kidzdoc: 75 from the shelves #12

Unknown, Procession of Maharao Ram Singh II of Kota, about 1850




Thread #1
Thread #2
Thread #3
Thread #4
Thread #5
Thread #6
Thread #7
Thread #8
Thread #9
Thread #10
Thread #11

Currently reading:



Soul Talk, Song Language: Conversations with Joy Harjo by Joy Harjo and Tanaya Winder
Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire by Iain Sinclair
The Half-Finished Heaven: The Best Poems of Tomas Tranströmer by Tomas Tranströmer

Completed books:

January:
1. Angel of Death: The Story of Smallpox by Gareth Williams (review)
2. A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore (review)
3. The Memory Chalet by Tony Judt (review)
4. The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by José Saramago (review)
5. The Tenant and the Motive by Javier Cercas (review)
6. Who Killed Palomino Molero? by Mario Vargas Llosa (review)
7. An African in Greenland by Tété-Michel Kpomassie (review)
8. The Elected Member by Bernice Rubens (review)
9. The Good Doctor by Damon Galgut
10. Blind Man with a Pistol by Chester Himes (review)
11. Yalo by Elias Khoury

February:
12. Match Day: One Day and One Dramatic Year in the Lives of Three New Doctors by Brian Eule (review)
13. Monument Eternal: The Music of Alice Coltrane by Franya J. Berkman (review)
14. Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to Mubarak by Tarek Osman
15. Métaphysique des tubes (The Character of Rain) by Amélie Nothomb (review)
16. The Seine Was Red: Paris, October 1961 by Leïla Sebbar (review)
17. The Secret History of Costaguana by Juan Gabriel Vasquéz (review)
18. Staying On by Paul Scott (review)
19. Hygiène de l'assassin (Hygiene and the Assassin) by Amélie Nothomb
20. Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure by Paul A. Offit, M.D.
21. Jonah's Gourd Vine by Zora Neale Hurston (review)
22. The Latino Challenge to Black America by Earl Ofari Hutchinson (review)
23. Fear and Trembling by Amélie Nothomb (review)

March:
24. In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar (review)
25.The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
26. Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero by David Maraniss (review)
27. The Book of Proper Names by Amélie Nothomb
28. A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond (A Novel) by Percival Everett & James Kincaid
29. I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor's Journey by Izzeldin Abuelaish (review)
30. Memory of Departure by Abdulrazak Gurnah (review)
31. Little Mountain by Elias Khoury (review)
32. Chinese Dreams (Kindle Single) by Anand Giridharadas (review)
33. Harlem Is Nowhere by Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts (review)
34. Morning and Evening Talk by Naguib Mahfouz (review)
35. Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord (review)
36. The Anatomy of a Moment by Javier Cercas (review)
37. Pakistan and the Mumbai Attacks (Kindle Single) by Sebastian Rotella
38. Chopin's Move by Jean Echenoz

April:
39. A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 by Alistair Horne
40. Annabel by Kathleen Winter
41. Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
42. Dubliners by James Joyce
43. A Murder of Crows by Larry D. Thomas
44. The Carpenter's Pencil by Manuel Rivas
45. Send in the Idiots: Stories from the Other Side of Autism by Kamran Nazeer
46. On Elegance While Sleeping by Viscount Lascano Tegui
47. Being Abbas el Abd by Ahmed Alaidy
48. Monsieur Linh and His Child by Philippe Claudel (review)

May:
49. The Collaborator by Mirza Waheed (review)
50. The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna (review)
51. The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise by Georges Perec (review)
52. Amigoland by Oscar Casares (review)
53. The Three Christs of Ypsilanti by Milton Rokeach (review)
54. The Chalupa Rules: A Latino Guide to Gringolandia by Mario Bosquez (review)
55. Death to the Dictator! by Afsaneh Moqadam
56. Curfewed Night by Basharat Peer (review)
57. Soldiers of Salamis by Javier Cercas
58. The Instigators (Kindle Single) by David Wolman (review)
59. The Shadow of What We Were by Luis Sepúlveda (review)
60. I Love a Broad Margin to My Life by Maxine Hong Kingston (review)
61. Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck
62. To Siberia by Per Petterson (review)
63. White Egrets by Derek Walcott (review)
64. The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta by Mario Vargas Llosa (review)
65. Hospital Sketches by Louisa May Alcott (review)
66. Americus, Book I by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
67. The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan by Yasmin Khan
68. All My Friends Are Dead by Avery Monsen & Jory John
69. Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera
70. The Boy in the Moon: A Father's Search for His Disabled Son by Ian Brown
71. Emerging Arab Voices: Nadwa I, edited by Peter Clark (review)
72. Red April by Santiago Roncagliolo (review)
73. The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson (review)

June:
74. The Bill From My Father: A Memoir by Bernard Cooper
75. Elegguas by Kamau Brathwaite
76. Partitions by Amit Majmudar (review)
77. A Season in the Congo by Aimé Césaire
78. Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat
79. Go the F**k to Sleep by Adam Mansbach
80. Above All, Don't Look Back by Maïssa Bey (review)
81. Fair Play by Tove Jansson
82. Naked (Asian Poetry in Translation) by Shuntarō Tanikawa
83. Open City by Teju Cole
84. A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz

July:
85. the immigrant suite: hey xenophobe! who you calling a foreigner? by Hattie Gossett (review)
86. Seeing Patients: Unconscious Bias in Health Care by Augustus A. White III, M.D. (review)
87. The Outcast by Sadie Jones (review)
88. The Sea and Poison by Shusaku Endo (review)
89. The Passport in America: The History of a Document by Craig Robertson (review)
90. The Prospector by J.M.G. Le Clézio (review)
91. The Swimmer by Roma Tearne (review)
92. Hearts and Minds by Amanda Craig (review)
93. The London Train by Tessa Hadley (review)
94. Daisy Miller by Henry James (review)
95. Des éclairs (Lightning) by Jean Echenoz (review)
96. Fatale by Jean-Patrick Manchette (review)
97. Dump This Book While You Still Can! by Marcel Bénabou (review)
98. A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes (review)
99. Underdog: Poems by Katrina Roberts
100. Snow Plain by Duo Duo
101. Mañana Forever?: Mexico and the Mexicans by Jorge Castañeda
102. 12 Angry Men: True Stories of Being a Black Man in America Today
103. On Beauty by Zadie Smith
104. Granta 113: The Best of Young Spanish Novelists
105. Ghostwritten by David Mitchell
106. The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
107. The Anatomist: A True Story of Gray's Anatomy by Bill Hayes

August:
108. The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst (review)
109. Pao by Kerry Young (review)
110. The Wandering Falcon by Jamil Ahmad (review)
111. Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman (review)
112. London: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd (review)
113. A Cupboard Full of Coats by Yvvette Edwards (review)
114. The Broken Word by Adam Foulds (review)
115. Real Bloomsbury by Nicholas Murray (review)
116. From the Observatory by Julio Cortázar (review)
117. Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch (review)
118. The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje (review)

September:
119. The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
120. The Last Gift by Abdulrazak Gurnah (review)
121. On Canaan's Side by Sebastian Barry (review)
122. The Last Hundred Days by Patrick McGuinness (review)
123. Down the Rabbit Hole by Juan Pablo Villalobos (review)
124. Weep Not, Child by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (review)
125. Chinaman by Shehan Karunatilaka (review)
126. The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers (review)
127. Miró by Iria Candela (review)
128. Anatomy of a Disappearance by Hisham Matar (review)
129. The Submission by Amy Waldman (review)
130. Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan (review)
131. In Praise of Reading and Fiction: The Nobel Lecture by Mario Vargas Llosa
132. Who are We-and Should it Matter in the 21st Century? by Gary Younge
133. Lyrics Alley by Leila Aboulela
134. Derby Day by D.J. Taylor (review)
135. The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
136. Snowdrops by A.D. Miller
137. The Goldsmith's Secret by Elia Barceló (to be reviewed in a future issue of Belletrista)
138. Colour Me English by Caryl Phillips
139. River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh
140. County: Life, Death and Politics at Chicago's Public Hospital by David A. Ansell, MD, MPH

October:
141. The Artist of Disappearance by Anita Desai (review)
142. Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone by Nadine Cohodas (review)
143. The War of the End of the World by Mario Vargas Llosa
144. We the Animals by Justin Torres
145. Cain by José Saramago
146. The Cloud Messenger by Aamer Hussein (review)
147. Good Offices by Evelio Rosero
148. Jamilia by Chinghiz Aitmatov
149. El Corazón De La Muerte/Altars and Offerings for Days of the Dead by Oakland Museum of California (review)
150. The River Between by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
151. Kangaroo Notebook by Kōbō Abe (review)
152. The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht

November:
153. Scenes from Village Life by Amos Oz (review)

The painting in message #1 will be part of a new exhibition at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco that opens next week, Maharaja: The Splendor of India's Royal Courts.

>7 mckait: I love it! Thanks, Kath.

I'm still way behind on almost everyone else's threads. I'll try to catch up over the next day or two.

Hi Darryl. Just stopping by to star your new thread and say thanks for the info about Caryl Phillips. I'll definitely check out his novels and essays!

Hi Darryl!

Darryl, starred as usual.

Noticed you are reading a selection of the latest laureates poems. Just wondered whether you read these with any method or just dipped in and out of them as the fancy catches you? For me I will usually sample a few mid-length poems first and keep back longer ones for when I'm really in the mood, mopping up the shorter ones as I go along.

Starred, Darryl. Gorgeous painting you've opened with; the colours of India are breathtaking! Hope you will be able to get to the exhibition in SF new week.

There was an Indian Maharaja Art show at the Royal Ontario Museum last year- if any of the same material is in this show- it was amazing!

Starred! Have a good fun there in SFO.

Beautiful colors in that painting. Have a great time in SF.

*starred* You sure are one travelin' man lately!

I can't keep up with you! Now you're in Frisco! Usually I have read at least one book in your monthly list, but not this time. Chastening, innit?

Found your new thread before I set off on my travels - I expect I'll be hundreds of posts behind when I get back next week!

>9 EBT1002: Thanks, Ellen. I'll be interested to see what you think of Caryl Phillips' nonfiction works. BTW, I saw the US edition of Color Me English at City Lights Bookstore yesterday morning, along with the US edition of The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, which hopefully will win the Booker Prize next week.

Speaking of book prizes, the finalists for this year's National Book Awards will be announced tomorrow morning during the 9 o'clock hour Pacific Time (noon Eastern time), on Oregon Public Broadcasting's morning program Think Out Loud:

2011 National Book Award Finalists to be Announced on Oregon Public Radio

Rumor has it that the Republicans in Congress are threatening to shut off funding to National Public Radio if the nominees don't include the latest books by Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman and Rick Perry.

>10 cushlareads: Hi, Cushla (fellow traveler)!

>11 PaulCranswick: Noticed you are reading a selection of the latest laureates poems. Just wondered whether you read these with any method or just dipped in and out of them as the fancy catches you?

Actually I haven't started The Half-Finished Heaven yet. I did bring it with me, and I probably will begin reading it later today, as I don't have any plans for this evening. I usually read any poetry collections I come across from beginning to end, unless it's a compilation of a poet's work that encompasses several previously published collections. e.g. The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni. In that case, I might read poems from the collection that interests me the most.

The poems in The Half-Finished Heaven are mostly short ones, and the book itself is less than 100 pages in length, so it could easily be read in one sitting.

BTW, the Nobel Prize web site recently posted five poems by Tranströmer, including "The Half-Finished Heaven":

Five Poems by Tomas Tranströmer

>12 lit_chick: Thanks, Nancy. The exhibition at the Asian Art Museum opens next Friday, so I'll only have two days to see it before I leave on 10/23. I think I'll buy a ticket online today, to make sure that I do get to see it.

>13 torontoc: Thanks for that info, Cyrel. I'll have to find out if this is the same exhibition. I read that several of the paintings, including the one I posted at the top of this thread, came from the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

>14 richardderus:, 15 Thanks Richard and Ardene!

>16 LauraBrook: You're right, I have been traveling a lot lately. I didn't take any vacation until the day before I left for London in late August, and I'll use all of it, along with the leftover vacation I had remaining from last year, in a two month period, so I'll only end up working two weeks in that time. I'll take two more trips to Philadelphia before the end of the year, as I'm off for most of Thanksgiving week and I also have a week off around Christmas (the first time I've been off for both holidays in a long time).

>17 sibylline: Assuming that you mean the list of books I read in September, I can't say that I'm surprised, Lucy, as all but seven of the 22 books I read were ones that I purchased in London, or bought from the UK beforehand, namely River of Smoke.

>18 gennyt: Have a great trip to Portugal, Genny! I don't think I'll be on LT these next two weeks as much as I was in London last month, so I don't think you'll be too far behind on this thread.

I made my first trip to City Lights yesterday morning, and came away with these books:

What Is a Palestinian State Worth? by Sari Nusseibeh: The author is a well known and respected Palestinian activist, who was a trusted advisor to the PLO, and a pacifist who counts the Israeli author and pacifist Amos Oz as a close friend. I read his superb autobiography Once Upon a Country several years ago, so I immediately grabbed this after I saw it displayed amongst the new nonfiction titles.

Schizophrene by Bhanu Kapil: One of the many things I love about City Lights is its Poetry Room on the second floor, which has thousands of poetry titles, many from little known authors, along with a display table with notable new collections. This book came from the table, and is written by a Punjabi literature professor who teaches writing at the "Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado". The book is 'an account of immigration and trauma, told through memory, research, vision and hallucination', which includes 'the violent partition of the South Asian subcontinent to the disorientations of the London city grid.'

Waifs and Strays by Micah Ballard: The newest release in City Lights' Spotlight series, this collection of poems tells stories of those who struggle daily to survive on the gritty streets of San Francisco.

Jamilia by Chingiz Aitmatov: A novella described as 'the most beautiful love story in the world' by Louis Aragon, which has been praised by Akeela and several other LTers recently.

We the Animals by Justin Torres: A coming-of-age story about three mixed race brothers (half white, half puertorriqueño) growing up in Brooklyn.

Other Lives by André Brink: I looked for this recent novel by Brink in London after Akeela reviewed it last month, but I couldn't find it there. It consists of three interconnected stories about modern day South Africa, each dealing with the fluidity of identity and meaning.

The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency by Randall Kennedy: This book was high on my wish list, and is written by an African American Harvard law professor who has written several highly regarded books on race and culture.

Soul Talk, Song Language: Conversations with Joy Harjo by Joy Harjo and Tanaya Winder: This was another book from the display table in the Poetry Room at City Lights, which consists of conversations between the two women. Harjo is a "poet-healer-philosopher-saxophonist", who is considered to be "one of the most powerful Native American voices of her generation".

African Rhythms: The Autobiography of Randy Weston: Mr Weston is another of my favorite jazz musicians, who has been active for well over 50 years and was one of the first artists to incorporate African music into jazz. I'll probably read this next week, for my TIOLI October challenge (read a book by or about an artist for National Arts & Humanities Month).

As usual, I'll make at least a couple of more trips to City Lights over the next week and a half.

Great haul from City Lights, Darryl. I haven't been there in years (too long since I've been to SF), but I recall that it was a wonderful bookstore. Enjoy.

Aside from Palin and Bachman, do you know who else might be on the potential list for the National Book Awards?

No; I haven't seen any articles or blogs that have speculated on the books that will be amongst the finalists.

The finalists for this year's National Book Award for Young People's Literature have been announced:

My Name Is Not Easy by Debby Dahl Edwardson
Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai
Flesh and Blood So Cheap: The Triangle Fire and its Legacy by Albert Marrin
Shine by Lauren Myracle
Okay For Now by Gary D. Schmidt
Chime by Franny Billingsley

These are the finalists for this year's National Book Award for Poetry:

Head Off & Split by Nikky Finney
The Chameleon Couch by Yusef Komunyakaa
Double Shadow by Carl Phillips
Tonight No Poetry Will Serve by Adrienne Rich
Devotions (Phoenix Poets) by Bruce Smith

The nonfiction finalists are:

The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism by Deborah Baker
Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution by Mary Gabriel
The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable
Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout by Lauren Redniss

Finally, the fiction finalists are:

The Sojourn by Andrew Krivak
The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht
The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka
Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

And no Palin or Bachman among them? How sad.

Sarah Palin may have breathed a sigh of relief to learn that Joe Mc Ginniss' book The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin wasn't selected, either. I'm not sure if it would have qualified for the fiction or nonfiction award, though.

I can't comment about the young people's literature selections, but I do own one book in each of the other three categories: The Chameleon Couch (poetry), Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, and The Tiger's Wife, which I'm planning to read this month. I'll go to City Lights shortly to look for the other poetry finalists, but I won't buy any of the other fiction or nonfiction finalists just yet.

If I understood correctly, Radioactive is the first graphic novel that has ever been nominated for a National Book Award.

The winners will be announced on November 16th.

>27 kidzdoc:: The Tiger's Wife? Really? (I wasn't a fan)
>28 catarina1:: *snerk*

Apparently there was a "miscommunication" about the finalists for the Young People's Literature award. As a result, after the finalists were announced on Oregon Public Broadcasting, a sixth book was added by the National Book Foundation, Chime by Franny Billingsley. Has this ever happened before?

#24 - 27 thanks for that Darryl - another pile for the TBRs! Will be interesting to see if the NBA shortlist is considered to be better than the Booker list this year.

It's an interesting lineup in the YA list, I've heard only good things about Schmidt's book and Chime is on my tbr pile, I've enjoyed both Billingsley's books that I've read. The others I've not heard of but a couple look interesting, especially the verse novel.
I can't comment on the adult finalists except to say that I really enjoyed reading The Tiger's Wife. Impressive haul from City Lights, browsing in a well stocked bookstore is one of life's great pleasures.

