LizzieD: 2012*5 (Tra-la, It's May)

Even when it's June, she will still be our MAY!

SIGNIFICANT IN THE FIRST QUARTER OF 2012
Fall on Your Knees
The Broom of the System
A Splendor of Letters
1Q84
Arcadia
Purgatory
The Siege
We Need to Talk about Kevin
Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

MAY
(* = review on book page)

1. *Cindie - Virago - sugar cane in turn-of-the-last-century Australia - enjoyed it
2. The Bone People - New Zealand - 3 damaged people find new life - I find awe
3. The Song of Achilles - Trojan War up close and personal - enjoyment but no passion from me
4. *Bring Up the Bodies - Awed Again!!! - maybe this is the best of the year
5. Love Marriage - a loser was due - this is it - the Sri Lankan diaspora
6. Means of Ascent - LBJ Volume 2 - Military (?) Service (?) and the election of 1948
7. Killer Dolphin - mystery - Rory Alleyn and Fox in the theater - my favorite Marsh (reread)
8. The Forgotten Waltz - modern adultery - beautiful writing
9. Don't Look Back - murder in Norway - very readable

NEW IN MAY

1. State of Wonder - Bonnie (Thank you!)
2. Mrs. Tim of the Regiment - Kindle sale
3. The Solitude of Thomas Cave - Kindle sale
4. The Harper's Quine - Kindle - cheap
5. The Diary of a Country Parson ✔ - Thank you, Elaine
6. Jane Austen - Another of Elaine's orphans comes home
7. Emily Bronte: A Biography - Elaine again!
8. Housekeeping - Jill's World Book Night U.S. (Thank you!)
9. Bring Up the Bodies ✔ - Early Reviewers!!! (YAY!!! Thank you!)
10. The Vicar of Sorrows - PBS
11. The Mongoliad - Kindle Daily Deal
12. A Place of Greater Safety ✔ - Kindle (GC!)
13. Waterland ✔- PBS
14. Period Piece - AMP
15. Bad Intentions - Kindle Daily Deal (GC)
16. Black Seconds - ditto
17. Don't Look Back ✔ - yep, but no more GC
18. He Who Fears the Wolf - ditto
19. The Indian Bride - ditto
20. The Water's Edge - ditto
21. When the Devil Holds the Candle - ditto
22. The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating - Kindle Daily Deal
23. Island of Wings ✔ - AMP (GC)

NEW IN JUNE
1. Maps and Legends - Kindle Daily Deal
2. Lovely Green Eyes - Kindle
3. Norwegian Wood - gift from a friend who didn't want it - I DO! Thank you!!

I'm officially setting aside The Cairo Trilogy and The Kif Strike Back for a bit. (I secretly hope that this move will make me hot to read them again.)

JUNE
1. Thirteen - hardboiled action in scifi setting - Morgan hasn't been bad yet, but this is not his best

First? Me?
Happy May thread, Peggy!

Edit: your dog??

Nice dog!

Aren't you proud of having gently convinced me to give J.A. another look? And you were so very right. Emma is at the top of my list, Sense and Sensibility at the bottom. Her books make a very pleasant oasis from the sturm und drang of everyday humdrum stuff.

Welcome, Nathalie and Gail! I should explain, I guess, that the dog is our May. She is as good as she is beautiful!
I am proud that you have read some JA that you love, Gail!!! Now if I can convince you sometime to read Ferrol Sams for sheer fun, I will have done my duty. Run with the Horsemen is the first one, and it is one of the funniest books I've ever read.

Hi Peggy,
I'm so glad you loved The Bone People!
The discussion about reading for pleasure vs. assigned reading is something I've thought about frequently over the years. I've heard so many people complain about having to read The Return of the Native that I'm truly grateful it was not part of the curriculum during my school years and I was allowed to discover Hardy on my own, with a little help from Julie Christie. I'd say you were fortunate if most of the teachers who taught you had a real passion for their subject. My experience was exactly the opposite. Most of the teachers I had - including in college - seemed to be as bored as we all were by the subjects they were teaching. It certainly made the exceptions that much more memorable. My 12th grade literature teacher got so excited when I told her I loved Thomas Hardy that I hardly knew what to do. But, by and large, I learned to love reading in spite of my teachers. And it pains me to say that, as we have quite a few in our family, too, including my Mom. I don't really hold anyone to blame, as I think it was partly an unfortunate cultural byproduct. Where I grew up it was considered unacceptable to get too excited about anything and the very idea that one could bring passion to teaching probably would have been frowned upon by the tight-lipped, no-nonsense authorities who ran the schools of my youth.
And, Lucy, I couldn't agree more about the teaching of poetry. Is it any wonder it's such a hard sell? Don't get me started, either!

Peggy: Happy May thread. Nice May -- reminds me of our late Nala, also a nice dog.

May does look like an absolute darling!

May is lovely, Peggy. (The month of May is pretty nice, too!)

Oh Peggy I succumbed to the Kindle sale and Mrs. Tim of the Regiment and The Solitude of Thomas Cave too. My iPad is starting to resemble my overloaded shelves with the added disadvantage (or advantage, depending on your POV) of not being aware of how overloaded it us without making the effort of opening it up and looking. Ah well, ignorance is bliss, as they say.

May looks like a sweetheart. Off to investigate Run with the Horsemen. I could use a little laughter (who couldn't?).

Pretty May! She's a sweetheart.

The fun of starting a new thread is having visitors! I love to see you, Stephen, Beth, Lucy, Nancy, Bonnie, and Laura.
May thanks you kindly for your compliments, as I do. I wish I had a better picture of her so that you could see her striking brown eyes. Actually, I do, but it's sideways, and I can't get it to turn right-side up and stay that way. It obviously wasn't May-the-Month when DH made that picture.
Stephen, I tried so hard when I taught not to turn kids off to reading. One non-reader once said to me in a rather accusatory voice, "You get high on books, don't you?" I guess that was something; she certainly never did the year I had her in class. I do realize that I was fortunate in my teachers, but I'm also recalling that I liked professors whom nobody else could stand, so I possibly projected my love onto them. Dunno.
Bonnie, when I look past the first page of Home on my Kindle, I'm appalled - so I don't do it often.
I'll mention one caveat for Run with the Horsemen, Bonnie. I don't know that it was his first book, but he made the mistake of giving his characters titles, the Boy, the Mother, the Grandmother, etc. It drove me a little nuts, but often he would forget and then it was O.K. This is the first of a trilogy. Porter Osborne is a very smart little boy, pushed ahead academically, as he grows up on a red clay farm in Georgia in the 30s. His father muses at one point that he's not a bad boy; it's just that they can't think of all the things they need to tell him not to do. My uncle read this first one before he died, and said that it was pretty much the way he and his brothers grew up, so some of the humor is earthy. It's all funny.
I neglected to mention that Porter was "raised right," so he comes up in the Baptist church, thanks to his devout mother. Porter's own piety is something to read about. The next book, The Whisper of the River puts him in a little church-supported college in Atlanta. The third, When All the World Was Young chronicles his experiences as a medic in WWII.
I have to reread the last two. I read the first one aloud to my aunt a couple of years ago before her dementia took away her ability to follow a story. She loved it too!
AND the reason I came ---- My copy of Bring Up the Bodies is here! It's HERE!! I'm off to read!!!

Finished yet? LOL!

May looks just like our old dog Ben, half Lab, half pointer. A great, loving, funny soul.

Labs are good dogs! May has some chow in her because her tongue is blueberry blue, but she doesn't have any chow in her nature.
Bring Up the Bodies is good, good, good so far!!!

Little late Peggy but congrats on your latest thread and I hope you have a lovely weekend.

*Waves to May, Peggy and Bring up the Bodies*

Hi Peggy,
Labs are nice dogs, my sister's one (and my sister-in-laws one which are the same dog as far as Wilbur can tell) is so placid and lovely for the kids to cuddle (and climb on in Lenny's case). He is also very useful as a vacuum cleaner after the kids have eaten and left half of it on the floor!
Happy new thread!

Labs were our first dogs -- my mother said my dog thing started instantly, as the lab they owned then, immediately appointed herself guardian and began sleeping under my crib - except briefly in boarding school and college iIve always had a dog (I'm playing footsie with Posey even as I write this!). When I didn't have one of my own I was always co-opting other people's dogs.....

Oh my, that's making me remember I have a new Posey/Hank photo to post!

Adorable dog! And hello, new thread! I've only just caught up on the last, by the way, and was longing to let my English major flag fly. :)

I teach English (literature and writing) these days, but it's hard to recommend being an English major anymore, since jobs are so few and related fields are contracting. Not that many students want to anyway -- it's all business and marketing and finance, even with those students who do love to read. But, the love is still there and all the more precious for being rarer, perhaps.

But anyhoo... more about cute dogs? :)

Whoa, was I behind with the last of April and now May. All caught up, however. Another English major here. I did my M.A. thesis with a full-time job and three year old twins. Looking back, I have no idea how I managed it. After the course part of the M.A. prior to the thesis (heavy duty Milton, Spenser, the Romantics, and Chaucer), I collapsed in a heap and read S.F. for an entire summer. Not reading was never an option, however.

