**QUESTIONS for the Avid Reader III (April & May)

QUESTION 16

An easy question to start this thread:

What is the last book you read where a great discovery was made or a secret was unveiled?

(Apologies for being late with the weekly question, I was away some of last week)

Hmm. China Mieville's Kraken is a big old jumble of secrets veiled, unveiled, and partially glimpsed, but "a discovery" or "a secret" are difficult to point to there. So, discounting that, I suppose it's The Ship Who Won by Anne McCaffrey and Jody Lynne Nye, in which plucky space heroes uncover the power source at the heart of the planet they're exploring and educate the natives about how their magical technology really works. Not a particularly interesting answer to that question, I'm afraid.

I guess the last book I read where a secret was unveiled was the mystery The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. There you had to try to figure out not only what the secret was, but who was doing the covering up and for who and why. The Big Sleep was a fun read.

I had to give this a lot of thought, because I'm leaving out all the little things we don't know until we read further in a book. Certainly I would say some secrets were unveiled in some of the stories in Edith Pearlman's Binocular Vision, but I don't think they're really dramatic enough to be what you're looking for. So I'd have to go back to This Body of Death by Elizabeth George, which was chock full of secrets and discoveries, although some of them weren't so hard to guess.

Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens, I avoided giving the secret away in my review and will continue to do that here.

Can't remember anything about my recent books that fits. I had to go back to early last year to find The Twin by Gerband Bakker, in which the narrator has something he his hesitant to share.

The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt chronicles, among other things, the discovery by Poggio Bracciolini during the 15th century of a manuscript of Lucretius' On the Nature of Things, which had lain buried for 1500 years in an obscure southern German monastic library. Before Poggio's discovery, Lucretius was known only in fragmentary quotes, primarily in contempory polemical tracts denouncing Epicureanism of which Lucretius is today its greatest known proponent.

In Alice Munro's collection Open Secrets, there are a number of stories where a secret is unveiled. It's an interesting look at what we choose to keep secret and what we unveil.

There is a mysterious prisoner in Michael Ondaatje's The Cat's Table. The young protagonist and his friends watch him walking the deck of the ship they are traveling on, shackled and guarded. In the end, we find out who he is, and his relationship to the other travelers on the ship. Although it isn't the main interest of the story, and Ondaatje is a bit too explicit in resolving the mystery, I found this subplot fairly interesting.

Hmmm. I think 16 was a bit of bust. So, we are back on our late week question schedule again:

QUESTION 17

What was the last book you read which you approached with great skepticism or trepidation, but which won you over in the reading of it? Why were you skeptical? How did you get past your skepticism in order to begin reading it? and how did it win you over?

The closest I could come was in 2011 with: African Psycho by Alain Mabanckou. I hesitated because I was assuming (rightly) that it was a bit of a play on American Psycho and I'm not sure I wanted to read such a violent book*; however, my desire to read this Congolese author outweighed my reservations. I would not say that it won me over, but it was an interesting read (well, I read it ALL, so it much have been interesting...right?) and will have me keeping an eye out for another Mabanckou novel though there is still some of that trepidation lingering (I think he has a new one translated)

*this coming from a regular reader of JCO, eh? :-) It's the detailed, gratuitous violence, the kind meant to titillate, that I don't care for. The Congo is a violent place these days, and there is much violence in the novel but it was a bit of commentary on this very thing...

I guess that would have to be The Ship Who Won again, because Anne McCaffrey is an author I loved as a teenager but who has greatly disappointed me since. That novel was part of the one series of hers that I'd actually never really stopped enjoying, but I was afraid that it was going to turn on me and leave me disappointed, too. To say that it won me over might not be entirely accurate, but I was at least pleasantly relieved that it turned out not to be terrible.

I am sceptical about most of our book club choices, because they would not necessarily be my choices. I was particularly sceptical about Night Train to Lisbon, Pascal Mercier particularly when I discovered that he was a philosophy teacher turned novelist. I had recently read The Elegance of the hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, who is also a philosophy teacher turned novelist and thought it very overrated. However Night Train to Lisbon could not have been more different; it had characters I could relate to, it had a plot that held my attention and the philosophy bits,(yes there were some) were written in the form of a discovered book that Mercier had written using some lovely prose.

I guess I don't try books I'm wary about often enough because I had to go back to 2010 when I read The Siege by Helen Dunmore. I had been avoiding Dunmore ever since reading With Your Crooked Heart, which I really disliked, but several people here on LT strongly encouraged me to read The Siege. It won me over because I just couldn't put it down! Although well researched, it wore the research almost invisibly, and was beautifully and compellingly written.

More often, I have the opposite experience of having high hopes that are not realized!

The Faerie Queene is the first that comes to mind. (It's an old long poem, dating from the late 1500's, written in pastiche to make it sound ancient.) My skepticism was whether I would be able to enjoy it, not whether it was valuable work. I told myself that I would just try as an experiment, and anticipated that I would give up if it didn't work for me. This worked. I had some trouble at first, but somehow I became completely absorbed by the language and read through the whole poem over several months.

The first thing that popped into my head reading the question was Strip Jack by Ian Rankin. I'd read the 1st Rebus book, wasn't wowed, and chalked it all up to another overhyped crime series that was OK but didn't warrant the time and effort to read through religiously. I grabbed Strip Jack (the 4th in the series) off the shelf as a last-minute needed-something-for-a-flight. I ended up liking it much more than the 1st one, and could see the appeal. I think more of Scotland came through, which I liked.

I think it's a matter of finding the mix of right time, right place, right mood. I'm still not rushing to read every one, but am definitely not shying away from the other three I've got sitting on my shelf either.

I agree, there is a right time time/place/mood for books, at least for me there is.

>16 ljbwell:, 17 me too.

like rebeccanyc
I guess I don't try books I'm wary about often enough
so me.

The last was probably Tina Fey's Bossypants, which I declined an arc of because I had zero interest in vacuous celebrity memoirs and (so silly) hated the man-arms on the cover. But months later, Carrie Fisher's Wishful Drinking made a road trip fly, so when I read avaland still laughing in her comments about Bossypants I gave it a go on my next trip. It was great fun, I became a fan of Fey, and the cover was totally appropriate.

>19 detailmuse: I'm not much of a memoir reader, period. And would not think to read Fey's memoir; it should only be listened to on audio, don't you think? (and I now notice the scar on her face...)

>20 avaland: I notice it too, or at least how her smile is lopsided. I did like the audio, it's also the first where I noticed the author/reader tailoring the text to the audio format. But she reads so fast, I think there were times I would have looked up from a written page and stopped to chuckle.

QUESTION 18

Anyone can give a book to another, of course, but gifting the 'right' book to a friend or relative is an art. Sometimes giving is more about the giver than it is about the recipient, yes? Of course, here on LT we've become a little spoiled because we may have found a few readers who really "get" our reading and can recommend/gift to us something we'd find reliably good 9 times out of 10. But what about all those other book surprises?

What was the last book you read that was given to you by another person which was NOT a title you wanted (not on a wishlist), requested OR expected. And did you like the book?

I was given The Ice People by Maggie Gee by an LTer, who knew me fairly well, through a gift exchange. So, while I was expecting a book from someone, I was not expecting this book from this person (double surprise). She, of course, had access to my library and likely saw my penchant for dystopias. I read the book straightway and enjoyed it.

One of my daughters gave me Hark! A Vagrant! by Kate Beaton for Christmas last year. It is rare for any relatives to give me books of any kind (even my husband has given up), so this was a big surprise. I was dubious as she and I have very different tastes. The Kate Beaton book is not a novel but a collection of intelligent, witty comics (many about literature), and I enjoyed it very much.

Does this include books that someone lent to you? If so, the latest book I received was Walk on Water: Inside an Elite Pediatric Surgical Unit by Michael Ruhlman, which one of my partners at work gave me last month. The author describes the pursuit of perfection of a world renowned pediatric cardiac surgeon, his colleagues, and the babies at death's door whose lives he usually saves. The topic was interesting, but the author engaged in too much hero worship to make it a balanced and memorable book.

What ever happened to Andrew S? He sent me The Prospector by J. M. G. Le Clézio, unbidden, and I fell in love the book and the author.

The last book like this that I read was Oil on Water by Helon Habila, which came in box of goodies from our avaland. I really enjoyed the book. I'm looking now at Measured Time, also by Habila, The Shallows by Nicholas Carr, and The View from Castle Rock by Alice Munro—all from that same box—on a shelf above my machine at home, calling to me.

Oh, wait a minute (duh). The last book I was given that I read was Panther Baby by Jamal Joseph, which avaland sent to me as an ARC in February. I finished it last night, and it was superb. It's a memoir written by a former Black Panther, who joined the NYC branch in 1968 at the age of 15, was imprisoned off and on for roughly of the next 20 years, where he completed a bachelor's degree and wrote plays for his fellow inmates at Leavenworth Prison. After his release he became a screenwriter, community organizer, and college professor; he currently heads the film division of the School of Arts at Columbia University. I was surprised to learn that he also worked with the Black Panther division in Jersey City, my home town, and it's entirely possible that I may have met him and that my father, who also worked as a community activist in his spare time, may have known him (his photo on the cover of the book, taken when he was a young man, looks familiar to me).