At the risk of beating a dead horse...

Numerous sources have announced today that a new literary prize is being created, in response to the uproar over this year's Booker Prize fiasco. It has tentatively been named The Literature Prize, and it was announced by the literary agent Andrew Kidd earlier today.

"The Literature Prize will be for the best novel written in the English language and published in the UK in a given year, and a writer's country of origin will not be a factor. Our aim is to establish a clear and uncompromising standard of excellence, and the prize judges will be selected in rotation from an academy of experts in the field of literature.

"The prize will offer readers a selection of novels that, in the view of these expert judges, are unsurpassed in their quality and ambition. For many years this brief was fulfilled by the Booker (latterly the Man Booker) Prize. But as numerous statements by that prize's administrator and this year's judges illustrate, it now prioritises a notion of "readability" over artistic achievement.

"We believe though that great writing has the power to change us, to make us see the world a little differently from how we saw it before, and that the public deserves a prize whose sole aim is to bring to our attention and celebrate the very best novels published in our time."

The articles about this proposed award indicate that funding is currently being procured, and that the first award ceremony will likely take place in 2012. Several literary heavyweights are listed as supporters, including "John Banville, Pat Barker, Mark Haddon, Jackie Kay, Nicole Krauss, Claire Messud, Pankaj Mishra and David Mitchell."

More information:

New Literature Prize to establish "standard of excellence" (The Bookseller)

Is it time for a new literary prize? (New Statesman)

War of words: major authors launch rival to 'low-brow' Booker (The Independent)

Thoughts?

>34 kidzdoc: Thoughts?

Tempest, this is teapot. Teapot, meet tempest.

Darryl - I think this is a little bit of an overreaction on the part of disgruntled writers who were overlooked this year. To be fair "readability" has not always been the prime factor in selecting Booker winners (The Bone People anyone?) and most people concurred re the literary merit of Wolf Hall not so many moons ago. Julian Barnes, whether all his books work or not, is clearly a writer of the first rank and he would be a worthy addition to the pantheon of Booker winners if he gets the nod. Yes there are some strange choices this year Snowdrops has been reviled in many reviews including your consistently relaible one - but that is part of the charm of such awards. The panel this year was perhaps unfortunate but, Ms Rimington apart, it was not devoid of literary merit either and surely they have a right to judge as they see fit.

That said I would welcome a new award that is open to the new US written publications in UK as nationality should rarely be a barrier to one's reading enjoyment as is realised in LT.

I look forward to seeing how they get on with finding funding... I'll definitely be looking at their longlist for a source of books, along with the Booker longlist.

Paul, I don't think any of those authors are ones who missed out this year are they? (I will def not be reading anything else by Claire Messud though - really didn't like The Emperor's Children!) Both Barker and Banville have won the Booker already.

True Cushla Barker and Banville weren't really up for the award this year although I Banville interestingly did put out a series thriller Elegy for April under the pseudonym Benjamin Black so perhaps he is not so averse to pandering to the masses as long as he hides behind another name so serious readers don't readily associate him with it. The Booker was fine when the two of them won it - the last two years maybe compromised a little The Finkler Question is of arguable merit and this years list has been less than unanimously welcomed shall we say but surely this is the stuff of debate not a trend towards mass appeal at the expense necessarily of literary quality.

A big ditto for not liking The Emperor's Children!

I don't know if it's a trend but I may not stick around to find out! It's out of step enough with previous years to make me get *much* less excited about next year's list. (She says now... but come next August maybe I will yet again be sitting on the computer waiting to see what is shortlisted.)

>34 kidzdoc:: interesting, but am also kind of agreeing with Richard. And they could use a snappier name. Sadly, the name will probably be associated with the funding source.

>37 cushlareads:, 39: ew, I found The Emperor's Children yukky, too.

I just posted this comment in the Booker Prize group:

After thinking about it overnight, I think that The Literature Prize is a very bad idea, even though I'm (obviously) a fan of literary awards, and its timing less than one week before the announcement of this year's Booker Prize winner is a slap in the face to this year's judges, Ion Trewin and the prize committee, and most of all to the 13 longlisted authors, and, depending on who is chosen, the author of the winning book. If The Literature Prize (is that the best name they could think of?) does come about, will it be harder to select quality judges for either prize? Will the reputation of the Booker Prize suffer even more? And what happens if some authors are miffed because their books are not selected for either award? Another literary prize, perhaps?

Although I do agree that this year's judges failed badly in their task of choosing the best 13 works of literature this year, and that there seems to be a worrisome shift away from challenging and rewarding works of literature toward books of questionable literary merit which will be soon forgotten, this seems like a case of throwing the baby out with the bath water.

>42 kidzdoc:: we're cross-posting on both threads, Darryl!
Must. Work. Now.

>35 richardderus: I agree, for the most part. However, if next year's Booker Prize longlist is equally disappointing, I probably read the 13 books that the Guardian chooses instead. This year's list looks to be far better than the actual longlist:

Here's our Booker dozen – what's yours?

>36 PaulCranswick: I agree that The Literature Prize is an overreaction by a group of disgruntled authors and literary agents. I do like the idea of a new literary award, but I dislike its stated purpose as being an alternative to the Booker Prize.

I haven't read The Bone People yet, so I can't comment on it. Wolf Hall was brilliant, and definitely one of the best Booker winners I've read. I am a fan of The Finkler Question, although it certainly isn't in the same league as Wolf Hall and The Remains of the Day. I completely agree that The Sense of an Ending rates well with past winners, which I can't say for any other of this year's shortlisted books. Snowdrops and The Testament of Jessie Lamb were dreadful books, and I can't believe that anyone thought that either was amongst the best 13 novels of the year.

>37 cushlareads: I'll also be curious to see if The Literature Prize is able to obtain a stable source of funding for more than one year.

After those comments from you, Laura and Rebecca I will avoid The Emperor's Children or anything else by Claire Messud!

>42 kidzdoc: We are cross posting, Laura!

BTW, today's Guardian chimes in on the proposed new prize, and sums up what has been a very bad year for the Booker:

Man Booker prize faces fresh challenger

#44 What was most interesting about the Guardian 13 was the level of disagreement in the comments underneath from readers such as ourselves profoundly interested in the subject and better-than-averagly well-read. Much to your chagrin I'm sure Darryl there was even a plug for Snowdrops.

What odd titles for the books about the Marxes and the Curies - they sound suspiciously like trivialising the subject.

I found this last paragraph by Mr. What's-it very telling:

Andrew Kidd and his friends have launched an opening salvo, but there's going to be a lot more cannon fire across the water before this engagement is over. The forthcoming prize dinner at the Guildhall next Tuesday will be fraught with interest.

The book world's "commenariat" (a neologism I absolutely adore!) needs to look beyond its tiny borders...this is such a ridiculous non-issue.

Going way back up to the NBA nominations: there seems to be some controversy over that prize as well. This article in Salon was interesting, I thought, and reflected some of my ambivalence over the Booker issue and the perceived schism between the "literary crowd" and the reading public. But at this point, I think I'm with Richard in this being much ado about not very much.

wow, Darryl, I turn around and you've amassed 50 new posts. How did that happen? Anyway, hope you're having a blast in San Francisco.

#47, elkiedee, I haven't read the Curie book, but I did hear its author/artist, Lauren Redniss speak, and she was utterly fascinating and serious about the process of writing and illustrating a graphic biography about scientists and science.

Just dropping by to say how I admire your reading prowess and your love of (and/or interest in) the award books.
I am in awe of your reading for this year, they all look so interesting and I'm itching to read some off your list.

>46 PaulCranswick: Paul, I missed the reader comments that followed that article in the Guardian, probably because I read it on the day that it was published. I have eight of the 13 books that made this list, and I'd like to read most of them before the end of the year. I'll probably read At Last by Edward St Aubyn sometime next year, as it is the last book in his Melrose trilogy, and I'll plan to read the trilogy in order.

Despite my disdain for Snowdrops I can't say that I'm surprised that there was a plug for it. The book does have its supporters in the discussion group on the Man Booker Prize web site, although very few, if any, think it should win the award. The vast majority of members rank The Sense of an Ending first, with The Sisters Brothers a distant second and Half Blood Blues a close third.

>47 elkiedee: I agree, Lucy; those are odd titles for those books. I don't own either one, and haven't heard or read much about them.

>48 richardderus: I'll agree that this year's Booker Prize fiasco is not a big deal, but only if this year was a fluke and not representative of a new trend. If next year's longlist is similarly weak then I'll have to reconsider whether I want to continue to follow the prize as closely as I do, or look to alternative sources (Guardian longlist, The Literature Prize, etc.) for the best literary novels of the year.

>49 katiekrug: That was an interesting article, Katie; thanks for posting it. I was a bit disappointed that Open City by Teju Cole and The Submission by Amy Waldman weren't included among the fiction finalists. I'd like to read all five of the fiction and poetry books every year, but I'm not sure if I will or not. I did pick up Salvage the Bones from the fiction list, and Tonight No Poetry Will Serve and Double Shadow from the poetry list today, though.

>50 Nickelini: Thanks, Joyce. I haven't done much so far, although I will attend several SF Jazz concerts, Litquake events and museum exhibitions over the next 10 days.

Whew! Took me a while to find my way to your new thread Darryl, but here I am, here is my star, and here are plenty of interesting topics going on here too! No comments for now, just content to watch you all have your say.

Here is today's haul from City Lights:

Tyrant Memory by Horacio Castellanos Moya: This was at the top of my wish list, after I read and enjoyed his three earlier novels that have been translated into English, Dance with Snakes, Senselessness and The She-Devil in the Mirror. His latest book is a comic novel based in El Salvador in 1944, during the last days of the presidency of Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, a pro-Nazi dictator who survived a coup in April of that year, only to lose power after a general strike led by the military a month later. The main character is a wealthy socialite whose husband is in prison, while her son flees for his life. I'll have to read it to find out where the comedy lies in this seemingly grim story.

In the Castle of My Skin by George Lamming: The author is one of the best known writers who emigrated to the UK from the Caribbean after World War II, and his novel The Emigrants is widely considered to be a classic. This book is an autobiographical novel about Lamming's childhood in Barbados, before he emigrated to Trinidad and then to London in his early 20s.

Op Oloop by Juan Filloy: A classic work of Argentinian literature that was originally written in 1934 and published in English as part of Dalkey Archive's Latin American Literature Series, which is about a Finnish statistician living in Buenos Aires, whose life is meticulously regimented until a traffic delay leads to disruption of his schedule, with disastrous results.

Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala: Her Booker Prize winning novel (1975), which is set in colonial India in 1923 and is centered around a Englishwoman trapped in an oppressive marriage, who seeks solace in the palace of an Indian prince, to the chagrin of her husband and the community who supports him.

Vertical Motion by Can Xue: I hope that I'll like this collection of dreamlike stories set in modern China better than her novel Five Spice Street, which I was unable to finish several years ago. It was recently published by Open Letter at the University of Rochester, and has received several glowing reviews.

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward: I almost bought a signed copy of this book on Monday, but decided to get it after it was selected as a finalist for this year's National Book Award for Fiction. The setting is a small town on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and the characters are members of a poor African American family who are in the path of a devastating hurricane, and must rely on each other and their neighbors to survive the looming disaster.

Tonight No Poetry Will Serve: Poems 2007-2010 by Adrienne Rich: This collection was selected as a finalist for this year's National Book Award for poetry, and it deals with "{p}artings and reconciliations, solidarities and ruptures, trust and betrayal, and exposure and withdrawal", in a variety of settings.

Double Shadow by Carl Phillips: This collection is also an NBA poetry finalist, which examines the double shadow that a life casts forth, in which "risk and faintheartedness prove to have the power equally to rescue us from ourselves and to destroy us."

Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything by David Bellos: I nearly purchased this at Foyles last month, regretted not buying it or attending his talk there, and snatched it up after I saw it today. Bellos is the English translator of Georges Perec's masterpiece Life A User's Manual and the author of a biography about Perec. This book "ranges across the whole of human experience, from foreign films to philosophy, to show why translation is at the heart of what we do and who we are."

In Mad Love and War by Joy Harjo: This collection of poems won the William Carlos Williams Award, awarded by the Poetry Society of America for the best collection of poems published by a small press, non-profit, or university press. I bought this to accompany the book I purchased earlier this week, Soul Talk, Song Language: Conversations with Joy Harjo.

Darryl - Just out of curiosity, do you make multiple trips to particular bookstores on your vacations because you don't have time to cover the whole store in one go or does the stock change over that frequently, or....? I note that the first entry on today's list was at the top of your WL but you didn't purchase it on your first trip to City Lights. There are several stores around here that I go to frequently, though not within a matter of a couple of days, so I'm just wondering - and feel free to tell me to take a hike - I'm always so nosy about people's book habits :)

Hi Darryl - how funny that you bought Op Oloop today! That's one of the titles I purchased during Dalkey's Archive Sale this past summer, and I moved it from my New Book Drawer onto one of my shelves this afternoon. If you hadn't posted about their sale on your thread I never would've gone and purchased the book, so I said a little "hey there" in my head once it got moved. Feel any weird, Cheesehead-y vibes today? ;)

Wow, what a kerfuffle. On the new prize -- the one thing I like about it is the idea of throwing it open to ANY work published in the UK in a given year, regardless of the nationality. Otherwise, it sounds like a bunch of disgruntled elitists who rely on the Booker to boost their sales. I mean, I like Banville's writing, but there is a VAST difference between the novels he writes under his own name (would The Sea have sold as well as it had without the Booker?) As for The Infinities, it is SQUARELY aimed at people with a significant knowledge of classical mythology, or those who want to think they do; you won't understand more than 20% of this novel without having read extensively in this area already. So he's automatically excluding the vast majority of readers from fully understanding what he writes. Which is fine, but he can't have his cake and eat it too. The best novel is not always the most oblique/opaque/uber-literary. Difficulty in understanding the themes being explored does not always make a book better, except to those who cherish the idea that Great Literature must be hard for the hoi polloi to understand (and who kinda like it that way.) Take Wolf Hall -- that proved that a literary novel could be accessible.

Re the Guardian's alternative list -- some of them, like The Good Muslim, I would definitely have liked to see on that list. That was a great novel, far better than The Sisters Brothers, for instance. On the other hand, Anne Enright's latest was dreadfully pretentious.

I suspect if this new prize gets off the ground, there will be a lot of overlap.

Re the NBA, I had to roll my eyes at Laura Miller's comments in Salon. Ann Patchett's book was far from her best; I thought Binocular Vision was fabulous and if it was a choice between the two, I'd plump for the latter every time. And while The Submission was a good novel, it wasn't particularly "literary"; it and The Tiger's Wife would make very odd bedfellows. To be honest, I really disliked the latter -- I don't like being beaten over the head with a heavy object and instructed to "see this symbolism!!!" -- because I am not enamored of authors, however well they write, doing little dances to prove how smart they are.

On the non-fiction side, I was delighted to see The Swerve on the list. I just started reading the ARC I picked up at BookExpo, and am loving it. Admittedly, part of that is because its focus is on Poggio Bracciolini, booknapper/bookhunter extraordinaire and one of the top people on my most-overlooked in history list, but Greenblatt is an intelligent guy who can write and pay attention to the scholarly element.

>51 rebeccanyc: Thanks for that info about Radioactive, Rebecca. I'll have to look for it in the next week or so.

>52 LovingLit:, 54 Thanks, Megan and Ilana!

>56 katiekrug: Just out of curiosity, do you make multiple trips to particular bookstores on your vacations because you don't have time to cover the whole store in one go or does the stock change over that frequently, or....? I note that the first entry on today's list was at the top of your WL but you didn't purchase it on your first trip to City Lights.

Good question! Going to City Lights, in particular, is similar to visiting a chocolate shop filled with far more delicacies than one could hope to try at one time:



I'll usually browse a few sections at one visit, and stop when I've acquired an armful of books (8-12+), or have run out of shelves to browse, which usually happens at the end of my vacation. New releases generally arrive there on Monday or Tuesday, so I'll go back there then, especially if there are books that I'm looking for. This Tuesday books by two of my favorite authors are being released, Nanjing Requiem by Ha Jin, and Zone One by Colson Whitehead, so I'll certainly go back there that morning. I'm friendly with one of the guys that has worked there for many years, who is also African American and is an avid reader and jazz buff, and I like to chat with him about books and jazz when the store opens, before it gets busy.

And, as Kerry said, "browsing in a well stocked bookstore is one of life's great pleasures."

>57 LauraBrook: Ha! I did not notice any Cheesehead-y vibes, Laura. I happened to see Op Oloop when I was browsing the Translated Literature section at City Lights, and remembered that I did want to read it.

>58 Chatterbox: I'm also glad that the new prize will include all English language books published in the UK. However, that would seem to add a lot more eligible books to the list of candidates, possibly more than any one person or set of judges could be expected to read in a single year. I'll be interested to see how the judges decide what books are eligible for the prize, and if there are any grumbles from the authors whose books are invariably left off of the list of finalists for either award.

I'm very eager to read The Good Muslim, The Visiting Angel, Waterline and Pure from the Guardian longlist. I'll probably read those books by year's end, and I may also read the five other books from that list that I don't already own.

Thanks for indulging my nosiness, Darryl.

