kidzdoc: 75 from the shelves #14

Unknown photographer, Winter scene in Central Park




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Currently reading:



Volcano by Shusaku Endo
A Disease Apart: Leprosy in the Modern World by Tony Gould
False Friends: Book Two by Ellie Malet Spradbery

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 (review)
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 (review)
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)
154. Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje (review)
155. Soul Talk, Song Language: Conversations with Joy Harjo by Joy Harjo and Tanaya Winder
156. The Good Muslim by Tahmima Anam (to be reviewed in issue 16 of Belletrista)
157. Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward (review)
158. The Sojourn by Andrew Krivak
159. Old Filth by Jane Gardam
160. Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes

December:
161. No More Mr. Nice Guy by Howard Jacobson (review)
162. In Mad Love and War by Joy Harjo
163. Other Lives by André Brink (review)
164. Nemesis by Philip Roth (review)
165. A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas
166. The Leper Compound by Paula Nangle (to be reviewed in issue 16 of Belletrista)

Hi Darryl! Probably shan't try to catch up on your threads, but looks like lots of older reviews and comments I'm going to need to go trawling them for!

How's life?

Great photo! I love old NYC pictures!

It is a great photo! Yours is the first thread I follow which has been "continued" using the new feature : ).

>6 flissp: Hi Fliss! I finished my week off for Thanksgiving yesterday, and I'll be mostly working from now until Dec 19. I'm on call at work, waiting for admissions to come in. How about yourself?

>7 rebeccanyc: Same here Rebecca, although I don't know if this is truly an old picture, or one that looks old because of the weather. I loved walking through Central Park with my girlfriend when I worked in NYC, particularly on snowy or wintry days. Hmm, Pittsburgh was also beautiful on snowy days as well...I'll have to find a photo to post here.

>8 lit_chick: Hi Nancy! I know that I'm not the first 75er to use this new feature. I'm pretty sure that Janet (JanetinLondon) and Tui (tiffin) have also used it recently.

Of course, that pic could have been taken last winter, when we got that Boxing Day blizzard!!

Hi Darryl. Beautiful photo, and what a surprise to be directed automatically to your new thread!

Wow, here I am! I hope I got to read all the posts on the old thread before being redirected. Scurries off to check

Darryl - from my warm vantage point - nice photo of a less warm NYC. Will be joining you this December with Great House by Nicole Krauss on the TIOLI challenge.

Lovely pic of Central Park, Darryl ... I have that same one as one of my screensavers. I think I downloaded it off the Webshots website.

Going back to your previous thread, Darryl about the 2012 challenge .. I'm so glad to see we won't be alone in this. haha... I need a strong support team if I'm going to succeed in this challenge.

I love Paul's suggestion of picking literacy and children as charities. There's one that I'm partial to and that's the 'Room to Read' charity. http://www.roomtoread.org/ It

Love the picture, Darryl! And count me in on the literacy charities for money I would otherwise have spent on books. It's a perfect channel for my privilege and will encourage me to use the public library even more.

That's truly a lovely photo, Darryl.

Lovely picture! :)

#9 I think it's the fact that it's in B&W that made me think it was old. Can't tell from the buildings, because the angle is wrong for the newer buildings near Columbus Circle.

I've written about Room to Read for Barron's -- the founder, John Wood, is a seriously cool guy and they do fabulous work. The reason I wrote about them? They ranked #1 as the world's most effective philanthropy...

Glad to see you also adopted the thread continuation feature Darryl. It's definitely the way to go in 2012 for multiple threaders like you!

continuation of #12

Beware! If you don't want to miss a single post on Darryl's thread, you might need to go back to his previous one. The auto thread maker unstarred Darryl's previous thread and automatically moved me to this new one, complete with star, but I still had 30 or so unread posts on his old thread. Since it was no longer starred, it didn't show up in my list. If I hadn't checked, I would never have known that I was missing some of the fun.

>22 labfs39:: The auto thread maker hasn't "unstarred" any threads that I follow. I have to manually unstar to keep my thread list tidy (which is OK with me).

If I may be so bold as to add another charity to the list for the lurkers and posters to consider for the 2012 challenge, there are some interesting programs involving pairing children who are struggling to read with a registered reading therapy dog. The dogs offer no judgement or corrections, are trained to be attentive to the child and book throughout, and inspire kids to practice reading to their own pets at home.

Some organizations that participate in this are Therapy Dogs International, R.E.A.D.: Reading Education Assistance Dogs, Reading with Rover, READing Paws, Library Dogs, Dogs Trust (in the U.K.) and multiple others who sponsor reading therapy dogs or other animals.

Just an idea to throw out there.... The charity donation for next year is a great concept.

Hi Darryl, lovely winter pic.

Just a quick Drive-By (no guns)

and a Thank You for your Photo (up top)...I haven't been to NYC in too many years...but I remember some chilly mornings when I was young & poor & full of hope....

Thanks for visiting, everyone! I'm near the end of a particularly rough week at work, and I'm a bit too brain dead to post anything coherent at the moment. I'm also too fried to read anything, I think, so I'll just read some posts and call it a night soon.

I hope you get some rest, Darryl. Take good care.

#24 My daughter loved Reading with Rover when she was younger. It was definitely an incentive for her to read aloud. Not only are the dogs (and handlers) attentive, but they encourage kids to come back by inking the dog's paw onto a sheet with five spaces, one paw print for each reading session, and cute photos on bookmarks you can collect. It was a drop in activity at our local Indie bookstore. Darryl, does your hospital use therapy animals?

Priceless!

Beautiful photo on this thread :)

Thanks, Kath. I would highly recommend visiting Central Park and the museums that surround it on your next trip to NYC.

The New York Times' 10 Best Books of 2011 list has been published:

Fiction:
The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
11/22/63 by Stephen King
Swamplandia! by Karen Russell
Ten Thousand Saints by Eleanor Henderson
The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht

Nonfiction:
Arguably by Christopher Hitchens
The Boy in the Moon: A Father's Search for His Extraordinary Son by Ian Brown
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War by Amanda Foreman

More info: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/11/books/10-best-books-of-2011.html

I've read The Tiger's Wife, which was good, and The Boy in the Moon, which was superb (I'll review it for my group's Christmas party later this month, as several of us compile a list of our 10 favorite or most notable books to hand out to the others). I own Swamplandia! and Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, both of which I'll read early next year.

30> LOVE it!! It's exactly how I feel after the week I just had. I couldn't even read last night I was so tired. I just looked at your review of The Stranger's Child. I've just started it and hope I enjoy it as much as you did.

Book #161: No More Mr. Nice Guy by Howard Jacobson



My rating:

Frank is a 50 year old British television critic, who has just left his partner, a highly dysfunctional author of feminist porn plagued by bulimia and neuroses. He is literally a talking and breathing penis, whose thoughts about having sex are interrupted only by eating, sleeping and other necessary bodily functions. He returns to Oxford and other towns where his sexual conquests as an adolescent and young man took place, but to his apparent surprise, he cannot relive the past. The novel is well written, but incredibly juvenile, vulgar and boring, and it may well be the worst book I've read this year.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO K. That's a no. And I liked The Finkler Question, so would have been inclined to grab this from the library, so you have probably just saved me from a very bad book experience. Thanks Darryl!

Your review of No More Mr. Nice Guy is hilarious, Darryl! Thanks for the warning to skip this book. :)

You're welcome, Cushla. I would rather read The Testament of Jessie Lamb again than re-read this piece of rubbish.

Loved The Boy in the Moon a Father's Search for His Extraordinary Son by Ian Brown. I am glad that the book and author got the recognition in the New York Times.

Well, I didn't care for The Finkler Question so I would not have rushed impulsively towards this one. But your review cracked me up! Especially this line: He is literally a talking and breathing penis ...

Thanks for sparing us all, Darryl!

I'm with Laura about The Finkler Question and her reaction too!

>39 torontoc: I agree, Cyrel. I gave it to one of my partners to read, and both of us found it to be insightful and instructive, as we often take care of children with chronic and debilitating conditions. Once I write my review for my group in the next week or two I'll post it here, as well.

>40 lauralkeet: I'd like to say that my comment about Frank is unique, but it's not:

Take D's objections to being thought of as c**t. Why so sensitive? Frank would love to be thought of as c**k. 'I wouldn't mind a piece of that,' he once overheard (sic, spelled overhead in my copy of the book) one woman saying to another in a theatre queue. If he wasn't mistaken he was the that she wouldn't have minded a piece of. He'd never been more complimented in his life. He never has since.

This is one of the least raunchy sections of this lovely book. If anyone wants it, send me a private message, and it's yours. Otherwise it's going into the recyclable bin.

Such a shame about Howard Jacobson. Some of his earlier books are really good, but somehow he has lost his way maybe. I couldn't get excited about The Finkler Question, and I definitely won't be reading this latest one.

>43 JanetinLondon: I should have mentioned that No More Mr. Nice Guy is a reprint, as it was originally published in 1998. I look forward to reading Whatever It Is, I Don't Like It, his collection of columns from The Independent, and I still plan to read his earlier novels Kalooki Nights and The Mighty Walzer, which I already own.

Thanks for reminding me that The Finkler Question is still sitting on my shelf, unread. The lukewarm reception it got put me off, although I still plan to read it someday.

Interesting about Howard Jacobson's off-putting book. I read another book that people considered offensive. It was called The Foreskin's Lament by Shalom Auslander. I agree that it was offensive, but I liked the book. As a matter of fact, the latest ER bonus batch has an offering of his newest book (and I'm hoping to win a copy!).

I still want to read The Finkler Question, of which I have a copy, but do not want to read No More Mister Nice Guy. If I like The Finkler Question, I might, just as you are doing, Darryl, read Jacobson's other books.

I've read both Kalooki Nights and The Mighty Walzer, and was just above lukewarm about them. I thought The Mighty Walzer was better.

I hope your week is better than last week's, Darryl. And thanks for the heads up about No More Mr Nice Guy because I had been contemplating picking it up.

Just joining in. Great review, Darryl. After all, great reviews shouldn't always be for the books we love, right? I have and still want to read The Finkler Question.

>45 brenzi: I did like The Finkler Question, although it's probably one of my least favorite Booker winners. Last year's Booker Dozen wasn't particularly memorable, especially in comparison to the 2009 longlisted books (Wolf Hall, The Glass Room, Brooklyn, The Children's Book, Love and Summer), although these books were considerably better than this year's lot (except for The Sense of an Ending and The Stranger's Child). 2012 should be a much better year for the Booker, as the chair of judges, Peter Stothard, editor of the Times Literary Supplement, has a solid literary pedigree.

>46 SqueakyChu: I can tolerate bits of hyper-androgenized writing in an otherwise good book, e.g. The Finkler Question. However, all of No More Mr. Nice Guy read this way, which made it practically unreadable.

>47 JanetinLondon: As you know, we've been discussing Roth and Jacobson (the "British Philip Roth", as Steven had mentioned) on my Club Read thread, and I just mentioned that I might read one of each author's most famous early works, to compare the two. If you liked The Mighty Walzer better I might read that one ahead of Kalooki Nights, and alongside American Pastoral by Roth.

The talk about Roth on my Club Read thread reminded me that I had wanted to read Nemesis, Philip Roth's latest novel, which was selected as a finalist for this year's Wellcome Trust Book Prize, set during a polio epidemic in Newark, NJ in 1944. I'll read it this week, although I may not finish it until this coming weekend.

>48 cameling: Thanks, Caroline. I had originally thought that this would be a better week, but (without getting into unnecessary details) it may not be as good as I had hoped. Next week will definitely be a better one, though.

>49 EBT1002: I'm curious to get your (and Bonnie's) opinion about The Finkler Question, Ellen.

The only reason I would mention Roth and Jacobson in the same breath is because they both focus on men and sex; however, Roth is an incomparably better writer (in my opinion).

I've got Nemesis in the TBR chute as well. Unfortunately, I won't get to it until next year.

Darryl, I thought the judges in the Booker committee all had literary pedigrees. Is this not so?

I'm simply stopping by and waving hello. Happy Holidays!

Hmm, shall add Roth to my reading for this month then, Rebecca. I did like The Finkler Question, because the book itself was so ... unexpected. I love it when a book is well-written and challenges me. Am glad that I didn't request this Jacobson from ER, however; I get about as bored with men who write like that as with men who talk like that in bars.

Caro, all literary pedigrees are not created equal. Stella Rimington writes thrillers, which are good insofar as their genre is concerned, but the genre is not literary fiction. Stothard is more of a critic than a writer (although I read The Spartacus Road last year and greatly enjoyed it!) I certainly wouldn't think he knows as much about literary fiction as a practitioner of the craft than does Rimington, but the public knows what he reads because he writes about it and we don't know what Rimington reads, because by the time she talked about it, it was in defensive terms. Personally, I'd rather have writers than critics judge, generally, but Rimington was probably a bit of a silly choice. One year David Lodge chaired it, and the panel included Maggie Gee and Edmund White. But then another year, chick lit author Kate Saunders was on there. Ruth Rendell was on the committee the year that The Ghost Road by Pat Barker won. The year that Mantel won for Wolf Hall, the chair was a broadcaster -- a bit like naming Brian Williams or Anderson Cooper to the job, no better than Rimington, really, even if the outcome was less criticized.

Hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving week off then Darryl! Sorry last week was so rough - I hope this one proves better... I'm good thanks - very busy (work & play), but that's how I like it best really!

Re thread continuations - the fact that I hadn't even realised that this was a continuation/an option shows how much I've been on LT recently I think...

#35 re book #161 - Wow. Definitely one to avoid there then!

The Boy in the Moon however, I shall clearly have to investigate - I've not come across it before...

#55 Interesting what you say about the Booker panel Suzanne, I'd never really noticed who was on it before! This year, while I've enjoyed the longlist books I've read, the only one that might actually stick with me (which is what I would expect from a Booker), was The Sense of an Ending (unexpectedly to me).

(PS also love the photo!)

Ah, the life of a dog ...

He looks like he's getting a great rest. Hope you do too Darryl.

Love it!

Catching up...

>51 rebeccanyc: Rebecca, from what little I've read of Roth and Jacobson I would tend to agree with you that Roth is the better writer. I did start Nemesis, Roth's latest novel, which is set in Newark, NJ during the polio epidemic in summer 1944. It's pretty good, but so far it isn't as compelling as The Plot Against America.

>52 labfs39: Lisa, I'll finish Nemesis by this afternoon, and I'll review it later today or tomorrow.

>53 cameling: I thought the judges in the Booker committee all had literary pedigrees. Is this not so?

Actually, no. According to the Booker Prize web site, "Every effort is made to achieve a balance between the judges of gender, articulacy and role, so that the panel includes a literary critic, an academic, a literary editor, a novelist and a major figure." I think that provides a nice balance, in general, although it didn't work out well this year.

>54 Whisper1: Happy Holidays to you too, Linda!

>55 Chatterbox: I agree, Rimington was a silly choice as the chair of judges. I can't help but wonder if the powerful and influential former MI5 Director General persuaded the others to shift the direction of the award away from literary fiction this year. I'd like to think not, but I would be very interested to read the comments of the other judges.

>56 flissp: Hi, Fliss! I did enjoy my Thanksgiving week, which was peaceful and relaxing. This past week was marginally better than the previous one; however, I'll be off for five of the next seven days (Sa, Su, W, Th, F), so I'll have a chance to recharge my battery (and read!) over the week.

I don't mind (and I'm certainly used to) being busy, but I don't like it when work is hectic and unnecessarily stressful, as it has been these past two weeks. On the other hand, I do have an excellent and rewarding job, so I don't have anything to complain about.

I like this continuation option, particularly because it allows starred threads to stay starred when a new one is created.

Do not read No More Mr. Nice Guy (the title of the book makes no sense to me, which fits with my impression of the book). Of the five reviews so far on LT, none gave it more than 1½ stars.

The Boy in the Moon is superb and highly recommended by me. I'll write a review this week to give to my group's holiday party next Saturday, and I'll post a review here, as well.

The Sense of an Ending will definitely stick with me, along with The Sisters Brothers and Pigeon English, at least. The Testament of Jessie Lamb and Snowdrops will also be memorable, but for the wrong reasons. (Hmm...I may end up re-reading it this week, as it's another book that I'll want to write a review for my group's holiday party. Then again, I do have to read and review a book for the upcoming issue of Belletrista, The Leper Compound by Paula Nangle, and review The Good Muslim by Tahmima Anam, which I've already read, so I might have to put the review of The Sense of an Ending off until next year.)

>58 lit_chick: I wish I was a dog sometimes...

>59 Smiler69: I did sleep for 8½ hours last night; I fell asleep not long after posting that GIF in message #57. I'm still very sleepy, though, and I'm sure that I'll take a long afternoon nap in the next couple of hours.

>60 avatiakh: Thanks, Kerry!

I love Cait's idea of posting a list of books from her TBR pile to read in 2012. I'll go through my shelves over the next week, compile a similar list, and post it on my 2012 75 Books and Club Read threads.

BTW, I'm still holding fast to my promise to not buy any books for the remainder of the year. My last book purchase was on October 20 at City Lights. I'll definitely make it until Christmas; however, I probably will buy books during the NYC LT get together on December 26, particularly ones that I'm planning to read as part of the Author Theme Reads and Reading Globally groups.

Ahhh...a well rested Darryl is a Darryl to fear .. how many books will he read over the weekend I wonder that will wing their way over to my obese wish list?

Don't forget to buy as many books as your arms can carry in NYC on Dec 26 because you're also doing the Read More Buy Less challenge next year. ;-)

#22, 61 I was wrong about my star being lost off your old thread, because it has worked several times for me beautifully. I must have accidently unstarred your old thread myself. My mind isn't what it used to be! Sorry if I mislead any of your thread followers.

>62 kidzdoc: - I'm looking forward to that TBR list - I imagine it is quite a bit larger than mine!!

>63 cameling: Ahhh...a well rested Darryl is a Darryl to fear .. how many books will he read over the weekend I wonder that will wing their way over to my obese wish list?

Not many this weekend, I suspect. I'll probably only read one or two other books other than Nemesis, which will likely be Devil on the Cross by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, and Captain Pantoja and the Special Service by Mario Vargas Llosa. I'll read a few more books from Wednesday to Saturday, though.

>64 labfs39: My mind isn't what it used to be!

That goes for all of us, I think...

>65 Cait86: How about this for a start?

Patrick White, The Vivisector {Patrick White 100th Anniversary Challenge}
Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar, A Mind at Peace {Reading Globally 1Q}
Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence {Reading Globally 1Q}
Orhan Pamuk, Snow {Reading Globally 1Q}
Yashar Kemal, Memed, My Hawk {Reading Globally 1Q}

Stefan Zweig, Beware of Pity {Reading Globally Classics}
Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita {Reading Globally Classics}
Louis Couperus, Eline Vere {Reading Globally Classics}
Edward Said, Orientalism {Reading Globally 3rd Q}
Naguib Mahfouz, The Cairo Trilogy {Reading Globally 3rd Q}

David Grossman, To the End of the Land {Reading Globally 3rd Q}
A.B. Yehoshua, Friendly Fire {Reading Globally 3rd Q}
Amos Oz, My Michael {Reading Globally 3rd Q}
Amos Oz, The Same Sea {Reading Globally 3rd Q}
Michael Ondaatje, Anil’s Ghost

Nicola Barker, Darkmans
Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety
Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (re-read)
Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention

?Natsume Soseki, Kokoro
?Natsume Soseki, The Three-Cornered World
Rohinton Mistry, Family Matters
Elias Khoury, Gate of the Sun (re-read) {Reading Globally 3rd Q}
Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, The Colonel {Reading Globally 2nd Q}

Ma Jian, Beijing Coma {Reading Globally 4th Q}
Mo Yan, Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out {Reading Globally 4th Q}
Jiang Rong, Wolf Totem {Reading Globally 4th Q}
Ruiyan Yu, The Lost and Forgotten Languages of Shanghai {Reading Globally 4th Q}
J.G. Farrell, The Singapore Grip

Jean Echenoz, I’m Off + One Year
Abdulrazak Gurnah, Paradise
Edward St Aubyn, Some Hope
Andrew Miller, Pure
Roy Porter, Madmen

Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
Ian McEwan, Atonement
Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder
Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns
Edward Said, Out of Place

Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic
Tony Gould, A Disease Apart: Leprosy in the Modern World
Alice LaPlante, Turn of Mind {2011 Wellcome Trust Book Prize winner}
Ann Patchett, State of Wonder {2011 Wellcome Trust Book Prize finalist}
Louisa Young, My Dear I Wanted to Tell You {2011 Wellcome Trust Book Prize finalist}

Helen Dunmore, The Siege {Orange January/July}
Helen Dunmore, The Betrayal {Orange January/July}
Jane Harris, Gillespie and I
Abraham Verghese, The Tennis Partner
Boualem Sansal, The German Mujahid {Reading Globally 3rdQ}

Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita {Nabokov in 2012}
Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin {Nabokov in 2012}
Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire {Nabokov in 2012}
Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory {Nabokov in 2012}
Simon Mawer, Mendel’s Dwarf

Amitav Ghosh, The Calcutta Chromosome
Colson Whitehead, Sag Harbor
Colson Whitehead, Zone One
Victor LaValle, Big Machine
Ernesto Sabato, The Tunnel

Roma Tearne, Mosquito
Kamila Shamsie, Broken Verses
James Kelman, How Late It Was, How Late
William Trevor, Selected Stories
Jaimy Gordon, Lord of Misrule

Karen Russell, Swamplandia! {Orange January/July}
Eleanor Catton, The Rehearsal {Orange January/July}
Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin {Orange January/July}
Rose Tremain, The Road Home {Orange January/July}
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Purple Hibiscus {Orange January/July}

Patricia Grace, Dogside Story
Keri Hulme, The Bone People
Robert Klitzman, When Doctors Become Patients
Touré, Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness? What it Means to Be Black Now
José Donoso, The Lizard’s Tale

There's a 99.99% chance that this list will be revised repeatedly over the next couple of weeks.