Picked up the new Mantel this week. Just had to.

And I love labs. I love dogs, period.

Mother of an English major here! She's just completed her first year of university. I really hope she doesn't burn out on reading!
AND I'm in the Lab Lover Fan Club! We have two, a chocolate and a yellow.

Hello Sarah, Tui, and Laura! English majors and Labs!! No wonder we're so happy here!!
I maintain that the person who can write will always get the job instead of the otherwise equally qualified applicant. You can learn the other stuff in lots of work, but that writing has to come from long years of doing it. Ta-da! English major!! (I don't know that I really think that's true, but it's a great excuse to sink oneself into 4+ years of lit if that's what feels good.)
I don't know how you did your thesis in those circumstances either, Tui. You have now made my hero list, and I naturally want to know the title of the work that encompassed "heavy duty Milton, Spenser, the Romantics, and Chaucer."
Mother of an English major, eh? Wonder where she got that yen?
I am really, really enjoying Bring Up the Bodies, whereas I mostly respected Wolf Hall. I can't wait to see whether people think that the difference is in the writing or in my reading.

Just stopping in. I'll be back ...

>25 LizzieD: I've found my ability to write (and organize my written work) an invaluable asset in my technical career, so I'd have to agree with you about English majors. The problem is that some employers are not as cognizant of the difficulty of teaching clear and effective communication. It's not something you can learn in a 5 day in service class.

>25 LizzieD:: Wonder where she got that yen?
Yeah, I am a computer scientist by trade but I think I was an English major in a previous life.

>27 ffortsa:: completely agree with you there, Judy! Like you I'm one of those computer people who can also communicate, and I spend a lot of time helping those who are very good technically but can't get their ideas across.

Any new good reads on your radar Peggy, something to fill the void that the Bone People has left?

Steve, come back anytime at all!
Judy and Laura, I wish I had had your testimony when I was teaching. I'd have friends in lots of different fields come to talk about the writing that they did on the job, but I'm not sure how valuable that was to the high school juniors and seniors I was teaching. Some of them improved their writing with me, and I guess that's the best anyone can hope for. (You both are fine writers with good ears, I notice.)
Megan, I'm a bit relieved not to be gripped by the throat and shaken by anything that I'm reading now although I'm very happy with my current books. Bring Up the Bodies is really, really, really good and really, really, really enjoyable. I'm thinking what I can say in my review as I read, and I'm not sure how good that is. The Caro LBJ biography volume 2 is really, really, really enjoyable. It's just big and will take a long while. Thirteen is not Richard K. Morgan's best scifi, but it's a rough and tough adventure with enough scientific trappings to be enjoyable too. That makes it a good contrast to the others. Everybody knows about The Song of Achilles. AND Killer Dolphin is a favorite in the Ngaio Marsh canon. There. (It took me forever to figure out that the Touchstone for the Morgan is not going to work, but I foxed 'em.) What about you? I confess that I'm daunted by the number of posts on your thread in the few days since we finished *Bone*.

Thanks for the compliment, Peggy. I feel quite rusty when writing reviews and such, but on the job technical writing and business writing has been my best appreciated talent, and it carries over when technology changes. Thank goodness for that - those things change faster than I can keep up.

Aw that's very nice, Peggy!

Just speaking the truth, ladies. I never see rust either place.

THE SONG OF ACHILLES by Madeline Miller

I really enjoyed Miller's reframing of The Iliad. From an epic she crafts a love story between two young men who work out their destinies when honor confronts love. She writes really well and her imagination is both inevitable and logical, but somehow I never caught fire with this one as others have done. I liked it; don't mistake me. I think that it deserves its place on the Orange short list. I will be surprised if it wins although I've read only one other shortlisted work at this point. If only *Achilles* and Foreign Bodies were competing, I'd give the prize to *Achilles* without question.
So I feel a bit odd woman out. I am ready for something that is not derived from another, greater work.

#33 I'm feeling a bit odd woman out about Painter of Silence Peggy which I like but don't seem to have fallen for in the way others have. It would be a boring world etc...

Wouldn't it, Heather? But I'm hopeful that I'll love and adore that one because I spent $ to buy it and *Achilles* at the new Kindle price, and that's something I almost never do. I'm glad to have them, but I could have waited for *Achilles*.
Bring Up the Bodies, on the other hand, is more than fulfilling its promise. I've just read Cromwell's interrogation of Mark Smeaton, and I've rarely read anything that struck me as more chilling.

I'm reading The Song of Achilles now, Peggy, and although I'm liking it, it is seeming like a love story is a love story by any other name so far. Like you, having read The Iliad (albeit in translation), we aren't going anywhere new with this but it's still well written. Especially for a first book. And it is such a great tale! ETA: I agree with you that it belongs on the Orange short list.

Appreciate your comments on The Song of Achilles, Peggy. I well know the feeling of a bit odd woman out. But then to use the old cliche, if we all liked the same things ... So I say, "Vive la difference."

I did finish Bring Up the Bodies last night, and I couldn't sleep for trying to think what I want to say about this amazing book. I'll be back later for a real review on the book page.

Hi Peggy, nice new thread, and what a darling dog! Many, many books on this thread and your last to tempt me! Hope you have a great weekend.

Thank you, Anne. I'll say again that May is as good as she is beautiful.

BRING UP THE BODIES by Hilary Mantel

READ THIS BOOK. My review is on the book page, but it doesn't come anywhere close to appreciating this book as it deserves or as much as I am able. (I'm saying that there's a lot more to it than I can get.) Did I sleep through my reading of Wolf Hall? I think it has to be on my summer agenda for a reread.

Wow, you finished it already!
I'll get it soon, but I still hope they'll lower the price for the Kindle. The same goes for *Achilles*, but here I decided to wait a bit, until The Iliad has settled with me. Right now, in comparison, *Achilles* could only lose I'm sure and I want to give it a fair chance.

>40 LizzieD:: thumbed your review as well as Bonnie's. Can't wait to read this. Meanwhile I roam the parallel universe that is Matthew Shardlake in Dark Fire.

After reading your review and Bonnie's I feel like I simply have to go off the wagon and buy a book -- this book.

Anne Boleyn is my favorite historical character. I've read most of the books re. her. To learn there is a new book re. this subject is a joy on a busy Friday.

Hi to Nathalie, Laura, and Linda!! What a book!!!!
Nathalie, I'd certainly have had to wait if ER hadn't given me a copy, but I predict that people will be reading and talking about it for a long time. Laura, I have Revelation out to read soon, but I"m trying to let this one settle a bit. Linda, La Ana doesn't come across as a very appealing character in either of these, but I think you'll like them. Or have you read Wolf Hall?
(And I thumbed Bonnie's review too!)

Thumb for a fabulous review, Peggy! Oh, I MUST read Mantel.

Thank you, Nancy, and I agree that you MUST as soon as ever you can!

And I thumbed your review too Peggy. It was excellent and we are in agreement on this one. I'm wondering now how any book will live up to this one as I move on. And how long we will have to wait for the next volume. If you haven't hear her interview on NPR on the Tom Ashbrook show (On Point) do look for it. It's really very good.

Both of your reviews were excellent. I'm so glad that book is sitting RIGHT HERE, ready to be read this weekend!

Thanks for the thumb and the tip, Bonnie. I'll listen.
Tui, pile a lot of non-perishable food and fruit and water beside you and go for it! Like Bonnie, I'm not sure that I can read anything else with literary pretensions right now. I'm glad that I have a lot of other stuff demanding my attention.

Peggy, I thumbed your review too and can't wait for my copy to turn up! I loved The Song of Achilles but haven't read the Iliad, and suspect that helps (although I knew the story pretty well before I read the book).

Heather, we can be odd women out together over Painter of Silence because I am about to put it aside till I am in a better mood for such a slow book.

Thank you for the thumb, Cushla, and I'm glad to see you here.
I've spent my small reading time today with Means of Ascent, volume 2 in Robert Caro's fabulous LBJ biography. I can't seem to get away from politics!

I have got to read that book!! (Except I have to read the first one, and I know it too is really long... and this year I am not doing well with chunky books unless they are fast reads.) I heard a discussion about it on Slate's political gabfest podcast about 6 weeks ago and promptly forgot to investigate whether the library has a copy available.

Edited to add that doh, it was the new one that I heard about - which makes the chances of me getting to it soon even lower... But vols 1 and 2 are both in the library.

Didn't know there was a long review on the book page! *off to read and thumb*

Edit: so she changed her writing a bit? It sure took me some getting used to in WH, but actually I liked that I had to "work" my way through that book. The writing was one of the elements that made it stand out for me.

*sigh* still can't wait to get my hands on this new one now...

Cushla, you're going to need plenty of leisure to read Wolf Hall, I think. *Bodies* certainly goes faster, and not only because it's shorter.
Nathalie, my first impression was that Mantel had changed her style a bit, but I went back and read a passage or so in *WH*, and now I'm not so sure. I need to talk to Bonnie. As she says, *WH* covers a longer period and is more diffuse. Cromwell is the servant of the king in *Bodies* and not the servant of the servant as he is in *WH*. That may have something to do with it. At any rate, I backed off from the "dumbed down" theory a bit after I reread. I'll have to try to get through the whole book again to have a chance at being coherent about it.