A note of caution re Nanjing Requiem and Zone One, Darryl. I'm currently reading the former (an ARC) and while interesting (esp since I know something about the incident), I'm finding it to be an oddly distancing narrative, with about 1/3 read. I'm finding it hard to keep going with it, and not because of the subject. Zone One is a book I almost got an ARC of, but a few people who did didn't think it came anywhere close to Sag Harbor. Might be worth sitting down and looking through them to decide before buying -- although I suppose if they are both absolute faves, it may not matter as much whether they are good books in their own right.

#59 and 61 - I keep hearing good things about Sag Harbor. The Intuitionist is in my top ten novels of all time, but the only other book of his that I've read is Apex Hides the Hurt, which was somewhat dreadful. I had planned to read John Henry Days very soon, but perhaps I should read Sag Harbor first. Do either of you have an opinion on which is better - Sag Harbor or John Henry Days?

Darryl--I've had In the Castle of My Skin on my WL for ages, so I can't wait to hear what you think of it.

Also, re The Bone People, I tried to read it years ago, but couldn't get into it. I just tried again (have now finished it and will review soon), and it's one of my best books of the year so far.

Cushla, Rebecca and Lindsacl--I hated The Emperor's Children too (and another of Messud's books, the title of which I can't remember), but I was blown away by her novel The Last Life. If you can ever bring yourself to try another book by her, I hope you'll give that one a try.

>60 katiekrug: You're welcome, Katie.

>61 Chatterbox: I exaggerated a wee bit in my comments about those two authors. Ha Jin is one of my top two or three living American novelists, along with Maxine Hong Kingston. I've liked two of the three books I've read by Colson Whitehead, namely The Colossus of New York and The Intuitionist, whereas I didn't care for Apex Hides the Hurt. However, he isn't in the same league as Ha Jin.

I definitely want to read Nanjing Requiem, because of the author and the topic. Several years ago I read The Rape of Nanking by the late author Iris Chang, which was compelling and horrifying, so a novel set during the massacre is of great interest to me. I would be willing to wait for others' opinions on Zone One, though.

I have to remember to read the memoir The Woman Who Could Not Forget: Iris Chang Before and Beyond The Rape of Nanking, which was written by her mother Ying-Ying Chang. Ms Chang developed a severe case of depression after she was attacked by right wing groups in Japan and the US after she wrote The Rape of Nanking, which acutely worsened while she was researching her next book, and took her own life soon afterward. The other book of hers that I've read, The Chinese in America: A Narrative History is also outstanding and eye-opening; both books earn five stars from me.

>62 DorsVenabili: I own but haven't yet read John Henry Days or Sag Harbor, so I'm of no help to you.

>63 arubabookwoman: Deborah, I highly doubt that I'll read In the Castle of My Skin before next year, although I'll probably read The Emigrants for the fourth quarter Reading Globally theme on Migration and Immigration in November.

I'm glad to hear that you liked The Bone People. I tried to read it once but got bogged down in its language, but I'll give it another go in the next year or two.

I don't think you could pay me to read The Emperor's Children now.

kerfluffle. As far as book awards of any kind, While I give them a respectful nod..
And usually look at the lists of chosen, I just don't use them to choose my own reading.
I choose much more randomly and moodily.

I have found that LT has influenced my reading much more than I would like, and not
necessarily in a good way. I am drawn to too many books, and tend to want to read them
as soon as acquired .. instead of reading books that I sought out on my own. Lack of discipline
for sure!

As far as book awards of any kind, While I give them a respectful nod..And usually look at the lists of chosen, I just don't use them to choose my own reading. I choose much more randomly and moodily.

Sigh. I hear you, Kath. I feel as though it was a largely a waste of time to read this year's Booker Prize longlist, as the majority of books were ones that I wouldn't have otherwise chosen to read and it kept me from making a dent in my TBR pile and reading books that I'm sure I would have enjoyed much more. I'm a bit burned out on prize books at the moment, and I'll probably spend the rest of the year, and most of 2012, reading books that interest me the most at that moment, or ones I've been meaning to get to.

I'll have to check, but I think I've failed miserably on my goal of reading "75 books from the shelves", and I've definitely bought far more books than I've read—again. I'll try to do better next year (no guffaws from the audience, please!).

I have found that LT has influenced my reading much more than I would like, and not necessarily in a good way. I am drawn to too many books, and tend to want to read them
as soon as acquired .. instead of reading books that I sought out on my own. Lack of discipline for sure!

Interesting comment. Hmm...although I've probably added a hundred or more books to my wish list that were recommended by other LTers, I've probably only purchased and read a couple of dozen of them, and I've rarely been disappointed by any of them. The vast majority of books I buy and read continue to come from my usual sources: random finds at favorite bookshops (particularly City Lights, London Review Bookshop and Book Culture), reviews in the Guardian and other media, literary prize finalists, and my increasingly out of control library.

I've been reading The War of the End of the World by Mario Vargas Llosa off and on since last Saturday, and it's as good as Rebecca has said. My copy (a Penguin edition from 1997 that I bought in a secondhand bookstore in Berkeley years ago) is 568 pages long, but it has tiny print and the book seems closer to 800-900 pages in length. With 200 pages to go I'll probably finish it tonight or on Monday, and I anticipate that it will end up as the best novel that I've read this year.

Straight into the TBR forest before you have even finished it Darryl but I must say that I'll be looking for a more user friendly version. Find myself more and more put off by small print, font that is difficult on the eye and unwieldy book sizes. The larger versions of many novels and thrillers released usually earlier than the more standard versions are not at all my bag.

>68 PaulCranswick: According to Amazon, the Faber and Faber (UK) paperback edition of The War of the End of the World is 768 pages in length, so I would assume that it's much more user friendly on the eye than my US paperback. I looked at the latest US paperback edition of the book last week at City Lights, but it's essentially identical to my copy (576 pages versus 568 pages).

Yep noticed that the Picador only added 8 pages when the book was added to my hitlist. Will certainly scour for a larger print version. Encourages one's reading if we look like we are making progress pages wise as well as reducing trips to the optician.

Right. I've found it a bit frustrating that I've read so few pages of my two tomes this week, this book and Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire, which is similar in length and in its tiny print. I've been on vacation since last Saturday, but I haven't finished a book in over a week.

65: I have found that LT has influenced my reading much more than I would like, and not necessarily in a good way.
I've found LT to be a generally positive influence. I add books to my wishlist when I see mentions, but rarely buy books until I've seen multiple positive reviews. Where I've been disappointed is in group reads, but this is mostly because I use these to expand my horizons, and instead I confirm that I like my horizons where they are.

66: I've definitely bought far more books than I've read
I had aspirations this year to chip away at books on my shelves, and to a small extent I have, but I've also created new piles on the floor. Maybe I should set a specific goal next year, e.g. every third book must be from the shelves, but I fear I'll devise a loophole.

BTW, I'm reading The Emperor of All Maladies, and it's fascinating, though its 475 pages are going to set me back in the book quota department.

65: & 72: Interesting to think about how LT has affected my reading. Back in the days when there were small independent bookstores in town, I was pretty fortunate to be able to walk in and pick out some really great books by new authors. For example, I read Ellen Foster by Kay Gibbons when it first came out. Long before it became a popular book.
Enter the big book chains and the marketing gods and most of what is pushed is the chaff rather than the wheat.

In some ways LT has replaced my now nonexistent local independent bookstore. Browsing what other people are reading, their reviews, and comments help me to find books I might otherwise have missed. Then again....I have come across a few "turkeys" along the way too.

>73 tangledthread:: In some ways LT has replaced my now nonexistent local independent bookstore ooh, I like that!

Darryl you said l I'll have to check, but I think I've failed miserably on my goal of reading "75 books from the shelves", and I've definitely bought far more books than I've read—again. I'll try to do better next year (no guffaws from the audience, please!).

Sorry... I have to LOL. I have failed miserably at that as well ...which is partly why I sometimes feel like fleeing from LT

I just think LT has me wanting to read more books than .. is reasonable for me.
My choices always depend on my mood, and frankly.. if I want to read nothing but fluffyfluff I will.. but sometimes a comment or two about my choices just tick me off..That isn't fun. I too, sort of iss browsing and finding books that way and sometimes with that by tbr pile was smaller. Thre are days that I just don't feel like reading.. and so I don't. But I sort of feel as if I have to explain myself if I don't, sometimes? Dunno. unimportant.

Have a wonderful Sunday, Darryl!

I love your picture: Procession of Maharao Ram Singh II of Kota

Hi Darryl! I had The Emperor's Children on my wishlist for a while, then took it off when I read a bunch of negative comments. Then saw it on sale at a bookstore I like just the other day and figured "what the heck" because the writeup on the sleeve appealed to me. Good marketing I guess. I'm in no big rush to get to it, but who knows? maybe it'll end up appealing to me after all.

LT is definitely a big influence in my life, as far as reading choices go, as far a socializing and how I spend much of my time, but from the get-go, I found that the TIOLI attitude suited me perfectly, and so I don't feel in the least bit guilty when I choose to "Leave It". Which goes for being hit by book bullets (much less of that than when I joined at first) and putting aside books on my TBR. Actually, scratch that last bit, because yes, LT definitely lead me astray with so many interesting reading choices that I wouldn't have known about otherwise. But I'm very happy about the quality of people I've met in this group and the positive exchanges we've had on an amazingly broad range of topics. Sometimes I don't feel like participating, and then I take a day off guilt-free. But my biggest problem is trying to stay up to date afterward... still struggling with the "Leave It" attitude as far as that goes! :-)

65: I have found that LT has influenced my reading much more than I would like, and not necessarily in a good way.

I love what LT has done for my reading, or more specifically this 75er group. I can pick and choose among readers whose tastes closely mirror my own. The only problem for me is the number of books now on my shelves with more and more books that look too good to pass up being added all the time. But that's a good problem to have if you're a reader :)

I find that LT has added books to my reading target list, or bumped some of them higher on the list. On the other hand, it's not going to influence my judgment of what I read -- there will always be books I enjoy that others loathe and vice versa. So I'm less swayed by what others think of a book than how they describe it, the subject matter, the author, etc. Only the experience of reading a book myself really guides me.

I'm not big on group reads, because I prefer to pick books up when the mood strikes me and not feel under much pressure to read a certain list of books, especially in a set time period. For instance, I might reach out and pick up something that's been hanging around for years, or a book that I've already re-read on multiple occasions.

Re the Nanking massacre, if you haven't stumbled over it already, I highly recommend the quasi-documentary "Nanking", which features John Rabe and Minnie Vautrin, the latter the de facto central figure of Ha Jin's novel. The producer was inspired to develop the concept after reading Iris Chang's obit and then her book; it pulls together a narrative based on letters, diaries and other documents of the era, along with all kinds of footage; it was featured at Sundance. Very memorable.

Well said Suzanne -- my choices have broadened hugely. I think my taste has also altered a little in that, for example, I've really become quite absorbed in dystopic fiction and has also made me more open to historic fiction. The first I think because I am finding the genre thought-provoking and because the attempt, even when it fails, feels like a worthwhile 'exercise of the imagination' - we imagine things first, after all, and then manifest them -- and second because I have been guided to some books that are truly excellent.

I have always read very broadly... in fact, I have never read as much fluff as I have read since LT
came on my radar. Partly is is due to stressors/mood.

Maybe the moral of the story is : "too many books, too little time"

Hi, Darryl! Interesting conversations going on here.

72 Where I've been disappointed is in group reads, but this is mostly because I use these to expand my horizons, and instead I confirm that I like my horizons where they are.

I can relate to that!

75 I just think LT has me wanting to read more books than .. is reasonable for me. . . I too, sort of iss browsing and finding books that way . . .

I'm feeling a little of that too. Right now I'm feeling a bit bogged down with titles I'm trying to read, feel I should get to, etc. And I don't impulse buy books like I used to, just based on my own gut feelings. Funny, I'm reading (actually listening to) a book that I didn't find via LT -- just put a hold on it on a whim on the library website and downloaded it when it was available. I'm really enjoying it, and it's reminded me how important it is to sometimes chuck the recommendations and TBR list and just go with a hunch about a book that looks good. (And -- Kath -- I think I just wrote on my thread that I thought it was one you'd like -- in eye-reading form, of course -- there go those recommendations again!)

Whether I follow them or not, I like the recommendations factor on LT. It's very interesting to gauge the reading tastes of my fellow biblioholics as a guide to how to spend my finite time resources.

>83 LovingLit: Maybe the moral of the story is : "too many books, too little time"

exactly, Megan!

>85 richardderus:. Whether I follow them or not, I like the recommendations factor on LT.

Yes, I like that feature too. And I like that you can see why they recommend certain titles. If the recommendation is based on a list of books that I groaned through, then I know to stay away. So the "recommendations" feature can work both ways!

Breaking news: The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes is the winner of the 2011 Booker Prize.

>88 kidzdoc: ...oh goody...?

>89 richardderus: I'm thrilled that it won, as it was my favorite of the 12 longlisted books I've read so far, and easily the best of the shortlisted books, IMO. I still maintain that it is the best novel I've read that was published this year, and I suspect that I'll enjoy it more with future readings. I brought my copy with me to San Francisco, and I'll probably read it again in the next day or two.

I think it's fair to say that the "literary establishment" and most of the readers who follow the Booker closely are also pleased, and greatly relieved, that the Barnes came out on top.

The Guardian already has a 10+ minute Books Podcast about the winner, the other shortlisted books, the books that the members felt should have been on the shortlist, and this "bad year for the Booker":

Guardian Books podcast: Barnes wins Booker

Thanks for posting that Barnes won, Darryl. I only read two or three of this year's "Bookers," but I did very much enjoy The Sense of an Ending. I will also reread it, and quite possibly more than once.

Early this morning I finished The War of the End of the World by Mario Vargas Llosa, which gets my vote as the best novel I've read this year (it was published in 1981, so The Sense of an Ending remains my favorite 2011 novel). Despite its length (568 very dense pages, which made it seem half again as long) it was captivating and I never lost interest in it. I won't do it now, due to all of the other books I have yet to read, but I would be happy to start it again right now.

I've started, and will soon finish, We the Animals by Justin Torres, a coming of age novel written by a seven year old boy who has two older brothers, a white mother, and a Puerto Rican father from Brooklyn who is intermittently a presence in the boys' lives. It's good so far, and it's exactly what I needed after The War of the End of the World, a quick and engaging short novel that serves as a small piece of dessert after an exquisite seven course dinner.

I attended last night's fascinating conversation between Michael Ondaatje and Michael Chabon, in which Mr Ondaatje read two excerpts from his latest novel, The Cat's Table, and spoke about the book, the craft of writing, his childhood in Sri Lanka and the UK, and his non-literary influences, including jazz and collages. I took some notes, including several of his quotes, and I'll post a "review" of the talk later today or tomorrow.

I stayed up late last night and woke up early this morning, so this old man needs a nap. Back later...

Ahh such a relief, Darryl!! Sense of an Ending won the Booker. Have a great nap!

>92 kidzdoc: Wow that sounds like a fantastic talk to be present at! I look forward to your review/notes on it.

I had seen The Sense of an Ending around on LT and when I saw it at the bookshop I had to resist buying it as I was going on familiarity and nice cover alone! I might have to go back and get it now as I have a thing about Booker winners......

Catching up on older messages...

>72 qebo: (qebo)

I've found LT to be a generally positive influence. I add books to my wishlist when I see mentions, but rarely buy books until I've seen multiple positive reviews. Where I've been disappointed is in group reads, but this is mostly because I use these to expand my horizons, and instead I confirm that I like my horizons where they are.

LT has certainly been a positive influence on me, as well. It's helped me to broaden my literary horizons, as several LTers have introduced me to new books and authors (e.g., The Sea and Poison by Shusaku Endo, from lilisin's recommendation on Club Read). I don't always wait for multiple positive reviews before buying a book, particularly if the book seems especially interesting (again, lilisin's review is a good example of this). A single negative review won't always turn me away from a book, as several books I've enjoyed recently have been panned by others. However, multiple negative reviews from LTers (e.g., the recent comments about The Emperor's Children) will almost always keep me from buying a particular book.

I've definitely bought far more books than I've read
I had aspirations this year to chip away at books on my shelves, and to a small extent I have, but I've also created new piles on the floor.

I did the math last night; so far 56 of the 144 books I've read so far this year were purchased or received before 1/1/11, and 88 were obtained this year. So, I might be able to achieve my "75 from the shelves" goal for the year, but I suspect that I'll fall a bit short unless I read some older poetry collections

I'm glad that you're enjoying The Emperor of All Maladies, which was one of my favorite books from last year.

>73 tangledthread: (tangledthread)

Back in the days when there were small independent bookstores in town, I was pretty fortunate to be able to walk in and pick out some really great books by new authors. Enter the big book chains and the marketing gods and most of what is pushed is the chaff rather than the wheat.

Exactly. Atlanta is largely bereft of good independent bookstores, or at least the ones that feature quality literary works and nonfiction books from smaller presses, university presses, and lesser known writers, along with foreign fiction. That's the main reason why I go on book buying spurts whenever I go to SF, NYC or London and visit my favorite indies there. I also enjoy reading handwritten comment cards about the books that the bookstores' employees enjoyed the most, especially at City Lights.

It seems to me that the Borders stores in Atlanta were more similar to indie bookstores when they first opened, featuring local authors and musicians, and displaying books by new and little known writers. This seemed to last for a couple of years, before the stores became less unique and more identical to each other.

In some ways LT has replaced my now nonexistent local independent bookstore. Browsing what other people are reading, their reviews, and comments help me to find books I might otherwise have missed. Then again....I have come across a few "turkeys" along the way too.