Oh, I've got a good one for this question! ;-)

After my son was born, a relative gave me the book Bringing up Boys by James C. Dobson. For those of you who don't know, Dobson is a very conservative Christian and the book was filled with all kinds of religious advice, including an entire chapter on how to prevent your son from becoming gay. My husband and I are so far away from this kind of thinking that I just threw the book away. I have to say, I was pretty offended to receive that kind of parenting book from someone with such an obvious agenda. Luckily, since we don't see them often, I didn't need to pretend to have read it!

Where is a book on how to prevent my children from thinking like Dobson?

Darryl - very interesting about your possible intersection with Jamal Joseph.

ETA a grammatical fix

Some friends of mine gave me the graphic novel The Middleman: The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse as a late Christmas present after making me watch the complete run of The Middleman TV series on DVD. (Which didn't take long, since there wasn't much of it, alas.) Providing me with the graphic novel afterwards was especially nice of them, because it tells the story that was meant to be last episode of the (one and only) season, and wraps a few things up that the TV series didn't get the chance to.

And I enjoyed it very much. Those particular friends have a very, very good knowledge of my taste in TV shows.

>27 japaul22:: Gaah, I got a Dobson book from my fundamentalist father for Christmas one year. There was a period of a few years, in fact, where he was constantly giving me the most horrible ultra-conservative religious books at every opportunity, apparently in some kind of doomed, unsubtle attempt to convert me. I also remember a copy of the New Testament translated into "plain language" -- read one-syllable words -- with annotations explaining exactly how you're supposed to interpret each passage so that no thinking is required. I don't think I've ever been that insulted by a gift in my life, not even the year he bought me hot pink sweatpants that were four sizes too big. Those books all went straight to the local used bookstore or library sale donations box, needless to say, and eventually he gave up. Thank goodness.

The first book that really comes to mind is Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories That Heal by Rachel Naomi Remen, which a friend-of-the-family / psychologist / general practitioner gave to me. To be honest, it isn't a terrible book, especially for a self-help kind of thing, but it definitely doesn't warrant a 4.33 average rating on LT.

>27 japaul22: Wasn't Dobson the idjit that claimed that SpongeBob was a symbol of gay manhood?

>29 dchaikin: Right, Dan. I'll ask my father what he remembers about the Black Panthers in Jersey City in the late 60s and early 70s. He wasn't a Panther, but he was involved with a multiracial (black, white, Latino) community action group that occasionally interacted with them and members of the Nation of Islam. Their main HQ was very close to where we lived, and I seem to think that they wanted me to become part of their youth group (my mother remembers the same thing). She said that she has photos of me as a boy of 8-10 years, wearing a leather jacket and a beret, which she is going to look for soon. If she finds them, I'll post them on my thread.

I'll have a lot to say about Panther Baby when I review it in the next day or two, particularly about the good things that the Panthers did in inner city communities like the one I grew up in.

>26 kidzdoc: Good to know the book was excellent! (that was a book surprise for both of us - since it was sent to Belle. I thought the author not female enough, ha ha). I'll be interested in your review. I'll have to tell Algonquin how well their mis-shipment turned out.

>27 japaul22:, 31 new category: gifts with an agenda

My stepson is the family member with whom I most closely share reading interests and the only one who ever gives me books as gifts. This Christmas, knowing how much I want to visit Ireland, he gave me Human Chain, the latest and wonderful collection of the Irish poet and Nobel laureate, Seamus Heaney, inscribed with "To Inspire Irish Travels". I find poetry very challenging to review and am doing a reread before I attempt it. And although I still haven't planned that trip to Ireland, I have been inspired to read more Irish poetry and literature. I am currently deep in more Heaney, reading short stories by James Joyce and Colum McCann, and planning for Yeats.

The last book I read that someone gave to me was Five Bells by Gail Jones, which an Australian LTer (amandameale) sent to me. She has a good sense of the kind of books I like, since we follow each other's reading, and I liked it a lot. However, I also own several books given to me by a quasi-relative that I have very little interest in reading (e.g., the newest translation of Madame Bovary and a young adult novel that takes place in an upstate region near where my family has a house). But I also have On Rereading, which a friend gave me and which I hope to read in the not too distant future, and another friend gave me Catherine the Great as an early birthday present, and that's something I definitely want to read.

Patting myself on the back, I have been complimented by various members of my family about my ability to pick out books they really like/want to read. I think reading so much myself has helped me think about what other people might like.

I have one particular friend who is always turning up with books that she thinks I would enjoy reading. But the overlap between our tastes is variable. She has produced the occasional excellent read - eg The Big Necessity - but others (Geek Love, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society) I haven't even been able to finish.

If I've ever read a book that was a gift not from my wishlist, it was so long ago I don't recall it. Either they were duplicates or didn't interest me at all.

I try to keep a long wishlist on Amazon to give people a lot to pick from so they can feel it's a personal choice and so there's some suspense on my part. Yet year after year they just order the top items on the list, which are those most recently added.

My best friend gives me interesting books that are quite cool/ hip and not my normal picks. She got me Cynthia Heimel Get your tongue out of my mouth I'm kissing you goodbye and some Will Self ones. Most of those I end up liking.

My Aunt always gives me "proper" books of apparent literary merit like Tortilla Curtain and Wolf Hall. That is much more hit and miss, some are great but I do end up keeping them all, mostly out of guilt that I should have liked them more.

My mum tries to get me Sci-Fi and Fantasy books, which is the genre I like most, but she normally ends up getting me book 3 of a series or things that are far too heavy in Physics for my liking. I gift them on as I know loads of people that do like that sort of thing. I have told her about my LT wishlist but she hasn't managed to work it out.

>38 StevenTX: I also put my wish listed books on Amazon, but I narrow and rate the books in my Kindle wish list just before Christmas and my birthday, so that my family members and friends who want to buy books for me have an easier time of it and are more likely to select books that I'm most eager to read.

Question 16 and 17 would be the same book for me: Bleak House by Charles Dickens. Firstly, Dickens is always intimidating, to me. In addition to that, from critics reviews, Bleak House was Dickens' most energetic piece, combining multiple plots and several dozen main characters. Several of my friends, one who teaches British Lit, said she would not tackle that book under any circumstances. So there was my challenge. By page 50 I was very confused, couldn't keep the characters straight. So I took notes, names and occupations, then I was able to organize them in my mind. Once that occurred, it was an enjoyable read. It was discovered that Lady Dedlock was the mother of "orphan" Esther Summerson, who was disfurged by a bad case of smallpox.

Books are my husband's no-brainer gift for every occasion. He is great at picking out one or two from my wishlist (i.e., he remembers that I've mentioned wanting it), but always has at least one that he has found that I've never even heard of that he thinks I'll like.

A relatively new acquisition from March, I haven't read it yet, but the one that really jumped out reading the question is Yiddishkeit: Jewish Vernacular and the New Land by Paul Buhle and Harvey Pekar. The only reason I haven't read it yet is because I really want to give it time and attention and savor it.

This past Christmas my best friend took me out to lunch & gave me a few books, one of which was For One More Day by Mitch Albom. Having read Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven as a bookclub pick years ago, I knew what to expect from this author. I finished it on the same day she gave it to me; it's very short. It was a perfect way to spend a cold January night.

Questions 18 - I wonder what this says about me - that I'm narrow-minded? too controlling? - but I have not read a single book since 2009 (when I started tracking my reading) that I didn't personally pick out. Sometimes they were gifts, but I asked for them; sometimes they were from LTER or for Belle, but again I chose them.

The last one I read that was a gift was New Atlantis: Musicians Battle for the Survival of New Orleans which I guess was a pretty obvious pick for something that I was pretty guaranteed to like. This was given to me by a friend that works in Oxford's music books division, and I'm from Louisiana so it was a good thing to go back and forth on.

I don't read a lot of what I'd call "historical fiction," although I realize definitions of this may vary. To my surprise, I did read one relatively recently, Every Man for Himself by Beryl Bainbridge, which takes a real historical event, the fateful voyage of the Titanic, and mixes real people with fictional ones. I don't know how historically accurate it was, as I'm not a Titanic devotee, but I found it a compelling picture of a way of life that was soon to be largely destroyed by the first world war, as well as an interesting portrait of a fictional character who grows up a little over the course of the interrupted voyage. It was quite dramatic at the end, even though of course we all know what happens.

As for historical novels in general, I think I tend to shy away from them, but there have been several in addition to the Bainbridge that I've really enjoyed, including Wolf Hall and A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel, The Kingdom of This World by Alejo Carpentier, They Were Counted/They Were Found Wanting/They Were Divided by Miklós Bánffy, and The Siege/The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore. In all of these, to a greater or lesser extent, real historical events and people mixed with fictional ones.

