Tom Kitten Begins His Sophomore Year - (Not Just A Scratch In the Pan)

Best of 2011
Fiction
Kate Atkinson. When Will There Be Good News?
Carol Birch, Jamrach's Menagerie
Peter Carey, Parrot & Olivier in America
Joyce Dennys, Henrietta's War and Henrietta Sees It Through
Emma Donoghue, Room
David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
Charles Portis, True Grit

Non-Fiction
Franklin Toker, Fallingwater Rising
Alison Weir, The Life of Elizabeth I
David Yeadon, Seasons on Harris

Plays
Kevin Rice, Hopper's Ghosts
Brenda Withers, The Ding Dongs or What's the Penalty in Portugal?

Poetry
Carol Ann Duffy, Rapture

Children's
Chizuko Kuratomi, Mr. Bear and the Robbers

Currently Reading
Stephen Brook, ed. The Oxford Book of Dreams
Kate Christensen, The Great Man

On Deck
Kevin Crossley-Holland, At the Crossing Places
plus at least 75 others in the ever-expanding universe of TBR's

January Reading
1. David Snodin, Iago: A Novel - Early Reviewer
2. Sophie Blackall, Missed Connections: Love, Lost and Found
3. Michael Ondaatje, The Cat's Table
4. Richard Zacks, The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd
5. Rose Tremain, The Road Home
6. Ira Wood, You're Married to Her?
7. Hilary Mantel, The Giant O'Brien

February Reading
8. Tana French, In the Woods
9. Claire Tomalin, Charles Dickens
10. unnamed play in manuscript, author's name withheld to protect the guilty

March
11. Julian Barnes, Talking It Over
12. Patrick DeWitt, The Sisters Brothers
13. John Grisham, Calico Joe
14. Donna Leon, Suffer the Little Children
15. Chris Ewan, The Good Thief's Guide to Paris
16. Alberto Angela, A Day In The Life of Ancient Rome
17. Kathryn Harrison, Enchantments: A Novel
18. Alan Bradley The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

April
19. Nicole Galland, I, Iago
20. Julian Barnes, The Porcupine
21. Julian Barnes, Love, etc.
22. Julian Barnes, Arthur and George
23. Helen Humphreys, The Reinvention of Love
24. Paula Vogel, A Civil War Christmas

May
25. Edward Ardizzone, Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain
26. Julian Barnes, The Sense of An Ending
27. Linda McCartney, Linda McCartney's Sixties
28. Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb
29. Tana French, Faithful Place
30. Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Volume One
31. Percy Charles Birtchnell, Bygone Berkhamsted
32. David Dalton, Who Is That Man?: In Search of the Real Bob Dylan

June
33. Jeffrey S. Croushore, Idlewild
34. Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies
35. Geoff Rodkey, Deadweather and Sunrise: The Chronicles of Egg, Book 1
36. Michael Frayn, Skios

July
37. Bob Edwards, Fridays With Red

August
38. A.S. Byatt, The Children's Book
39. Tana French, The Likeness
40. Amor Towles, Rules of Civility
41. David Yeadon, At the Edge of Ireland

September
42. Nevada Barr, The High Country
43. Vanessa Diffenbaugh, The Language of Flowers
44. Emma Thompson, The Further Tale of Peter Rabbit
45. Joseph O'Connor Redemption Falls Audio
46. Timothy L. O'Brien, The Lincoln Conspiracy

October
47. Eve Bunting, Scary, Scary Halloween
48. Julia Donaldson, Room On the Broom
49. Kathy Hoopman, All Cats Have Asperger Syndrome
50. Peggy Rathmann, Good Night, Gorilla
51. Susan Casey, The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks and Giants of the Ocean
52. Edward Ardizzone, Sketches for Friends
53. Kate Williams, The Pleasures of Men
54. Elizabeth Benedict, The Joy of Writing Sex
55. Roger Moore, Bond on Bond
56. Peter Carey, His Illegal Self
57. Arthur Mason, The Wee Men of Ballywooden
58. Jean-Claude Carriere, The Mahabharata: A Play
59. Russell Potter, Pyg: The Memoirs of Toby, The Learned Pig

Glad to see you back with us again, Stephen!

Happy New Year, you funny person! "scratch in the pan" *big grin*

Forgive me for not catching up... I am just trying to stake a place :)

Welcome back!

> 2. Thanks, Stasia, and a belated congratulations on your funding. That's exciting news! Tell me how to find your 2012 thread.

Hi Stephen!

Happy New Year, Stephen!

I do not have a thread yet. I will probably wait until I actually have something to say before I start one :)

Thanks to all who stopped by and a very Happy New Year! Kathleen, I really appreciate the sparkly cat!

I hereby award you the Best Subject Award for the scratch in the pan bit! Happy New Year!

Hello there! I really enjoyed reading your threads in the 2011 75 group. Happy New Year!

Sandy K

Hello and Happy New Year!

Ditto!

Happy New Year and welcome back Stephen.

:) I thought you might! :)

1. David Snodin, Iago: A Novel - Early Reviewer

Demand me nothing. What you know, you know.
From this time forth I never will speak word."
Iago, from Othello, Act V, Scene 2

Not content to let Iago continue down through the ages in silence, David Snodin has decided to bring the old villain to justice with this richly imagined, if very flawed, exercise in what-happened-next.
Now, I'm certainly not opposed to a writer riffing on another writer's work. Shakespeare himself borrowed liberally from a multitude of sources. In fact, I've recently enjoyed two other books that used a great work of literature as a jumping off place - Jon Clinch's Finn, which takes inspiration from Twain's masterpiece and Louis Bayard's Mr. Timothy from A Christmas Carol. Finn borrows characters from the old work and then takes them back in time in an attempt to explain how they became the people we encounter in the original. Mr. Timothy, on the other hand, takes us forward in time to tell us what happened to the familiar characters after the events of the parent book. In Iago, David Snodin tries to do a bit of both. The events of the novel take us forward in time from Shakespeare's play, yet Snodin also wants to give us Iago's back story, in an attempt to explain why he left a trail of corpses in Cyprus. We certainly have to give Snodin an A for ambition, but I'm afraid that, unlike his protagonist, he falls short of the mark in execution.
Snodin concocts a plot that involves a young Venetian nobleman, a stereotype of a love interest and a wily inquisitor, nicknamed Il Terrible, saddles them with more improbable plot twists, chance encounters and loose ends than even old Bill could imagine and still never manages to give us an Iago that makes much sense or is even consistent with Shakespeare's. Most surprisingly, given contemporary views about Othello, race hardly figures in the story at all.
So, why two and half stars? Well, despite all that, the story is actually kind of fun. Pages turned and I was reasonably entertained. One almost wishes that Snodin, having hit on an idea for a story, could have seen his way clear to abandoning Iago altogether and substituted a villain of his own devising, thus shedding the weight of comparison. I think he would have found an altogether more favorable reception.
One final note: I do hope this goes through another round of proof reading before publication. I can't remember when I've encountered an ARC more in need of it. Shocking, really.

It's good to get that first one out of the way, isn't it ?

It is indeed, and now I have a second one to add.

2. Sophie Blackall, Missed Connections: Love, Lost and Found

In response to a suggestion on McKait's thread, here's a link to a film of Les Paul and Mary Ford doing How High the Moon, the song that was number 1 the week that I was born.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0ffdwBUL78

I love that version of How High the Moon. I'd never seen that clip--I've only heard the recording of the song.

Sandy K

Nor had I. So many wonderful music clips on YouTube!

#3. Michael Ondaatje, The Cat's Table

"That was a small lesson I learned on the journey. What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power. Nothing much of lasting value ever happens at the head table, held together by a familiar rhetoric. Those who already have power continue to glide along the familiar rut they have made for themselves." p. 75, Michael Ondaatje, The Cat's Table

On board a ship, the Cat's Table, we are told, is at the opposite end of the social scale from the Captain's table, though such an exalted name would seem to suggest otherwise, at least in this humble feline's opinion. Michael, an eleven year old boy, is assigned a place at the cat's table when he journeys from his native Ceylon to begin school in England, some time in the early 1950's. As the above quote makes clear, he soon realizes that, despite it's lowly status, the Cat's table is where all the really fun people dine every night with him. He becomes friends with two other boys, roughly his own age, and the three of them vow to do one forbidden thing every day for the entire six weeks it takes to reach England. Innocent pranks often lead to disastrous consequences and, by the end of the novel, we know that Michael's life has been permanently altered by the people he's come to know and by the events that have taken place on board the Oronsay.

I love Michael Ondaatje's writing. I always begin his books knowing I'm in good, trustworthy, experienced hands, though I often have no idea where he'll be taking me. But, to quote Leonard Woolf, it's the journey not the arrival that matters, and never more so than in this superb coming of age story that has the ring of truth filtered through fiction. This will surely lead my best of the year for 2012.

I liked that one a lot. I have never read anything of his before, but I will keep him in mind
for future reads..

I must get hold of a copy of The Cat's Table - I've enjoyed his other works that I've read so far, and even people who have not enjoyed others seem to give this one the thumbs up. It does sound good...

#23. Kath, I think my favorite Ondaatje, but only by a cat's whisker, would have to be In The Skin Of A Lion. His poetry is quite wonderful, too.

#24. Thanks for stopping by, Genny. Always hard to say what one individual's reaction will be but if you're already a fan, I think you'll at least find this engaging.

#4. Richard Zacks, The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Capain Kidd

"All captains should beware of false promises by greedy men." - William Kidd, from the gallows

Lively, fact packed biography that puts a broadside into the lies, myths and legends about a man more sinned against than sinner. Zacks makes a strong case for the upright family man, with perhaps a bit too much pride than was good for him, who was set up and then knocked down by extremely greedy men in very lofty positions. A cracking good read.