I partially agree. Some of the books I buy do come from LT recommendations, such as Nadja by André Breton, which I bought at City Lights yesterday after reading steven03tx's review of it on Club Read earlier this month. (City Lights has an entire bookcase dedicated to Surrealism, and I found Nadja there.) However, most of the books I buy come from non-LT sources (prize lists, discoveries at bookstores like City Lights, experience with books written by a known author, and reviews in the Guardian and elsewhere).

I've definitely read some "turkeys" that I've picked from the shelves, especially at City Lights. However, I've had far more hits than misses there, overall.

>75 mckait: (mckait)

I just think LT has me wanting to read more books than .. is reasonable for me.

I agree. I do add a lot of books to my (Amazon) wish list based on LT recommendations, which has exceeded 200 books at times, but I only buy a small minority of them and ultimately cull the list significantly before Christmas.

My choices always depend on my mood, and frankly.. if I want to read nothing but fluffyfluff I will.. but sometimes a comment or two about my choices just tick me off..That isn't fun. I too, sort of iss browsing and finding books that way and sometimes with that by tbr pile was smaller. Thre are days that I just don't feel like reading.. and so I don't. But I sort of feel as if I have to explain myself if I don't, sometimes? Dunno. unimportant.

No one should ever be criticized by the books they choose to read, or if they decide to do something other than read, and none of us should have to explain our choices to others. (Of course, good natured ribbing ("four pistols and a hanky") is always welcome here.) Feel free to call me out publicly or send me a PM if I ever do this (and that goes for everyone else). Sometimes I wonder if I come across as a book snob, especially when I become a bit passionate about a particular book that I love or loathe.

>78 Smiler69: (Smiler69)

Good for you that you decided to buy The Emperor's Children and make your own judgment about it, Ilana. I'll be curious to see what you think of it.

LT has been a big influence in my life, as well, especially since 2009. Sometimes, though, I spend too much time here, and as a result I've neglected some other things that I should spend more time on (e.g., reading medical journals, exercising regularly). I'll almost certainly cut back a bit next year, although I'll definitely continue to be an active member here and in the other groups I'm involved with on LT.

>79 brenzi: (brenzi)

The only problem for me is the number of books now on my shelves with more and more books that look too good to pass up being added all the time. But that's a good problem to have if you're a reader :)

As I stare at the three stacks of books I've acquired over the past 1½ weeks and think of the mega stacks of unread books back home, I think this is a problem for me. I'm sure that I have over 1000 books that I've bought over the past 10+ years that I am eager to read, and buying roughly twice as many books than I can hope to read in one year means that it is becoming less and less likely that I will get to those books from years past.

>80 Chatterbox: (Chatterbox)

I'm not big on group reads, because I prefer to pick books up when the mood strikes me and not feel under much pressure to read a certain list of books, especially in a set time period.

I will almost certainly swear off of group reads of particular books from now on, after doing a horrible job on the ones that I led (The Plague and Life A User's Manual) and the ones I promised to participate in. I will continue to participate in collective reads based on themes (Reading Globally), authors (Author Theme Reads) and literary prizes (Orange, Booker, etc.), as they give me enough flexibility to read a book of my choice.

Thanks for the mention of the documentary about the Nanking Massacre. I've just found it on Amazon and have added it to my wish list.

City Lights didn't have Nanjing Requiem available when I stopped there yesterday morning, so I'll have to go back for it later this week.

>81 sibylline: (sibyx)

Hmm...I don't know if my taste in books has broadened as a result of joining LT. The sources I mentioned above (City Lights finds, reviews in the Guardian and literary prizes) have had much more to do with the genres of books that I read, and I still avoid mysteries, SF, YA, etc. for the most part.

I'm glad you finally had a chance to read The War of the End of the World and enjoyed it so much!

>82 mckait: (mckait)

I have always read very broadly...

Compared to you and many others, I think I read less broadly. I don't see that changing any time soon, though; I have way too many books on my shelves and many many more that I'd like to read to do too much exploration in other genres. Having said that, I would still like to read books by China Miéville and Octavia E. Butler in the near future.

>83 LovingLit: (Ireadthereforeiam)

Maybe the moral of the story is : "too many books, too little time"

I'm tempted to put that on my epitaph.

>84 tymfos: (tymfos)

Right now I'm feeling a bit bogged down with titles I'm trying to read, feel I should get to, etc.

Same here. Now that the Booker Prize season is over, I'll go back to reading books that I want to read. I would like to get to the one book I haven't read from this year's longlist, Far to Go by Alison Pick, although I may save that for next year.

>85 richardderus: (grumpyoldmanfromLongIsland)

Whether I follow them or not, I like the recommendations factor on LT. It's very interesting to gauge the reading tastes of my fellow biblioholics as a guide to how to spend my finite time resources.

I haven't used or tried this feature often. Thanks for the mention; I'll look at it more closely from now on.

Darryl I'm sure that I have over 1000 books that I've bought over the past 10+ years that I am eager to read, and buying roughly twice as many books than I can hope to read in one year means that it is becoming less and less likely that I will get to those books from years past.

See, that's one thing that I mean. I used to buy enough books to have a nice sized TBR and a coule of shelves of not yet read. I have bought too many books in the last few years, and am losing hope of getting to some that I have had! :) Of course I don't mind good natured ribbing.. that's just fun..

I did the math last night; so far 56 of the 144 books I've read so far this year were purchased or received before 1/1/11, and 88 were obtained this year. So, I might be able to achieve my "75 from the shelves" goal for the year, but I suspect that I'll fall a bit short unless I read some older poetry collections

See? why should you read something that isn't 'calling out' to you for some challenge? Even if it is only a challenge from yourownself, to resolve a dilemma that you might not have had, were it not for all the books that hit your radar?

Believe me, I am not anti-LT... I love LT, but I recognize that I have allowed it to put some pressure
on me when it comes to reading... my own weakness, to be sure...

96: Sometimes I wonder if I come across as a book snob

Not at all. You come across as caring about books. You do not remotely have a snob's attitude of superiority.

Though I've become inclined toward a theory that you step through the wardrobe into Narnia to read books, while no time at all elapses here.

>91 lit_chick: I'm glad that you also enjoyed The Sense of an Ending, Nancy. I'll probably also re-read it at least once more after I give it a second go this week.

>93 vancouverdeb: I did have a good nap, woke up briefly, went back to sleep, woke up again at roughly 2:30 am, and now feel sleepy again at the 6 o'clock hour. Part of me wants to go back to sleep again, but I might be better off getting up and out a bit early. However, I'm very grateful that I don't have to think about going to work today!

>94 LovingLit: I had seen The Sense of an Ending around on LT and when I saw it at the bookshop I had to resist buying it as I was going on familiarity and nice cover alone!

Interestingly, Julian Barnes commented on the appearance of his book during his acceptance speech last night:

"Those of you who have seen my book, whatever you think of its contents, will probably agree it is a beautiful object. And if the physical book, as we've come to call it, is to resist the challenge of the ebook, it has to look like something worth buying, worth keeping."

The UK hardback edition, as I had mentioned on Ilana's thread, is absolutely gorgeous, and it would probably win my vote for the most aesthetically pleasing book I've purchased this year. The new US edition is tasteful and appealing, but nowhere near as captivating.

>97 rebeccanyc: Thanks, Rebecca! Your comments about The War of the End of the World made me decide to read it ahead of The Green House. I only wish I had read it sooner.

Continuing the topic of too many books, here is yesterday's haul from City Lights:

Good Offices by Evelio Rosero: A newly translated novel from the author of The Armies, which won the 2009 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, which is set in a Catholic church in Bogotá, Colombia, and features a hunchback, a corrupt priest and three witchlike widows, whose ceaseless efforts to feed the poor in the neighborhood have eroded their collective humanity. While the priest is away a new father takes his place, a drunkard whose angelic singing captivates and inspires all of them.

The Sojourn by Andrew Krivak: This novel set in the trenches of Austria-Hungary during World War I was selected as a finalist for this year's National Book Award for Fiction. The author is a fellow Rutgers alumnus, and the book was published by Bellevue Literary Press, which specializes in literary works about medicine and science, so I bought it to support my alma mater and one of my favorite small publishers.

Before the End, After the Beginning by Dagoberto Glib: A collection of short stories by this renowned Chicano author, which were written after he suffered a stroke in 2009. The stories have a common theme of existence and identity, while confronting issues of mortality and physical limitation brought upon by his own illness.

Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje: I didn't realize until Tuesday that Ondaatje had written a novel about Buddy Bolden, the legendary early 20th century New Orleans cornet player who was one of the pioneers of jazz before his career was cut short by an episode of acute psychosis at the age of 30.

Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje: Mr Ondaatje spoke about this Sri Lankan family memoir during Tuesday's talk, particularly in comparison to The Cat's Table, which made me want to read it ASAP.

Nadja by André Breton: The "first and perhaps best Surrealist romance ever written", which describes the author's relationship with a Parisian girl in the 1920s. As I mentioned earlier, I bought this after reading steven03tx's review of it in Club Read earlier this month.

Boundaries by Elizabeth Nunez: I've heard of this author and her work, particularly her novel Prospero's Daughter, but haven't read anything by her. The main character, Anna, is a sheltered young Caribbean American immigrant, whose position as the head of a specialized imprint at a major publishing house is threatened by an upstart, who accuses Anna of not understanding American culture in general, and African American culture in particular. Anna is then forced to confront the upstart, and learn more about her new country and her place in it as an immigrant.

Handing One Another Along: Literature and Social Reflection by Robert Coles: This was another book from my wish list, in which the author, a psychiatrist and professor at Harvard Medical School who won the Pulitzer Prize for Children of Crisis, "explores how character, courage, and human and moral understanding can be fostered by reflecting on the lives of others, through great literature and art", and is based on his Literature of Social Reflection course at Harvard.

Oh and I have some Octavia Butler books languishing right next to my chair!

>99 mckait: (mckait)

See? why should you read something that isn't 'calling out' to you for some challenge? Even if it is only a challenge from yourownself, to resolve a dilemma that you might not have had, were it not for all the books that hit your radar?

Right. Maybe I won't make a big deal about reading "75 books from the shelves" this year, although I do need to cut back my book acquisitions once this week ends. My reading output usually slows down significantly in the last two months of the year, as we get into our busy season at work, so I might not be able to reach that goal anyway.

Believe me, I am not anti-LT... I love LT, but I recognize that I have allowed it to put some pressure on me when it comes to reading... my own weakness, to be sure...

Kath, you would be one of the last people I would describe as being anti-LT, considering that you have twice as many threads as I do!

>100 qebo: (qebo)

Though I've become inclined toward a theory that you step through the wardrobe into Narnia to read books, while no time at all elapses here.

LOL! I wish that was true.

>103 mckait: I thought I had at least one book by Octavia E. Butler, but my LT library doesn't list any. Maybe on my Kindle?

Great haul Darryl - I think I've only got the Andre Breton but waiting on your positive reviews to put that right! The Andrew Krivak book The Sojourn (a lovely and much underused word by the way) looks especially interesting. There is a dearth of literature in translation looking at Austro-Hungary's participation in the missnamed Great War.

Atlanta is largely bereft of good independent bookstores, or at least the ones that feature quality literary works and nonfiction books from smaller presses, university presses, and lesser known writers, along with foreign fiction.

Too true. I miss the days before Borders expanded when the one store in town featured a university press collection right next to the new books. Sometimes I wonder if bookwise I'd be better off in a small university town that had at least one good bookstore.

This is only my second year on LT, and what I've noticed is a growing frustration at the lack of foreign (translated) fiction. My budget severely limits my book buying, and if it's not available via Baker & Taylor, my library won't have it.

On the other hand, I never lack for something to read, so I'm not complaining, just whining a bit.

Nice haul. I have to say I was disappointed with The Sojourn, for reasons I won't disclose so as not to spoil it for you, despite beautiful writing and an interesting plot. It wasn't clear to me why Bellevue published it, since it isn't about science or medicine.

Gawd Darryl...all of those books sound like more four-hankies-and-a-pistol reads...srsly dude just reading the *titles* makes me want to lie down with a cold compress on my eyes to take down the tear swelling.

Read Candide! Molto funny-oso, and still very hoity-toity, you book snob you. Or heck Ragtime is pretty jolly...well, not jolly exactly, but not damn good and depressing anyway.

When I lost over 2000 books in the move, at first I was desolated. Now I see it as the Universe pruning my TBR down from "Not in three lifetimes" to "Not in this lifetime." Since then, I've been on the catch-and-release program, and I have to say it's a huge relief to me.

Richard - that's the funniest post I've read all week. There's a special award coming your way in the mail.

When I lost over 2000 books in the move, at first I was desolated. Now I see it as the Universe pruning my TBR down from "Not in three lifetimes" to "Not in this lifetime."

Some years ago, I lost a bunch of books when my parents' house flooded, and I tend to look at it the same way now. If I had those books on top of all the books I have now . . . I would probably need to build an addition to my house.

Seriously, I decided that the book madness was getting out of hand when I momentarily considered getting rid of my piano to make room for more bookshelves.

>110 Nickelini: *sweeping bow*

I live to amuse.

*teaches dog to sniff mail for bombs*

Thanks for visiting my thread! I sure hope between a few of us, we can increase the popularity of The Twin. Fabulous read!

Great haul of books that you got from the City of Lights! I'm hoping to finish up the year reading just off the shelf book/ library books. We'll see how successful I am at doing that. And rest eary The Sense of an Ending is on the shelf.

>112 richardderus: I live to laugh, so its no wonder we get on

>101 kidzdoc: books are so beautiful, I'm confident they wont become obselete.

Interesting discussions here.

Re The War of the End of the World message 67 My copy (a Penguin edition from 1997 that I bought in a secondhand bookstore in Berkeley years ago) is 568 pages long, but it has tiny print and the book seems closer to 800-900 pages in length.
I hear you! I'm glad you were able to finish it and enjoyed it so much, Darryl. I think I have a newer edition, but it is the same length and has the same tiny print. I can't even say I'm halfway through, but I've seen so many enthusiastic endorsements of it that I'm sure it will be worth it (eventually).

The puertorriqueño-cubano author Piri Thomas died on Monday, at the age of 83. He grew up on the rough streets of Spanish Harlem in NYC, and was best known for his 1967 memoir Down These Mean Streets, a no holds barred look at the horrors and hardships of inner city life, which was written, in part, while he served a seven year jail sentence for wounding a police officer during an armed robbery. I read this as a teenager, and thought it was brilliant.

Thomas also wrote two novels, Savior, Savior Hold My Hand and Seven Long Times, a short story collection, Stories from El Barrio, and poetry, which he set to music.

New York Times: Piri Thomas, Spanish Harlem Author, Dies at 83

My book group read Down These Mean Streets, but I think I must've skipped it because I remember nothing at all about it and it sounds like something I'd like. Have to dredge it out.

Breaking news: The Libyan transitional government reports that former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi has been captured after a NATO air strike and killed. The White House and 10 Downing Street have not issued any statements about these reports yet.

>106 PaulCranswick: Paul, The Sojourn is a relatively short novel (my copy has 192 pages), so it should be a quick read. I might read it as early as this week.

>107 markon: Sometimes I wonder if bookwise I'd be better off in a small university town that had at least one good bookstore.

It depends on the town, I think. My friends in Madison, home of the University of Wisconsin's main campus, have yet to find a good independent bookstore after Canterbury Books closed. Their favorite "local" indie bookstore is Prairie Lights Books in Iowa City, the home of the University of Iowa, but it's not close to them.

It's surprising to me that Madison doesn't have several general independent bookstores, since it is a relatively large town (>200 qebo:,000 residents) with a major university and a liberal and highly educated population that is home to several renowned writers, most notably Lorrie Moore.

>108 rebeccanyc: Thanks for that info about The Sojourn, Rebecca. I had assumed that one of its topics was based on illness or death, since it is published by Bellevue Literary Press.

>109 richardderus: just reading the *titles* makes me want to lie down with a cold compress on my eyes to take down the tear swelling.

You are judging my light and fluffy reads too harshly, sir. To prove that you are wrong about my choice of books, I'll mail the ones I've finished to you over the next month or two.

Since then, I've been on the catch-and-release program, and I have to say it's a huge relief to me.

Prepare to catch a few hundred books from me, then.

>111 tymfos: Seriously, I should start to wean my library from the books I've read and don't plan to read again, or ones that I almost certainly won't read.

>113 vancouverdeb: Thanks, Deb. I'll probably make one more trip to City Lights between now and Saturday, and after that I probably won't buy any more books this year. I did pre-order 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami from Amazon earlier this month, and should receive it by early next month (it will be released in the US on Tuesday, and it came out in the UK two days ago).

>114 LovingLit: books are so beautiful, I'm confident they won't become obsolete.

I couldn't agree more, Megan. However, I'm not sure that a majority of younger readers share this opinion.

>115 AnneDC: Is this the cover of your copy of The War of the End of the World, Anne?



That is the copy I saw at City Lights last week, which is essentially identical to the older copy that I have:



>117 richardderus: It's been at least 35 years since I read Down These Mean Streets, and I haven't read anything else by Piri Thomas. I'll plan to read it sometime next year.

British Prime Minister David Cameron and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon have just finished making speeches about Gaddafi's death, and CNN has been showing cell phone videos of what appears to be Gaddafi's bloodied body, so the initial reports do seem to be confirmed.

* searches for light and fluffy reads in this thread* LoL

Darryl how many wrongs justify a right? There are many many many with cause not to regret his demise but the distasteful sight of his bloodied body being dragged through the streets that latterly disowned him is frankly a cause of concern that those replacing him will not prove much of an improvement. Don't think that he will be mourned too much especially to those victims of his own callousness but must humanity debase itself so frightfully in sight of achieving all it sought?

PaulCranswick - yes! You said it well.