Peggy, I saw a long interview with Hilary Mantel done on an English program and got the impression that she is a writer who is constantly critiquing her own work and pushing herself to evolve. It was right after Wolf Hall was published so perhaps this change is just indicative of her own desire to try a new direction, rather than purposely "dumbing" things down? Although it's quite possible that the confusion some people had about "he" wasn't something she wanted to have getting between her readers and her characters, so she might have amended that approach. I'm really eager to get into it but have to finish Achilles first or I'll have yet another half-read book flopping around.

40: Lovely review of "Bodies," Peggy. Thumb from me! I'm on the reserve list at the library. Can't wait to get my hands on it after your glowing praise.

I'm with Laura in the parallel universe with Matthew Shardlake. I think after reading Sansom's books, I can appreciate Mantel even more.

Tui, that's interesting. One reason that I've backed away a little from the thought that she's reacting for her readers is that in the first paragraph I reread at random in *WH*, she used "he, Cromwell," and I ran into it several other times. So I don't know. I'd like to ask her. I do need to reread to see why I reacted so differently to the two books.
Thank you, Donna. I'm with you and Laura (and Tui) in the Shardlake universe. Maybe next month!
Meanwhile, I'm approaching LBJ's 87 vote landslide election to the Senate in '48. Right now I'm reading about his opponent Coke Stevenson, who seems to have been a real statesman rather than a politician. I can't wait!

Peggy, I was being incoherent up above - I meant I have to read your LBJ book but haven't even read the first couple yet. I adored Wolf Hall and now I'm waiting for Book Depository to send me my copy of Bring up the Bodies - I pre-ordered it ages ago, and it is probably on its way from England, but I should just paid the higher price to get it in a bookshop here instead because I have seen it in bookshops 3 times in the last week.

Cush, have you checked your order status at B.D. to see if it has been sent out yet?

Tui I hadn't done that before, but I just looked and it was sent on May 10 so hopefully it'll arrive very soon - yay and thanks.

No, you weren't incoherent, Cushla; I was just careless in my reading. The LBJ's are a bit intimidating because they have so much print on the page as well as so many pages, but honestly! For the most part, they're hard to put down. It's hard to believe what a complete bastard the man was, and yet, he did so much good. I don't know that I actually "against all better judgment find myself rooting for Johnson," as the reviewer from the NY Times has it on the back cover, but I can't stop reading.
Maybe your *Bodies* will come Monday. (Thanks for the help, Tui.)

ETA: Why on earth is "find myself" blue???? I didn't do that.

All very interesting about the latest Mantel. Another thumb!

I'm wondering about the Caro books... I don't consider myself as really an "American" -- although I was born here, I was gone for the next 32 years of my life. And I don't have that much interest in the minutiae of American political history. I'm curious about LBJ's presidency, given the contradictions of his background and his actions in power, but I'm not sure I want to wade through thousands of pages on his life up to that point. I suppose if I read one presidential epic, it will be T Roosevelt's multi-volume bio, because he interests me more as a character.

Can't believe I'm only just catching up on your thread now... *shame shame*

>40 LizzieD: glad you loved the Mantel book, I heard her talking on the radio here as she's here for the Auckland readers festival.... I have yet to read her. Will probably start with the one with Black in the title, cant remember the title!

#40 Great review Peggy!

"A friend asked me why he should read Wolf Hall rather than a history of the time. I said then that he should read it for the wonderful writing. That’s still true of Bring Up the Bodies, but now I find that only the beginning. Read this book in order to enter into the period and participate in the mindset. Mostly, read it for Cromwell. Mantel ends her author’s note like this: “Meanwhile, Mr Secretary remains sleek, plump and densely inaccessible, like a choice plum in a Christmas pie; but I hope to continue my efforts to dig him out.” Dig, Ms. Mantel. I will surely read!" Yes!

#53 & 54 I'm reading Bring up the Bodies straight after reading Wolf Hall and I don't think her writing style has changed noticeably. Occasionally she has included a 'he, Cromwell' where the use of he might otherwise be ambiguous (she explained in her talk that this is a direct result of reader comments although she gave a bit of an eye-roll when she said that) but she doesn't use that expression every time she refers to Cromwell and she did use it occasionally in WH too. It doesn't read as dumbed down at all to me.

ButB covers a shorter time period than WH so the narrative arc is more focused - perhaps that makes it seem like an easier read to people? Or more familiarity with the characters?

I skimmed your review of Bring Up the Bodies, Peggy, but only because I want to read it with a clear mind next month, but I did give you a thumb for it.

All this is very much making me want to read pretty much everything by Hilary Mantel. Talk about book bullets! Ouch. :)

All this is very much making me want to read pretty much everything by Hilary Mantel

That's where I am. BUTB was just so so good that I just downloaded A Place of Greater Safety onto my iPad. I definitely noticed something different about Mantel's style but it may have just been me. I just flew through BUTB whereas I had to stretch Wolf Hall over a longer period of time because of a lack of time. The writing was still spectacular and if Mantel responded to her readers, well, more power to her, eye roll or not.

Well, Wolf Hall covers a longer period of time, whereas BUTB is concentrated on just a few weeks -- I think that makes a difference in the pacing. Also, it's more clear to most readers what we're heading towards -- a dramatic event. I loved A Place of Greater Safety -- I may have to re-read that. Bought it in hardcover when it came out, at a time when I had to limit my hardcover purchases! I liked seeing the revolution from the "other" side. (I'm soooo sick of Marie Antoinette... yes, tragic fate but very silly woman and really not that interesting.)

I love company!
Suzanne, I just lucked into an hour and a piece of Caro being interviewed on C-Span. He says that he was not interested so much in LBJ as a person but as an illustration of the development of political power in the latter half of the 20th century. I remain fascinated and find these books even better than David McCullough's Truman, which blew me away last year. In fact, I like Caro so much that I'm pretty sure that I'll go on to read The Power Broker about Robert Moses when I've run out of LBJ, and I have no inherent interest in Moses at all.
Megan, Beyond Black is the other Mantel that I own, and Bonnie, I want *Safety* too and will likely succumb and part with the $ to download it next month. Sarah, I'm now ranking Mantel up there with (or maybe even above, but I'll have to read more to decide) Rose Tremain. I think they both avoid writing the same book twice. I also want to read everything - just not now.
Heather and Lucy and Darryl, thank you.
Heather, that's so helpful to know that Mantel tried to accommodate her readers whether she rolls her eyes or not. When I reread some of *WH*, I found it pretty much the same as *Bodies* too. I don't know what was wrong with my reading the first time. Pacing and maybe familiarity of the subject matter - or did somebody say that already? Answer: yes, that was Heather. I'm eagerly awaiting Elaine's review. She has already made me look at some of it in a different light.

For now, I'm resisting the Caro. I hope that the right time will come for me to read them.

I hope that the time comes for you too, Lucy. I have to say that I'm touched by the farm people that LBJ woos in his bid for the Senate in '48. There are a couple of pictures that make me nearly tear up when I look at them - Johnson hugging and being hugged by a laughing woman, fat, few teeth, a coquette, and Johnson shaking hands with a bantam of a fellow with tightly tanned skin and a world of pride both in himself and in his position of being asked a favor by the great man. I know these people well. I'm also touched by the fact that all the males who gathered around "The Johnson City Windmill," his campaign helicopter, couldn't keep their hands off it, didn't understand it, and so, kicked the tires because that's what you do to a car.

Hi Peggy, Beyond Black, that was it. I have that one of Mantels and no others. Yet. I would like to get Wolf Hall (on account of the Booker thing...).

I love labradors above all dogs - probably because we had one (Snoopy!) in the family from when I was two until I was fourteen. I'd cry into his fur after a particularly bad day at school!

I think reading less ecstatic reviews of The Song of Achilles is giving me a more balanced idea of what to expect so thanks for that. I hope you enjoy Painter of Silence. I read a few pages and got the impression that it was written in a lyrical sort of style which would be lovely if you were in the mood for it but not if you weren't. I decided I wasn't, right then but might go back to it another time.

Sadly I can't comment on any of those books yet (though hopefully soon!!), so for now I'm *waving*, wishing you a wonderful rest-of-the-week.

Greetings, Dee, Megan, and Nathalie. I broke down and downloaded A Place of Greater Safety to my Kindle since I could appropriate an Amazon GC that DH got for Christmas and hadn't used. (Yippeee!) I'm not ready for more historical fiction just yet, but when I am, I have it. I feel as though I have $ in the bank.
Dee, I'll look forward to what you have to say about *Achilles*. I still feel as though I missed out. May is our first Lab, but she is a wonderful representative of that breed. Our dogs before I became greatly allergic to them were chows, so I'm happy when I look at May's blueberry tongue.
Nathalie, I wave back, and I'm confident that you'll get to Mantel and Orange lists. Enjoy!

P.a. -- One thing that came through loud and clear on our visit to the LBJ home place was how deep his roots were, how empathetic he was to the tribulations of the rural American - those people could feel how 'real' they were to him, no doubt, that he could really see them, and really cared.