>63 cameling: Don't forget to buy as many books as your arms can carry in NYC on Dec 26 because you're also doing the Read More Buy Less challenge next year. ;-)

Yes, yes...however, there aren't all that many books that I'm dying to read, and the ones that I am I'll probably receive as Christmas gifts.

Are you planning to create a thread for this challenge?

Oof. I'm tired but not sleepy. I need another mug of coffee (or an IV infusion of caffeine).

Great list, there's a few on there that will hopefully appear on my 2012 lists. Where is the Patrick White challenge? I'm hoping to read at least one of his books next year as I have an Australian category in my 12in12.
I'm hoping to participate a little more in the Reading Globally group next year, I sort of dropped out this year after the first quarter.

Wow that's quite a list Darryl. Lots of books that I already own and lots of books I'm interested in reading. Could you post some links to some of these challenges? I'm particularly interested in the Patrick White 100th Anniversary Challenge, Reading Globally, Reading Globally Classics, Author Theme Reads, Nabokov in 2012. I guess that's just about all of them LOL.

>68 avatiakh:, 69

Patrick White 100th Anniversary Challenge: http://www.librarything.com/groups/patrickwhite100thann
Reading Globally: http://www.librarything.com/groups/readinggloballyficti
Reading Globally Classics thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/128006
Author Theme Reads: http://www.librarything.com/groups/authorthemereads
Nabokov!: http://www.librarything.com/groups/nabokov

Thanks Darryl!

I'm impressed by your being able to list books from your TBR you're planning to read in 2012. I can't begin to be that organized!

Good news for fans of Japanese literature: the Author Theme Reads group (see link in message #70) will be focusing on several Japanese authors in 2012. We'll be reading Shusaku Endo throughout the year, along with four mini-authors: Natsume Soseki (Jan-Mar), Kobo Abe (Apr-Jun), Ryu Murakami (Jul-Sep), and Yukio Mishima (Oct-Dec). Participants can read any other Japanese author of their choice, and talk about it, as well. We'll also start a group read of 1Q84 in January, and I'll definitely start reading it then (if not a bit sooner). I'd encourage any of you who are interested to join us!

Ambitious plan, Darryl! I have the Tearne and the Shamsie novels; let me know when you start reading them next year, and I will try to do the same.

Yes, I'll be joining in on Japanese literature, although I won't be reading IQ84, as January is already too full of big books. I will aim to read Soseki's Kokoro in January, and maybe start Endo's Silence, if I can find them.

>71 brenzi: You're welcome, Bonnie.

>72 rebeccanyc: Rebecca, it wasn't that hard. I chose books that I plan to read for the groups I'm active in (Reading Globally, Author Theme Reads, Orange January/July, and Booker Prize, in particular) along with others that I've been the most eager to read (A Place of Greater Safety, When Doctors Become Patients, The Singapore Grip, etc.).

As I predicted, my list of planned reads has already changed, now that the major and mini authors of the 2012 version of Author Theme Reads have been announced. I'll also read Botchan by Natsume Soseki (the e-book version is free, and I have it on my Kindle), Spring Snow and The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima, and The Box Man and The Ark Sakura by Kobo Abe. If I have time, I'd also like to read The Changeling by Kenzaburo Oe.

This list also leaves out a lot of books that I'm very eager to read, such as In My Father's House by Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Burden of Responsibility by Tony Judt, Let the Wind Speak by Juan Carlos Onetti and (if I don't get to it by the end of the year) Haiti After the Earthquake by Paul Farmer. I probably need to stick with this plan (and stop buying so many books!) for the next 3-4 years, at least, to make a serious dent in my TBR pile.

I found this image, which I'm using for my first 2012 Club Read thread, kidzdoc's Assault on Mount TBR in 2012:



Hopefully I can find an equally appropriate one to use for my first 75 Books thread in 2012.

I'll probably make a last hurrah book haul at The Strand and/or Book Culture after Christmas, mainly to buy books that I intend to read for 2012 challenges, such as I Am a Cat by Natsume Soseki and the last three books in Mishima's The Sea of Fertility series. However, I won't count those books, or others I receive for Christmas, as ones from my TBR pile. Next year I would like to only buy books for the prizes I follow most closely, particularly the Orange, Booker and Wellcome Trust Book Prizes, along with a small number of "must have" books, such as the new Hilary Mantel novel that will be released in April. I plan to keep a close track of the TBR books I actually read, books I give away, and books I acquire, and indicate which of these are books I've bought and books that are free (LTER books, gift books, free e-books, etc.), along with the cost of the books I give away and those I buy. (Can you tell that I'm far more serious about this now than I was at this time last year?)

#66 - Thanks for sharing the Patrick White challenge! I plan to read one of his books for one of my 12 and 12 challenges. I really don't know much about him, but after reading the book summaries, I keep going back and forth between The Vivisector and The Tree of Man. We'll see.

And great TBR list! I'm currently reading Zone One and am impressed so far.

Checking in, Darryl. Thanks for the heads up about No More Mr. Nice Guy. I enjoyed The Finkler Question a lot and would have been tempted to pick up the other book. Now I know not to!

>74 Cait86: Cait, I finally looked at the books in your TBR list yesterday, and there are several that I own that I'm also eager to get to:

Paul Murray, Skippy Dies
Roma Tearne, Mosquito
Ali Smith, There but for the (not a TBR book, but one that I'll either receive as a Christmas gift or buy in NYC after Christmas)
Zadie Smith, Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays
Mario Vargas Llosa, The Bad Girl
Kamila Shamsie, Broken Verses
Helen Dunmore, The Betrayal (I'll read The Siege first, as others have recommended)
Olga Grushin, The Line
J.G. Ballard, Empire of the Sun
Todd Shimoda, Oh! A Mystery of Mono No Aware
Sadie Jones, Small Wars
Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea

We should keep in touch whenever either of us starts to read any of these books. I'll probably read There but for the in January or February, and I'll probably read Mosquito and Broken Verses in the spring. I could read them sooner, but probably not in January.

>75 JanetinLondon: Janet, I'm glad that you'll be joining us in reading Japanese literature next year in the Author Theme Reads group. I'm also planning to read Kokoro in January, along with 1Q84.

BTW, lilisin created a thread for the group read of 1Q84 that will begin next month: 1Q84 Group Read.

>77 DorsVenabili: You're welcome, Kerri! The Vivisector has been high on my TBR list for about a year and a half, so this challenge is perfect for me.

>78 alcottacre: Hi, Stasia! It's great to see you back. I can't think of a book I've read since I joined LT that has received so many strongly negative reviews and such a low rating (two people gave it 1½ stars, two gave it 1 star, and one gave it ½ star). I'll have to leave it in my virtual LT library, only because I would lose my LT ER review if I delete it, but I plan to get rid of the physical book ASAP.

I admit to being surprised that a Jacobson book would merit such low reviews. Of course, I have only read one of his, so I am no expert :)

Darryl - impressive lists in 66 & 79. A mere 87 books to go at there. I have the majority of them somewhere about but have only read 8 of them - Mafouz, Mistry, Gurnah, Mantel, Pamuk, Ellison, Farrell & Ballard. You don't seem to have any duffers in there Darryl although The Singapore Grip is probably my least favourite Farrell.

>81 alcottacre: Stasia, I still don't know much about Jacobson, other than the two novels I've read and the general impression that he was overdue to win the Booker Prize (based on what, though?). I wouldn't consider him in the same league as the first class contemporary British writers, such as Hilary Mantel, Ian McEwan, Alan Hollinghurst, David Mitchell and Julian Barnes, and he seems to be a bit overrated to me, based on comments from folks in this group who have read him the most. No More Mr. Nice Guy is an absolute embarrassment, and I'm surprised (and disappointed) that he agreed to allow it to be republished.

>82 PaulCranswick: Thanks, Paul. Several others have said that The Singapore Grip is their least favorite book by Farrell, but Troubles and The Siege of Krishnapur were two of my top 5 favorite books in 2010, so I'm still eager to read this one.

#76, I do think about books to read for the Reading Globally theme reads and the Author Theme Reads groups, but I tend to be such an opportunistic reader and also such an addicted book buyer that I can't really plan ahead. I admire that you can, but I know myself well enough to know I can't do it myself. That said, I do try to think of which books to bring on two trips I have to take in January and February -- nothing like long plane trips for reading!

#82 I would have loved The Singapore Grip if I hadn't read Troubles (my favorite) and The Siege of Krishnapur first. But I was fascinated by its depiction of the role of Singapore in the second world war, something I was unfamiliar with.

Darryl - Yes, I'll start a new Challenge Thread for the 2012 Read More Buy Less Challenge. I wonder if there's a way to link the thread to some of the other groups in case there are folks there who may interested in participating in the challenge as well. I'll have to check with Jim I think.

I will look forward to your reviews of the Orhan Pamuks you have in your TBR Tower. I read and didn't like My Name is Red and it left such a bad taste in my mouth that I've consciously kept away from his works thus far. But I haven't read any good reviews from anyone I know as yet on his other works so perhaps the one I read was his least effective work?

I read Natsume's I Am A Cat a few years ago and really liked it. It's a book that can't be rushed and reading it wrapped me in a little quiet bubble... everything seemed to slow down, I breathed more deeply, and it was an almost meditative experience.

Book #164: Nemesis by Philip Roth



2011 Wellcome Trust Book Prize shortlist

My rating:

"Bucky" Cantor is a young physical education teacher who is spending his summer as a playground director in the largely Jewish neighborhood of Weequahic in Newark, New Jersey. It is the summer of 1944, one that would be remembered for its brutal heat and its devastating outbreak of paralytic polio, the worst outbreak to strike the city since 1916. Bucky is distressed that he cannot join his two best friends in the war effort, as his poor eyesight makes him ineligible for the draft. He is a serious and dedicated teacher and mentor to the boys in the playground, who love and respect him unconditionally, as do their parents.

Bucky is deeply in love is Marcia Steinberg, the strikingly beautiful daughter of a beloved community physician, who teaches in the same school where he works. She is spending the summer as a counselor in a camp in the Poconos, and she begs him to join her there.

Weequahic is seemingly protected from polio, which has begun to make inroads in the surrounding neighborhoods, until two of the playground boys suddenly succumb to the illness. As the epidemic flares with a vengeance, the members of the community panic and point fingers at the city's leadership, the parents of the stricken children, and anyone suspected of bringing the infection into the neighborhood. Bucky is deeply shaken, and questions his own role in the outbreak, and how a merciful God could allow such a pestilence to strike against innocent children.

A position for a swimming instructor becomes available at the camp where Marcia is working, and Bucky leaves the disease plagued city to be with Marcia. There it is cool and idyllic, and polio is a distant memory. Bucky, however, is conflicted by his decision to leave the boys and his community, who he feels need him more than ever, but he is also free of the fear that he or the children in the camp will be the next polio victim and is alongside the woman he intends to marry.

In Nemesis, Roth does a fine job of portraying the fear and paranoia that resulted from that awful summer of 1944, and the devastating effect of paralytic polio on its survivors and on the families of those who died from the illness. However, the main characters are one dimensional and thinly portrayed, which greatly dilutes the effect of the story. Roth's main theme in the book, the struggle of one man's responsibility toward his community and country and its conflict with personal happiness and fulfillment, is not handled as well as it could have been, and it seemed to this reader that the first 3/4 of the book served as a set up for a discussion of this theme, making for a somewhat disjointed and unsatisfying read. Nemesis is a good book, but it could have been a great one.

62: I'm still holding fast to my promise to not buy any books for the remainder of the year. My last book purchase was on October 20 at City Lights. Go, Darryl! You've made it this far; another three weeks should be a breeze.

I love your reading list for 2012 and the, um, tree..... I'm going to start compiling my TBR list, as well, and yes! - many of them need to be off my shelves!

I hope you've been able to rest this weekend.

Book #161: Other Lives by André Brink



My rating:

This book consists of three interconnected short stories, all set in contemporary Cape Town and its surrounding towns. In "The Blue Door", the main character is a middle aged teacher who is also a successful painter, who lives in an apartment with his wife, in a comfortable but stolid and childless marriage. He owns a studio across town, which also serves as a haven of solitude for him. He leaves the studio one day to go to a local delicatessen, but when he returns there, he is greeted by an attractive younger woman who claims to be his wife, and two small children who smother him with hugs and kisses. Shaken, he leaves and attempts to return home, but his plight becomes increasingly surreal. In the second story, "Mirror", a successful architect prepares to go to work one morning after his wife and children have left, but he is shocked at the change in his appearance in the bathroom mirror. Finally, "Appassionata" is narrated by a concert pianist, who engages in a professional relationship with a renowned but mysterious singer with a dark past, with whom he falls madly in love.

In Other Lives, Brink plays with shifting identities and roles in the new South Africa, a country that is adjusting to new realities and expectations. The technique of using the same characters in different stories was largely successful, although "Appassionata" was a far weaker story than the brilliant first story and the very good second one. This book slipped from a 5 star read after "The Blue Door" to a 4 star one at the end, but it was still a very good read overall, and is highly recommended.

Just the title The Vivisector makes me shudder...
interesting conversation here as always..

eta

like the graphic you chose btw

>87 EBT1002: You've made it this far; another three weeks should be a breeze.

I'll only go for another two weeks. We're having another NYC LT get together on Boxing Day, and I'm planning to buy several books in preparation for 2012 before the year is out.

I love your reading list for 2012 and the, um, tree...

I thought it looked more like a (small) mountain of books. :-)

I'm a bit more rested than yesterday, but I'll take an afternoon nap very shortly. Fortunately I'm off from Wed-Fri, so I'll be able to fully recover by this coming weekend.

>89 mckait: Just the title The Vivisector makes me shudder...

Don't look at the cover of the Penguin Classics edition; you'll do more than shudder!

As you may remember Darryl I am a advocate of Andre Brink and it is pleasing to see you enjoying his work. Is that your first Brink?

>91 PaulCranswick: Is that your first Brink?

Yes, the first one I've completed, anyway. I bought A Dry White Season in London this summer, but I haven't read it yet. Hopefully I'll get to it next year or in 2013.

I love the way you've organized your tbr list into the various challenge categories ( many of which I'm also in). Off to waste,,,,er spend productively,,,the rest of my day doing the same. :)

Darryl, nice review of Nemesis but it's not compelling me to rush out and get a copy as yet.... but your review of Other Lives had me heading over to Amazon where I scored a hard cover copy for $0.01

>93 arubabookwoman: Ha ha! I'll be interested to see what books you come up with, Deborah.

>94 cameling: Way to go, Caroline! I love those 1 cent Amazon specials...although I must resist them in 2012. Hmm...I should look at them just before we get together in NYC, though.

Love your graphic for Mt. TBR! Hope this week is not as stressful as the last two have been.

Thanks, Ardene. We continue to be extremely busy, and we've had to admit some of our patients to overflow areas in the hospital, as the regular floor beds are all full. However, neither Monday nor Tuesday was hectic for me, although they were both long days (8 am to 9:30-10 pm). Fortunately I'm off for the next three days, work Saturday-Monday, and then I'm off for the next eight days for my Christmas break, which I'll spend with my parents in the Philadelphia area. This will be the first Christmas that I haven't worked in at least six or seven years, so I'm looking forward to it that much more. Unfortunately, I won't be able to spend the holidays with my best friends and their kids in Wisconsin, but hopefully I'll see them early next year.

Today I'll read The Leper Compound by Paula Nangle, a novel about a European girl who grows up in Rhodesia during its troubled and war torn years prior to independence. I'll review it for the upcoming issue of Belletrista, along with The Good Muslim by Tahmima Anam, which I read earlier this year.

Enjoy your time off, Darryl!

Every time I have made a list of books to read, I have ignored it and read something else - there is always something else that seems more interesting than the list I have prepared!

Alan/TT

George Whitman, the founder of the current version of the famed Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris, died today at the age of 98. Whitman opened the second version of the bookstore in 1950; the original bookshop was founded by Sylvia Beach in 1919, which closed in 1941. He and the bookstore were described in the book Time Was Soft There by Jeremy Mercer, who spent several months there as a "tumbleweed", one of the thousands of people who lived in the bookstore in exchange for working there and reading one book a day.

George Whitman, founder of Paris’ Shakespeare and Company bookstore, dies at age 98

Sad news, Darryl, although 98 years is a good long time. The story is great -- I love that people lived in the bookshop in exchange for working and reading. Probably less romantic than it sounds, but I wouldn't mind giving it a try for a while.

Here are my planned reads for January, and the groups that I'm reading them for:

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami {Author Theme Reads group read} (Mount TBR)
Silence by Shusaku Endo {Author Theme Reads major author} (Christmas gift from best friends)
Kokoro by Natsume Soseki {Author Theme Reads mini author} (Mount TBR)
Botchan (Master Darling) by Natsume Soseki {Author Theme Reads mini author} (Mount TBR)
We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver {Orange January} (Mount TBR)
Swamplandia! by Karen Russell {Orange January} (Mount TBR)
A Mind at Peace by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar {Reading Globally 1stQ} (Mount TBR)
Snow by Orhan Pamuk {Reading Globally 1stQ} (Mount TBR)
Zone One by Colson Whitehead {African/African American Literature} (Mount TBR)
Open Wound: The Tragic Obsession of Dr. William Beaumont by Jason Karlawish {Medicine} (Christmas gift from best friends)
Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante {Medicine} (Mount TBR)

BTW, Botchan (Master Darling) is available as a free e-book, for those who are participating in the Author Theme Reads group.

I might make a head start on one or two of these books before the New Year, since January will likely be an extremely busy month at work.

One of my goals for this year that I failed to accomplish was to make an attempt to revive the moribund Medicine group on LT. I've just posted two new threads there, Can we revive the Medicine group?, and Darryl's (kidzdoc's) books and thoughts about Medicine, in which I intend to post book reviews and other topics related to medicine and books (fiction and nonfiction). If you have any interest in this topic I would encourage you to consider joining me there.

#102 - I'm really enjoying Zone One, and I hope you do as well. Hopefully I can finish it this weekend and write a review. I've been swamped with work and school lately, but things are settling down now. Yay!

>104 DorsVenabili: I look forward to reading your review of Zone One, Kerri. That book's title always makes me think of air travel, as I almost always fly Delta Air Lines, which boards by zone numbers: "Customers seated in Zone 1 on Delta Flight ___ to _________ may now board at this time."