Thanks for letting us know about Piri Thomas. I hadn't thought about him in years. When I was very young - maybe 12, since you say it came out in 1967 - I read a copy of Down These Mean Streets I found in our house. Now, it seems completely amazing to me that one of my parents must have bought this book, as although they were big readers I don't remember them reading much in the way of "hard life" sorts of books. At the time, I found it a guilty pleasure - all that swearing! I was a very very innocent kid, so some of the sexual references went right over my head, but I knew the people in the book were "bad" and I got a real frisson from reading it. It was the first time I knew books could be about things like that.

I too read Down These Mean Streets as a teenager and was very affected by it, as well as by Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown which I read at about the same time and which is his story of life in Harlem as a young man a decade or so earlier.

And the reddish cover is the cover on my copy of The War of the End of the World; I also have a remaindered hard cover copy which I bought years and years ago but I sprung for the paperback when I wanted to read it because the hard cover was SO heavy.

As for Qadafi, I shed no tears for him. Aside from what he did to his own people, at the time of the Lockerbie crash I worked with someone who had grown up with one of the people killed. I agree in a perfect world, people wouldn't stoop to his level, but it's not a perfect world.

>119 kidzdoc: I ain't worried. In the end, it'll just be too hard to let them go!

>120 mckait: Amen, sister woman!

I am not going to shed any tears for Qadaffi or the manner of his death; I don't think we can be at all surprised when citizens of a country devoid of a rule of law or a civil society resort to "street justice".

I'm far from convinced that what will follow will prove that much better for the world, or even many of Libya's citizens. I'm not even that upbeat about Egypt, however, so factor that in...

I may disagree with you on the absolute merits of Barnes's book (vs the relative merits in this year's nominees), but when I opened the box and saw the wonderful design of the book, with everything in so much harmony, from the paper's tint to the shape of the letters, etc., I was wowed. It is indeed a work of beauty and I'm v.v. glad I ordered the UK edition.

Read Running in the Family when it first came out. To me, it read as a classic coming of age family memoir, just set in an exotic locale and with equally exotic tales. Aside from the writing, which is unique and distinctive (I have moments when I like his style; moments when it gets on my last nerve), I wasn't that wowed. Exotica alone can't carry a narrative or transform it into something better. But that's just me...

I'm in Berkeley at the moment, attending a play at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, "How to Add a New Book to the Bible" which is quite good so far (we're at the intermission at the moment). The first act was "highlighted" by a brief 3.9 magnitude earthquake that was centered 2 miles SE of Berkeley, which caused a brief but very noticeable quake that lasted for less than 5 seconds. Nothing fell, no one was hurt, and the play went on after a minute or two.

Ah California...oh no no no.

Just checking in to say that I loved the sense of an ending, I finished it last night. I'm still waiting for my own copy to arrive, it should have arrived from amazon.uk two weeks ago, but I managed to get a library copy in the meantime.

Not a fan of earth tremors.

#124 / #126 Just to clarify I shed no tears for him either especially as I had distant relatives lost in the Lockerbie attack - my point was more that to come down to the level of dragging his bloodied corpse through the streets is a return to medievalism that, in 2011, it would have been hoped had no further place in civilised society - therefore ergo the poor people of Libya are unlikely to be much better served in the future if this is their idea of restoring order and human dignity.

I'm back in San Francisco. The play went on without any further interruptions, and it was superb; I'll write a review of it soon.

This was the second earthquake I've experienced during a visit to San Francisco. Fortunately neither one caused any serious injuries or major structural damage.

4.0 quake hits East Bay

Ironically, today was the annual Great ShakeOut earthquake drill in California, so Bay Area school kids had the opportunity to practice a few hours before the actual quake hit this afternoon.

>120 mckait: I should have said relatively light and fluffy...

>121 PaulCranswick: I agree with you too, Paul. The repeated showings of the videos of the dying and dead Gaddafi on CNN were in extremely poor taste...ack, CNN is still doing it as I'm typing this message!

Ironically, today was the annual Great ShakeOut earthquake drill in California, so Bay Area school kids had the opportunity to practice a few hours before the actual quake hit this afternoon

It was Great ShakeOut earthquake drill in British Columbia today too. I had no idea that it was a multi-national event. I don't think we had a real earthquake today though (I never feel them).

Admit I'm happy not to have CNN right now. I cut off my cable at the beginning of the year and now rely on radio (NPR & BBC) for news, along with print media.

Uh oh, another earthquake just happened...

Yes, KRON TV confirms that this was an earthquake. It definitely felt stronger than this afternoon's quake in Berkeley. The lights flickered, but nothing spilled or fell over in my hotel room.

The preliminary reading is a magnitude 4.2 quake, so it was stronger than the first one. It was also located near Berkeley, in the East Bay.

>134 kidzdoc: This is why I stay the hell away from the place. My family wants to see me, they can come here.

It's all coming together. First, the "King of Kings", Muammar Gaddafi is killed. Next, earthquakes strike in the Bay Area and Texas. So, naturally, the Apocalypse, as predicted by Harold Camping, will take place later today.

I shouldn't have purchased all of these books...

Today? Darn, I just got my hair done too - what a waste!

>137 kidzdoc:, 138: LOL!

Glad to see that you had no earthquake related issues :) I heard about it on the news this morning..
Too bad about the Apocalypse, though. I hate when that happens.

Hi Darryl , just want to add my 2 paisa bit to the earlier LT influence on reading habits conversation. I have been slightly disappointed with the recommendations that I have read so far like Cloud Atlas , Freedom by Jonathan Frazen. They were just ok books and did not deserve the rave generated. So as a result I follow less and less people on LT and go to my previous sources like the classics and the awards.

>137 kidzdoc: Darryl, you'll just have to read fast.
I got enough of a taste of an earthquake here in DC this summer--I'm not in a hurry to experience a more serious one.

And yes, that is my The War of the End of the World cover.

...earthquake in Texas?...gotta go, Google is calling my name...

Muammar Gaddafi has been captured after a NATO air strike and killed When I heard this I went right outside with my AK47 and fired a whole clip in the air!!!

Note: This is total sarcasm. I do not own an AK47 or any other arms and do not in any way condone random firing in the air.

So far, so good. No more significant aftershocks since the one last night, and the Rapture hasn't happened yet. Is this similar to New Year's Day, with the Apocalypse occurring at a particular hour in whatever time zone you happen to be in (e.g., 8:13 pm)?

>129 avatiakh: I'm glad that you also enjoyed The Sense of an Ending, Kerry. Any apocalyptic activities in New Zealand yet?

>130 PaulCranswick: I agree with you, Paul. Today's New York Times had an article which touched on the vengeful way in which Gaddafi was treated once he was captured and after he was killed, and speaks to the difficulties that the newly liberated Arab countries will likely face in achieving stable and just societies if they are not able to resolve conflicts and competing interests in a more civilized fashion:

Qaddafi’s Death Places Focus on Arab Spring’s ‘Hard Road’

>132 Nickelini: It was Great ShakeOut earthquake drill in British Columbia today too. I had no idea that it was a multi-national event. I don't think we had a real earthquake today though (I never feel them).

I hadn't heard about the Great ShakeOut until after yesterday's first earthquake. From what I can tell, it started in southern California in 2008 and spread to the entire state the following year. It seems to be limited to California and certain parts of Arizona in the US.

I seriously doubt that you would not have been able to feel either of yesterday's earthquakes, or the other two I've experienced. During the play it was obvious to the cast, the audience and the theatre staff that an earthquake had taken place. It started with a loud bang, which was followed by a half dozen or so sharp back and forth shakes that lasted for roughly five seconds. The cast stopped immediately and looked skyward, but none of the light fixtures or overhead support structures fell or became dislodged, although they swayed for a few seconds after the quake stopped. The lead character made a comment something like "Ah, it's good to be back in California", and after he was advised by a staff member that it was safe to continue, the show went on.

Yesterday evening's earthquake was a bit longer, lasting up to 10 seconds, and seemed stronger to me and to the viewers who called into KRON TV, although the US Geological Survey downgraded it to a 3.8 magnitude quake.

>133 Chatterbox: I rarely watch CNN anymore, since I only have basic cable at home and because I would rather watch BBC World News for breaking international news stories. Contrary to its frequently self touted title as being the "most trusted name in news", I don't find CNN to be as accurate or analytic as the BBC. My only other choice yesterday was MSNBC, whose coverage was even worse than CNN's while I was watching the initial reports.

>136 richardderus: I love coming to the Bay Area, but I do often think about what I would do if the Big One hit while I was out here. I don't have any family members here, and the only friend I have lives near San Jose, about 40-50 miles south of SF, so I would be on my own if the overdue major earthquake did take place while I was here.

>138 ChelleBearss: I suppose that the Apocalypse would be the ultimate bad hair day...

>140 mckait: Thanks, Kath. I did call my parents at the intermission from the theatre, after I logged onto the Internet on my BlackBerry and confirmed that it was a mild earthquake that we felt, just in case they had received any news about it. They hadn't, so they were calm when I called them.

>141 mausergem: Gautam, I agree with you about Freedom. I don't think I wrote a review of it, but it was probably the most overhyped and disappointing book I've read in recent memory. I haven't read Cloud Atlas yet, although I do own it and will probably read it next year.

I don't think there are any infallible sources for book recommendations, on LT or elsewhere. Rebecca (my "book sister") and I have very different opinions about The Finkler Question, and Suz and I viewed The Sense of an Ending very differently. I think I've enjoyed every book that Guardian reviewer Maya Jaggi has liked, e.g., Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie, Monsieur Linh and His Child by Philippe Claudel, and The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver, and she remains my most trusted source for new books. The book I've started today, Good Offices by Evelio Rosero, was reviewed by her earlier this month, and it does look good so far.

>142 AnneDC: I'm with you, Anne. The strongest earthquake I've felt was in SF in 2007 (the Alum Rock earthquake), which only had a magnitude of 5.6 but was still pretty scary to me. However, it was also the strongest quake in the Bay Area since the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake that disrupted the World Series and caused the collapse of the Nimitz Freeway in Oakland and the upper level of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, so it was nothing to sneeze at.

>143 richardderus: Yep, the Texas earthquake (magnitude 4.8) was centered within 50 miles of San Antonio.

>144 mamzel: As long as you fire your AK-47 in Napa and not in SF I have no problem with your celebration.

BTW, could you feel yesterday's quakes there?

Nothing apocalyptic unless we add in the Rugby World Cup final between New Zealand and France tomorrow night. Here's a glimpse of current NZ focus.

Book #146: The Cloud Messenger by Aamer Hussein



My rating:

This was a dreary and bland, but thankfully short, novel narrated by a Mehran, a Pakistani man from a privileged family who grows up in Karachi, travels to Delhi, Bombay and Rome after his education in the United Kingdom, and spends most of his life in London, as a professor of Urdu literature. He is a citizen of the world, in a sense, but he is a rootless and nomadic man whose life is characterized by his failed relationships with two flawed and unlovable women and a friend who claims to care for him but continually takes advantage of him. The novel shares the same title as a famous Sanksrit poem by Kālidāsa, in which an exiled man uses clouds to convey messages to his wife; in the same fashion, Hussein's narrator writes letters to his first love, but these are largely brief and dispassionate chronological accounts of his work and relationships.

Despite its brevity, this was a difficult book to read, as the four main characters were largely inscrutable and held little interest for this reader. I had a somewhat similar impression of his book of short stories Another Gulmohar Tree, so I will not be reading any of this author's work in the future.

I made my fourth trip to City Lights yesterday, and came away with these books:

Damascus by Joshua Mohr: The author lives in San Francisco's Mission District, and I had meant to go back to City Lights for his appearance there last night, but forgot due to my poor memory the earthquake. The novel is set in a dive bar in the Mission in 2003, as its patrons take different sides for and against the Iraq War. The characters are based on some of the people that Mohr has known in the eclectic and diverse neighborhood; he spoke about the book in an interview that appeared earlier this week in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Joshua Mohr lets chaos flow into sordid stories

The Lizard's Tale by José Donoso: I loved Donoso's wacky and surreal novel The Obscene Bird of Night, so I was pleased to see this newly translated novel, whose main character bears a striking resemblance to the author, which is a "compact, powerful, and still-relevant meditation on the commercialization of art and of the places we inhabit."

Zone One by Colson Whitehead: This is a post-apocalyptic novel set in Buffalo, after a pandemic has decimated the planet, as the military attempts to reclaim Manhattan from a colony of zombie-like stragglers.

Nanjing Requiem by Ha Jin: A novel set during the Nanjing Massacre of 1937, which is a fictionalized reenactment of the efforts of American missionary Minnie Vautrin, who saved the lives of thousands of Chinese girls and women from almost certain death at the hands of soliders of the Imperial Japanese Army.

I was wondering what you'd think of this, Darryl; I'm in complete agreement with you, although I think I ended up being a tad more generous with the rating. If the short stories are like this I'll stick a big "avoid" sign above the author's name. I had thought that the style might work better in a short story.

>147 avatiakh: Thanks for the reminder about the Rugby World Cup final, Kerry. I watched a couple of matches in the last few days I was in London, and I might watch tomorrow's final if it is televised, depending on what time it takes place here.

Suz, I groaned after I realized that Aamer Hussein was the author of Another Gulmohar Tree, which was inexplicably shortlisted for a regional Commonwealth Writers' Prize last year. I gave that book 2½ stars and described it as a "marginally interesting love story", which I remember being almost equally as tedious.

#146 I think Deb would agree with you on that, Darryl!
#147 / 151 - For the love and good of rugby the All Blacks need to dish out a severe beating to the extremely lucky French team who a la England have got this far by playing anti-rugby and somehow currying favour with the officials. The proximity of an insufferable french neighbour also has something to do with this. All non-french men and probably non-australians are Kiwis today!
#148 - Your wholehearted disapproval of all things Aamer Hussain reminds me not to give certain writers a second chance when you have hated their other work. Your first impressions are usually right.

153 I agree with you that first impressions of authors are usually right -- but not always! I really disliked Helen Dunmore after reading With Your Crooked Heart, but I am eternally grateful to the LTers who convinced me to read the spectacular The Siege, so much so that I've been recommending it others. Its recent sequel, The Betrayal, is excellent too, but not as stunning as The Siege.

>153 PaulCranswick: From what I read, it seemed as though France stole a victory away from a more deserving Wales squad. The article also mentioned that the French players had been bickering amongst themselves and the coach for years, and the coach made a pretty disparaging comment about his players. Let's see...I think it was in the New York Times earlier this week...I found it. This was the coach's response after several players celebrated their win over Wales in the semifinals:

“I’d asked the players not to go out and I found out that a few of them had gone out,” Lièvremont said Sunday. “So we spoke about it this morning and I told them what I thought of them.

“I told them they are a bunch of spoiled brats. Undisciplined, disobedient, sometimes selfish. Always complaining. And it’s been like this for four years.

“But at the same time, we’re in the final. And as I said yesterday, we have to believe in this destiny. In the end, a cigarette, a dessert after dinner or a couple of drinks will not affect how you play in the final.”

How can you root for a team like that? Go All Blacks!

I'm certainly willing to give an author a second try, especially if I read an early work that I didn't like and if I've read a glowing review of a subsequent book. I can't think of anyone off the top of my head who fits this description, as Rebecca did with Helen Dunmore, but I'm sure there are at least a couple of authors I could say this about. There are writers, though, who are critically acclaimed but I just can't connect with, despite trying several of their books. César Aira and Jean-Phillippe Toussaint come to mind right away.

I am still willing to give authors a second chance. I didn't like the first book by Can Xue that I read, Five Spice Street, but I did buy her most recently translated novel Vertical Motion a few days ago, based on a positive review of it.

I'm about to head out, but I did finish Good Offices by Evelio Rosero earlier this morning, and absolutely loved it. I've given it 5 stars for now, although I might drop ½ star from the final rating. I'll try to catch up on reviews later today, or during the flight back to Atlanta tomorrow.

Darryl, I'm glad to hear that the tremors you experienced out in CA were only minor. There were a few of those when I lived out in the Bay Area as an au pair back in the late 80s, but somehow I always missed them because they mostly just felt as if a big truck was driving by in nearby. The 1989 quake happened not very long after I'd just come back to Montreal and it was all that more shocking (no pun intended) to hear about for that reason.

One strike and you're out, for all of me. That stupid hummingbird book, f/ex, while I'm sure the writer is kind to puppies and kitties and pays his taxes on time, he will never see one thin dime of my money or one more instant of eyeball time. Life is, in the end, too short to make bad bets one knows are likely not to add to one's pleasure.

David Mitchell and that de Zoet debacle. Arundhati Roy and the wife-beating book. Franzen and his tedious tomes. Bohjalian after that nose-thumping second person skeleton thing. Why? There are unknown unknowns to learn about, for good or ill!

And yet, Luis gives me great pleasure........reread begins soon.

>158 mckait: o.0

Rebecca / Darryl - The Dunmore example is a case of never say never I suppose but I have never liked a novel by anyone whose first novel I hated. As usual however I am not quite as adamant as Richard on the subject. What is it with him and Franzen - did the fellow steal his girlfriend or something?

>160 PaulCranswick: lol, I'm physically lol'ing

PS. Forgot to thank you way back somewhere in this thread for calling me your "book sister" -- what a sweet thing to say!

Paul...my first wife...but really, don't worry about dredging up old hurts, no no, I'll simply sit over here in a corner and sob.

Haha Richard - don't know about first wife my one-and-only can regularly reduce me to tears!

