kidzdoc is cutting down the mountain of unread books in 2012: part 8

Yo conozco, está tan tarde, pero ¡Feliz Cinco de Mayo a todos! (I know, it's too late, but Happy Cinco de Mayo to everyone!)














Currently reading:



The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
The Patient Survival Guide: 8 Simple Solutions to Prevent Hospital- and Healthcare-Associated Infections by Dr. Maryanne McGuckin

Completed books:

January:
1. Volcano by Shusaku Endo (review)
2. False Friends: Book Two by Ellie Malet Spradbery (review)
3. A Disease Apart: Leprosy in the Modern World by Tony Gould (review)
4. Best Mets: Fifty Years of Highs and Lows from New York's Most Agonizingly Amazin' Team by Matthew Silverman (review)
5. Walkabout by James Vance Marshall (review)
6. Swamplandia! by Karen Russell (review)
7. Letter from the Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King, Jr.
8. Mister Blue by Jacques Poulin (review)
9. Stained Glass Elegies by Shusaku Endo (review)
10. Botchan (Master Darling) by Natsume Soseki (review)
11. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
12. Guadalajara by Quim Monzó (review)

February:
13. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
14. Erasure by Percival Everett
15. Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness?: What It Means to Be Black Now by Touré
16. Memed, My Hawk by Yashar Kemal
17. India Becoming: A Portrait of Life in Modern India by Akash Kapur (review)
18. The Three-Cornered World by Natsume Soseki
19. Angel by Elizabeth Taylor
20. Kokoro by Natsume Soseki
21. The Golden Country by Shusaku Endo
22. The Patience Stone by Atiq Rahimi

March:
23. Professor Andersen's Night by Dag Solstad
24. Amsterdam Stories by Nescio
25. Your New Baby: A Guide to Newborn Care by Roy Benaroch, MD (review)
26. Fragile Beginnings: Discoveries and Triumphs in the Newborn ICU by Adam Wolfberg, MD (review)
27. There but for the by Ali Smith
28. The Deportees and Other Stories by Roddy Doyle
29. When the Garden Was Eden: Clyde, the Captain, Dollar Bill, and the Glory Days of the New York Knicks by Harvey Araton (review)
30. Walk on Water: Inside an Elite Pediatric Surgical Unit by Michael Rudman (review)
31. Suffer the Children: Flaws, Foibles, Fallacies and the Grave Shortcomings of Pediatric Care by Peter Palmieri (review)
32. Tonight No Poetry Will Serve by Adrienne Rich

April:
33. Little Misunderstandings of No Importance by Antonio Tabucchi
34. One with Others by C.D. Wright (review)
35. The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro by Antonio Tabucchi (review)
36. Boundaries by Elizabeth Nunez (review)
37. Panther Baby by Jamal Joseph (review)
38. The Map and the Territory by Michel Houellebecq
39. Waifs and Strays by Micah Ballard (review)
40. Gillespie and I by Jane Harris (review)
41. Natural Birth by Toi Derricotte (review)
42. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (review)
43. Thirst by Andrei Gelasimov (review)
44. When I Was a Poet by David Meltzer (review)
45. Book of My Mother by Albert Cohen (review)
46. The Lepers of Molokai by Charles Warren Stoddard

May:
47. Colonoscopy for Dummies ~ Special Edition by Kathleen A. Doble
48. Map of the Invisible World by Tash Aw
49. A Planet of Viruses by Carl Zimmer
50. State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
51. The Leopard by Giuseppe Di Lampedusa (review)
52. The Line by Olga Grushin
53. What Is Amazing by Heather Christle
54. Painter of Silence by Georgina Harding
55. The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright
56. The Treasures of Destiny by Laurie Harman Wilson
57. Confusion by Stefan Zweig
58. Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick
59. The Undertaker's Daughter by Toi Derricotte

June:
60. Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable

Books acquired in 2012: (books in bold are ones that I purchased this year)

January:
1. Best Mets: Fifty Years of Highs and Lows from New York's Most Agonizingly Amazin' Team by Matthew Silverman (2 Jan; LT Early Reviewer book) √
2. The Map and the Territory by Michel Houellebecq (3 Jan; Kindle purchase) √
3. The Lepers of Molokai by Charles Warren Stoddard (7 Jan; free Kindle download) √
4. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt (8 Jan; gift book)
5. Walkabout by James Vance Marshall (8 Jan; NYRB Book Club) √
6. There but for the by Ali Smith (9 Jan; ordered from Alibris 30 Jan) √
7. I Am a Cat by Natsume Soseki (9 Jan; ordered from Alibris 30 Jan)
8. The Samurai by Shusaku Endo (9 Jan; ordered from Alibris 30 Jan)
9. Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima ((9 Jan; ordered from Alibris 30 Jan)
10. Coin Locker Babies by Ryu Murakami (9 Jan; ordered from Alibris 30 Jan)
11. Black Talk, Blue Thoughts, and Walking the Color Line: Dispatches from a Black Journalista by Erin Aubry Kaplan (10 Jan; LT Early Reviewer book)
12. Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell (11 Jan; ordered from Strand Book Store on 27 Dec)
13. Runaway Horses by Yukio Mishima (11 Jan; ordered from Strand Book Store on 27 Dec)
14. The Temple of Dawn by Yukio Mishima (11 Jan; ordered from Strand Book Store on 27 Dec)
15. The Golden Country by Shusaku Endo (11 Jan; ordered from Strand Book Store on 27 Dec) √
16. Deep River by Shusaku Endo (11 Jan; ordered from Strand Book Store on 27 Dec)
17. Letter from the Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King, Jr. (15 Jan; free download) √

February:
18. Panther Baby by Jamal Joseph (2 Feb; free ARC) √
19. Angel by Elizabeth Taylor (4 Feb; NYRB Book Club) √
20. Class War?: What Americans Really Think about Economic Inequality by Benjamin I. Page (10 Feb; free e-book from U of Chicago Press)
21. India Becoming: A Portrait of Life in Modern India by Akash Kapur (15 Feb; LT Early Reviewer book) √
22. Amsterdam Stories by Nescio (29 Feb; NYRB Book Club) √

March:
23. Your new baby: A guide to newborn care by Roy Benaroch (6 Mar; free Kindle download) √
24. Fragile Beginnings: Discoveries and Triumphs in the Newborn ICU by Adam Wolfberg, MD (11 Mar; Kindle purchase) √
25. The Irish Americans: A History by Jay P. Dolan (17 Mar; Kindle purchase)
26. The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God & Other Stories by Etgar Keret (17 Mar; partial book purchase from Barnes & Noble gift order)
27. The Grief of Others by Leah Hager Cohen (17 Mar; Barnes & Noble gift order)
28. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (17 Mar; Barnes & Noble gift order) √
29. Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now--As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It by Craig Taylor (17 Mar; Barnes & Noble gift order)
30. The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright (17 Mar; iBooks order)
31. When the Garden Was Eden: Clyde, the Captain, Dollar Bill, and the Glory Days of the New York Knicks by Harvey Araton (20 Mar; Kindle gift book) √
32. Assumption by Percival Everett (20 Mar; Kindle gift book)
33. The Barbarian Nurseries by Héctor Tobar (20 Mar; Kindle gift book)
34. A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes (22 Mar; Kindle gift book)
35. The Man Within My Head by Pico Iyer (25 Mar; Kindle gift book)
36. Walk on Water: Inside an Elite Pediatric Surgical Unit by Michael Rudman (25 Mar; borrowed book) √
37. Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete by Washington Irving (26 Mar; free Kindle download)
38. Suffer the Children: Flaws, Foibles, Fallacies and the Grave Shortcomings of Pediatric Care by Peter Palmieri (26 Mar; Kindle purchase) √

April:
39. Store of the Worlds: The Stories of Robert Sheckley (3 Apr; NYRB Book Club)
40. The King of Kahel by Tierno Monénembo (15 Apr; Kindle e-book)
41. The Secret Piano: From Mao's Labor Camps to Bach's Goldberg Variations by Zhu Xiao-Mei (15 Apr; Kindle e-book)
42. The Greenhouse by Audur Ava Olafsdottir (15 Apr; Kindle e-book)
43. Thirst by Andrei Gelasimov (15 Apr; Kindle e-book) √
44. Book of My Mother by Albert Cohen (16 Apr; Archipelago Books 2011 subscription) √
45. My Struggle: Book One by Karl Ove Knausgaard (16 Apr; Archipelago Books 2011 subscription)
46. As Though She Were Sleeping by Elias Khoury (16 Apr; Archipelago Books 2011 subscription)
47. Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick (17 Apr; Kindle e-book)
48. Painter of Silence by Georgina Harding (17 Apr; Kindle e-book)
49. Bleak House by Charles Dickens (22 Apr; free Kindle e-book)
50. Three Strong Women by Marie NDiaye (28 Apr; Amazon UK order)

May:
51. A Planet of Viruses by Carl Zimmer (3 May; free e-book from the University of Chicago Press) √
52. Colonoscopy for Dummies ~ Special Edition by Kathleen A. Doble (3 May; free e-book) √
53. Foreign Studies by Shusaku Endo (6 May; Strand Book Store)
54. The Enormity of the Tragedy by Quim Monzó (6 May; Strand Book Store)
55. Hitch-22 by Christopher Hitchens (6 May; Strand Book Store)
56. The Coward's Tale by Vanessa Gebbie (6 May; Strand Book Store)
57. Trapeze by Simon Mawer (6 May; Strand Book Store)
58. HHhH by Laurent Binet (6 May; Strand Book Store)
59. The Undertaker's Daughter by Toi Derricotte (6 May; Strand Book Store)
60. What Is Amazing by Heather Christle (6 May; Strand Book Store)
61. Confusion by Stefan Zweig (8 May; NYRB Book Club) √
62. Scenes from Early Life by Philip Hensler (8 May; The Book Depository)
63. Pure by Timothy Mo (8 May; The Book Depository)
64. Capital by John Lanchester (19 May; The Book Depository)
65. A Mind of Winter by Shira Nayman (19 May; LibraryThing Early Reviewer book)
66. The Treasures of Destiny by Laurie Harman Wilson (20 May; ARC e-book) √
67. The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro (21 May; History Book Club)
68. The Complete 2012 User's Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle by Stephen Windwalker and Bruce Grubbs (29 May; free Kindle e-book)
69. Our Lady of Alice Bhatti by Mohammed Hanif (30 May; Kindle e-book)
70. Last Orders by Graham Swift (30 May; gift book (J.N.))
71. The Patient Survival Guide: 8 Simple Solutions to Prevent Hospital- and Healthcare-Associated Infections by Dr. Maryanne McGuckin (31 May; LT Early Reviewer book)
72. Subduction by Todd Shimoda (31 May; LT Early Reviewer book)
73. Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel (31 May; Amazon UK)

TBR books read in 2012 (books on my shelf for ≥6 months):

1. A Disease Apart: Leprosy in the Modern World by Tony Gould
2. Swamplandia! by Karen Russell
3. Botchan (Master Darling) by Natsume Soseki
4. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
5. Guadalajara by Quim Monzó
6. Memed, My Hawk by Yashar Kemal
7. The Three-Cornered World by Natsume Soseki
8. Kokoro by Natsume Soseki
9. The Patience Stone by Atiq Rahimi
10. The Deportees and Other Stories by Roddy Doyle
11. Little Misunderstandings of No Importance by Antonio Tabucchi
12. One with Others by C.D. Wright
13. The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro by Antonio Tabucchi
14. Waifs and Strays by Micah Ballard
15. Gillespie and I by Jane Harris
16. When I Was a Poet by David Meltzer
17. Map of the Invisible World by Tash Aw
18. State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
19. The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa
20. The Line by Olga Grushin
21. Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable

Books purchased in 2012:

1. The Map and the Territory by Michel Houellebecq ($13.99) √
2. Fragile Beginnings: Discoveries and Triumphs in the Newborn ICU by Adam Wolfberg, MD ($9.99) √
3. The Irish Americans: A History by Jay P. Dolan ($0.99)
4. The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God and Other Stories by Etgar Keret ($8.70 (partial purchase))
5. The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright ($12.99) √
6. Suffer the Children: Flaws, Foibles, Fallacies and the Grave Shortcomings of Pediatric Care by Peter Palmieri ($3.99) √
7. The King of Kahel by Tierno Monénembo ($0.99)
8. The Secret Piano: From Mao's Labor Camps to Bach's Goldberg Variations by Zhu Xiao-Mei ($0.99)
9. The Greenhouse by Audur Ava Olafsdottir ($0.99)
10. Thirst by Andrei Gelasimov ($0.99) √
11. Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick ($9.99)
12. Painter of Silence by Georgina Harding ($9.99) √
13. Three Strong Women by Marie NDiaye (£19.27)
14. Foreign Studies by Shusaku Endo ($6.95)
15. The Enormity of the Tragedy by Quim Monzó ($5.95)
16. Hitch-22 by Christopher Hitchens ($13.49)
17. The Coward's Tale by Vanessa Gebbie ($8.00)
18. Trapeze by Simon Mawer ($14.35)
19. HHhH by Laurent Binet ($23.40)
20. The Undertaker's Daughter by Toi Derricotte ($7.95)
21. What Is Amazing by Heather Christle ($11.45) √
22. Scenes from Early Life by Philip Hensler (£15.62)
23. Pure by Timothy Mo ($20.61)
24. Capital by John Lanchester (£13.31)
25. The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro ($24.99)
26. Our Lady of Alice Bhatti by Mohammed Hanif ($12.99)
27. Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel (£18.58)