>74 Soupdragon:: I'd cry into his fur after a particularly bad day at school!
One of our labs is good for that, too. She's very furry and soft, and has a very sympathetic nature. She seems to know when you've had a bad day or aren't feeling well.

Peggy, "Achilles" was a good read for me. Once she got into the actual siege and war, I thought she handled the aspect of his demi-godhead well. I think it's a difficult task to build from an epic, which by its nature is so detailed and, well, epic. If I hadn't read the Iliad, I think Miller's book might have swept me away more, if that makes sense. But I think she did a good job and writes very well indeed.

Hi, Peggy! I see the new "State of the Thing' has an interview with Hilary Mantel. I'm planning to read Wolf Hall in a group read over on the 12 in 12 group, and I can't wait!

Lucy, having read Caro, I'm not sure about his empathy - or rather, I suspect that it was non-existent. He was able to connect with the rural folks amazingly well (he had been one of them, after all), and Caro doesn't quote anybody to the effect that he called them ugly names or anything like that. Johnson does come across as a sociopath who didn't care about anybody or anything except his own power. He does quote people who say that LBJ lied about everything to everybody with a conviction that showed that he believed what he was inventing. His combat experience in WWII, for example, consisted of flying as a passenger on one bombing mission in the Pacific theater. I'll bet that's not what it says at his homeplace or at the LBJ library. It's certainly not how he campaigned. And yet, and yet, and yet..... he worked unsparingly to make rural electricity available and then to make the folks sign up for it. You need to read the books!
Laura, we've been fortunate to have the same dog four times in our 40+ year marriage, and she's a sweet and funny spirit.
Tui, I agree with all that, and I enjoyed the book. I just found it lacking soul somehow.
Terri, thanks for the reminder. I haven't had time to read the "S ot T" interview with Mantel. You guys are going to have an amazing time! Now, there's a book with a soul!

I have A Place of Greater Safety too in paperback, although the size of it has been putting me off - mine is at least 900 pages. That's almost WH and ButB combined!

>81 LizzieD:: I understand and think I know what you mean. Maybe gods don't have them...

Well I guess I didn't realize A Place of Greater Safety was so long. That's both the advantage and the disadvantage to e books. But if the writing is anywhere near as good as in Bring Up the Bodies I won't mind in the least. At this point I think I will follow mantel wherever she wants to lead me.

Well said, Bonnie! I don't mind length if the reading's good. In fact, if I take the trouble to get lost in a book, I like the experience to last for awhile. I just need something contemporary before I jump back into history. Maybe some of us will read it at the same time. (Dee, the current edition over here says 768 pp. - that's how I'll count it for reading on Kindle.)
*BEAMING* at Tui.

I'm only about 30 pages in to Bring Up the Bodies and am struck by how GOOD she is at making me feel a sense of impending danger lurking beneath the surface of everything around the king and his court. I'm with you, Bonnie!

Hi Peggy,
Just dropping off a HELLO on my way past.
See you ;)

Tui, I know that feeling. At that point I was thinking, Cromwell projects a confidence that all is in hand and he and I both know it ain't so!
Hi, Megan! I'm happy to pick up your HELLO!

LOVE MARRIAGE by V .V. Ganeshanathan
I wanted to like this book a lot. It was nominated for Orange in 2009, and the author is a product of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, both good recommendations. I gave it three stars because it's obvious that Ganeshanathan wrote with passion and care, but I just can't like it.
Yalini is the American daughter of Sri Lankan Tamil immigrants. *LM* is the story of her learning her family's history and of establishing her own identity for herself. When she is a college student, her uncle Kumaran, a former Tamil Tiger now dying of cancer, arrives quietly in Canada with his daughter. Yalini and her parents move to Toronto to be with him and help him die. Yalini becomes the historian of the family, writing down the reminiscences of her parents and Kumaran. These stories are inextricably linked to the war in Sri Lanka between the Tamil minority and the Sinhalese. Yalini's cousin is preparing to marry a radical Tamil man who raises money for the Tigers in Canada. That's pretty much what happens.
The stories are told in small vignettes which never come together to make a whole. I am gravely irritated by this and by choices in the writing that are meant to be significant but strike me as amateur. I need to get these out of my system, so I'm going to go on about them. (I see that other reviewers on the book page find her writing "poetic" and "lyrical," and sometimes it is. More often, though, it's just "annoying" with enigma standing in for profundity.) (And if I don't understand the profundity and it's actually there and meaningful, that's annoying too.)
So. I hate that she chooses to capitalize words that are motifs through the book. We learn that her father had a congenital heart murmur that scared him as he became a doctor. She writes about his Heart and everybody's Heart. She writes a lot about Marriage and Marrying, and I'm thrown back to my fantasy reading where somebody Heals by magic. "Who knew if or when he would Love her?" "This is the taste of a Marriage Dying, her Heart said." ("Pah," my mouth said and I spit it out.)
Then there is the newly ubiquitous matter of no quotation marks for dialogue. I had a passage marked that I can't find, but as it was the only one where what was said aloud and what was only thought were not clear, I won't look any longer. I look forward to thinking about questions of morality or politics or history or whatever an author is interested in. I dislike being forced to spend time deciphering meaning from clumsy mechanics.
Finally, I owe Ms. G. a note of praise. She can write. An abused wife makes the best of her situation: "But Harini bent double, bent down. She picked up her Go-On Forever Smile from where it had fallen on the ground, and went on." I think this is excellent writing, and I hope that Ms. G. continues to develop her strengths and minimize her weaknesses.

Excellent review, Peggy. Thanks for reading that one for me; I'll pass. Couldn't agree more about the matter of no quotation marks for dialogue. I dislike being forced to spend time deciphering meaning from clumsy mechanics. Indeed!

Thank you, Nancy. I know that I get fetishes that prevent my liking what other people love. I don't think I'm too wrong about this one though.

I'm about to wrap up Means of Ascent in which LBJ steals or buys the U.S. Senate seat in 1948. It's pretty much unputdownable, so I'm out of here!

Very good review, and finally a book I can give a pass. :)

The mystery then is why he did work so tirelessly on the programs to help the poor. A pure sociopath wouldn't do that. But I guess that is what makes him so deeply interesting? You are beginning to hook my attention, Peggy!

Always happy too, to read a review of a book I never have to read.!~

Back to add: Corgis make perfect cuddlers and have excellent furry ruffs that absorb all tears.

Lucy, if I'm remembering the first book correctly, the reason that he pushed and worked so hard to get electricity out to the the hill country was that otherwise, there would have been no need for the dam that his friend and supporters, the Brown brothers of Brown and Root Construction needed to build if they were going to get into federal money. Caro devotes a chapter, though, to the lives of the women in the hill country that will always be vivid in my mind. It's hard to understand how somebody could grow up watching that and not feel something. I need you to read these books, Lucy, so that you can tell me what you think!
Glad to take the bullet for you and Nathalie; you've both taken plenty for me!
I sort of suspect that Corgis might cry with you.......
Back to Lyndon, now in the senate and regaling everybody with this joke:
"Manuel was sitting on a curb in a little town near the Mexican border one day and crying, when a friend came up and asked him what the trouble was.
'My father was in town last Saturday, and he did not come to see me,' Manuel replied.
'But Manuel, your father has been dead for ten years.'
Manuel just sobbed louder. 'Si, he has been dead for ten years. But he came to town last Saturday to vote for Lyndon Johnson, and he did not come to see me.'"

MEANS OF ASCENT: The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert A. Caro

FIVE STARS!! This is amazing biography that brings not only the man but his contemporaries and the times to life. Volume 2 covers LBJ's final years as a Congressman - in which he continued to do very little on the floor of the House - and as a member of the armed forces. His war consisted of touring Naval bases on the west coast and reporting on their condition and flying as an observer on one mission in the Pacific Theater. The other observer's plane was shot down and he was awarded a posthumous Distinguished Service Cross. MacArthur awarded the other men on that mission, including LBJ, the Silver Star. This puts a strange light on his speeches to the folks back home in which he embroiders on the whole cloth about his unity with the boys who sacrificed their lives.
Most of the book deals with his Senatorial campaign on 1948 against "Mr. Texas," Coke Stevenson. In "A Note on Sources" following the main text, Caro describes his growing understanding of what happened as he moved from interviewing the Johnson faithful to reading the documentation and interviewing people in the other camp. Stevenson had been a very popular governor of the state who realized too late that he should have been raising money and bombarding the media as Johnson did. Johnson couldn't come up with issues that separated the two, especially since Stevenson was a complete conservative in a completely conservative state, so he attacked him personally. When he accepted an endorsement from the AFL, Johnson had his issue. This all sounds pretty dry, but I couldn't put the book down. LBJ never had a legitimate chance to win, but he spent unknown amounts of money to buy the election, and when that didn't work, he put his friends in counties on the southwestern borders of the state to steal it. The theft was so blatant that I read the last 200 pages at white heat to find out exactly how he got away with it. Amazing!
I'll be back with Master of the Senate in another month or two, but right now I need to read something uplifting or at least fluffy!

I shouldn't be back yet, but in cleaning (well, in looking for a couple of books I've misplaced), I found yet another student paper that I copied because it was so over the top. I also found a directive from the administration that I'll save for last. As is my practice, here is a character sketch of Elizabeth Proctor from The Crucible in all its splendor.