* hands rd a tissue*

Thank goodness you're also on FB, Darryl or I'd never know where you were or what you're reading. :-) Not the same as the details I get on LT, but it was a nice bit of touch during the last couple of weeks when I was unable to log into LT. I like my life on an even keel for the most part and I think I feel the balance starting to return ..... I may be deluding myself though. ;-)

The only earthquake I've been through was the 6.8 Nisqually earthquake in Feb. 2001. I had just moved to Seattle and was totally clueless about what to do in an earthquake. I was working at the University of Washington, and when I say my boss go running down the hallway shrieking "Get out, get out", it seemed like good advice. :-) Once outside, I got to see the ground actually ripple. Very strange sight. Fortunately despite quite a bit of property damage, only one person died, an elderly man of a heart attack.

And here I was thinking that the volcanoes were a bigger threat!

I'm back in Atlanta, after an uneventful flight. I go back to work tomorrow, so my "summer vacation" is officially over.

>156 Smiler69: I was ready to leave SF after those earthquakes on Thursday, Ilana. However, I'm sure it won't take long for me to catch the Bay Area bug again.

I may have mentioned this already, but the first earthquake I felt was in Atlanta, not in California. The earthquake occurred 7-8 years ago, I think, and it was centered near Huntsville, Alabama, and it was felt throughout the southeastern US. Fortunately it didn't cause any damage in Georgia.

>157 richardderus: One strike and you're out, for all of me. That stupid hummingbird book, f/ex, while I'm sure the writer is kind to puppies and kitties and pays his taxes on time, he will never see one thin dime of my money or one more instant of eyeball time. Life is, in the end, too short to make bad bets one knows are likely not to add to one's pleasure.

David Mitchell and that de Zoet debacle. Arundhati Roy and the wife-beating book. Franzen and his tedious tomes. Bohjalian after that nose-thumping second person skeleton thing. Why? There are unknown unknowns to learn about, for good or ill!

Such vitriol cannot be healthy. I would suggest a week long vacation in San Francisco to calm yourself.

I haven't read The Hummingbird's Daughter, although I do own it, but I did read his nonfiction book The Devil's Highway, about a group of Mexican illegal immigrants who died in an Arizona desert, which was well written, though tragic.

I liked The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet! Is The God of Small Things the "wife-beating book" you're referring to? I do own The Corrections (I think), but I'm in no hurry to read it, and I may add it to my discard pile. And, who is Bohjalian?

Maybe we can introduce Richard to Mr Urrea, so that he can rid himself of his ultra negative opinion of him.

>162 rebeccanyc: You're welcome, sis! He isn't a 75er, but Larry (lriley) would be my "book brother".

>166 cameling: Hi, Caroline! I'm also glad that you're active on Facebook, otherwise I would been worried about you. *smooch*

>167 labfs39: That sounds scary, particularly seeing the ground ripple.

I don't like earthquakes, but they don't scare me as much as tornadoes or hurricanes do.

BTW, is anyone planning to read 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami this year? It was released in the UK last week, and will be released in the US on Tuesday. I'm not proposing to lead a group read, since I don't do well with those, but I would strongly consider participating in one if someone else were to lead it.

Big article on Murakami in today's NYT magazine. On iPhone so can't provide link, but you should be able to find it from NYT home page.

>170 rebeccanyc: Yes, I read it on the flight from SFO to ATL this morning. Here's the link:

The Fierce Imagination of Haruki Murakami

1Q84 was mentioned, of course, but other than that there wasn't much new information. I'm a big Murakami fan, so I was familiar with his life story and most of his books; however, this would be a good article for those who aren't familiar with him. I have 15 of his books in my LT library, and I've read all of his older books other than Dance Dance Dance. I'm not as fond of his newer novels (although it could be that the initial fascination with his novels has worn off), but I'm very eager to read 1Q84, based on what I've heard about it.
,

Thanks for sharing the link to the NYT interview. Fascinating. I read my first Murakami last year, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and have to say, I'm still not sure how I feel about it. Confused, for sure, and with no idea of whether I liked it or not. Would you say that WUBC is typical of Murakami's works? If I were to try another, which would you recommend?

Hi Darryl, I completely agree with RD that life is too short to give second chances and there are so many worthy authors out there to discover. Waiting for some reviews.

A week in SFO. Ha. Not even if you're paying.

Meet Mr. Urrea? Sure. Be nice to him? Improbable, since at some point his book would come up. I hate making people cry, and remaining silent would be a goal so distant from the reality of my character as to make it risible to pursue.

Chris Bohjalian. I've only read the one book, Skeletons Make the Feast or something, and it made me so angry with its eyelash-pulling second person you chased the Jew on your horse bits (I most assuredly did NOT and I do NOT appreciate you saying I did!) that I can't feature ever even trying another one of his books.

Yep, The God of Small Things. All the women had abusive husbands. I just do not care to read one more syllable about how good, saintly woman puts up with brutish, abusive man ever in life. What, screaming whining kvetching women aren't abusive? Why aren't there stories that match *my* experience? (PS no one tell me men aren't writing them, I used to be a literary agent and I know that they are but can't sell them to (largely female) editors or editorial boards.)

Well, Darryl, considering how many four-hankies-and-a-pistol books you read, the de Zoet dreariness must have seemed like a soothing zephyr, a giggle-fest of lightheartedness, what with its disfigured woman in love with exploitive mercantilist who goes gaga for...what was it again? Why was he so bananas about her? Oh yeah! She talked to him!

I enjoyed The Devil's Highway but Hummingbird is better ... and I am in with Urrea from afar, so if
he is in the neighborhood, I wouldn't mind an introduction one little bit :)

I usually give second chances.. not always..

>172 labfs39: Would you say that WUBC is typical of Murakami's works? If I were to try another, which would you recommend?

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is the first novel by Murakami that I read, and I absolutely loved it and was blown away by it. It's still my favorite book by him, and I would say that it is very typical of his work. I also loved Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, A Wild Sheep Chase, and South of the Border, West of the Sun, which are similarly surreal, bizarre and very delectable.

One book of his that I also loved which is quite different from these novels is Norwegian Wood, a beautiful but incredibly sad love story. I read it about 9-10 years ago, and finished it while sitting in a Starbucks in town, as I choked back tears.

BTW, 1Q84 is nearly 950 pages long, according to Amazon. In the NYT article, Murakami was "alarmed" at the size of it, and commented that "{i}t's like a telephone directory."

>173 mausergem: For the most part I agree with you and Richard. However, even my favorite authors have written books that I've not been fond of, particularly Caryl Phillips (In the Falling Snow), Ian McEwan (The Comfort of Strangers), V.S. Naipaul (Half a Life), and James Baldwin (The Evidence of Things Not Seen). So, for that reason I'm willing to give an author I think I would like a second chance.

Yep, I do need to write some reviews. I'm off on Wednesday and Thursday, and I'll try to knock out my outstanding reviews for the month then.

>174 richardderus: I just do not care to read one more syllable about how good, saintly woman puts up with brutish, abusive man ever in life.

I broke up with a girlfriend after we saw the movie The Color Purple, based on Alice Walker's novel, which (at least IMO) portrayed all black men as rapists, abusers, liars, and low down dogs. She felt differently, and we argued about the film afterwards, so much so that we parted ways in anger and never dated again.

>175 mckait: I'll give The Hummingbird's Daughter a try, but it's still pretty low on my massive TBR list.

I read the NYT article. Murakami sounds like a fascinating person. Not sure I'm ready for more trips down the well just yet. I may have to reread WUBC first. I'll keep an eye out for Norwegian Wood though, thanks.

Darryl, it's difficult to keep up on LT on my blackberry. I've found that it's not easy to keep the threads in place or add comments. So until they have a mobile app for LT, I only log in when I'm at a computer. With fb, that's easier because it's not a forum and they have a mobile app.

The conference room that I was in last week was apparently just behind the hotel's laundry room, so every time their washing machines went into the spin cycle, the entire room would vibrate quite violently. Initially, we all thought there was an earthquake, but it was happening too regularly so one of our guys asked the hotel staff and they told us what it was. We had a good laugh but when we had presenters who were clients in just for the day, we had to remember to warn them, because one of them became quite alarmed during his presentation when he felt the floor start to vibrate.

Darryl, I'm a Murakami fan as well, though have only read about half a dozen of his books so far. Still have Hard-Boiled Wonderland, A Wild Sheep Chase and After Dark waiting on my shelves, and haven't read any of his short stories, which I know he's greatly appreciated for, but I fairly want to pounce on 1Q84 when it comes out (tomorrow, right?) That book alone is a very good reason to get an e-reader. I'll also want to do that re-read of 1984 first, something I've been meaning to get to since I read it last in... 1984.

eta: my first introduction to him at least a decade ago was also with The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which, like most people I did not understand at ALL, but I thought it was so strange and wonderful that I was hooked.

>177 labfs39: I would love to meet and chat with Mr Murakami, about his books, the authors who influenced him, and jazz.

>178 cameling: I'll sometimes look at LT on my BlackBerry, but it's a strain on the eyes and difficult to post comments on, although I did use it to post the comment about the mid-performance earthquake during intermission of the play I saw in Berkeley on Thursday.

I agree; LT needs an app for smartphones.

>179 Smiler69: Right, Ilana; 1Q84 will be released in the US today. I ordered it from Amazon a couple of weeks ago, but it still hasn't shipped yet.

I completely agree with you about The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I didn't understand it, nor did I try to, as I was enjoying the ride too much to wonder about where Murakami was taking me.

Ooh, I just found out that Alan Hollinghurst will be reading from and signing copies of The Stranger's Child at my closest bookstore (Outwrite Books in Midtown Atlanta) at 7:30 tomorrow night. I'm off tomorrow and Thursday, so I'll almost certainly go.

Alan Hollinghurst signs 'Stranger's Child' at Outwrite

Bohjalian truly is awful -- he lives in Vermont, near me somewhere and I always want to 'like' his novels since they are about local things -- say, dowsers, or whatever - and I'm always so bored and disappointed. I'm weeding the fiction section at our little library and my fingers itched as I went over them, but I have to leave them all there...... I avoided the Hummingbird book successfully and suspect you are correct, read a bit of the Roy and thought, nuh unh, but I did love The Corrections.... not entirely sure why, I just did. Some of it is set in Philly, Darryl...... maybe I was a sucker for that. And I loved the train stuff. And the description of the parents' house.....

>181 sibylline: I hadn't heard of Chris Bohjalian, and I certainly won't read anything by him after those comments from you and Richard. I'll remove The Corrections from my discard pile, but it will remain near the bottom of my TBR list.

Earlier this week I was thinking about a playful comment that one of my partners at work made a few months ago; she said something like "You don't read many American novels, do you?" I admitted that she was right; there aren't many living US novelists who are amongst my favorites, although there are numerous poets and nonfiction authors from the US that I favor. If I came up with a list of my 25 favorite living novelists who were born in the US, I think only Maxine Hong Kingston (second-generation Chinese-American) would make the list. Ha Jin, Edwidge Danticat and Caryl Phillips would make my list of my 25 favorite living novelists, but none were born in the US. I would exclude Dave Eggers because my favorite books of his, Zeitoun and What Is the What, are mainly nonfictional works. I haven't read enough books by Philip Roth, Barbara Kingsolver or Colum Mc Cann to include them, and Junot Díaz has only written two books so far, so I'm reluctant to include him just yet.

That's really very interesting. I'll have to think about this and see which of my fave american contemp. novelists I can recommend..... I might be able to dredge up a couple that you haven't read. But -- I think novelists from elsewhere have been more aventurous of late than our home team -- publishers in the US are so obsessed with the bottom line they aren't taking any risks at all.

I've come up with a tentative top 20 list, with two honorable mentions:

Mario Vargas Llosa
Ian McEwan
Ha Jin
Caryl Phillips
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

Jean Echenoz
Hilary Mantel
Haruki Murakami
Kenzaburō Ōe
Maxine Hong Kingston

Edwidge Danticat
Kazuo Ishiguro
Elias Khoury
V.S. Naipaul
Salman Rushdie

Abdulrazak Gurnah
Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio
John Edgar Wideman
J.M. Coetzee
Horacio Castellanos Moya

Honorable mention: Amitav Ghosh, Amos Oz

Two Americans made my top 20 list, although John Edgar Wideman is a tenuous pick. I am 100% certain that this list will change significantly over the next couple of years, and I would like to see more than three women on this list. I suspect that Assia Djebar, Kamila Shamsie, and Roma Tearne will be added as I read more of their works.

The list idea intrigues me. I've created a thread for it called Darryl's Meme.

Great idea, Richard! I'll post my list on the thread now.

Why exclude an author because he/she writes primarily non-fiction? I tend to lump them together, although I broke them out into categories for the meme thread... They are all authors whose books almost never disappoint, no?

The problem I have is that there are authors who have written one or two books I love, and then one or two that I either loathed or could never get into. Or some who have only written a few books, or I've only read one or two. I can't possibly dub them a "favorite author" on such flimsy evidence, which is why so many of mine are dead!

Question -- do you even read American novelists? Do you consciously avoid them?

>187 Chatterbox: Why exclude an author because he/she writes primarily non-fiction?

This wasn't a matter of excluding anyone. As I mentioned in message 182, I started thinking about this several months ago, after one of my partners suggested that I didn't read many American novels. I read plenty of nonfiction books and poetry collections by US authors, but far fewer novels by Americans, and when I started thinking about my favorite authors, I realized that almost none of them were originally born in the US. And, if I think about the most prominent American living authors, such as Cormac McCarthy, Philip Roth, Marilynne Robinson, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Barbara Kingsolver (even though I loved The Lacuna), Jonathan Franzen, Don DeLillo, Denis Johnson, and Michael Chabon, my eyes start to glaze over, even though I've hardly read any of their books. Why is that?

If I think of my 20 favorite deceased novelists, there would be several Americans on that list: Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin (#1 overall) and Carson McCullers are definitely there; Flannery O'Connor and Richard Wright probably so.

The same holds true for favorite living black authors; very few of them are what I would call traditionally African-American (i.e., born in the US and directly descended from slaves). My tentative top 10 list would be:

Caryl Phillips
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Edwidge Danticat
Abdulrazak Gurnah
John Edgar Wideman

Percival Everett (M, US)
Jamaica Kincaid (F, Antigua, US)
Alain Mabanckou (M, Republic of the Congo, US)
Dinaw Mengestu (M, Ethiopia, US)
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (F, Nigeria)

BTW, Wole Soyinka doesn't make this list, as I don't think I've read any of his novels, and I'm lukewarm about Chinua Achebe.

The problem I have is that there are authors who have written one or two books I love, and then one or two that I either loathed or could never get into. Or some who have only written a few books, or I've only read one or two. I can't possibly dub them a "favorite author" on such flimsy evidence, which is why so many of mine are dead!

Exactly. And that's why I drew a distinction between favorite novels and favorite novelists. The authors on both of my lists would look very different if I tallied my favorite novels by living authors; Aminatta Forna would be on both lists for The Memory of Love, for example. My main criterion for a favorite novelist is that I had to have read three or more of their books that I would rate 4 stars or higher, which made it much easier to come up with that list.

Question -- do you even read American novelists? Do you consciously avoid them?

LOL! That is literally the same set of questions that my partner asked. Yes to the first question, but let me do a quick tally of what I've read this year. I'll finish The River Between by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o today, which will be my 150th book of the year; by my count I've read seven novels by American authors: A Gate at the Stairs, Blind Man with a Pistol, Jonah's Gourd Vine, A History of the African American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond, Amigoland, The Submission, and We the Animals (I'm excluding Open City by Teju Cole, since he was born and raised in Nigeria, and Daisy Miller, as it's a novella). Chester Himes and Zora Neale Hurston are deceased, so I've read only five novels by living American authors this year. Wow...I thought I would have read more than that. I'll have to see how many American novels I've read in years past.

One of my goals for the year was to read 1-2 novels by living African-American authors every month, and I wanted to read the winners and at least some of the finalists for this year's Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for Fiction. So, I don't consciously avoid American novels, and I had planned to read far more than I have so far this year. I feel guilty that I don't read more US literature, and I will consciously plan to read more American novels in the future (ignore the crossed fingers behind my back).

Darryl, you've enabled my laziness in seeking out great off-mainstream authors. Because you do such a great job finding them, reading them and reviewing their books, I no longer have to take the time to seek out award nominees and winners. I just always come to your thread to find them, and add the ones that sound like they're up my alley to my obese wish list. I'm not complaining, mind you .... I'm thanking you for letting me give in once in a while to my inner lazy child. ;-)

Darryl, I love your thread and I've recently purchased a number of books by some of your favorite authors, most notably Caryl Phillips, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Haruki Murakami. I'm reading my first Kazuo Ishiguro now. Thanks for the various lists and recommendations --- I've been wanting to expand my reading horizons and you're helping with that endeavor!

I've got nothing good to say about Bohjalian. I've started and tossed aside more than one of his novels. Ugh (just my opinion).

Cheers --

Is anybody watching Game 6 of the World Series? This will almost certainly go down as one of the most memorable ones in history, and it's not over yet. The Cardinals trailed 7-5 in the bottom of the 9th inning, and were down to their last strike, but tied the game 7-7 on a two run triple. The Rangers took a 9-7 lead in the top of the 10th inning on a two run home run. The Cardinals were again down to their last strike in the bottom of the 10th, trailing 9-8, when Lance Berkman hit a run scoring single to tie the game again at 9-9. The Rangers lead the series 3-2 in this best of 7 series, so if they win the series is over. If the Cardinals win, there will be a Game 7 tomorrow night in St. Louis.

Wow. The Cardinals hitter who tied the game in the 9th inning just hit a solo home run in the bottom of the 11th, after the Rangers failed to score in the top half of the inning. So, the Cardinals win 10-9, and there will be a winner take all Game 7 tomorrow night. Unbelievable.