Completed books from JanetinLondon's library and list of planned reads for 2012:

January:
1. Volcano by Shusaku Endo
2. Botchan by Natsume Soseki

February:
3. The Three-Cornered World by Natsume Soseki
4. Kokoro by Natsume Soseki

March:
(none)

April:
(none)

May:
5. The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa

My planned reads for May (you know the drill by now):

Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (TIOLI challenge #1) {TBR} - reading
Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel (to be read in June)
Painter of Silence by Georgia Harding (#4) {2012 Orange Prize shortlist} - completed
The Undertaker's Daughter by Toi Derricotte (#11) - completed
The City in Which I Love You by Li-Young Lee (#11) {TBR}
The Line by Olga Grushin (#11) {TBR} - completed
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie (#11) {TBR} (won't have time to read this month)
Source by Mark Doty (#11) {TBR}
The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright (#12) {2012 Orange Prize shortlist} - completed
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable (#12) {TBR} - reading
The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa (#14) {TBR} - completed
Lighthead by Terrance Hayes (#14) {TBR}
Splay Anthem by Nathaniel Mackey (#14) {TBR} - reading
State of Wonder by Anne Patchett (#14) {2012 Orange Prize shortlist} - completed
Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick (#16) {2012 Orange Prize shortlist} - completed
Map of the Invisible World by Tash Aw (#21) - completed

Una poema para el Cinco de Mayo:

Cinco de Mayo por Naomi Shihab Nye

If this is your birthday and you are dead,
do we stay silent as the sheet
you died under? No. You always talked.
Here's a thick white candle whispering.
Pour birdseed into feeders.
Speak up, speak up.

Tell me where they go, my friend said,
in the same pain. I touched her shoulder.
Here, right here. You're closer than
you ever were -- takes a while to know that.
Every scrap of DNA, he's listening.
There's a way not to be broken
that takes brokenness to find it.

Fabulous lists of books acquired, read and planned, Darryl, although you're giving me more ideas that I don't really need.

Also, thanks for sharing that great poem. There's a way not to be broken / that takes brokenness to find it. Love that.

Darryl - signing in for number 8. A regular cornucopia of lists, colourful pics and quality reading.

I can't keep up . . .

OK, stepping in to comment on the last few posts on the older thread.

I LOVE most of McEwan, although some of the rather kinky earlier stuff (e.g., In Between the Sheets) isn't among my favorites. And I wasn't as enamoured of Atonement as were others. On Chesil Beach was brilliant and should have won the Booker that year. Many readers had a reaction it it that, I suspect, was much like yours to that unnamed recently read book by that now unmentionable author; but I did not see it as "sexploitation," and the main characters were flawed--but not selfish or evil--persons. In many ways the book was about lost chances and failed expectations. So many of his novels are about miscommunication and contrary expectations, and he is really a master at conveying internal dialogue. His characters always seem to learn something about themselves. Among my favorites are Enduring Love, Saturday, Amsterdam, and The Child in Time. Solar started well but fell off a bit towards the end. Glad to hear that he has a new one coming out.

I'm in the minority on Never Let Me Go: I really hated it. It was way overhyped, especially the "surprise" ending that I had figured out by the second chapter; in between, a lot of adolescent angst and whining. The "ethical argument" was about as subtle as a hammer on the head.

Totally hated Never Let Me Go, because I've read SF for years and Ishiguro blew right past modern SFnal developments in his journey to forty years ago for his plot.

But that's me, and my view, so I mostly belt up in company. Deborah gave me the nerve to speak out. Blame her.

Darryl....love the poem...is there a source?

Please keep the excellent poems coming, Darryl. I've read others of hers but not that one.

Looking forward to your reactions to the Li-Young Lee.

just checking in

Hi Darryl, lost track of you again... But I see you're now reading The Master and Margarita - how are you getting on with it?

Re Ian McEwan, I'm clearly going to have to go back and read previous posts, but he's always been very hit and miss for me. I've only read three, but the only one I really loved was The Daydreamer - Atonement I enjoyed, but was also frustrated by, Saturday, while I made it to the end, mostly just bored me. I've got a copy of Solar because one of my mates is a big fan of his and had mentioned it, we'll see...

#10/11 Re Never Let Me Go, you see I also intensely disliked this book and I also felt that the plot was rather hackneyed. However, I did so enjoy his writing style - I honestly couldn't put it down, despite my dislike and it's the sole reason that I tried Remains of the Day, which I thought was wonderful. My feeling is that for Ishiguro, it's not so much about the plot as about the characters and so, while I'll probably never read it again, these rescued it for me.

Re the "ethical argument", I don't really feel this was the point of the book - for me, it was more about how the characters deal with the situation than it is about the (to me) extremely unlikely scenario. In fact, I went to see the film when it came out just because the showing I went to had a Q&A with Ishiguro afterwards (I contemplated just turning up for the Q&A and skipping the film, but it seemed a bit awkward) and this did seem to be the case, from what he had to say. He's interested in people's interactions with each other above anything else - one of the odd things that I took away from this Q&A was *SPOILER* that he feels that it doesn't have an unhappy ending. For him, the three central characters know all along that their lives are going to be short. It's not strange or sad for them - what is is the love triange and in the end, everyone gets what they want, including Ruth, who may not get Tommy, but does get redemption. *END SPOILER*. I don't know, but it was one of the more interesting Q&As I've been to and did make me revisit my initial impressions.

>15 flissp: Thank you for telling us about Ishiguro's perspective. Fascinating. I took it the other way totally.

Wow, I'm surprised I'm in the minority (at least so far) in really liking the book. It'll be interesting to see where you come down, Darryl!

I'm quite relieved and glad that I finally see some other people that don't like Never let me go as neither did I. I always thought that I completely missed the point because so far all the people surrounding me loved it and I thought it was horrible. Although in retrospect I'm starting to appreciate it a tiny bit more. I didn't like The remains of the day either, but since Darryl loves it so much I'll give it another chance and will reread it some time in the future.

I also really liked The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist (Swedish author), which was similar to Never Let Me Go. Anyone like one and not the other?

I liked Never Let Me Go despite the dull predictability of it. I thought the writing style and characterizations were very well done. I guess I assumed that we were supposed to know what the ending was...there were too many hints.

Did those who disliked Never Let Me Go like The Sea, though? Curious. The Sea is my least favorites of the 15 Booker winners I've read.

#18 I think I preferred The Unit - although I really liked other books by Ishiguro.

Added to The Unit to my list. I liked Never Let Me Go quite a bit, but as one reviewer put it, for me the sci-fi aspects were beside the point. Having read other works by Ishiguro, I wasn't expecting a page-turning how-will-it-end kind of book. It was the characters and their relationships that I found intriguing.

#20 haven't read the Sea yet, but is is high om my TBR list. I'm curious why you're asking.

>23 lilianboerboom: Just because they were in the same Booker year and it was leaked that the jury debated on those two for the winner.

I have to be on the side of those who didn't like Never Let Me Go. I was just disappointed that I figured what was happening very early- and I loved the other Kazuo Ishiguro books that I read. I found this one not as complex.

20> I didn't particularly care for The Sea. Nice enough writing, but meh, it just didn't engage me.

If you read any of the reviews or hype or readers' comments when Never Let Me Go first came out, it was all about the "big surprise in the ending" and what the overall premise (which I won't spoil by being more specific here) meant to then-current debates about medical ethics. No one was talking about wonderful characterization or brilliant use of language. Sorry--I thought it was plodding and predictable and the characters annoyingly adolescent (in the worst way).

25> Cyrel, exactly. How surprised can you be when the characters refer to themselves as "Carers" and "Donors" in the first chapter?

Woo! I was overdue for a quiet long call, and I got it tonight, with only two hospital admissions and one inpatient consult. So, my day was only 10 hours long, and it felt like a breeze compared to my last long call on Friday. This is going to be a good week, and a far better one than last week.

>6 Linda92007: Thanks, Linda. I haven't read as many TBRs as I had hoped so far (20 read, 55 to go), but I hope to pick up the pace soon. I've purchased far fewer books than the past few years, so I'm very pleased with that, given how many TBR books I'm especially eager to read.

I'm glad that you liked Ms Nye's Cinco de Mayo poem.

>7 mckait: Hi, Kath! I like the multicolored "HELLO", which fits well with my Cinco de Mayo photos.

>8 PaulCranswick: Thanks, Paul! I'm glad to see you here.

>9 Nickelini: With 21 unread messages in a little over 12 hours, I'm not sure I can keep up either! No complaints; I love the company and the intelligent conversation here.

>10 Cariola: I agree with you, Deborah. Of the 2007 Booker longlisted titles I've read (On Chesil Beach, Animal's People, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Mister Pip, Gifted and The Gift of Rain), I would rank the McEwan as my favorite, followed by The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Animal's People. I found the two main characters in this book to be fully developed and thoroughly believable, though deeply flawed, which I couldn't say about the characters in my superficial reading of The Forgotten Waltz. Based on your comments, I need to move Enduring Love and The Child in Time further up my TBR list, although I doubt that I'll get to either book this year.

So many of his novels are about miscommunication and contrary expectations, and he is really a master at conveying internal dialogue. His characters always seem to learn something about themselves.

I couldn't agree more, and I definitely couldn't have said it as well as you did. That is exactly why I'm such as fan of McEwan.

>11 richardderus: But that's me, and my view, so I mostly belt up in company.

Really? When did this start? ;-)

>12 tututhefirst: Darryl....love the poem...is there a source?

Yes, Tina. This poem was the Weekly Poem of the first week of May, 2012 from the Arts Beat blog on the PBS NewsHour's web site. The following link includes a short video of Naomi Shihab Nye reading Cinco de Mayo:

Weekly Poem: 'Cinco de Mayo'

>13 jnwelch: Thanks, Joe. I've heard of Nye, but I haven't read any of her collections yet. Any recommendations, from you or anyone else?

>14 EBT1002: *waves at Ellen*

>15 flissp: Hi, Fliss! I've only read the first two chapters of The Master and Margarita, but I'll make more headway during the next week or so. There's a group read of it that is currently taking place on Club Read; here's the link if anyone is interested in joining us: http://www.librarything.com/topic/136915.

Of the three McEwans you mentioned I've only read Saturday, which I did like but not as well as On Chesil Beach. I'll be curious to get your take on Solar, as I haven't read it yet. The April 30 edition of The New Yorker includes a short story by McEwan, which seems to be an excerpt from the beginning of White Tooth, his forthcoming novel; it's free to non-subscribers:

Hand on the Shoulder

The Remains of the Day was simply brilliant, and it's one of my favorite Booker winners. I'll read Never Let Me Go eventually, but it's pretty low on my TBR list, especially given these comments about it.

>16 1morechapter: Will do, Michelle. I seriously doubt that I'll read it before 2013, at the earliest.

>17 lilianboerboom: I hope that you do choose to re-read The Remains of the Day, Lilian. It's easily one of my all-time favorite novels.

>18 1morechapter: The Unit sounds intriguing, after reading some reviews of it on LT and Amazon. The Kindle version is available for $1.99 on Amazon US. I've downloaded a free sample, and I may get it if I like the opening segment of it.

>19 The_Hibernator: I would be more likely to give Never Let Me Go a fair trial if it's a well written but dull book, rather than one which is more intense but poorly written.

>20 1morechapter: The Sea is my least favorites of the 15 Booker winners I've read.

Yep, I think it will be awhile before I'll read that book.

>21 SandDune: Of the five books I've read by Ishiguro (When We Were Orphans, The Remains of the Day, A Pale View of Hills, An Artist of the Floating World, and Nocturnes), his Booker winner was far and away my favorite, and it's the only one I would rave about. The others were very good, but not stellar.

>22 labfs39: Thanks for those comments about Never Let Me Go, Lisa.

>23 lilianboerboom:, 24 Interesting. Do either of you have a favorite book from the 2005 Booker longlist? I've only read Slow Man, Saturday, Shalimar the Clown and On Beauty.

>25 torontoc:, 26 So, it seems as though most who have weighed in haven't liked Never Let Me Go. I think it will be quite a while before I read it.

The Booker judges sound much more promising this year. Three of the four have academic backgrounds (Foreman also writes historical novels--good for Hilary Mantel!), and from a few interviews I've read, Dan Stevens is an intelligent actor and probably a perceptive reader. Plus the TLS editor as chair. It would seem they are really trying to make up for last year's debacle (although they ended up choosing a good winner).

Out of curiosity, I checked the 2005 long and short lists. I did like The Accidental and A Short History of Tractors in the Ukraine, although neither of them seem Booker-worthy to me. I have a few of the others in my stacks but haven't yet been inspired to read them (The Harmony Silk Factory, On Beauty, Shalimar the Clown).