Yay! My annual batch of Christmas gifts books from my best friends has just arrived, from my Amazon wish list. Here's what they gave me:

The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andrić
Open Wound: The Tragic Obsession of Dr. William Beaumont by Jason Karlawish
Silence by Shusaku Endo
Blue Nights by Joan Didion
The Master by Colm Tóibín

I knew they had bought the first three books for me, but I didn't know about the last two. They are all from the top of my wish list, so I'll read them early in 2012. I won't count these books, and any I receive for Christmas or buy afterward, as TBR books toward next year's count.

Darryl, we have one overlap for January - Kokoro. I am really looking forward to the Japan reading, as I have read very little in that area.

>106 JanetinLondon: Excellent! Let me know when you start it, as I might read it alongside you. The bulk of my January reading will likely take place in the last week and a half of January, as I'll work most of the first three weeks of the month — and January tends to be one of our busiest months of the year. I'll almost certainly cut back on my planned reads for December, and start reading several of my January books, starting next week.

Haven't visited in a while but am all caught up with you. I'm impressed with the fact you're already organizing your reading for 2012 and now thinking I should probably get on that ASAP so it's not left to the last minute when the New Year and New Group and New Thread madness are all underway.

I just might join you for 1Q84, but am not committing to it just quite yet as still have to come up with a reading list for January. Though I might be tempted to just wait till the January TIOLI challenges are up before doing so.

eta: also interested in Zone One, but same as above.

Glad to hear you're getting some nice vacation time off and are able to spend the holidays with your family this year.

>108 Smiler69: Hi, Ilana! One of the main reasons that I'm already making plans for 2012 is that I want to figure out which books I intend to read for the different challenges and groups I've committed to, and buy most of the ones I can between Boxing Day and New Year's Eve. Most of what I buy this month will be for the Author Theme Reads group, particularly novels by Shusaku Endo, Natsume Soseki and Yukio Mishima, and for the Reading Globally challenges, particularly the third quarter theme on Middle Eastern writers that avaland and I will co-host. I'll still plan to buy all of the books longlisted for next year's Booker Prize, all of the books on the 2012 Orange Prize shortlist and roughly half of the 20 longlisted books (not including those I already own or will buy this month), and all of the books on the Wellcome Trust Book Prize shortlist. I'd like to severely limit other purchases to those books I absolutely must have, such as the new novel by Hilary Mantel that will be released this spring. My bookshelves have more enticing books than any of my favorite bookshops, with the possible exception of City Lights, and I'm eager to finally read the ones that interest me the most.

Having said that, I was severely tempted earlier today by the enticing list of Forthcoming Books by New York Review Books, and was drooling like one of Pavlov's dogs as I read their descriptions.

My bookshelves have more enticing books than any of my favorite bookshops
That sounds like me and probably a lot of us here, but it doesn't seem to curb anyone's enthusiasm for acquiring even more.
I should also look at what I'll be reading in the early part of 2012 as I didn't do that well with Reading Globally this year.

The public intellectual Christopher Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great, Hitch-22 and numerous other books, lost his public battle to esophageal cancer last night, at the age of 62.

New York Times: Polemicist Who Slashed All, Freely, With Wit

Guardian: Christopher Hitchens dies aged 62

Sorry to hear about Christopher Hitchens who, whether you agree with his views or not, always expressed himself intelligently and with more than a modicum of acidic wit. His debate with Tony Blair on the existence of God or not was extremely illuminating and entertaining. I hope for his sake that Mr. Blair was correct and that God is the forgiving ultimate being that I hope to find myself who will overlook convictions profoundly held even if entirely misconceived.

#109, That list of forthcoming NYRBs does look especially intriguing. Hmmm. Wondering how long you will hold out . . . .

#107 - Will do. I will provisionally plan for last week of Jan (I mean w/c 23rd) as that seems to fit with your schedule. But if I get desperate to read it sooner (or if you do) we can revisit.

I was gnashing my teeth reading the NYRB ....it's lists like this that make me realize the challenge next year is going to be a really difficult one for me. My poor obese wish list ......

I posted this to the 'Favorite books of the year?' thread, but I thought I'd post it here as well.

Here's my list, in no particular order, of my 10 favorite fiction and nonfiction books, along with two notable books of poetry:

Fiction:

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
The War of the End of the World by Mario Vargas Llosa
The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna
Monsieur Linh and His Child by Philippe Claudel
Hearts and Minds by Amanda Craig
The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst
The Good Muslim by Tahmima Anam
The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje
Scenes from Village Life by Amos Oz
River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh

Nonfiction:

The Memory Chalet by Tony Judt
Colour Me English by Caryl Phillips
Seeing Patients: Unconscious Bias in Health Care by Augustus A. White III, M.D.
A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz
I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor's Journey by Izzeldin Abuelaish
An African in Greenland by Tété-Michel Kpomassie
Angel of Death: The Story of Smallpox by Gareth Williams
A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 by Alistair Horne
The Boy in the Moon: A Father's Search for His Disabled Son by Ian Brown
Real Bloomsbury by Nicholas Murray

Poetry:

I Love a Broad Margin to My Life by Maxine Hong Kingston
The Broken Word by Adam Foulds

>110 avatiakh: Right, Kerry. I'm still enticed by new books, and the NYRB list of forthcoming books that I mentioned above is proof of that. However, I also own a decent stack of at least 25 unread NYRBs, including The Singapore Grip, Memed, My Hawk and The Foundation Pit, that I'm very eager to read. I guarantee that I'll buy several of the new NYRBs in 2012.

>112 PaulCranswick: I don't know much about Christopher Hitchens, Paul. I haven't read anything by him, and I don't have any of his books, although I've certainly heard about him. I'm sure there will be plenty of tributes to him in the next few days, so I'm sure I'll learn much more about him and his work. I don't expect that I'll read any of his books in the near future, though, as I have plenty of books by current and past public intellectuals that I'd rather read first, including books by Tony Judt, Edward Said, Kwame Anthony Appiah and Sari Nusseibeh, to name a few.

>113 rebeccanyc: Rebecca, some of those books will become 'must reads' for me. I may ask my parents to buy me a 6- or 12-month NYRB subscription for Christmas (for the books; I already subscribe to The New York Review of Books).

>114 JanetinLondon: Let me know if you want to read Kokoro sooner than that, Janet. If several others in the Author Theme Reads group are reading it early next month then I'll probably join them.

>115 cameling: Stay strong, Caroline! Cait (Cait86), Joyce (Nickelini) and I on Club Read are standing with each other, in the TBR Pile Reduction Solidarity movement. We could establish a 75 Books chapter as well. Solidarność!

I finished The Leper Compound by Paula Nangle this morning, and I wrote a review of it for the upcoming issue Belletrista this afternoon. I'll soon finish my review of The Good Muslim by Tahmima Anam, also for Belletrista; after that I'll start either Devil on the Cross by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o or Captain Pantoja and the Special Service by Mario Vargas Llosa.

Both Devil on the Cross and Captain Pantoja and the Special Service are excellent, but Capt. Pantoja is just plain fun, fun, fun.

>118 rebeccanyc: Thanks, Rebecca! Based on your comment, I'll start Captain Pantoja and the Special Service today, and read Devil on the Cross next week.

The New Yorker has published its best books of 2011 list, and it's a far better one than this year's New York Times list, IMO. Three of my top 10 novels of the year are included: The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, The Good Muslim by Tahmima Anam, and The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst.

A Year’s Reading: Reviewers’ favorites from 2011

I've finished my review of The Good Muslim for Belletrista, and as I was writing it I was reminded of how much I loved this book. I inexplicably gave it 4 stars after I read it; I've added an additional ½ star to my rating of it. It was one of the novels that the books gang at the Guardian placed on its speculative Booker longlist, but it was mysteriously excluded from the actual longlist in favor of far less accomplished books. It was longlisted for this year's Man Asian Literary Prize, and it should be a strong contender for next year's Orange Prize (and I'll be mystified and very disappointed if it doesn't make the longlist).

Oooh! That NYRB list of upcoming titles is enticing indeed. Which reminds me I've got A High Wind in Jamaica and Troubles waiting on my tbr by them, which I MUST get to in 2012. I don't know that my collection is better than what you'd find in a book store, since it's much more modest than yours Darryl, but most every book I own makes me wonder why I don't consult my own shelves more often. Of course, that would be because of all the awesome recommendations one picks up on threads like yours.

Many of the books you read make me think that I could probably use a tutor to get through them so I can fully appreciate them, but I'm glad you're here to open my eyes to many possibilities I might not have considered before. I'm also very happy that we'll have a tutoring option available in 2012.

If you MUST purchased all the Longlist Booker Prize books, and some from the Orange Prize shortlist and so on, I won't be dissuading you as I'll be looking out for your reviews before plunging into some of them myself.

>120 Smiler69: Definitely read Troubles ASAP, Ilana; it was my favorite book of 2010.

My TBR collection consists mainly of the books that interested me the most on my trips to my favorite bookshops over the past five or more years. And, there are very few books that I've desired the most in that time that I haven't bought or received. So, I maintain that my collection is of greater interest to me than most, if not all, of the holdings of my favorite bookshops.

I still consider myself to be a novice reader, as I didn't take any literature courses in college. I was initially an engineering major, and our English requirement was met by taking one semester of Techinical Writing, and another course in Public Speaking. Writing and reading book reviews on LT and elsewhere has essentially been an ongoing literature course for me, and I hope that my reviews become more fluid and incisive with time.

I love these end of the year lists of best/favorite books.

BTW, I just asked you over on my thread whether you knew the answer to my question about who the PM of Australia was.

Darryl interesting list from The New Yorker. Will be interesting to track down most of these over the next couple of years. Have a few of them either on the shelves or on my hitlist and as a completist freak it looks like a good list to go at! Also like the throwaway summaries given of each book. Nice for a change that they haven't picked a top ten or a top fifty and have instead selected 21 non fiction and 23 fiction/poetry titles as they are considering apparently quality rather than quantity.

>122 arubabookwoman: I just responded to your question about the Australian PM on your thread, Deborah. I did not know that Julia Gillard was the current PM. Let's see who else knows this:>123 PaulCranswick: I probably won't get many of the books on this list, Paul. I did receive The Anatomy of a Moment from the LT ER program, and I'll definitely read the Malcolm X biography early next year. From the fiction list, I've also read Open City and Solo, which were both very good, I bought One With Others earlier this year after it was nominated as a finalist for this year's National Book Award for Poetry, and I received Stone Upon Stone as part of my Archipelago Books subscription. I would like to get Leaving the Atocha Station, and I'll buy The Forgotten Waltz if it is nominated for next year's Orange Prize (assuming that it is eligible).

I've just created a thread for the Worst books of the year. I'll post my list here, although you probably won't be surprised by the books that I've chosen.

No More Mr. Nice Guy by Howard Jacobson: A juvenile, misogynistic and mind-numbingly boring novel about a man in the midst of a midlife crisis, who thinks about nothing but sex and seeks to revisit the sites of his former conquests as a young man. To his dismay, he finds that his former partners have settled down, raised families, and want nothing more to do with him.

The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers: Possibly the worst book ever nominated for the Booker Prize, it is a dystopic mess about an utterly dislikable teenage girl who finds herself at the center of a crisis in which pregnant women are felled by a microbe that rapidly turns their brains into cottage cheese. So, naturally, she decides to become pregnant herself, in order to serve as a martyr and a symbol for the stricken women.

Snowdrops by A.D. Miller: Another disaster from this year's Booker Prize longlist, about an amoral and clueless English lawyer who moves to Moscow in the go-go 1990s, where he falls in "love" with a skanky Russian girl, who proceeds to entrap him in a real estate scandal. This book was about as predictable and enjoyable as a head-on collision on a one lane road.

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore: A frustrating, maddening, and intensely distasteful novel about a social misfit who attends a large university in the Midwest, where she babysits for a couple who is even stranger and more disturbing than her. The author tried to cover several themes in the book, but did so in a superficial and demeaning manner.

I just broke my book buying ban, but it was for a unique reason. Roy Benaroch, who is a good friend of mine and fellow pediatrician in Atlanta, sent me a Facebook message last night to tell me about his new book, Flow, which was published earlier this month. I just downloaded the Kindle version for 99 cents, and I'll see if I can get to it later this month. Here's a description of the book from its page on Amazon:

The City is awash in Flow—invisible strings of power that can be harnessed only by a chosen few Guildsmen. But there are a few individuals who’ve learned to use the power of Flow outside of the Guilds. They’ve found each other, and formed a loose confederation to replace their own lost families. Soon, they find themselves attacked from all sides. As they try to understand their own abilities, The City boils into crisis. The Mayor, overcome by paranoia, sets the Guilds against one another. Who can hold the City together, and what is the secret of the power of Flow that has pulled so many families apart? Could the same power be used to bring a new family together?

Roy mentioned that "I don't think this is up to the quality of what you usually read", but I will gladly support him, as he is one of the truly good guys, whose patients and families love him, and he is quite witty and very funny (if not a bonafide nut). I'll add it to my TIOLI challenge, and read it either next week or on New Year's Eve.

That's it from now until Boxing Day, though. No more book purchases!

Darryl, great to see you break your self-imposed ban to support a friend. I admit the book sounds crazy intriguing!

You know I gotta disagree with you on the A Gate at the Stairs. You gotta admit that woman is an amazing writer. I know you felt the plot didn't gel, but it really was good--- really. (How's that for a convincing argument! :oP) I encourage you to up your rating to 4 and edit your post #125. K, gonna run from the room now!

Hi Darryl--I'm wondering whether the 6 who knew who the PM of Australia was are Aussies or Kiwis. Or maybe I just have uninformed friends and family? :)

Hi Darryl, I am catching up slowly on threads- just finished this one of yours that, as always, I enjoy for the variety of commentary and your always smart and insightful comments.

I'll look forward to your comments both Kokoro, that I read earlier this year, and Bridge on the Drina that I read in Spanish the year Andric was awarded the nobel prize (1961). Drina is one that from time to time I'd like to re-read but need to find a good translation.

Darryl, I will go with the flow - when lots of people say they are reading Kokoro, I will, too.

>127 GCPLreader: No need to run, Jenny. I know that others had different opinions about A Gate at the Stairs, The Testament of Jessie Lamb and Snowdrops, and I'm glad that you liked Moore's book more than I did. However, these four books were the only ones that I read completely and made me see red. The only "4" that would appear in my rating of A Gate at the Stairs would appear in the denominator, e.g. ¼ or ¾ star, if LT would permit it.

>128 arubabookwoman: Deborah, I noticed that at least two of the "Yes" votes were posted in the early morning hours in the Eastern US (2-3 am), so I suspected that they came from Oceania or Europe. I had meant to limit the vote to non-Aussies and non-Kiwis, but I still suspect that most if not all of the six "Yes" votes (and hopefully none of the "No" votes) came from Australia and New Zealand.

>129 xieouyang: It's good to see you here, Manuel. I'll have to revisit your review of Kokoro; I look forward to reading it. I can't comment about the quality of the translation of Bridge on the Drina. My copy was originally published by the University of Chicago Press in 1977, which was translated by Lovett F. Edwards.

>130 JanetinLondon: Lilisin described Kokoro as one of Natsume Soseki's most highly regarded books, so I look forward to reading it, as well.

National Public Radio and The New York Times have announced within the past hour that Czech playwright, dissident and former Czech Republic President Vaclav Havel died in his sleep early this morning, at the age of 75:

NPR: Havel, Czech Playwright And Former President, Dies

The New York Times: Vaclav Havel, Dissident Playwright Who Led Czechoslovakia, Dead at 75

Ok, you get a special dispensation for purchasing Flow .. it does sound intriguing. *off to look for a copy since i'm not on a book buying ban ...as yet.

I've been wondering where to post the Challenge for next year, Darryl so more folks are aware and to entice them to sign up. Any ideas?

>132 cameling: Caroline, here's the link for the Kindle edition of Flow, which still costs only 99 cents:

http://www.amazon.com/Flow-ebook/dp/B006J07CU6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=132437...

I may read it as early as tomorrow, during my trip from ATL to Philadelphia. I'll write a review of it ASAP.

I've been wondering where to post the Challenge for next year

I was thinking about that, too. IMO, it makes the most sense to keep it within the 75 Books group, instead of making it a separate one, at least as a first attempt. There are enough 75ers here (nearly 1000!) to form a sizable group, I think, and I could invite Joyce (Nickelini) and Cait (Cait86) and any other Club Readers who are interested to join us.

My Christmas break begins today! I'll do a five minute happy dance, and then sleep until noon.

> 126

I just broke my book buying ban, but it was for a unique reason.

I keep saying: there's no such thing as a BBB! ;)

>134 SqueakyChu: I keep saying: there's no such thing as a BBB! ;)

Yes, there should be an extenuating circumstance or emergency clause built into the Book Buying Ban. I could have waited until the New Year to purchase Roy's book, but I wanted to mention it here and to the people who know him in Atlanta, in support of him. I'm still impressed that he finds the time to run a very busy and thriving pediatric practice, write a blog for parents about their children, The Pediatric Insider, and one or two books about pediatrics for parents, in addition to being a loving and dedicated husband and father. He also offered me a job in his practice a few years ago, which I would have taken had I not been happy in my current position (despite my occasional whining about how busy we are).

Darryl, I'm just teasing. Your friend sounds terrrific.

Why not start a BBSD (book buying slow down) instead? ;)

Hi Darryl, I've read a couple of books from your 2012 reads. The Calcutta Chromosome is fantastic, The Satanic Verses is ok and Swamplandia! is mediocre, IMO.

I'm thrilled by the medicine group and have joined it. Will look for good medicine related book there. I've been searching for a good tuberculosis history book ( I'm a pulmonologist by the way) for ages. Hope you have some recommendations.

>136 SqueakyChu: Why not start a BBSD (book buying slow down) instead? ;)

2012, 2013 and beyond will constitute the BBSD. The last gasp NYC Boxing Day Book Buying Binge (which may become an annual tradition) is meant (in my case, anyway) to pick up those books that we plan to read in 2012 for different challenges, groups, etc. After lunch we'll hit the Strand, and I may convince some of the LTers in attendance to go with me to Book Culture on the Upper West Side if the Strand doesn't have some of the books that I'm looking for. Otherwise, I'll buy them from Amazon.

The evil Ms. Avaland from Club Read has been taunting several of us who are planning to attack our TBR piles in 2012. Today she created a thread on Club Read 2012, TBR Therapy. Do you need it?, whose sole purpose appears to be to dissuade the book dieters from making an effort to trim our corpulent wish lists and TBR piles in 2012, by self analysis of our 2011 trends and the assignment of a severity score, ranging from 20 (completely healthy) to 180 (terminally ill). I scored 147, which landed me in the TBR Intensive Care Unit, as nearly 77% of the books I've read so far in 2011 (129/166) were books I bought within the past six months, and only 39 were ones that were at least six months old (so much for my "75 from the shelves" prediction). No matter; in the immortal words of long suffering Brooklyn Dodgers fans who faithfully stood behind Dem Bums, "Wait 'til next year!"

>137 mausergem: I noticed earlier this evening that you had joined the Medicine group, Gautam; I was hoping that you would. (That reminds me; I should send an invitation to kiwidoc (Karen), who is a general practitioner in Vancouver. I don't think she is a member of the group.) Oddly enough, I don't own any books about TB! I was a microbiology major as an undergraduate, and any books about infectious diseases are highly interesting to me, so I'm surprised by this. I do own one book by a pulmonologist, who was one of my teachers in medical school, entitled My Own Medicine: A Doctor's Life as a Patient by Geoffrey Kurland, which describes his battle with hairy cell leukemia. I'm surprised that I haven't read this yet, as it's been on my shelves for several years, and I enjoyed the week I spent with him in the Pulmonology Clinic at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh as a third year medical student. I'll add it to the list of books that I plan to read in 2012. Now that the Medicine group seems to be on the brink of becoming active again I'll plan to read 2-3 books a month about medicine, health and illness, and make adjustments to my TBR list.

I'm looking forward to reading all three of the books that you mentioned, especially The Calcutta Chromosome, which I bought after you recommended it so highly. I'm interested in The Satanic Verses mainly because of the furor that it generated after it came out. I expect that I'll either love Swamplandia! or loathe it, as I do like quirky novels that are well written.

I scored 147, which landed me in the TBR Intensive Care Unit,

LOL! I won't even try to score myself. What I have noticed over the past few years as an active Bookcrosser is that, the more books I try to give away, the more I tend to keep.