AND the last book in a TBR pile begun a year and a half ago, so a sort of milestone, too. Now on to the pile I've been accumulating since then, which now numbers around 80 titles. An embarrassment of riches indeed.

I am embarrased to say that I have around 80 titles in e-book form alone.. and more on paper *blush*

#22 I keep seeing The Cat's Table mentioned on the threads - guess I'll have to wishlist it!

# 27 And that's one of the main reasons I've resisted an e-reader, Kath, though, come to think of it I do have an additional 8 books on my phone plus the complete Color Fairy Books of Andrew Lang. So perhaps I should adopt a late resolution - to never have more TBRs than I can read in a year.
Naaaah, silly idea, really.

#28 Heather, it's been a week now since I finished The Cat's Table and I can now report that this is one of those books that stays with you and you're glad to welcome it in.

Silly idea indeed. The thing is, many of my ereader books are either free or V inexpensive books.
Not the greatest reads, but good for those times when you just want a thriller or a fluffer and so on. I have only recently purchased good books recently.. as I am still suffering from not wanting to pay for non existent books..

I too, began with an app on iPod touch.. but now with an iPad... I dunno.. I have lost my mind. Still.
I am very pleased to have an ereader. Two actually since I have a nook and I use it to borrow books from the libraries, as well as to get inexpensive reads. I cannot however, say that I regret it. If I had a do-over
I might have skpped the nook and gone straight for the iPad.. but I didn't want the first generation. Then once I had it, I was in less of a hurry for the iPad, as I have a nook color.. but the iPad was a very a gift ....I will admit this only to you.. I almost wish he hadn't done it. as much as I love it, and wanted it.. maybe the guilt is spoiling it for me? Terrible person that I am.. that is sort of how I feel.
I guess what I am trying to say is, I thought I was a die hard paper only reader.. but, reading on an ereader.. bigger than the iPod Touch.. is a different and pleasant experience.

oh.. and I agree with you about Cat's Table.. It really was that good.

5. Rose Tremain, The Road Home

Knowing that others were/are reading Orange Prize winners this month, I decided to look through the TBRs and see what I had that might qualify. And there it was, in one of the boxes under the bed, the Orange prize winner for 2008, purchased at a library sale last year, in pristine condition with a shiny dust jacket, just waiting for me to have at it. On such whims are great reading experiences built.

For Lev, life in his small village in Eastern Europe has reached an end. Cancer has taken his wife and the love of his life, Marina, at the age of thirty-six. The sawmill where he worked has closed because there are no more trees in the area. In order to provide some future for his young daughter, Maya, he boards a bus for the UK with little more than a work visa and a beginner's grasp of English. On the bus he meets Lydia, also from his country, also traveling to the UK to take a job as a translator for a renowned conductor. Arriving in London, Lev soon realizes that the money he thought would keep him for weeks is barely enough for a few days.
With Lydia's help he finds dishwashing work in an upscale restaurant run by a Gordon Ramsay-like chef. Lydia also helps him locate a room in a flat owned by an alcoholic Irish plumber named Christy, whose wife and child have recently left him. Lydia's willingness to help Lev is not completely selfless. She's desperately lonely and believes she's fallen in love with him. But Lev can't respond in kind, in fact, feels himself incapable of loving anyone other than the memory of Marina. That changes when he meets the red haired prep-cook, Sophie. Suddenly life feels good again, for Sophie, it seems, is attracted to him as well. He's promoted to chopping vegetables, is able to start sending money home to his mother and Christmas presents to Maya and he's starting to help Christy get back on his feet. And then in the space of a day that begins with an opening night at the Royal Court and ends with the loss of his job at the restaurant it all falls apart. He leaves London, takes a job picking asparagus and settles into the life of a migrant worker in Suffolk. And then one night he has a vision of The Great Idea, a vision that will take him back to London and lead him to The Road Home.

I read Rose Tremain's Restoration years ago and enjoyed it immensely and now I see that I've really missed something by not keeping up with her. I don't know what else was nominated the year this won but it's hard for me to imagine a book more worthy of awards and honors. It is simply suberb, a rare combination of masterful storytelling and a big old beating heart that had me rooting like a cheerleader for Lev. I flat out loved it.

So that's two brilliant books in one month! At least the reading part of 2012 is off to a great start.

A thumb for your *Road* review, Stephen. I do so love it when somebody else also loves one of my favorites. Tremain is another of those wonderful writers who hasn't written the same book twice.

I loved The Road Home too - and everything else of Tremain's I've read so far. As well as the masterful storytelling and the heart, there were those unexpected flashes of humour too - I particularly remember being highly amused by something to do with the menus at the old folk's home, though I can't remember the details...

I'm going to have to check out The Road Home based on your review.

I dropped by because I love your name. I loved Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost which I read last year. I liked Cat's Table, but it didn't wow me like ghost. I have not read In the skin of a lion yet, but it's on my list, and I need to check out his poetry again. I think I read some years ago and was intrigued.

Thumbing ! Sounds like a good one..

> 32: I'm so glad you love this, too. Peggy, and thanks for the thumb. (I must investigate this thumbing business as it's new to me.) What's making me particularly happy today is that I still have another Rose Tremain book (Music and Silence) that came from that same library sale, plus a copy of her latest, Trespass that I bought when it first came out.
> 33: You're absolutely right, Genny. She has a wonderful sense of humor, much of which comes out in Sophie and Lev's visits to the nursing home, though the pretentious conversation at the Royal Court opening is also pretty painfully hilarious as well as pitch perfect.
> 34: Hi Ardene! Thanks for dropping by. I'm glad you like the name. Good to meet another Ondaatje fan, too. I think you'll enjoy In The Skin of A Lion, which shares one character with The English Patient.
> 35: Thanks, Kath. It is indeed.

Here I am again with regrets for not having read any Ondaatje - not even *English Patient* - and with an unsolicited comment that Music & Silence is my 2nd favorite Tremain so far. I was disappointed in Trespass although I might not have been if somebody besides RT had written it.

I haven't read Ondaatje yet either, and must remedy that. I have been less enthusiastic about Rose Tremain than I would like, given how many readers I trust think she's wonderful. I didn't care for Trespass. The Road Home definitely had its moments, but I found it a bit intentionally literary---too much authorial presence. I do intend to read more of her, though.

I liked "Music and Silence" better than "The Road Home", so happy reading! Must hunt down "The Cat's Table".

# 6. Ira Wood, You're Married to Her? ARC

#7. Hilary Mantel, The Giant, O'Brien

The first Mantel I've read other than Wolf Hall. In the late 18th century an Irish giant travels with his "agent" and a gang of hangers-on to London. They plan to make their fortunes exhibiting this wonder of nature to a public eager for novelty and quick to abandon yesterday's entertainment. They do manage to attract the attention of paying customers, including the anatomist, John Hunter, who views most living creatures as eventual subjects for his dissecting table. The more unusual ones he covets for his collection. It's a bleak and a brutal story and we know at the start that it will not end well but Mantel is such an assured and poetic storyteller that we are willingly drawn into this world of poverty, hopelessness and sorrow. She alleviates the gloom with a very dark and very Irish gallows humor - a Martin McDonagh character would feel right at home in this world - and by making the Giant a scholar and a gifted storyteller, though the stories he tells are as rife with violence and despair as his own. Mantel writes historical fiction, untainted by nostalgia or a longing for the mythical "good old days." There is an unflinching honesty in her refusal to turn away from who we were and who we still are that makes the novels feel far more true than most non-fiction. Merle Rubin got it just right in the Newsday review quoted on the back cover: "A somber, powerful, often heart-wrenching novel."

Not up for gloom right now.. but it does sound interesting :)

43 Ditto what Kath said. Good review! It just may nudge me to put The Giant, O'Brien on my list for future reading. (That list just keeps growing, no matter how much I keep reading . . .)

> 42, 43. Hi Kath and Terri!
Thanks for stopping by. I picked up about half a dozen Hilary Mantel titles last year, most of them from library sales and I hope to get to all of them before the end of this year. I really loved Wolf Hall and others have said that A Place of Greater Safety is equally brilliant. Maybe at year end I'll do a kind of round up.

I just wanted to take this opportunity to enthusiastically recommend the film Hugo. It's a remarkable love letter to cinema, literature and art in general. This is the time of year when I often get to catch up on films and this has been my clear favorite in a season that, I feel, has been unusually strong. Don't miss the chance to see it in a theatre. I'm told it's spectacular in 3D but I'm here to say it's pretty darned wonderful in 2D, too. I just might go again while it's still in town.

Oh, I've been wanting to see that, TK. Thanks for the nudge.

Nostalgia is a clear theme this year in movies, isn't it? I just watched Midnight in Paris, the Woody Allen film, and loved it. And a friend just urged me to see the new silent movie, The Artist. Plus I want to go see the remake of Tinker, Tailor and the US version of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Well, now I know what to do on my birthday!!

I'm an enthusiastic table-thumper for The Cat's Table, which was definitely one of my faves for last year. Superb. I read another Ondaatje a while ago that I found disappointing, but have blanked out the title. And I need to try Rose Tremain again. I had to review Music and Silence, which kinda underwhelmed me, and I never really got back into reading her novels.