Thanks for posting the link to the McEwan story/excerpt!

>30 kidzdoc: I've only read 3 from the 2005 Booker year, and I would rank them in this order:

Never Let Me Go
On Beauty
The Sea

I see that Sebastian Barry was on the shortlist for A Long Long Way, though, and I know it would have been in the top 2 somewhere because I really love his writing. On Beauty was just ok for me.

>29 kidzdoc: $1.99 is great for The Unit!

>28 kidzdoc: >11 richardderus: But that's me, and my view, so I mostly belt up in company.

Really? When did this start? ;-)

Oh ha ha. Now you've done it! Release the hounds!

Ian McEwan: I need to move Enduring Love and The Child in Time further up my TBR list, although I doubt that I'll get to either book this year.

Enduring Love is perhaps my favourite McEwan. I read it one day in Maui, and I ignored my family the entire day ("Hey Mom, you want to go swimming?" "Later!" "you want to go for a walk down the beach?" "Later!" .... hours later, ....."Later!"). I also loved Atonement (especially the beginning section--it had such a Virginia Woolf/Katherine Mansfield/Elizabeth Bowen feel to it).

I have to admit, I didn't get The Child in Time. When I was reading it, I kept thinking "what IS this?". Reading the reviews here at LT helped a bit, and I'm holding on to it to reread in the future, but my reaction on the first read was "???!"

Ishiguro: Okay, I'll speak up--I very much enjoyed Never Let Me Go. It was my first Ishiguro, and I listened to it on audiobook. I knew nothing about it going in, and just found it very interesting. Not the best book ever, but I think very good. Deborah (Cariola) and I usually agree on books, but this is one that we have different about (whew! Good thing, otherwise one of us would be redundant). But we both agree on On Chesil Beach (oops, back to McEwan).

The Sea was on my wishlist for a long time and now it sits on my TBR pile (I purchased it a few months ago). I liked but didn't love Never Let Me Go; I think it had been so well-hyped that it was almost bound to disappoint (me).

>28 kidzdoc: The Naomi Shihab Nye I was given, Darryl, was 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, which I thought was very good. I see she has a selected poems collection from 1994: http://www.amazon.com/Words-Under-Selected-Poems-Corner/dp/0933377290/ref=sr_1_5... I need to read more of her stuff myself.

Thanks for the link to the Master and Margarita club. I love that weird book.

It is funny, I find I have similar reactions to both McEwan and Ishiguro, in that when they're good they're amazing, but some of their books don't work for me at all.

Atonement and The Remains of the Day are among my favorite books ever.

For McEwan, I liked Saturday, disliked Amsterdam, and thought parts of Solar were brilliant but that it trailed off at the end. I have Enduring Love and On Chesil Beach TBR. And from Ishiguro, I liked When We Were Orphans, though nowhere near as much as Remains of the Day, but The Unconsoled was one of the more bewildering books I've ever read. And that's not a compliment.

Interesting discussion. The interview with Ishiguro is enlightening.

I thought Remains of the Day was amazing and also liked Never Let me Go. They are very different.

Of the Booker winners---I think Disgrace which I read last month, is probably my favorite. The only one I hated was The Bone People. I would like to read more Booker winners, but probably that's going to be a goal for next year.

I quite liked Never Let Me Go and gave it four stars. Maybe I appreciated it more because I wasn't really aware of the hype and didn't expect a big, exciting twist. I actually knew very little about it before I read it. I thought the way the "big issue" was revealed - little by little - was very effective. Sure, you pretty much knew what was going on long before it was officially revealed, but that particular storyline wasn't really what I thought was important in the novel, so it didn't bother me. I vote read it. I'd like to get to The Remains of the Day at some point as well.

Hi Darryl. I haven't been vocal here, but I've been lurking on this thread since yesterday, more or less (creepy, eh?) after looking at some titles, I was inspired to go back to the Booker Prize lists and add a bunch of books to my wishlist, especially as there were several that were already on my Amazon wishlist but not here; I'm trying to slowly migrate all my book lists over to LT so I can see them all at a glance.

I was among those who really disliked Never Let Me Go. In fact, I will never forget that Deborah (Cariola) virtually "came out" to me as one who didn't enjoy it at all, after she'd seen my very short negative review of it. She was under the impression at the time that almost everyone loved it and that she was in a small minority, but I see here that we were not alone after all. I'll never know if I failed to enjoy it because of the hype or because of the story itself, but I was seriously underwhelmed.

>31 Cariola: Right, Deborah. This year's set of Booker judges looks to be an exceptional one, so I'm confident that they will be able to select a superb longlist from what looks to be a very strong year for literature in the Commonwealth.

If I remember correctly, last year's judges came very close to picking another book as the prize winner, but fortunately ending up choosing, IMO, the best book selected for the longlist. (What was that other book?)

Ah, I see that the dates for this year's prize have been posted:
25 July 2012 – Longlist announcement
11 September 2012 – Shortlist announcement
16 October 2012 – Winner announcement

>32 1morechapter: From the 2005 longlist, I'd read Saturday and Shalimar the Clown as roughly even, and ahead of Slow Man and On Beauty.

>33 richardderus: Oh, crap. Better hounds than pigs, though.



>34 Nickelini: LOL! I'd better get to Enduring Love soon, then.

>35 EBT1002: I do remember the hype that resulted after Never Let Me Go was published. I didn't buy it until 2008, after I read (and adored) The Remains of the Day, but I haven't been overly tempted by it yet. It will probably be a couple of years before I eventually get to it.

>36 jnwelch: Thanks for those recommendations for Naomi Shihab Nye, Joe; I'll probably look for her work at the Strand (NYC) or City Lights (San Francisco) next month. I just found out today that I'll have two weeks off from work from late June to early July, and a week off just before that. I'll probably go to Philadelphia in mid-June to visit my parents, work a weekend, and then go to SF, and spend July 4th with one of my best friends from medical school, who lives in the South Bay.

>37 AnneDC: McEwan is more prolific than Ishiguro, but I've liked a greater percentage of his work than Ishiguro's.

I need to move Atonement considerably higher on my TBR pile, though I doubt I'll get to it this year.

I completely agree with you on your assessment of the McEwan novels (Saturday, Amsterdam) and the Ishiguro works (The Remains of the Day, When We Were Orphans) that we've both read. Rachael (FlossieT) gave me her copy of The Unconsoled when I saw her a couple of years ago in London, but she said that she didn't like it at all.

>38 banjo123: Disgrace is certainly one of my favorite Booker winners, but I'd put (in no particular order) Troubles, The Siege of Krishnapur, The Remains of the Day and Wolf Hall above it.

>39 DorsVenabili: Thanks, Kerri. I'll definitely read Never Let Me Go, but there are quite a few Booker winners and longlisted novels that I own and would rather read first, such as Darkmans by Nicola Barker and How Late It Was, How Late by James Kelman.

>40 Smiler69: Yep, I'll just have to form my own view of Never Let Me Go, after I clear my mind of everyone's very useful and interesting comments about it.

Dead Men Risen: The Welsh Guards in Afghanistan by Toby Harnden was announced as the winner of this year's Orwell Book Prize:

Afghan war book wins Orwell Prize for political writing

>41 kidzdoc: eek, creepy running of the pigs. Takes me back to the sequel of Silence of the Lambs....*shudder*

I will be reading The Remains of the Day hopefully this year, as one of my Booker reads. Never Let me Go just sounds plain weird to me. But lets face it, Ill probably read it one day anyway .

Pig GIF = LOL

>44 LovingLit: You're in for a treat, Megan.

>45 richardderus: Caroline, Richard, myself and any other pork aficionados will risk our lives for an unlimited supply of bacon.

My copy of Bring Up the Bodies still hadn't come as of yesterday, seven days after its scheduled arrival date. I sent a message to Amazon UK last night, and this morning I received a reply, which informed me that a second shipment has been dispatched, which I should receive on May 31, free of charge. Hooray!

* first in line, in case you receive two copies *
:)

Things I dislike about my job:

1. Having to tell a teenager and his mother that he tested positive for HIV infection.

2. Having to inform a mother that the mass in her daughter's leg bone is not a benign mass, as we had hoped, but a very aggressive bone cancer with a guarded prognosis.

So so so sorry. {{{Darryl}}}

>49 kidzdoc: Those are two truly heartbreaking scenarios. Both those families are very blessed to have a compassionate doctor like you taking care of them.

A hard day indeed. {{{hugs}}}

>51 avidmom: couldnt agree more.
They are lucky to at least have you Darryl, a doctor who cares, and who no doubt shows it.
Not a good day at the office though....

>49 kidzdoc:: Oh dear, how sad Darryl. Hugs to you.

#49 So sorry. Somehow it always seems worse when it's children.

Being a doctor has got to be really hard sometimes...

If I ever had to hear such ghastly news, I would want it to come from someone like you, Darryl, because I would know two things: you would really, really care, and you would do your level best to help.

Thanks for the commiseration, everyone. Whatever sorrow I feel is a very tiny fraction of what the patients and families experience, though.

I was able to get out early today, thanks to the two extraordinary residents I worked with this week. They made this very busy week as pleasant as it possibly could have been. I'm off tomorrow, but then I have to work on Sunday night. After that, my work schedule for the end of May and all of June and July is far kinder than the past several months have been.

I started Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick on the train ride from the hospital this afternoon, which I should finish by tomorrow, at the latest. It's the only Orange Prize shortlisted book from this year that I haven't read yet. Once I'm finished it I'll resume reading The Master and Margarita, which I should finish by the end of the month (I'm off from Monday morning to Friday morning next week).

I dislike those things about your job, too.
I like that you care enough to dislike them.
I maintain that you are one of the few exceptions
to the rule. ( rule: doctors do not give a dotted damn)

>59 mckait: Kath, I wish I could introduce you to the doctors in my group, the ones I work with at Children's, and some of the professors I had at Pitt, UPMC, and Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. Several of them were influential role models, and dedicated and caring physicians. I'm very fond of my parents' internist, and their (and now my) gastroenterologist. I do agree that many physicians are arrogant, callous and uncaring, but I've met many more who I respect and admire.

Oof. My sympathy, Darryl. I agree with Kath - it's heartening that you dislike these things.

ETA: I was writing when you posted. The arrogant, callous and uncaring doctors are so annoying, and frustrating, and just plain awful. They should be ashamed of themselves. But the caring ones are gems, and appreciated way more than they probably know. These so often are crisis times for the patients and their loved ones, and someone in that position who cares can make a huge difference.

I wish you could, too. I mostly only meet the other kind.

I must be pretty lucky. Most of the doctors I've seen have been the good kind.

>58 kidzdoc: I'm sure it's true you feel only a tiny fraction of what patients and families have to go through, Darryl--but on the other hand you have that tiny fraction of many many peoples' sorrows and I can't help but think that that must add up to a lot over time. My sympathy for such a tough day.

I guess I have had mostly very good, interested and very capable doctors especially my primary. The surgeon who replaced both of my shoulders, six months apart, was far and away the best surgeon I've ever known. Not just caring and capable, but outstanding in his field. I feel you fall somewhere in there Darryl.

Hi Darryl, finally caught up on your thread. I was fairly tickled by the whole colonoscopy conversation. Lots of experienced people sharing their views!?

Thanks for the suggesting the Wodehouse prize. I never knew it existed. I now and then like to read a Wodehouse novel and similar humorous fiction.

I've read 10 Booker winners and list them in order of preference
The God of Small Things
The Midnight Children
The Sea
The White Tiger
Hotel du lac
Amsterdam
In a Free State
The English Patient
Life of Pi
The Inheritence of Loss

Lastly, I liked both The Sea and Never Let Me Go more for the writing than for the story.

>61 jnwelch: Right, Joe. I've had indirect experience with arrogant and callous physicians, both as a doctor seeking help from another physician (such as the Prima Derma I mentioned earlier this year or last year), and the doctors of family members or close friends (most notably the internist whose decision to stop my aunt's anticoagulant medication without consulting her hematologist led to a near fatal pulmonary embolism).

>62 mckait: I will say that my partners and I often gripe about lazy primary care pediatricians, who refer kids for admission or send them to our ED without thoroughly working them up, which often results in unnecessary hospitalizations and costs to the health care system. I had two such admissions this month, and I was able to figure out what the problem was and come up with a (successful) treatment plan in both cases within 20 minutes. Unfortunately, both patients had already been admitted, so I had to bill for a hospital admission, which needless to say is far more expensive than an office or ED visit.

One of the kids was a 2 week old baby who was referred for admission for failure to thrive. I interviewed the parents, who told me that he initially didn't feed well from a bottle with a standard nipple immediately after birth. He was switched to an alternate nipple (NUK), and immediately fed well. For some reason he wasn't sent home from the nursery with this nipple, and the parents didn't know the name of it, or how to get it. So, he was using the standard nipple for a week and a half, didn't feed well during that time, and progressively lost more weight. The baby was seen by his pediatrician, who didn't obtain this history, and referred him for admission. So, guess what I did? I asked for his nurse to show them a variety of infant nipples, they picked out the NUK nipple, and he fed well after he started using it. I went off service, and the weekend doctor that saw him decided to observe him to ensure that he fed well and gained weight (which was somewhat reasonable in a general sense, but overkill in this case, IMO), so he stayed in the hospital from Friday night, when I first saw him, until Monday morning, when I returned to work. So, his parents were charged for a 4 day hospitalization that could have been avoided if his primary care pediatrician had asked the questions I did when I first met his parents. Utterly ridiculous.

