to that...

Rebecca, this was kind of my point -- I don't have candles in the house (really, not at all -- well, just three or four small chunky ones that I put in a decorative container on my kitchen table but haven't lit in so long that they keep getting dusty) and the last time I used a candle was during the 2003 blackout. THAT would be a fire hazard. As would smoking. Or using a stove carelessly, etc. I pointed that out -- and he shifted his tune, to say that the books would block my access to an exit in
the event of a fire. Now, the stacks of books that he is complaining about are (a) in a space between my sofa and a bookshelf down in my office, (b) a row in front of my unused and closed off fireplace along one wall in my living room and (c) a few stacks flush with the bookshelves along a back wall. None are near doors, hallways, or passages from one part of the house to another. I think what is going on is that books look like clutter to him. It's not that he's not a reader, but he just doesn't believe that more than a certain number of books are necessary, and it rattles him, visually. And you have it exactly right -- I need to be able to live my own way in the home I'm spending a significant amount of money to rent from him -- especially when that rent has climbed 45% in the last decade. But pointing that out makes him absolutely livid -- and he starts treating me as if I were his defiant child and lecturing me.

To say that my stress level is sky-high is the understatement of the decade.

Thank GOD he lives in Germany. Can you do this by letter? With photos, and notes from the Fire Department? Alternatively, there is the idea of becoming a superheroine/hit woman called "Scourge of the Slumlords" or something.

{{{Suz}}}

If you follow the gentlemen's advice, wrap the room in polystyrene beforehand, and just bundle the whole mess up for disposal. (Suggestion compliments of Reamde)

When and how will your landlord determine that you have reduced the number of books?

Sadly, Richard, anything that I do that isn't simply compliance would be seen as me dissing him. One issue here, much as I hate to say it, is that he's African American and in his 60s. He struggled in his career, at least in part because of discrimination. So now anything that anyone does or says that isn't agreeing with him is an example of racism at work. He was on the Acela to visit his daughter down in the DC area, and a white businessman looked at the empty seat beside him and moved on. He was still furious about this as an example of racism days later -- when I asked him whether the train had been full (it was early afternoon...) he said no, and when I then suggested that perhaps the guy had spotted two empty seats further ahead, he became furious with me and said I was as bad as the racist guy. He'll be back in December and it must all be in order by then... If I went to the Fire Dept it would simply be seen as going behind his back (as when I checked the rules re landlords painting rented accommodation) and he'd simply find something else to be furious about.)

Book du jour: Betrayal of Trust by Susan Hill is the sixth mystery featuring Simon Serrailler and even better than the preceding five. (Jackson Brodie fans, you may want to check this out -- not as richly detailed as Kate Atkinson's books, but still v.v. good.) A heavy rainstorm causes floods and land slippages -- and uncovers the graves of two young women, one known and the other a mystery. One is a girl who has been missing for 16 years, and Simon has to go back in time to solve that case, even as he wrestles with family and personal issues. This is brought together with the story of a woman in her 70s contemplating assisted suicide after a medical diagnosis; the work of Simon's sister, Cat, at a local hospice and another woman's struggle to cope with her partner's diagnosis with Alzheimer's. Lots of medical gloom here, but Hill blends these side plots with the main mystery effortlessly, making it a rather rich novel. I'm thinking of going back and starting to re-read these novels, which I began reading as soon as they were published. 4.3 stars, recommended.

#121 -- when will be December; how? Well, that will be his decision -- of course!!!

Well, can you just put a bunch of boxes in storage for a month? Until he comes back to inspect? But maybe, and I'm sure you've thought of this yourself, it's time to start looking for someplace else, especially since he's so troublesome and charges you so much.

At first, I couldn't believe you were saying that for real! It is rather unbelievable. One of my ideas was the same as Rebecca's--since he only is there occasionally, and you get good notice of his visit, using a storage place to put excess books during that time. Another is, since you essentially have no income at the moment, go to Legal Aid. As a landlord (of one unit on the back of our property) in California, even if some regulations don't apply, I can't believe that he isn't violating some! Of course, you are quite right that he could for any reason decide not to renew your lease, but if there is that chance AND he is in violation in his demands, maybe you could go to small claims court to get moving costs and damages. I'm sorry for all the stress this puts you through--I know that finding apartments in that area is difficult.

With multiple cats, no full time job and income that has fallen off a cliff, there's no way I can move -- I wouldn't get a lease anywhere else. Yes, some books are going into the basement. Just what I needed to spend time doing in the next month.

Hmm, am sitting in my living room, which overlooks the backyards of lots of other brownstones and can hear the sound of -- can it be?? -- typing! I didn't know anyone still did that...

I had a laugh a month or so ago when the NYTimes had an article on people who craved the sound and feel of manual typewriters, and who went way out of their way to acquire or maintain them. So yes, you might have heard typing. But not from me!

An IT guy came to install a new database at work today and got excited when he saw my boss's manual Braille typewriter. He said he used to collect manual typewriters until his wife put her foot down.

I'm also a fan of the Susan Hill Serailler mysteries, though so far I've only read the first two. Glad to hear the quality remains high.

I have nothing to add to the apartment discussion. If I still lived in NY I'd be happy to come over and help pack up books to go to the basement. I like to fondle books :)

114> Someone should write a book about Henry Knox the Boston bookseller turned General who bailed out Washington's a** more than once during the Revolutionary War era.

The story McCullough tells about Knox getting cannon over the mountains to threaten the British encampment in Boston is worth the price of admission.

Later as first Secretary of War he was noted for doing a good job without a heck of a lot of money or backing (Americans didn't belive in a standing army then) and also having a surprisingly tolerant and unbiased policy towards the Indian tribes.

Three hundred pounds of basso profundo was Henry Knox.
A heavy, hearty, light-hearted party was Henry Knox.
Enthusiasm always in high, the kind of man who'd never say "die,"
Robust, rotund, congenial giant was Henry Knox.

Can still sing it after 40 years. Damn childhood imprinting!

Sorry to hear about your landlord woes Suzanne; I guess boxing them up until he "clears" you sounds like the best bet :(

I'm not familiar with the Susan Hill/Serailler series, so I'm going to check that out.

I admit that Henry Knox was one of the most interesting characters in the whole story; more so than Washington, certainly!

Books du jour:

Finished Nanjing Requiem, an Amazon Vine ARC. The dispassionate writing style and lack of narrative arc made this feel like a chronicle or reportage that had been rendered into fiction by adding dialogue; the result, I fear, is that the story is strangely un-engaging, particularly given the fact that the story is built around the Rape of Nanjing and its aftermath. Essentially, it's the story of Minnie Vautrin, the dean of a women's college that its founders (as we are repeatedly told) are striving to make the Wellesley of China; instead, as the Japanese Imperial troops approach Nanjing in late 1937, it becomes home to some 10,000 women and children refugees, most of whose lives were saved by the efforts of Vautrin and Chinese and Western colleagues who created the International Safety Zone. But Ha Jin doesn't do justice to either the characters or events here. 3.4 stars; very meh.

Absolute Monarchs by John Julius Norwich is an ambitious task, nothing less than the history of the papacy from St Peter down to the current Pope, Benedict. Needless to say, a book can't do justice to that, especially in a mere 468 pages, and the pace is too brisk to allow for nuance. Nevertheless, reading this was kind of like finally figuring out the shape and nature of a city that you've only seen bits and pieces of before; now I understand the background to some events (like the Avignon papacy and the schism with the Eastern churches) and have filled in gaps in eras that I knew little of before (eg the Counter-Reformation.) Still, even taking it slowly, the last 100 pages felt like a slog, and I was irritated by a few tiny errors that crept in -- Marie Antoinette was not executed along with her husband but months later; Mussolini was not murdered by his former subjects when his government fell in 1943, after the invasion of Sicily but rescued by the Nazis and set up in a puppet government until the final collapse of fascism in April 1945. That made me wonder what else was lost, particularly in the latter stages of the book, where Norwich -- an expert on the Byzantine empire and Norman Sicily, who is also very knowledgeable about Venetian history -- is less familiar. Also irksome was the failure to mention such important issues as liberation theology, even in a sentence. Historians may not find much here to relish, as it's too much crammed into too few pages, but for anyone curious about European/Western history, this offers a solid overview of the evolution of the papacy from a spiritual into a temporal and back into a spiritual power again, and the ways in which various popes have interpreted their mission. 3.9 stars, could have been higher if not for the errors and omissions that I noted -- and if I noted them, as a non-Catholic and non-scholar, I worry about what specialists might find. For my 11 in 11 challenge.

>130 magicians_nephew: There is a book about Knox -- a friend was reading it after a trip to Maine -- Henry Knox: Visionary General of the Revolution. She was liking it a lot at that time. I had just finished the McCullough so we had a great chat about him.

Thanks, Lucy! I may seek that out -- after, that is, I finish reading about Emerson, Richelieu, Catherine the Great and a few other folks I need to tackle...