There is another category that I would call "novels that take place in historical times," rather than "historical novels," because they deal with themes of human nature and human behavior rather than with historical events. In this category I would put the delightful The Corner That Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner, Shipwrecks by Akira Yoshimura, and Train Dreams by Denis Johnson, among books I've read relatively recently. And then of course there are books that play with history, like A History of the Siege of Lisbon by Jose Saramago and Terra Nostra by Carlos Fuentes.

History: A Novel by Elsa Morante

Time Period: WWII
Real vs Fiction: Characters are all fiction and symbolic, even the dogs and cats...especially the dogs and cats. Events are roughly real.
Is accuracy important here : yes and no
Personal preferences with HF: I don't know

Thoughts for those who want to know more (which are much less coherent than intended):

The theme is the small (personal?) histories lost in the larger, mythical historical picture. There is a sense that the larger events are accurate, and this brings a lot of tangibleness to the story. There is also a sense that the larger events are just summarizing ideas that happen out there somewhere, things that sweep over all the small histories of real people. This was intended to be a novel for everyone, the main characters are accessible, but also represent types of people, with the central adult character strongly a nobody, exaggerated.

Morante's purpose is a protest against the violence and world destruction (including environmental) in the 20th century. The cost of mythical progress. She considered the novel "an act of accusation".

In this sense, the accuracy is important, but so is the manipulation of the accuracy. The historical picture is given in news-clip language from a Communist-leaning point-of-view. The point-of-view changes real history into something a little different, without actually changing the facts.

I am looking at my list of books read this year with Rebecca's distinction in mind. Not all of the fiction I have read this year qualifies.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Factotum by Charles Bukowski
Kim by Rudyard Kipling
The Karla Trilogy by John le Carré: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy, and Smiley's People
Voss by Patrick White

It is hard to sort them, and a few are recent enough that some might question whether they are historical. Moby Dick is big on big, even universal, themes, but it would not be the book it is without being convincingly set in the environment of eighteenth century whaling. I read Factotum with the specific notion of learning about the year, in America, in which I was born; it was secondarily, however importantly, about character of certain sort. Kim rather naturally tells us about that time in history in India when the English ruled; I characterized the book when I listed it, however, as 'spy novel.' I lived through the time of The Karla Trilogy, and the books really drew me back into that time; intricate spy novels I suppose could be written in any era, but The Honourable Schoolby, especially, recalled for me southeast Asia of forty years ago, a time forgotten or never known by a big part of the population. And Voss is quite clearly a historical novel despite the strength of the characters in it; the strength of the setting equals the compulsions of the protagonists.

Robert

I know you said "the last book you read," but of the 13 fictional works I have read so far this year, 10 of them are historical in one sense or another (listed just below). Only two (# 6 and #7) might be classified as historical fiction, but I doubt that anyone would confuse them with "genre" historical fiction. There is one that is really a police procedural, but it is set at the end of the Stalinist period in the USSR (#8). Two (#2 and #10) don't really qualify as "historical fiction" because they were written during the subject times, yet they both convey a very immediate sense of the reality of the period, which is one of the attractions of genre historical fiction. The rest (#s 1, 3, 4, 5 and 9) are all contemporary, but they deal with historical figures, each in quite different yet fanciful ways, and they approach history from an almost philosophical angle. While they don't tell us much in the way of new facts about their subjects, they do tell us about our world or some historical aspect of our world — and very succinctly, I might add — that a full-blown historical novel could not hope to accomplish any better and perhaps not as lyrically. Sorry for exceeding the range of the question, but I guess the short answer would have been: I have not read any traditional historical fiction recently, and thus there would have been no post.

1 - Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes (1984)
2 - Moby-Dick, or the Whale by Herman Melville (1851)
3 - A Mapmaker's Dream: A Novel by James Cowan (1996)
4 - A Troubadour's Testament: A Novel by James Cowan (1998)
5 - Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman (1993)
6 - Morality Play by Barry Unsworth (1995)
7 - The House of Doctor Dee by Peter Ackroyd (1993)
8 - Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith (2008)
9 - Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino (1972)
10 - Arthurian Romances by Chrétien de Troyes (1170)

The last historical fiction book I read was Moby-Dick. This was based on a real event in history namely the sinking of the whaleship Essex, however the characters and many of the events were fictional. Herman Melville was painstaking in getting the social history right and of course the book goes into great detail on the operation of a whaling ship in the mid 19th century.

What is a curious aspect of the book is of course the numerous chapters about the natural history of the whale. It is as though Melville is trying to out do the historical (factual) element of the story, he wants to make it more real than the fictional aspect. It is very much a one off there is nothing else in fiction quite like it.

I read a lot of history books and hope there is not too much fiction in them.

#49-51 : I didn't consider Moby Dick, since it didn't feel historical to me. It felt very current, albeit, exotic.

>47 rebeccanyc: The sequel to Wolf Hall is due out in May...(both in the UK and US, I believe)
-------------------------------------

Technically, a work of historical fiction would be a work in which the author is writing about another time period not his/her own. Sir Walter Scott was one of the earliest writers in English to write historical fiction. So, technically, Moby Dick is not historical fiction; Melville was writing of his time. It's historical to you because it was written 150+ years ago, but not the author.

THAT SAID, for the purpose of the question, I was more or less leaving the interpretation of the phrase 'historical fiction' up to you all, so carry on.

My immediate thought had been Beijing Coma, which I read last year, but I hadn't seen >53 avaland: then. It's good to have a definition of historical fiction and I think it's a good one, as writers writing events that are contemporary to them is hardly historical. So thanks, Avaland, and thanks also for making the distinction of Scott as a "writer in English".

Using your definition, my last five would be

1. The Last of the Mohicans about the Seven Years War, read 2012
2. Rob Roy about a historical figure, read 2012
3. The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson about the Wars of the Roses, read 2011
(there seems to be a lot of "Boys' Own" here)
4. The Dreadful Judgement about the Great Fire of London, read 2011
5. Wolf Hall read 2010

I read dchaikin's History: A Novel last year and thought it was excellent, as is his discussion of it, but Morante was writing about events she lived through, so it doesn't really follow the definition.

I also like Rebecca's distinction of "novels that take place in historical times" versus historical fiction.

I have just finished Island of Wings by Karin Altenberg, which was mostly excellent, and quite obviously historical fiction. The two main characters, the Reverend Neil MacKenzie and his wife Lizzie, are based on real historical personages who spent a number of years on the isolated islands of St Kilda.

I have a friend who hates historical fiction and movies based on real people, as he claims that the verisimilitude is never quite there and that it gives a false picture of reality. I do feel somewhat uncomfortable with some of this fiction, especially when it represents the feelings of historical persons as fact, but I am not opposed to fictional reworkings of the lives of real people.

What do you guys feel about this kind of writing? Do you think there are boundaries that term how far a writer can push the envelope in writing about 'real' people?

There were two origins for this question. 1. was JCO's comments about her novel Them, which she called 'history as fiction,' which is interesting as she wrote the book just after the events happened. I'll try to elaborate on this once I reread her introduction again.

The other inspiration for the question was a conversation I had with tess over on Tess's Tomes thread. If you haven't met her, she is a history teacher and a fan of good historical fiction. I don't think she'd mind if I reposted her response to some of the questions I asked her:

What is good historical fiction? I don’t know if there is an absolute answer to that question. I’m sure “beauty” is in the eye of the beholder on that question. However, for me, I will use a quote (from whom, I’m not sure), that good historical fiction is the “hallucination of presence.” Good historical fiction is akin to time travel, allowing us to know more than the textbooks and/or manuscripts would permit. That being said, there is an awful lot of “trashy” historical fiction out there! There is a difference between a novel that takes place during a specific time period and true historical fiction. To me, historical fiction is based on an actual event or the life of an actual person. Novels can be written in a specific time period, such as the Victorian Age, but still not be based on a true event or person; such as the Jane Austen novels.

While I agree with her general description (hallucination of presence...etc), I personally would not limit the definition historical fiction to actual events or actual persons. I'm more a fan of social history and am conscious of the 'silences' in history - the missing voices of the poor, people of color, women...etc. With the exception of a few surviving diaries, it is only fiction that can provide these missing voices. No one would treat fiction as necessarily fact, but it certainly can convey truth.

On the Moby Dick note, it seems there was a book or article some time ago that discussed the dangers of thinking that classics (for example) are accurate mirrors of their time. I believe both Austen and Dickens were discussed.

#54 - good point SL. She wrote the book in 1974. To me, it was historical in the sense that she was trying to re-capture a historical time.

#56 - interesting quote by Tess. I don't think historical fiction needs to fully honor the time period, unless the purpose of the fiction is history. A fictionalized "historical" time period can leave a lot freedom for the imagination. Anyway, most authors are writing about their "today", even when they are writing about yesterday.

>56 avaland:, 58 - Good points all round. I agree that historical fiction need not be based on real lives. I just find it interesting that so much is based on actual personages, and wonder what implications this could have for one's conception of the past. I think that taking liberties with 'real' people can sometimes lead to a misleading idea of history, but maybe the writer is purposely writing an alternate history, or making some point about historical accuracy. I think some of this cropped up in discussions of reviews of The Orphan Master's Son, which is about more recent history, but still fairly 'historical'. (I haven't read it, so I can't really comment).