Elizabeth Proctor, from The Crucible

In Arthur Millers, The Crucible, we meet a woman of about middle age by the name of Elizabeth. Wife of John Proctor, Mother of two children, and during the play is the most hated character. But this woman interests me, because she shows more strength than a score of men combined.
We learn that, like every one else, she has had her share of problems. She fell ill last winter, but it was not the chill in the air which struck her the hardest. Lying in bed, not able to lift a finger for herself - more or less her children and husband- she had to hire a mistress to tend to her house. Not fully aware of what was happening under her knows, though suspicions grew, she noticed how pretty the young teenager was ... and how she thought she wasn't.

Back again since I decided I just as well finish my reread of my favorite Ngaio Marsh mystery!

KILLER DOLPHIN by Ngaio Marsh

I love this one and reread it every ten years or so. It never palls. It's set in a theater (I mean, theatre) with a play inspired by a newly-discovered Shakespearean artifact. Ms. Marsh was a theater insider, so all of the production background is good. The characters are real characters. There's a little romance and a death. And there's Roderick Alleyn at his unflappable best aided by his perfect sidekick Fox. I'm in love with both of them.

Peggy: I am also a Marsh fan. Hmm-- I know I have a bunch stored in boxes. That might be a fun quick read for a rainy afternoon.

70, 95: Everyone's raving about the biography, and a recent article by Robert Caro in the New Yorker was gripping reading, and yet... just how interested am I in LBJ? Or the development of political power. Maybe when there's a condensed version.

It's amazing how much stuff happens right under your knows............

Hi, Beth, Katherine, and Bonnie...... I'm happy to see you.
I hope you have Killer Dolphin, Beth. I really like the theater ones!
Katherine, I don't know that I have any interest at all in LBJ or the development of political power, but Caro is amazing! --- I think I said that.
Well, Bonnie, when you hire a mistress for your husband's house, you're asking for trouble. That "knows" makes a weird kind of sense, doesn't it?

Peggy - catching up with some fascinating reading over here.
I saw Bring Up the Bodies yesterday and was sorely tempted by it but desisted as it is in one of the cumbersome-sized editions I hate so. Will certainly get to Love Marriage eventually as I have a good number of Tamil friends here and their own experiences on the difficulties of marriage arrangements make it a subject of interest. My first secretary in Malaysia, was a lovely and intelligent Tamil girl, Vejaya, who married for love to a sailor and they lived apart for two halcyon years whilst he finished his tour of duty. I left the company and she continued as secretary for my replacement and her later experiences were disasterous as her husband was a wife-beating alcoholic whose influence got her dismissed from work as, forced into debt and desperation, she concocted a scheme to fiddle money from the staff's medical expenses. A beautiful girl with lots of potential and a nice family brought low by a poor marriage.
Love Presidential bios and Johnson is one of the more interesting holders of that august office.

Paul, you will be interested by Love Marriage then. She starts off by saying that there are too kinds of marriage - Arranged Marriage and Love Marriage. The second is still frowned upon. Poor people! Poor young woman.

Another 5 star read! Great, looks like you're on a roll Peggy

I was snorting coffee out my knows!

Lots of good stuff to catch up with here!

I received The Passage of Power by Robert Caro earlier this week, which I'll probably read this summer. I also have Master of the Senate, but I haven't read it yet.

A Place of Greater Safety was supposed to be a summer read for me, but I already have a lot of books to read in this upcoming third quarter, so I may not get to it until the fall. My edition (Picador USA paperback) is 749 pages in length, so it's a bit of a door stopper. However, if there is a group read of it, that would spur me to get to it sooner (I'm not volunteering to lead one, though).

Love Marriage wasn't one of the Orange books that I most wanted to buy, but it's officially off my list now. Thanks for taking one for the team.

Means of Ascent sounds superb. I'll probably end up reading the entire LBJ series, but I'll start with The Passage of Power first.

Still waiting for Bring Up the Bodies...

Alert! ALERT!! The Kindle Daily Deal features seven (7) !!! Karin Fossum mysteries for $1.99 apiece. I just ate the last of my GC and downloaded them every one. Now I hope I like them....
Darryl, I think that you need to start with The Path to Power because so much of what Caro makes of LBJ comes from his early experience, especially with his conflicted relationship with his father. They are a commitment, but such a rewarding one that I can't recommend them strongly enough.
Megan, I am on a roll pretty much. I've been picking up and putting down in anticipation of June. I know that I'll read the Orange winner if I haven't already and a VMC, but then, I'm branching out!
O.K. Lucy! Blow your knows; here comes the next installment of ----

Elizabeth Proctor, from The Crucible

So there she was - sick, helpless, just plain pitiful. For six months she lay in the cold winter bed, until that dark, dark day came when she felt the strength to rise of her feet, and walk to the barn, where as she found her suspicions to be correct. There her husband John, and that hell-whore were out there sinning like two rabbits in a meadow. And this is when Elizabeth shows the first sign of her strength conquering her weaknesses. "To the streets with you" is how any ordinary Puritan woman act, but I could imagine a woman with Proctor's bravery easily saying, "Get the hell out!"

What a priceless essay - wonderful really.

She sure nosed what was going on right under her knows now! I'm going to have the phrase "sinning like two rabbits in a meadow" stuck in my head for a long time.

#109: THAT's what 'under her knows' means! :-)

Peggy: wonderful essay! Will there be more?

amazon tells me Killer Dolphin doesn't exist for the Kindle, but the book page then offers something called Death at the Dolphin. Both lead to the same touchstone here, so must be the same book. Goes onto the WL.

"sinning like two rabbits in a meadow" - *snort*

Alert! ALERT!!! The Kindle Daily Deal today is seven (7) (!) Karin Fossum Scandi-crimes for $1.99 each! I've used the last of my GC + a bit more to download them. Now I hope I like them!!
I am on a roll, Megan! *Bone People* was a good start for me. I'm having a great time this weekend picking up, reading a little, putting down what will turn out to be June's books. I'll read the Orange winner if it turns out to be one I haven't read yet. Lovely!
Darryl, I envy you your *Passage*. I'm hoping that by the time I'm ready for it, it will be in paperback to match the rest of my set. I probably won't make it though. I wish you might think about reading them in order. So much depends on LBJ's childhood and his changing relationship with his father. I guess that's true of all of us, but it goes a way to explaining why he was willing to brag at how he stole the Senate seat in '48, for instance. The series is a commitment, no doubt about it! But it graciously rewards the time spent.
I'm not sure when I'll read A Place of Greater Safety. I almost want to be out of history for a little, but it is calling me.
Lucy, I'm glad you're enjoying Elizabeth Proctor, from The Crucible. Here's the next installment - which I posted once this morning but somehow lost.

Elizabeth Proctor, from The Crucible, cont.

So there she was - sick, helpless, just plain pitiful. For six months she lay in the cold winter bed, until that dark, dark day came when she felt the strength to rise of her feet, and walk to the barn, where as she found her suspicions to be correct. There her husband John, and that hell-whore were out there sinning like two rabbits in a meadow. And this is when Elizabeth shows the first sign of her strength conquering her weaknesses. "To the streets with you" is how any ordinary Puritan woman react, but I could imagine a woman with Proctor's bravery easily saying 'Get the hell out!"

Peculiar stuff going on here. I still don't see my original morning's post, but it has to be here since Lucy and Tui and Laura all read it. Neither did I see your posts until I came back here a bit later....
Nathalie, Killer Dolphin and Murder at the Dolphin are the same book. American publishers at the time apparently had to change British titles because Americans were too dense to get them. I don't know. And, yes, there is a little more of the essay. The author made very creative use of white space (i.e., 2 ½ inch margins) (thanks to "Shoes," a cartoon, for that explanation), so it's almost done. I will make you wait until tomorrow in a cheesy and blatant way to bring folks to my thread.

I see your original post; it's #107. Still invisible to you?

No, when I came back this afternoon, there it was. I remember this happening on somebody else's thread not too long ago. Earlier, the posts went from 106 to 108. weird.....
Picked the first cape jasmine/gardenias this afternoon. And our magnolia tree has blooms low enough for me to smell too. I'm in scent heaven!

Peggy, hi!

Just devoured the whole thread. I'm in complete agreement about B.U.t.B. Marvelous book; even when one knows (or perhaps nose) the outcome, the suspense builds beautifully. And isn't Cromwell's slow but very steady working out of his own ends amazing? What a book! Now I'll be scanning everywhere for news of the next (gasp! the last?) installment.

The essay is hilarious. Did you get to discuss it with the student, or did you more mercifully just mark it and let her know the result?

Re: English majors: I am a mother of same. She's had a variety of, um, less-than-acceptable jobs, but three great ones. Her job now is as a content manager at a very well-thought-of online magazine publisher. Her computer skills are critically important, of course, but much more important is her ablility to communicate clearly, concisely, and often cleverly.

Peggy, thanks for the alert on the Fossum books, which I downloaded immediately. I read the first one months ago, and liked it very much, so I'm excited to have stockpiled the others.