> 46. You're very welcome, Tui. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
> 47. Hi Suzanne! I haven't seen Midnight in Paris yet but so many friends have recommended it that I'm sure I'm going to enjoy it. The Artist is really wonderful. What about a double bill of The Artist and Hugo for your birthday? Throw in a few books on the side and that sounds like a real celebration to me.
I'm glad you liked The Cat's Table, too. I do hope you get back to Rose Tremain. She's definitely worth a second try.

#31 Great review Stephen. That was one I had on my list but didn't get to this month.

#45 Seconded, I thought Hugo was wonderful. Have you read the book (Hugo Cabret)? I'm hoping to see The Artist soon too.

> 49. Hi Heather. I'm glad you liked both the review and Hugo. I confess that, though I've sold any number of copies of The Invention of Hugo Cabret and have glanced inside more than once, I've not yet read it in its entirety. I'm about to remedy that situation.

I am not much of a movie goer... I am hoping to see Woman in Black..
but the rest.. I think waiting till I can stream them to tv will do it for me..

Also taking inspiration from Jeremy

JANUARY 2O12 READING
Total of 7 Books finished
And one in process (Middlemarch), which I'll count as number 8 because it makes the percentages that much easier to do

Books by male authors read: 4 (50%)
Books by female authors read: 4 (50%)

Books by dead authors: 1 (12.5%)
Book by living authors: 7 (87.5%)

Publication Years
2012 - 2 (25%)
2011 - 2 (25%)
2007 - 1 (12.5%)
2003 - 1 (12.5%)
1998 - 1 (12.5%)
1872 - 1 (12.5%)

Medium
Hardcover: 4 (50%)
Paper: 2 (25%)
ARC: 2 (25%)

Source
My Library: 6 (75%)
Place of Employment: 1 (12.5%)
Loan: 1 (12.5%)

Original Source
Library Book Sales: 3 (37.5%)
LTER: 1 (12.5%)
Gift from Mrs. K: 1 (12.5%)
Publisher: 2 - (25%)
Purchased online, used: 1 (12.5%)

Rereads: 0 (0%)
Books I'd gladly reread someday, had I but world enough and time: 2 (25%)

Hi, thanks for visiting my thread, you've certainly had some excellent reads so far and thank you for the thumbs up on the movie Hugo, I love the book and it is definitely in the pipeline for me to see the film.

It's Charles Dickens' 200th birthday today and I'm happy to have started the day continuing my reading of Claire Tomalin's biography. I was also very moved by dovegreyreader's post in her blog, dovegreyreader scribbles, this morning. Of all the many things that land in my inbox every morning, the link to her blog is not only the best of the bunch, it's often the only one that I actually bother to open and read from beginning to end. Today's post is everything that I love about her writing, a wonderful combination of heart and head and humor, the personal and the universal, and the "circularity of reading." So thanks to Charles and to Lynne for so much great reading. Here's a link to dovegreyreader:

http://dovegreyreader.typepad.com/dovegreyreader_scribbles/

#8 Tana French, In the Woods

Well, things have certainly slowed down this month as writing projects have edged out reading projects.
Started Anne Enright's The Gathering but it just wasn't working for me for some reason. Maybe it was all the playing around with this happened and this happened but, actually, no it didn't. Sorry. Or maybe I'm not. But I did manage to get this one in. I started listening to it in the car, actually, on a too short trip, then came home and got the print edition out of the library and finished it at home. A very smart, very engaging mystery set in Dublin and environs. The dialogue rings true even if the motives and characters are often less convincing. A good, solid three stars.

Oh good! I like Tana french :)

I've had In the Woods for a lwhile, and there have been so many conflicting reviews of it that I haven't been able to decide whether to read it.

57 Hi Linda,
I'd say give it a try. The first fifty pages or so will tell you pretty much all you need to know. It's a good, solid meal of a book with a few interesting flavors of it's own.

I think I'm going to do a Mystery March again this year, so I'll put it on the stack.

TK my apologies -- I somehow lost you..... or maybe you didn't start yr. thread until fairly recently????? I've wishlisted the Ondaatje -- I wonder if a little bite of it wasn't in the NYer or someplace -- the premise sounds so familiar. I've read all three Tana French's - in some ways I liked the third one best.

Hi, Mr. K. Just speaking since I haven't done so on this thread. Oh - I see that you only just started this thread. I can't tell you how happy that makes me!

> 60, 61 Well, er, actually, I've been here since the first of the year, just, you know, doing my thing. Napping, washing, napping, getting up to eat, watching the Daily Show and the Colbert Report then napping some more.

Lucy, I do hope you get around to reading The Cat's Table. It's a worthy addition to his works. In fact, I'm pretty sure you introduced me to Ondaatje, when Mrs. K and I visited you in VT waaaaay back when. You had just read one of the early ones - The Collected Works of Billy the Kid? Coming Through Slaughter? Both? - and were quite enthusiastic about the writing. I ordered him for the store that year and have been reading him, with great pleasure, ever since. As to Tana French, I had a note from my cousin this week with exactly the opposite response. She was quite keen on the first, less so about the second and gave up on the third. Funny how differently good readers can see the same books.

Peggy, thanks so much for your comment. I've really been enjoying your Daily Dickens. It's been a wonderful compliment to my slow but steady read of the Claire Tomalin biography, which I'm just loving. Between the two of you, you make me want to cast aside all the TBRs spilling off the nightstand and overflowing the boxes under the bed and just spend the rest of the year reading CD.

#9 Claire Tomalin, Charles Dickens: A Life

Of the 2011 Autumn releases, this was the other book I was most eager to read, along with The Cat's Table. I'm a great admirer of both the subject and the author and I was curious to see what Claire Tomalin would bring to a life of Dickens, in that she covered some of this territory quite thoroughly in The Invisible Woman, her 1990 biography of Nelly Ternan, who, for a dozen years lived a secret life as Dickens' mistress. Having now finished it and having previously read several other biographies of CD, I am of the opinion that Tomalin's is the one that people will be turning to for many years to come. It is an honest, respectful and clear-eyed portrait of a man whose achievements are as undeniable as his failings, by a writer at the top of her game.
In general, I think it's a good thing that biographers no longer feel obliged to overlook feet of clay when examining the lives of the great. We turn to a biography to try to understand how the life influences the art and a biographer who chooses to overlook the less admirable aspects of the subjects character or personal history is only telling us part of the story. As a novelist, Charles Dickens had few peers. As a family man - a son, a husband and a father - he fell far short of greatness. Neither of these things cancels out the other. Despite his failings as a man, he is still a great writer. Despite his achievements as an artist, his is still a tyrant at home. Claire Tomalin writes with affection, humor, appropriate approbation and understanding of all the facets of Dickens' personality and does so in a way that makes us see him for what he was: not an immortal but one of us, a human being, flawed but capable of goodness and even greatness.

I loved Tomalin's bio of Jane - She has a gift, no?

# 10 Unnamed play in manuscript.

Nothing to see here. Move along, move along.

*moving along*

#65 (Days later; same thread) Still nothing? Hmph.

wow, everyone moved along!

Just throwing in my 0.02 to say I'll be reading my first Tana French novel this month.

Was the play good? Or was it so bad that you simply can't read any more?

Maybe TK's litterbox was a portal into an alternate universe?

I know the litterbox here definitely is at times.

LOL!

Been out mousing for the last week or so. Got a lot of reading done while waiting for the little beggars to poke their heads out. I'll be reporting on it all when I've had a chance to digest and rest. Now, what did I do with the ketchup?

>68 Chatterbox: The play wasn't terrible. But it wasn't very good either and I've simply lost patience with playwrights who don't even strive for greatness. They seem to be legion these days. Even the title was dull and witless and, while it would be fun to say something like "and it was all downhill from there," the truth is the title was a perfect weathervane for the stultifying breezeless thing that was the play. But the internet, being what it is, and this having been given to me to read by a friend, who, for some reason, thought very highly of it, I'll just keep it on this year's reading list as "unnamed play."

11. Julian Barnes, Talking It Over
12. Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers
13. John Grisham, Calico Joe
14. Donna Leon, Suffer the Little Children, audio
15. Chris Ewan, The Good Thief's Guide to Paris, audio

What a nice little reading week Mr. and Mrs. Kitten have just had! We've actually been out visiting other members of the Kitten clan, a veritable kindle of Kittens, (in non-digital form, mind you), but there was plenty of time to read, too. On the way to the ancestral Kitten homestead, we listened to Donna Leon's Suffer the Little Children, which we liked well enough. This was my first Leon and I'd like to try reading another. I suspect she may be best experienced on the page. Listening to it, I found myself drifting in and out of the story. Returning home, we were well entertained by the great Simon Vance, reading Chris Ewan's The Good Thief's Guide to Paris. Good fun!

For some reason, I ended up buying a lot of Julian Barnes books at various library sales last year without ever having read anything by him. So it is with no small measure of relief that I'm able to report my first encounter a successful one. Talking It Over is the story of a love triangle, told from the point of view of each of the participants, as well as assorted friends, relatives, landladies and other acquaintances. Parts of it are wonderfully funny and parts unexpectedly melancholy and both the humor and the sadness spring, in large measure, from the utter cluelessness with which all of these people bumble through their lives. I'm very much looking forward to reading more Barnes.

Patrick deWitt's The Sisters Brothers is just out in paperback and, having heard good things about it, I thought I should read a few pages, just to get the flavor of the thing, when it came in to the store recently. Well, that was all it took. The truly remarkable thing about this story of a pair of hired killers operating during the California gold rush is not that it's laugh out loud funny and incredibly violent, often in the same paragraph, but that it's somehow oddly sweet, too. de Witt is definitely working the same claim staked by Charles Portis in True Grit but he ably proves there's more than one book to be mined from that vein.