>58 dchaikin: Yes, that is a good point. The same is said certainly of those who write about the future.

The last book I read that I might describe as historical fiction, by some definition or another, would be Thomas Wharton's Icefields, which is set at the beginning of the 20th century in the Canadian rockies. While it does have a setting in the past, I'm not convinced that history has really much to do with the story. It is more about a timeless kind of exploration, discovery, obsession or preoccupation, mystical experience. This author chose to use the past. The book has a note that declares the story a work of fiction and thus contains historical and geographical inaccuracies.

Prior to the Wharton book, my pick would be Them, though technically it would never qualify as historical fiction, as Oates was writing of the very recent past. It was written in the late 1960s and chronicles the life of one of her night students, who in the book named Maureen Wendell. It begins in the 1930s and climaxes near the end of the book with the Detroit riots of '67. Here is what Oates has to say in her introduction to the paperback edition I have (I have omitted a few lines to save on typing):

This is a work of history in fiction form—that is, in personal perspective, which is the only kind of history that exists.... (omitted her description of how she came to hear of Maureen's story) ....My initial feeling about her life was, 'This must be fiction, this can't all be real!' My more permanent feeling was, 'This is the only kind of fiction that is real.' And so the novel Them, which is truly about a specific "them" and not just a literary technique of pointing to us all, is based mainly upon Maureen's numerous recollections. Her remarks, where possible, have been incorporated into the narrative verbatim, and it is to her own terrible obsession with her personal history that I owe the voluminous details of this novel. ... Because their world was so remote from me it entered me with tremendous power, and in a sense the novel wrote itself. Certain episodes, however, have been revised after careful research indicated that their context was confused. Nothing in the novel has been exaggerated in order to increase the possibility of drama—indeed, the various sordid and shocing events of slum life, detailed in other naturalistic works, have been understated here, mainly because of my fear that too much reality would become unbearable.

As far as what I would classify as genre historical fiction, Jane Stevenson's excellent trilogy that begins with The Winter Queen comes to mind. As does the many books by Kenneth Roberts (Arundel, Rabble in Arms, The Northwest Passage...etc I read as a 12 year old (if it was in the house, I read it). Roberts won a special Pulitzer for making history real to the reader (or something like that). But neither of these are recent reads.

I've been reading quite a bit of historical fiction the past few years, including The Song of Achilles, which I read this past weekend. It's a retelling of The Iliad as narrated by Patroclus, Achilles' best friend, most trusted companion and (at least in this novel) devoted lover. As I mentioned in my review, which I've just finished, I haven't read The Iliad or The Odyssey, so I can't say if it's in complete concordance with Homer's work, but Miller does have a master's degree in Classics and teaches Classics to high school students, so I would assume she knows the story far better than most.

The other notable work of historical fiction I've read (and reviewed) most recently is Gillespie and I by Jane Harris; both of these novels were nominated for this year's Orange Prize. It's set in 1888 Glasgow during the International Exhibition of Science, Art and Industry, and in 1933 London. From reading the Acknowledgments section at the end of the book, it seems to be based in part on two actual notable Victorian Scottish trials that were chronicled in William Roughead's Classic Crimes.

I'm not sure if I can say what kind(s) of historical novels I like; I'll have to think about this a bit. I've enjoyed other books set in Victorian England, such as The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt, The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst, and The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds. Wolf Hall is probably my favorite historical novel, which is set in Tudor England as I'm sure you know, but The Glass Room by Simon Mawer, set in pre-World War II Czechoslovakia and based on the Villa Tugendhat home created by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, was also outstanding, as was The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver, which took place mainly in Mexico and featured Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera as leading characters. I'm sure there are others I can name; I'll have to review the books I've read recently to come up with other novels that I enjoyed.

Darryl, I'm interested that Gillespie and I may be based in part on trials in Classic Crimes, as I read and enjoyed that book last year. Do you remember which trials they were?

Yes; they were the Trial of Oscar Slater, and the Trial of John Watson Laurie.

I'm in the middle of reading Alone in Berlin which is based on real people and events in WWII Germany. Included at the end are images of some of the actual postcards, investigation documents, witness statements, and more. I haven't read the afterword in detail yet, so as not to spoil too much, but do sense that the true story forms a strong basis for the story.

In general, I tend to like alternative histories, which are a variation on historical fiction - books like The Plot Against America, SS-GB, and Fatherland take real people and/or events and re-imagine the 'what if...?'.

I should have mentioned that I am now (very slowly) reading Europe Central, which certainly qualifies as a novel about history. I'll have a lot more to say about it when I (eventually) finish it.

I've just finished the second of Anthony Burgess's two historical/biographical novels set in Elizabethan England: Nothing Like the Sun about William Shakespeare, and A Dead Man in Deptford about Christopher Marlowe. In the case of both men there are huge gaps in the historical knowledge about their lives, gaps which have fueled much speculation over the years. Burgess attempts to fill those gaps, leaning towards the sensational side in doing so.

"The virtue of a historical novel is its vice - the flat-footed affirmation of possibility as fact." So says Anthony Burgess in his afterward to A Dead Man in Deptford.

The author's "affirmation" that Shakespeare was bisexual and Marlowe a spy was not, for me, the chief value of these novels. Instead it was the immersion in Elizabethan life and language (both were written in period English), and a taste of the political and religious issues that dominated the day.

I enjoy historical fiction, but I'm leery about novels that take liberties with the historical record when it comes to real people and events. It's easy to take fiction for fact. I like it when an author includes with his or her novel a note telling the reader how much of the story is based on historical sources and how much on imagination.

Historical fiction is one of my favorite genres. Some of it I view as guilty pleasure and some of it as really great literature. I agree with Steven that I like when an author includes a note about what is real and what is made up.

My narrowest definition of historical fiction is fiction that was created primarily to describe the time period it was written about from a fairly large distance in time. I also tend to consider something historical fiction when it deals with characters that actually existed. As I said, this is my narrowest definition, and I can definitely widen it to include a larger variety of books at times.

I'm currently reading Song of Achilles. I started the year with Outlander which I'd hoped would qualify as a "guilty pleasure" but was unfortunately not that pleasurable! Last year I read Elizabeth I by Margaret George, and a couple of Sharon Kay Penman's novels.

When I was reading the Aeneis this month I was struck by the thought that this could be the closest Latin literature had come to the historical novel. Written between 29 and 19 B.C., it paints a prequel to the foundation of Rome by linking it to the Trojan war. Of course, for us the fictional element grossly outweighs the historical, but readers in the first century may have felt differently. There are references to events that are in the future for Aeneas but in the past for the reader: the Punic wars, the battle of Actium. Whether it was propaganda for Augustus or a politically correct way to criticise imperial policy, the Aeneis blends history and fiction into a great story.

QUESTION 20

Having just read a book where the author takes 12 mega-bestsellers and discusses what he perceives to be the 10 characteristics they have in common, I thought we might try this on a more personal level(yes, even the Da Vinci Code has things in common with Jaws and To Kill A Mockingbird).

Look at the most recent three novels—not by the same author—which you rated very highly (and please list the three for us) Are there any common characteristics between them? For example, are the types of protagonists the same? or, are the themes or settings similar in any way (i.e. all set in cities)? Are the viewpoints similar, the narration? Are the tones in each book similar? Is there some element in the story that they all might have in common (i.e. religion, poverty...)

Take your time. Have a think. That's what I'm going to do.

I know, I know, this question sounds like an English Lit assignment...extra points for those who take a stab at it... (identify your three books and then you can't help but start thinking about them....)

So, my three are: Them, Salvage the Bones and Go With Me (I had to go back to 2011, because I had too many Oates in 2012...)

So far, I've only thought of 2 things these three books have in common: poverty and a certain amount of suspense, but 'survival' might also be one. In two of the books, poverty is an important part of the theme, it might even be called the antagonist, the force they must struggle against. And while there is poverty in Go With Me, it is part of the setting, but the narrative is a more old-fashioned tale of chivalry.

All three have women protagonists, but the spotlight is shared with at least one male characters in each. Them is set in the slums of Detroit from the 1930s- 1960s; Salvage is set in rural Mississippi at the time of Katrina, and Go With Me is set in rural Vermont. Two are family stories, one is not technically, but it could be argued that the 3 in Go With Me are a makeshift family of a kind (or perhaps a team).

And when I say there is suspense, I mean that it is inherent in the narrative, as one would expect when 'survival,' on one level or another, is part of all three stories.

I like the question! But it does take some thought, doesn't it?

The last 3 highly rated books I've read are Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh, and Excellent Women by Barbara Pym.

On the surface, they don't necessarily go together - historical love story, british 1900s satire, and hmmm, how would I classify Excellent Women?? Well, anyway, they all separately fit into categories I tend to gravitate to - british lit (Waugh and Pym), books by women with Miller and Pym (I know that's broad, but it tends to be true for some reason), historical fiction.