There is something just so much more readable about a book that freshly arrived into one's hands than one that has been sitting on a bookshelf for any length of time.

Hurray for BBBs (book buying binges, this time)! Have a great time at the meet-up and tell Katherine (qebo) and drneutron (Jim) I said hi if they both make it up your way.

138: I scored 147, which landed me in the TBR Intensive Care Unit
Hmm... Depends on how I count things... 143. BUT... There's an out! Call yourself a collector and you can be cured immediately Hah! I've been calling them "reference books" for years.
(Hi, Madeline!)

>140 qebo:: I latched onto the "collector" thing earlier this year. It's my saving grace.

This article, Confessions of a Book Hoarder, got me thinking about it, and inspired this blog post rationalizing the 170+ books I've received via Paperbackswap, many of which are part of my Virago Modern Classics collection.

We sure can rationalize, can't we?

Darryl, I may have a copy of Soseki's I am a Cat lurking around my shelves; let me know if you want me to dig it out & lend it.

I am not sure where I'd rank on the Avaland scale, but do know that when I have several waist-high stacks of unread books here, things are out of control. Not to mention the fact that my library borrowings are bumping up against a (very high) upper limit.

Darryl, is the medical group here just for medical professionals, or can anyone with an interest in medical subjects join? I have several books with medical themes planned for this year.

I had an uneventful and peaceful flight from Atlanta to Philadelphia this morning. I'll spend Christmas with my family in Jersey City, NJ, at the home of my mother's youngest sister, attend the LT NYC Boxing Day meet up across the river, and then fly back to Atlanta from PHL the following day. I read a couple of medical journals today, and I'll probably spend more time accruing year end CME (continuing medical education) credits that expire on Dec 31 than I will in reading for pleasure this week.

>139 SqueakyChu: There is something just so much more readable about a book that freshly arrived into one's hands than one that has been sitting on a bookshelf for any length of time.

I would agree with that. However, I feel a special sense of satisfaction when I read and enjoy a book that I've been wanting to read for awhile, such as The War of the End of the World by Mario Vargas Llosa, which I bought before I joined LT 5½ years ago.

Hurray for BBBs (book buying binges, this time)! Have a great time at the meet-up and tell Katherine (qebo) and drneutron (Jim) I said hi if they both make it up your way.

Katherine will be there, but I don't think that Jim will be joining us (unless I'm mistaken).

>140 qebo:, 141 Collectors=addicts IMO. I've reserved TBR ICU beds for both of you (but they are filling up fast).

>142 Chatterbox: Thanks for the offer, but I'd like my own copy of I Am a Cat. If I don't find it on Boxing Day I'll order it from Amazon.

>143 tymfos: The Medicine group is "{a} group for Librarything users with an interest in books pertaining to medicine and medical science", whose members "might include doctors, medical students, nurses and other health professionals and scientists", according to its creator. So, I think it's open to everyone, and I hope to see you there.

>144 kidzdoc:: TBR ICU is a very nice place, Darryl. Thank you for the comfy bed. *passes Katherine a cup of tea*

mornin' Darryl and Merry Christmas! Thought of you when I saw this article in the Wall Street Journal about their best medical reads of the year: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204553904577102710243208248.html?m...

enjoy your time in Philly! :o)

>145 lauralkeet: Now that you and Katherine have had a restful night's sleep it's time for your morning occupational and physical therapy (OT and PT) sessions. The therapists expect you two to put 100 TBR books in boxes (OT), and carry them to your cars to take to your local secondhand store (PT).

>146 GCPLreader: Merry Christmas, Jenny! Are you staying in Gwinnett for the holiday, or traveling elsewhere? Thanks for that WSJ article; I've read only one of the books, County: Life, Death and Politics at Chicago's Public Hospital by David Ansell, but three of the others, Invasion of the Body: Revolutions in Surgery by Nicholas Tilney, The Sublime Engine: A Biography of the Human Heart by Stephen & Thomas Amidon, and Your Medical Mind: How to Decide What Is Right for You by Jerome Groopman & Pamela Hartzband, sound interesting. I was planning to buy Dr. Groopman's new book for my parents, and I look at the other two on Monday.

I was planning to buy Dr. Groopman's new book for my parents,

Aha! Another way to evade the book-buying ban: buy a book you want to read "for someone else."

>148 rebeccanyc: Yes. Suz and I perfected that technique last year, when we sneakily resourcefully purchased a book for each other to avoid a year end book buying ban.

I have done well so far, as I've only bought that one book since Oct 20.

flyby wave..

Darryl, I for one think you should financially support authors and the publishing industry. (this helps me feel less guilt about not having paid much for books last year!)
Yeah, staying here in Gwinnett county-- just chillin'

Darryl, forgot to ask a favor for 2012 tbr list-- what's your favorite narrative nonfiction book? I'm gonna try and read one a month to increase my nonfiction digestion.

>150 mckait: *waves to Kath from the other end of the state*

>151 GCPLreader: Oh, I think I've done my part to support authors, the publishing industry and my favorite independent and local chain bookstores over the years, Jenny! As I've mentioned previously, two of the guys who work at City Lights in San Francisco know me on a first name basis, and one of the employees at the London Review Bookshop even recognized me this past summer, after my multiple visits there over the past five years (and he gave me a book bag with the shop's logo on it for being a good customer). And, without trying to toot my own horn, I daresay that if the other customers who shopped at Borders over the years bought as many books as I did on an annual basis, the chain would still be in business.

I'll still buy books, you can count on that. I just won't buy them in the excessive numbers that I have in the past five years or so (250-300+ books annually).

>152 GCPLreader: Ooh, that's a very good, and tough, question! I had heard of narrative nonfiction, but I hadn't thought closely about the concept. I'd say that it's arguably my favorite genre, if I understand the term correctly. I looked at the books I read last year, and these are my favorites:

The Memory Chalet by Tony Judt
An African in Greenland by Tété-Michel Kpomassie
Match Day: One Day and One Dramatic Year in the Lives of Three New Doctors by Brian Eule
I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor's Journey by Izzeldin Abuelaish
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
Send in the Idiots: Stories from the Other Side of Autism by Kamran Nazeer
A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz
Seeing Patients: Unconscious Bias in Health Care by Augustus A. White III, M.D.
Real Bloomsbury by Nicholas Murray
Who are We--and Should it Matter in the 21st Century? by Gary Younge
Colour Me English by Caryl Phillips
County: Life, Death and Politics at Chicago's Public Hospital by David A. Ansell, MD, MPH

The Memory Chalet and Colour Me English are nonfiction collections, which each include several brilliant personal essays and observations. I just bumped up my rating of A Tale of Love and Darkness to 5 stars, and I Shall Not Hate and Real Bloomsbury, a combination of travel writing and personal narrative about the London neighborhood, also earned 5 stars from me. I'm hard pressed to say which one of the five is my favorite, though.

ETA: Somehow I forgot to mention that Seeing Patients was also a 5 star read.

I love Jenny's idea of reading one narrative nonfiction book a month, and I'll do the same thing. I won't get to Haiti After the Earthquake by Paul Farmer this month, so I'll make it my narrative nonfiction read for January.

Jenny, since was your idea, would it also be a good idea to have a thread dedicated to Narrative Nonfiction in 2012?

ETA: I'd love to read Just Enough Liebling, and some of the other collections by the great New Yorker writers of years past and present that have sat on my TBR shelves for years, particularly Collected Works : A Journal of Jazz 1954-2000 by Whitney Balliett, and Paris to the Moon and Through the Children's Gate by Adam Gopnik. I thought that I had one or more books by Joseph Mitchell and John McPhee (other than A Sense of Where You Are: Bill Bradley at Princeton, which I absolutely loved), but my LT library says otherwise. Hmm...more books for the Book Buying Binge?

I think I might try the "County" one. You do it, Darryl-- I'm shy. and besides, Mark's the one knows all 'bout that stuff. :o) Also, there was a recent podcast on the Books on the Nightstand show about narrative nonfiction.

>155 GCPLreader: I'll do it, unless someone else (Mark?) wants to. We could call it the "Narrative Nonfiction Club", or something like that.

I checked on LT, and I didn't see a group dedicated to Narrative Nonfiction, unfortunately.

152,154: There is the Non-Fiction Challenge group...

>157 qebo: Thanks, qebo. It's a small group, so I've signed up and I'll create a thread there soon.

158: Oh, excellent! I started it last spring because non-fiction activity on LT is so sparsely scattered,
advertised in the Non-Fiction Readers group (which is mostly monthly What Are You Reading threads, not individual threads), and in the 75er non-fiction thread, got some crossover members, but the timing wasn't great. I've been hoping for more activity in 2012 with a shiny new year, so a bunch of 75ers would be a fine thing. I'll reconsider the description when I get a break next week.

I'd like to sign up too, qebo! -- Jenny

I've joined too. Some of my most memorable 2011 reads have been nonfiction (including Gulag, What It Is Like to Go to War, Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York, Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza, and Classic Crimes), although I largely read fiction.

I'm in. I listened to the podcast (thanks, Jenny!) which was very helpful in thinking about this genre. The Warmth of Other Suns was absolutely one of my favorite reads of 2011 and I loved Paris to the Moon when I read it several years ago. Other than that, I haven't delved into this genre much at all.

Can someone explain to me what narrative non-fiction is? I've got quite a few non-fiction books piling up that I've meant to get to all year, and will hopefully read in 2012. Not sure it would warrant joining the group, but I'm curious all the same.

>159 qebo: Okay, I've created a thread in qebo's Non-Fiction Challenge group, entitled kidzdoc's 12 narrative non-fiction books in 2012. I'll still create a Narrative Non-Fiction thread in the 2012 version of the 75 Books club if Mark or someone else doesn't, but I'll focus the bulk of my NNF activity in qebo's group. I'll create a list of probable 2012 NNF reads next week, when I return to Atlanta.

>160 GCPLreader: Be careful down there, Jenny! North Georgia is under a tornado watch until 11 pm, and I just received an alert on my BlackBerry from WSB that there is a line of severe T-storms that are passing through Fulton County now.

>161 rebeccanyc: I'm glad that you're also joining qebo's group, Rebecca. I also own Classic Crimes, but I don't think I'll get to it in 2012.

>162 EBT1002: On the other hand, I'll definitely read The Warmth of Other Suns next year for the Non-Fiction Challenge.

Somehow I forgot to mention that Seeing Patients was also a five star read, so six of the narrative non-fiction books I read received my top rating. I think all of them were amongst my favorite 10 non-fiction books of the year.

>163 Smiler69: Can someone explain to me what narrative non-fiction is?

I'll take a back seat to Jenny or anyone else who is more familiar with the genre, since it's a new concept to me. However, my understanding is that it is non-fiction that uses elements of literature in order to create a narrative that is factually accurate and contains compelling stories or characters. A book like An African in Greenland or Dave Eggers' Zeitoun would count, as they are based on the author's own travels in the first example, or the life of a real person told as a narrative in the second one. A Million Little Pieces by James Frey would have been originally billed as narrative non-fiction, since it was supposedly a true story, but it would now be considered fiction, since some events in the book did not actually take place.

I'm not entirely sure I completely grasp that, but will be paying attention all the same. I might have a few books that could fit in there, though I'll have to look over my collection with that specifically in mind. Am always on the lookout for a good tagging opportunity! :-)

Darryl, I also started thinking about narrative nonfiction after listening to the Books on the Nightstand podcast. They defined it as “nonfiction that reads like fiction, following a story and incorporating the elements of fiction such as plot, character, pacing, etc.” A narrative book would illustrate through specific examples or stories. The author wouldn't try to cram in every single bit of their research.

I've just joined the group too. I don't want to set a specific commitment but I do want to read more NF so it seems like a good way to keep it on the radar.

I know that In Cold Blood was considered the first narrative nonfiction. A lot of us have also read Devil in the White City. Here's the best google definition I found: "With narrative nonfiction you don't present the main point in the first paragraph—compelling narrative keeps the reader reading to find out what happens, and the journey to the epiphany is half the point." and later--" Basically, it's fact-based storytelling that makes people want to keep reading. Forms of creative nonfiction include literary journalism, the memoir, the lyric essay, the prose poem, and the nonfiction short."
so, hey that sounds like good readable writing to me--- I know I want to start with author Tony Horwitz and I want to read the Teddy Roosevelt nonfiction and the one about Grover Cleveland. (I recall seeing both of the authors on CSPAN's BookTV.)

>166 Smiler69: I'm listening to the Books on the Nightstand - Narrative Nonfiction podcast that Jenny referred to, and I'm finding it very helpful. The authors of the podcast describe NNF as "a bridge between fiction and nonfiction", which focuses on telling good stories as much as providing the reader with accurate factual information, instead of a dry and academic historical account. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer would also be good and recent examples of narrative nonfiction. As the woman in the podcast says, "It's a true story, but you're turning those pages like it's a thriller."

>167 lauralkeet: That's right, Laura. I'm glad that you're joining qebo's group as well!

I may create a second thread in the Non-Fiction Challenge, for books about medicine and health that aren't NNF.

Ooh, one of my parents is cooking something that smells delightful downstairs. Off to check...

>168 GCPLreader: I loved (maybe not the right word) In Cold Blood, which we read in my 9th grade literature class.

Thanks for mentioning this genre, Jenny!

I am so late, here, Darryl

i troll through these posts and ..yes...i read This book and That book......and your "medicine" groups

The only thing I will say...I have one Net Galley on my plate...after that, it's "books off of my shelves"

makes no sense, right?

sorry

I joined qebo's group too Darryl. I read quite a few narrative non-fiction book this year but the two that got me started in 2010 were Timothy Egan's The Worst Hard Time about the American Dust Bowl and Eric Larson's Devil in the White City. This year I also read Midnight Rising by Tony Horwitz and Catherine the Great (narrative biography) by Robert K. Massie. I plan to read The Warmth of Other Suns in January and River of Doubt:Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey as well as Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster.

>171 jdthloue: Hi, Jude! Do you have to have a blog to participate in Net Galley, or is it sufficient to have an active thread on LibraryThing?

>172 brenzi: I'm glad that you've also decided to join qebo's group, Bonnie. Hmm...I wonder if others are interested in reading The Warmth of Other Suns in January; it wouldn't take much to get me to read it then. I bought The Devil in the White City when it first came out, but I still haven't read it yet. I doubt that I'll get to it before 2013, but I'll move it considerably higher on my TBR list from where it formerly resided.

Darryl- Thanks so much for pointing me this way! What a great discussion on NNF. I am finding myself more and more obsessed with this type of book. There are at least 3 or 4 on my Best of the Year List. And I've been jotting down titles that have been recently mentioned. Whew! This book loving is a lot of work! I know Henrietta Lacks, Zeitoun & Unbroken were 3 big ones from last year.
If you need ANY help with the NNF Threads, please let me know!

Bonnie- the Worst Hard Time might be my favorite read of this year. And Into Thin Air is outstanding and might have been one the 1st books that got me into NNF, along with The Perfect Storm. I also need to get The Warmth of Other Suns on the WL.

Darryl...i have a Blog (http://jayditreader.blogspot.com) but Net Galleys are distributed by the publishers...who let you know how they want reviews posted. I post on my blog, here on LT, on Goodreads...on Amazon, after the date of publication..

the only way I could participate in Net Galley was after I could access ADOBE DIGITAL EDITIONS...once I got DSL Internet..

some people have problems accessing ADE I have a Mac...no problem

If you're interested in Net Galleys...go to the Web Site:

http://www.netgalley.com/

follow from there

*I'm outta here....foolish me*

173: I wonder if others are interested in reading The Warmth of Other Suns in January
Yes. I'm planning to focus on American history in 2012, in no particular order though I want to cover a range, and this would fit nicely. I have The Worst Hard Time in the TBR pile. I've read Devil in the White City, River of Doubt, Into Thin Air.

Darryl have you read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt and would this qualify as NNF?

Paul, in this discussion of NNF, the first book that popped into my mind was Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. That was a great book!

*placing a bet that Darryl has read this book as it's set in Savannah, Georgia, and we all know that Darryl's a Georgia man*

To me NNF is nonfiction that reads like fiction. I read it all the time. I joined qebo's group as well.

Some NNF I've enjoyed this year were:
Kosher Chinese: Living, Teaching, and Eating with China's Other Billion - Michael Levy - theme: China
Farm City - Novella Carpenter - theme: urban farming
Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home - Nando Parrado - theme: survival
Zarafa - Michael Allin - theme: giraffe
I Shall Not Hate - Izzeldin Abuelaish - theme: Palestine
Foreskin's Lament - Shalom Auslander - theme: circumcision

Check out post #174

I cleared up all previous vagueness...hope it helps.

Need to find qebo's thread. The History Dept. at my school is desperate to find some readable history we can assign as summer reading for our upper level history classes. The last two years have been duds.

>174 msf59: You're welcome, Mark. I agree with you; now that Jenny has made me aware of narrative non-fiction, I've come to realize that it may be my most favorite genre, even above literary fiction. Nine of my favorite books of 2011 could be classified as NNF (although my definition may be broader than those of others), and six of them earned 5 stars from me.

I'll plan to create a NNF thread in the 75 Books in 2012 group next week, and encourage everyone to participate ad lib. Hopefully, and as some of us start to discuss the genre, the thread will take on a life of its own. I think a good start would be for people to list their favorite NNF books, as you've just done, to help everyone understand the concept and to encourage others to pick up these books.

I'll have to check out the books you've mentioned; thanks!

>175 jdthloue: Thanks for the info, Jude. I'll check out Net Galleys, but I can't see myself creating a blog just yet, as I have a lot of fingers in different pies at the moment.

>176 qebo: Great; I'll plan to read The Warmth of Other Suns next month.

>177 PaulCranswick: Surprisingly, I have not read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil yet, and I still haven't made it to Savannah. Even though it's in the same state as Atlanta, the cities aren't that close to each other, being about 250 miles (roughly 400 km) apart. I do want to go, although I'm not sure when, and I'll probably read this book before I leave.

Based on its description, I definitely would count it as NNF.

>178 SqueakyChu: *placing a bet that Darryl has read this book as it's set in Savannah, Georgia, and we all know that Darryl's a Georgia man*

No, you're wrong, Ms Chu! Although I've been a Georgia resident since 1997, I'm still one of those gawd awful Atlanta transplants, which are people who live in the Atlanta metropolitan area but were born outside of the state. Transplants constitute the vast majority of people who live in the metro, and true Georgians don't acknowledge us as Georgia men or women. I'm pretty sure that Jenny (GCPLreader) and Ardene (markon) are also transplants. My group at work is also typical of this phenomenon; only two of the 15 or 16 of us are originally from Georgia, and we have more people that grew up in the Philadelphia area (3) than in Atlanta (1, but he also has strong Philadelphia ties, as he went to medical school at the University of Pennsylvania, completed his residency at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia on Penn's campus, and worked there for several years before he joined us).

*gleefully takes Madeline's betting money*

>180 weejane: The Non-Fiction Challenge was created by qebo, and can be found here: http://www.librarything.com/groups/nonfictionchallenge

In a single day you have increased the non-fiction group membership by 25%!

>183 qebo:: well that's cool.

Thanks Daryl!

>183 qebo: In a single day you have increased the non-fiction group membership by 25%!

I think the credit rightfully goes to Jenny, for bringing up the topic of narrative non-fiction, a concept I wasn't familiar with, and to you, for creating the Non-Fiction Challenge group and mentioning it here. I was just a facilitator for our shared interests in NF and NNF.

>184 lauralkeet: It is cool; eight 75ers joined qebo's group after I did.

>185 weejane: You're welcome, Brit; I'm glad to see that you've joined qebo's group as well.

Jenny, Darryl, qebo, your discussion has sparked some new interest in non-fiction with this NNF sub-genre! The question of whether something "qualifies" has come up a time or two, so I've posted a separate thread for that discussion. Meanwhile, I'm working on developing a list of NNF books for my 2012 reading as I realize that some of my favorite books over the years have been in this category (yet I still trend very heavily toward fiction). Another horizon expanded. Cool.

boy, me too, ebt.... i only read 3 or so nonfictions the whole of this year (out of 140). that's why I set a goal for myself to try more nonfiction. I know I've been missing some really great books!

Well, it's a lesson in marketing, I suppose. I'd mentioned the non-fiction group in a few "what we are reading" threads shortly after I created it, then stopped so as not to become spam. What I needed was a nexus of social activity to go viral.