>63 Cariola: I'm glad to hear that, Deborah. There are a lot of good doctors out there, I think.

>64 AnneDC: Unfortunately delivering bad news to (older) patients and families is part of the job of any physician who cares for hospitalized patients. However, as Rhian said, it's almost always worse when this news is delivered to the parents of a young child. Some of these patients die in the hospital, but this rarely happens on our service, unless the parents have signed a DNR (Do Not Resusciate) order and agree to withdraw care. The little baby (2-3 month old?) with the fatal and progressively worsening genetic disorder that I mentioned on my thread last year was the only one I took care of last year who died while he was on the General Pediatrics service.

I think it's become easier for me to handle the personal sorrow I feel about these kids, after nearly 12 years of working as a hospitalist. I now feel comfortable presenting bad news to families, although it will always be an emotionally draining task. I'll sometimes forget these kids' names, but I could never forget their faces or the conversations I've had to have with their parents and families.

>65 brenzi: Thanks, Bonnie. I'll accept caring and capable, but I wouldn't call myself outstanding by any means.

I found out this week that the current Section Chief of Pediatrics at my hospital will be retiring at the beginning of August. I'm the Vice-Section Chief (which is approximately 1/1000th as important as it sounds), so I will become the new Section Chief at that time, barring a coup d'état or palace takeover. This means that I get to wear the Grand Poobah hat all year round!



What it also means is that I'll have to attend a lot more hospital committee meetings. Damn.

>66 mausergem: Right, Gautam. All people 50 years of age or older are supposed to receive a screening colonoscopy in the US, so there are a bunch of us here who have gone through this experience (which, for me, wasn't a bad one).

I don't follow the Wodehouse Prize as closely as some others, but I'll keep a closer eye on it from now on. I'll read one of the shortlisted novels, Capital by John Lanchester, sometime this year, although it's a bit of a door stopper; my edition (Faber & Faber) is 576 pages long.

Nice list of Booker winners. From your list, Midnight's Children is easily my favorite. I liked but wasn't overly fond of The White Tiger, Amsterdam, In a Free State, The English Patient, and Life of Pi. I'm planning to read The Inheritance of Loss next month, for my proposed TIOLI challenge for June. I won't announce my challenge ahead of time, as Madeline has threatened to throttle me if I do that again.

Congratulations on your upcoming Poobah-dom, Darryl. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy, IMO.

Section Chief of Pediatrics sounds pretty darn good, Darryl. Congratulations! You deserve the cool hat.

Darryl, I was sorry to hear about the bad news you had to deliver this week, but then must admit every time you post about the difficult times you have with your work, it only reinforces what a caring person you obviously are and I'm sure both your patients and their parents must greatly appreciate that about you, no matter how good or bad the prognosis.

Congrats on your upcoming increase in committee meeting attendance. ;-)
That's what comes with increase in responsibilities it seems, no matter what line of work one happens to be in!

Hi Darryl,

I'm sorry to read about the two lots of terrible news you had to deliver this week, but share everyone's feeling that if I had to get that kind of news you are exactly the kind of doctor I'd want to be getting it from. And congrats on reaching Grand-Poohbahdom. Try not to get caught reading a book under the table at the extra meetings.

67: after nearly 12 years of working as a hospitalist
I'd expect it to be difficult to get the balance right, caring without going over the edge, and detaching without becoming callous.
64: you have that tiny fraction of many many peoples' sorrows
Exactly this, and knowing that your tiny fraction is the entire world to each of your patients.

Congrats on achieving Grand Poobah!

LOVE the chapeau! Can I borrow it, please?

67: With such a hat as incentive, maybe someone else would attend those committee meetings for you.

>69 lauralkeet: The Section Chief of Pediatrics is a vitally important position in the organization, so much so that almost no one, save the Section Chief and Vice-Chief, is aware of its existence. My responsibilities will include reviewing and signing hospital charts (or delegating others to do it for me), attending mind numbing committee meetings (which I previously avoided at all costs), and teaching new doctors the secret Water Buffalo handshake.

When the current Section Chief told me that I would be taking over the position in August, my response was, "Do I have to?"

>70 jnwelch: The Grand Poobah hat has cool medals on it, and I'll be able to add important looking lapels to my white coat (which I never wear anyway). (I'm seriously thinking of buying a Grand Poobah hat to put in my office, in recognition of this great honor.)

>71 Smiler69: Exactly, Ilana. I'd much rather be a worker bee and not attend hospital committee meetings or accrue other titles or non-clinical responsibilities that cut into my reading time. ;-)

>72 cushlareads: Try not to get caught reading a book under the table at the extra meetings.

Shh! Don't give away my secret!

>71 Smiler69:-73 Thanks for your kind words, Ilana, Cushla and Katherine. I realize that the moment that I present bad news to a parent will likely be one of the worst moments of their lives, and it's a responsibility that none of us take lightly. This task was emphasized early in medical school, as my classmates and I took a course as first year students in which we communicated with patient or family actors in difficult situations, including hostile patients and those who had to be told of a serious or fatal diagnosis. Even though these were artificial scenarios, nearly all of us, except for a couple of immature students, treated them with the gravitas they deserved when it was our turn to act, with sweaty palms and shaky, stuttering words. I also had many opportunities to observe attending physicians present bad news to parents as an intern and second-year resident, and to talk to families myself as a second- and third-year resident. Whenever possible, I ask the residents and medical students to accompany me when I have these conversations, which I normally do in a private conference room with my cell phone turned to silent, with both parents present and when I don't have any pressing duties or other distractions.

>74 richardderus: You can have the chapeau, kind sir! Are you available for the June 5th Credentialing Committee meeting?

>75 qebo: I'm hopeful that someone will want the Grand Poobah hat more than I, and volunteer to become the Section Chief of Pediatrics.

Darryl, there's bound to be some eager beaver ladder climber who would love the job--unless they are all smart enough to know the drawbacks. I just deferred chairing a committee to a newer (not younger) colleague who thinks another service line on his cv will help him get promoted. I already know that no one appreciates the work required of search committee chairs, except for the fact that it's off their backs.

That said, if the hat fits, wear it with style!

>77 Cariola: Nope, everyone is too smart to jump at the opportunity to attend more committee meetings! Everyone in my group is required to be part of one or more hospital committees, and submit quarterly reports on their progress. These meetings are generally held at the Office Park, since there are three hospitals that comprise Children's, and this park is equally inconvenient from all three, particularly during rush hour when these meetings are generally held. I was elected as the Vice-Section Chief several years ago without knowing that I was nominated for the position or who voted for me. At that time I thought it was an honor (and, seriously, it is), but it was just an honorary position, as I would function as the Section Chief when he was out of town. I'll have to join two or three additional committees (and pay attention), but hopefully this won't be a huge time drain.

Man, I've always wanted to learn the secret Water Buffalo handshake. Doctors are so lucky.

>79 jnwelch: I'd be more than happy to teach you the handshake, in exchange for your regular attendance at the bimonthly Credentialing Comittee meetings.

Good look for you, but that hat makes you look pale..

>81 mckait: At least it's better than the cheesehead hat I had to wear after the Steelers lost to Green Bay in the Super Bowl a couple of years ago.

mmm yeah, probably.

Darryl, I'm laughing at your description of the critically important job duties you'll be taking over in August (and this right after you had indicated that the coming months would bring you a kinder work schedule....) --- sometimes, when someone asks me what I actually do for a living, I say "I meet."

81, 82, 83> LOL

Darryl - I must say that it is a measure of the man and his sensitivity that the "people" part of the job wears upon you so. If you became blase about it then you would join Kath's list of Docs and we know you're one of the good guys. I don't know if I could cope with telling parents there is a strong likelihood that their kids will not outlive them. Best wishes and salutations to you mate.
Share Kath's experience but only in part. Nowadays in Malaysia there are plenty of private hospitals which are run as cold hearted businesses. Some of them won't admit those whose prognocsis is likely to damage their statistics and they will try to admit you on any pretext if it is thought you can afford a Private room.

I finished Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick tonight, my sixth and final book from this year's Orange Prize longlist, which was based on The Ambassadors by Henry James. It was beautifully written but disjointed, and the main characters were interesting but dislikable and largely inscrutable. I'll give it 3½ stars for now.

Here's my final shortlist ranking:

1. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
2. Painter of Silence by Georgina Harding
3. Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick
4. State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
5. Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan
6. The Forgotten Waltz

I'll be pleased if Miller or Harding win the prize, which will be announced on Wednesday, and disappointed if anyone else is selected. The UK bookies are still forecasting Ozick to win.

Congratulations on the upcoming promotion, Darryl!

Won't be able to get through The Master and Margarita this month, but it's now on my June tbr, so I am looking forward to reading your thoughts on it.

So you have an iPad if I remember right. Load up a good ebook and pretend you're so serious about these committee meetings that you must take detailed notes! No one will ever know... :)

>89 drneutron:: Now THAT sounds like the voice of experience talking ... :D

Woo! My last night call of the quarter ended, and it was nowhere near as bad as my most recent call (7 admissions last night, versus 16 earlier this month). I'm off until Friday morning, so I'll catch up on sleep, and get some reading done. Last night I managed to finish The Undertaker's Daughter, the latest poetry collection by Toi Derricotte, which described, in prose and poetry, her difficult relationship with her abusive yet loving father and her emotionally beaten down mother, and her efforts to achieve peace with her father and healing from the scars that his physical and emotional torment left on her. I'll review it later today or tomorrow, but it will get no less than 4½ stars from me.

>84 EBT1002: Several of my partners work as hospitalists on a part-time basis, and spend the remainder of their time in committee meetings or working on assignments for these committees. Thanks, but no thanks (although I may change my tune when I hit 60 and want to cut back on my clinical duties).

>85 PaulCranswick: I would never tell a parent directly that their child will not outlive them; that's practically the worst sin imaginable for any family. I don't have to tell a family how long a child had left to live very often, except for the families who have decided to withdraw care at the end of their child's life.

>88 Deern: Thanks, Nathalie! I won't get any additional pay for this "promotion", nor any other benefits (other than the priceless benefit of attending more committee meetings).

>89 drneutron: Oh yes, I've seen that done before, at committee meetings, conferences and lectures. Unfortunately we usually sit in a square shaped configuration, rather than rows, which makes it more difficult to avoid paying attention.

>90 lauralkeet: Yes, it seems as though Jim has mastered this technique!

I am reading a book that came my way from Vine ( The Third Gate). One of the main characters
is a doctor, and my brain promptly put your face on him! This happens now and then..
I have had several characters wear rdears face, for instance. I keep thinking how adventurous
you are!

Great pictures at the top of your thread, Darryl. Wow, you certainly deserve your time off after all you've gone through. I hope you manage to recover some of your lost sleep and re-energize yourself before you head back to work.

Enjoy your break, Darryl!

>80 kidzdoc: I knew the price would be too high for learning that darn handshake, Darryl. I'll just hope to catch you some time when you're dying for somebody to buy you a good beer.

What amazes me, is that you work so hard and still manage to get so much reading done. How do you do it?

And I hope you have a lot more easy shifts AND easy meetings. I am a social worker and don't know which is deadlier--days of vicarious trauma or hours in meetings where nothing gets done.l

Have a great break from work Darryl, Im envisaging a well set up sitting station involving a foot stool, a refreshing beverage, an array of tasty snacks and either (a) a beautiful view or (b) a roaring fire, and a leaning tbr pile.

Oh dear, one of my life's *dreams* is to attend a hospital Credentialing Committee meeting! Sadly, on June 5th of this year, I must commit seppuku, so I won't be able to attend. Perhaps next time!

Oh...or, errrmmm, uhhh not.

I fell asleep just after noon, woke up at 6 pm, walked into walls for a couple of hours (and read about 10 pages of The Master and Margarita), then fell promptly back to sleep. I'm still sleepy, but I'm feeling much better at the moment.

>92 mckait: Aww, thanks Kath! I hope he was a good (or at least fair) doctor...

>93 cameling: Thanks, Caroline. I'll be off for five of the next six days, starting today, so I'll be able to catch up on sleep and finish The Master and Margarita and Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Sunday.

>94 Cariola: Thanks, Deborah! I'm looking forward to three lazy days at home.

>95 jnwelch: If you combine a good beer with a slice of deep dish pizza, I'll teach you the secret Water Buffalo handshake.

>96 banjo123: What amazes me, is that you work so hard and still manage to get so much reading done. How do you do it?