But when I think about it more, they do have certain aspects in common. One is that they are narrowly focused on one or two characters. Song of Achilles and Excellent Women are both in first person, and Decline and Fall really sticks to Paul Pennyfeather's experiences. Also, in my reading of these books, the characters almost overwhelm the plot. Even in a book as plot driven as Song as Achilles, what I'll remember in the long run about that book is the characterization of Patroclus and Achilles - how they change as they grow up, how they interact with each other, and how their personalities effect the outcomes of the book (even more than the fates ;-) ). The same is true of Decline and Fall. Even though some crazy things happen to Pennyfeather, I'll remember most his personality and banal acceptance of everything that happens to him more than the actual plot of the book.

Also, in terms of writing style, these books all use fairly "straight ahead" language, definitely nothing fancy or experimental, but there are also flashes of insight and brilliance that jump out when most of the language is simple. I love that in a book.

Tough one to answer without getting lost.

The three:
The Dart League King by Keith Lee Morris
Oil on Water by Helon Habila
Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Quick descriptions
The Dart League King : Explores losers in small town Idaho playing darts and thinking a lot
Oil on Water : Explores the consequences of oil exploration in Nigeria. The plot follows a low level Nigerian journalist's pursuit of a rebel-held English hostage in the Nigerian Delta
Moby Dick : 19th century American whaling story. Explores a lot of stuff.

Similarities
These are so different, that I couldn't see any obvious similarities. Looking closer I noticed, first, that each includes psychological explorations, but in very different ways. The Dart League King lets each character narrate their section, but in a very stream of consciousness-y way. Oil on Water is 1st person observational. The book studies several different characters, all from the view of the same journalist. Moby Dick begins as a simple first person narration, but slides into third person, and here it begins to really explore the psychology and sanity of the key characters, but all from the outside.

Then I noticed that each opens with young man narrating. And each man is a nobody in some sense (a drug-addict loser/a low-level inexperienced journalists/Ishmael, the penniless carefree adventure-seeker). So, each story then becomes very personal, even when, in summary, the stories aren't really personal.

Not sure that all means anything important, however.

Very interesting observations!

I'm having a little trouble to pick which three books to list, because there are several books I've read relatively recently that I really liked, but I don't know if they would be true favorites in the long run. Since I don't give rating stars, I think I'll just list them, I'll try to pick the ones that I think I'll continue to think were the best. They are:

The Corner That Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner -- about relationships and life in a 14th century British convent, charming and pointed
GB 84 by David Peace -- about the 1984 coal miners strike in Britain, brutal and chilling
The Kingdom of This World by Alejo Carpentier -- about the Haitian revolution

The thing that first strikes me, and in fact surprises me, is that all three of these are historical in some way (connecting this question to the last one). I think what this says about my reading taste is that I am interested in times and places other than our own.

Another similarity I see is that although they are written in different styles, all are very well written. Warner writes subtly and with great wit; Peace abruptly and confusingly, but with great cumulative impact; and Carpentier in a deceptively simply way that nonetheless conveys some very complex ideas in a vivid and compelling way.

Finally, although perhaps this is true of a lot of literature, all three involve people who are struggling in some way against their environment, be it political, interpersonal, or both. I guess that's life.

I wasn't sure about the definition of "rated very highly," but thought it might be interesting to look at novels I had given five stars to, something that only do for maybe two or three books a year, on average. So, the last three novels to be given the coveted five-star rating are:

Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit by P.G. Wodehouse
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

I don't think those three books have anything in common, other than being set in the first half of the 20th century. Well, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and The Book Thief both have young protagonists, while Bertie Wooster is... young at heart? Really, he's far and away the most immature of the three of them. Come to think of it, both A Tree Grows and The Book Thief feature young girls to whom books are extremely important. Also poverty and hardship. And there are probably lots and lots of other similarities between those two that I'm not thinking of, because I had to go back way too far to find three five-star novels, and my memory of them has faded. But whatever those two books are doing, the Wodehouse is probably doing precisely the opposite.

Hmm. Let's try four-and-a-half star books, maybe. Excluding graphic novels, which, despite the name, I think are really a different art form entirely, we have:

Matched by Ally Condie
My Antonia by Willa Cather
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Which also all feature young people (although My Antonia covers a pretty big time frame, and when we get our last look at the title character, she isn't young any longer). I'd say they also feature times and places significantly different from my own: two science fictional futures and one rural past. Hmm. It seems like there ought to be much more profound things to tease out of those titles, but I'm not at all sure what.

Interesting question.

The three books that qualify as my personal favorites have been tops on my list for a while, but since I re-read the first two of them recently (I added my thoughts on The Book Thief to my thread yesterday afternoon, so it is freshest in my mind), I can count them without feeling that I'm cheating here:

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer

What strikes me as the greatest common denominator between my three favorites is that they're each written in a unique way. Cannery Row is basically a series of short stories threaded together by common people and place; The Book Thief is narrated by Death; and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society is written as a series of letters. They all take place around the same time period. Cannery Row is set during the Depression; the latter two take place during WWII. In all three stories, the characters are struggling to strive against a backdrop of hard scrabble circumstances: the folks on the Row are cheerfully dealing with poverty and the characters in TBT & Guernsey are dealing with circumstances thrust upon them by war. The Book Thief and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society have literature as a source of salvation for the characters. In TBT, the main character learns to read and this proves to be a way to bond with the people around her which "saves" her figuratively and now that I think about it, quite literally at the end. The people on the Guernsey island, when they are caught meeting together after curfew by their Nazi occupiers, make up an on- the- spot alibi that they were having a book club meeting. The fake book club saves them and this proves to be the way the people living on Guernsey bond as well - through reading. Also, given the time period and subject matter of the three it would seem they would be dark and depressing reads, but they are not.

Another common thing of all three is that they were read as part of a group. I read Cannery Row years ago but it was the first on the Steinbeckathon list; the latter two were book club picks.

My three would be

1. Beijing Coma by Ma Jian
2. The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh
3. Triste's History by Horacio Vazquez Rial

All three tell the story of young men caught up in major changes in their country's social framework and/or history. I think I am drawn to the idea of how real world change affects the individual and conversely, the powerlessness of the individual in most cases to affect that change.

I also noticed as I was listing these, that all three have been translated into English, so perhaps this is not a theme that authors living in English speaking countries are drawn to as a rule, although books like Things Fall Apart and The Reluctant Fundamentalist would immediately provide a counter to that thought.

Hmm. I had to go back to last year as nothing from this year has blown me away. My three favorites (restricted to fiction) from last year were:

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
2666 by Roberto Bolano
Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa'Thiong'o

My conclusions are that I like:

really long books
really (some would say overly) detailed books
dark humor
something about the nature of good and evil, why people do evil acts, etc.
how the socio-political environment influences this idea of evil
multiple narrators
a hint of the magical, maybe

Can't make any other connections right now (I'm sick and a little pouty about it), but I like this question and may come back to it.

>74 rebeccanyc: My first thought was to say, "books you loved" but thought of "highly rated" as a kind of synonym - forgetting, of course, that we do actually rate books here on LT (or at least some of us do). I guess everyone got the idea.

I almost feel like I am cheating in answering this question. Quite by accident I recently read a group of novels by different people about entirely different subjects but which fall into a category that someone has dubbed for me as "quirky dreamy novellas." It seems that pure animal magnetism drew me to these particular books at this particular time. Three of them are:

The Mapmaker's Dream by James Cowan
Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

Here are the things they have in common.

1) Each of them consists of less than 200 pages.
2) None of them has a plot yet one cannot resist turning the pages.
3) Each of them uses a series of vignettes to paint verbal pictures, yet none of them are illustrated.
4) None of them has a human protagonist, but instead, respectively, a map, time and the city.
5) While none has a human protagonist per se, they are all about real historical figures.
6) Each of them is beautifully written, dreamlike and a potent stimulus to the imagination

The Renaissance mapmaker is dreaming of a great mappa mundi that he is creating based on the tales told to him by travelers to the far corners of the then known world.

Einstein's dreams are all about time — distorted, twisted, reversed, repeated, extended, obliterated.

The invisible cities are figment's of Marco Polo's imagination, told in Scheherazade-like fashion to assuage the insatiable appetites of Kublai Khan.

Each of these novels, individually and collectively, are absolute treasures.

I predicted what my last three 5-star books would have in common before going to check what those titles actually were, and I was correct in my thoughts. The three books are:

Tell it to the Trees by Anita Rau Badami
The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje
There but for the by Ali Smith

Things in common:

- all are shortish novels - less than 350 pages
- all are written in complex, sparse prose that requires the reader to concentrate on filling in the gaps. These are not authors who spell everything out for you.
- all have non-linear narratives. The Cat's Table is narrated by one person, but it jumps from past to present. The other two novels have more than one narrator, and move around in time.

I guessed at these points, as I know the type of book I enjoy. Something I didn't realize is that I am drawn to stories about children, as the Badami and Smith novels both have child narrators, and Ondaatje's narrator is telling a story from his childhood. They are also all novels that are theme-focused, rather than plot-focused. I don't think these authors set out to tell a good story; I think they set out to say something about the world.