189> What I needed was a nexus of social activity to go viral.
LOL
You know, I have found myself thinking this past 24 hours or so that there is a marketing lesson in all this! Glad to be part of the bandwagon.

>189 qebo:: Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point -- narrative nonfiction that explains what just happened here! Now that's a nexus for you. :)

The Tipping Point sounds right, Laura; I was thinking about a Perfect Storm analogy before I saw your message. A good idea (a) is announced on an active thread (b), whose owner is available to chat (c), at a time where many others are also available (d), and at a time where many are thinking of their reading plans for the New Year (e). Another good idea is proposed (f), which is mentioned on another active thread (g), which results in a dramatic increase in activity in another group (h). Malcolm Gladwell has nothing on us.

I've almost completely lost interest in the books I'm currently reading, and I wish that I could start my 2012 books now. I don't have any of those books with me...unless I bought my mother a copy of The Warmth of Other Suns.

Your mother needs that book and will love it all the more for it having been read first by you.
;-)

I do want to go, although I'm not sure when, and I'll probably read this book before I leave.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil so made me want to visit Savannah. Although I have a (Jewish) friend who grew up in Savannah, I've never yet been to visit that city.

true Georgians don't acknowledge us as Georgia men or women.

Haha! How many generations does it take to be come Georgian? Er, that is, if conversion to Georgian is even a possibility.

*gleefully takes Madeline's betting money*

My bet wasn't for money. It was for a gently used Bookcrossing-registered book.

By the way, the book I have in mind is Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. And, yes, I do have a copy of it. Send me your mailing address by private message, the book will be mailed to you, and my part of the bet will be paid off! :D

Narrative non-fiction being what I write and what I read a lot of, I'll take a stab at a definition. It flows out of what became known in the 60s/70s as "new journalism", and it's essentially the recounting of a non-fictional tale using classical literary devices, including a narrative arc. It has become a useful catch-all phrase for books that don't fall into a readily-defined category, such as biography and history. Confederates in the Attic is a great example of a work of narrative non-fiction; it blends elements of history with personal experience/memoir, all combined with commentary on current society. I tend to think of it as a kind of "fusion" literary category. Some memoirs can be narrative non-fiction; not all are, automatically. Personally, I wouldn't include books like The Memory Chalet in that as they are collections of stand-alone pieces. On the other hand, the longform essays in the New Yorker are classic narrative non-fiction. The idea is to transcend a single genre -- the piece/book is no longer only a biography, or only about a business or a new piece of technology. The other element that has to be there is a structure for the book that propels the reader forward -- there is a sense of the author steering a reader along a path toward a certain end point.

I'm not sure that I'd agree with the "bridge between fiction and nonfiction", as that implies (at least, to me) that NNF authors are spicing up their books to appeal to readers who like reading dialog etc. I don't think that's characteristic of this type of book. Rather, what they are doing, is paying attention to structure and adopting the sense of narrative flow that is part of a good novel.

Some recent examples of NNF that I'm reading or have read:

Molotov's Magic Lantern by Rachel Polonsky
Arrival City by Doug Saunders
On the Spartacus Road by Peter Stothard
Chasing the Devil by Tim Butcher
A Most Dangerous Book by Christopher Krebs
The File by Timothy Garton Ash
Dreaming in Chinese by Deborah Fallows
Every Man in this Village is a Liar by Megan Stack
Turn Right at Machu Picchu by Mark Adam
The Hare With Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal
Running the Books by Avi Steinberg
The Magician's Book by Laura Miller
Cod by Mark Kurlansky (and most of his other books)

Some folks would say NNF has to have an element of first person perspective to it, but to me that is one of those "rules" that makes this a hard category to define. Perhaps there is a stronger-than-usual author's voice that can be detected, but this doesn't need to be a book written in the first person. There are a lot of authors and books that teeter on the brink. Some people would see David McCullough's bio of Adams as a work of NNF; others say it's history. That's one reason I don't use it as a tag -- the definition can be very subjective. I use it when people ask what I write -- I don't write fiction (yet), and the non-fiction that I write isn't how-to guides or other kind of non-fiction books, so ergo it falls into the NNF camp.

Re NetGalley -- it's up to the publisher to approve you for each title, and whether you review on here or Amazon or wherever may vary by title in terms of its importance. My impression is that they care more about a blog, about Amazon and about Goodreads in that order, before they care about LT, because the former get far more "hits" and thus are likely to translate into sales. On the other hand, being a top ranked Amazon reviewer is better than being a blogger with only a dozen visitors. Try it and see... You can get the titles downloaded to your Kindle, now, so you don't need to read them on Adobe. The formatting can be a bit wonky sometimes, but it's still worth it, IMO.

Yes, still itching to see both Savannah and Charleston. I think Savannah has a good classical music festival at some point in the year?

Hi Darryl ...thanks for the tip, I've downloaded Flow from Amazon and can't wait to get to it.

Thanks for the link to qebo's Non Fiction group. I've not heard of the term narrative non-fiction before, so it was fun going through the thread to see what types of non-fiction qualified as narrative and which didn't.

I haven't been to Savannah or Charleston either and I keep meaning to plan a trip there. I loved Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and always wanted to visit ...especially during the winter when it's at least warmer than Boston. One of these days.....

While everyone's hanging around here anticipating a new year of reading, I'll also mention sibyx's New Yorker (and science!) magazine support group...

Oh no, I can't join two groups in two days!

Merry Christmas, Darryl!

glitter-graphics.com

Have a great Christmas, Darryl!

Wow Suz as usual has put a definitive stamp on the subject!

Darryl 2011 has been a pleasure for me in large part because of my discovery of this wonderful site. This site is wonderful because of the individual's that people it. It has been a pleasure getting to know you a little in 2011, nodding in agreement (usually) or disagreement at your literary likes and dislikes, appreciating the links that you helpfully spray across your thread, and sharing with you your love of good writing, discussion and wry good humour. Have a lovely holiday in the bosom of your family and I trust that 2012 brings you everything your heart desires.

Merry Christmas Daryl!

I've read essentially nothing in the past four days (except for medical journal articles), and I'm far more interested in getting an early start on books I want to read in January. So, I think I'll switch gears and start reading books that are on my TBR list that I intend to read in 2012. Using avaland's definition of a book I've owned for 6 months as of 1/1/12, two books on my Kindle jump out immediately: Botchan by Natsume Soseki, who is the first mini-author in lilisin's Author Theme Reads group for 2012, and A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor, for qebo's Non-Fiction Challenge (and my Narrative Non-Fiction Challenge within her group). I'll probably still read Captain Pantoja and the Special Service by Dec 31, but I'll save Intern, the long overdue book that I borrowed from the Free Library of Philadelphia in 1985, until later next year, so I don't have to lug it to Atlanta and then back to Philadelphia to return it to the library under the cover of darkness, along with the $20.00 maximum late fee (whew!).

>193 EBT1002: I didn't buy The Warmth of Other Suns for my mother after all. I'll start reading it after I return to Atlanta.

>194 SqueakyChu: How many generations does it take to be come {a true} Georgian?

I'm not certain, but I would guess it depends on who you ask. For certain white Georgians, I would think that someone who had antebellum ties to the state would qualify. The same may hold for the well-to-do of old money Atlanta (the people who got rich mainly from investing in Coca-Cola when it was first founded or from inheriting wealth derived from antebellum plantations). Upper middle class and wealthy blacks in Atlanta and other major US cities can be very snobby, as Lawrence Otis Graham described in his book Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class, and you would have to have attended the "right" colleges, belong to the "right" clubs, marry into the "right" families, have an acceptable skin color (preferably no darker than a paper bag), and trace your heritage back for at least four generations of similarly elitist Atlantans, who were professionals or business owners dating back to the early years of the 20th century. Personal accomplishments are less important; Martin Luther King, Jr., for example, was largely rejected by the well to do African American community in Atlanta. For most other Georgians, being born in the state and residing there for one's entire life would be good enough, I think.

Thanks for the offer, Madeline! I'll send you a PM shortly.

>195 Chatterbox: Thanks for your helpful comments about narrative nonfiction, Suz. The festival you're thinking of is probably the annual Spoleto Festival in Charleston, BTW.

>196 cameling: Hi, Caroline! Thanks for downloading Roy's book. I'll let him know; he's one of my Facebook friends. I'm glad that you've also decided to join qebo's Non-Fiction Challenge group.

Hmm...maybe we can plan an LT meet up in Charleston and/or Savannah in the future?

>197 qebo: Thanks, qebo. I've just signed up for sibyx's New Yorker support group. I've been a loyal subscriber since 2000, but I don't often read them. Hopefully this group will give me an impetus to read at least one or two articles from each issue.

>198 rebeccanyc: I hear you, Rebecca! I wouldn't have joined the New Yorker support group if I wasn't already a subscriber to the magazine and had a desire to read its issues more regularly.

>199 ronincats: Thanks for thinking of me, Roni! Merry Christmas to you and your family, too!

>200 tymfos: Thanks, Terri! Merry Christmas to you, too!

>201 PaulCranswick: Thank you for those warm sentiments, Paul, and a Merry Christmas to you and your lovely family as well, my friend. LT has become an essential and important part of my life, and this group and its members represents the best of the Internet and the online community, IMO. I'm especially pleased that several online friends have now become real life friends, thanks to our formal and informal meet ups, and I hope to meet more of you in the years to come.

Having said that, no disagreements or dissension will be permitted on this thread in 2012. And, as in years past, the mention of certain banned words or phrases will be met with severe punishment. The 2011 list includes "readability", "Stella Rimington", "dumbing down", "Mama Grizzly", and the names of the crop of current Presidential candidates (except for Mitt Romney and Barack Obama).

>202 weejane: Thank you, Brit, and a Merry Christmas to you, as well!

It's time for breakfast...

> (preferably no darker than a paper bag),

LOL! Did you know that a paper bag covered with oil becomes pretty dark? I was making latkes for Chanukah yesterday and used the paper bags for darining the oil off of them after frying them. Mmmm!

I really didn't know there was an elitist group of blacks in Georgia. Do you think that the class separation of people in the south that has been so inbred that it will ever begin to disappear?

As a black professional, do you feel the bigotry of southern whites at times at work?

In the DC area, that bigotry, not gone by any means, certainly has begun to dissolve over the years. Some of that has to do with legislation. More has to do with people of different races, nationalities, and religion being more exposed to one another in situations like school and employment.

When I first worked within the home health agency which still employs me, I was often told not to send a 'black" nurse by what I presumed to be were "white" people. I was after hours supervisor and talked to people on the phone as well as phones nurses to assign their visits. I really did *not* know the skin color of my nurses; I just knew their names. Those requests have mostly stopped, and the more current and offensive (to me, anyway) requests became those to not send a "male" nurse. *sigh*

Merry Christmas, Darryl!

Darryl I hope you have a wonderful Christmas!

Darryl -- are you ready for Eagles vs. Cowboys this afternoon? :) I'll miss the ending, as I'll be in church, so I definitely must set the DVR.

#204. Sigh. I should go over and sign up too. I've been a subscriber for at least 25-30 years (and read my parents' copies before that) and used to be a much more regular reader. I go back to when all the cartoons were in the beginning sections and the Talk of the Town articles were unsigned.

>205 SqueakyChu: I really didn't know there was an elitist group of blacks in Georgia. Do you think that the class separation of people in the south that has been so inbred will ever begin to disappear?

There are elitist blacks throughout the US, and in other parts of the world where African slavery took place and where there was race mixing, often from white men fathering children by vulnerable women who were slaves or sharecroppers. The progeny of these illicit relationships had a higher status than "pure" blacks, but they were not white either, of course. When slavery ended in these countries, particularly the US and the Caribbean, these mixed race individuals (mulattos (half black, half white), quadroons (1/4 black) and octoroons (1/8 black)) often benefited from financial and educational support from the white men who sired them, and thus were more likely to establish businesses, or find work as teachers, ministers, etc. as compared to their darker skinned counterparts. They were more acceptable to whites, and some of them were light skinned enough to pass as white. Andrea Levy portrays several mixed race characters in her novel The Long Song, BTW.

Deeply held prejudices within the African American and Caribbean communities based on skin color, hair texture, etc. continue to exist, although it is arguably less significant than it was when my father attended college at Howard University in Washington, DC in the 1950s, and when I attended Tulane University in New Orleans in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Neither of us was aware of this growing up in the North, and we each experienced this as college students, though quite differently. My father is dark brown in color (as you can see in the photo of my parents that is amongst my LT profile pictures), and he was shunned by the lighter skin and elite students at Howard and any girls he met at dances and social gatherings. I'm much lighter in color, though a shade or two darker than a paper bag, and I was accepted as a close friend by several of the light complexioned Creole students that attended Tulane, who looked down upon our fellow darker skinned classmates (as a couple of them made me aware of at the time). I got myself in big trouble with my medium dark New Orleanian girlfriend and her sisters at that time, when I naively and innocently mentioned that I thought that the light skinned Creole women of New Orleans were especially pretty (she & I almost broke up as a result...and, in retrospect, it would have been better for me, and probably her, if we had done so). This issue also came up during my intern year at Emory, when I learned from an older AfrAm nurse at the inner city children's hospital that we trained at that several of the AfrAm nurses that were exceedingly friendly to me during my first rotation there were unfriendly and hostile to me on my second rotation, as I refused to ask any of them on dates, because they felt I was "color struck" and was only interested in the lighter skinned nurses. (This was odd and humorous to me, as I found the two lightest skinned nurses on the wards to be lazy, spoiled and quite unattractive. This was also when I decided that Atlanta women were wackos, and I lost interest in dating any of them.)

Oops, back to your question. I find that class prejudice is still rampant in the South, and it seems to me that it is much higher here than in the Northern metropolitan areas I've lived in (NYC, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh). On the other hand...

As a black professional, do you feel the bigotry of southern whites at times at work?

Essentially, no. Never from people I work with, and extraordinarily rarely from families, maybe once every 2-3 years (so far less than 1% of the time). I will run across unfriendly, hostile and condescending families, but those families treat everyone that way, white or black. I think the key reason is that I am a black professional, and am perceived to be different, in manner, appearance and use of language, from inner city AfrAm males, both at work and in public, by whites, blacks and other races. So, oddly enough, I and my AfrAm colleagues at work are often treated with more respect (and frequently with great warmth and affection) by whites, and frequently with less respect by some fellow AfrAms from the inner city, who probably view us as being haughty and superior creatures who "act white". This doesn't reflect the attitude of most of the AfrAm families my AfrAm partners and colleagues and I encounter, but it happens often enough that it is quite noticeable to each of us, and it's a topic that we'll talk about at times.

And, even though I am at the opposite end of the political spectrum from many of the white families I take care of and most of the white nurses I work with, they are still very respectful and genuinely warm towards me, which is the main reason I love my job and want to continue to work there for the foreseeable future. For example, the parents of Brianah (the girl with spina bifida in several of my profile photos) and I have a very warm relationship, but her mother is an avid Sarah Palin supporter and can't stand Barack Obama!

The progeny of these illicit relationships had a higher status than "pure" blacks

In college, I learned about the higher status of lighter skinned blacks when studying Latin American history in an anthropology course. I never really thought about it here in the U.S.

quadroons (1/4 black) and octoroons (1/8 black)

I'd never even heard these words before. Of course, I grew up in Baltimore in the 50's and 60's, and my knowledge of the black population back then was limited to the "schwartzes" (derogatory Yiddish word for blacks and a word which still makes me cringe to this day). These were the black women that were hired by some Jewish families in northwest Baltimore to do housecleaning. These women were usually cherished by the families that hired them but most often thought of as "lower status".

When I was in middle school there was only one black student in my class. It was a guy whose name was Bill Burton. I wonder where he is today?!

Liberal old me, of course, would be hanging out with blacks and whites at parties in the late 60's/early 70's and thought it was quite the thing to be very, very liberal (and I still think this way).

though a shade or two darker than a paper bag,

Haha! Here we go again...

This was also when I decided that Atlanta women were wackos, and I lost interest in dating any of them

LOL!!

frequently with less respect by some fellow AfrAms from the inner city,

That's interesting. I was asking my husband today if he thought that affluent blacks here in DC looked down on less affluent blacks - as if class status mattered more than skin color. I thought no, but he thought yes. I'm not sure what the real answer is.

frequently with less respect by some fellow AfrAms from the inner city,

I think that same attitude can be seen in other situations that have nothing to do with skin color. My husband has a niece who is studying at Princeton. She is bright, successful, and talented. She has also been shunned at times precisely for her success.

her mother is an avid Sarah Palin supporter

Yikes!! :D

I wonder if my attitude about blacks is colored (no pun intended!) by the fact that most of my colleagues at work are black. Over the past ten years, my two bosses (both black) have turned into people I most admire. I think of them as angels (and adore both of them) and am only too sad for people who have bosses (of any color) whom they don't like. I consider my work situation truly blessed.

ETA: Thinking about what you said above, I'm wondering if that's why you so truly fell in love with the book by Dr. Abuelaish, a man who, under the most trying of circumstances, still seeks the find the humanity within everyone.

Darryl, you need to branch out into the suburbs. All women out here are friendly and attractive! (and didn't I tell you to stop watching that "Real Housewives of Atlanta"?!)

In the DC area, that bigotry, not gone by any means, certainly has begun to dissolve over the years. Some of that has to do with legislation. More has to do with people of different races, nationalities, and religion being more exposed to one another in situations like school and employment.

That's it exactly, IMO. Whites and blacks work and live side by side in Atlanta, in the suburbs, and throughout most of the state. There is also a sizable professional African American community in the Atlanta metropolitan area, including hundreds of AfrAm physicians in offices and hospitals in inner cities and in the well to do suburbs, such as the one I work at (located in Sandy Springs, just north of Atlanta, which was the 9th wealthiest city in the US that had >75 JanetinLondon:,000 residents in 2010). I experienced far more racial prejudice as a medical student in Pittsburgh, not from the residents of that fine city, but from people who lived in rural parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio and especially West Virginia, who weren't used to being around black people and were often noticeably hostile to me as compared to my white classmates. Some of them would make overt comments to the nurses and my white classmates, using the N-word to describe me. Although I loved Pittsburgh and the people who lived there, those small town attitudes played a big role in my decision to leave there after graduation, and it has a lot to do with my preference for larger and diverse cities and communities.

Sorry for the long winded answers to your simple questions!

>206 -Cee-: Merry Christmas to you and your family, Claudia!

>207 ChelleBearss: Thank you, Chelle, and a Merry Christmas to you, too!

>208 tymfos: I'm always ready for an Eagles vs. Cowboys game, Terri! We'll be at home today, so my parents and I will be glued to the set for this game, and the equally important battle for New York (Giants vs. Jets) that precedes it. There is one complicating factor, though. A good friend of mine invited me to participate in his fantasy football league this year, the first season that I've done this, and my team, the Fightin' Cheesesteaks, is playing in one of the two championship games (I'm in the consolation bracket, not the top one). Guess who my fantasy quarterback is?



So, I'll be simultaneously rooting for the Eagles, and hoping that pretty boy Tony Romo has a good game for the #&$^*!!! Cowboys.

Ooh, less than an hour before the Giants-Jets kickoff. Go Big Blue!



>209 rebeccanyc: So you'll be joining me in sibyx's New Yorker thread, Rebecca???

Hi Daryl and all...
Am currently about 2/3's of the way through The Emperor of All Maladies, which is astonishingly well done narrative nonfiction.

I've gotten to the point where HIV has entered the story...which is just after the bone marrow transplant studies and have come to the realization that all of the grueling treatment trials narrated in this book so far are done on children (leukemia) and women (breast cancer & leukemia)....segments of the population which have historically had little voice in public life.

There was a segment of the story on prostate cancer early in the book, which was a history of the disease, but no similar grueling trials on males....the dominant public voice.

Am I reading something into this that isn't there? Or should we be more concerned as a society about this?

Daryl, I looked up your review of the book and I do agree with your review.... Great book.

214 If I may put in my two cents, it's a documented fact of history that there was racial prejudice involved in selecting subjects for grueling, dangerous, and otherwise ethically questionable medical studies. (see book Medical Apartheid, among others.) It wouldn't surprise me there was gender and age bias, too.