Too many books, too few hours in the day, days in the month, months in the year.... And who on earth pushed the fast forward button while my back was turned???

Catching up... really sorry to read about your landlord woes. I'd help box the books up too if I were closer.

And I've added Absolute Monarchs to my WL and just checked Wellington library - it's there but it's called The Popes: A History. I could have done with reading it before we went round the wonderful Papal Palace in Avignon... I kind of-sort of-vaguely knew about the schism but not in much detail. Funnily enough the history of the popes was not taught in RE at my Catholic school...

Cushla, reading about the popes would be enough to destroy one's faith in their infallibility (which, I was interested to learn, is largely a recent phenomenon...) Words like nepotism, simony, "pornoacracy", etc. pop up a lot, as does the phrase "antipope". So I can kinda understand that anyone with a vested interest in not having critical thought devoted to church institutions might not want to teach a lot of church history vs. theology. One of the tidbits that I learned was that a pope in the 15th or 16th century (if I recall correctly) issued an edict that no physician could attend a patient who was not in a state of grace, having confessed to their sins and received absolution. The same pope banned single men from having female servants. One of the only figures that impressed me in the rapidfire survey was John Paul I, who I can't help wishing had had a decent stint in the papacy. It does seem that there is a tendency to swing back and forth between devout and decadent, and between reactionary and forward-thinking.

Yes, exactly! (Sometimes the internet is useless - I needed an eye-roll icon in my first post). I remember Pope John Paul I from when I was a kid and how upset everyone was when he died. I still have (in a box in NZ, of course) Under His Very Windows to read, about Pope Pius XIII in WW2.

One of the evergreen counterfactuals on soc.hist.what-if is, "What if Pope Pius XII had spoken against the Holocaust?" Authors posit it would have made a great difference in public responses to the events, acting like a starting gun, since if "His Holiness" commented on it, then it's incumbent on the Allied powers to do something. I myownself doubt this. I suspect pressure would've been applied forcefully, and not just from Germany or Italy (which had a sterling record of ignoring German pressure re: Jewish extermination right up to the breaking point of the Ubermenschen's patience).

Not that anyone asked.

One of the tidbits from the book that was interesting was that even without the pope speaking out, Norwich reports that virtually every Catholic monastery, convent, church, etc, in Hungary ended up offering refuge to Jews during that final bloody part of the Holocaust. Perhaps not rapidly enough, but it was almost a uniform response. That hypothesis, though, shows to me the weakness of "what if" questions -- I can't imagine a scenario where any pope of THAT ERA would have risked the wellbeing of Catholics in the area ruled by Germany to protect a people who had rejected the "truth" as he saw it. Any pope of that era would have believed their divine mission was to protect the church and its members. So it would have been one thing to protest about Edith Stein, a convert and a nun who was carted off and died in the camps, but another to risk the lives of Catholics to protect Jews. I'm not saying it's right; I'm saying that he probably really believed that is not what God wanted him to do. Even when John Paul II spoke out against Communism, I think it's interesting to ponder the fact that he was speaking in defense of countries like his own Poland, often heavily Catholic, against atheistic Communism. I'd have to look back to see how he weighed in on the Yugoslav civil conflicts, and he certainly became more outspoken about the human cost of war, period -- eg opposing the Iraq war -- but that marked a real evolution.

Wondering if you've read Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, centered around her six week trip to Yugoslavia in 1937? This thing is massive, which has put me off of reading the book. So, I'm a wimp.

>142 labwriter: Lisa, it's a wrist-sprainer alright. Be careful...get the RSI supports before tackling.

JPII on the human cost of war was fairly consistent. It's a bad thing. But speaking out against the Iraq war was political, a way of disapproving of Shrub. The one and only time, to the best of my knowledge, that I agreed with "His Holiness."

All counterfactuals contain that element of resistance, I think. It makes sense to thee and me that Pius XII did it the way he did it, but *could* he have done otherwise is the crux of your and my objection to the counterfactual assertion. Could he have, in conscience, put millions at risk who were safe if he kept mum? Would he have seen the Biblical injunction "what you do to the least of my people, that you also do unto me" as applying to Jews? (I fall on the "oh HELL no" side of that question.)

On the other hand, Jesus was a nice Jewish boy, so it would have made sense.

>144 ffortsa: Far too logical to gain traction in the religious brain.

Books du jour:

Brava, Valentine by Adriana Trigiani was a library book that has been hanging around since February. I decided it was time to read it and return it. I'd borrowed it because the idea of the heroine being a custom shoe designer and maker was intriguing, but this sequel is full of tedious family squabbles and a romance that, to me, turned really weird when the hero turns up in Buenos Aires when Valentine is meeting a longlost cousin and investigating a manufacturing contract, and then goes into a huff and decides she doesn't love and respect him enough when she doesn't spend a lot of time with him. WTF? Dude shows up unannounced on a business trip and expects her to drop everything to be with him and when she doesn't that means she doesn't love him? Of course, it's Valentine who realizes she has done wrong, expresses her remorse and seems prepared to live happily ever after with Mr. Perfect. Retch. 2 stars, because I did finish it. I'm not sure why.

At the other end of the spectrum was the wondrous What It Is Like to Go to War by Karl Marlantes. I haven't yet read Matterhorn, but this is a non-fiction book that should be prescribed reading for every citizen, and that should be re-read by politicians and veterans and their families, as it's not only remarkably honest but also clear-sighted and thoughtful. I'll be doing a more thorough review for my blog & Amazon etc., and will post a link here when I do. For now I'll just say I'm giving it 5 stars, and you know I don't do that often... A MUST read book.

...and one more...

I hadn't read Julie Otsuka's debut novel, When the Emperor was Divine but there was enuf buzz about it that I thought I'd pick The Buddha in the Attic, her next novel, from last month's list of Amazon Vine offerings. It's beautifully written, almost a prose poem, but the form is strangely distancing. It's written in the first person plural, and indeed it chronicles the collective experience of a group of Japanese "picture brides", arriving in the early years of the 20th century in California, slowly and painfully building lives and then being deported to camps on the outbreak of WW2. I knew the basic outlines of the history, and have read books like Obasan; still, the most powerful parts of this book were the final two or three chapters, when the Japanese women understand they are now viewed as traitors and when the local white population realizes what their departure means for community life. But up until then, the style -- at first intriguing and compelling -- had become first mildly annoying and then deeply irritating, like a dripping tap. (In the chapter where the women become mothers, there are 60 sentences in a row that begin "We gave birth...", before finally, thankfully, one interrupts the litany with "Nine months later, we gave birth...") The combination of that repetition and the first person plural (which on its own might well have been fine) drove me nuts and keeps this book to 4 stars, despite the powerful content. Perhaps the author's intent is to force readers to confront the magnitude of the injustices confronted by a large group of women -- injustices delivered by their husbands, their employers, their neighbors, even their children, and finally their new country's government -- but "we" is never as compelling to read about in a novel as "I" is. Read it to enjoy the writing (some of the time); view it as a prose poem and you may find more here to appreciate. For my 11 in 11 challenge.

Today's book du jour:

Growing Up Amish isn't a great book, but it's a decent-enough read if what you're looking for is some insight into the world of the Old Order Amish. Note that I say "some" insight -- this is Ira Wagler's personal experience, and there's little to no broader context to be found. I was amused to note that the Lancaster County Amish consider themselves to be relative "bluebloods", and to learn of the tiny distinctions that separate various communities. But this is a memoir about Wagler's own indecision from his late teens until his late 20s, as he veered back and forth between trying to become Amish versus following his instinct that told him this wasn't the way of life for him -- even though leaving would, he had been taught, condemn him to hell. The agonizing he goes through, sadly, starts to feel repetitive -- that's where some broader context would have been helpful. Still, an interesting "insider" account of a group that has remained remarkably able to resist the pull of the modern world and the pull towards cultural cross-fertilization, and that's what was interesting to me. Mildly recommended, if you're curious about this world. 3.2 stars. (And another library book read!!)

>148 Chatterbox: - I think I got this one from NetGalley... should probably check.

I finally finished When She Woke - let's just say I didn't like it as much as you and Bonnie :)

148: Hmm. Apparently he's local: http://www.irawagler.com/?page_id=2. Maybe I'll read it.

More books:

The Warsaw Anagrams by Richard Zimler is bleak, bleak, bleak. That doesn't mean it's a bad book -- not at all -- just that I don't recommend you read it if you're already in the dumps. The main character, Erik Cohen, is a psychiatrist who is now confined to the Warsaw Ghetto; it's early 1941, and he's living with his niece, Stefa, and great-nephew, Adam. From the start, we know exactly how grim things are: Cohen is recounting his story as a spirit or "ibbur", to a man who inhabits an apartment near the one he shared with Stefa and Adam. And it's Adam's death -- murder -- the preoccupies him, as he tells Heniek the story of his efforts to track down the man who betrayed Adam to his murderer and the man who murdered him. The plot has a few holes and leaps, but what Zimler really does is give the reader the sense of mission that Cohen has -- pursuing small-scale killers of individuals among large-scale genocidal murders. It's a story of "the Before Time" and the struggles of the ghetto to survive. I'm a bit at a loss as to how to rate this, but will plump for 3.7 stars. It's good, but not great; well-written, but doesn't do any more than explore the basic plot. I'm glad I read it, but I'll also be glad to return it to the library. For my
11 in 11 challenge.