QUESTION 21

(I had this on my master list of questions, and Cait's post suggested it was time to use it!)

What was the last ADULT book you read that significantly featured a child? What role did the child play in the book? Could the story have used an adult instead?

Well, one of the main characters of The Elegance of the Hedgehog is twelve. And maybe the novel could have used an adult in her place, but, really, a 12-year-old with that kid's attitude is just about tolerable, because you can at least hold out the hope that she might grow out of it. In an adult, it would probably have been unbearable.

I have to go back to 2010 to Touch by Adania Shibli -- a series of short sketches of a Palestinian family in Israel from the perspective of a young girl in 1980s. She changes ages, and does grow up to marriage age. The child's view neutralizes the preconceptions and the judgment. It also separated the girl from much of the drama. Because the older characters are much more emotionally invested in what is going on, while the youngest stays a little aloof.

Another books is Empire of the Sun, a WWII novel told by a precocious pre-teen British expat who becomes a Japanese prisoner of war near Shanghai. The contradiction between the boys optimistic sense of adventure the tragic reality is quite powerful, and not possible with a normal adult.

Earlier this year, I read Adventures of Mottel, the Cantor's Son by Sholem Aleichem for a challenge to read a book published in the year you were born. I was surprised, since I've had it since the 1970s, that I hadn't read it before! The story is told by Mottle, who is about 8 or 9 when the book begins, and he is a delightful creation, mischievous and an astute observer of the people and world around him, first in an eastern European shtetl and then in New York. The story of the troubles of the Jews in Russia and their struggles in America could have been told by an adult, and could have been just as perceptive, but it would not have been nearly as fun.

I was surprised to see I had read a book with a child protagonist so recently, as I know I read lots of books with youngish adults in them but didn't think I read books with children as main characters.

Looking further back, to last year, I read Shipwrecks by Akira Yoshimura, which was told through the eyes of a boy who starts out being 9 years old. It is partly a coming of age story, as the boy learns about himself, the dangers in the harsh world he lives in, and the shocking secret of his village, so it was appropriate for the story to be from a child's perspective. However, as I noted in my review, it was very difficult for me to believe that the boy was as young as 9 at the beginning of the book, even given that children grew up faster and had to take on more adult responsibilities in medieval times. It was easier to imagine him doing some of the things he did towards the end of the book, when he was about 12.

Was by Geoff Ryman. The three main characters are: Judy Garland, seen as a ten year old and then as the teen actor of "The Wizard of Oz"; a gay man in the 1980s who is captivated by the Garland film as a child; and an imagined child in 1870s and 1880s Kansas who provides L. Frank Baum with the model for his Dorothy. Garland and Dorothy especially must carry adult-sized burdens and sorrows while still children - Garland is seen by her parents as having responsibility for saving their marriage and finances, and Dorothy suffers the poverty, deprivation and meanness of prairie settler life. A brilliant, heartbreaking book about how the world fails children.

The child's view neutralizes the preconceptions and the judgment {and} drama.

Excellent observation dan; that's what often draws me in. I'll go take a look at my reads.

Life of Pi, read last summer, would be the last one I read. I was reluctant to read this based on the hype it received, but I picked it up on one of those slow summer days and I must say I really enjoyed it.

The story could not have existed without the child Piscine Patel and his companion Richard Parker. The anthropomorphizing of Richard and the self deception necessary for Pi's survival had something very childlike about them, as did Pi's insistence on his version of the facts. I could not imagine an adult doing the same things under the same circumstances.

#88 Life of Pi is a interesting example. I wonder whether, if we keep our suspension of disbelief on the same level as we do with Pi, an adult couldn't be pushed in some kind of similar way.

Argh! I can't believe this thread has been going on since early last month and somehow I've missed out on all the fun. I think I'll blame my computer for nefariously hiding it!

Anyway, to answer question 21, I recently listened to the wonderful Cat's Table on audiobook, read by the author. This gave it a deeply autobiographical feel, though I believe this story is more the adventure that Ondaatje wanted to have when he was 12 than anything that really happened to him.

A.S. Byatt uses the figure of a young girl, a "thin child" living during WW II to mediate the myth of Ragnarok, one of the Canongate series, which is less of a retelling than perhaps a refocusing. Byatt is most interested in the agents of the apocalypse -- Loki and his children by Angurboda, the old one: Fenrir, the wolf; Jormungander, the snake; and Hel, the goddess, who Thor sets to rule over Helheim, the land of those dead who did not die in battle. While the "thin child" finds an odd kind of comfort in her copy of Asgard and the Gods while her father has been lost in the skies over Africa and her mother has remained in London to aid the war effort, we know the war will not end in Ragnarok, at least not immediately. Byatt's forebodings are for us, who are despoiling the earth and creating our own destruction.

At the end of tale, Byatt's "thin child." reunited with her parents continues to be haunted -- less by the spectre of war than by the ever-shrinking outdoor spaces of her childhood. She learns to live within a domestic peacetime garden, but beyond the garden gate looms the unknown.

In Ratner's Star by Don DeLillo a teenage math prodigy enters a bizarre community where scientists from all over the world, supposedly all working together to decipher a message from space, are instead pursuing their own esoteric and often ludicrous researches.

The role of Billy (age 14, if memory serves) is principally that of an innocent and frequently astonished observer. His youth isn't essential to the plot, but it does make it more plausible that other researchers would be more open to him. As a child he doesn't threaten the others by having an agenda of his own, and he is a more impressionable and open-minded listener.

So this isn't a novel about a child or childhood, but rather a "see ourselves as others see us" narrative device.

Children of Dynmouth. There are three major child characters but the key one is Timothy Gedge, a 15 yo who wants to participate in the local talent show and has dreams of being 'found' by Hughie Green. The fact that his act is based on the famous 'brides in the bath' murderer, George Joseph Smith, reveals all you need to know about his psychology. In pursuit of this goal Gedge damages all he comes into contact with, almost less a child than a force of nature. It is his sheer banality that makes him genuinely creepy.

There but for the by Ali Smith is split into four sections, each with a different narrator. The last section is narrated by a ten year old girl named Brooke, who is a character throughout the entire novel. Smith's narrators vary in age, and that gave her themes a very universal feel. As well, Brooke is quite bright, and more than a bit precocious. I would have found her voice irritating if she was an adult, but since she was a child, I found her delightful. She came right after a section narrated by an 80 year old, so there was an interesting contrast in voice.

>89 dchaikin: The first thing that came to my mind when I read your comment was Rubashov. I don't imagine that's the kind of adult suspension you were thinking about, yet I keep hovering around prison novels and prison writings when thinking of your comment.

Well, I'm curious now. I had to look up Rubashov (in Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon). Definitely not the impression I intended to leave.

QUESTION 21

A lighter question to give the gray matter a bit rest. Since we are all avid readers... (and this has come up elsewhere on Club Read...) You can copy and paste the questions to your post and then add the answers. You can answer some or all of the questions, it's up to you.


To date, in 2012, how many books have you:

Purchased new?
Purchased used?
Borrowed?
Been given to review?
Been given as gifts?
Mysteriously acquired?
Total acquired thus far in 2012:

And of those acquired how many:

Are paper?
Are digital?
Are some other format?

And how many have you given away?
or sold?

And finally how many have you read from those acquired in 2012 thus far?
And how many books have you generally read in 2012?

This is not a contest, you don't win anything for the most (or least) books bought. Please feel free to add any other stats you wish to :-)

ETA two more questions and clarify one...

Purchased new? 0
Purchased used? 1
Borrowed? 0
Been given to review? 0
Been given as gifts? 1
Mysteriously acquired? 0
Total acquired thus far in 2012: 2

And of those acquired how many:

Are paper? 2
Are digital? 0
Are some other format? 0

And finally how many have you read thus far?: Read one of those two so far. And have read 5 books so far this year. (I like to read but don't do as much as I'd like.)

And even though you say no one wins for most or least books bought... I WIN!!!

Purchased new? 24
Purchased used? 8
Borrowed? 1
Been given to review? --- possibly 3 of the 15 listed as 'gifts' could be put here, but I'm not obligated...
Been given as gifts? 15
Mysteriously acquired? 0
Total acquired thus far in 2012: 47

And of those acquired how many:

Are paper? All but one
Are digital? 0
Are some other format? 1 audio, unabridged.

And how many have you given away? well, 2 in the last week. I don't really keep count. I think we took a box or two to the library in February.
or sold? None.

And finally how many have you read from those acquired in 2012 thus far? 11 total, 5 partial reads, 1 reading now (some of the books acquired are not books meant to be read cover to cover)
And how many books have you generally read in 2012? 30 total, 5 or 6 partials, 1 reading now.

Hmm, I'm getting closer to parity, aren't I?

To date, in 2012, how many books have you:

I have acquired e-books this year, but I have not kept track of them because I don't quite believe in them, and I haven't read any of them. I don't have any new books in any other format except on paper. So all my answers are restricted to what I have acquired and read in print on paper.