I am 80% of a full time equivalent (FTE), which means that I work ~14-16 shifts per month, not counting vacation (four weeks) and continuing medical education conferences (one week). My partners and I work more shifts during the busy late fall to early spring months than in the lighter late spring to early fall months (13 shifts for me in June, and 14 in July), so I can get a lot of reading done during my days off, especially during the lighter months. I hardly watch TV (less than an hour a day, on average), and I have no familial responsibilities (no wife or kids, unfortunately), so I can read as much as I want to when I'm not working. My work days are often hectic and long, especially when I'm on call for hospital admissions, but the amount of time off makes up for it.

I find many meetings to be quite painful, particularly when they are led by administrative types who are removed from day to day clinical practice and love to hear themselves talk.

>97 LovingLit: You're spot on, Megan! I'm sitting in my glider, with my feet propped on an ottoman which also glides. This isn't the exact model that I have, but it's very close:



I bought it several years ago from a baby supply store, after my best friend's wife got one after their first child was born. My favorite chair as a boy was a rocking chair, which I could sit in for hours with a stack of books on a nearby table. Hmm...there is a picture of me in my medical school yearbook that my parents posted, which shows me sitting in my rocking chair. I don't have the original photo, but I might be able to take a photo of that photo, transfer it to my computer, and post it here. I was pretty cute then, but not so much now.

I raided the refrigerator for some grapes and a very stinky but quite tasty cheese (Saint Albray) that I bought yesterday morning. I initially thought that there was something rotten in the fridge when I opened its door, but soon realized that it was the cheese that caused the odor. I had the cheese and grapes with a mug of Twinings Prince of Wales tea, which was a perfect early morning snack.

>98 richardderus: Seppuku is probably less painful than attendance at a Credentialing Committee meeting. Good move, bro.

He was good, and rather interesting.. after a successful start to his career, a life changing event
caused him to begin doing research. He got a little too caught up in it for a minute there, but ?

That chair looks perfect. I thought I would love my reading chair..
I hate it. It's too big. I have trouble getting out of it. My favorite chair is on the front porch :)
It's a wicker rocker :)

I had no idea what a glider was until I visited my friends just after they moved from Palo Alto, CA to Madison, WI, not long after Mary was born in 2003. I sat in that chair, and fell in love with it immediately. It swings back and forth like a rocking chair, as does the ottoman that came with it. I ordered one a couple of years later, and it's still my favorite piece of furniture.

Darryl, I love gliders but I can't read on them ... I suffer from motion sickness if I try to read in moving cars and buses. Oddly enough, I'm ok reading on trains and planes. Haven't tried reading in a boat in choppy water yet though, so I don't know about that one.

I like reading lying down or scrunched in a beanbag.

Darryl, that photo brought back memories from early motherhood. Many's the time I fell asleep in a chair like that, rocking a tiny girl in my arms, probably after reading "Goodnight Moon." Now I'm all nostalgic. And I can't for the life of me recall what we did with that chair, but I guess we must have sold it or given it away when we moved. Boo hoo.

>102 cameling: Caroline, I never get motion sickness unless I'm already feeling queasy, and I can read on almost any type of transportation, sitting or standing; I can't think of the last time I've read on a boat, if I ever have.

I read fairly well at home, but I do much better when others around me are also reading.

>103 lauralkeet: Maybe you could have another baby and get a new glider, Laura. ;-)

Darryl, I see that you say "unfortunately" regarding the no wife and kids. I hear ya, and I feel very lucky to have my P, but I admit that I sometimes envy those of you who get to come home and just read when you want, with no sense of obligation to family. I suppose some kind of balance is the ideal, but I do wish I had more time to myself for reading.

I appreciate your list of your rankings of the Orange shortlist. I haven't yet read any of them, and probably won't get to before July.

Ellen, Every year Dan goes to Canada for a week. I have to tell you that is the
sweetest week of the year for me. Absolutely nothing to do for anyone but the furkids
and myself.

Oh dear, I still have glider envy..

My planned reads for June (as always, subject to change):

The Ark Sakura by Kobo Abe
Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel - reading
The Coward's Tale by Vanessa Gebbie
Foreign Studies by Shusaku Endo
The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
The Loss of El Dorado: A Colonial History by V.S. Naipaul
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable - reading
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov - reading
A Mind of Winter by Shira Nayman
One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life by Bliss Broyard
Our Lady of Alice Bhatti by Mohammed Hanif
Pure by Timothy Mo
Scenes from Early Life by Philip Hensher
Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov
Three Strong Women by Marie NDiaye
The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe

Goals for this month (a.k.a. The method to my literary madness):

*Read 1-2 books by Kobo Abe for the Author Theme Reads group. Abe is the mini-author for the second quarter, and I haven't read anything by him this year. The Woman in the Dunes will be a re-read of one of my most favorite novels.

*Read 1-2 books by Shusaku Endo for the Author Theme Reads group. Endo is the major author for the year, and I'm in the process of reading the majority of his books that have been published in English, roughly in the order of publication. Foreign Studies follows Volcano, which I read earlier this year, and precedes Silence, which I'll read in July or August.

*Read books that seem to be good candidates for the upcoming Booker Prize longlist (Booker Dozen). This summer will be a very busy one, as Cait (Cait86) and I will lead the discussion of the 2012 Booker Prize on the Booker Prize group (the longlist will be announced on July 25), and Lois (avaland) and I will co-host the third quarter Middle Eastern literature theme in the Reading Globally group. So, I'd like to get a head start on the Booker front, by reading books that have been touted as possible candidates for this year's Booker Dozen. I'll start by reading Bring Up the Bodies, which will also coincide with the group read of the book that starts on June 1, and then proceed with The Coward's Tale, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti, Scenes from Early Life and Pure.

*Read a book by Vladimir Nabokov. I set a goal to read four of his books this year, but I haven't read any yet. Speak, Memory: An Autobiography seems like a good book to start with, and I'll follow it by reading Lolita, Pnin and Pale Fire. JanetinLondon was also planning to read Speak, Memory this year, so it also counts for her memorial thread.

*Complete The Master and Margarita for the Club Read group read. I had hoped to finish Bulgakov's masterpiece by this weekend, but I doubt that will happen, unless I forego reading Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. Most of the participants aren't finished with it, so I'm in good company.

I'm reading The Inheritance of Loss, One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life and The Middle Passage for my June TIOLI challenge; Three Strong Women is the book I plan to review for the upcoming issue of Belletrista; and A Mind of Winter is my April LT Early Reviewer book. I think that covers it.

Please note that the preceding set of lists represents normal ex-medical student behavior. I am not obsessive-compulsive, not at all.

*goes offline to wash hands for the 50th time this morning*

Yay! I won The Devil in Silver by Victor LaValle from the list of May LT Early Reviewers books. I was hoping to win it or The Investigation by Phillippe Claudel, which will now go to the top of my TBR list.

The LibraryThing Orange Prize Shadow Jury has spoken. Six of us who read all six shortlisted titles have voted, and Painter of Silence by Georgina Harding is our selection for the award. The actual winner will be announced in London tonight.

One of the docs I work with told me about a recent profile of Toni Morrison in New York magazine; she was one of the 12 recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom last night. Among other things, she speaks less than highly of fellow writers Maya Angelou and Alice Walker, so it looks to be a titillating read:

Who Is the Author of Toni Morrison?

In other book news, Rahul Bhattacharya was awarded the 2012 Ondaatje Prize by the Royal Society of Literature on Monday for his debut novel The Sly Company of People Who Care, which I'll add to my wish list:

Ondaatje prize 2012 goes to debut novel by Rahul Bhattacharya

>105 EBT1002: I sometimes envy those of you who get to come home and just read when you want, with no sense of obligation to family.

Right. My book loving friends and colleagues who are married and have young kids are quite envious of the time and energy I have available to read. I had almost started to substitute fortunately for unfortunately in that sentence, but it sounded incredibly selfish and insular. I love visiting my friends and their two kids in Wisconsin as much as anything else, although we aren't able to get together as often as we used to, now that both of them are in elementary school and have after school activities practically every day. I'd love to come home after work to the sounds of pattering feet (human and animal), cries of "Daddy, Daddy!" and hugs, but it's also nice to come home to a quiet place, a comfortable chair and a good book.

There were several very good books in this year's Orange Prize shortlist, most notably Gillespie and I, The Song of Achilles and Painter of Silence for me, so I'd say that you'll have some good books to read in July. I intend to read one of the two 2012 longlisted books I own for Orange July, either Lord of Misrule or The Grief of Others.

>106 mckait: I think we should find out when Dan is going to Canada, and choose that week to invade Ambridge, PA and make Kath wait on us hand and foot, while we read books from her shelves and stay up late playing cards. I'm sure she'll be more than happy to oblige us.

Hmm...I may need to get a lock and chain for my glider.

Why on earth would she do that? They are three remarkable women and writers.
Great article.. I didn't know she had lost a son..

eta

*gazes longing at the chair*

The Investigation and The Sly Company of People Who Care both look interesting, Darryl. So now you don't even have to have read a book in order to push it onto my wishlist. And I applaud your discipline in developing reading lists with some rationality behind them. I usually just randomly choose whatever suits my mood.

>110 mckait: I haven't read that article yet; I'll get to it soon, though. I did read the quote about Angelou and Walker, which my friend mentioned to me last night.

>111 Linda92007: Both of those books are intriguing, Linda.

Change in vacation plans, I think. I was looking at the web site of the Southbank Centre in London, to find out what time the Orange Prize ceremony is being held at Royal Festival Hall tonight, and noticed that this year's London Literature Festival is being held there from July 3-12. This year's festival's focus, in keeping with the upcoming Olympic Games, is international literature, and it features a tremendous and irresistible line up of writers and other artists, including Senegalese musician Baaba Maal, one of my favorite world musicians, and authors Dinaw Mengestu, José Eduardo Agualusa, Chika Unigwe, Nuruddin Farah, Monique Roffey, John Banville, Katherine Boo, and many others. I had planned to go to San Francisco for the two weeks that I'm off (June 25-July 8), but there isn't much going on in the city during that time. I would still like to travel to London in the fall, so it looks as though I will make two trips to the capital this year, provided that I can get a reasonably priced hotel room (or any hotel room, for that matter).

I hope you can get a room, Darryl! The festival sounds right up your alley!

Thanks for sharing your thoughts about the dynamic tension between loving company and loving solitude. I share a lot of your feelings, even though I landed somewhere different in the long run. Or, since I have no kids, perhaps I split the difference. When I turned 40, I went through a serious spell of grief for having chosen not to have kids (important to note that I felt grief but not regret). It's clear that this was the right choice for me in my life. I adore my nieces and nephews and the kids of my friends, but I like the freedom my own life has provided. Now if only I would win that lottery.......

>113 EBT1002: Yes, there are plenty of rooms available in central London, and plenty of seats on the direct flights from Atlanta to Heathrow on Delta. I'll probably spend the entire two weeks in London (June 24-July 8), and travel to San Francisco in a little over two weeks (June 16-22) to visit a good friend that I haven't seen in a couple of years, as she'll be free then. I'll postpone my trip to visit my parents in Philadelphia until August.

I know that it's far tougher for most women to remain childless than it is for most men. I'm too old to have kids now, but I still hope to get married someday. I enjoying showering my biological and non-biological nephews and niece with love, attention and gifts, but I'm usually ready to return to a life of solitude after my 1-2 week visits to Wisconsin. Last February's visit was too short for everyone, particularly the kids, and I had hoped to visit them this summer, but the family's schedule is already full. I'll try to see them at least twice in the fall and winter, especially since this was the first year that I didn't see them around Christmastime.

This is today's Poem-A-Day, from the Academy of American Poets:

Photographs of the Interiors of Dictators' Houses
by Albert Goldbarth

It's as if every demon from hell with aspirations

toward interior design flew overhead and indiscriminately

spouted gouts of molten gold, that cooled down

into swan-shape spigots, doorknobs, pen-and-inkwell sets.

A chandelier the size of a planetarium dome

is gold, and the commodes. The handrails

heading to the wine cellar and the shelving for the DVDs

and the base for the five stuffed tigers posed in a fighting phalanx:

gold, as is the samovar and the overripe harp

and the framework for the crocodile-hide ottoman and settee.

The full-size cinema theater accommodating an audience

of hundreds for the screening of home (or possibly

high-end fuck flick) videos: starred in gold

from vaulted ceiling to clawfoot legs on the seating.

Of course the scepter is gold, but the horns

on the mounted stag heads: do they need to be gilded?

Yes. And the olive fork and the French maid's row of dainty buttons

and the smokestack on the miniature train

that delivers golden trays of dessert from the kitchen

to a dining hall about the size of a zip code,

and the snooker table's sheathing, and the hat rack,

and those hooziewhatsit things in which you slip your feet

on the water skis, and the secret lever

that opens the door to the secret emergency bunker.