Gail, I hope your daughter has a good, long run using her skills. I took my English skills into computer programming when it was still a new business field, and they have supported me very well so far. If I'm lucky, I'll be able to transit into an area of data management that actually requires the writing of definitions! Clear, concise and clever communication is always valuable.

Welcome back, Gail and Judy! I'm getting antsy to start A Place of Greater Safety in order to have a Mantel fix, but it's so big and I'm a little weary of historical novels at the moment. I don't think it will be long though. I don't remember who wrote the essay - I inked the name out when I copied it. I doubt that this person took the opportunity to have a conference with me about the rough draft although that was required and earned her a zero if she didn't. I see that I made copious comments on the paper when I returned it. My guess is that she (I am pretty sure that it's a she) sort of half watched the movie and didn't bother with reading the play.
Judy, I'm glad to hear from another Fossum fan. I always second-guess myself about buying multiple books before I've read even one, but that was too good to pass up in case I love them. I think I will.
I'm sort of guessing that English majors will have an easier and easier time of finding a job as other people become less and less able to write clearly, much less concisely and cleverly.
I'm off to explore something else now before I fall asleep. I'm still enjoying The Forgotten Waltz in a weird kind of way. Enright can really write! Gina, the narrator, seems so directionless to me - she falls into bed with the man once when she's very drunk, and then again, and again and decides that she loves him, but I haven't caught a real thought in the whole process thus far. I'm almost exactly half through. She's decided that they've gone on long enough, but she loves him. What a mess!

Enjoyed the encouraging news about English majors ...

I hope it's true, Laura!
Instead of reading myself into a troubled sleep with *Waltz*, I had a look at Doc, and I do believe MDR has hooked me again.

Elizabeth Proctor, from The Crucible, continued

We'll, no matter what she had said, it worked. The women of Salem feared Elizabeth, and probably the men too. Though she did have doubts, she was too strong to show them. Who could walk over her? No one, but her - she wouldn't allow it.
Though after that experience Elizabeth thought she didn't have the best marriage in the world (and didn't), she tried. She knew she couldn't leave John, and didn't even question it. Any woman today would at least question the thought, but not Elizabeth - that's the kind of morale the woman had...the morale to go on and live.

Peggy: Having just finished reading about 100 essays similar to this, I can only pull out what little hair I have left. Some nice phrases I can pull out: "heart retching" and "mental torcher." I'm sure the images I get from these phrases are not the intended ones.

I did like The Forgotten Waltz, too. Enright writes so beautifully about ordinary lives.

Ah, Beth. I'll bet they were "mental torcher," and if your heart retched, you need a holiday to recover. Enjoy!

(I have to contribute my favorite again ---- the kid had let his friend copy his paper, and I noticed (!) this. {"Notice," btw, was a favorite word, as in, "She noticed that her friend was having convulsions.} When he wrote a second paper for credit, he remarked that "that was a big missed ape.")

Yep, I've missed a few apes in my lifetime.

"that was a big missed ape." Priceless!

Oh gracious, the essays we get! Too funny.

Also, I love Mary Doria Russell, and enjoyed Doc last year, so I'm curious to see what you think of it.

er... missed ape? Mistake? Sorry if I am being stupid!

My English landlady told me today during our walk that in the hotel we had just been passing some German guy had found his wife in their room 'in flagranti' with another hotel guest - and that he threw her out of the window into the swimming pool (no-one was injured). I told her she must change that to "he found them sinning like two rabbits in a meadow" - she loved it!

Nathalie, you have it! I wish that my little author could know that she is now internationally famous - or maybe not.
Ah, Beth, Nancy, Sarah, and Lucy, what happened to the teaching of our language over the past forty years? Since the English teachers now didn't get instruction, it's unlikely that they'll improve the situation. We may have post-apocalyptic language without the apocalypse.
I always wondered what you did with the ape you didn't miss.
I love MDR, so I'm sure that she'll make Doc good for me. I'm making my way through the rest of *Waltz* where I've just read, "...(there was no thinking involved in any of this)..." Yeah. That was sort of my take.

Hi Peggy,
We read the Crucible in High School English, my friend and me had the major parts, and I always laugh when I think of us over acting and being silly with the characters. We still sometimes say the lines to each other. "Shut up Mary Warren!" is a favourite, Im not even sure if its an actual line in the play or one we ad-libbed :)

I have an MDR on my shelf that I haven't read yet Peggy and I think I'll bump it up to read in June. It's Dreamers of the Day. I loved Doc, didn't think much of The Sparrow but my favorite remains A Thread of Grace.

I probably won't read A Greater Place of Safety until July due to a plethora of door stoppers between now and the end of June.

I haven't read any MDR, but I do have A Thread of Grace sitting somewhere in the middle of my pile. It sounds like I should get to it.

You are reminding me of a student I had in a first year English course who was the King of Malapropisms. He was a master of the "close but no cigar" choice of words but, of course, I read the paper as the words were intended, which made it just nuts (and hilarious). He argued about his grade, saying "look, I used big words and everything, that's an A paper". Arthur, you can't toss a grenade into a Thesaurus and call it an essay. Ok, he said, and tried to sell me a Christmas tree. I wish I had kept a copy of that paper. "Mental torcher" indeed!

Megan, if "Shut up Mary Warren" isn't in the play (and I really don't think it is), it should be.
I love A Thread of Grace too and trust that Nathalie has read it. For some reason I think it's set in the part of Italy where she lives. I haven't read Dreamers of the Day either, Bonnie, and come to think of it, I never got into Children of God. On the other hand, The Sparrow is such a great favorite that when I lent it and it didn't come back, I replaced it. Beth, I don't think you'll be disappointed in the time spent with *Thread*.

THE FORGOTTEN WALTZ by Anne Enright

I don't think that "liked" or "enjoyed" describe my experience with this book, but I was certainly involved in it, and I've thought about it when I wasn't reading it, so I've given it 4½ stars.
It is internal meanderings and recollections of a thirty-something woman in the throes of an affair. She seems much younger than thirty to me. Gina is a relatively successful business woman, married, who falls into an affair with the married neighbor of her sister. She doesn't think about what she's doing, and if he does, nothing much of it registers with Gina. His wife devotes herself to their child who had seizures when she was younger, but at 12 or 13 has apparently outgrown them but is having psychological problems as a result of the affair. He loves his daughter but complains about his wife. Gina falls out of love with her husband (a much better man, we deduce --- but his breath is bad when he's asleep) and into love with Seán after she sleeps with him. Her sister and various friends object to the affair on moral grounds, but Gina can say only that she loves him.
Enright doesn't judge. She simply presents Gina's feelings in stunning prose. Is Conor, Gina's husband, hurt? Yes, but Gina doesn't worry about it. Is Aileen, Seán's wife, hurt? Probably, but Gina has no way of knowing, so we don't see anything about her. Is Evie, the daughter, hurt? Yes, but Evie at least knows where the responsibility lies and doesn't hesitate to put it where it belongs. Will Seán be faithful to Gina? Probably not, but pain is not likely to endure. (She does miss her mother who dies in the course of the story.) Enright draws a striking picture of a woman at sea morally. I think it's telling that the only thing she recalls her mother teaching her is how to sit properly so that the line of her thigh seems longer. It's a remarkable portrait. I wish I didn't feel that it's a typical one.

Great review of the Enright novel... My sense of Conor vs Sean is that Gina fell into marriage with as little thought as she deploys in falling into the affair -- she wakes up, in both cases, to find more than she has bargained for is there, from bad breath to rivalry with a daughter. I thought that was deftly handled. Also, I found the way Enright deals with Aileen to be very clever. We are seeing her through Gina's eyes, so Aileen is two dimensional -- it's more convenient that way for Gina. We see her as Evie's over-protective mother, the woman who exasperates Sean, so in many ways the anti-Gina, in Gina's eyes. Gina isn't an appealing character, but she's a real one. Gina's character makes me think of a pinball in a pinball machine -- she bounces hither and yon, reacting to whatever and whomever she comes across.

I am still giggling at "sinning like two rabbits in a meadow". Methinks the verb may have been toned down for your consumption. But thanks for the chortle!!

I agree with every word of yr. review - I think Enright intended Gina to be what she is and the novel to be what it is, but I couldn't get away from feeling that it was familiar territory indeed despite the beautiful writing. (Not quite enough on its own, I guess?)

Alert! ALERT!! The Kindle Daily Deal today is The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating. Amazon is out to nibble my retirement away.
I'm glad that you both agree with me about *Waltz*, Suzanne and Lucy. Lucy, I think this is one time that not-exactly-form follows not-exactly-function. There's not a lot to Gina, so Enright doesn't draw any conclusions, dig any deeper into the void....it is familiar territory - shame on us.
(It did occur to me that the "sinning" showed an awareness of audience maybe not quite shared with "hell-whore.")

Elizabeth Proctor, from The Crucible

Though after that experience Elizabeth thought she didn't have the best marriage in the world (and she didn't), she tried. She knew she couldn't leave John, and didn't even question it. Any woman today would at least question the thought, but not Elizabeth - that's the kind of morale the woman had ... the morale to go on and live.
What shows the best strength in Elizabeth is her strength to change. It was after a long time of thinking and being separated from John. Half a year in fact, and this is as she's pregnant with her third child, too. John is about to either sign an agreement with the Salem Courthouse or be hung of witch craft. But it doesn't matter to Elizabeth. She has finally seen all of their mistakes together ... and she is wise enough to see that the biggest mistake was the lack of love.