Purchased new? 53
Purchased used? 35
Borrowed? 0
Been given to review? 0
Been given as gifts? 1
Mysteriously acquired? 1, actually acquired as a benefit of subscribing to a newsletter; 2, from the bookshelves at church
Total acquired thus far in 2012: 92

I am, despite a single large order from AbeBooks, surprised that so many are used.

And finally how many have you read thus far? I have read 38 books so far this year. I believe that 21 of the books that I have read this year are books that I have acquired this year.

Robert

Oh, dear, I'm a little afraid to examine some of these stats. Let's see...

To date, in 2012, how many books have you:

Purchased new? 31. Although a lot of them were cheap remaindered volumes. Those can be so hard to resist!
Purchased used? 14. (Blame the library sale.)
Borrowed? None
Been given to review? 3. (I think I said 2 on another thread, but apparently I forgot to count the one I just received.)
Been given as gifts? 3. (Including two from certain generous folks right here. Thank you again!)
Mysteriously acquired? None. That seems to account for all of them.
Total acquired thus far in 2012: 51. With more on the way. Sigh.

And of those acquired how many:

Are paper? All of them
Are digital? None
Are some other format? None, but now I'm curious as to what those other formats might be.

And how many have you given away? None. My house tends to be something of a black hole for books: they come in, but they don't leave. I did donate a number of unread books that I'd finally realized I didn't actually want to read to the library a year or two ago, but that's a rare and significant event for me.
or sold? None.

And finally how many have you read from those acquired in 2012 thus far? 13. The fact that it's that low is almost certainly due to a concentrated effort to read books I already owned at the start of the year, thanks to the Books Off My Book Shelves group.
And how many books have you generally read in 2012? 57.

To date, in 2012, how many books have you:

Purchased new? 15
Purchased used? 7
Borrowed? 0
Been given to review? 1
Been given as gifts? 0
Mysteriously acquired? 0
Total acquired thus far in 2012: 24

And of those acquired how many:

Are paper? 18
Are digital? 4
Are some other format? 2 audio

And how many have you given away? 0
or sold? maybe 6 to 10 I forget which ones bleed over from last year

And finally how many have you read from those acquired in 2012 thus far? 5
And how many books have you generally read in 2012? 13

To date, in 2012, how many books have you:

11 - Purchased new
96 - Purchased used
1 - Borrowed (actually just a friend trying out the lending of Kindle books)
1 - Been given to review
0 - Been given as gifts (but Fathers Day is around the corner)
0 - Mysteriously acquired
109 - Total acquired thus far in 2012

And of those acquired how many:

106 - Are paper
3 - Are digital (not including free e-books)
0 - Are some other format

And how many have you given away or sold? - about 120

And finally how many have you read from those acquired in 2012 thus far? - 4

And how many books have you generally read in 2012? - 49

Purchased new? 20
Purchased used? 32
Borrowed? 0
Been given to review? 1
Been given as gifts? 0
Mysteriously acquired? 0
Total acquired thus far in 2012: 53 (not including books for the kids, or my wife)

And of those acquired how many:
Are paper? 50
Are digital? 3
Are some other format? 0

Given away? 0
Sold? 0
Read from those acquired in 2012? 6 (started three others)
Generally read in 2012? 24

Optimism question - Of the 42 unread books acquired in 2012, how many do I definitely intend to read this year: 9

ETA - five more books arrived today

It is interesting to compare how many (total) have been acquired thus far this year with how many books have been read thus far, and then to take note whether any books are leaving the house...

Purchased new? 79
Purchased used? 0
Borrowed? 0
Been given to review? 0
Been given as gifts? 3
Mysteriously acquired? 0
Total acquired thus far in 2012: 82
New category: Books that don't go on the TBR Two cookbooks and one guidebook

And of those acquired how many:

Are paper? All

And how many have you given away?
or sold? 0

And finally how many have you read from those acquired in 2012 thus far? 20
And how many books have you generally read in 2012? 32

As I noted in the other thread where we discussed this, there are just far too many interesting books and I wish I had more time for reading and/or could read faster with comprehension. Of the books I read that had been on my TBR for some time, several had been there for more than a year and two for decades. Also, because my life has been busy and somewhat stressful recently, I've been reduced to reading shorter, lighter books, and I long to get back to some gloomy tomes!

And a big thank you to LT for me being able to find these stats so easily!

avaland, you actually have a better idea than I do about these stats - you're the one who brings them home. Enabler.

To date, in 2012, how many books have you:

Purchased new? 3
Purchased used? 10
Been given to review? 7
Been given as gifts? 2
Mysteriously acquired? 0
Total acquired thus far in 2012: 22

And of those acquired how many:

Are paper? 21
Are digital? 1
Are some other format? 0

And how many have you given away? 0
or sold? 0

And finally how many have you read from those acquired in 2012 thus far? 8
And how many books have you generally read in 2012? 22

To date, in 2012, how many books have you:

Purchased new? 20
Purchased used? 11
Borrowed? 0
Been given to review? 4
Been given as gifts? 3
Mysteriously acquired? 6
Total acquired thus far in 2012: 44

And of those acquired how many:

Are paper? 44
Are digital? 0
Are some other format? 0

And how many have you given away? 0
or sold? 0

Other books given as gifts: 17

And finally how many have you read from those acquired in 2012 thus far? 14
And how many books have you generally read in 2012? 19

>107 dukedom_enough: Dukie dear, I merely tallied the books added to my library since January, which, as you know, is not the same as the books added to your library (I know, I know, it's physically all the same library, under the same roof....) I'm sure you could tally the same way (and I am merely the transporter, not the enabler. Did you want me to refuse the offer of the Miéville arc?)

>108 Cait86: Very impressive! 22 acquired, 22 read. Very impressive indeed.

I think my 'given as gifts' category is high because I didn't get my holiday gifts logged in until January.

Purchased new? =32*
Purchased used? = 19
Borrowed? = 1 + **
Been given to review? = 2
Been given as gifts? = 5
Mysteriously acquired? = 0
Total acquired thus far in 2012: = 59

* This does not include 3 reference books, which I don't count as they don't go into Mnt TBR.

And of those acquired how many:

Are paper? = all of them
Are digital? = 0
Are some other format? ** I've also borrowed 2 audio books from the library, but they don't go in my TBR pile--I download books as I need them to listen to while completing mindless projects such as painting. Thus, they don't intrude on my "book" time. I do count them in my "books read" list though. So my stats are a bit wonky, but oh well, it works for me.

And how many have you given away?
or sold? = lots, but I haven't kept track

And finally how many have you read from those acquired in 2012 thus far? = 5
And how many books have you generally read in 2012? = 25

Purchased new: 44
Purchased used: 12
Been given as gifts (i.e., they were free): 5
Total acquired thus far in 2012: 61

Paper: 45
Digital: 16

How many read from those acquired in 2012? 9
Total books read in 2012: 23

To date, in 2012, how many books have you:

Purchased new? 9
Purchased used? 37
Borrowed? 3
Been given to review? 0
Been given as gifts? 1
Mysteriously acquired?
Total acquired thus far in 2012: 50

And of those acquired how many:

Are paper? 42
Are digital? 8
Are some other format?

And how many have you given away?
or sold? 0

And finally how many have you read from those acquired in 2012 thus far? 16
And how many books have you generally read in 2012? 24

To date, in 2012, how many books have you:
Purchased new? 16
Purchased used? 0
Borrowed? 6
Been given to review? 11
Been given as gifts? 1*
Mysteriously acquired? 0
Total acquired thus far in 2012: 34

And of those acquired how many:
Are paper? 31
Are digital? 0
Are some other format? 3 (audio)

And how many have you given away? 14 to the library
Or thrown away? a bunch (I don’t donate ARCs; I toss those I don’t give to friends)
or sold? 4

And finally how many have you read from those acquired in 2012 thus far? 13
And how many books have you generally read in 2012? 27

And Dan’s optimism question: of the 21 still-unread books acquired in 2012, how many I definitely intend to read this year? 9 (However, I'm trying to route my optimism to my pre-2012 TBRs this year; I want to read at least 40.)

* heh, gifted just this morning -- a friend had gone back to her hometown, visited with a writer friend, and brought me a copy of her friend’s latest book. A romance novel; I can recall only having read one, ever. What the heck, it's from a Random House division, I added it to my library.

To date, in 2012, how many books have you:
Purchased new? 46
Purchased used? 1
Borrowed? 0
Been given to review? 7
Been given as gifts? 18
Mysteriously acquired? 0
Total acquired thus far in 2012: 72

And of those acquired how many:
Are paper? 51
Are digital? 21
Are some other format? 0

And how many have you given away? 0
or sold? 0

And finally how many have you read from those acquired in 2012 thus far? 18
And how many books have you generally read in 2012? 38 (I am trying to clear the TBR backlog)

The 18 gifts are quite amusing. I am English, living in Austria and when a plasterer came to the house a few months ago, he took one look at the bookshelves and said "Oh, you like English books, I have some spare ones of those that the wife gets on holiday- you can have them". I politely said thank-you whilst uncharitably assuming it would be at best a couple of Jeffery Arch-holes but he has now dropped round twice with bagloads of a mix of thrillers, crime, a Douglas Adams and even one book that was actually on my wishlist! I'm not sure how many of them I will read but I guess about half, the others I can easily find homes for.
It seems quite common on the numbers above for 2x as many books to come in than are actually being read over the same time period.
A small silver lining though- I was pleased I am clearing more older books than just jumping on new arrivals.