This is the time of year when I usually begin reading the sports section again, looking to see how favorite Red Sox players are doing in Spring training, maybe planning a trip to Fenway. I say usually because I'm having a little trouble working up the old enthusiasm this year. I'm still royally riled at the Sox owners over their treatment of Manager Terry Francona, who brought not one but two world series trophies back to Boston during his tenure there and then was let go when he failed to secure a 2011 playoff berth by all of one game. Now there's gratitude for you. Grrrrr. So this ambivalence I'm feeling probably makes me an ideal reader for John Grisham's new baseball novel Calico Joe, which will be out in early April, just in time for the start of the season. It's not so much a celebration of the sport as it is a meditation on the precarious nature of life in the big leagues and how a career and a life can hang on one pitch. Or one game, as Tito discovered. It's a short, quick read and if it isn't in the same league as, say The Natural, it's at least a good match for my March malaise.

I was just looking, yesterday, in an agony of indecision at a whole shelf of Julian Barnes. I think I gave up, not sure what to get.

> E just read Sense of An Ending and was quite blown away by that, too. So far he's two for two in our house.

That was the only one they didn't have and the only one on my list..... so I had no idea what to choose of the others.

I recently read the first in Donna Leone's series, and liked it a lot.

I gave one of my lads Sisters Brothers for Christmas and he loved it. Must borrow it!

Try Flaubert's Parrot, Lucy. I haven't read Talking it Over, but may well try it.

I was underwhelmed by The Sense of an Ending because (a) I saw the twist coming from miles away (b) it felt like a better-written version of an over-written trope and (c) it was SO hyped up, with all the Booker hoopla, that it would have had to be, oh, Tolstoy or Flaubert to make me sit up and take notice. That said, I do love Barnes's writing, and normally he can take what appears to be a plot theme that has been done to death and make you feel as if you've never read it before; a bit like an actor whom you see in multiple productions or films, and tend to forget when you see him or her, because they inhabit their roles so thoroughly. I often don't think of Branagh or even Colin Firth as themselves, even though they are so well known, for instance. Tom Cruise? It's impossible to forget it's Tom Cruise acting, as he flashes he eyes around the set.

Oh, another Barnes worth essaying is one of his newer non-fiction books, about death. It's actually quite good; just don't read it if you're feeling even a tad morbid.

Wait, I think I have read Flaubert's Parrot.... Hmmmmm. I'm quite sure I did - and I loved it too, I'm equally sure.

Just back from seeing John Carter, a movie I've been hoping to see for almost fifty years. I didn't much care for the leads but it was great fun to see Barsoom realized so faithfully. And there are some fun supporting performances, most notably Ciaran Hinds and James Purefoy (Caesar and Marc Antony from the HBO Rome series) reunited as Tardos Mors and Kantos Kan. In fact, in certain scenes it looks like they brought their Rome costumes with them. "We'd love to have you do the role and, by the way, you didn't by any chance save your costumes from that series you did a while back, did you?" The Rome reunion also includes Polly Walker (the evil, conniving Atia) who voiced one of the Thark characters (the evil, conniving Sarkoja). If only they could have found someone other than Taylor Kitsch to play John Carter. Here's an idea, why not a proper actor? (One has to assume that both Kevin McKidd and Ray Stevenson were unavailable.) Lynn Collins (Dejah Thoris) certainly has a bit more range (it would be hard to imagine anyone having less than Kitsch) but she just didn't work for me in the role. Still good fun and I do hope they get to do the second book in the series, The Gods of Mars. Perhaps Stevenson or McKidd will be free by then.

Ciaran Hinds... drool...
*wait, does that date me??*

Me confused, Kitteh Man; I thought you not like SF??????

It is true, Lucy, that I'm not at all interested in SF now but back in the day, when I was in my early teens, I just devoured these books, as did my brothers, my father, my aunt and uncle and all my cousins. You could say that the Kittens were raised on this stuff. In fact, The Warlord of Mars, the third book in the series, was the first real book I ever read in one sitting. I also think it's fair to say that the Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars books have about as much in common with real SF as the Hardy Boys do with Ian Rankin or P.D. James. But they're great fun, in this completely ridiculous yet terribly earnest way, that insists you take seriously notions like John Carter being such a manly man because "the fighting blood of old Virginia runs in his veins." I find it interesting that Hollywood is just getting around to making movies of these books, not only because advances in special effects and CGI have finally made it possible to convincingly create the world of Barsoom but because, in a way, the books are just like the blockbuster Hollywood movies that monopolize the multiplexes every summer now. It's taken the movies almost a century to catch up to the kind of non-stop action, idealized romance, outlandish non-human creatures and two-dimensional, humorless characters that Burroughs rendered so thrillingly. Bless his Old Virginia fighting heart.

Oh I don't know about that -- a lot of my favorites aren't so far off from the Burroughs -- sure -- the best ones all have a protagonist who is, well, simply heroic! Try Leigh Brackett's three-parter on Eric John Stark - the first one is The Ginger Star - Sometimes, of course it is a bit disguised, with a lot of flim-flam and sciencey nonsense, but of course, I love that stuff! The best, of course, are examining what it means to be human while also being loads of fun.

Thanks, Lucy, but I still think I'll pass. And that's mostly just because of the time factor. I'm really a pretty slow reader. For me, this 75 Books Challenge thing really is a challenge. I didn't get there last year and it's probable that I won't this year either. And yet there are already more than 75 books in my TBR pile and it certainly would take me no time at all to come up with a list of 75 or 150 or 300 more books that I'd love to add to that pile. So, while I adored the Burroughs books as a boy, it's just not the sort of thing I want to be reading now with so much else to on deck and time's winged chariot and all that.

Makes perfect sense.

#63 Thrilled to see that you enjoyed the Tomalin Dickens bio! "As a novelist, Charles Dickens had few peers. As a family man - a son, a husband and a father - he fell far short of greatness. Neither of these things cancels out the other." - Exactly.

I think The Sisters Brothers is slowly working its way on to my wishlist.

> I did indeed, Heather. And I do hope you get a chance to read The Sisters Brothers. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts about it.

17. Kathryn Harrison, Enchantments: A Novel

In a recent interview, the historian Paul Johnson said that he writes history in order to learn about it. I kept thinking about that statement as I was reading Kathryn Harrison's vivid and engaging new novel, Enchantments, for she must have had to do an enormous amount of research and take it all in to her bones in order to get this book to feel as right as it does. The framework of her story is a familiar one - the last days of Nicholas and Alexandra, their family and immediate circle. That circle included the daughters of the recently assassinated madman/holyman Rasputin, who could heal with one touch of his perpetually unwashed hands, whose sexual conquests were legion, despite his adamant disregard for personal hygiene. The Tsarina, convinced that the "Mad Monk"'s daughters must have inherited his healing powers, insists that they accompany the family to their country home where they are kept under house arrest as Russia descends into political chaos. The story is told from the clear-eyed perspective of the eighteen year old daughter Masha, who, unable to heal the hemophiliac young Tsarovich, can only sit with him and tell him fantastic stories, as the circle draws tighter and the inevitable end looms nearer.

Historical fiction can be difficult to pull off, but like Peter Carey or David Mitchell or Hilary Mantel, Harrison here blends history with fiction so thoroughly that we eagerly buy the world she creates for us. Fact never overwhelms story, the story feels utterly rooted in an awful kind of reality. Dialogue, which is often the most difficult trick in the game to pull off, rings true. All of which is to say I loved this book. Don't miss it.

Compelling review --- I'm going to try to get the library here to buy this one I think.....

Thanks, Lucy. I hope it will be even more compelling now that I've had a chance to edit it a bit. I've been away for a while and I'm just now getting around to looking at LT again and I look forward to catching up with your thread.
Best,
S

I'm waiting patiently for my turn at The Sisters Brothers to come up. Thanks for the review, Mr. K. Enchantments sounds good too, doggone it.

> 94. Thanks, Peggy!

18. Alan Bradley, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

Since so many friends have enjoyed the series I thought I'd give this, the first of the Flavia de Luce books, a try. It was, indeed, good fun. I have the next two waiting in the TBR piles but I'm now inclined to bump them to the back of the queue. One is enough for now.

I love the reader of the Bradley mysteries -- I don't think I would have liked them half so much just reading....

Who is it that reads the Flavia stories on audio, Lucy? I might see if my library has those. I mildly enjoyed Sweetness but felt I could have been using my reading time more fully, somehow. Maybe they'd be good to listen to while driving to and from work.

> 98. Linda, you've summed up my own discontent perfectly. I, too, was mildly engaged and entertained but somehow expected and wanted more perhaps because of all those hearty recommendations.

I can't believe I found this!!!!!! A snippet on YouTube of the marvelous Flavia reader. FLAVIA

Oh, that IS good, Lucy! Just what the books need, I suspect. There's a hint of the young Hayley Mills in it. A performance, not just a reading. And I've gone and reserved the second one on audio at the library. Thanks a million.

19. Nicole Galland, I, Iago.

It's somewhat remarkable that two writers should choose to delve deeper into the whys and wherefores of Shakespeare's greatest villain, that their books should appear within months of each other and that I should be sent both as Early Review books. Should there be a third on the horizon, I don't think I'll request it. That's, in part, because it's hard to imagine anyone doing a better job at the formidable task of creating a back story for Iago than Nicole Galland has done with I, Iago.