Well, that book took me a week to read, and I filled in the rest of my reading time with a lot of untaxing books to help alleviate the bleakness of the world Zimler conjures up. One of 'em was another James Patterson novel, which have the twin benefits of demanding no intellectual effort whatsoever, and being readable in only about three hours. (They are great for airplanes; that's how I first started reading them, when I did a lot of plane trips back in late 2006.) Now You See Her kinda stretches credulity in a few spots (how can someone with a faked identity become a lawyer??) but it's an entertaining novel about a woman who leaves the cop husband after she discovers what he's really like, builds a new life for herself and her daughter, and then is drawn back into his world when she defends a guy accused of being a serial killer that she is in a unique position to know is innocent. 2.6 stars, not actively bad, entertaining in parts. And back to the library it goes, too!

I've started reading The Friar of Carcassonne by Stephen O'Shea, who has written several immensely readable books, including The Perfect Heresy about the Cathars and Back to the Front about the trenches of World War I, which I re-read last year. This looks like another winner so far; a little-known story of politics and religion set in one of my fave parts of the France, Languedoc, in the early 14th century. Also dipping into a novel by Rachel Hore who is, I was surprised to learn, married to the author of Booker-nominated Derby Day, D.J. Taylor. (Still need to read that, as well as Half Blood Blues and The Last Hundred Days by Patrick McGuinness.) Also may whip through the latest Anne Perry novel.

Just took all my coins to the Coinstar machine (I do this periodically, and get Amazon gift certificates with them, which is my book buying budget until the next time) -- ended up with $26.18! I am so broke, it's not even remotely amusing. The income I'll get between now and early January won't even cover my rent. So this book had better sell, or a miracle needs to materialize -- quickly.

Finished A Gathering Storm by Rachel Hore. Not terribly demanding; historical chick lit, mostly -- the story involves a young woman meeting an elderly woman and solving a family mystery that dates back to WW2. It's one of those classic split-narrative books. Still, a good book, involving, warm & fuzzy. 3.5 stars. Off to read another book that won't make too many inroads on my intellect, as it seems to help reduce my stress level!

"We'll always have reading."

Just dropping by to send some positive vibes your way and to thank you for posting the historical fiction list on your blog. I added several titles to my tbr list.
I've pulled out of the shared TIOLI read of Daniel Stein, interpreter, especially after reading a less than enthusiastic article in Haaretz, mainly though I just overbook my reading time.

No worries on that, Kerry. I may forge ahead, as it's a library book about a story that intrigues me, but one that I have kept renewing and is turning into one of those perpetual presences on my TBR mountain...

I did finish, late last night, a shared TIOLI read that was absolutely dreadful -- The Accident by Linwood Barclay. The writing was clunky and dreadful, the "suspense" heavy-handed and not very suspenseful at all; the main character narrated about 80% of it and seemed incredibly dense to me -- when his daughter overhears a conversation where one person says to another, wear long sleeves to cover it up until the marks have healed, or something like that, he agrees with the third grader that she's probably thinking about broken wrists... ARGH. Good news? Well, it was a free NetGalley book. The plot looked interesting, but was so clumsily handled and so obvious I can't give this more than 1.5 stars, even as a mindless suspense thriller. The only mystery here is how it got published.

So that will teach me to read a book only because it's (a) free and (b) a shared TIOLI read...

Have to wonder if Richard wants me to feel suicidal, (*grin*) given his eagerness in urging me to read Ethan Frome! Don't misunderstand, it's a great novel, very nuanced and well-written, albeit very different from the others by Edith Wharton that I've read (and the intro to my edition was a bit odd, focusing on race issues and implicitly arguing that there were racial undertones to the novel by virtue of the absence of non-white characters, which I found a bit odd, but hey, whatever). But heavens, it is depressing enough to send me in quest of a rusty razor blade with which to slit both wrists -- not just the ending to the story of Ethan and Mattie, but the way she depicts the ending to the story of the three of them -- Ethan, Mattie and Zeena, in the final pages. (Trying to avoid spoilers...) And I was in the doldrums enough as it was.... 4.5 stars, nonetheless, as the caliber of the novel cannot be denied, though it took me two weeks to finish reading a 99-page book.

Also finished The Dark Enquiry by Deanna Raybourn, which was a mildly amusing historical mystery, the fifth in a series featuring Lady Julia Grey, now married to hunky mysterious sleuth Nicholas Brisbane. This one involves spies, seances and blackmail. It's a bit less successful than the others, as it lurches between romantic interludes (think Peabody & Emerson in Elizabeth Peters' series of Egyptology historical mysteries, although not quite as well crafted as those) and a half-baked mystery, with nods in the direction of Julia's eccentric family members and the difficulty in keeping staff in their eccentric household. (At one point, Julia expostulates that fires aren't routine...) This was a NetGalley book, which meant the price was right, but I think I'm now too familiar with Raybourn's methods and it was unexpectedly easy to identify the evildoer. 3.3 stars, poss 3.4 stars. If you like Elizabeth Peters, this is worth a try, although it doesn't have the Egyptology background or the author's skill with this kind of plot. Undecided as to whether I'll continue the series, but if I do it will be via galleys or library books, not purchases.

Now finishing up The Friar of Carcassonne and Wicked Autumn by G.M. Malliet; the latter sounded more intriguing than it is proving to be in reality, although it's a quite serviceable cozy mystery. Off to the Intelligence Squared debate on Obama's jobs plan tonight; invited to the dinner afterwards -- free food!!!!

Am talking to some folks about some recurring freelance work, but suspect they believe I'm overqualified. Since I need to bid for it, I need to tailor the bid accordingly; a bit on the low side. Ho hum. Just found out that a wire transfer that should have arrived in the summer never showed up. Definitely a bah humbug kind of day.

Finished Wicked Autumn by G.M. Malliet. This was a meh read for me; lots of cliches (sorry, accent marks not working today...) and a rather ho-hum mystery when the most-loathed woman in the village of Nether Monkslip is found dead of peanut allergies, after the author has flagged all her enemies and her allergies to death in the preceding pages. True, the denouement comes as a bit of a surprise, mostly because the author makes a sudden lefthand turn and takes the reader into new territory. Underwhelming in part because of the writing -- one character is described as "sultry" no fewer than three times in as many pages (enough, I've got it, already!!); the author writes "sexually assigned household roles" when I suspect "gender-based" is intended; describes someone as a "precise, neatly hemmed woman" (neatly hemmed???) and then a sofa "for which it looked a thousand rosebushes may have been sacrificed" -- leaving aside the grammatical error, since when were sofas crafted from rosebushes? Yes, I know the author meant that the chintz COVERING the item was covered with images of rosebushes, but there are neater, more precise and even more vivid ways to convey that. Lots of stuff like that drove my irritation level up throughout the book. 2.9 stars. If I read any others, they'll be from the library. The premise of an MI-5 officer turned vicar was intriguing, but the reality went from the banal to the sentimental. And it just wasn't convincing that the police would enlist him as a de facto investigator. This just reinforced all my cozy mystery prejudices.

Oh yes Suzanne, it's the ending of Ethan Frome that knocks you for a loop. It got the same 4.5 stars from me.

Yes I think Ethan Frome would be a likely candidate for the Ten Most Depressing Books of all time...... I think Wharton's 'take' on the Berkshires and life therein is extremely interesting. If I were to write about her, I would focus on that.

Ok, that latest book sounds dire! And I can't read books about people dying from peanut allergies - my son's very allergic - so that's one book i can ignore from you!1 Looking forward to reading about the Carcassonne one though.

Was that a Slate debate last night? I adore their Political Gabfest podcast every Friday morning... it's the first one I listen to.

Good luck on the freelance bidding. Have got my fingers crossed for you and hope you get some good news soon.

Cushla, it's webcast on Slate, but it's IntelligenceSquared US -- here's the site: http://intelligencesquaredus.org/ I love the Oxford style debate, which is always meaty, and the topics are fascinating. I can get media passes, but I use that only sparingly; last night I was invited to both the debate & the dinner afterwards, which is usually about two dozen people including the debaters, advisory council members and my long-time source, whose foundation funds the events, and so I def. wanted to go. If you think of your brain as a muscle, these debates are like really high-end workout equipment -- very invigorating. Oh, and the food was good, except for the chocolate desserts. I sampled one and am struggling with a headache today. That was rather stupid of me...