213 Darryl, how in the world did you wind up with a Cowboy for your quarterback in your fantasy football league??? For shame! ;)

mistletoe smooches!

>211 SqueakyChu: In college, I learned about the higher status of lighter skinned blacks when studying Latin American history in an anthropology course. I never really thought about it here in the U.S.

Yes, it's an important part of American history, particularly in the South after Reconstruction, and in the antebellum North, as these mixed race individuals were more likely to be freed by Northern slaveowners before slavery was outlawed there.

I grew up in Baltimore in the 50's and 60's, and my knowledge of the black population back then was limited to the "schwartzes" (derogatory Yiddish word for blacks and a word which still makes me cringe to this day). These were the black women that were hired by some Jewish families in northwest Baltimore to do housecleaning. These women were usually cherished by the families that hired them but most often thought of as "lower status".

My mother, in particular, had a very different experience growing up in NYC in the 1940s and 1950s. The schools were not segregated, and the working class neighborhoods were far more integrated. She had two close friends throughout grade school and high school; one was Irish, and the other was Jewish. The three were almost inseparable, and they visited and stayed at each other's homes. My father attended one of the best high schools in Jersey City, NJ in the 1950s, which had almost equal numbers of black, white and Jewish students.

I didn't have any Jewish friends growing up in Jersey City in the 1960s and 1970s, as there weren't any in our neighborhood, and because I went to the elementary school that was associated with our Lutheran church, which consisted of almost equal numbers of blacks and whites of German descent, with a smattering of Irish, Polish and Puerto Rican students. My closest schoolmates were two boys, one Irish and one German, and my parents had friends of many different races, mainly AfrAm, Puerto Rican and German, and my relatives that lived on the other side of town lived in a neighborhood that mainly consisted of second-generation Irish, German and Greek families. Those exposures helped me tremendously when we moved to all white neighborhoods in suburban Philadelphia, as I had a relatively easy adjustment in school and with the kids in those neighborhoods.

Liberal old me, of course, would be hanging out with blacks and whites at parties in the late 60's/early 70's and thought it was quite the thing to be very, very liberal (and I still think this way).

Even though my parents had a strong AfrAm identity and were very active in the civil rights movement, their closest friends (and, as a result, mine) were white. It was an invaluable experience for me, as I didn't grow up with the anti-white baggage that many AfrAms of my generation did, which helped me to feel comfortable and do well in school and work environments in which I was the only AfrAm at a particular level.

I was asking my husband today if he thought that affluent blacks here in DC looked down on less affluent blacks - as if class status mattered more than skin color. I thought no, but he thought yes. I'm not sure what the real answer is.

I had looked at the photos of your family in your profile, particularly the ones that feature your husband and daughter, and I had wondered what their ethnic background was. Your husband looks a lot like my late maternal grandfather, who was mulatto; his father was AfrAm, and his mother (my maternal great-grandmother) was an Irish immigrant. However, my PGF looked as if he was from Egypt or Morocco!

A brief interruption: SWEET! The Giants' Victor Cruz just scored a TD on a pass from Eli Manning that covered 99 yards, the longest pass play in the history of the New York Giants (who have been in existence since 1925). The Giants now lead the Jets 10-7, heading toward halftime; go Big Blue!

I agree with your husband, in terms of what I know about the AfrAm culture in the District and in the US in general. Many affluent AfrAms do look down on their less fortunate brothers and sisters. It's a fallacy that there is a united AfrAm community, as there was before and during the civil rights movement, as many of the professional and financially better off AfrAms were able to move from the inner cities to the suburbs (as my family did in the mid 1970s). So, the AfrAm neighborhoods in the inner cities became progressively poorer while middle class AfrAms as a whole prospered in the 1970s, 1980s and beyond, and there was little interaction between the two groups as a result.

If I'm being honest, I would say that I am uncomfortable around the poorer AfrAms that people of other races are also uncomfortable with, including people who are loud and obnoxious in public, and those who I fear could rob me. I've also been hardened by my experiences with some AfrAm residents of Philadelphia when I was attending night classes at Drexel; some would spit at my feet as I walked to 30th Street Station at night, others would call me "Uncle Tom" or "white boy" without provocation, simply because I was a college student. That hurt me deeply, and although I try to be open minded whenever I meet anyone, regardless of their race or appearance (well dressed or not), I have to work hard to keep my internal prejudices to myself.

I think that same attitude can be seen in other situations that have nothing to do with skin color. My husband has a niece who is studying at Princeton. She is bright, successful, and talented. She has also been shunned at times precisely for her success.

That's a huge problem in poorer black communities, as many kids who are successful in grade school are ridiculed and even assaulted by other neighborhood kids for "acting white". One of the books in my TBR pile that I hope to get to next year is based on this problem, which is entitled Acting White: The Ironic Legacy of Desegregation. I experienced that from some neighborhood kids in Jersey City during the last year or two we lived there, in Philadelphia, as I mentioned above, and I suspect that the hostility that I and my AfrAm colleagues receive from some poorer black families that we care for in the hospital has a lot to do with this.

I wonder if my attitude about blacks is colored (no pun intended!) by the fact that most of my colleagues at work are black.

I would certainly think so, in the same way that my open minded view towards other races is based on my own personal experiences throughout my life.

Thinking about what you said above, I'm wondering if that's why you so truly fell in love with the book by Dr. Abuelaish, a man who, under the most trying of circumstances, still seeks the find the humanity within everyone.

That was certainly one of the reasons, and it's also why I loved A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz, and Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life by Sari Nusseibeh.

upon re-reading my comment..yes it does sound Pollyanna-ish. I guess the better way for me to put it would be this:

When taking up the book Emperor of All Maladies I expected to be a bit squeamish about the subject: cancer.

As it turns out, I am more squeamish about the medical ethics in the biography of cancer than I am of the disease.

>212 GCPLreader: Darryl, you need to branch out into the suburbs. All women out here are friendly and attractive! (and didn't I tell you to stop watching that "Real Housewives of Atlanta"?!)

All the women in suburban Atlanta are friendly and attractive??? They are all married, though! ;-) I sometimes joke with the nurses about certain "cute moms", which earns me a (playfully) harsh look or a smack on the arm.

I have to date someone who lives in north Fulton County, or maybe DeKalb County; the thought of driving on I-85 from Midtown ATL to and from Gwinnett County on a regular basis gives me hives. Seriously, I need to start going to more cultural events at Emory (lectures, fine art perfomances, etc.), as there is a much better chance that I would meet someone with a similar background and interests there. There are some single female doctors at my hospital, but I'm reluctant to date another physician, to avoid talking about medicine at home and at work.

I think I'd rather watch a Sarah Palin campaign appearance than watch Real Housewives of Atlanta!

>214 tangledthread: I've gotten to the point where HIV has entered the story...which is just after the bone marrow transplant studies and have come to the realization that all of the grueling treatment trials narrated in this book so far are done on children (leukemia) and women (breast cancer & leukemia)....segments of the population which have historically had little voice in public life.

There was a segment of the story on prostate cancer early in the book, which was a history of the disease, but no similar grueling trials on males....the dominant public voice.

Am I reading something into this that isn't there? Or should we be more concerned as a society about this?

The studies on pediatric cancers were often grueling, and many children died earlier than they would have if they had received no treatment at all. However, at the time of the earliest studies, cancers like leukemia were essentially death sentences, and parents agreed to place their children in these early studies in the hope that they could be cured, or their lives could be prolonged. The result of these sacrifices is that the treatment of childhood cancers has been far better studied than adult cancers have been, and the clinical outcomes and cure rates are much higher as a result. For example, ALL (acute lymphoblastic leukemia) has a >85 cameling:% cure rate overall, with an even higher cure rate for the most common type of leukemia, pre-B cell ALL, in the most commonly affected age group (1-10 years of age). However, the optimal treatment of other pediatric cancers, particularly brain tumors, remains elusive, with high mortality rates and significant morbidity for survivors, particularly epilepsy and global developmental delay. One of the saddest stories I can think of is the daughter of one of the neurologists at my hospital, who is the "brain tumor expert" in the group, whose daughter died of a brain tumor, despite his knowledge and the expertise of the oncologists there.

There have also been significant advances in the medical and surgical management of breast cancer, which are described in the book. One of the surgeons at my medical school (the University of Pittsburgh), Dr. Bernard Fisher (who I'm pretty sure is mentioned in The Emperor of All Maladies), was instrumental in demonstrating that radical mastectomy for invasive breast cancer, a procedure that caused significant morbidity, did not result in better outcomes that more limited surgical approaches that resulted in less removal of healthy tissue.

I think it's fair to say that there have been fewer studies on prostate cancer than most pediatric cancers, including leukemia, and breast cancer. However, the ideal management of prostate cancer is less well known, as evidenced by the controversy that arose earlier this year when the United States Preventive Services Task Force recommended against routine PSA (prostate specific antigen) screening for healthy men.

The Emperor of All Maladies is a must read, IMO, and a book that is worthy of the accolades and awards it has received, including the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction last year, and the Guardian First Book Award this year.

If I'm being honest, I would say that I am uncomfortable around the poorer AfrAms that people of other races are also uncomfortable with, including people who are loud and obnoxious in public, and those who I fear could rob me.

I have a interesting story about this. I was working overnights with a black nurse, both of us doing telephone triage. We arrived and left at different times. She told me about a scare that she had. After I left, the elevator came up in (what we thought was our empty) office building and a white (!) man came out. I had the feeling that she was more scared of his skin color than his gender. It left me thinking about how we react to people whom we don't know.

I like how Gavin de Becker tells us of whom to be scared. He says, if your gut feeling tells you to be scared of someone, heed that feeling. He does not discuss the person's appearance. His book, The Gift of Fear, is excellent, by the way.

others would call me "Uncle Tom" or "white boy" without provocation, simply because I was a college student.

To me, that is so sad.

I had wondered what their ethnic background was.

My husband is a native of El Salvador. His father's mother was Spanish (Caucasian) from Spain. His father's mom was Central American Indian. His mom's parents were both Central American Indian. My parents were European Jewish, my dad was of German-Jewish origin and my mom was of Yugoslav-Jewish origin (the part of Yugoslavia that was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Both were Ashkenazi Jews. Our kids are mutts (but beautiful ones!).

Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life by Sari Nusseibeh.

Hmmm... I haven't read that one. Onto my wishlist it just jumped!

>215 tymfos: If I may put in my two cents, it's a documented fact of history that there was racial prejudice involved in selecting subjects for grueling, dangerous, and otherwise ethically questionable medical studies. (see book Medical Apartheid, among others.) It wouldn't surprise me there was gender and age bias, too.

That's certainly true, Terri. However, if there was any prejudice in selecting subjects for pediatric cancer studies in the early years, I suspect that it would have been that affected children of minority groups would not have been selected for these studies, or treated with antiquated techniques and therapies/ I suspect that the same would be true for minority women with breast cancer, and I think I read a study or article that indicated that they were more likely to receive radical mastectomies for breast cancer than white women, even after Bernie Fisher's groundbreaking studies were well known. I may have read this in Augustus White's book, Seeing Patients: Unconscious Bias in Health Care.

I still haven't read Medical Apartheid, and I don't think I own it (checking...nope). I'll add it to the list of books I'll look for on Monday.

>216 richardderus: Thanks, Richard; I love the photo!

Who ya got, Giants or Jets? Big Blue looks good, with a 20-7 lead over the Jets early in the 4th quarter. No way that Mark Sanchez will lead the J-E-T-S to two TDs (unless the Giants "D" has a total collapse, like the incredibly stupid pass interference on 4th down that just happened). Ha ha! Sanchez just fumbled.

Wishing you all the very best Darryl!

Back to message 215:

Darryl, how in the world did you wind up with a Cowboy for your quarterback in your fantasy football league??? For shame! ;)

My other QB is the Giants' Eli Manning, who I've started most of the year. However, I didn't start him last week, and I would have lost the playoff game if I had done so. I thought that Romo would have a better game against the Eagles than Manning would against the Jets, and Eli hasn't had a good fantasy performance so far (I can't believe I'm talking about this fantasy stuff, but I'm hooked!).

Uh oh, the Sanchez fumble was ruled an incomplete pass, and the Jets are threating to score a TD...which they just did. No...Sanchez just fumbled the ball in the end zone back to the Giants! LMAO!

Great...the Jets just intercepted Manning, so the Jets have the ball deep in Giants territory again. I need a drink.

>218 tangledthread: When taking up the book Emperor of All Maladies I expected to be a bit squeamish about the subject: cancer. As it turns out, I am more squeamish about the medical ethics in the biography of cancer than I am of the disease.

Hmm...I'll have to revisit the book next week and look at this. It wouldn't take much for me to reread it.

>220 SqueakyChu: I have a interesting story about this.

Yes, the fear of the unknown, or unexpected!

He says, if your gut feeling tells you to be scared of someone, heed that feeling.

I agree. I'm not afraid of young poorer AfrAm men as a group. However, young men of any ethnic background or appearance who act in a hyperaggressive manner are threatening to me, and to most of us, I suspect.

Our kids are mutts (but beautiful ones!).

I completely agree!

Hmmm... I haven't read that one. Onto my wishlist it just jumped!

It's one of my favorite autobiographies of the past few years. I bought his newest book, What Is a Palestinian State Worth? at City Lights this fall, and I'll definitely read it next year.

damn...jets...just, well, damn.

Merry Christmas, Darryl! I've very much enjoyed your thread, though I usually lurk and only occasionally chime in. I appreciate your thoughtful reviews and willing recommendations for reading and learning. I agree with you, Paul, and others in saying that LT has been a true gift for me in 2011. Wishing the very best to you in the coming year!

Merry Christmas Darryl! Have a great holiday!

>222 Smiler69: Thanks, Ilana! I hope you enjoy the holidays as well.

>224 richardderus: The Giants won, 29-14, so I'm happy about that. However, I forgot that a Giants win eliminated the Eagles from the playoffs. The Eagles are playing well, with a 7-0 lead over the Cowboys midway through the 2nd quarter. So, next week's game between the Giants and Eagles for the NFC East championship. Unfortunately for my fantasy team (but not for the Eagles or Giants), Tony Romo was hurt in the 1st quarter, so I probably can't win.

>225 EBT1002: Merry Christmas, Ellen, and thanks for your kind comments. I expect that 2012 will be better (and busier) than 2011 was.

>226 msf59: Merry Christmas to you as well, Mark! I'm sure you'll be watching tomorrow night's Bears-Packers game.

This photo of my brother's & girlfriend's cat was taken just before both of them were taken to a local ER to be treated for multiple lacerations:

Happy Christmas, Darryl!

#228 I hope you are not serious about the multiple lacerations, though from the look in the cat's eyes and its flattened ears I fear you might be!

>229 gennyt: No, I was kidding. Sasha is a patient cat, but every feline has her limits...

De-lurking to wish you a very Merry Christmas, Darryl!! I enjoy your reviews and the breadth of your reading. Your humor is not bad either. ; ) I am very glad you are a part of the 75ers.

>228 kidzdoc:, 230 ...every feline has her limits... and self-respect, I might add. :-D

Merry Christmas, Darryl! Hope you're having a great holiday weekend!

Oh, that cat photo is wonderful... Although I must say that I empathize with Sasha. The indignity of it...

Re the "don't send me a male nurse" issue -- I could actually understand that, to some extent. While I might understand that a nurse is there as a professional, there are some women who simply wouldn't be comfortable with a male nurse dealing with things like catheters, bedpans, etc. etc. Depends on your background. I don't think it's prejudice so much as personal comfort. It's a bit like preferring a female OB/GYN. For women who do, they aren't saying that men aren't as effective as women or lacking in caring, etc., just that given the nature of the treatment, they'd rather have a woman if that's possible. I wouldn't put that on the same level as racism, in this context.

A Jewish friend of mine sometimes tells the story of how he and his mother (his father died when he was a very small boy) heard members of his father's family refer to "schwartzes" at a family dinner one holiday. His mother said if they used that word again, she would get up and they would leave. A few minutes later, the word was used again. His mother got up, put on her coat, and they simply walked out.

I agree with you, Darryl; the people that make me fearful do so because of their attitude and behavior, not because of their race. I can divide them into two categories: young men in their teens and 20s (mostly), posing and strutting like hip-hop icons and behaving aggressively to everyone around them and then older people (usually) who are some combination of mentally disturbed and/or addicted. (Obviously, there's a lot of overlap there...) There is a group of the latter that hang out at the entrance to the subway across the street and harass people for money pretty much all the time. In the evenings, there can be some fairly scary fights & a lot of screaming of obscenities. To the extent that either group is dominated by members of one racial type, I usually figure that it's largely due to economic/educational opportunities (and lack of same). What does worry me are the kids that I see from the high school on my block. Most of them are HIspanic or African American, and what I see and hear is downright disturbing. It's hard to know how much is just what passes for normal teenagerdom in NYC these days and how much is "culture".

I did read -- and rave about -- a great book about the conflict of what to do when your peers say you're not black enough because you're interested in books, education, etc. and want to participate in society that is broader than that offered by any single racial category. It's Losing My Cool by Thomas Chatterton Williams; the author read at an event I did last year when my book came out, and I was really impressed both by him and the book. Highly recommended. Another intriguing book was the first one by John McWhorter to take aim at the phenomenon of "ebonics". He struck me as kind of being an African-American Allan Bloom, the kinda guy who develops political views that despise hip hop, etc. etc. I thought some of the conclusions he drew were a bit bizarre, but on the other hand, it was interesting to hear an African American public intellectual strongly deprecate the trend to identify ourselves in ways that exclude others.

OK, after all that blather, I'm off to apply ice pack to my head! My current bete noire is finding a way to get Target's people to honor their promise to override their "preferred supplier" contracts (as they are supposed to do) to stock the generic version of my migraine meds that I can tolerate. For the last two weeks, I've been ordering a refill, the pharmacy has been ordering it from McKesson (the distributor/middleman), which has it in stock, but none has been showing up in the delivery because someone somewhere keeps deciding that Target's preferred relationship with the maker of the toxic generic (the one that knocked me out for 19 hours earlier this year) means they can't abide by my physician's specific instructions. Meaning that when I can get it filled at all, I can usually only get 50% to 60% of the quantity my doc wants me to have. NY law means that because this stuff has codeine in it, I can't get half today and then pick up the rest when it's in stock -- what I walk out of the store with is all I'm allowed to get for a particular refill. So, with one refill left on this Rx, I'm owed an absurd 330 capsules on the entire prescription!! Very, deeply bizarre. Need to find a way around this, which is tricky as relatively few pharmacies stock even the brand of this stuff.

OK, enuf scribbling. MERRY HAPPY XMAS. See you boxing day...

Ooh, as usual, many book bullets here from the interesting discussion of race/class. I've added Acting white, Losing my cool, and Medical Apartheid to the obese TBR pile, not to mention Emperor of Maladies.

Merry Christmas Darryl, and I hope we do arrange an Atlanta meetup sometime this year.

Happy Christmas morning Darryl! I guess, I'll be watching the Bears games, with much trepidation. This could be a slaughter.

I am geared up for the NF Challenge and I have 2 waiting impatiently in the wings: Lost in Shangri-La: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II and House of Prayer No 2. Both sound terrific!

Merry Christmas!

hey darryl, whatcha get...whatcha get?? :o)

Merry Christmas, everyone! I hope that everyone has a wonderful day with friends and family today, and I look forward to seeing all of you in the New Year. May 2012 grant all of us health, stability, good times...and great reading!

I've compiled my wish list of books for tomorrow's Boxing Day Book Buying Binge, which I'll post here for my own reference (as I can access LT on my BlackBerry).

S.Y. Agnon, Only Yesterday
S.Y. Agnon, A Book That Was Lost: and Other Stories
Harvey Araton, When the Garden Was Eden
Shusaku Endo, Deep River
Shusaku Endo, The Samurai
Shusaku Endo, Scandal
Shusaku Endo, Stained Glass Elegies
Shusaku Endo, When I Whistle
Percival Everett, Erasure
Michel Houellebecq, The Map and the Territory
Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask
Yukio Mishima, Runaway Horses
Yukio Mishima, The Temple of Dawn
Yukio Mishima, Decay of the Angel
Ryu Murakami, Coin Locker Babies
Ryu Murakami, In the Miso Soup
Ryu Murakami, Popular Hits of the Showa Era
Ali Smith, There but for the
Dag Solstad, Professor Anderson's Night
Natsume Soseki, I Am a Cat
Harriet Washington, Medical Apartheid
Liu Xiaobo, No Enemies, No Hatred

Obviously this list is heavily tilted toward Japanese literature. That's because lilisin's Author Theme Reads group is focusing on Japanese literature in 2012. I intend to read six or more books by Shusaku Endo, the major author, and three or more books by the quarterly mini-authors, Natsume Soseki, Kobo Abe, Ryu Murakami, and Yukio Mishima.