I've written about David Snodin's Iago, elsewhere. Suffice to say I found it less than satisfying. Nicole Galland's approach to the story is to take the events and characters in Othello and rewind all the way back to a day in his boyhood when Iago learned a valuable lesson in the merits of honesty after he and his friend Rodrigo were caught playing a childhood prank. The story is told from Iago's point of view and he goes on to tell us of his relationship with his cold and demanding father, his training in the army, his first years in the service and the making of his reputation as a soldier, a swordsman, and, above all, an honest man. One by one, the other characters in the play are introduced until they're all gathered just off stage, waiting for the cue to begin, once again, the terrible sequence of events that we know as the Tragedy of Othello. This is all masterfully done. Even knowing what Iago is about to do, Ms Galland manages to get us on his side and make him not only likable but admirable. We understand what drives him, what draws him to Othello, why he is so stung when the lieutenancy he expects to be given goes to Cassio instead. His courtship and marriage to Emilia is movingly portrayed as a romance of loving, intelligent and equal minds. If that seems an impossibility, given what we know will happen to her, let me assure you that not only does Nicole Galland make their relationship romantic, even sexy, but giving them that back story just makes their ending all that much more horrible and tragic.

Let's face it: no one's ever going to write a better version of Othello. But what Nicole Galland has managed to do is create a novel that borrows characters and events and yet feels entirely original, vital and compelling while still true to the source. And I can't imagine anyone ever doing a better job of that, either.

20. Julian Barnes, The Porcupine

This novella length meditation on power, truth, guilt and complicity really got under my skin. The setting is an Eastern bloc county, now free from Soviet domination and undergoing a painful transition to a market economy and domination by other forces and interests less easy to distinguish. The former leader, who held power for more than thirty years, is on trial. But how to even come up with appropriate charges for someone who made up the rules as he went along, in a society where the government and the sole political party were one and the same? The case is being prosecuted by a man who, we want to believe, is working for the common good. But it's Barnes' genius to make us see that the desire to convict, even in the absence of hard evidence, is not that far removed from the deposed leader's position that maintaining the security of the party and the state "by all means necessary" is justified.

Two great reviews - Barnes is someone I need to spend some time on.

Ooh, The Porcupine sounds intriguing! I really enjoyed Barnes' The Sense of an Ending. I Iago sounds good too. Great reviews, Tom.

> Thanks, Terri. I just finished another Barnes, Love, etc., which I'll be writing about shortly. Now on to Barnes #4 for the year, Arthur and George, then Sense of An Ending. This is all largely coincidental, as I just happened to come across all of these, at excellent prices, in library sales last fall.
But I've found I do enjoy his writing immensely, as unsettling as it can sometimes be.

21. Julian Barnes, Love, etc.
This sequel to Talking It Over picks up ten years after the events of that book, and, as he did in the earlier novel, Barnes uses alternating first person voices to tell the story of Gillian, Oliver and Stuart, with other characters occasionally chiming in as well. It's a technique that serves Barnes well in making his point, once again, about the unreliability of memory, perception and people in general.

Reading along and keeping up but not a thing to add, Mr. Kitten sir.

I'll look forward to your thoughts on Arthur and George Stephen. I read that pre-LT, probably mainly because I am such a Conan Doyle/Victorian fan but I really enjoyed it.

I also enjoyed Arthur and George. Hope you do too, Stephen.

> 108. Always happy to have visitors stop by.
> 109, 110. Re: A&G - so far, off to a great start.

22. Julian Barnes, Arthur and George

This makes the fourth Julian Barnes book I've read in as many months and they just seem to keep getting better and better. In fact, Arthur and George is so good, so rich, so emotionally satisfying that it makes the others I've read - Talking It Over, The Porcupine and Love, etc. - seem a little like minor works.
The Arthur of the title is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. George is a Birmingham solicitor whose father is Indian, mother is Scottish and who thinks of himself as thoroughly English, despite the fact that others fail to see him that way. George is falsely accused of a series of horrific crimes, is convicted largely on the basis of rumor and speculation and spends three years of a seven year sentence in prison. His early release is unexplained and, because of the conviction, he is not permitted to resume his law practice. His appeals to the government go unanswered but his case eventually comes to the attention of Doyle, already famous as the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Arthur, newly widowed and consumed with guilt about his love for another woman, throws himself into overturning George's conviction. The events of the story are based in fact and, in lesser hands this might have become merely an historical mystery, one of those that borrows characters from the past to spice up a potboiler plot. But even though Barnes is a superb storyteller, what he's really about here is exploring the idea of identity. And while racial, cultural, religious and national identity all come in to play, the central conundrum has to do with personal identity and how the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves seldom match the reality of who we are. It's a theme he's worked before, but here it's especially poignant and powerful. A great, great book by a great writer at the top of his game.

Threw that one on the wishlist, TK. Good review!

I have that on the TBR pile, I think.

23. Helen Humphreys, The Reinvention of Love

It certainly wasn't my intention to read two novels, back to back, involving famous novelists of yore and seances, but that's exactly what I just did.
Helen Humphreys is one of my favorite contemporary novelists and I know others in this group share my admiration for The Lost Garden, Coventry, The Frozen Thames, Afterimage and Leaving Earth. Therefore, I've been more than a little curious as to why this book, which was published in the UK and Canada last year, has yet to appear in a US edition. So, knowing that I would be in Toronto for a couple of days last week, I vowed to seek out and acquire a copy if opportunity presented itself. It did and I did.

The Reinvention of Love centers on the relationship between the writer and critic Charles Sainte-Beuve and Victor Hugo's wife, Adele. We get to see quite a lot of Victor, too, as well as other notable figures from mid-19th century Paris including George Sand, Liszt and Balzac. The tragedy of Victor and Adele's daughter, also called Adele, and her hopeless obsessive love for an English sailor is revisited in the closing chapters. (If you're familiar with the film, The Story of Adele H., then you already know this sad story.) In fact, sadness and loss are in abundant supply throughout this novel. though Humphreys compassion and wit provide ample leavening.

As I have with almost everything I've read by this writer, I devoured this novel, finishing it in a little more than a day, which, for me, is quite unusual. But Humphreys has this way of pulling me in and not letting me go until I've reveled in every last word. And I'm delighted to report that she still has the power to take my breath away with one exquisitely crafted sentence after another. But I also feel obliged to report that, overall, the novel failed to live up to my considerable expectations. The shifting focus and points of view make the whole feel out of balance, and, while most of Humphreys' books are relatively short, this one feels not just too brief for the amount of material she's trying to cover but rather undercooked as well. It's a worthy effort that occasionally takes wing but not quite up to her usual standards.

24. Paula Vogel, A Civil War Christmas

A friend very kindly sent me this published edition of a play I had the honor to perform in a few years ago. Even though ours was the second production, Paula was still writing and revising on a daily basis while we were in rehearsal, so it's nice to have a copy of this where the page numbers actually make sense and follow the usual sequence. It's a handsome volume, too, with some fascinating supplementary material. I do hope publication will lead to more productions.

You been a busy reader!

On My To Do List: Read Julian Barnes.

That is a Humphrieys I didn't know about. It's interesting to read your comments - that there wasn't enough story, ultimately. That doesn't surprise me, Humphreys seems to skitter here and there along the perimeter of 'stuff happening' - it's not what interests her, is it?

> 113. Thanks for the kind words about the review, Tui. I hope that wish comes true soon.
> 114. Linda, I do hope you enjoy it as much as I did when it bobs to the surface.
> 115. I been busy with all kinds of things since I saw you last, Lucy. But the only moose I got to see was a stuffed one in the Royal Ontario Museum. Your analysis of Humphreys' approach to story is particularly apt for this one.

#112: I am so glad you like that one! Nice review too!

> 119. Thanks, Stasia!

You are most welcome :)

25. Edward Ardizzone, Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain

Doing some tidying up recently, I came across this, the first of the Little Tim books, and a favorite read-aloud back when the Kitten lads were young. Ardizzone is primarily known for his superb, distinctive pen and ink illustrations but he was also an excellent writer. His picture books are a perfect balance of lively text and active, engaging illustration. All the stars in the world!

26. Julian Barnes, The Sense of An Ending

Others have written about this book far more eloquently than I could ever hope to do so I'll simply say that Barnes is as masterful as ever with this brief novel. Yet I do feel that everything he's saying here he's said before and better elsewhere. I certainly don't begrudge the man his Booker. But I wonder if this is really the best book from a Commonwealth county published last year?

27. Linda McCartney, Linda McCartney's Sixties: Portrait of An Era

I've coveted this book for quite some time and was delighted to find it in a library book sale this past weekend. Wonderful photos and a text that brings us to back to the days.

Just back from a fun weekend away that included a visit to a wonderful library book sale. My modest haul consisted of:
Linda McCartney, Linda McCartney's Sixties: Portrait of an Era (see above)
Julian Barnes, England, England
Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Volume One
having won David Dalton's biography, Who Is That Man? in the March batch of ER's I felt I should really read Chronicles first to get a proper handle on the man and his music.
Emma Donoghue, Slammerkin
Rose Tremain, The Colour
Jon Finch, Kings of the Earth
plus
a DVD of Sense and Sensibility to replace my VHS copy - love this film!
and 3 CD's
Pink Martini, Joy to the World - I had no idea they'd even done a Christmas CD let alone one as handsomely packaged as this one.
Beth Nielsen Chapman - You Hold the Key - I've only recently begun listening to this artist and I'm quite blown away by her voice and her songwriting
The McGarrigle Hour - with Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Rufus, Loudon and Martha Wainwright, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris and others. - I think this completes my McGarrigles collection

I love those McGarrigles too! And Sense and Sensibility -- it might be my favorite.

Kings of the Earth is a remarkable read. I hope you'll get to that one soon.

Great haul from the library sale! Kings of the Earth is one that I'm interested in. I look forward to your comments when you get to it.