(And that is the end.)

I saw the Kindle Daily Deal this morning, too, Peggy, and after what I've been reading on LT lately, think I will splurge on it.

I've been "enjoying" your student's essay, if chuckling with inner cringing is enjoyment. ;-)

Caught another two BBs! Haven't read A Thread of Grace, in fact not even heard of it, but it's duly WLed, along with The Forgotten Waltz. Great review!

Thanks for posting the Kindle deals, they are so well hidden that I usually forget to look - and when I do, the books are often not available in Europe. Haven't found a way yet to subscribe to the DDs, shouldn't they have a kind of newsletter for it?

If I had a kindle I might get it..... my husband has one, maybe I'll make him get it?

Er... I guess the price of 12,30 USD means that once again the DD is not valid for us Europeans. :(

We Canucks are often excluded from the daily deals (the mysteries you mentioned the other day, Peggy). I have no hopes but will check out the snail.

ETA: success! Hooray!

Peggy - also chiming in to say that the review of Enright's novel is fair minded and balanced and I may gave it a try despite being underwhelmed by The Gathering earlier. The image of sinning rabbits will stay with me late into the evening I'm afraid - I think I'll go and find that meadow before sleep intrudes!

Lovely to see you, Roni, Nathalie, Lucy, Tui, and Paul!
Nathalie, for some reason I think that *Thread* may be set in the same general area where you live. My lack of geography is shaming, and it's been several years since I read the book, but that's what I remember maybe.
I grouse a lot because we don't get the wonderful Kindle deals available in the UK. The mysteries and *Snail* are the first offerings here that I've cared to have in weeks --- well, checking them out, I see that I did get the Neal Stephenson this month. Glad it was available to you, Tui.
Paul, I couldn't read The Gathering. I gave it a good try, but I didn't feel the need to be depressed. I don't think I'll try it again soon either, but someday.... Meanwhile, I like being considered fair minded and balanced. Thank you!

Nice review of The Forgotten Waltz. My experience with most of Enright's work, including The Gathering, is that she writes exquisitely, with prose you just want to tattoo on your skin, but her emotional tone is almost always depressing, without redemption of any kind. I suppose that's a way of looking at life, but it makes me admire her work without really enjoying it. Even so, I'll probably read that one eventually.

>132 LizzieD: I think I may have not been thinking clearly when I suggested the line "Shut up Mary Warren" was in the Crucible...It really was something we said to each other as a joke. lol, we had so much fun at school.

You are having a lot more luck lately in good reads....I cant find a thing that holds a candle to The Bone People :_(

Excellent review of The Forgotten Waltz Peggy but after suffering through the dreadful The Gathering I don't think I'll read it anytime soon unless it wins tomorrow. Then I could read it very soon. I did pick up The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating this morning and I haven't been lured much lately by the DDs. But my iPad is filling up and it won't be long til it resembles the shelves in my house. Yikes!

Ah, Sarah, "prose that you just want to tattoo on your skin" is exactly right for Enright. Thanks for that! I would have read the whole of *Waltz* for the last line alone.
Megan, I didn't really think that you thought that "SU, MW" was in the play. I say again that it should have been. And I have been fabulously happy with my reading this month. I've spent the past couple of days reading a little of this and a little of that in hopes of nailing down a few to get into June. Instead, I have a huge pile of equal read-a-tunity books giving me little whimpers.
Bonnie, I can't wait to see what does win. I wasn't attracted to any of the short list last year, and this year I've read three of them. I'm betting on *Silence*, but I can see *Waltz* dancing away with the prize. So far my Kindle is a black hole. I'm going to be amazed and disappointed when it won't hold any more.

When I found the paper with the sinning rabbits, I also found this directive from one of the ass. principals at the HS.

Teachers please remember that the Progress Reports were due to day home yesterday. If you have not sent out Progress Reports please do so before this week.

The next day's e-mail included a snarky warning that teachers should not waste time correcting her e-mail. I agree that correction would have been a waste of time, but I felt and feel sorry for her.

The age of computers has brought in a new directive: always proof read at least once before hitting send. I got a query once about Roman citizens "pubically" insulting the Emperor and didn't quite know how to respond.

I grabbed the whole Fossum series too and Wild Snail Eating.

After reading your 5 star review, I was positive I had at least part of the LBJ biography on my shelf, but no--I have McCullough's Truman shelved right next to Caro's The Power Broker and I confused myself.

Very nice review of The Forgotten Waltz. Yes, saying you "liked" it seems wrong somehow, doesn't it?

>148 tiffin: Proof read, and also watch out for autocorrect!

148. Toga failure?

>150 sibylline:: like Janet Jackson's famous wardrobe malfunction.

ROTFL re pubical insults and Toga failure...

the saddest part of the Crucible essay is that there are some reasonable comments/insights (for a HS student) buried in the labyrinth of prose...

>150 sibylline:: *snort*

Tui, Anne, Lucy, Laura, and Suzanne, thank you for making the absurd even funnier. I'll betcha those ancient Romans were liable to pubic toga failure more often than we suspect!!!
Anne, until I read the Caro LBJ's, I thought that McCullough's Truman was the epitome of the political biographer's art. It's still a great one-volume. I know that I'll read The Power Broker at some point, and I really have not the least interest in R. Moses.

DON'T LOOK BACK by Karin Fossum

This is the best modern mystery I've read in a long time - better than the first H. Mankel, for example. I like Inspector Sejer and his assistant Jacob Skarre, and I hope to see their relationship deepen in the next books. Fossum tosses the reader an early bone, takes it back, and generally provides plenty to keep an eager sleuth-hound on the scent. I choose to say no more so that others may enjoy the unfolding plot as I did.

So you want to reach 200? Here's one...

Ok, I came over from Lucy's thread to help you out - here's another!

I've been lurking daily but not speaking up--hate it when that happens on my own thread as I like to know who's been by--so here I am!

*making what richard calls social noise to get you closer to 200*

and adding another post to say "I should have bought those Fossum books when they were hot deals at amazon" :(

Peggy, glad you enjoyed Don't Look Back. Fossum is on my list of writers to explore. I also liked the Mankells I've read (only the first 2-3), but from what I've heard here on LT, I think I may like Fossum even better. Just think of all the great reading I would have missed had I not decided to read Larsson's Millennium Trilogy! It was he who started me on the road of discovering other Scandinavian writers. I devoured the Dragon Girl books, and HAD to have more : ).

* more social noise! *

Many thanks, ladies! I guess I could write a message apiece, but my thrifty Scots soul won't let me do that. So, "HI!" Katherine, Mamie, Roni, Nathalie (I'm thankful that I bought the Fossum books and sorry that you didn't), Nancy, and Laura. Yeah. Mankell owns 2 ls, doesn't he? At least I didn't confuse him with H. Mantel.
To natter on a bit, I've been reading 10 pp here, 30 pp there in an effort to line up what's for June. I have a wonderful time doing that, and I guess I should check out the new TIOLI before making any iron-clad commitments. I wonder why I even bother because I have skilled iron-breaking tools. Anyway, I've read some of Pilgrim, Belinda (NOT the dirty one!), 1491, Revelation, Painter of Silence, and Doc. Doc is the keeper so far. And I'm feeling the old Dickens lure again. It's getting hot here, so I hope that I'll be inside reading.

I havent tried any of Fossum's books, but all these good things I am hearing are making me wonder....

OK Peggy I'll help you out in exchange for another bit of advice. I read (and LOVED) Bleak House which you suggested so should it be David Copperfield, The Pickwick Papers or Our Mutual Friend in June?

Which reminds me---Peggy, are you and I still going to re-read Our Mutual Friend together? I was thinking July for that, if it suits you?

Megan, you should try one! I was unhappy to spend that $ when I hadn't read any, but now I'm very grateful that I did!
Bonnie, thanks for the help! You're mentioning 3 favorites!!!
There's nothing else like *Pickwick* in the language. It starts out frivolous and funny and then takes a small turn for the darker side. I can never decide whether I love Mr. P. or Sam Weller more.
*OMF* is a Dickens-fest with a LOT of everything that you loved about him in *BH*. It's tied with *PP* as my #2.
*DC* is thinly disguised biography with some major changes. The young women in *DC* and *OMF* are a bit off-putting, but if you could put up with Ada Clare, you should get along just fine! I'll be eager to see which you choose.

I'm just about sold on Fossum, I have to admit.

I could maybe get with the idea of OMF in July. The Daily Dickens here was so much fun the last few months.

Did I mention it rained all day? (Just doing my bit.)

>163 LizzieD:: I like your "thrifty Scots" excuse, I'm going to have to steal that one.

I still want to read Our Mutual Friend this year. Maybe a nudge will get me going...

OOO! Beth, if you and Lucy join Liz and me in July, that will be an excellent group - maybe even attractive to some other readers. If *BH* is oceanic, *OMF* is cosmic. There has to be something for everybody! I did read a little of *B&S* yesterday. It would be a push to finish it by July, but I probably can....
(That you for your bit, Lucy! Maybe I was just in the mood for that Fossum, but I really enjoyed it. It's not her first book, so I expect that's a help. )
"Thrifty" is the nice way of putting it, Laura!