Btw, am finally reading The Novel in the Viola; enjoying it as it's very well-written and moving although not finding it a game-changer in the fiction dept. I feel as if I've read a lot of books of this kind before, from Catherine Gaskin up to Judith Lennox. But it's entertaining, and I should finish it this afternoon.

Oh, got a freelance assignment from a friend of mine who edits an ecumenical religion news portal to do a review of the Norwich book on the Popes -- $250! (assuming they pay me... I'm still waiting for payment that should have arrived in August for something else...) And she's sending me a book about religion in China to read & review.

Book du jour: The Novel in the Viola by Natasha Solomons may have dealt with traumatic events -- the desperate effort by members of Jewish family in Vienna to leave, and the struggle of the younger daughter, Elise, to adapt to life in domestic service in Englnad -- but it was kind of a warm and fuzzy narrative despite the danger, deaths, etc. It reminded me a lot of some plot elements in Catherine Gaskin's novels (especially The Lynmara Legacy), which were kind of historic/romantic fiction that I read & enjoyed as a teen (though still own as sentimental faves). And indeed, the plot here was often just a bit too sentimental and romantic for me -- of course Elise falls in love with the heir to the manor house where she is employed; of course the local aristos don't like her and look down their noses at her, etc. I did find it a bit implausible that Elise, initially described as the ugly duckling of the family, so rapidly becomes some kind of femme fatale for Kit, and her rapid removal from domestic service probably wasn't representative of the experience of most women in her shoes. And the fact that these things niggled at me while I was reading is probably a signal that this novel didn't quite do it for me. Still, it was interesting, and a fast read, so no regrets, especially as it was much better written than are most in this genre. 3.7 stars.

...and one more. Finished The Friar of Carcassonne, the fourth winner in a row from Stephen O'Shea. This very readable work of history tackles an extremely obscure subject -- while the Cathar heresy and the Albigensian crusade have become almost trendy subjects (and contributed to tourism in the Languedoc), it's doubtful whether anyone other than medieval scholars have heard of Bernard Delicieux, a Franciscan friar who challenged both the monarchy and the papacy in the early 1300s -- and ended his days chained up in an inquisition prison. At first, it looked as if Delicieux's comination of persuasive power, logic, charisma and reputation for adhering to the spirit of his Franciscan order would carry the day, but O'Shea chronicles how his own failings and the circumstances shifted, giving his enemies the upper hand. This book is a great reminder of how efforts to ensure orthodoxy became more and more intense -- a battle against the Cathars morphed into a conflict between religious orders (the Dominicans and the Franciscans) and ultimately even within the Franciscan order itself. Delicieux lived just before the inquisition became truly institutionalized as a force, and sought to stop it in its tracks, and he lived in the Languedoc just as the region was being incorporated -- reluctantly -- into what is today France. It's a fascinating tale, and O'Shea tells it vividly, never forgetting that Delicieux's world was very different from ours today and we can't impose our moral sense or ethics on his contemporaries -- at best, he writes, these can only appear to as “strange people moving at a distance of several centuries, their outlook unfamiliar, alien even, like figures crossing a faraway field on a moonless night, to be distinguished only the in the dimmest of half-lights.” Definitely recommended if you're interested in obscure bits of history, the nexus of religion & society, etc., 4.4 stars. For my 11 in 11 challenge.

You just might win me over to historical fiction with reviews like this!

Lucy -- just to be clear, this wasn't even HF, but ackshual real history! It would be fun if O'Shea wrote fiction as well, but I can't believe that publishers would want a novel based around a charismatic friar -- no sex scenes, you see...

The Friar of Carcassonne sounds fascinating, Suzanne.

And I'm happy that I can remove The Novel in the Viola from my PBS wishlist and replace it with The Friar of Carcassonne. Thanks very much for reporting in!

#162: I read her Mr Rosenblums List which I liked in that 1950s retro-read sort of way, similar to how you felt. It had some magical elements to it which I liked. I'll still read The Novel in the Viola but slot it in between more serious endeavours.

The Friar of Carcassonne sounds fascinating, though my Mt tbr is already groaning in anticipation of another addition.

Life happened, Suz ..... but I'm back again .... a wee bit tired after catching up on your voluminous but always interesting thread. ;-)

Caro, lovely to see you again. Life is happening here, too, kinda sorta, which is why I've been mostly lurking in LT world of late...

Peggy, if you'd like my copy of The Novel in the Viola, shoot me a PM with yr address and I'll send it along. I'm being a bit more ruthless about what books I keep, and this one, while quite adequate in many ways, didn't rise to that threshold.

Kerry, I noticed that Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English is available at my local library, so I may check that out there. I wouldn't pay $10 for a Kindle version...

Amazon Vine day again, and I opted for The Fat Years by Chan Koonchung over my usual pick -- the newest Charles Todd mystery. I'm a fan of the Rutledge series, but I've had the last half dozen or so books in the series from Vine, so maybe it was time to ring the changes... My other pick was "The Innocent" by Taylor Stevens, the sequel to The Informationist, which was a surprisingly good thriller that I read last winter. Again, I wouldn't have bought it, but am happy to read a free galley! Both are picks that I may enjoy or may loathe, but I didn't feel like playing it safe and there weren't many "oooh, gotta have this!" items. Well aside from the fridge and washing machine, but those were loong gone -- snapped up in the first second or two by the people with ultra-fast computers who can write code to pull up high-ticket items. Am I cynical or what??

Book du jour: A Jealous Ghost by A.N. Wilson is another one of those TBR books that has been hanging around for at least five years, possibly six... I probably bought it on a London trip. In any event -- it's a fab read and something that is going to send me in search of more of Wilson's novels (he's also a noted biographer). I haven't read The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, and in some ways that may even be an advantage, as it makes the story Wilson tells still creepier, as he reveals more about the narrator, Sallie; her academic work on James & "Turn"; her history and -- as we begin to understand, her self delusions and her ability to rewrite history even as she rewrites the events in the James novella when she goes to care for two young children at a country mansion. Early on, the reader detects that Sallie's grasp on reality is slipping; she'll refer casually to Bly when she means Staverton, the "real life" country house, or call one of the children Miles or Flora rather than Michael or Frances. Wilson plays around with ideas of what can happen when someone already imaginative and psychologically troubled becomes disconnected from reality and over-invested in the world of literature. "What was so crazy about believing that she, Sallie Declan, had been prepared for Staverton ... by the benign old hand of Henry James her compatriot, leading her there, murmuring to her that, before taking Staverton into her possession, she must purge it of its unwanted presences, clean it?" 4.5 stars, fabulous albeit chilling.

I LOVE A.N. Wilson, The Vicar of Sorrows, Daughter of Albion and hm, I think one or two more...... I'll have to look for this one, which I know I haven't read.

Not an author I've read yet. Let me make room on my shelves first.

Lucy, I used the remnants of my last Amazon gift certificate (all the coins I collected!) to get Dante in Love by A.N. Wilson for my Kindle. I think I can find some of the novels at the library.

Books du jour:

Finished the delightful and delightfully mind-bending The Sexual Life of an Islamist in Paris. To say that Mohamed is conflicted would be putting it mildly. On the one hand, he lives with his mother and younger brother at the age of 40, in the Algerian neighborhood of Paris of Saint Ouen (home to my fave flea market!). On the other hand, he has already "Gallicized" his name, and ensures that his skin is pale and hair straight enough for him not to be mistaken for an Arab in real life, so he's got a great job. Suddenly, Momo discovers his dream apartment, and sets out to build a dream life in it, complete with (at last!) losing his virginity to a possibly endless stream of non-Algerian women. "All that remained for me to do was to go over the wall, with the firm intention of becoming an individual who decides and charts his life as a Westerner, on a full-time basis, with every right thereto pertaining." Except that nothing happens quite as he anticipates; most of the women he encounters turn out to be Algerian, and he is haunted by another one the reader never quite encounters, an Algerian novelist named Loubna Minbar, whom he is convinced is masquerading as his concierge and stealing his writings. Questions of reality, of the narrator's reliability, multiply in the final pages, taking on an almost hallucinatory quality, and the until-then relatively distant narrator ends up playing a greater role. Fascinating, both in the style and in the substance -- the havoc that social discrimination can play on a psyche. A must-read for anyone interested in the immigrant experience in Europe, and it's translated by the wonderful Alison Anderson, to boot. 4.4 stars, recommended. For my 11 in 11 challenge.

In contrast, Hotwire by Alex Kava is a decent-enough thriller to read on the subway, but not much more. You don't want to pause to ponder the gaping holes linking two plots, one involving food poisoning in DC schools, the other the mysterious deaths of teenagers in Nebraska, as there are lots of them. Kava has one of her main characters, Maggie O'Dell, in peril investigating the latter plot; Benjamin Platt in no peril investigating the former. A very meh addition to this series, with only perfunctory attention paid to plot, character and whether anything is convincing. Don't bother unless you're a die-hard fan. 2.7 stars.

Hoping to have news of the book from the agent next week. He says three publishers have voiced "interest", but what that means remains vague, of course. As long as one of them makes a decent offer... Gah, this has been going on for about 3 months now.