Just popping in to wish you a very Merry Christmas, Darryl ! I'm putting together my list for tomorrow's shopping spree. :-)

> 234

Re the "don't send me a male nurse" issue -- I...understand that, to some extent.

You are right about this in some respects. In the Muslim culture, a male nurse shoud not be examining a female patient. However, men are accepted as doctors in that culture. In our culture here in the United States, this determination of service provider by gender is discriminatory.

Then there was the reaction that a few of our patients were afraid (and they've voiced this) to open their doors at night to a man (especially an AfrAm man!). It so happened that an AfrAm man was one of our two night nurses. We did home visits round the clock if extenuating circumstances warranted it. He and a Chinese woman (our second night nurse) did those visits. We've had patients decline necessary intravenous therapy rather than agree to a male nurse at night. Whether beneath their request was really the issue of skin color, I'm not sure. They knew who our night nurses were as we had those two nurses regularly.

just that given the nature of the treatment, they'd rather have a woman if that's possible

I understand this completely. However, as described above, patients occasionally put themselves into medical jeopardy because of racial preference/discrimination. For example, a patient would decline a male nurse and forego a dose of an intravenous antibiotic simply by saying that no male nurse could visit. Of course, our responsibility in the case of any refused, but neccesary, visit was to report that situation to the physician.

heard members of his father's family refer to "schwartzes

I was once a guest, back in Baltimore, at the home of very observant Jews when I heard that word. It made my jaw drop. Seriously, I had not heard that word used in casual conversation since I left Baltimore in 1968. That was 43 years ago!!

>231 Berly: Merry Christmas to you too, Kim! Thanks for the compliment; however if my humor is only "not bad", then I need to work on my comedy routines for 2012.

>232 EBT1002: One day my brother and/or his GF will end up being sliced into Kibbles 'n Bits if they keep messing with Sasha.

>233 LauraBrook: Merry Christmas, Laura! Yes, it will be a good holiday weekend; I hope you have a good time, as well.

>234 Chatterbox: I completely agree with gender preference when it comes to health care providers. We don't do many pelvic exams on teenage girls, and I'm comfortable doing them, but I would prefer for one of my female partners to care for a teenager with GYN issues, whereas I or my male partners will take teenage boys with GU (genitourinary) problems. I personally don't understand why any male would want to become an OB-GYN; that is the last field of medicine I would want to enter!

The values of the current youth (or, as Rachael would say, youf) culture are essentially foreign to me: misogynistic and violent rap music, R&B and pop singers who all sound alike, near complete disrespect of adults and others that aren't like them while simultaneously demanding respect, dressing like convicts, disregard of education and traditional routes to success, etc. Yikes, I sound like an old fuddy duddy...

Someone else had recommended Losing My Cool. I have a couple of books by John McWhorter, including Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America and Acting Black, and other similar books by Juan Williams (Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America--and What We Can Do About It) and Stanley Crouch (The Artificial White Man: Essays on Authenticity), along with Acting White, so I'll read those first before I get Losing My Cool.

See you tomorrow!

>235 markon: Merry Christmas, Ardene! One possible choice for an Atlanta meet up would be the Decatur Book Festival around Labor Day, or possibly a literary event at the Carter Center or at Emory.

>236 msf59: Merry Christmas, Mark! My first narrative non-fiction read will almost certainly be The Warmth of Other Suns, which others are apparently also planning to read in January.

>237 qebo: Merry Christmas, qebo! See you tomorrow.

>238 GCPLreader: I'm not sure yet. My family greatly de-emphasized the gift giving aspect of Christmas about 25 years ago, so the adults give each other small gifts, if anything. My brother will spend the day with his GF's family in South Jersey, and I'll see them tomorrow night for dinner after the LT meet up; they usually get me something, and vice versa.

>239 kidzdoc: Hmm...I might get some of the books I posted above as Kindle books today or tomorrow, to limit the number of books I have to lug back on the train from NYC tomorrow, and to Atlanta on Tuesday, particularly the ones by Ryu Murakami.

We'll be leaving for North Jersey in the next couple of hours, and I don't think my aunt has wireless access. So, I'll use my BlackBerry, and I probably won't be on LT much until tomorrow night or Tuesday morning. Have a Merry Christmas, everyone!

Merry Christmas!

> 242

I completely agree with gender preference when it comes to health care providers.

I see what you mean when you talk about gyn/GU issues. I just used to get so frustrated, though, when evenings came, and patients refused care by our male nurses. It was kind of tough finding female nurses to do night visits considering the rougher sections of town in which they sometimes had to make visits. We did have security personnel who could make visits with them. However, I remember one of our security people saying that he was even scared in the place he had been sent with a female nurse. That didn't leave me feeling very secure in asking for such a visit to be made. I don't know how such situations are handled presently as I no longer do telephone triage after hours.

Have fun at your meet-up everyone.

Whew. I just read through this thread (some skimming admitted), and I feel like the book bullets were coming from a machine gun! There is so much to read! Thanks always for the reviews; that way, I can attempt to calibrate the damage. Mostly, I promise myself to look back on the threads when I aspire to new titles.

I'd offer to help carry your plunder tomorrow, but I've already offered my book-bearing abilities to Richard.

Hi Darryl, I'm just catching up on the last 35 or so posts on your thread. Fascinating conversations as always. Hope you have a wonderful Christmas Day and have fun at the meetup tomorrow.

Merry Christmas, Darryl.

No way to catch up......hope all is happy in your world!

Merry Christmas Darryl and all the best to you in 2012.

Hi Darryl, interesting conversations here as always. Love the picture of Sasha, though must admit it took me a while to catch on to the joke. A bit... sloooooooowww. lol.

A Merry Christmas to you, too, Darryl (and Happy Boxing Day since I'm late.)

I've been admiring your reading plans for 2012 and see we have quite a few books in common. I'm also very interested in the narrative non-fiction thread, which I will probably join since it seems to apply to a lot of my non-fiction reads, especially to my favorites.

Happy Boxing Day!



;-}

A lovely time was had by all at today's LT NYC Boxing Day Meet Up. Details soon.

Just doing a bit of a skim-through on your thread! Can't wait to here about the LT meet-up!

Hi Darryl belated Merry Christmas. A load of books added to the TBR pile. Pity that you could not suggest any book on tb for me.

>254 weejane: This is the message I posted on the NYC Boxing Day meet up thread:

The LT NYC Boxing Day meet up was a success. It began at 10:30 am, when Caroline & I met at Russ and Daughters, the legendary Lower East Side appetizer shop close to the 2nd Ave/Lower East Side station, where we bought smoked sturgeon, pastrami salmon, whitefish salad, and bialys (bialies?). The shop was amazingly empty, and we got out far sooner than we had anticipated.

From there we took a northbound F train to the 14th St/6th Ave station, and stopped at Strand Books on 12th St & Broadway, as we had an hour to kill before lunch. Caroline proceeded to load a shopping cart with books (despite my dozens of visits there, I had no idea that the Strand had shopping carts), and I came away with 11 books, about half of what was on my wish list.

At noon, the gang (consisting of Suz, Judy, Jim, Richard, Katherine, Caroline and myself), met at Scarpina Bar & Grill, a lovely fusion restaurant specializing in Spanish and Mediterranean cuisine that was a stone's throw away on University Place between 11th & 12th Sts. I had guacamole with the most unique corn chips I've ever had, along with a massive and delightful lamb burger with fries. The group then proceeded to the Strand, where several photos were taken. Suz took this photo on my BlackBerry (which doesn't have a great camera):



Back row: me, Jim (magicians_nephew), Richard (richardderus)
Front row: Judy (ffortsa), Katherine (qebo), Caroline (cameling)

Most of the group entered the Strand; Caroline, Richard & I split off after that. Hopefully someone else can pick up the story from there (and post better photos).

Here's my haul from the Strand:

Shusaku Endo, When I Whistle; Stained Glass Elegies; Volcano
Yukio Mishima, The Sound of Waves; The Decay of the Angel
Ryu Murakami, In the Miso Soup
Frank Dikötter, Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962
Su Tong, The Boat to Redemption
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
Jane Ziegelman, 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement (recommended by Caroline)
Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism

>255 mausergem: Gautam, I did reply to your question on my thread in the Medicine group two days ago; I'll repost it here.

I found two historical books about TB on Amazon US, The Forgotten Plague: How the Battle Against Tuberculosis Was Won - And Lost by Frank Ryan, which was published in 1994, and the 1987 book The White Plague: Tuberculosis, Man and Society by René J. Dubos. I'm pretty sure that I have (or had) Ryan's book, although I don't think I read it and, if I do have it, it would be in one of my boxes of books that I haven't entered into my LT library yet. I'm surprised that there apparently aren't any recent books about the history of TB.

I'll be leaving my parents' house to head to the airport in a couple of hours, so I'll reply to other posts later today.

The weather in the Northeast US looks to be miserable today; safe travels to all of you who will be on the road or in the air.

I'll probably wait until New Year's Eve or New Year's Day to create my first 75 Books thread in the 2012 group, as I have to work from Wednesday to Friday.

Looks like an erudite group! I hope I can participate in a LT meet-up in 2012 (although the thought makes me frankly feel a bit nervous). I hope Weds - Fri work is relatively smooth, Darryl.

Have a safe flight back to Atlanta, Darryl. I hope you'll have a relatively easy workload this week so you have the energy to bring inthe new year and new LT. challenges with your dancing shoes on.

>257 EBT1002: Nah, no need to be nervous of us. We talk a lot, but we're a genial group. We'd be glad to see you.

Sounds like a wonderful outing! The last time I was in NYC, we went to the Strand. It's marvelous.

Sandy K

172, 242: Among the books that I picked up at Penn Station was The Warmth of Other Suns.
256: I'm surprised that there apparently aren't any recent books about the history of TB.
Huh, yeah, because it seems that diseases have become a strangely popular topic.
So nice to meet you yesterday!

I'm finally back in Atlanta, after a delayed but pleasant flight from Philadelphia. The flight attendants couldn't have been any nicer, and the captain was the nicest one I've ever had the pleasure of flying with. I was fortunate enough to be upgraded to a first class seat in the first row, and he amiably chatted with us and kept us abreast of the situation, both at the gate before we boarded and those of us who were at the front of the plane. Once we took off, nearly two hours late, it was a smooth and quiet trip, as everyone around me, including my seat mate, seemed to be engrossed in a Christmas book.

I decided to get a head start on 2012, and stared Volcano by Shusaku Endo, the main author of next year's Author Theme Read; I'll probably finish it on Thursday or Friday. I'll also switch gears and start The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, for my January TIOLI challenge and qebo's Non-Fiction Challenge, which I should finish over the weekend or early next week. It's a book from the TBR pile (which I'll define as a book that I've owned for more than six months, based on avaland's definition), so it will count for my as yet unnamed TBR challenge in 2012.

>243 lauralkeet: I hope you had a Merry Christmas, Laura! Hopefully we can get an LT group together in Philadelphia sometime this spring; I'll probably visit my parents again in March or April.

>244 SqueakyChu: I just used to get so frustrated, though, when evenings came, and patients refused care by our male nurses. It was kind of tough finding female nurses to do night visits considering the rougher sections of town in which they sometimes had to make visits.

I've heard that certain sections of Baltimore, particularly the neighborhood that Johns Hopkins Hospital resides in, are very dangerous. I could certainly understand why no female nurses would want to do night visits, and although I respect the right of patients to choose the gender of their caregivers, I think there should be a little common sense and realization that a male nurse is better than no nurse at all.

>245 ffortsa: It was great to see you, Jim and everyone else at the meet up, Judy. It sounds as though Caroline (a.k.a. Iron Girl) took the prize for the most books purchased at Strand, but her two mile trek through Manhattan demonstrated that she didn't need anyone's help!

There were several books from my Boxing Day wish list that I couldn't find on the shelves at the Strand, so I'll order the ones I can from the store's web site before the New Year. My cousin also gave my a $50 gift certificate to Barnes & Noble, so I'll probably go to my closest branch on Friday or Saturday.

I'm borrowing Katherine's much better picture of the LT NYC Boxing Day gang, for those who aren't following the Boxing Day thread:



>246 phebj: Thanks, Pat! I had a wonderful Christmas Day and Boxing Day, at the LT meet up in the afternoon, and with my parents, brother and GF that night after I left the city.

>247 Trifolia: I hope that you had a lovely Christmas too, Monica!

>248 mckait: Yes, it was the best Christmas I've had in quite awhile, and not only because I didn't work on Dec 25 for the first time in six or seven years. I hope that you had an enjoyable time with your family as well, Kath.

>249 brenzi: A Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year to you as well, Bonnie!

>250 Smiler69: You weren't the only one to be thrown off by my "joke", Ilana. I should probably post an appropriate emoticon the next time I do that...

>251 AnneDC: I hope that you had a Merry Christmas and Happy Boxing Day as well, Anne. I'll continue to follow your 75 Books thread closely in 2012, as we do have similar reading tastes, and I hope to see you in qebo's Non-Fiction group as well.

>252 jdthloue: Ooh, nice Boxing Day photo, Jude!

>257 EBT1002: I agree with Judy, Ellen; all of the informal and formal LT meet ups I've attended (in NYC, London and Cambridge) have been very enjoyable and relaxing. I hope to meet many more LTers in 2012 and beyond.

>258 cameling: Thanks, Caroline. I imagine that it will still be very busy at work, but I'm supposed to have a third year pediatric resident from Emory working with me the next three days, which will make it a much easier stretch of days. I just looked, and our inpatient census is currently in the upper 40s, or about 15-20 patients less than there were at this time last week. Hopefully it will stay that way.

>260 sandykaypax: Right, Sandy. The Strand is one of the great bookstores in the US, and I've been going there for years, particularly when I worked and was in graduate school at NYU before I went to medical school.

>261 qebo: Great, Katherine! Are you planning to read The Warmth of Other Suns next month? So far six of us have signed up to read it for my January TIOLI challenge, Read a work of narrative non-fiction.

I'm also very surprised that there aren't any more recent books about TB, at least ones that have been published in the US. I'll have to look for books about TB when I go to the UK next year.

It was great to meet you yesterday! Hopefully I'll see you again at one or more LT meet ups in 2012, in NYC, Philadelphia, Washington or elsewhere.

262: Are you planning to read The Warmth of Other Suns next month? So far six of us have signed up to read it for my January TIOLI challenge
Yes, I expect to. I'm still frantically actively working on 2011 though.

I just ordered seven more books from the Strand's web site; all, if not most, of these books were cheaper than ordering from Amazon, BTW.

Runaway Horses by Yukio Mishima
The Temple of Dawn by Yukio Mishima
Deep River by Shusaku Endo
The Golden Country: A Play About Christian Martyrs in Japan by Shusaku Endo
I Am a Cat by Natsume Soseki
There but for the by Ali Smith
Up in the Old Hotel and Other Stories by Joseph Mitchell

Can't wait to hear what you'll have to say about Up in the Old Hotel!

Darryl- Glad you had a great trip to NYC, and got to mingle with some of the LT royalty. Lucky dog. Hope you had a safe trip back home.
I did start my NF Challenge! Stop by!

Darryl, during this very hectic time of year I've been greatly amiss by not making it a priority to visit your thread. So a little catching up is in order.
Great pic from outside The Strand. Funny, even though I haven't met any of you in person, how the faces and places are becoming so familiar. Glad you all had a nice time.

All the best to you in 2012!

Hi Darryll, I envy you guys getting together in NYC. It looks like you had lots of fun.

I wish you a belated Merry Christmas and definitely a Happy New Year filled with yet more success and plenty of reading.

>265 richardderus: I'm looking forward to Up in the Old Hotel, Richard. I'm planning to read some of the classic narrative non-fiction works of New Yorker writers such as A.J. Leibling, John McPhee (ack, I was supposed to have ordered The John McPhee Reader from the Strand's web site yesterday!), Whitney Balliett and Joseph Mitchell, along with Adam Gopnik.

>266 msf59: Thanks, Mark. We did have a great time, as we did when we met on the Saturday after Thanksgiving last year. Fortunately NYC is a short trip from my parents' house (~70 miles), so I can go to the city whenever I want to when I visit them.

I'll visit your NF thread now; thanks for the heads up.

>267 Carmenere: Hi, Lynda! I hope that you have a prosperous year to come.

>268 xieouyang: Happy New Year to you as well, Manuel!

Here's a tentative list of books that I plan to read in (or for) January. My reading in 2012 will be much more structured than in years past, due to the goals and challenges I've committed myself to.

Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 {Author Theme Reads}
Shusake Endo, Volcano {Author Theme Reads}
Natsume Soseki, Botchan (Master Darling) (tbr) {Author Theme Reads}
Natsume Soseki, Kokoro (tbr) {Author Theme Reads}
Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar, A Mind at Peace (tbr) {Reading Globally}
Ivo Andric, The Bridge on the Drina {Reading Globally}
Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns (tbr) {Narrative Non-Fiction}
Paul Farmer, Haiti After the Earthquake (tbr, as of Jan 18) {Narrative Non-Fiction/Medicine}
Alice LaPlante, Turn of Mind {Medicine}
Percival Everett, Erasure {African-American Literature}
Karen Russell, Swamplandia! (tbr) {Orange January}
Nicole Krauss, Great House (tbr) {Orange January}

(tbr=a book from my TBR pile, a book I've owned for at least six months)

There's a good chance that I'll finish Volcano and Botchan (Master Darling) by New Year's Eve (two books I'll read for January challenges), and, depending on how the next three days go, I might be able to knock out Great House as well. I assume that I'll receive my LT Early Reviewer books for November and December in the next month, so I'll add one or more of those to my January books.

Well Darryl you held out well until Christmas but your purchasing thereafter would seem like a reversion to type!

Just 3 more days before you need to start curbing your book purchasing activities, Darryl. I just had a thought ... if the USPS think they're having revenue problems now, they ought to consider how dire their situation would be if the LTers weren't such active online book shoppers.

Just dropping in to wish you a very good New Year, and may all your reading plans be fulfilled!

Darryl, it's been a pleasure trying to keep up with your threads this past year. I wish I could have been in NYC for the Boxing Day meet-up. Meeting my fellow LTers has been one of the highlights of 2011 for me as I was part of three meet-ups...KC, Denver, and Joplin, MO.

I'm glad that you and Jenny have pointed us toward Katherine's nonfiction thread. NNF books have been in my top ten reads for the past few years and I'm looking forward to reading more of the same. I didn't realize that In Cold Blood was considered to be the first narative non-fiction work. Perhaps I'll get around to reading it in 2012!

I'm glad your short book-buying ban is over. I live vicariously through you and others that buy more books than I do. I have a few B&N gift cards burning a hole in my pocket(book) so I'll add a few new books to my collection and call it good.

It's me again --- with more questions about black-white relations. :)

My husband saw the book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil lying about so he decided to re-read it. Not to worry. He's almost done so don't forget to pm me your mailing address so I can get it to you sooner rather than later.

While reading this book, my husband asked me, "How do black readers feel about white authors writing about the south and putting down blacks in their books?" I said I'd put the question right to the source (esepcially since you're also going to read the same book shortly).

Here are my thoughts:
I think it's done to make books realistic, rather than politically correct, since some whites do put down blacks - either overtly or covertly.

He also asked, "Are black readers offended by the use of the N-word in novels written by white authors?"

Here are my thoughts:
I think this can be equated with the use of the word "kike" which is a very offensive term to Jews. It would depend on how it's being used. If it is spoken by an antisemitic person who hates Jews, it says more about the abhorrent nature of the fictitious character than it does about the novel's non-Jewish author.

Your thoughts, Darryl?

>271 PaulCranswick: Right, Paul. This is one last hurrah before the Book Buying Ban goes into effect. I still need to get a couple of books for the Author Theme Reads challenge, and I'll probably buy them from Amazon in the next day or two.