It was AMAZING!

>189 cameling:, 190 Thanks, Caroline and Ellen!

>193 richardderus: Wasn't it? That was better than the Mets' improbable comeback against the Red Sox in game 6 of the 1986 World Series, IMO.

One of the few times this year when I have felt the lack of television...

Well, that and the Stanley Cup playoffs!

Didn't you read Lord of Misrule at some point this year or last?

The reason I queried the non-fiction decision was that some authors might make my list in large part because of the caliber of their non-fiction, even though they also write novels -- VS Naipaul and Julian Barnes being two examples. Or even Peter Ackroyd, though he isn't on the list at present.

>192 kidzdoc:: I haven't been paying attention since the Phillies fell on their collective a$$es, but I tuned in last night when it was 2-2, then watched something else, and heard about the game on the radio this morning. WOW!

>195 Chatterbox: I didn't start watching the game until there were two outs in the 9th inning, with Texas poised to capture its first World Series title, although I was keeping abreast of the game on my computer. So, I saw very little of the game, unlike Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, which featured an improbable 9th (or 10th?) inning comeback by the Mets against the Red Sox. I'll never forget seeing the Shea Stadium scoreboard display of "Congratulations Red Sox" (or something like that) just before the Mets' rally. The Mets, of course, won Game 7 the next night.

I own Lord of Misrule, but I haven't read it yet.

The reason I queried the non-fiction decision was that some authors might make my list in large part because of the caliber of their non-fiction, even though they also write novels

Ohhh! I see your point...and I completely agree with you. James Baldwin's position as my all time favorite novelist is due, in part, to his nonfiction works, particularly Notes of a Native Son, The Fire Next Time and The Evidence of Things Not Seen. Likewise for Caryl Phillips, Edwidge Danticat, Maxine Hong Kingston and V.S. Naipaul. So, if I ignore that, Mario Vargas Llosa becomes my favorite novelist, living or dead, James Baldwin drops a couple of spots (although he would certainly remain in my top five) and the other authors I mentioned whose nonfiction works I've read drop lower on the top 20 list, although not very much and definitely not off of the list.

Hmm...I didn't realize that Julian Barnes wrote much in the way of nonfiction. That's not surprising, since I wasn't very familiar with him before The Sense of an Ending.

I did finish The River Between by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o yesterday, and I liked it more than I thought I would. It's set in colonial Kenya, in an isolated region where two rival populations each live on a ridge separated by a river that nourishes—and erodes—the land of both communities. One community is mainly Christian, led by a local man who has embraced the colonialists' religion and rejects traditional values, particularly circumcision of young men and women; the other is based on tribal traditions, led by a group of elders and influenced by a young man who is descended from a rich lineage, was educated in part by the Christian missionaries that influenced the other camp, and is highly respected by many in the community for educating its young people. This community embraces circumcision as an essential ritual, and is torn between those who embrace and support the Teacher, and a small but powerful faction led by a sworn power hungry enemy of the Teacher. The Teacher himself is torn by his duty to the community, passed down by his father, his love of the uncircumcised daughter of the preacher of the neighboring community, and his belief that the two rivals must unite to combat the increasing influence of the colonialists and gain independence from them. This was closer to a 4½ star than a 4 star read for me, and I liked it better than his earlier novel Weep Not, Child.

>196 lauralkeet: I hadn't been paying attention either, since the Phillies fell on their faces. I don't think I had watched any of the league championship games, and I definitely didn't watch any of the World Series games until last night. I'll almost certainly watch tonight's game, though.

Ooh! Amos Oz was on The Charlie Rose Show on PBS last night, to speak about his new book Scenes From Village Life, which I have in front of me. My local PBS station will re-broadcast this episode at noon; I'm off from work today, so I'll definitely watch it. I'll post a link to the episode when it becomes available, which should be later today.

199: Oh? My local PBS has Charlie Rose at noon also, and I work at home...

From what I can tell, Charlie Rose will interview Amos Oz in the first half hour, and Stephen Greenblatt of Harvard about Hamlet afterward.

Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve about Lucretius is a National Book Award finalist, a fact I learned in post 26 on this very thread, which I noticed because I'd recently read his article in The New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/08/110808fa_fact_greenblatt.

I've gone over to the other thread to list my favorite living authors, but I do note that nearly all of my favorite living US authors are women. I first noticed this trend when I listed my favorite reads of 2010 and noticed that all my favorite fiction by contemporary writers was by women.

Yay! My copy of 1Q84 came in the mail today. I'll plan to read it—or at least start reading it—next month.

I just finished watching the re-broadcast of the conversation between Charlie Rose and Amos Oz on the Charlie Rose Show on PBS (available here). It lasted a little over half an hour, and was absolutely wonderful. The two men began by speaking about the recent release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit; Oz had mixed feelings. He was glad that the soldier is free, but thinks that Israel paid too high a cost by agreeing to release over 1000 Palestinians imprisoned for terrorist activities, and fears that terrorists may be more inclined to capture Israeli soliders and citizens in the future, in order to exact more concessions from Israel. They spoke about the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians, the lack of courage displayed by leaders on both sides, his new book Scenes from Village Life, his main influences (Anton Chekhov and Sherwood Anderson), his book The Same Sea, which he feels is his best work (I have it, and will read it soon), his current home in a small desert town in Israel, and his past life that was expertly chronicled in A Tale of Love and Darkness. Mr. Oz was an engaging and brilliant speaker, and the conversation flowed easily; I was very disappointed that it didn't go on for hours.

Scenes from Village Life is a collection of interconnected short stories set in one of the historical villages of Israel, in which characters from one story will reappear in another, and where all them know each other. Oz described it as a book about half knowing and half remembering, which takes place in attics or basements; the characters look for things they have lost, without fully knowing what it is that they are looking for. I'm very eager to read it now, and I'll get to it early next month. I bought my copy in London, but it is currently available in the US.

I loved several quotes from Oz, but this one was my favorite: "The best way to know the soul of another country is to read its literature."

>202 qebo: I didn't watch the entire segment that featured Stephen Greenblatt, but it did seem as the focus was on Hamlet, rather than his book The Swerve.

>203 rebeccanyc: I've gone over to the other thread to list my favorite living authors, but I do note that nearly all of my favorite living US authors are women. I first noticed this trend when I listed my favorite reads of 2010 and noticed that all my favorite fiction by contemporary writers was by women.

If I use a criterion of two ore more novels ranked four stars or higher to designate favorite living US authors, I'm left with no one, I think. I forgot that my favorite books by Maxine Hong Kingston, China Men, The Woman Warrior, The Fifth Book of Peace and I Love a Broad Margin to My Life, are all works of nonfiction. John Edgar Wideman probably comes the closest, but I'm not sure that I would give 4 or more stars to more than one of his books (it's been awhile since I've read anything by him, other than Fanon, which I was lukewarm about). I did like the two fictional works by Junot Díaz that I've read, Drown (short story collection) and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (novel).

204: I watched also. I have A Tale of Love and Darkness already in the cart for next time I click the order button. I stuck around for Stephen Greenblatt and Hamlet, out of curiosity, though I'm unlikely to pursue.

ETA: Yeah, no mention of The Swerve.

Darryl,
I had skimmed your post and watched the interview with Amos Oz. I agree with your choice of favorite quote: "The best way to know the soul of another country is to read its literature." This statement gave me a beautiful chill.
Thanks for the link.

And Greenblatt wrote about Poggio Bracciolini, one of the people in history I would really love to have met. He was an early Renaissance bookhunter, who spent time avidly chasing down old Greek/Roman MSS wherever possible. I've had the new book sitting here for a while in galley; saving it for a rainy day. Mind you, since it's snowing like crazy, maybe today is the day...

Darryl I amanged to find a copy of Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa'Thiong'o at Borders in Kuala Lumpur this afternoon. First time I've seen any here (and yes Borders franchise bought itself out here and continues successfully as there must be several more magpies like me in Malaysia) and couldn't resist given your molten enthusiam for his work.

>208 Chatterbox: Yikes. I just read your post and looked out the window! Blizzard!!!

>206 qebo: I would highly recommend A Tale of Love and Darkness to you; it's one of the best memoirs I've read.

>207 EBT1002: You're welcome, Ellen. I've added that quote to my list of favorites.

>208 Chatterbox: I'll have to find out how much snow my folks received in Bucks County, PA. I saw photos of the Rutgers-West Virginia football game at Rutgers Stadium yesterday (we lost to WVU, unfortunately), and it looks as though New Brunswick received a good 4-6 inches of snow (this photo was taken after the field was snow plowed prior to the game):



>209 PaulCranswick: Excellent! I'm thinking of re-reading Wizard of the Crow in December, for the Author Theme reads group. We're reading the works of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o for the last four months of the year.

>210 ffortsa: Has it stopped snowing there yet?

I'm off to see patients; I'll be back for the readathon later this afternoon or evening.

I saw photos of the Yale-Columbia game on TV this morning. A very similar scenario!

It stopped snowing/sleeting/precipitating early this morning; it's now chilly chilly chilly (or feels like it indoors!) with a bright blue sky. Actually feels like it should be Thanksgiving instead of Hallowe'en tomorrow, or even Christmas.

Yes, doesn't it, Suz? We were driving to a party last night and it was so windy and snowing hard that it really felt more like December/January weather. I'm so not yet ready for snow .. I need another month at least to prepare for this.

Book #151: Kangaroo Notebook by Kōbō Abe



My rating:

This novel was more strange than surreal, yet somehow readable. I think I would have to take a hallucinogenic drug to come close to understanding it, though. The main character is a Japanese man who wakes up to find that radish plants are growing out of pores on both of his legs (fortunately the plants are tasty, so he is able to snack on them at times). He undertakes an increasingly bizarre journey to seek a cure for his malady, occasionally aided and accompanied by an attractive nurse who collects blood from anyone she can, in her quest to win the Dracula's Daughter award. He encounters singing child-demons, strange fellow patients, and a motorized bed which transports him throughout the story and responds to thought commands. It was completely nonsensical and mildly humorous, but I can't say that I enjoyed it.

I've tried to read Abe at times, but have never liked his novels much; with so much else out there to relish and appreciate, the cost/benefit analysis does not compute!!

Have you read The Woman in the Dunes? It may be my favorite Japanese novel.

Darryl I must say that I occasionally find the Japanese psyche difficult to penetrate in the works of writers such as Abe and especially Kanzaburo Oe whom I note that you have listed as a favourite. Sometimes without fully comprehending we get carried along anyway but at other times I am just left perplexed. Murakami I do enjoy thoroughly and need to read more of and he is excellent at keeping his readers interest from waning by the sheer art of storytelling - avant garde or not.

LOL ... actually your review is making me want to add Kangaroo Notebook to my obese wish list. I like nonsensical reads from time to time. I find the Japanese do surrealism writing very well, but I need to be in the mood for it.

>218 PaulCranswick: I do like Kenzaburo Oe's works, especially A Personal Matter, Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness, Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids and Hiroshima Notes. (I just realized that he wasn't one of my "favorite" authors on LT, so I've just added him). I particularly like his fictional and nonfictional books that are based on his disabled son, and the love that he as a father has for him. I plan to read The Changeling, his latest novel, and Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age! next year, particularly if lilisin does decide to focus on Japanese authors in the Author Theme Reads group in 2012. I may also put off reading 1Q84 until early next year if Murakami is one of the chosen authors, although I'm very eager to get started on it.

I also want to read more by Yukio Mishima next year. I have several of his novels, but I think I've only read his novella Patriotism.

>219 cameling: Kangaroo Notebook was nonsensical, and a quick read. I wasn't in the mood for it as much as I could have been, and that's why I ranked it so low.

My planned reads for November:

In Red by Magdalena Tulli (2011 Archipelago book subscription)
The Good Muslim by Tahmima Anam (recommended by the Guardian for this year's Booker Prize longlist earlier this year) - completed
Everything You Know About Indians Is Wrong by Paul Chaat Smith (for Native American Heritage Month)
In Mad Love and War by Joy Harjo (for Native American Heritage Month)
The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich (for Native American Heritage Month)
Soul Talk, Song Language: Conversations with Joy Harjo by Joy Harjo and Tanaya Winder (for Native American Heritage Month) - completed
Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes
Salvage the Bones by Jessmyn Ward (2011 National Book Award for Fiction finalist)
Old Filth by Jane Gardam (Orange November)
Scenes from Village Life by Amos Oz - completed
Writing in the Dark: Essays on Literature and Politics by David Grossman
Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire by Iain Sinclair - reading
The Half-Finished Heaven: The Best Poems of Tomas Tranströmer - reading

I had originally planned to read 1Q84 Haruki Murakami's latest novel, but I may put this off if the Author Theme Reads group decides to make him its major author for 2012. If I do, I'll add two or three more books to this list.

I'll probably be joining you this month for Scenes from Village Life. Would be tempted to take up Old Filth as well, since it's also very short, but I'm determined to stick to just a few planned reads this month and perhaps surprise myself with a few extras, as opposed to keep disappointing myself with unrealistic goals.

I'm reading Nineteen Eighty-Four this month in preparation for 1Q84, which I may or may not pick up in December.

I nearly bought Scenes from Village Life today Darryl - it was my second pick in my favourite bookshop and I was being good and sticking to 1. Will be keen to see what you think.

And 1Q84 has just arrived here today for my husband's birthday present and it is such a monster of a book!!

>222 Smiler69: I'm glad to hear that, Ilana. I've read the first short story in Scenes from Village Life, and it was delightful. I'll almost certainly finish it today; my copy (UK version) has 265 pages, but the font size is relatively large and the pages are short and have wide margins on all four sides.

I've been wanting to read Old Filth for a while, so I'll probably read it sooner rather than later.

I think I'll temporarily postpone reading 1Q84 until I find out if the Author Theme Reads group will focus on Murakami's works next year. The group's leader indicated in a message a few days ago that she was thinking of focusing on Japanese authors, and Murakami would seem to be a good choice for the year long author, based on his popularity, output and the recent release of 1Q84. I'm not sure that a decision will be made this month, so I probably won't get to it until December at the earliest, unless I start reading it and succumb to it (which is quite likely).

I haven't read Nineteen Eighty-Four since high school (nearly 35 years ago!). I'd love to read it again, but it won't be before next year.

I agree with your comment about sticking to a few planned reads rather than posting books that you want to read ASAP. I could easily post twice as many books if I did that!

>223 cushlareads: You won't have to wait long for my opinion about Scenes from Village Life, Cushla.

I have several massive works of fiction, but 1Q84 is up there with the largest of them. Don Quixote, Three Days Before the Shooting... by Ralph Ellison have more pages, and my UK editions of Darkmans by Nicola Barker and Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra are heavier, but there probably aren't many more novels that can match it.

BTW, which edition do you have? I understand that the UK version is divided into two editions, whereas the US copy (which I own) is encompassed in one book. Here's an image of my copy:



It's a beautiful and unique edition; the jacket is thinner than usual and transparent, as it is made of rice paper. The cover underneath shows the woman's full face under a white hat, with the four characters of the title overlying her image, in white. The spine of the jacket has "1" in blue and "8" in yellow with the author's name and the publisher's name and logo, whereas the spine of the book itself displays only a red "Q" and a black "4".

Oh...I just found an image of the complete book cover:



The back cover has a similar design, except that there is a man's face on it.

I think that 1Q84 replaces The Sense of an Ending as my book with the best design for this year.

ETA: I found a page on the publisher's web site where the designer, Chip Kidd, talks about the book. It includes images of the jacket, the cover, and the combination of the two:

Chip Kidd Discusses the Book Jacket for Haruki Murakami’s Forthcoming Novel 1Q84

Actually, the jacket is composed of vellum, and not rice paper.

I'm planning to read The Plague of Doves too for that challenge - I've not read any Erdrich but I recall several postive comments about her in this group, and my copy has already turned up at the library.

Interesting cover design indeed - but I did wonder when I read 'rice paper' as that would not be very durable - vellum makes much more sense!

I thought the jacket might be a thicker version of rice paper. The vellum jacket is easily the most delicate one I own, and I'll probably put it aside once I start reading the book.

I'm glad that you'll be reading The Plague of Doves this month for my Native American Heritage Month TIOLI challenge; it looks as though Anne and Ellen will also be reading it.

I can't remember if I mentioned this before or not, but the University of Chicago Press offers a free e-book, as an Adobe Digital Edition, from its catalogue every month. This month's offering is Is It Good for the Jews?: More Stories from the Old Country and the New by Adam Biro. Other books I've downloaded include We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver, which was high on my wish list, and Isolarion: A Different Oxford Journey by James Attlee, which I had purchased at City Lights several years ago. If you sign up for the UCP e-mail list, you'll receive information about the month's free e-book:

Free e-book!

I do love the design... I won't be reading the book itself until next year, however...

I like to list everything that I might/could read in the coming month, then I have more options if something really appeals to me or finds me utterly uninterested. I hate the feeling that I should or must read something because it's on my list; I like to let my moods and tastes and sometimes what I've just read or heard about lead me to the next book. I make more discoveries that way -- both good and bad! I probably will read the Gardam book as it will fit in my Europa Challenge and I've already got a library edition here -- I'm trying to pare down the # of library books I have at home.

Another option, for me at least, is to read one of the three books that comprise 1Q84 this month; it was published in three separate volumes in Japan. 1Q84 Book 1 ends at page 309, which would be much more doable than reading all 925 pages in a single month.