Suz, I was in a PageOne bookstore in Hong Kong and saw your book out in both hardcover and paperback! I gave it a little pat on your behalf. ;-)

Thanks, Caro -- it needs all the TLC it can get as it ventures off into an uncertain world...

The cats are practicing their synchronized sleeping. Three of them lined up in a row along one side of the bed, each curled beside the other in an identical position, like large furry commas. Hilarious. Too chilly to get out of bed & search for a camera, however.

So, the next book -- which I'm going to have to buy at some point, in order to own a copy, curses, curses, curses -- was The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje. After an initial reaction that was more appreciative than enthusiastic, I suddenly fell in love with it around the time that the narrator and his friend Cassius are riding out the storm in the Indian ocean, tied to the deck by their third friend. From then, I just savored every word, phrase, digression, as it became clear that this was more than a traditional coming of age story but rather a narrative of the transition from youth into an awareness of the adult world; that there was more than just the story of a voyage and a hodgepodge group of characters. At one point, the narrator (like the author, named Michael, although in a postscript, Ondaatje insists there is no biographical detail in the novel) ponders how his interest in the people around him has shifted. "We were preferring the gentle Mr. Daniels, after all, obsessed with the care of his plants, and the pale figure of Miss Lasqueti, who wore her pigeon jacket replete with cushioned pockets for the transporting of her birds. It would always be strangers like them, at the various Cat's Tables of my life, who would alter me." Ondaatje's shifts are impeccable -- from the rampaging activities of the three young boys traveling almost unaccompanied to England from Sri Lanka, a trio whose experiences would resonate decades into the future, to that future, and into the past lives of their traveling companions. A final mystery is resolved -- or maybe not really -- in the final pages, including the question of Michael's own character. "I am someone who has a cold heart," he writes of himself, looking back at his life. "If I am beside a great grief I throw barriers up so the loss cannot go too deep or too far. There is a wall instantly in place, and it will not fall." There were moments like that that carried such an emotional punch I had to stop reading altogether for a while; that never tipped over into sentimentality.

I'm giving this a full five stars. I'm at a loss as to why the Man Booker judges didn't even put this on the longlist.

I'll have to reconsider Ondaatje. I loved The English Patient, and thought the movie was a work of near genius, to take the nearly unfilmable prose and turn it into something that was true to the spirit of the book. Then I read another of his books, and disliked it. Sigh. So I'm gonna have to try some more...

Definitely recommended. Damn, I have to give it back to the library.

Catching up after my holiday and mother-staying absence. So sorry to hear of your landlord issues - being powerless to challenge such unreason must be inexpressibly galling and stressful...

Glad to hear of a commission to review the popes book - and I hope your payment for the previous review for the same source comes through soon!

The book about the Friar sounds very interesting, and with 5 stars to The Cat's Table I'll have to get to that one soon! Which Ondaatje did you read and not like? I've read Anil's Ghost as well as The English Patient, found the former a tougher read but still good...

I'm at a loss as to why the Man Booker judges didn't even put this on the longlist.

It probably wasn't zippy enough for them. I believe that every past set of Booker judges would have included it on the longlist, and probably the shortlist.

I first read Ondaatje when Annie Dillard referred to the Billy the Kid novella in a book of essays about books and reading..... ok.... lemme go find those titles and come back with 'em: The Dillard is Teaching a Stone to Talk and the Ondaatje is The Collected Writings of Billy the Kid -- I was blown away by it and haven't looked back, although Anil's Ghost flummoxed me, was so painful I never finished it. I hope to one day. My favorite is In the Skin of a Lion and second is the memoir Running in the Family.

I think it was Anil's Ghost that I read and couldn't get into at all.

Lucy, didn't I tell you to keep your snow to yourself??? Woke up to find an inch or so of slushy white stuff on the ground -- and to hear the sound of SNOW SHOVELS!!! Good grief, two weeks ago I still had my A/C on part of the time...

I'm glad The Cat's Table was good - for some reason I don't understand I found it on Kindle when they were selling it for £1.91 - glad I snaffled it on impulse. It was also a Vine offering here, and it went really quickly. I've not actually read any of his books properly, I also acquired Divisadero in the summer sale on Kindle.

I finally had to add your last two reads to my wish list - the reviews were just too interesting to ignore. I'll probably get to them sometime in 2020.

By the way, Brenpike also read The Cat's Table this month but listed it in Challenge 9.

Book du jour: A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines is a book that several folks have told me I should read, and they are right. Set in the mid-1940s in Louisiana, it's the moving story of a young black man condemned to death in the electric chair; his godmother implores the local schoolmaster, as the one of the only educated black men in the region, to help him die as a man rather than as the unthinking hog that his own defense attorney described him as being during the trial. Grant's struggle to help Jefferson is the catalyst for a much broader struggle on his part, as the request brings him face to face with everything he's been trying to deny about himself and about the realities of his life and as he has to make compromises he deplores -- dumbing himself down, taking a subordinate role to the whites in town -- in order to fulfill the demands his community is making of him. At the same time, he comes to realize how he is asking too little of himself, and deluding himself on other scores. It's a moving and passionate indictment of Jim Crow laws in the South, and the damage they did. I couldn't help wondering, however, how the book might have been different had Gaines chosen to make Jefferson actually culpable -- in the first pages, it's clear that he was merely a bystander, unjustly convicted of being black and in the wrong company -- or had the story been written today, when discrimination is less extreme and evident -- indeed, banned -- but has not been banished from the minds of those enforcing justice. (Just look at the ratio of black murderers on death row vs all those charged or convicted of murder, and it's hard to see that justice is at work...) There's a lot of great writing and some fabulous characters, but not much subtlety when it comes to the issues. On one level, that's appropriate, but it's something I tend to prize in books about highly-charged subjects. 4.1 stars, recommended. For my 11 in 11 challenge.

Update on books finished yesterday/last night:

The Kashmir Shawl was a predictable but still moving tale of two women and their experiences in Kashmir -- a grandmother in the war years circa 1940/41-1945, and her granddaughter, trying to figure out the story behind a Kashmir shawl that once belonged to the grandmother she never knew. The modern narrative is really nothing more than a device for the historical one, weakening the novel substantially, but for those who enjoy this kind of woman's novel/quasi chick lit, it's an interesting look at a place I really want to visit although I doubt I'll ever be able to see the Kashmir of yore, destroyed by sectarian conflicts. 3.7 stars, genre fiction but fine for what it is.

The Ministry of Special Cases by Nathan Englander is one of a clutch of stories about Argentina's "dirty war" against its own citizens in the 1970s/early 1980s that has been on my TBR list for a few months, and while I'm glad I got to read it, it was definitely a disturbing novel. The story revolves around a Jewish-Argentinian family, Kaddish Poznan, his wife Lillian, and their son, university student Pato. It shifts from a rather comical absurdism -- we first meet Kaddish as he's chipping off names from a walled-off section of the Jewish cemetery reserved for the pimps and whores, to protect their descendants -- to a tragic absurdism, as Kaddish staggers around Buenos Aires trying to arrange a very strange ransom for the son he fears may be dead after "being vanished". Fascinating and chilling; recommended. 4.4 stars, for my 11 in 11 challenge.

I like the sound of The Ministry of Special Cases. I regard Rosie Thomas as hen lit but I quite like her books when I read them and I have a Vine review copy of The Kashmir Shawl - though it's now being offered in a Rainy Day Read sale in Kindle and I'm quite tempted - my Vine copy is a rather chunky ARC,

The ministry of Special Cases was one of my favourite reads last year.

Kerry/Luci -- "Special Cases" is fascinating... It's got elements of tragedy amidst the comedy, like the deal that Kaddish haggles over to settle a debt, and elements of comedy amidst the tragedy, like Kaddish's final burglary. The tragedies are large -- a nation's national trauma -- and small -- those of a family or the Jewish community.

I tried reading something else by Nathan Englander a few years ago and couldn't get through it; may have to try again.

Rebecca, I was actually wondering about that. His style in this novel is very distinctive, and I wasn't all that drawn to it, but works very well with his plot and characters in this novel. The attraction here is the narrative and characters; I didn't feel compelled to even go off and look for anything else he has written.

Farewell, Suz...I am off to the Thirty Days' War that is NaNo...you will have forgotten me by the time I return...adieu, ma petite amie de l'alme...*waves lacy white hanky limply*

Erm, good luck with that, Richard, mon cher....

If it's really painful, ya know, no one is holding a gun to your head!

Brief notes as I'm tired and headachey myself.

Finished two more books to wrap up the month.