Smug and snarky as we are, in our sophisticated

and subtler, non-tyrannical tastes, it's still

unsettling to realize these photographs are also full

of the childrens' pictures set on a desk,

the wife's diploma proudly on a wall, the common

plastic container of aspirin, and the bassinette

with the scroll of linen shade at the ready

in case the sun is too powerful: reminders of how

a graduated continuum connects these überoperatically

fat interior lives to our own. We all desire

"more" and "better," Melville adds that final "e"

to the family name, and Faulkner adds the "u," in quest

of a signified gentility. My friend Damien

(fake name) won A Certain Literary Award, and

at the stellar after-ceremony party, in the swank hotel's

swank atrium, he found a leggy literary groupie

noshing caviar under a swankily lush mimosa,

and in under an hour his own swank room could boast

the golden statuette, the evening's loveliest woman, and

the silver serving platter of five-star caviar,

and if you think this story's moral lesson is

that satiation is ever attained, you don't understand

the protoknowledge we're born with, coded into our cells:

soon soon soon enough we die. Even before we've seen

the breast, we're crying to the world that we want;

and the world doles out its milkiness in doses. We

want, we want, we want, and if we don't then

that's what we want; abstemiousness is only

hunger translated into another language. Yes

there's pain and heartsore rue and suffering, but

there's no such thing as "anti-pleasure": it's pleasure

that the anchorite takes in his bleak cave

and Thoreau in his bean rows and cabin. For Thoreau,

the Zen is: wanting less is wanting more.

Of less. At 3 a.m. Marlene (fake name) and Damien

drunkenly sauntered into and out of the atrium,

then back to his room: he wanted the mimosa too,

and there it stood until checkout at noon, a treenapped testimony

to the notion that we will if we can, as evidenced in even

my normally modest, self-effacing friend. If we can,

the archeological record tells us, we'll continue wanting

opulently even in the afterlife: the grave goods

of pharaohs are just as gold as the headrests

and quivers and necklace pendants they used every day

on this side of the divide, the food containers

of Chinese emperors are ready for heavenly meals

that the carved obsidian dragons on the great jade lids

will faithfully guard forever. My own

innate definition of "gratification" is right there

in its modifier "immediate," and once or twice

I've hurt somebody in filling my maw. I've walked

—the normally modest, self-effacing me—below a sky

of stars I lusted after as surely as any despot

contemplating his treasury. The slice of American cheese

on the drive-thru-window burger is also gold,

bathetically gold,

and I go where my hunger dictates.

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/22917

>115 kidzdoc: Wow! I like that one, thanks, Darryl. I've not been an Albert Goldbarth fan, but that poem may start changing my mind.

>116 jnwelch: You're welcome, Joe. I hadn't heard of Albert Goldbarth before, but I liked this poem, which I received as an e-mail today (Poem-A-Day) from the Academy of American Poets. I'll continue to regularly post poems I receive or discover that I particularly like.

DARRYL! Song of Achilles won the Orange Prize!!!

Thanks, Laura! I missed the announcement, as I called into my group's monthly meeting, which ended about 20 minutes ago. I'm triply happy, as (1) it was my top choice; (2) Madeline Miller seems like a very nice person (and she's awfully cute, to boot); (3) the win serves as a return slap to Daniel Mendelsohn, who wrote a mean-spirited review of The Song of Achilles in The New York Times last month. I'd love to know what his response is to this news.

Very cool to have The Song of Achilles win. Now I have to find time to read it!

I thought you'd like the final choice, Darryl! And I'm with Joe ---- but I'll make it a priority as soon as it comes available from the library.

Yes, I should have said, get a hold of it and find time - it's a wait at my library, too.

>120 jnwelch:-122 I wonder if its selection as the Orange Prize winner will make any difference to its sales and availability, particularly in libraries, in the US. I suspect that far fewer avid readers, male and female, are aware of this award here, based on my conversations with my female friends who love to read. My group at work is mostly female, and most of the women, including our practice manager, love to read. The only one who is remotely familiar with the award is the practice manager, who was a literature major in college and lived in London with her family for several years. She's heard of the award, and knows its significance, but she doesn't follow it at all.

Have any of you seen a book published in the US that prominently announces that it was longlisted or shortlisted for the Orange Prize, or won the award? I'll have to check my shelves to see, but none of my books come to mind (except for those I purchased in the UK). Some of my US books do mention the Booker Prize, though. I'll be interested to see if any copies of The Song of Achilles I run across in US bookstores display any information about the prize on their front covers.

I would think it would make it more available, assuming demand increases. I'm #29 in the queue for one of 14 copies of the book in the Seattle Public Library system. That's not atypical in this large city which ranks among those with the highest rates of reading (among U.S. cities, anyway). And with 14 copies and a two-week check-out period, I'm likely to get it by the end of June.

eta: I don't think so, Darryl. I think they are more likely to advertise if they are nominees or winners of the National Book Award, the Pulitzer, or the Booker Prize. Or the Newberry, Edgar, etc.

I don't think the Orange Prize is very much on the radar here yet -- the Booker, yes, but not the Orange.

Going back to Ishiguro -- I liked Never Let Me Go because I read it to understand how the understanding of their role evolved, rather than because of some big "reveal". I also thought The Unit was very good, raising, as it does, the question of what gives a life value. In the latter, the scenario is clear up front, and the "donors" are those who drift into a state where their lives are deemed to be less important than those of other members of society. I'm keeping an eye open to see if Holmqvist has any other books due out.

> I'd be anxious to read other Holmqvist books as well.

I'm currently reading A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, and although I bought it in Canada, it was printed in the US. On the front cover it says "nominated for the Man Booker Prize" and on the back, in quite large letters it says "An International Bestseller.....Shortlisted For The Orange Prize." Inside, it says "....nominated for the Booker and Orange prizes."

But my English-major friend from book club wasn't familiar with the Orange Prize.

Make of it what you will.

I did a quick survey of my own shelves, and though it's hard to say definitively because sometimes the edition was printed before the award, it seems my US books do display fairly prominently if a book won or was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. It appears to be less frequently featured for longlisted books, and if the book won the Pulitzer or some other award, the Orange mention disappears or gets very small.

>127 Nickelini: NONE of my IRL book club members were familiar with the Orange prize until I brought it up.

I think they are more likely to advertise if they are nominees or winners of the National Book Award, the Pulitzer, or the Booker Prize. Or the Newberry, Edgar, etc.

I don't think the Orange Prize is very much on the radar here yet -- the Booker, yes, but not the Orange.

But my English-major friend from book club wasn't familiar with the Orange Prize.

if the book won the Pulitzer or some other award, the Orange mention disappears or gets very small.

NONE of my IRL book club members were familiar with the Orange prize until I brought it up.

{soapbox}

So, why is this the case? It's not as if the Orange Prize is a new literary award (this marks the 17th year of the prize), or the books are published in a foreign language, or are not, for the most part, readily available to US and Canadian readers. I'll accept that it's a British literary award, and therefore doesn't receive as much media attention in North America as it does in the UK, but three of the shortlisted novels were written by Americans, and the last four winners are American citizens (Marilynne Robinson, Barbara Kingsolver, Téa Obreht and Madeline Miller). There are millions of women in the US and Canada who are at least casual readers, yet very few seem to know about the Orange Prize. And, unless I've been living under a rock, there are no comparable literary awards that honor women in North America.

I grabbed three of my older Orange books that were published in the US. My copy of The Accidental was published in 2007, and it made the Orange Prize shortlist in 2006. The front cover prominently mentions that it won the Whitbread Award for Best novel and was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize, but there is no mention of its selection for the Orange Prize shortlist on the front side. The back cover mentions that it was a finalist for the Orange Prize, in much smaller print.

My copy of The Inheritance of Loss was published in 2006, but it wasn't selected for the Orange shortlist until 2007, so that doesn't count.

Fortunately, my copy of 26a by Diana Evans does prominently display an orange colored logo on the top right hand corners, which indicates that it was the "Winner of the Orange Award for New Writers".

{/soapbox}

>130 kidzdoc: I sure wish there was that much hoopla in the U.S. over literary prizes as there is in the U.K. Someone said on twitter they interrupted regular TV programming to go live to the Orange Prize announcement. Whoa!! Maybe I need to move. Unfortunately, many of the prize winners (Booker and Orange) I've not liked. (I'm thinking specifically of The Song of Achilles, The Sea, and Inheritance of Loss) BUT, at least there is that attention on books and reading. Woefully lacking in the U.S.

127 NONE of my IRL book club members were familiar with the Orange prize until I brought it up.

Oh, none of my book club were either, but I didn't mention them because that's not a surprise. I mentioned my English-major friend because I did expect her to know.

>132 Nickelini: Right, you would expect English majors (no matter the nationality) to be informed of the major prizes, whether they've read the winners or not.

Heck, my own sister has her bachelor's in English and master's in linguistics and she didn't know about the Orange!!

>109 kidzdoc: I think we should find out when Dan is going to Canada, and choose that week to invade Ambridge, PA and make Kath wait on us hand and foot, while we read books from her shelves and stay up late playing cards.
Im in!

>123 kidzdoc: I wonder if its selection as the Orange Prize winner will make any difference to its sales and availability, particularly in libraries, in the US.
Surely that would be the case? If you look at the number of people who have the book listed on LT, and in a week, once news of the prize has filtered out, I bet the number who have it will have doubled. It happened with The Sense of an Ending....this must translate to general public. *confident guess*

A lot of my books have the prize that they have won well advertised on the cover, even if I do prefer the pre-prize-winning covers....just like I prefer not to have a film poster cover on my book.

134 A lot of my books have the prize that they have won well advertised on the cover, even if I do prefer the pre-prize-winning covers....just like I prefer not to have a film poster cover on my book.

I feel the same. I think they do the film covers to increase sales, but it's cheesy, imo.

*confetti toss*

The Song of Achilles won it won it won!!

::jubilation::

I'm going to be tracking the holds on Song of Achilles at the SPL for the next week or so ---- it's hardly scientific research but I'll still report back. Right now there are 92 holds on 14 copies (I'm #29).

Oh, and I try to avoid film covers if at all possible!!!

San Diego has 7 copies, all checked out, with 14 holds at the moment.

Darryl, going back to before all the Orange madness, I love your list of planned reads for June and I especially love that you provided the method behind the madness. Nice touch.

>130 kidzdoc:: I wonder if its selection as the Orange Prize winner will make any difference to its sales and availability,
My 19-year-old English major daughter just started a summer job at Barnes & Noble. Every day she comes home and tells us how many copies of Fifty Shades of Grey she rang up at the register. And we all groan. When I came home today, I pulled out my shiny new copy of The Song of Achilles. She wasn't sure if she'd seen it in the store yet, but now she'll recognize the cover. Sadly I don't think it will outsell Fifty Shades, though.

>141 lauralkeet: Sadly I don't think it will outsell Fifty Shades, though.

Yeah what a sign of our times though. Who are all these repressed females who haven't read a book in years but find that this is the book they've been waiting for? Wait til the copy cats start:(

#142: the ones who read and loved Twilight but didn't read The Hunger Games.

Orange Prize - looks like they should have kept the debut novel prize since the last two winners have been first books.

On my flight home, I chuckled when I saw a woman reading Fifty Shades sitting next to a woman reading A Moveable Feast. I shouldn't laugh though because I still read Marvel Comics on a good day.

Wow! What an interesting discussion.
Thanks for the Toni Morrison article link--it was fascinating. I haven't read any of her books in years--now I want to.
Her comments on Walker and Angelou are harsh, but they are also true. I think that at 81, Morrison has earned the right to be truthful. And how frustrating to have to spend your writing life compared only to people the same ethnicity as you are.

Regarding the marriage & kid discussion; I would think that you'd have marriage prospects lined up out your door. However, when the right one shows up -- it will be great.

Hey--when you go to SF; you can probably see the Giants. I love AT & T Park.

>131 1morechapter: Right, Michele. There is far more attention paid to the literary awards in the UK than in the US. CNN or the other major news outlets would never interrupt regularly scheduled programming to show a live broadcast of the National Book Awards, the Pulitzer Prizes or the National Book Critics Circle Awards; they only do that for really important news stories, such as Anna Nicole Smith's death or the O.J. Simpson chase. (I lost what little faith I had left in CNN when it dedicated its news broadcast to nonstop coverage of Anna Nicole's death.) Fortunately, or at least until the Republicans manage to cut off funding for public television and radio, PBS and NPR will almost certainly have news stories about The Song of Achilles in the coming days; hopefully Madeline Miller will be interviewed on "The Charlie Rose Show" and/or "The PBS NewsHour".

Fox News, on the other hand, will probably be in a tizzy that a book which features two male lovers won a major literary award.

>132 Nickelini:, 133 I'm also amazed that woman who majored in English in college would not be aware of the Orange Prize. However, my group's current and most recent managers, to my knowledge, both majored in English, and neither was all that familiar with the Orange Prize. To their credit, both have expressed an interest in what books I'm reading, and our current practice manager is currently reading my copy of Wolf Hall.

>134 LovingLit: I wish I was optimistic as you, Megan. I think that some people, particularly those who watch PBS and listen to NPR (public broadcasting in the US, which tends to attract a more literate and better educated audience than the major broadcast media outlets in the US), will hear about Madeline Miller's win this coming week, and those will be the ones who will be most likely to look for and read The Song of Achilles. I'll bet that The New York Times will only print a one-paragraph blurb within the Arts Beat, which is buried in the middle of the Arts section (I'm a daily subscriber, so I'll look for it in tomorrow's paper). Checking the online paper...yes, it is mentioned in the Arts Beat section, but there are three paragraphs about the prize announcement, which will likely appear in tomorrow's paper:

Madeline Miller, an American debut novelist, won the Orange Prize on Wednesday for her book, “The Song of Achilles,” a lyrical retelling of “The Iliad” that was published by Bloomsbury in Britain and Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins, in the United States.