>272 cameling: I'm sure that a lot of people and companies are happy about LT readers: authors, publishers, and online and brick & mortar booksellers, along with the USPS.

>273 gennyt: Happy New Year to you too, Genny! I hope that 2012 is a prosperous and fulfilling year for you as well.

>274 Donna828: Thanks for those kind comments, Donna. I hope that you'll be able to make one of the NYC LT meet ups sometime soon, but you've gotten around quite a bit this year. I'll almost certainly spend more time with LTers in 2012, particularly in the Northeast cities (NYC, Philadelphia, Washington?) and in the UK (London and Cambridge).

I'm looking forward to participating in Katherine's Non-Fiction group, and following the threads and recommendations of others.

The book buying binge, as Caroline mentioned, is only on until December 31st. After that, I plan to restrict my book purchases to only those books I really want to read and ones I plan to read in the calendar year. If I haven't mentioned so already, I received a $50 Barnes & Noble gift card for Christmas, which I could use now, but I'll probably save it for a couple of must read purchases in 2012.

>275 SqueakyChu: "How do black readers feel about white authors writing about the south and putting down blacks in their books?"

I'm in general agreement with your comment, Madeline. I don't have a big problem with authors describing racist characters in their books, as long as the black characters are portrayed by the author as full human beings, and not stereotypes or caricatures. I try to make allowances for books that were written well before the U.S. civil rights movement, although I often find it difficult to read those books uncritically. I also dislike books which stereotypically portray or denigrate any ethnic group or gender. One of the books I loathed the most in 2010 was Them by Nathan McCall, an African American author and professor at Emory, which looked at gentrification in a section of Atlanta not far from where I live. I thought that his portrayals of the white characters in the book were demeaning, and the tense relationship between blacks and whites in the neighborhood was insulting and not consistent with my experiences living here. I didn't review it, but I gave it ½ star, only because I couldn't give it a lower rating than that.

"Are black readers offended by the use of the N-word in novels written by white authors?"

It certainly is a word that makes me cringe, but I can't say that I'm more offended by its use by a white author than by a black one, and I hate that the inner city youth use it frequently in public. The use of the N-word by Carson McCullers seemed to be "appropriate", given the location and time period (Georgia in the late 1940s), but some of the novels and short stories by Flannery O'Connor seemed to be a bit over the top.

Happy New Year Daryl and all.

Enjoy The Warmth of Other Suns, it's a very well done book. I see you have The Arc of Justice in your library....it would be a good "companion read" to Warmth. Both are narrative nonfiction....

Here's to reading in 2012!

Hi Darryl, great discussions here as always. Looking at your January planned reads, I'd love to join you for 1Q84, but am already much overbooked as it is, partly with narrative non-fiction books I've entered in your TIOLI challenge. It's looking like I might complete one of my 12/12 categories (non-fiction) in the first month of the year! One such book I thought was a *must read* this coming month was Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick, which I got fairly recently and couldn't be more timely.

I got an ARC copy of Turn of Mind earlier this month at a book swap we did with the Montreal Book Bloggers group I'm part of. It was one of many great scores and I'll look forward to your comments on it. I was quite keen to get it as seems like a very interesting premise.

Wishing you a Happy New Year, and I look forward to continuing to follow your threads in 2012.

Hi Darryl- I know we talked about the podcast "Between the Lines", a couple years ago. It looks like the show is coming to an end. I listened to the 2 last shows, talking about the best non-fiction and memoirs, that she has featured on her program. Very good stuff. I'll miss her.

I've just added Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea to my library hold list. It's a bit of a queue -- as others have said, very timely. It's one for which I'll adjust my planned reading list, whenever my turn comes up.

Hooray for Friday!

It was a busy, but not crazy, three day work week to end the year. However, it was certainly one of the most rewarding weeks of this year, and in my career as a hospitalist. It isn't often that I can say that I saved a child from death or a serious complication from illness, but this did happen on Wednesday night.

I saw a little baby in our emergency department who was felt to have viral gastroenteritis (infection of the stomach and intestines) by the ED doctor, as he was vomiting and not able to keep any formula or other liquids down. I talked with the parents, who told me that he was vomiting bile (and the baby had three episodes when I was in his exam room), and had not had a bowel movement in over 48 hours, which is a classic presentation for complete intestinal obstruction, a surgical emergency. I ordered X-rays, which were abnormal, followed by an abdominal ultrasound, which confirmed that he had an extensive ileocecal intussusception, a condition where a portion of the intestines, usually at the junction of the small and large intestines, folds in on itself similar to the parts of a collapsed telescope. It's not uncommon, and is usually not a serious condition, unless the intestine stays stuck; in that case, the portion that is collapsed (the intussusceptum) loses blood flow and oxygen, and can become nonviable, which would require surgical removal of that portion of the bowel. If this goes on for too long, the dead portion of the intestine can rupture, and feces can leak into the abdominal cavity, which can cause peritonitis, a potentially deadly infection. If the area of dead bowel is in a critical area (which was true in this case), and it has to be surgically removed, then the intestines don't function properly, which could lead to an intestinal transplantation.

The baby underwent emergency surgery late Wednesday night, and a significant portion of the intestine in that critical area was discolored and swollen, meaning that it had already lost some of its oxygen supply. Thankfully the intestines pinked up (returned to normal color and appearance) several minutes later, and he didn't have to have that portion of his intestines removed. He is doing well, and although he is still in the hospital, all indications point to him making a complete recovery. The parents were incredibly grateful, particularly his father, who doubted my diagnosis in the ED, and he was glad that I insisted on getting the X-rays that night instead of waiting until the following morning, as he wanted to do. If I had done that, the baby certainly would have lost a significant portion of his intestines, and could have easily died as a result.

I apologize if this sounds as if I'm patting myself on the back. On one hand I'm relieved and thrilled that I was able to make the diagnosis in time to save the baby from serious morbidity or death; on the other hand, I'm still a bit shaken by how close that baby came to a really bad outcome.

>281 kidzdoc: You = awesome

NEVER EVER AGAIN apologize for telling us you've saved a life! THAT is not bragging. It's sharing the best moment anyone can ever have, at work or wherever. I am so thrilled for you!

Agreed!

Right. Back to books...

>277 tangledthread: Thanks for the reminder about Arc of Justice; I'll see if I can get to it later this year.

*raises champagne glass to toast a great reading year in 2012*

>278 Smiler69: Hi, Ilana. I'm sorry that you won't get to read 1Q84 in January, but I hope that you're able to read it soon. I'll probably start reading it on New Year's Day.

I may decide to read Nothing to Envy this month, although I would probably have to drop one of my other books, probably Haiti After the Earthquake, to fit it in. I definitely want to read a book about medicine in January for the Medicine group, so I'll probably wait to read Nothing to Envy until February or March.

I hope to get to Turn of Mind next month, although it's a bit lower on my priority list than most of the other books I'm planning to read in January. Hopefully it will be longlisted for the 2012 Orange Prize, so that I can get a jump on those longlisted books.

>279 msf59: Oh, I'm very sorry to hear that about "Between the Lines"; thanks for letting me know, Mark. WABE, which produces the show, is my local NPR station, and I have been a long time contributor to the station. I'll be sure to listen this weekend, to make sure that I hear the final episodes of the show.

>280 EBT1002: I look forward to your comments about Nothing to Envy, Ellen. I assume that January will be a busy month for us, and we've been considerably busier than we normally are at this time of the year, so I might have a hard time finishing all of the books I'm planning to read next month. I will be off for nine of the last 10 days of January and the first three days of February, so I might be able to read it early in February.

281: I sometimes wonder how you can do your job and also outpace nearly all of us on LT. And then I wonder whether you need extra LT time to recover...
Seriously, if I'd had an experience like that, I'd be agitating over it for months afterward, whereas you have until, what, Monday?

Amazing. Great story. Congratulations, and thanks for telling us.

Great job! It's not everyday that someone has such a great story to tell, you should be proud! :)

I read Nothing to Envy exactly a year ago Darryl and it is a book that has really stayed with me. Recent events brought it back to the forefront and I was surprised how clearly I remembered the events that the book brought to light.

It's hard for me to imagine how you deal with the really difficult cases that come up in your ER. They are very fortunate to have you.

Thanks everybody. I started not to mention this case, but it's still haunting me, even though it turned out well. I told the ER doctor about it earlier today, and he was shaken by what had happened.

I sometimes wonder how you can do your job and also outpace nearly all of us on LT. And then I wonder whether you need extra LT time to recover...

Fortunately I work part time (80% of full time), and I end up working about 15 days (shifts) a month. This allows me time to decompress and catch my breath...and read! It's probably very obvious that reading is my main form of relaxation, but I'm far from alone. Several of the doctors who work at my hospital or went to medical school or residency with me are also avid readers; many others don't read as much as they would like, particularly those who are married and have small children. The docs in my group frequently talk about books, and what we're reading. Several of my partners read Wolf Hall after I recommended it so highly, and practically everyone has read Cutting for Stone, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, and Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science, Atul Gawande's first book.

I had started to mention at lunch on Monday that doctors in training are expected to read for several hours every day, to keep abreast of the medical literature (as best that one can), and to learn more about the patients that they encounter on the wards or in the clinics. That continues once we go into practice, and I suspect that medicine tends to attract people who enjoy reading.

Seriously, if I'd had an experience like that, I'd be agitating over it for months afterward, whereas you have until, what, Monday?

I'm certain that I won't ever forget this case. However, the cases that stay with us and affect us the most are the ones who have bad outcomes, particularly those who suffer from mistakes that we have made, or those who died tragically despite our best efforts. By Monday I'll be far more focused on the patients I admitted to the hospital this afternoon, particularly one incredibly cute toddler who has a complicated pneumonia that may require surgery to drain pus out of her chest (pleural space) over the weekend, who will certainly still be in the hospital on Monday.

I had hoped to get some reading done tonight, but I think I'll turn in soon, and start fresh in the morning.

Darryl, first of all, congratulations. You have every right to be happy about saving a life and sharing it with us. And even if you were to pat yourself on the back, I doubt anyone would hold it against you.

It's weird how I can read about the most disgusting forms of violence in fiction, but details about medical conditions in books or in RL really make me incredibly squeamish. I loved Cutting for Stone, but had trouble with that aspect of the book. Needless to say, even if I had been smart enough to be a doctor, I'd have been a very poor one if I lost my lunch every time I had to look at a patient with a serious condition! It's a good thing there are competent doctors like you out there who genuinely care for their patients.

Darryl, Just pat yourself on the back, my friend. It's not nearly the same, but I'm in a helping profession and most of the time, we don't really know whether we're making a difference. Clearly, you did. You made a difference. And I know the shaken feeling of afterward. You did the best you could, you stood your ground, and you trusted your instincts. Thank goodness it turned out well. You deserve to just feel good, to know that your training and your compassion made a difference. This will, indeed, be one of the ones you remember for life.

Happy New Year to you, Darryl. You deserve just a little bit of optimism.

Darryl, what a great way to end your year at work. Thanks for sharing the story with us. I hope the toddler with pneumonia gets better over the weekend. Happy new year!

I went a wee bit crazy last night before I went to bed, as I ordered several books from Alibris that were on my year end wish list:

There but for the by Ali Smith (Strand's online bookstore was out of stock)
I Am a Cat by Natsume Soseki (ditto)
The Samurai by Shusaku Endo
Scandal by Shusaku Endo
Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima
Coin Locker Babies by Ryu Murakami

I also succumbed to the irresistible temptation of the forthcoming New York Review Books offerings, and joined the NYRB Book Club. I'll receive one new NYRB Classic every month for 12 months, starting with Walkabout by James Vance Marshall in January. I won't renew my Archipelago subscription next year, as its forthcoming titles were nowhere near as appealing to me.

Okay, that's it. I'm done buying books for the year. No, really.

Darryl - thank you so much for sharing your story with us about the little boy and his intestinal problems. Puts my couple of days moping around with bronchitis and asthma into humble perspective. You may not want to pat yourself on the back but I am sure that all of us regulars to your thread would gladly do so if we were able to get to Atlanta.
You dear sir have given a happy new year to a small boy and his grateful parents and I for one am proud that you are one of us!

btw Anymore Japanese novels and we'll have to make the next LT meet up on neutral ground - in Tokyo!

Darryl, that's a great story about the baby and you absolutely deserve back-patting! This may be a dumb question, but did you perform the surgery itself or do cases get referred to surgeons based on your diagnosis?

>290 Smiler69: It's weird how I can read about the most disgusting forms of violence in fiction, but details about medical conditions in books or in RL really make me incredibly squeamish.

I'm just the opposite. I have a difficult time reading about violent actions in fiction, particularly against women and children, whereas I enjoy nearly all descriptions about medical procedures and conditions in fiction.

>291 EBT1002: I'm in a helping profession and most of the time, we don't really know whether we're making a difference.

Exactly. The parents are grateful when we cure their children of the illness that landed them in the hospital, but the vast majority of the patients already have a diagnosis by the time we see them (e.g., pneumonia, urinary tract infection, RSV bronchiolitis, asthma exacerbation, etc.), and treating them isn't hard for us. We just help the kids get better; their bodies and immune systems do most of the work in exacting a cure.

>292 cushlareads: I just checked on the toddler with the severe pneumonia, using our electronic medical record. She seems to have done better overnight, and I'm amazed that she has not required supplemental oxygen, considering that she has a white out of her left lung:



Obviously that isn't my patient's CXR (chest X-ray), as toddlers don't have breast shadows, but it's very similar in appearance to hers.

>294 PaulCranswick: Konnichiwa, Paul-san. 2012 will be tilted toward Japanese literature for those of us who are participating in lilisin's Author Theme Reads challenge. I'm planning to read at least six novels by Shusaku Endo, and at least three by Natsume Soseki, Kobo Abe, Ryu Murakami and Yukio Mishima. I'll probably also read The Changeling by Kenzaburo Oe, and I'll start 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami tomorrow, after I finish Volcano by Shusaku Endo.

>295 lauralkeet: That isn't a dumb question, Laura. I don't have privileges to take a patient to the OR, although I am permitted to do limited bedside surgical procedures, such as I&D (incision and drainage) of an abscess or repair of a laceration by suturing. Once I knew that the baby had intussusception and that an air contrast enema was unsuccessful in reducing it, I consulted the general surgeon on call, who took the baby to the OR soon afterward.

#284, I too read Arc of Justice some years ago (pre-LT) and found it very interesting.

Nothing to Envy is a quick read. I pulled it off the shelf for my sweetie after Kim Jong Il died, and he is zipping through it (and he is a slow reader, usually).

#293 I'm done buying books for the year. No, really. I'll be watching you! Oh, and by "the year," which you so cleverly wrote while it's still 2011, have you given yourself a (sneaky) out for 2012??????

All kidding aside, I only share the admiration of everyone else for the job you do. I cannot imagine how difficult it must be to be treating often extremely sick children all the time. Thanks goodness that with your training and experience you are able to help so many of them.

>297 rebeccanyc: Oh, and by "the year," which you so cleverly wrote while it's still 2011, have you given yourself a (sneaky) out for 2012??????

LOL! No, that goal and intention still stands. You could, however, make the case that my decision to join the NYRB Book Club before the end of the year was a bit sneaky, as I'll receive the forthcoming NYRB classics in 2012 that I found enticing, without having to pay for them next year.

I probably won't create my 2012 75 Books thread until tomorrow. I do want to set it up with multiple tickers or counters, to register the number of books I've read, the number of books I've read from my TBR pile (books I've owned for at least six months, using avaland's definition), and the number of books I've purchased in 2012.

#281 - Darryl - What a wonderful story. You're a champion! However, shame on you for mentioning the NYRB Book Club. Now I'm sort of considering it, but we'll see.

>296 kidzdoc:: thanks Darryl! I know next-to-nothing about how hospitals work and it's very interesting to learn from you.

For all of those eager to read Nothing to Envy you might also like Sky Train: Tibetan Women on the Edge of History. I read them within a few weeks of each other and found them both to be very interesting and informative about cultures and political situations foreign to me.

I didn't make it to 75 this year...but I didn't count books that weren't pleasure reading. Perhaps next year........

Happy New Year..

301: I didn't count books that weren't pleasure reading.
You should count unpleasure reading double.

I started the 2012 Read More Buy Less Challenge thread, Darryl ... It can be found here

I'm on the last day to buy books as well before the official start date for the challenge on Sunday. Must fly.. Book Depository and Amazon call...and I might squeeze in a visit to B&N later this afternoon too.... as a pep up visit for the recovering hubster of course. ;-)

Cripes, I have this entire thread to catch up with! Maybe I'll just wish you a happy new year, Darryl, and say I'll see you in 2012. Best of intentions and never enough time. xo

Darryl, I want to wish you a very Happy New Year with plenty of engaging projects, wonderful books (that's a given), exciting trips, many more successes at work and a generally good time! I'll be seeing you in our new group!

I'm not sure I should thank you for mentioning the NYRB Book Club, because now I'm seriously considering it. Especially since they're starting out with Walkabout by James Vance Marshall, which really tempts me, even though I haven't read A High Wind in Jamaica yet, though I intend to ASAP. When you posted the link to their upcoming publications, there were quite a lot that appealed to me too. Great idea to install a ticker for books purchased, I might take it up too. I totally cheated with my definition of "books off the shelf" by choosing 31/12/2011 as my cutoff date! lol, certainly sets me up for plenty of last minute shopping!

Just stopping by to wish you a Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, Darryl!

Happy New Year , Darryl. That was a wonderful story to finish the year on.
I've so enjoyed visiting your thread over the year and look forward to seeing you over in the 2012 group. I have an old paperback copy of Walkabout so I'll dig it out and try to read it in January. It's included in 1001 children's books you must read before you grow up.

>299 DorsVenabili: shame on you for mentioning the NYRB Book Club. Now I'm sort of considering it, but we'll see.

But but but...I just wanted to make you aware of it, my dear! ;-)

>300 lauralkeet: You're welcome, Laura. I'd be happy to answer any questions about hospitals that I can. Needless to say, my knowledge is mainly limited to children's hospitals, but I've have two brief hospital stays since I moved to Atlanta (for appendicitis and for idiopathic atrial fibrillation, a heart rhythm abnormality that was self limited due to an unknown cause, probably an antecedent viral infection), and I've spent a few nights with my mother's oldest sister at Sloan-Kettering Memorial Cancer Center in NYC, and those two hospitals shared mainly similarities with the one I work at.

I could post a link to a parent information sheet about hospitalists that the American Academy of Pediatrics or the Society of Hospital Medicine makes available, as many people have no idea what a hospitalist does. I'll do that on my new 2012 thread.

>301 tangledthread: Thanks for your recommendation of Sky Train: Tibetan Women on the Edge of History, tangledthread. I'll keep this book in mind once the Reading Globally group focuses on China and neighboring countries in 2012.

>302 qebo: I didn't count books that weren't pleasure reading.
You should count unpleasure reading double.

LOL! I agree.

>303 cameling: Thanks for letting me know, Caroline! I'll be eager to see what you purchase before the midnight deadline—and, how long it takes before the first participant in your challenge breaks down and buys a book in 2012. I can probably hold out until the Orange Prize longlist is announced, presumably in March.

>304 tiffin: Happy New Year, Tui!

>305 Smiler69: Happy New Year, Ilana! I'm glad that I've made your acquaintance this year, and I look forward to a great reading year in 2012 (although I don't know that I'll read as many books).

Uh oh, I'm in trouble with you, too? I was severely tempted when I saw that list of forthcoming NYRB Classics, and I knew that I would end up buying nearly all of them next year. So, I suppose I cheated a bit in buying a 12-month subscription early this morning, as I'll receive 12 NYRBs in 2012 without spending any money for them after New Year's Day.

>306 weejane: Happy New Year, Brit!

>307 DorsVenabili: Happy New Year to you too, Kerri!

>308 avatiakh: A belated Happy New Year to you, Kerry! It's early afternoon in New Zealand, right? I'll eagerly follow your thread in 2012, of course. I should receive Walkabout around January 11, and I'll probably bring it with me when I visit my best friends in Wisconsin at the end of the month, as my best friend's wife and daughter would probably like to read it.



This thread is officially closed. Please visit my new 2012 75 Books club thread here! Happy New Year everyone!

302...now there's a thought!