Dancing in the Glory of Monsters by Jason Stearns is a hard book to read on many different levels -- it's hard to keep track of all the players, all the toing and froing and the various factions that have contributed to decades of civil war in the Congo. At the same time, Stearns has done something very valuable, by at least attempting to create an orderly narrative from the horrors of factional infighting, corruption and interventionism from pretty much most of the country's neighbors, especially Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe. There are no heroes here and a lot of victims. I read this ahead of November's scheduled elections, and because a childhood friend of mine now runs a peace organization (Pragmora) and has just returned from Congo. Her take: the elections will result in more violence and the only question is whether that will rise to the level of civil war. I made some other comments on the book on the Hallowe'en readathon thread as I was reading; I'm too tired to transcribe them all now. 3.9 stars, simply because at times it was confusing to keep track of the narrative.

Broken Glass Park by Alina Bronsky starts out very well, but ends with a bit of a bumpy ride -- I felt as if I was lurching all over the place and ended up not being very sure what I thought about the character or the narrative. I did love Bronsky's writing, and the way she so vividly inhabits the character of 17-year-old Sasha, who lives to write a book about her murdered mother, murder her stepfather (vengeance for the death of her mother) and care for her younger siblings. She's feisty, unafraid, and yet vulnerable. A memorable character and book, even if it didn't quite manage to be as good as I hoped it would. 4.2 stars; definitely worth trying. Both are for my 11 in 11 challenge.

Oooh, scored an ER copy of the new Mallory mystery from Carol O'Connell! I really am on a winning streak with ER, although I'm still waiting for last month's book to arrive.

Same here; I won Howard Jacobson's 1998 novel No More Mister Nice Guy last month, but it hasn't come yet.

I gather there were some issues with Bloomsbury last month, but that they should be arriving shortly - I think Jacobson is a Bloomsbury author also.

ETA, meanwhile, just go the late October Vine picks -- the second book by Taylor Stevens in the Vanessa Michael Monroe series and The Fat Years a new novel, "banned in China" !!

Can't wait to read your review of The Fat Years, Suz. I've heard some good things about it and have it on my obese wish list.

Just catching up here Suzanne...that's a good description of The Ministry of Special Cases..."chilling." But that book stayed with me a long time. I picked up Broken Glass Park at the end days of Borders and what you describe parallels her style in The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine so I'll look forward to reading that one. And 5 full stars for The Cat's Table will push that one way up the TBR pile.

Suzanne - delurking to say hi and express my awe at 390 books so far this year. Excellent reviews and the breadth of your reading is staggering, salutations my dear.

Keep your fingers crossed, folks; I have a conversation scheduled tomorrow afternoon with a prospective publisher at Little, Brown. This individual apparently loves the writing but has some issues with the proposed structure of the book and some other questions, so the question she asked my agent was whether I was "open to making changes." Since the structure issue has been bedeviling me from the start, of course I am. Anyway, I'm hoping this is a step forward. Houghton Mifflin also wants a conversation with me sometime. And there may be a third firm. No bidding wars likely; I'd just like a solid book deal for my second baby!

Book du jour: without CitizenJoyce and this week's Halloween Readathon, I would never have stumbled over Elizabeth and Hazel by David Margolick, although the book itself came up in conversation at a dinner I attended last week. (The person who recommended it enthusiastically described the narrative, but couldn't remember title or author. So had Joyce not been reading it, I never would have stumbled over it! It's the story of two women whose lives remain inextricably linked some 54 years after a moment in their shared history was captured on camera: the snapshot of a 15-year-old Hazel yelling racial epithets at 15-year-old Elizabeth, attempting to enroll as one of the first black students at Little Rock Central High School only to find herself caught and isolated in the midst of a howling mob. Is someone's life defined by one moment in time? Margolick's book explores that, even as he recounts the lives of both happy-go-lucky and careless Hazel, and quiet, studious Elizabeth; their experiences that first crucial year of integration (especially those of Elizabeth; while Hazel left the school, Elizabeth remained for a year during which she was harassed without letup.) But the latter third of the book is most striking, as it deals with the brief friendship between the two; while Hazel had apologized to Elizabeth as early as 1963, in the 1990s the two women became friendly for a few years, an event that dewy-eyed sentimentalists chose to view as an example of how the United States could overcome its history of legalized discrimination and violence against its African-American citizens. Needless to say, nothing in life is ever that simple. The two women pulled apart, with Elizabeth disappointed and angry that (in her mind) Hazel showed no willingness to engage with the deeper-rooted racism Elizabeth was convinced still existed in her and her family; Hazel, for her part, being bemused by Elizabeth's growing anger and inability to look forward. "Whites weren't ready for desegregation in 1957, and blacks weren't ready for reconciliation now. Elizabeth didn't want reconciliation; she wanted revenge." Hazel grows to envy the openly racist students from Central, who gave Elizabeth far more grief and yet who never felt called on to apologize, and who lived quiet lives.

This is a fascinating book to read, because Margolick somehow manages (at least in my eyes) to do the impossible and walk the narrow line dividing the two women, understanding and communication the point of view of each while also understanding the flaws and foibles of both women. Moving to the US in my 30s, even as a US citizen, I had little understanding of how visceral these race issues were. In Canada, while such things exist, they don't carry the same weight, given the minimal history of slavery and Jim Crow-style laws. (But then in Canada, "visible minorities" historically made up a smaller part of the population.) Arriving as an adult, listening to both sides, I found both perspectives -- ably represented here -- distressing. I still struggle living in a culture where my attempts to get the almost completely black and Latino students at the high school 1/2 block away to not vandalize my home (broken windows; glass bottles flung at the security bars; mail stolen from the mailbox, etc. etc.) earn me the label 'racist' from the principal. I understand where that might come from, intellectually, but emotionally it is very difficult to be called such a harsh name. Hazel, in contrast, was a racist, or held racist views -- and became the face of bigotry. Yet she had the courage -- long before it was fashionable -- to apologize and seek forgiveness. Yet for many of those in Little Rock, no apology would ever be sincere enough to matter. I can understand why a traumatized Elizabeth pulled back from the friendship; why a despondent and exhausted Hazel withdrew. And yet the fact that they did saddens me.

So this was a very emotional book to read, even without having been part of the history myself. (Although my mother tells me that she was pregnant with me on her first trip to the Southern US in the early 1960s, and was so repulsed by what she saw that she fought to return to NJ, where my parents were living, early.) In a way, the issues that Margolick addresses in the later history of the two women are ones that seem to me to dominate the whole debate over race as a macrocosm, although happily we seem to have reached a point (in NYC at least) where I don't think anyone does a double-take on meeting a professional they've talked to on the phone to discover that that individual is black/African-American. An important book. 4.5 stars, for my 11 in 11 challenge.

That's a fine review, Suzanne. Please put it on the book page since there isn't one from an LTer. I heard an NPR spot on this one and have it bookmarked in my mind and now on your thread. Thank you. A
And all kinds of good wishes for your conversation with Little, Brown! Keep us posted!

Fantastic review of Elizabeth and Hazel, Suz! Yes, please post this on the book's page; it needs to be there. After your review and CitizenJoyce's comments this will go to the top of my wish list.

Fingers crossed!

ETA: I see the review, and I've thumbed it.

It's there, and posted on Amazon as well (where I also stuck up my review of The Cat's Table. Two back to back 5 star Amazon reviews? My natural curmudgeonliness must be slipping.

Wow, fabulous review.
Good luck today!

199: Excellent review, and the book is on my wishlist.
Hope you have productive conversations with publishers!

I recall the recent NYTimes review, complete with a picture of the incident between the two women. It did look interesting, very personally grounded. Your's is a great review of the book, Suz.

and best of luck with Little, Brown today.

Just heard that Viking wants a phone call as well, tomorrow afternoon, also to discuss structure. These seem to be the routine, to figure out if the author knows what he/she is doing and to talk through potential glitches in advance. I'm going to have to give some major thought to explaining the structure between now and then...

Ooof, long day. I started doing a new gig today, a contract editing job for a part of Reuters Thomson. It will be 10 to 15 hours a week; although I prob. won't see any income until Xmas, I'm relieved to have some kind of ongoing project.

The publisher phone call was a mixed bag; the woman was v. nice but it seems as if she was mediating between herself and more senior people; she was talking from notes the whole time. Also, the bottom line seems to be that she would want a complete rewrite of the proposal AND the sample material -- essentially, I'd have to do virtually all the reporting for the book before they'd consider it. Which my agent tells me isn't necessary or appropriate. So onto tomorrow afternoon, when I'll be talking to someone much more senior at another firm (interestingly, someone who works with a bestselling fiction author, although not someone whose books I've ever read.) I admit I'm dismayed about today, but while I'm completely willing to revise structural stuff and even reshape a proposal in note form, to spend three months or so reporting "on spec" seems extreme. Fingers crossed...