Darryl, Amazon.de sent me what seems like the US edition and it is stunning - it looks exactly like yours. Tim hasn't found the book yet but I think he'll be really excited (unless he's checked the Amazon purchase history recently... but he knows that is a bad idea.)

Thanks for the U of C link. I've just signed up.

I'll be interested in what you think of In Red, Darryl. I just read it on Monday.

Book #153: Scenes from Village Life by Amos Oz



My rating:

(I hadn't originally planned to write a review tonight, and I may update this later in the week. I may end up giving it a full five stars, as well.)

This collection of short stories by Amos Oz is set in an apparently fictional historical village in Israel that has been populated by Jews for roughly a century. The characters in the first seven stories all know each other, and those who are the center of one story will often appear in a minor role in one or more other ones. The stories are about the lives of the characters within their families and community, and focus on the loneliness and barely hidden frustration and despair that plague each of them. Each character is in a search for something, often without knowing what it is they are looking for or why, and the stories are dreamlike, haunting, and often mildly uncomfortable and menacing.

In the longest story, "Digging", a middle-aged widow lives with her cantakerous and difficult elderly widowed father, along with a shy and introspective Arab university student who lives in a shed on their land in exchange for performing household chores. The elderly man is awakened each night by the sound of digging underneath the house, yet no one else seems to hear it. Other stories feature a single doctor who expectantly waits for her ill nephew; a divorced woman pursued by a lovestruck and lonely teenager; an older man who lives in peace with his infirm mother at the edge of the village, until an intrusive stranger who claims to be a relative urges him to sell his mother's property; and the town's mayor, who receives a mysterious note from his wife. Oz does not provide the reader or his characters with straightforward resolutions to their dilemmas or searches, which made the stories that much more memorable and powerful.

The last story is quite unlike the others, as it is set in a different place at another time (past? present?), in a town whose structures are decaying and whose citizens are dying despite the best efforts of the official who is charged with their welfare.

The stories are wonderfully written, with simple yet evocative language, and I slowly savored each passage, such as this one from the elderly man in "Digging", as the Arab student plays a haunting Russian melody on his harmonica on one summer evening:

'That's a lovely tune,' the old man said. 'Heart-rending. It reminds us of a time when there was still some fleeting affection between people. There's no point in playing tunes like that today: they are an anachronism, because nobody cares any more. That's all over. Now our hearts are blocked. All feelings are dead. Nobody turns to anyone else except from self-interested motives. What is left? Maybe only this melancholy tune, as a kind of reminder of the destruction of our hearts.'

Scenes from Village Life is an unforgettable book, which is one of my favorite reads of the year, and one I look forward to returning to in the near future.

#232: Oh, I can't read your review till I read the book myself, but have noted your star rating and it's now next in line to be read.

Hi Darryl. I have Scenes from Village Life on hold at the library; I really hope it arrives in time for me to read it with you (and others) this month! The Charlie Rose interview with Amos Oz and now your review of the book combine to put it very high on my want-to-read list.

And I signed up to read The Plague of Doves with you (and others) for your TIOLI challenge. What's weird about this is that I can't remember if I've read it or not! It would have been a couple(?) of years ago, so - in any case - it might be worth a re-read. One thing about having started with LT in January 2011: I can go back and see what I've read and read my own comments (which are ultimately much more helpful than reading the marketing notes on the cover flap!).

I also want to read 1Q84 but it will definitely have to wait until 2012 and if the Author Theme Reads group focuses on Murakami next year, that would help with getting as much out of the reading as possible. I virtually never purchase hardback novels, but having picked this one up in the bookshop the other day made it hard to resist. It's a very lovely physical presence.

>233 avatiakh: I'm eagerly awaiting your comments about Scenes from Village Life, Kerry!

>234 EBT1002: I hope that you're able to receive Scenes from Village Life, Ellen. I own several other books by Amos Oz that I haven't read yet, specifically My Michael, The Same Sea (which is his favorite), and Black Box. I'll probably read one of them next month, if not sooner.

LOL! I've done that, too, especially if it was a book I read long ago, or before I started reviewing books on LT.

It's becoming more likely that I'll wait to read 1Q84 until early next year...unless I decide to open the book and start reading it, which is almost equally as likely. If I start to read it this month, I'll probably only read 1Q84 Book 1, which would still allow me to read it early next year.

Scenes from Village Life is going straight onto my list.

I saw Scenes From a Village Life at the bookstore this weekend (prominently displayed I might add) and thought about getting it but restrained myself--now I am having second thoughts.

I am joining you in reading A Plague of Doves for your Native American author challenge, but I have to admit I am feeling a little sheepish. I've read a lot of Louise Erdrich, although not this book, and would call her a favorite, so this is more of a comfort read for me when I feel I should be expanding my horizons with an undiscovered Native American author. Oh, well.

>236 JanetinLondon:, 237 I'm curious to see what the others who are planning to read it this month think of it. Kerry is reading it now, and Citizenjoyce, Ellen and Ilana will likely get to it soon.

I'm always a wee bit anxious when I highly tout a book that no one else in the group has read yet, although I think most of youse yinz y'all have liked the books I've recommended, save for The Finkler Question and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.

I haven't read anything by Louise Erdrich yet, so all three authors I've selected (Erdrich, Joy Harjo and Paul Chaat Smith) are new to me. BTW, which books by Erdrich would you recommend, Anne?

ETA: I do want to read more contemporary Native American and Chicano literature in the near future, so I'll look at the books that people choose to read and recommended books from my references and other LTers.

Just popping in to say hello! Longtime lurker, but I don't comment much as most of these books are above my comfort level. Great reviews though :)

The only Erdrich I've read is not characteristic of her, in that it addressed the non-Native American side of her family heritage. That was The Master Butchers Singing Club, which I found very beguiling.

I'll chime in here regarding Louise Erdrich. I've read a number of her novels and I think my favorite was The Beet Queen. It's been years since I read it (it was published in 1986 and I think I read it within two or three years of its original publication) and I still have some pretty clear mental images from the stories. It might make sense to read Love Medicine first since that is the first in a loose trilogy including Love Medicine, Tracks, and The Beet Queen.

Regarding other Native American writers, and again going back a number of years (very much pre-LT), I've read The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and Indian Killer by Sherman Alexie. I may have read Reservation Blues way back there, but I'm not absolutely sure. In any case, for those who haven't read his works, I recommend adding Alexie to your list of authors to explore for Darryl's challenge.

I'm looking forward to reading Joy Harjo and hopefully also Paul Chaat Smith along with you this month, as they are both new authors for me.

Several 75ers have read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie recently. (Also, if you haven't heard him speak, dredge up a video on YouTube.) House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday won a Pulitzer Prize in 1969. Along with Louise Erdrich, you might read A Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Michael Dorris, her sadly estranged and deceased husband, or The Broken Cord about his adoption of a child with fetal alcohol syndrome.

ETA: I do want to read more contemporary Native American and Chicano literature in the near future, so I'll look at the books that people choose to read and recommended books from my references and other LTers.

In that case, I highly recommend two books for you:

Green Grass, Running Water, Thomas King. This author is considered THE great Canadian First Nations writer, which is kinda funny, because he's from the US (Cherokee and Greek heritage, I believe). Whatever--this book is fabulous and also fun.

Kiss of the Fur Queen, Tomson Highway (how's that for a great name). A little north of your request, but a fabulous read all the same. Perhaps my favourite Canadian novel. Here's what I wrote back when I read it: This beautifully composed book follows the lives of two Cree brothers from their birthplace in northern Manitoba, to their school years when they were forced to attend an abusive Catholic residential school, through their adult years as artists (one became a concert pianist, the other a dancer). The novel covers some pretty rough areas, but the storytelling is absolutely lyrical. I would expect a book that covers sexual abuse, drug and alcohol abuse and homosexual struggles to be completely depressing, but Highway's use of magical imagery and humour made this a wonderful read.

>239 ChelleBearss: Hi, Chelle! Thanks for the compliment; hopefully I'll read and review something that is more to your liking soon.

>240 ffortsa: Thanks, Judy. Earlier this year I read the interview of Louise Erdrich in the Winter 2010 edition of The Paris Review, and she does talk about her father's family there. Reading it made me want to read her books, and this month is a perfect one to do so.

>241 EBT1002: Thanks, Ellen. Assuming that I like The Plague of Doves I probably will read Love Medicine next.

I haven't read, and don't yet own, any books by Sherman Alexie, which is why I'm not planning to read anything by him this month. That will change in the near future, though.

I'll finish both books by Joy Harjo by this coming weekend. I read a couple of pages in Soul Talk, Song Language last night, and I'll pick it up again later this afternoon.

Today is the second day of the Días de los Muertos (Days of the Dead), the annual Mexican and Chicano celebration held on November 1 (All Saints' Day) and November 2 (All Souls' Day) to honor relatives, friends and revered figures who have died. So, this is a perfect day to review:

Book #149: El Corazón De La Muerte/Altars and Offerings for Days of the Dead, published by the Oakland Museum of California



My rating:

I saw the 17th annual Días de los Muertos exhibition, entitled "Love and Loss", at the Oakland Museum of California when I was in San Francisco last month, and I bought this book from the museum shop afterward. The book, which was written for the 10th annual exhibition in 2003, provides a short introduction to the holiday, which dates back to pre-Hispanic Mexico. It began with Micailhuitontli, the Small Feast of the Dead, which lasted for 20 days and honored the dead children of the populations of ancient Mexico. This was followed by Huey Micailhuitl, the Great Feast of the Dead, in which the adult dead were honored. These rituals were both mournful and joyous, and consisted of the blessing of a tree cut down in honor of the dead children, and the creation of a large bird god made of amaranth seed dough, which was placed on the end of the tree trunk, forming a mythical Tree of Life around which offerings, sacrifices and bloodletting took place. Young men in the community then climbed the tree pole just before sunset, took down the bird made of bread, and broke off pieces, which were distributed to members of the community, as the "flesh of the god."

After the Spaniards conquered Mexico and its ancient peoples, elements of Christianity were incorporated into the ritual. Some of these were similar, yet many were different, most notably the conception of Heaven and Hell as places where people went after death. The rituals of Micailhuitontli and Huey Micailhuitl were replaced by All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day, and ofrendas, altars which consisted of offerings that were individualized based on the interests and influences of the dead person, became the essential core of Los Días de los Muertos, which continues to the present day.

The annual exhibitions at the museum, and the book based on it, consist largely of ofrendas created by Mexican-American artists and private citizens in the Bay Area, which consist of similar elements. The amaranth dough of the bird god is represented by pan de muerto (bread of the dead), which is placed on the altar, along with marigolds, the deceased's favorite foods, photographs, other objects that were dear to the departed person. Sugar-candy skulls are also featured in many of the ofrendas, along with miniaturized skeletons, which are often displayed as caricatures who sing, dance, drink and mock the powerful people who ruled their lives.

Here are some photos of several ofrendas that I took at the exhibition. As you'll see, several of the ofrendas are traditional, and others include modern elements, such as the one in which the altar is replaced by a boxing ring, and the depiction of a man in a disco outfit dancing with a woman who wears the mask of a skull (apologizes for the poor quality of the photos, which I took with my BlackBerry):





















The book was an excellent companion to this wonderful exhibition, which permitted me to appreciate the history and importance of Los Días de los Muertos. I would highly recommend this book, but I would even more highly recommend attending this exhibition, and/or any Días de los Muertos celebrations in your area.

Excellent review! Beautiful photos!

I loved your review of Scenes of Village Life, Darryl. Needless to say, that's now on my obese wish list.

Great pictures of the ofrendas, and another excellent review. Grrr...... where's that boot? hmmm... on my foot. I'll have to wait until I go home to throw it at you. It's been a while though...so I think your ducking skills are probably a little rusty.

Excellent review and beautiful photos, Darryl. It turns out that the Seattle Art Museum has a Tapete Display at the Olympic Sculpture Park for el Dia de los Muertos. These are sand paintings inspired by Oaxacan tradition. The display is there through 11/13 so I'm going to try to get by there this weekend, weather permitting.

Back to Louise Erdrich: I read a LOT of her about 20 years ago, and then picked up The Plague of Doves when it came out, having enjoyed some stories of hers (some of which eventually were adapted into parts of TPOD) in the New Yorker. I enjoyed it about 3/4 of the way through and then I thought it fell apart. I did really like her most recent novel, Shadow Tag, although it was very sad, and I've pretty much forgotten all the books I read by her so many years ago.

Just got in from our All Souls Day service, and found your fascinating review and photos of Los Dias de los Muertos. Our Anglican church looked very plain and sober by comparison, and I don't think we have any celebrations of this nature in our area!

Adding my enthusiasm for your Amos Oz review also. I'm sure I've read something by him, many years ago - some essays or other non-fiction I seem to recall. I have not catalogued the part of my library where it is likely to be if I still have it, so I'm being very vague...

>246 DorsVenabili: Thanks, Kerri!

>247 cameling: Yikes; I might need an ofrenda myself if Caroline's aim has improved.

>248 EBT1002: Thanks, Ellen. Please let us know if you do go to that display.

>249 rebeccanyc: I noticed that the LT reviews of The Plague of Doves are mixed. Enough people seem to have loved it, so I'm looking forward to reading it, although I will keep your comments in mind.

>250 gennyt: I wouldn't expect that there would be any Días de los Muertos celebrations in England, or anywhere else outside of Mexico or the US, Genny. According to El Corazón De La Muerte, it wasn't widely celebrated here until the 1970s, when teachers, artists and leaders in Chicano communities across the US taught about the ceremony in schools, hosted exhibitions of ofrendas, and led processions.

New thread here!

#251 I seem to recall some scenes in one of Barbara Kingsolver's novels - Animal Dreams I think, set in Arizona - where Day of the Dead celebrations feature, as an expression of the immigrant Chicano population's culture.

I love almost anything Louise Erdrich writes and have read just about everything. Love Medicine is my absolute favorite but Plague of Doves was very good (for me anyway).

I have Amos Oz's memoir A Tale of Darkness and Love and now I'll be adding Scenes From Village Life. Excellent review.

Regarding Erdrich, I mentioned elsewhere that I read The Master Butchers... right after I read Middlesex. They cover the same era of immigration, one to a rural and the other to an urban setting. The parallels were quite resonant, and I think both books are still vivid in my mind because of that.

Joyce thanks for your excellent suggestions on Native American lit. Dont know if I can find one of them to fit in with TIOLI but I will try.

Darry, I'll second Joyce's recommendation on The Kiss of the Fur Queen. It was all too true.

For a contempory and very humourous read on First Nations people, I just LOVED Motorcycles& Sweetgrass by Drew Hayden Taylor.

Here is my review from a while back - sorry it's so long!!!

Do you love Canadian Literature as I do, but sometimes harbour secret critical thoughts? Do you ever inwardly ask yourself questions like: Does CanLit have to be so depressing? Is everyone in Canada impoverished and filled with self pity? Could Can Lit ever allow its reader’s to indulge in a little escapism? Character development is wonderful – but could we cut out about 100 pages of navel gazing? Is any sub group in Canada not filled with lamentations?

It was with this trepidation that I picked up Motorcycles &Sweet Grass by Drew Taylor Hayden. Yes, I ‘d read excellent reviews that promised me that this book would read “like a romp.” But, I reasoned, this is a book about life on a First Nations Reserve and that is not generally indicative of a book that will be humour filled. I was most wonderfully surprised in so many ways.

Motorcycles and Sweetgrass is indeed filled with humour and great lines, but it also gently touches on many serious issues. Residential schools, abuse by Catholic Priests, alcoholism, drug abuse, the clashing intergenerational First Nation Culture and many other difficult topics are skilfully brought to our attention. Native mythology is prominent in the book, but presented in such a way that it very understandable to virtually any reader. I also got a real feel for the prejudice that First Nations people are subjected to, as well a look into what life might be like for both adults and children living on a reserve in today’s Canada. I was also able to get a very good idea as to what forces – both from within and outside a Reserve - are dealt with by an aboriginal Chief.

This is a most fun and enjoyable read ,but it would be a mistake to say it is simply that. There is so much more to this book, and it well earned its place as a finalist in the 2010 Governor Generalist’s Award. The author, Drew Hayden Taylor , born and raised on Curve Lake First Nation Reserve in Ontario well deserves his award from Knopf Canada as a New Face in Fiction in Canada.
Many humourous lines are quoted by other LT reviewers, but that one that grabbed me that has not been mentioned is this one concerning the Chief of the reserve :

“She hated appearing on television, felt that she looked too haggard and worn, like a character from a Margaret Lawrence novel.”

This is a wonderful read and deserves to be much more popular than it is. I look very forward to Drew Hayden Taylor's next book!

It was a 5 star read for me, and one of my favourite books!

Early Erdrich is really good, Alexie is always good, Momaday is good, Linda Hogan is pretty good - I loved Green Grass - There are also some fascinating books like 'God is Red' - essays by Native Americans and also one called Gone to Croatan - the subtitle is "Origins of American Drop-out Culture" that was one of the most interesting reads ever. I'm going to look over my fiction native american list to see what I'm forgetting. Hooray for tags!

Return -- My tags are terrible - I keep finding how sloppy I've been. If I ever get ALL my books in then I'll have to start the long process of making my tags useful..... but there is a lot of stuff under just plain native american but I don't know where all the fiction I've read is hiding. Probably just in fiction american which is not that useful. When I started out I had no idea how I was really going to want the tags to be and I was too simplistic. Sigh

I can't believe it but two of the books you are reading this month - Old Filth and Flaubert's Parrot I have actually read. This is a rare thing indeed!

I enjoyed also enjoyed The Death of Jim Loney by James Welch, another Native American writer. I know I own this book, but I seem never to have entered it into my catalog.