To date, in 2012, how many books have you:

Purchased new? 3 fiction, 4 nonfiction = 7
Purchased used? 7 fiction, 7 nonfiction = 14
Borrowed? 0 but I have had 4 books given to me to read by various friends all saying "You really must read this", so I have read them and given them back (see my comments on The Last Lecture!)
Been given to review? 0
Been given as gifts? 6 fiction, 13 nonfiction = 19
Mysteriously acquired? 0
Total acquired thus far in 2012: 40

And of those acquired how many:
Are paper 40
Have you given away 0, but have returned all 4 books from above "borrowed"
Sold 0

And finally how many have you read from those acquired in 2012 thus far? 13 and 3 halves
Two of these were replacements for favourites lost along the way and already read in past years.
Twelve books were only received in the last week, so I have only read one of them to date.

And how many books have you generally read in 2012? 25 completed, many others started

QUESTION 22

Alrighty, that last one was an easy one, so this one is going to require more thinking.

(Inspired by a paragraph in The Use and Abuse of Literature) There has certainly been some great literature that has had designs on its readers for political, social, or moral change - take some of Dickens work, for example (or various other Victorians, or Upton Sinclair or Harriet Beecher Stowe...). Have we bred this out of contemporary fiction?

Can you name a contemporary novel (say, written in the last 10 years) that you have read, which you feel has palpable intent to move you/the reader in a certain political, social or moral direction?

edited to change 'book' to 'novel' (thanks, Dan)

I'm assuming you mean fiction...yes?

And, is there a quality factor to take into account? There are many bad books out there with an agenda.

>119 dchaikin: well, how many bad books with an agenda have you read? ( I thought I'd find you here pitching Moby Dick...)

I should say here, that it only has to have a detectable intent (often it can be quite subtle, can it not?), doesn't have to be in the form of a screed. Are there books out there trying to address the issues of our time with intent to move you in a certain direction (even if it's the direction you are already very willing to go in) ?

Need to think more. Not sure there was any place for Moby Dick to move me in these ways, to a large extend I was already there.

Off the top of my head, most of the novels I read deal with moral ambiguity. I'll have to think about this more.

I think The Reluctant Fundamentalist had an agenda. It's been a while since I read it, but wasn't he trying to show how a westernized Muslim might still side with Islamists? I liked the book, but a number of people I know--all but one from the US--found it offensive. I'm sure they'd think it had an agenda.

Hmm. I really do not think this has been bred out of modern fiction, although the examples that come immediately to mind are science fiction of one variety or another, and it wouldn't entirely surprise me, now that I stop to think about it, if SF is more willing to engage in that sort of thing than, say, literary fiction. It's always been a big-picture kind of genre.

Thinking back on my own reading over the past few years, it also seems that these days if a novel is attempting to nudge the reader towards or enlighten the reader about a certain political point of view, it generally involves class differences, the gap between rich and poor, labor issues, etc. Which is also not at all surprising in the current political climate.

The most recent example that comes to mind is Adam Roberts' By Light Alone, which I read earlier this month. While it's not exactly a political screed, it's very much about the relationship between rich and poor and the widening gap between the two, and takes some very strong shots at the privilege and complacency of the well-off that are surely meant, in part, to make the reader re-examine their own privilege and complacency, and to understand and sympathize more with the have-nots.

The Blue Notebook by James Levine (2009) is a call to action against child prostitution/human trafficking. Effective, but also over-the-top manipulative.

The short stories in You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon (2011) promote understanding/empathy toward military families.

Carl Hiaasen's novels (I read his children/YA, Hoot, 2002) have strong calls for environmental change.

After giving this some thought, I realized that the novels that sprang to mind were not written by US authors.

The Lizard Cage by Karen Connelly depicted the extreme harshness of Burmese prisons and therefore promoted opposition to the military government.

Carpentaria by Alexis Wright focuses on the environmental impacts of mining, and on the impact on the aboriginal people who live in the area that the mining company is targeting

A Dream in Polar Fog by Yuri Rytcheu romanticized the life of the Chuchki and was pretty heavy-handed about the impact of western "civilization" on them. (Oops, not written in the past 10 years, but the translation is more recent.)

Wolf Totem by Jiang Rong had a strong (one might say too obviously so) environmental message, as well as a romanticized view of the Mongolians in contrast to the ethnic Chinese.

Having implicitly (or not so implicitly) criticized the last three books for the obviousness and sometimes heavy-handedness of their messages, I emphasize that each had things to recommend it, generally the vividness and fondness with which the authors depicted beautiful, harsh, and unfamiliar landscapes, and the human adaptations to them.

It seems the word "agenda" is awfully strong and suggests much premeditation. Not that I don't think some books have an agenda, but I think there are a lot of books whose author wants to move us in a certain direction but it is more subtly done.

>122 rebeccanyc: I suspect that is true of most of mine, but I need to have a good think over the weekend.

>123 Nickelini: I agree that the book set out to show how a sympathetic character might become radicalized (people found it offensive? I had not heard that). Although, I think the same thing was shown better in The Yacoubian Building (without pushing American 'buttons' in quite the same way).

>124 bragan: That's interesting that you bring up Adam Roberts, because as I was reading your post, I thought of his New Model Army, which I read some of—enough to know that he is trying to show a group/an army functioning in like a pure democracy (what does democracy really mean?). It's a bit jarring (and had faint echoes of the "Occupy" movement, though was written before that, I believe). I think he was being more instructional, or at least a bit provocative to get the reader to think about democracy (but then again, I didn't finish it so that's just speculation).

What bragan said. SF and fantasy seem to have social and moral propositions in mind quite often. Everything of China Mieville's except maybe King Rat comes to mind. Un Lun Dun, for instance: the two girls in this YA travel to the shadow London of the title. It's threatened. The prophetic book of Un Lun Dun says that one of them is the Chosen One, destined to save the city. But Mieville has stated that any prophecy in his books will always prove untrue - that our lives are not the playing out of a script. And that proves true for the prophecy here - Un Lun Dun is saved, but not in the way the book said (literally, said: it's a talking prophetic book, and rather full of itself).

>128 dukedom_enough: Sounds like more of a philosophical moment than an attempt to move the reader in a "political, social or moral direction"...? Or am I wrong?

The obvious "heavy handed" books that come to mind were The Lacuna by Barabara Kingsovler and, a little less so, Returning to Earth by Jim Harrison.

The Lacuna explores McCarthyism and the House Committee on Un-American Activities. It's clearly a political commentary, presumably critical of parallels introduced under W.

Returning to Earth promotes Harrison's version of Native American religio-philosophy, although the author may not have exactly seen it that way.

Both book are readable, but these are flaws. A heavy handed agenda is a flaw. Life is not so simple.

side note: this made me realize that I haven't been reading new fiction since 2009! Almost all my "read" and most of my TBR fiction date from 2009 or before.

#126 Rebeccca - I had forgotten about The Lizard Cage. Yes, heavy handed. We may agree with her agenda, but it leaves a taint on the effect and ruins the book, IMO. (The writing was otherwise very good and some of the characters were wonderful)

I had to go back through a few years of reading to find some titles that I felt had a "palpable intent." Like rebeccanyc, a majority of my reading seems to leave one in the gray areas. They seem to be designed to leave one thoughtful and yet without that push in one direction. But, here is what I came up with:

Pure by Julianna Baggott clearly wants to teach us about tolerance, about compromise, teamwork...etc. The book is aimed at the YA audience mostly, I think, which made me wonder if "intent" is usually more easily discerned (and expected?) in YA fiction. Either way, a dystopian story where a people are separated both literally (the 'pures' are safe under a giant dome) and in prejudicial attitudes towards each other does reflect some of the political atmosphere here in the states.

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward, like so many other novels (i.e. various of JCO, American Salvage by Bonnie Campbell) clearly wants us to be moved as they are (morally?) by the poverty around us that we do not see. I'm still debating whether I should have included these books, because I think their intent is merely to stand as witness.

Sorry by Gail Jones was clearly her response to the Australian government's inability to apologize to its aboriginal peoples for their past treatment of them (the apology came with the next administration). I think this was an acknowledgment and apology of sorts. An excellent book, btw.

Oil on Water by Helon Habila shows the various damaging effects the oil companies are having in Nigeria.

In all of these books did the author sit down, fingers poised over the keyboard, and think: "I'm going to make them feel or think this way about this particular subject?" I'm not sure it was that premeditated. Thinking...

btw, I enjoyed ALL of these books!

Lois - I've read Sorry & Oil on Water and I agree with both. I though that was a flaw in Sorry, but Jones writing is just magnificent, so maybe forgivable. I didn't think Habila's book was all that ambitious.

next part here (for those like me who missed it) http://www.librarything.com/topic/137754