Just delurking to say I'm enjoying your thread even though I haven't had anything sensible to contribute.

> 127 Hi Linda and Terri - I'm glad to have a copy of Kings of the Earth, too. Might be a while before I get to it but I'll be sure to report in once I do.

> 129 I'm glad you delurked and please be assured that both sensible and the nonsensical contributions are equally welcome.

Nothing too much to report. I'm over half way through Melanie Benjamin's The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb and growing increasingly impatient with it, in part, I think, because there are so many better books waiting in the wings. Yesterday Bring Up the Bodies arrived in the store where I work part-time and just seeing it on top of the pile when I cracked open the box was more thrilling than I thought it would be, and I was pretty pumped about it already. It's frustrating to know I won't be able to give it my full attention for at least another month but I might need to bring a copy home just to glance at every now and again. In fact, after a somewhat slow start to the year, the new book shelves are now packed with so many intriguing titles, including new works by three of my favorite writers - William Boyd, Peter Carey and Graham Swift. An embarrassment of riches if ever there was one.

28. Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

A bit of a disappointment, this one. Benjamin manages to take one of the more fascinating figures in P.T. Barnum's orbit and reduce her life to a silly unrequited love story, with more weeping than a forest of willows. Call it Fifty Shades of Purple. It did make me want to find out more about the real Mercy Lavinia Warren Bump, a Little Person, from a small Massachusetts town. Barnum's genius for promotion led to her performing for royalty and touring the world with her equally diminutive husband (Charles Stratton, aka General Tom Thumb) and sister, (Minnie Warren Bump). I'm sure the real life was far richer than the rather two dimensional version Benjamin gives us here.

Too bad it wasn't so much fun -- so what is next??? Hmmmmm let me guess.... First word starts with a B, last word starts with a B.....

> 132. I'm afraid I still need to keep that particular pleasure at arm's length for a while, Lucy. I'm being a dutiful ER reviewer and reading Bob Dylan's Chronicles, Volume One - and loving it - which I felt I really should read before tackling my March ER book, something called Who Is That Man?: In Search of the Real Bob Dylan, which had a completely different title when I won it. I often find it easier to read non-fiction when I'm writing, I suppose because it's hard for me to juggle two stories in my head. But once I put paid to both projects I'm heading straight for the Hilary.

You are a busy, busy reader, and I'm always impressed at your processing the great amount that you read. You've put Jon Finch back on my radar, and I don't know whether to thank you or weep. I should read Finn before *Kings*. Meanwhile, I hope that you'll get to the BB sooner rather than later!

> 134. Hi Peggy!
I'm so glad to know you're enjoying Bring Up the Bodies. It will probably be even longer before I can get to the Finch book but I'm very glad to have acquired it.
I liked your Song of Achilles review, too!

Hi Stephen.

#130 "An embarrassment of riches" - I like that way of thinking of the TBR piles!

My copy of Bring Up the Bodies has arrived too and it is proving very difficult not to dive in straight away, but I have to finish my library book first.

> 136. Your restraint and resolve to finish your library book make you all the more admirable, Heather.

#134 I should read Finn before *Kings*. No reason inherent in the books themselves, Peggy. They're both so good...and not related in any way.

(Gratias for the *Achilles* comment!)
Linda, I just figure I can get Finn more easily and cheaply than *Kings*, so that's why it should come first.....

29. Tana French, Faithful Place

I wasn't sure that I would go back to Tana French so soon, after reading In the Woods in February but this was the title that called to me when I went to the library to select something to listen to while traveling. The things I loved about the earlier book I also loved in this one - her sense of humor, her incredible ear for dialogue and her utterly convincing portrait of a society closing ranks against anything that threatens it. Just as in the first book, there's not much in the way of whodunnit about this mystery. It's clearly not what French is about. What she does want the reader to think about, or so it seems to me, is the complexity of moral choices, loyalty to ideals, loyalty to family, loyalty to place and even loyalty to a memory. And this she does masterfully. A really fine, genre-transcending work of fiction.

I liked that one a lot -- maybe even the best of all of them.

>125 TomKitten:: what a haul! Our little library in the village never offers up such riches.

#139 Aha...I see.
#140 I have that one here, and have read In the Woods, but I'm missing the one between. I'll have to see if our library has it.

> 142. That was quite the haul, Tui, but, in terms of quantity, only about half of what I took away last time I visited that book sale. The Tompkins County Public Library Book Sale is one of the best things of the kind I've ever come across and I've been to, worked at and even organized a lot of sales over the years. Ithaca, NY, the County seat, is a small city at the southern end of Cayuga Lake, in the heart of the Finger Lakes region of central New York State. It's a pretty hip town and the home of two major universities - Cornell and Ithaca College, not to mention that mecca for vegetarians, the Moosewood Restaurant, which is reason enough to go there. Suffice to say there are a lot of readers in Ithaca and environs. The Library has a huge quonset hut warehouse full of shelving and solely dedicated to collecting, storing and selling the books, music, movies, puzzles and games that seem to pour in for the sale. The sale runs for three weeks, twice a year, in Autumn and Spring, and prices start at $4 for most things in the first few days of the sales and get down to 50¢ and less by the end of the sale. One of the things we learned this visit was that they restock every night, too, so if you go on the last week of the sale, when everything is very reasonably priced, you're not just choosing from other people's leavings. That sort of explains how I was able to walk away with a box full of Rose Tremain, Julian Barnes and Hilary Mantel books last Fall, all for 50¢ each. My one complaint about the sale might strike some as odd: it is incredibly well organized. Not only are books categorized by subjects both broad and narrow, within those categories they are arranged on the shelves in alpha order by author's last name. While this is certainly helpful if you happen to be looking for books by a particular author, it somewhat lessens the chance of a serendipitous find. I do love the thrill of the hunt. But that's a very minor quibble.
And if you've read all this and are starting to think you really need to schedule a visit to Ithaca, the Fall 2012 Sale dates are October 6-8, 13-15, and 20-23.
You can read more about it here: http://www.booksale.org/

I'm going to Ithaka, Greece for my holidays in a few weeks. I didn't realise there was one in the U.S. as well.

TK, that sounds a bit like the Niagara on the Lake library sale we have stumbled on a couple of times in the summer when we are at the Shaw festival. I am astonished at the calibre of books in that sale. However, I think yours is in another league altogether. And as someone with several Moosewood cookbooks, I am pea green! Hmmmm Ithaca isn't all that far south.....

> 146. And now it's my turn to envy you, Tui. I've always wanted to go to the Shaw festival. I've been to Niagara on the Lake once, many years ago in December and I've always promised myself I'd go back in season.

> 145. And I'm also more than a bit envious of anyone who gets to go to Greece. I hope it's a great trip!

Yes I hope Greece is wonderful.

I have been to the Shaw festival, it was terrific!

Free is even better! One of the reasons I go to the Transfer station here once a week even if I only have a wee bag of trash is that they have a very nice bookshelf that takes up one whole wall and they keep after it, and I have found some amazing books, although never a Virago yet, to date. That will be the day!

*sigh* I'll just sit here and envy all of you. The closest I'll ever come is talking to my good friend Barbara who moved here from Ithaca in the 9th grade. *sigh*

>147 TomKitten:: TK, you don't have to go in the height of tourist season (June, July, August). September and October are beautiful, with the plays still running. We always stay at the same B&B: http://www.brockamour.com/ It has connections to some of the main historical characters of the region and the hosts are the best. We use it as the halfway point to meet up with Amurcan friends of ours, for an annual visit. Good friends, good theatre, good digs: doesn't get better than that.

30. Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume One
31. Percy Charles Birtchnell, Bygone Berkhamsted

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I felt I really should read Dylan on Dylan before tackling David Dalton's Who Is That Man?: In Search of the Real Bob Dylan, which was my March ER win. I'm really glad I made that decision. It should come as no surprise that he's a wonderful writer and his puckish sense of humor shines through on almost every page. Chronicles is hardly a straightforward autobiography but neither is it as deliberately obtuse as I feared it would be. It jumps back and forth in time, omits entire decades, expands here, glosses over there and by and large cherry picks significant moments in a career and a life. What he does choose to write about is fascinating, whether he's describing the early years in New York or escaping from a Daniel Lanois recording session. I was surprised to discover, both with this book and on the rare occasions when I've been able to listen to his radio show, that Dylan is even more of a cultural omnivore and enthusiastic fan than I ever suspected. It's a pleasure to spend time in his company and I hope that a volume 2 will someday see print.

About thirty years ago Mrs. Kitten and I took a trip to the UK and, thanks to the kindness of some family friends, we were able to use Berkhamsted, in Hertfordshire, as a base camp for our travels. Bygone Berkhamsted is a book of 19th century photographs of this fascinating town. It was a treat to run across it and be able to see how the town looked in earlier days and try to catch a glimpse of something familiar in the old images.

Wow -- onto the wishlist the Dylan goes, lickety-split.

Back to report, I had a seriously difficult time getting LT to 'reveal' Chronicles to me -- it kept sending me to other biographies. But I prevailed.

I have the Dylan waiting on one of my many TBR piles. It's good to know it's an interesting read.