Book du jour: Eternity Ring by Patricia Wentworth, was a re-read of one of the Miss Silver mysteries that I read through during the 1980s when they were reprinted by Coronet. Mostly written in the 1930s-1950s, these are rather dated, but kind of in a cozy way. (Some of the turns of phrase remind me of L.M. Montgomery...) There's always an ingenue heroine, the man who loves her, Miss Silver, and the police. Miss Silver is another Miss Marple, always knitting, quoting Tennyson and coughing not to clear her throat but as a form of expressive punctuation. I do enjoy these more than many by Christie; the plots may not be as well done, but the atmosphere is excellent and while the characters are stock, the plots are fun. This one involves a young woman who runs screaming into a neighboring manor house to announce she's just seen a murdered woman and her murderer -- but when everyone runs to look, there's no body. Until another murder takes place... This is the era of house parlormaids and afternoon tea, and nobody the reader gets to know and like gets murdered, of course. Within those limitations, this was a fun book to read after a rather grueling day. I'll give it 3.4 stars, with some of that being sentiment.

Suzanne good luck with the publisher and make sure you are properly represented as there are plenty of sharks in the water.

My agent is great, Paul; he represented me on the last deal and was there throughout the whole process. I've since gathered that that is relatively uncommon. But I was able to bounce concerns about the content, about how to work with the editor, off him throughout. So I do trust what he tells me about what is or isn't reasonable.

Exhausting day; I'm going to crawl into bed with a book and a cat and allow myself to drift off to sleep.

bed, a book and a cat. Sounds lovely. Good luck on the next publisher's conversation. I do think the LB gal was looking for a little too much insurance!

So much for the sleep idea. I crawl into bed and sleep crawls off somewhere else.

Yes, Judy, I think it's a bit extreme. Especially as, thinking it over, there are people who wouldn't give me access if I couldn't tell them who I'm writing it for or without a contract in place. "LB might publish it" won't cut it. That's the first question a lot of folks ask, and I think I've pushed about as far as I can without a contract.

>207 Chatterbox:

Am I the only person who finds Agatha Christie dull and repetitive?

I mean she wrote a couple of books that "broke the rules" of mystery writing
- one where the Watson did it
- one where everybody did it
- one where nobody did it and
- one where the detective did it - and I read those and enjoy them.

But Marple! Poirot! Cardboard characters in stock situations and over and over again. Clockwork plots you can admire but not enjoy.

As the old girl said I don't mind the screwing it's climbing the stairs over and over again wot does me in.

Maybe I'm just not into cozy

I swear I jinxed this process by mentioning it here. The other editor has canceled today's call, as other folks at the firm didn't like my "voice" as much as she did.

So now back to limbo...

>212 magicians_nephew:: I'm not a fan, either.

213: Damn.

Suz, did you see this new "lendable books" offer from Amazon?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=tsm_1_fb_s_amzn_lu3dtb?docId=100073981...

btw, after reading your review of Elizabeth and Hazel, I need to read that one soon.

>>212 magicians_nephew:, 214 I'm sure there are others like you, but her many fans like her clever puzzle-making; her clean, engaging, briskly-paced writing (late books not so much); and the enduring qualities of her famous characters, among other things.

I'm also not sure what you've read of hers. Here's one thread with LT members identifying their top 5 of Dame Agatha's books: http://www.librarything.com/topic/72999

Sorry that the phone calls didn't get a more promising result.

Really sorry to read the news on your book, but happy that you have the contract editing work.

Elizabeth and Hazel sounds excellent - just looked for it in the library at home, and it's not there, but I'm sure it will be soon.

Thanks, Luci.

Linda, yes, I spotted that last night and created a thread to discuss it, because I figured it would be interesting to more than those who happen to visit my thread.

I'm neutral on Christie. Some I like -- I re-read a couple of her stand-alone books last year and enjoyed them. But Miss Marple mostly bores me, and I'm fatigued with the little foibles of Poirot.

Sorry about the canceled phone call, Suzanne, but glad about the new contract work.

As for Agatha Christie, a friend and I read as many of her books as we could get our hands on when we were in 7th grade, and I haven't read her since. But I loved her then -- and she probably got me started on a lifetime of mystery reading.

Well, poo on publishers.
I love Dame Agatha for sentimental reasons - my first mysteries after Nancy Drew. Sometimes I simply need stock.

Suz, I didn't see the other thread about the lendable books. I'll talk there.

I used to love Agatha Christie. I thought she was the best. Now, there are plenty of others who are quite good but she is a terrific plotter of puzzles, even though her character development isn't always that great.

Amazingly, I have never read a Patricia Wentworth. I need to remedy that situation.

Peggy, I agree with you. We've got one bite at the apple, and I will be really pissed if I've squandered it by trying to sell the book at a bad time in the industry.

Very very down in the dumps.

Book du jour wasn't good enough to help. Long Gone by Alafair Burke is a suspense/thriller novel that stretches credulity at every turn, and while sometimes the plot is intriguing enough to make that OK, it's not so consistently. The first part of the book is three loose strands, which only get woven together later, and one of them is extremely weak and unnecessary. The main one involves Alice, the daughter of a famous Hollywood director trying to make it in the art world on her own. Improbable event #1 is when she meets a man at a gallery show, and within days he's offered her the job of managing a new gallery he plans to open. Improbably event #2 happens only two days after the gallery opens, when Alice arrives to find the guy's dead body inside, and the place stripped of all the art on the walls and everything else. Nor is the guy's name what she thought it was, and there's a lookalike redhead whom everyone thinks is Alice messed up in everything, and the cops think she's guilty, and there's a link to a nasty secret (or two) in her family past, and... Overly complex, not well enough written. 3 stars. No more by this author for me.

Sorry to hear your book news. Hang in there.

Suzanne - keep your chin up; stay positive and believe in yourself! Irrespective of market conditions ability will shine through - cream rises to the top my dear. Your Agent sounds like he/she is with you all the way and has faith in you - I'm sure that you will succeed.

Boo on publishers indeed. Here's hoping others show up with fat wallets and good taste.

Sorry to hear the editors haven't the sense to snap you up on the spot... I hope you get some good news soon to give a bit of security.

And hope you find a better book for your next book du jour!

Sorry to hear about the cancellation. It does sound like you have a good agent, and hopefully someone else will show interest soon. I just received my copy of your paperback--now to go lend it to my financial advisor! Hopefully some royalty checks are coming in after the release of the paperback edition.

Roni, the advance was large enough that I probably won't see royalties at all! I expect a smaller advance for this book -- assuming I find anyone to buy it at all *she muttered gloomily*

The book du jour was more of a comfort read -- a re-read by an old fave, Michael Gilbert. Blood and Judgment isn't one of his best, but halfway through it gets more intriguing as DS Patrick Petrella proceeds to defy his bosses and go off diving in a reservoir at night in search of more dead bodies or cast-off guns. I like Gilbert's books (my faves include Smallbone Deceased, The Long Journey Home, and the short stories featuring Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens.) It's hard to describe Gilbert's style: it's distinctive, perhaps a bit laconic, and one where the reader doesn't always get all the information the characters have -- there will be phrases such as "X told Y what he had in mind, and Y nodded slowly, with growing enthusiasm." Not a real quotation from the book, but just to give you an idea. There are also bits of a reserved, deadpan humor. In this short novel, Petrella is driving his ultimate boss batty by annoying other detectives, who may be rushing to judgment and thus condemning the wrong man to hang for murder. In that context: "When Petrella had taken himself off, Haxtell got up, kicked the wastepaper basket with beautiful accuracy up on to the mantelpiece, and said, "Damnation take the silly young idiot." Gilbert's strongest years were the 50s, 60s and 70s, although he continued to write into the 1990s, and his strongest books can feel a bit dated, but the mysteries are fun and should be better known. I particularly like the way he can draw the line between criminals who are just opportunistic or petty, and those who are "evil to the bone" and violent. 4 stars, a fun read.

I'm sorry things have unravelled a little, I hope it's just a bump in the road.

Sorry to hear of the lousy publisher attitude Suzanne. Hopefully your agent comes up with something else.

Thanks all...

Well, finally made it to the library, where both Reamde AND Colson Whitehead's Zone One were waiting for me. I'll have my work cut out to read both of those and get them back within three weeks on top of the rest of the books I have here...

I'm about #1894 on the library waiting list for Zone One...

Wow, Katie -- even not taking you literally, that's a long line! Brooklyn's system got in dozens of copies, so the line here moved fast. I think I was around 120, but now I have it here.

I was just thinking today, as I shopped for groceries and cat food, books are one of the best things one can spend $20. I'm going to have to do a big laundry load in the next few days, and that will cost me $30 (no washer/dryer at home). Plus the time to schlep the bags to and from the laundry. And that's money down the drain. Whereas if I buy a book, that's there for me to go back to time and time again...

Oh well...