I might be tempted. I'm going to be traveling the second half of the month, so I would put OMF onto my Kindle, and probably try to read ahead the first part of the month.

(Have to check when the 1Q84 group read is--don't want to be working on 2 big chunkers at the same time!)

It's okay, not until October. And I just picked up the free Kindle edition.

This is shaping up nicely -- I even think we might OWN a copy of OMF - somewhere..... but I should be able to find it with a whole month to work in.

YAY!! Roni, you will be most welcome. Lucy, this might push you toward a Kindle at last. It's a LOT easier to hold than 800 or 900 pages in dead trees - unless you have some aesthetic feeling for how CD should be read. (I think he'd love the Kindle myself.)
Just for the record, I'm finally into Doc after 80 pp or so.
And WHY do I have two posts numbered 174? I'll never make it to 200 this way.

You don't have two 174s. Sometimes LT plays tricks that way on your own thread but others don't see it that way.

Thank you, Ms. T. I am unvexed.

We have two Kindles because the spousal unit likes them. So maybe I will load it up on there if need be.

>172 LizzieD:: As you know, Peggy, I loved Our Mutual Friend when I read it a few months ago. I'll be sure to follow along if you do a group read.

>175 LizzieD:: I was told by "calm" a few days ago that when a post is edited it changes the numbers for a brief time. No idea why.

Another Fossum fan in the making. Yay!

That's an interesting explanation. Thanks, Donna! I don't know exactly when or how we'll do *OMF*, but stay tuned. And I already am a Fossum fan on the strength of that one novel.
REALLY liking Doc now. I had to get into it a good way to be enthralled, but now she has me.

Alert! ALERT!! Today's Kindle Daily Deal is a collection of Michael Chabon's essays called Maps and Legends. It now sits patiently in my Kindle.

DAILY DICKENS
"To and from the heart of this great change, all day and night, throbbing currents rushed and returned incessantly like its life's blood. Crowds of people and mountains of goods, departing and arriving scores upon scores of times in every four-and-twenty hours, produced a fermentation in the place that was always in action. The very houses seemed disposed to pack up and take trips."

(I love the rhythm of that!)

Ah, I just came from purchasing the Chabon book for my Kindle. Great minds and all that!

I snagged that Chabon book earlier today myself--and I'm so pleased to see that the first of the Fossum books was a hit. I don't know when I'll get to them but you make me glad they're all sitting patiently on my Kindle.

I too have been planning to read Our Mutual Friend this year. By July I will have had at least a month intermission following David Copperfield, and might be ready to pick up another.

Great minds for sure, Roni and Anne!
I am in a section of *D&S* that drags for the most devoted of Dickens Disciples, of whom I count myself one. It's all sentiment and Florence and Walter and Walter and Florence with a little Captain Cuttle, Susan Nipper, and Diogenes the dog thrown in for fun - but precious little fun. Here's a taste for DD 2. (I know it gets better, so I don't despair.)

"When no one in the house was stirring, and the lights were all extinguished, she would softly leave her own room, and with noiseless feet descend the staircase, and approach her father's door. Against it, scarcely breathing, she would rest her face and head, and press her lips, in the yearning of her love. She crouched upon the cold stone floor outside it, every night, to listen even for his breath; and in her one absorbing wish to be allowed to show him some affection, to be a consolation to him, to win him over to the endurance of some tenderness from her, his solitary child, she would have knelt down at his feet, if she had dared, in humble supplication."

I'd tell you what I think of that, but I know I'd only get flagged. :)

Not by me!

A slow patch in a Dickens can last a while....good luck, and see you on the other side :)

I picked up the Chabon book too earlier Peggy but it's good to know you alert us of the good ones that come along. There've been some good ones lately after a drought that lasted quite a bit of time.

Hi, Megan. Hi, Bonnie. I guess that they sell lots and lots of the ordinary schlock that they offer, but it's sad that the good stuff is rare. I was almost tempted by today's offering until I saw the review that said that the Kindle edition lacked the whole last chapter and that the formatting was grim.
I'm almost through the present dire part of *D&S* and will soon meet Edith, my favorite character in the book!

DAILY DICKENS
"In fact, Diogenes was at that moment, as they presently ascertained from looking down into the street, staring through the window of a hackney cabriolet, into which, for conveyance to that spot, he had been ensnared, on a false pretence of rats among the straw. Sooth to say, he was as unlike a lady's dog as might be, and in his gruff anxiety to get out, presented an appearance sufficiently unpromising, as he gave short yelps out of one side of his mouth, and overbalancing himself by the intensity of every one of those efforts, tumbled down into the straw, and then sprung panting up again, putting out his tongue, as if he had come express to a Dispensary to be examined for his health.
But though Diogenes was as ridiculous a dog as one would meet with on a summer's day; a blundering, ill-favoured, clumsy, bullet-headed dog, continually acting on a wrong idea that there was an enemy in the neighbourhood, whom it was meritorious to bark at; and though he was far from good-tempered, and certainly was not clever, and had hair all over his eyes, and a comic nose, and an inconsistent tail, and a gruff voice, he was dearer to Florence --- than the most valuable and beautiful of his kind."

Awwww.

What Lucy said!

That's the only time I don't hate Florence.

What Lucy and Roni said!

I'm glad that we're all in agreement and that I left Liz's blood pressure alone.

We have DD again! :)
And: agreed on the "Awwww"

OMF is on my tbr for 2012, maybe I can make room for it in July.

When I check the amazon site I never find a Kindle deal, it's always tools or kitchenware, so thanks again for posting those offers!

Deem, you have to go to Kindle ebooks to find the daily deal. It's one of the first links on the left.

#195: thank you, I checked again, but I don't see that link. I am sure they adapt the interface, depending from where you are, and many of those Kindle goodies are not available to people outside the US

Thanks for the advice, Judy. Oh, Nathalie, I'm afraid you're right. Now that I think about it, I've longed for some that the Brits have been able to get that just aren't available here. Have you read Suzanne's musings on the machinations necessary to get a Kindle set up with Amazon UK from here in the US?
Just in case, here's the link for today.

Oh, I forgot you weren't in the US. Rats. Sorry to get your hopes up.

Lurking with nothing to contribute, except one more post to get you on the brink of 200...

Rats for sure!
Thank you Katherine, and one and all!!!! I'll do my best to hunt out something for June. You all really boosted me over!

Peggy, I hadn't realised I was causing so much envy when I mention the UK kindle deals! I think that 95% of the stuff that gets offered in the UK is uninteresting to me but I often get reverse envy on the US deals and books which aren't available in the UK.

#196 Nathalie, can you buy from the amazon.de site? I think that was the one Cushla used when she lived in Switzerland. They seem to have daily deals (here) although, again, they are completely different deals to the US and UK sites....

I'm very tempted by the idea of OMF in July except for the fact that I don't seem to be able to do group reads at the moment and I'm supposed to be reading Martin Chuzzlewit next. But maybe I need to rekindle my Dickens enthusiasm by reading one of the amazing ones rather than one I'm worried about... I still bear the scars from Barnaby Rudge!

#201: sadly no, my Kindle then must be registered in Germany, Austria or Switzerland. They forgot about the little German speaking regions elsewhere. I could register with amazon.it, but I doubt I'd get English deals then, and I hesitate to get away from amazon.com unless I can be sure I'll get the same English books on amazon.it.

Sometimes when someone mentions a Kindle deal, if I enter the title, it will go to the book and will let me upload the book at the reduced price. Sometimes, however, they get a bit shirty and say "this offer is not available in your country". I don't know if it is to do with copyright laws or just what. Anyway, if I want it, I try but I do have to go through Amazon.com in the U.S., not Amazon.ca

Oh for the day when everything is available at the same low price everywhere! I'm not holding my breath. Heather, I can't tell you the times I flew to Amazon to try to find one of your deals to no avail. I wish you would think about *OMF* in July; you really can't read it too often, can you? Tui, you give me a little hope. Nathalie, maybe you can eventually get a second Kindle while you're in Germany and register it there?

THIRTEEN by Richard K. Morgan

This is mostly a men's adventure (lots of violence and bad language and a little sex) in a futuristic setting. I wouldn't have picked it up without the scifi angle, but having done so, I read it to the very end - all 544 big pages of it, so I must have liked something about it!
Carl Marsalis is a variant 13 - a result of genetic engineering for violence and aggressiveness that has been bred out of the general population over the millennia. He and his kind have been trained as soldiers in an experiment gone bad (because 13s are not particularly amenable to taking orders) and in his present have been sequestered on earth or sent to Mars. Carl, returned from Mars, hunts down escaped 13s for the government and often thinks about what he is and what he does.
The science fiction is not quite up to Morgan's usual standards, but the book works well enough. The USA has been broken into two states - the Union, and the Republic in the South, commonly called "Jesusland." Then there is the Rim, the source for earth-based technology.
In the Republic Carl suffers from discrimination both as a 13 and as a black man. That's the set up. As I say, I liked it well enough to read it to the bitter end.