32. David Dalton, Who Is That Man? In Search of the Real Bob Dylan

As mentioned above, this was my March ER book and the reason I finally got around to reading Chronicles. And, as I also said above, I enjoyed that book enormously. So, something good came of this experience.
Is there any genre of music that has inspired more overblown, pretentious and just plain silly writing than rock 'n' roll? And is there any figure in pop who has inspired more nonsensical musing than Bob Dylan? It's almost as if everyone who writes about him feels obliged to try to mimic the great man's penchant for obfuscation. Mr. Dalton certainly has a great deal to say about Bob Dylan. In fact, he has a lot to say about a lot of things, some of which are only tangentially relevant to a book about Bob Dylan. For instance, he very much wants you to know how many books he's read, how much music he's listened to and how many movies he's seen and the cultural references come hurtling at you at bargain basement prices. Why cite one book/song/film when you can cite a dozen? He frequently substitutes cultural laundry lists for more thoughtful analysis. He just as frequently manages to get things wrong and/or makes inferences that are simply astonishing in their presumption and audacity. I found myself scribbling in the margins more than once -"How could he know this?" The book is rife with bizarre statements like, "People make fun of Dylan's voice and imply he made it despite it, but to this day almost no one can cover his songs." Really? Really??
And what did I learn about the real Bob Dylan? Not much at all, I'm afraid. However, the book did make me want to listen to "John Wesley Harding" and "Blood on the Tracks" again and for that I suppose I'm just a little bit grateful. Otherwise, Mr. Dalton, "you just sorta wasted my precious time."

Popping over to your place to say hi.
Not a chance Ill read all posts so far today, so will star and return :)

Thumbs up for your review of Who is That Man? Thumbs down for the author and his presumptions.

Really good review, TK!

Enjoyed the review, much more than you enjoyed the book!

> 156 - 158 Thanks, Linda, Tui and Lucy!

>154 TomKitten: I really loved your review.
but to this day almost no one can cover his songs
I for one think that a lot of Dylan songs sound far better when sung by someone else. Changing of the Guard for one, sung by Patti Smith, is fantastic.

> 160. Thanks, Megan. I don't know that Patti Smith cover but I'll have to search it out.

Have you read Patti Smith's Just Kids, Stephen? That one is on my list too. I've heard good things about it.

That book sale sounds divine. The Finger Lakes are such a pretty region. But we're never there at the right time of year for those sales.

33. Jeffrey S. Croushore, Idlewild
34. Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

33. Idlewild is an amusement park near Ligonier, PA. It's the oldest one in the state and one of the oldest in the US. Our family has been going there for almost a century. This volume is mainly comprised of photographs, some of them of rather poor quality but it's still an enjoyable trip down memory lane.

34. Bring Up the Bodies. This is one of those all too rare books that makes me remember why I love reading, why I keep opening book after book with the hope that this new one will take me out of myself and into a completely realized world of the author's devising. If I read a better book this year I will count myself truly fortunate.

35. Geoff Rodkey, Deadweather and Sunrise: The Chronicles of Egg, Book 1 - An ARC

A ripping good adventure story with Pirates and treasure and tongue planted firmly in cheek. A good choice for light summer reading for middle readers.

>164 TomKitten:: re BUtB: yes, yes, yes!

Went to the store late this afternoon to buy cat food and asparagus and came home with the new William Boyd book, Waiting for Sunrise, which I've been eyeing since it hit the shelves at the beginning of last month. In my defense, I did also remember the cat food and asparagus, which Mrs. K. made into a lovely quiche. Nothing like a cat food quiche.

*sporfle*

Picturing the Kitten family all purring and licking their paws.

Himself always says we may end up eating catfood souffle if I keep blowing the food budget on books.

#170 At least he isn't threatening to put the CAT in a stew...

36. Michael Frayn, Skios

This was my April ER win.
I have several friends who consider Michael Frayn's Noises Off! the finest farce of our time and the funniest play they've ever seen. I'm less of an enthusiast, frankly but that's not entirely Mr. Frayn's fault. Farce is damned difficult to pull off, perhaps the most technically challenging thing you can do in theatre. If all the actors are not absolute perfection, if the director is not up to the job, if the design team has one weak link, it simply won't work. Because so many people love it, Noises Off gets done a lot in regional and community theaters. I've seen at least three productions of it over the years and I'm probably blanking on the others just because they've all been dissatisfying in one way or another. It's rather like listening to an inexpert performance of a particularly difficult piece of classical music - it's hard to hear the beauty if the player is perpetually hitting wrong notes or has no feel for the piece. So, in a way, I don't feel like I've ever seen a production of Noises Off that lived up to Mr. Frayn's intentions. (Just as I've never seen a wholly successful production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, but that's another story.)
Michael Frayn's newest novel, Skios, is a valiant attempt to make a novel of the conventions of farce - mistaken identity, trysts that never quite work out, the proud and the pompous brought low - all without the benefit of slamming doors. (Though there is one door that takes a considerable beating. It's a bathroom door, naturally.) If farce is a Matterhorn to climb on the stage, it's an Everest on the page. Timing, that most critical element in any stage production, is almost entirely at the whim of the individual reader. Skios almost needs to be read in a single session, or perhaps two with an intermission, to maintain a sufficient pace. I read it over several days, as I suspect many readers would or will do and that made the climb even steeper. Mr. Frayn asks a considerable suspension of disbelief in his central case of mistaken identity. It's hard to maintain that suspension when you're not immersed in the novel and, without it, the whole thing falls apart. I also find I need to like at least someone in a farce and I found none of the characters particularly endearing. Did I laugh out loud? Yup, but not that loud and not that often.
I really loved Frayn's Spies and found much to admire in Headlong. If this one falls short of the mark it's not for lack of ambition.

Too bad -- I did like Headlong quite a bit.

Hi, Tom! I'm familiar with Idlewild -- have been there a few times -- but didn't realize that the book about it existed. Very interesting.

Back to my thread after almost three months absence, due to a very hectic summer. No excuses, some summers are just like that and this one even more so. Not much reading time either but one of the few was one of the best for the year.
A recap:

37. Bob Edwards, Fridays With Red: A Radio Friendship - Linda very kindly passed this on to me and I enjoyed it quite a lot. It's actually a wonderful book for when leisure time is in short supply, as each essay is engaging, short and easily digested. I did love those Red Barber radio broadcasts on NPR, too.

38. A.S. Byatt, The Children's Book - This took me all of July and much of August to get through but, my, what a book. It's my first Byatt but it definitely won't be my last.

39. Tana French, The Likeness - Audio - Another strong effort by French who is fast becoming one of my favorite mystery writers.

40. Amor Towles, Rules of Civility - Audio - While I very much enjoyed Rebecca Lowman's narration, I found the book itself rather underwhelming, given the quantity of praise heaped upon it last year.

41. David Yeadon, At the Edge of Ireland: Seasons on the Beara Peninsula - I really enjoyed Yeadon's book, Seasons on Harris about his year in the Outer Hebrides. This one didn't quite grab me in the same way. The Beara Peninsula is the southwestern most finger of land in Ireland, very rural, very wild but this book seemed rather tame by comparison.

42. Nevada Barr, High Country - Audio - Kept me awake and feeding discs into the car audio player but that's about it.

43. Vanessa Diffenbaugh, The Language of Flowers - An Early Reviewers win - and, I'm afraid, another disappointment.

44. Emma Thompson, The Further Tale of Peter Rabbit - It's Peter Rabbit! It's Emma Thompson! How could one go wrong? Well, er, as much as I love Em, I'm sorry to say this falls a bit short of the mark. A rollicking story, lovely illustrations but the perfect marriage of text and pictures that is the Potter hallmark is just beyond reach.

Don't know if I'm back for good. Still lots to do but I hope to check in a bit more frequently.

I love Byatt.

A book that will keep you awake on a long drive has merit.

Glad to see you with us again, Mr. K, and always interested to find out what you think about what you've read!

Did I say I was glad you are back? It is becoming a true sign of the end of summer, your return here.

Glad to see you back, Mr. Kitten. I really liked The Children's Book as well.

Oh, you're back! I am used to cats who wander and don't come home for a while, but still...good to see you. I'm glad you got some smiles from Bob and Red. I've kind of fallen for Tana French too, and that reminds me it may be about time to pick up her third in the Dublin series, which is here...somewhere.

Welcome back! I liked, but didn't love, The Children's Book - there was just too much to my mind of Byatt showing us how much research on the period she had done - though all the information about the different political, artistic and cultural movements were fascinating in themselves, sometimes it felt more like reading a non-fiction history of Edwardian culture than a novel. But it has staying in my mind quite strongly after reading it over 2 years ago, so she must have done a lot right after all for my liking!

Thanks to all who were willing to turn a blind eye to my months long absence and welcome me back again. As you can see, I'm still more absent than present but, as the nights get longer I'm hoping for more time for lots of things. And that includes catching up with all of your threads.

176 & 178 - Hi Lucy! Thanks for the welcome! Good to see you this summer!

177 - Thanks, Peggy!

179 - Thanks, Tui! I'm glad to know you liked the Byatt, too. I'm hoping to read more of her in 2013.

180 - Hi Linda. Yes, my wandering was rather epic this year, almost on the scale of The Incredible Journey. But it's good to be settling back in again. I hope you get to Faithful Place, (Tana French's third). Of the three I've read, I think it may be the best.

181 - Thanks for your welcome and your thoughtful remarks about the Byatt, Genny. I'll be curious to see if this has any staying power for me.

In fact, I just finished Faithful Place over the weekend, and I agree with you--it's the best of the first three. I loved it.