The book du jour: Talisman Ring by Georgette Heyer is not only the book that wraps up this 75 batch of books, but also -- unbelievably -- a Heyer novel I had never read as a child and teenager. I started reading Heyer at about 9 or 10 years old, when my form mistress at school in England loaned my a copy of Arabella, and just kept going after that. I can only surmise that I never got to this one because it's not a Regency, but rather is set in the late 18th century, during the French revolution. Like all Heyer's novels -- although this a bit darker than some, in that there is a murder in the recent past -- this is light reading, but with verve and wit. There's an ingenue, young Eustacie, whose English grandfather got her out of France after her parents' deaths but before the worst of the Revolution, and who is on the verge of being married off to one of her three male cousins -- the most reliable one, Sir Tristam. The other one on the scene is "Beau" Lavenham, an apparently effete dandy who may be concealing a rather nasty secret. The third is young Ludovic, who may or may not be guilty of murdering a man, and who has had to flee the country. When Eustacie flees on her grandfather's death, preferring adventure to marriage, she encounters Ludovic as part of a gang of smugglers. The duo end up at a local inn, where a wounded Ludovic has to be concealed from not only Excisemen and the Bow Street Runners, but even the Beau as Sir Tristram and a young lady who had been at the inn with her brother (the "sensible heroine", which Heyer does so well!) try to find the ring of the title, to prove Ludovic's innocence. It's all a bit predictable, but that doesn't mean it's not fun to read.

Really enjoying Evening in the Palace of Reason; James Gaines, in alternating chapters, is leading up to a famous (musically speaking) meeting between Bach and Frederick the Great. Gaines really knows his stuff, and he's got a very lively style, which meant that I forgot to get off the subway where I had intended to do so... Writing about Frederick's slightly deranged and paranoid father, he says "Frederick William's chief consolations in life were getting drunk and kidnapping giants (not at the same time.)" The giants were to fill the ranks of his ornamental guard, and tall burly men from as far afield as Alsace had to be careful or they'd be hijacked. An early version of press-ganging!

OK, finished Evening in the Palace of Reason, while listening with great enjoyment to lots of Bach -- cantatas, fugues, the Goldberg variations and ultimately the Mass in B Minor. James Gaines is no Bach, but he does a fab job for the non-specialist reader, offering alternating chapters about Bach and Frederick the Great, showing how each came of age and came by their views of life, religion and music, all leading up to a climatic meeting in Berlin only a few years before Bach's death, when Frederick issued an impossible musical challenge -- only to find that Bach went him one better. Gaines is excellent at handling the complexities of these two very different characters, and sets the musical debate squarely in the context of its time -- the Enlightenment, when someone like Bach could rest in religious faith and Frederick, a generation younger and raised by a brutal, dysfunctional father, found no solace in anything -- even music, ultimately. I thought Gaines's ability to capture some of the musical history here were very well done indeed; harmony, as he points out, was seen not in absolute terms, but by Bach's peers (including philosophers like Leibniz) as a reflection of a Divine plan or order; music's structure could reveal and could inspire, in an intellectual and religious manner, as well as provide pleasure to the senses. He captures the essence of the different forms in witty metaphors: "canon is to fugue what haiku is to blank verse". I found I learned a tremendous amount here; I'll never listen to the Brandenburg concertos again without recalling Gaines's observation that the fifth prepared the way for all concertos that feature solo instruments in a dialog with the orchestra. Ultimately, this is a book about the ultimate meaning of music; an ambitious task. Gaines doesn't quite succeed at that, and the alternating chapter structure is choppy (if perhaps inevitable), tempting the reader to abandon one story line in favor of the other. But it's still 4.4 stars for me; recommended to anyone interested in 18th century Europe, music, the Enlightenment, etc. Very accessible even if you've no knowledge of music, though being able to listen in to some of the music here as I read was fab. More serious a work than Eric Siblin's The Cello Suites, which I read and recommended last year, but still excellent. For my 11 in 11 challenge.

Evening in the Palace of Reason sounds fascinating, Suzanne!

Roni, it wouldn't be ideal for a serious historian or musical scholar, I suspect, and sometimes he stretches to make his points, but i found it lively and engaging -- not typical of writing about either this era of history or musical history -- so I bumped up the points accordingly!

Evening in the Palace of Reason sounds like a very worthwhile book if you like Bach! And I like Bach!

I am up far earlier than I want to be up on any Sunday morning on which I have nothing that needs to be done by 9 a.m., but then the boom boxes are out, the watering station is up and there are 47,000 NYC Marathon runners abut to stream past my home over the next several hours. First come all the disabled runners in their cool special bikes, then the elite runners, complete with bleeping emergency vehicles, and then the rest of the pack. (Right now, it's just cyclists, taking advantage of the empty streets!) By 3 or 4 p.m., they'll move the barricades and let the traffic back on the street. Although a daughter's friend is running this year, we're not close (I did donate to her run, however) and given the crowds, I doubt I'd even see her, so I'm just planning to hunker down and do some work and some reading. If anybody is watching the marathon, I'm very very near the corner of Atlantic Avenue/Flatbush Avenue/4th Avenue, right at the end of the racers' long run along 4th Avenue, early on in the route.

For anyone who is interested, there are a bunch of Writer's Digest books available for free today on Kindle, on writing. I nabbed one self-publishing -- just in case.

Kind of cycling between a few things here. I'm at the midway point of The Innocent by Taylor Stevens (no touchstone... annoying); it's the sequel to The Informationist. About 1/3 of the way through two more cerebral novels, one of which, Minotaur by Benjamin Tammuz, I know seem to be reading straight through. The other, Arriving in Avignon by Daniel Robberechts (a Dalkey Archive book) requires a lot of concentration and will probably best be consumed in short bursts. There are some wonderfully evocative descriptions of place, but I'm still trying to get past the lovely writing and wrestle with the themes.

Ah, you got me with the Bach/Frederick book. It sounds like something I'd really enjoy, and I'm sure I have most of the music (although for reasons I cannot explain even to myself I don't play much music these days). Your reviews are always filled with interesting details and comments, and make the books you favor sound quite enticing.

>240 Chatterbox: - Is there a Vitamin Shoppe near you? I have the marathon on in the background and I think they just mentioned the lead woman flying by at 4th and Atlantic...

I'm always interested in the route for the marathon and noticed that my Motherland (The Bronx) got short shrift this year :) Of course, Mom grew up way up in the North Bronx - so North, it might as well have been Yonkers...

Anyway, thanks for the reminder that it was on. I do like to watch snippets and think (for about 5 seconds) how I could do that if I really put my mind to it. Then I return to my book.

Yes, the Vitamin Shoppe is 2 very short blocks from me -- about 2 mins on foot. If you see a PC Richard, that is right across 4th Avenue at Atlantic, cater corner from chez moi.

Are you close to Atlantic Yards, where the Nets' new arena is being built?

>244 kidzdoc: - As in the New Jersey Nets?!? They're building an arena in NY? Guess it makes sense since the Giants and Jets play in Jersey!

>245 katiekrug: Yep. The Nets are scheduled to move to Brooklyn next year, and will be renamed the Brooklyn Nets.

Oh, well, if they are getting re-named, it's not quite as amusing...

Thanks for the tip re: the free Writers Digest book about self-publishing. I snagged it for my son, a 30-something who spends his days writing. Hes forever talking to me about self-publishing, so it may be nothing new for him, but since we share the Amazon account, if he doesnt want it, I will take a look at it, if nothing else so I will know what hes talking about. Free is free, right?

Thats another thing about Kindle and Amazon that maybe people dont know about. I have 3 Kindles on the same account, all given different names so that we know who is who. Any book downloaded to any of those accounts can be easily transferred to another Kindle on that same account. So DH, my adult son, and I all share this account. Payment is made from my credit card, so the kid & I settle up at the end of the month.

Becky, that works beautifully, doesn't it? The only Kindle content that doesn't transfer are the PDF versions of NetGalley books that I get. Which mean that when my Kindle died weeks ago, I lost all of those, some of which I can't get back again.

Darryl, yes, I'm about a block away from the bottom end of the stadium. Eventually, if he gets financing for everything he wants to do in that project, there will be an awful lot of big office and residential towers clustered around the stadium itself, including, possibly, one where the PC Richard store is now across the way. I'm not looking forward to the opening, as the traffic around here is solidly blocked from about 7 a.m. until 10 a.m. and gain in the evenings -- it can take 10 mins to go the block from 3rd to 4th Ave on Atlantic in a car. And the subway station -- even after renovation -- is still so busy during rush hour that you have trouble even getting on to a platform. I've seen real problems when people try to get off trains and can't, because there's nowhere for them to go among the people on the platforms. Now, add to that nightmare the tens of thousands people coming to the ball games... We already have problems in this neighborhood with vandalism, etc., and I worry about drunk fans, etc., like I saw at CitiField last month. I'm amazed that Rattner got past the environmental assessment, but it's fairly clear to people who were neutral about the project that those who held the hearings and were responsible for giving it the OK, were all pre-disposed in favor of it. I'm not saying there was corruption and conspiracy, as the opponents do, just that Brooklyn pols are so keen to have a pro sports franchise here again (remember those Dodgers??) that they closed their eyes to some whopping great problems. Ah, the arrogance of power...

Okay, the end of a batch of 75 books, and 250 messages, tell me it's time to relocate.

Come join me over here.