The Orange Prize is given annually to a novel written by a woman in English. It is accompanied by an award of 30,000 pounds, or about $46,600.

Joanna Trollope, the chairwoman of the judges, said in a statement, “This is a more than worthy winner – original, passionate, inventive and uplifting. Homer would be proud of her.”

That seems like little more than a copy of an Associated Press release. Checking...no, the AP release is five paragraphs in length, and is roughly twice as long. Strong work by the "paper of record", as usual.

>134 LovingLit:, 135 I hate books that have film covers! Cheesy is right.

>136 richardderus: Yes! An excellent result, and a great win for Madeline Miller. I posted a photo in the Orange January/July group, which showed Joanna Trollope embracing Madeline Miller just after the announcement was made. Here's another one that I like just as much:



>137 EBT1002: I'll be interested to read your reports, Ellen!

The Seahawks played a good game against the Cowboys today, scoring three touchdowns and holding Dallas to a touchdown and a two point conversion, in a 21-8 win.

>138 EBT1002: I don't understand the appeal of books with film covers, or monstrous "Oprah's Book Club" or "Richard & Judy's Book Club" stickers plastered on them. Booker Prize or National Book Award stickers are far more tasteful, IMO.

>139 ronincats: There are only 7 copies of The Song of Achilles in the San Diego public library system? Hmm...I should check the Atlanta-Fulton County Public Library System. Let's see...there are only five copies in the entire county, all of which have been checked out.

>140 AnneDC: Thanks, Anne! I'm glad that you liked my lists and my literary madness. I enjoy reading other people's monthly lists, especially yours.

>141 lauralkeet: The first three books of the Fifty Shades trilogy are the top three selling books in the NYT Combined Print and E-Book Fiction list, for the week of May 18; the entire trilogy is ranked sixth. The Song of Achilles doesn't appear amongst the top 35 books. I guess that answers my question, "Who reads this crap?"

My female partners generally read lightweight fiction (my definition), such as Harry Potter, Twilight, The Hunger Games and Mockingjay. The men I work with, especially the docs outside my group, tend to read nonfiction books, such as Robert Caro's The Years of Lyndon Johnson series and works by physician authors such as The Emperor of All Maladies and Complications, along with literary fiction, including Matterhorn and books by Michael Ondaatje, Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco. I don't get it.

>142 brenzi: Wait til the copy cats start:(

I'll have to ask my female colleagues if they have read any of the Fifty Shades books. I'm sure that the major publishers are earnestly searching for the next E.L. James, rather than the next Madeline Miller or Hilary Mantel. Sigh.

>143 avatiakh: I do hope that the new sponsors of the current Orange Prize will resurrect the New Writers Prize, and consider giving it a name that is different enough from the Fiction Prize so that casual readers aren't confused by the two awards.

>144 cameling: You should have switched their books to see what their responses would have been, Caroline!

>145 banjo123: I forgot to read the Toni Morrison article; I'll get to it tomorrow (make that later today, since it's after midnight on the East Coast). I don't blame her for being cross when she is compared only with fellow black female writers.

I would think that you'd have marriage prospects lined up out your door.

Umm...that's at least partially true, especially when women I encounter find out that I'm a phy$ician. It seems as though I became infinitely more attractive after I received my MD. I've become quite cynical of this attention, and although I'm obviously proud of what I do, I don't mention it unless I'm specifically asked about it, to avoid unwanted attention from the gold-diggers that infest Atlanta like roaches.

I love going to Giants games at Pac Bell AT&T Park, although I haven't been to a game in several years. Unfortunately they won't be in town during my mid-June visit.

Hmmm no wonder some doctors are so cranky.. All that serious reading.
I am a proud reader of lightweight fiction!

I dunno Darryl.. I can't help but think that it is possible to run to a nice woman
who doesn't care what you do or how much you make. Even in Atlanta. Not all
women are gold diggers, I'm sure .

>149 mckait: Hmph! I am not cranky! I just need a cup or two of coffee, and a grim book to read.



Oh, I'm sure that there are nice, intelligent and interesting women here. However, they seem to be outnumbered by those who are aggressively seeking a good husband, particularly one who is financially stable and free of personal or emotional baggage, such as men who have children from another marriage or are involved with other women. Despite the large number of professional African Americans in the Atlanta metropolitan area, the AfrAm women here have a hard time finding suitable mates, if they are looking to date and marry an AfrAm man, which is also true in other areas (see this recent article from ABC's news program "Nightline" for a description of the problem). So, when these women meet someone who is honest and stable, they often tend to pursue them in an intense and sometimes overly aggressive manner, which is a major turn off for me. This month I've had two such experiences, and I find this unwanted attention to be annoying and tiresome.

I do sympathize with these women, whose intentions are generally honest. Their approach, however, is all wrong, IMO, and it makes men like me become cynical and defensive (and it's not just me; other AfrAm men I've met, single or married, have similar feelings). I'd much rather date and marry someone who I can relax with and be myself around, without her biological clock ticking loudly in my ear every second.

AHAhahahahaha great pic..

Hmm..understand how you can be turned off by overly aggressive pursuit.

What about an online site. Tell them you are a librarian.. not a lie..
you have a huge library :)

I know it is hard for adults to meet people.
There has to be a way? My own sons have dated women of several races, and
backgrounds. They tell me they are fine along, but still... I would love to see them with someone.
But, I also want them to be happy. Can they really be happy alone?
Back to communes. That is a wonderful and underused solution imo. You can be alone
and still have company when you want to .. I think I could do a commune. And in the
economic times, it could be a real solution for some. We need more communes!

And I thought that type of women existed only in American novels! But the whole American dating system is far away from my personal world and I'm glad about it. What an awful pressure with the asking s.o. out for an "official date" and then having to keep whatever the current rules are. Through internet dating it has found its way here as well, but I just can't do it, I must meet people/men in a normal environment. For some of my friends however the online dating worked very well, ending in happy marriages with kids.

"Financially stable" both partners should be if possible, at a certain age. There are always exceptions, you can be between jobs or just be doing some kind of qualification, but normally the other one should be able to pay for her/his life alone. But it's a very flexible expression and I'll never get why there are women who first select the jobs and then try to find a man within that limited range. A farmer or a carpenter can be most stable financially while your super-presentable shiny suit-wearing banker loses his job forever in the next best crisis.

It seems as though I became infinitely more attractive after I received my MD.

It's funny that you say that...when I first met my boyfriend he had JUST moved to Ohio from Virginia to start his residency. He complained to me that the women here in Columbus aren't as impressed with his MD as the women in VA were about his medical student status. ;) I think it's all a matter of region and what types of people you meet there. I'm a PhD in biomedical engineering, so I meet doctors all the time...it's not quite as overwhelmly attractive to me I suppose. :D

ETA: >152 Deern: We cross-posted. I'll just add a resounding YES! women like that exist! My sister is one of them! She says she simply COULDN'T fall in love with someone who wasn't rich. :) She was SO thrilled when I started dating Max (a doctor), and I actually had to tell her that I've gone out with plenty of doctors, they're sort like normal people. haha

Thank you so much for posting the link to that wonderful article about Toni Morrison. I absolutely love her work especially, of course how could it not be, Beloved. What an amazing, beautiful and powerful book. I have read The bluest eye and Song of Solomon as well. The latter also ranks high on my good book lists, but isn't in the same range of Beloved IMO.

I have bought many books the last couple of weeks that were higly recommended by you Darryl and as soon as I have finished writing these %$#%& papers for my mastercourses I'll start reading them. I cannot wait.

Anyway, Darryl, if you look at it from the opposite direction it kind of sucks, too. When I was single (for years) I had to look specifically for men with advanced degrees. Not because I wouldn't date men without advanced degrees, but because I realized from experience that men who are "less educated" than myself get bruised egos and become overly sensitive if I disagree with them about ANYTHING. So, because I wanted to avoid such insecurities, I HAD to look for men with an MD, PhD, or MBA (or of course lawyers!). Which makes me look like a snob, but what could I do?!

ETA: "ANYTHING" includes my opinions about books. I would like to date a man who doesn't mind if I disagree about a book. :) Though, granted, I DO state my opinion a little too freely perhaps....

>151 mckait: I'm glad you liked that picture, Kath.

I've briefly considered online dating sites, but I'm very reluctant to join one, based on comments about them from my single female friends. LOL about your librarian comment!

I have had close female friends of other races, and I would be very open to dating and marrying a woman who isn't African American. However, when I've gone out socially with women of other races here (not a formal date), I've often received hostile stares, mainly from African American women, especially if the woman was Caucasian. I suppose that they are offended that a black man would "go out" with a white woman, as it's a personal insult to them. Occasionally there are hostile stares from whites here, as the last social taboo is for a white woman to date or marry a black man, particularly in the South.

Can you be happy alone? I think so, and people like myself who willingly choose to stay single are becoming more and more common, particularly in larger cities and metropolitan areas. Would I be happier with a person who is a good fit for me, and vice versa? Yes, I'd say so. However, based on my past relationships and observations of friends who are in unhappy marriages, it's far better to be single than in a bad or unfulfilling relationship, IMO.

No commune for me, thank you. I'm a big city guy, and I would feel like a trapped mouse in a smaller environment. :-)

>152 Deern: I hate dating rules and expectations. I've gone on several blind dates, all of which were painful failures. The Southern US is more backward traditional than other parts of the country, and Southern women are more likely to have opinions and take on roles that are unappealing to me. Many feel that the man should take care of his woman, and that they should stay home and raise children rather than work. One comment I've overheard repeatedly, especially at work, is "I need a man to take care of me!", which makes me shudder in revulsion.

I agree with you; I'd rather meet a woman in a normal setting, rather than an artificial one like an online dating site. I have met some appealing women in this manner, including a woman who sat next to me on a flight from Atlanta to Philadelphia, and two women in San Francisco in the recent past, one at a coffee shop and another in a museum. The first woman and I had a lot in common; she was about to complete her PhD at Emory, worked for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in a public health capacity, and loved Latin American literature (she was Latina); however, she was on her way to visit her boyfriend, who taught at Penn's Wharton School. :-((( The second woman, an architect who lived in the city, sat next to me at a bench in a coffee shop, and we had a very nice conversation. We exchanged phone numbers and e-mail addresses, and kept in touch after I left town for a couple of weeks. However, I became a bit turned off after she mentioned that her parents were quite racist (she was Caucasian), and especially after she called me repeatedly at work and at home after I didn't call her one night. The third woman was an Asian woman (Indian?) who spoke to me at a museum exhibit; she was very attractive and appealing, but I wasn't by myself at the time, so I couldn't talk with her for long. :-(((

However, these experiences have given me hope that I can meet the right person, provided that I continue to go to places where I might meet someone who has similar interests (books, fine arts, etc.). I do find women in other cities (NYC, SF, London, even Madison, Wisconsin) far more interesting and appealing than those in Atlanta or other Deep South cities.

My best friend from medical school met his wife online, on a site where scientists with PhDs could communicate about their research; he has a PhD in physics or chemistry, along with his MD, and she has a PhD in chemistry. They eventually met, when she traveled from London to visit him in the US, hit it off immediately, and subsequently married after a short dating period. Another friend of mine met his wife through an online dating site; they are married, but I wouldn't call their marriage a happy one.

At my age (51), I would expect the woman I would consider dating or marrying to be financially stable. Not wealthy, just stable, with no major debt. I agree with your comment that people with the largest salaries aren't necessarily the ones who are most financially stable. People here have a tendency to live beyond their means, regardless of their individual or joint salaries, which is why the foreclosure rate in the Atlanta metropolitan area is among the highest in the country.

Love the photo. And how fortunate that Madeline Miller can wear orange well!

I've been single for a long time now. After my divorce, I felt that I wanted to meet someone else, but it just didn't happen. As professor, it's really hard to meet compatible men, too. The colleagues my age or older are all looking for someone 35 or under for their second (or third or fourth) wife, and as someone above said, the difference in education never seems to work out. At this stage, I really can't imagine being married again. I'm afraid that I enjoy my independence too much. And you're right, there are worse things than being single!

>153 The_Hibernator: It's funny that you say that...when I first met my boyfriend he had JUST moved to Ohio from Virginia to start his residency. He complained to me that the women here in Columbus aren't as impressed with his MD as the women in VA were about his medical student status.

Exactly. I've noticed the same thing about the women in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia as compared to those in Atlanta and the Deep South. This makes Southern women appear to be shallow to me, and it's the main reason why I (and other men) frequently label them as gold diggers. It's one thing to be impressed with what your S.O. does for a living, and another to be taken with his salary, the car he drives, or the size of the house or the neighborhood he lives in.

I've gone out with plenty of doctors, they're sort like normal people. haha

What? Sort of normal??? Hmph.