47. Eve Bunting, Scary, Scary Halloween
48. Julia Donaldson, Room On the Broom
49. Kathy Hoopman, All Cats Have Asperger Syndrome
50. Peggy Rathmann, Good Night, Gorilla
51. Susan Casey, The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks and Giants of the Ocean
52. Edward Ardizzone, Sketches for Friends

47 - 50. Picture books for Halloween and otherwise have been arriving at the store of late and I took a few minutes to acquaint myself with some of them the other day. My favorite of the bunch was Julia Donaldson's Room on the Broom which reminds me somewhat of The Elephant and the Bad Baby. A witch goes flying and collects a number of passengers along the way. The added weight eventually causes the broom to crack, sending everyone into a swamp where a dragon dwells. The dragon threatens to flambé the witch but the hitchhiking passengers save the day by scaring the dragon away. It's great fun and would make a wonderful read aloud book.

51. Living as close to the coast as I do, I should probably regard Susan Casey's The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks and Giants of the Ocean as the most terrifying book I've ever read. It seems a certainty that I'm doomed to be washed away by one of the ever increasing number of giant waves sloshing about in the oceans of the world. But this thing reads like a breeze and she's such a damn good writer that, instead of terror, I'm just full of admiration for her storytelling ability. The doom and gloom is leavened by alternating chapters about the elite comradeship of surfers who travel the globe in search of massive waves to ride. We're talking in the 60 to 120 foot range here. Her reporting is nearly as thrilling as the ride itself. One of my best non-fiction reads of the year.

52. I recently mentioned to an acquaintance how much I revered the English illustrator Edward Ardizzone and he was kind enough to pass on this collection of illustrated letters to me. I'm not sure it would have much resonance for non-devotees but for fans this would be a welcome and wonderful addition to a collection.

I am so with you all about Faithful Place - I feel as if I remember reading that some were disappointed with this third one, but I certainly wasn't - maybe it was mostly those readers wanted French to stick with the woman protagonist (name has been dumped from my brain).

Hmmmm. I'm thinking the spousal unit might like the Wave book, onto the xmas list it goes.

Lucy, I can't imagine that yer fella there wouldn't love The Wave. More than anything, it's just a great read.

I appreciate the review of Room on the Broom - Charlie and I *love* The Elephant and the Bad Baby, so I'll have to keep an eye out for this one this month.

>187 scaifea:. Hi Amber!
I'm glad to know there's another person out there who loves The Elephant and the Bad Baby. Now, there's a book just begging to be reprinted! I don't know if Room on the Broom has the same sort of heft of a classic picture book but it's pretty darned good. I hope you and Charlie get a chance to look at this month.

53. Kate Williams, The Pleasures of Men
54. Elizabeth Benedict, The Joy of Writing Sex
55. Roger Moore, Bond on Bond: Reflections on Fifty Years of James Bond Movies
56. Peter Carey, His Illegal Self

53. The Pleasures of Men was an ARC that was sent to me a few months ago. I do have an interest in fiction set in Victorian England. I have no interest whatsoever in serial killers and that pretty much sums up the struggle I had with this book. Ms Williams is an historian and biographer of some renown and the details in this all ring true. However the story did not engage me and the denouement felt forced and unearned.

54. The Joy of Writing Sex. Wait, what? The word is "writing", not "writhing"? Oh! Well, never mind.
This was one of those library sale finds that piqued my curiosity.
Sounds like it could be fun, no? Not really, as it turned out. Not much joy, not much really new or interesting to say about the process of writing and the examples the writer chose, including excerpts from several of her own works are, by and large, kind of dull. I suppose if one is going to write a book on this subject it's best to do it without shame but I'm not sure shameless self promotion is ever appropriate even in this day and age.

55. Bond on Bond. Roger Moore may not be anyone's idea of the perfect James Bond but he's actually a very funny writer and this slight, capsule history of the series makes for a fun browse. It would be a perfect book for a waiting room. Lots of fun pictures to look at and you could finish the text before they called your name.

56. His Illegal Self. At last, a book worth reading! Peter Carey is a favorite and a few of his books - Jack Maggs, The True History of the Kelly Gang and Parrot and Olivier in America - reside on my shelf of contemporary greats. This doesn't quite reach those exalted heights but I liked it very, very much indeed. All the usual virtues are present - palpable settings, an eye for the telling detail, complex characters who constantly surprise and carry deep wells of secrets, painterly use of language and a born storyteller's ear for pace and maintaining tension. Really, really fine.

Great to see Bring Up the Bodies win the Booker last night, too!

57. Arthur Mason, The Wee Men of Ballywooden. Illustrations by Robert Lawson.

Originally published in 1930, The Wee Men of Ballywooden, is comprised of two long stories about the title characters, magical Irish beings who are mostly benevolent spirits. The stories are told primarily in dialogue and it gets a bit tiresome at times, frankly, but the stories do eventually weave a kind of misty spell. What's truly magical about the book is the artwork. This was the first book Robert Lawson illustrated and his chapter headings and the few full page drawings are just delightful. The combination of strength and delicacy in the pen and ink work recalls some of the Golden age illustrators - particularly Heath Robinson and, to a lesser extent, Rackham - but there is a quality that's uniquely his own, too.

You've reviewed all sorts of things, good and bad, mostly things I won't read.

Since reading (listening to actually, so I don't know how to spell the last three words in this sentence) the Pratchett take on the wee free men, all I have to say about anything tiresome is waily waily waily.

> Hi Lucy,
Thanks for stopping in. I do think the Peter Carey book is worth keeping in mind. It's the first book I've read in some time that really enfolded me.

57. Jean-Claude Carriere, The Mahabharata: A Play
Friends who were lucky enough to see this epic theatrical event, staged decades ago by the great Peter Brook, raved about it at the time. However, I found this script a difficult read which only goes to prove, once again, that plays were meant to be seen, not read.

58. Russell Potter, Pyg: The Memoirs of Toby, The Learned Pig
This charming, gentle story combines sly wit, solid, though seldom overwhelming, historical detail and a lively pace to tell the story of Toby the celebrated sentient pig. It's being marketed as a novel for adults but it could as easily be enjoyed by young readers, say, 13 and older. Vegetarians, in particular, will find much to love here.

Traveler's Advisory: If you should happen to find yourself in Victoria, BC and unable to get to your home on the other side of the continent because all the flights to your home city have been canceled, you could do far worse than to spend an afternoon browsing in Russell's bookstore on Fort St.
This may be the largest used bookstore I've ever been in and, hands down, one of the best, too. Victoria is clearly a town that loves books - great public library, wonderful independent new bookstore (Munro's) and a smart, literate and very friendly population. Prices are very reasonable, too, so I had no qualms about purchasing ....

Kevin Crossley-Holland At the Crossing Places in paperback
Helen Humphrey's Wild Dogs, signed first edition of the only Humphreys novel I have yet to read!
Hilary Mantel, Beyond Black in hardcover
Michael Ondaatje, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (paper)
and Handwriting (hardcover, 1st edition) - two volumes of poetry - one early, one late - by one of my favorite writers.

Had I but money enough and more room in my suitcase the list would be much, much longer.

Ooooo Wild Dogs is the one of the only ones I haven't gotten hold of yet.

Billy the Kid was my first Ondaatje read it because of something Annie Dillard wrote - some essays about reading or books or something? Was very wowed by it at the time.

Delurking to say, as a Victorian, that is a great travel advisory you provided in post #194. ;-)

I am so happy you found Russell's and had the time to browse through the store. It is one of my favorite bookstores!

Hope you have/had a safe trip home.

> 196 Hi Lori,
We're actually still in your fair city but about to board the ferry to Seattle and then home from there late tonight. I see from your profile page you're also a fan of the Victoria Public Library with which Mrs. Kitten and I were most impressed! We went back to Munro's again today and also to Renaissance books, where I found two volumes of Helen Humphrey's poetry, which are not easily obtained in the US as well as a nice hardcover copy of Afterimage, perhaps my favorite of hers.
We are quite smitten with Victoria and will definitely be coming back. (I even inquired if Russell's was hiring.)

> Very happy to learn that both you and Mrs. Kitten enjoyed your stay here and book-related travels in our city on Vancouver Island!

We do have a good library system which is partially provincially funded and partially municipality funded. I am assuming you visited the central branch which is located only one block away from Russell's. The library system (10 branches in total) handles, IMO, an amazing amount of library patron traffic for a region with a combined population of only 330,000 people. The various bookstores (Russell's, Books on View, Munro's, Bolens' Books, Renaissance, etc) seem able to co-exist and thrive along side the library system. Very encouraging to see considering how compact Victoria, with a lot of places within easy walking distance, at least in the downtown core.

Should you come back to visit our fair city, I will recommend a visit to Russell's sister bookstore on View Street, aptly named Books on View. :-)

I wish you both a safe voyage home!

Glad to see you and Mrs. Kitten made good use of your layover in Victoria, B.C. Great purchases!

198 > Hi again, Lori
And thanks for the tip about Books on View, which we did manage to miss. I guess we'll just have to go back! Thanks, too, for the additional background on the Victoria Public Library. It was, indeed, the central branch that we visited but I wish we could have seen some of the other branches as well. The central was extremely busy the day we were there and both Mrs. K. and I felt like they were doing everything just about right. (And she should know, having run a library herself for the past 31 years.)
But so much about the city impressed us, from the topography, to the architecture, to the food, to the climate, to the stunning scenery and, most especially, the warmth of the people. There are lots of beautiful places in the world one can visit but not all of them are as welcoming as Victoria. It reminded me of Ireland in that respect. I'm sure that, as a resident, there are things about the city that drive you crazy, but, as first time visitors, we couldn't have been happier. We do hope to get back someday.

199 >Hi Terri!
Thanks for your comment. And I didn't even mention the two books about Emily Carr that Mrs. K. found. She's been a big fan for a long time and getting to see some Emily Carr paintings in person, in both Vancouver and Victoria, was certainly a high point of the trip.