>154 lilianboerboom: You're welcome, Lilian. I wish I could say that I'm a fan of Toni Morrison's, but I'm not, at least not yet. My friend (an African American doctor I work with) and I talked about her and Alice Walker over lunch one day, and one of us (probably me) said that reading their books is like being beaten over the head with a baseball bat nonstop for several hours. Although I didn't read the book, I absolutely hated Alice Walker's overly negative portrayal of black men in the movie version of The Color Purple, so much so that I ended up getting into an argument with the woman I was dating at the time after we watched the movie, which resulted in us breaking up on the spot.

I'm glad that I've given you some good book recommendations. Which ones will you be reading?

>155 The_Hibernator: When I was single (for years) I had to look specifically for men with advanced degrees. Not because I wouldn't date men without advanced degrees, but because I realized from experience that men who are "less educated" than myself get bruised egos and become overly sensitive if I disagree with them about ANYTHING.

I can easily see that happening. We guys (myself included) can have such fragile and easily bruised egos, especially in our relationships with women.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts/feelings about the dating scene, Darryl. I have two close colleagues here who are single African American women in their mid-to-late 30s with PhDs, and they sometimes talk about their struggles to find men they want to date. One dynamic they describe has some interesting parallels with yours: they find that many African American men (and each of these women has expressed strong preference for dating an AfrAm man) are turned off by their level of education. I think that can be true in many communities (along with the unbelievable refusal I hear women express about dating a man who is shorter than she is....), but it does seem complicated by the interaction of the dynamics of race and gender.

>157 Cariola: Right, Deborah. I did notice that she wore a very tasteful orange dress! I loved her joyful smile and obvious surprise in the photos that were taken after she was announced as the winner, and I felt that much happier for her.

ETA:

>159 EBT1002: There are far more AfrAm women with advanced degrees than AfrAm men, and many of these guys are intimidated by women who are more educated or make significantly more money than they do. This goes for other races, as well. I admittedly don't understand the height thing, which I've heard repeatedly. It isn't a problem for me, as I'm 5'10", and none of the women I've dated or closely befriended have been taller than me, I think.

Oh, Darryl. Dating is a drag, isn't it? I actually met my husband through Match.com and we're a success story. I had a good experience with online dating, in general, and didn't meet any crazy/scary men. At the time I was working in the sales department of a large newspaper and most of my male-co-workers were pigs (sorry to generalize), plus I'm not a big nightlife person, so it seemed liked a good option at the time. I had tried some blind dates too and they were disasters (e.g. Me: "Dave, you're sure he doesn't have a mullet, right?" Dave (my brother-in-law): "I don't think so." Of course, he had a mullet.) It could all depend on the region you're in I suppose. Chicago has a large people pool, so there's a better chance that you'll meet good ones, I guess.

Darryl - hang in there--there is hope for you. The biggest thing, I think, is actually meeting people. The more people you meet, the more likely you are to find someone right for you. When I was in my early 20s, I worked for a periodontist. The other staff were female, and most of our patients were middle aged or seniors. And none of my friends had boyfriends with cute friends, so it was a very long dateless period for me. But then I changed jobs ....

Second story: My husband's friend got married for the first time last summer--he was 46, good looking and very financially stable. He met the right one at a university alumni event. She shared a lot of the same interests with him, and also has her own career--she's an opthalmologist, so she doesn't look at him as a man to take care of her.

It'll happen . . . but in the meantime, I agree with you that no relationship beats a bad relationship. That was always my motto too.

Darryl, I added a comment in post 156.

Re the short thing: being a short woman, I've never been comfortable dating men over 5'10". I dated a 6'3" guy in college for awhile, and it felt very awkward.

Joyce, yes, my motto was: There are worse things than being single.

>160 kidzdoc: ROTFL! So mullets aren't attractive to women? I'd better make an appointment with my barber, STAT!



I'm glad that you were able to find a good, um, match on Match.com.

I agree with you about Chicago. I love the city, and it's high on my places that I would consider moving to when I leave Atlanta. I had hoped to go there for residency after I graduated from Pitt, as I ranked Children's Memorial Hospital first, and Emory third; UCLA was second, and the University of Chicago was fourth. Unfortunately (for me) Children's selected three of my classmates ahead of me, and UCLA was a pipe dream since I had no ties to L.A. or California. I would have ranked the University of Chicago ahead of Emory, but the residents I met when I interviewed there were tired and grumpy, which made me think that they were unhappy and miserable.

It's all so complicated, isn't it?

>162 Nickelini: Thanks, Joyce. I'm still very hopeful and optimistic that I'll eventually meet the right person, as long as I'm patient and keep my eyes open. Many people I meet are amazed that I'm 51, as most think I'm in my mid to late 30s, and they are equally amazed that I'm still single. Unfortunately, some of them want to find a good woman for me, which generally means they want to introduce me to one of their single friends, regardless of whether or not this person would be a good match for me. Thanks, but no thanks.

Yep, I don't think there are many ophthalmologists, at least those who practice in the US, who need financial support from anyone.

I agree with you that no relationship beats a bad relationship. That was always my motto too.

Absolutely!

>163 Cariola: I can see where men or women wouldn't feel comfortable with mates who are significantly taller or shorter than them. However, I don't understand why a woman would refuse to date a perfectly acceptable man, just because he is a couple of inches shorter than her. Besides, that's an easily fixable problem.



>165 EBT1002: Right, Ellen. Arranged marriages may not be the worst thing after all.

#164 - Wow that mullet is amazing (and I don't mean in a good way)! So, um, no, they are not attractive!! I think I had a mulleted boyfriend in high school, but that was the late 80s/early 90s, and, come to think of it, that was pushing it fashion-wise at the time, as I think the heyday of the mullet had already passed.

I've known a couple of people associated with the University of Chicago as staff, and they were both miserable, so maybe it's a culture thing. There are so many wonderful book stores around there though, especially the Seminary Co-op Bookstore: http://www.semcoop.com/.

Anyway, it would be lovely to have you in Chicago some day, although the weather can be dreadful. We often talk about leaving.

As the idea of heterosexuals dating makes me bilious, I have nothing to add to that discussion.

I despair of my county. We have 31 copies of The Song of Achilles and ELEVEN are checked out!

*sigh*

About the cross-racial dating--I think that might be a regional thing as well. I've been out on plenty of cross-racial dates in 4 different mid-west states (in fact my current boyfriend is Peruvian--which to most people, apparently, means he's "Mexican.") I've never felt like I'm being stared at. On the other hand, I HAVE been out on dates where the guy felt like he was being stared at...so maybe I'm just insensitive to the stink-eye?

Hi Darryl,

I completely see the point when you say (#156) that people shouldn't be living above their means, but at the same time when it comes to books that's exactly what I do especially like today when I feel like hell. I haven't had a day off for five weeks now, I have an important deadline on monday and to make things easier I have a light fever and a big headache. More than enough reason for me to go in at Waterstones and buy a book to cheer me up, but what do I do? I buy a lot of books that I can't afford. Ah well. I think everyone on this thread understands how these things happen. (BTW I bought The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt , The secret river by Kate Grenville, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry and The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna.

Of course now you ask I can't remember which books I bought after your recommendation, but two which I remember with certainty are The Glass Room and Gillespie and I.

I'm not sure whether you would like Toni Morrison based on the books you've seemd to like to read the last two months, but I can assure you Beloved is nothing like The color purple. It's much better.

This is a very interesting and enlightening conversation....

#156 the last social taboo is for a white woman to date or marry a black man

Do you find that that's different when you visit London? It's often quoted that in the U.K. that we have more inter-racial relationships than anywhere else in the world, but as I have been in a white mono-ethnic (is that a word?) relationship for 28 years I can't speak from personal experience. But I know I would never assume that a black person would have a partner of the same ethnicity, as in my experience it is so often the case that relationships are mixed ones. And it does seem to be borne out if you compare TV shows - there seem to be many more inter-racial relationships on British TV than on American TV.

Incidentally, for virtually all of my marriage I have been the one who has earned more, due to career choice rather than educational attainment (not any more as I am working part-time) but it does show that discrepancies in this regard needn't be insurmountable.

Actually, more than half of the babies born in the US are now "minority" or "mixed race"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47458196/ns/us_news-life/t/census-minorities-now-sur...

#172 And it does seem to be borne out if you compare TV shows - there seem to be many more inter-racial relationships on British TV than on American TV.

#173 Actually, more than half of the babies born in the US are now "minority" or "mixed race"

I've noticed that about TV shows from the UK, and I think the issue is that US TV hasn't caught up yet. In other words, I don't think US TV reflects reality--at least not what is happening in major population areas. I live in Vancouver, which has a highly diverse population, and inter-racial relationships are completely common.

>167 DorsVenabili: I'll almost certainly go to Chicago in early November, as I mentioned on Joe's thread. A good friend of mine from medical school, who lives near L.A., will be going there with her family during the second weekend of that month, to attend a wedding, and we've made tentative plans to meet there. One of my best friends from residency lives and practices in Chicago, so I'm eager to see her as well. Hopefully I'll have a free day or two, which will depend if my friends from Madison decide to come to Chicago that weekend, or if I leave from there after that weekend to visit them. Joe (jnwelch) and I had talked about getting together on his thread earlier this month, so maybe we could have a Chicago LT meet up then, along with Mark, Linda and any other folks who live in or close to Chicagoland.

I haven't spent much time alone in Chicago, as I've usually been there to see my friend from residency, but I'm eager to visit Hyde Park and the Seminary Co-op Bookstore.

The weather there can be brutal, as it was when I went on residency interviews in late January (it snowed six inches the night before my interview at the U. of Chicago), but I do better in colder climates than warmer ones (it's already 89 degrees here with a heat index of 94 degrees, and it's supposed to max out at 92 degrees; ugh). My frequent winter trips to Madison and living for four years in Pittsburgh have also toughened me up. I'll definitely let you, Joe and others know once my Chicago plans are in place.

>168 richardderus: As the idea of heterosexuals dating makes me bilious, I have nothing to add to that discussion.

Hmph. So you don't care about my happiness and well being, then?

I despair of my county. We have 31 copies of The Song of Achilles and ELEVEN are checked out!

So that means that 20 copies are available on the shelves at the moment? It will be interesting to see if that changes, once the word gets out about its selection as the Orange Prize winner.

This assumes, of course, that anyone in the New York metropolitan area learns of this news. Today's print version of the NYT makes no mention of the Orange Prize announcement, not even in the Arts Beat section.

>169 The_Hibernator: About the cross-racial dating--I think that might be a regional thing as well.

There are interracial couples and marriages here, but, oddly enough, I see far fewer college educated couples where I live (which is a pretty diverse area) and among the middle-class families whose kids I take care of. White-Asian couplings are pretty common, but the black-white couples are mainly from smaller towns outside of metro Atlanta. It's common to see whites and blacks in public establishments, and they generally sit alongside each other, but in self-segregated tables in restaurants, bookstores, and coffee shops. There is essentially no racial tension here, but there's also very little black-white interracial interaction in social settings outside of the workplace, even among people of similar socioeconomic backgrounds, which is quite sad.

my current boyfriend is Peruvian--which to most people, apparently, means he's "Mexican"

And Mexican probably means "illegal immigrant" to these same people, right?

>170 lilianboerboom: I'm sorry to hear that you're having a bad day and five week stretch, Lilian. You are certainly allowed to buy books, which is a far healthier addiction than other ones. When will you get a break?

Going to a well stocked bookshop such as Waterstones is like eating a tasty potato chip; you can't stop at home (to paraphrase the famous Lay's potato chip commercial).

That's a fabulous set of books you've acquired!

My friend at work that I mentioned is currently read Home, Toni Morrison's latest book. I'm curious to see what he thinks of it, as I'll consider reading it if he likes it.

>171 mckait: I agree, Kath; I'm enjoying this conversation!

>172 SandDune: Do you find that that's different when you visit London?

Definitely. I've noticed a lot of interracial friendships and apparent relationships during my four previous visits to London. I also feel very comfortable as a black man in London, as I've had almost universally positive interactions with the people I've met there (yes, British hospitality is alive and quite well, even in a megalopolis like London). I'd say that London is the friendliest big city that I've visited on multiple occasions, and I could list at least a dozen enjoyable conversations I've had with strangers in public settings, including the staff at the bookshops, cafes, and restaurants (such as the humorous conversation Rachael (FlossieT) and I had with a woman who worked at the London Review Cakeshop about Hershey's chocolate syrup, which I brought for her kids the first time we met in 2009).

Most people I run into there assume that I'm a black Briton, and are surprised and pleased when I start to talk and they realize I'm a black American, such as the two Welshmen I sat next to at a fish & chips bar near Paddington Station last year. I shared the sports section of The Guardian with them, the day after England defeated Wales in a football match. One of them exclaimed, after I spoke to him, "Oh! You're an American lad!" We had a great conversation about football, both the American and non-American variety, as they were on their way to catch a flight from Heathrow to JFK to see an American football game (Dallas Cowboys vs the New York Jets). The guys that work at this fish & chips bar also recognize me from past visits, particularly when I make my first trip there and they give me a warm welcome after I talk with my non-British accent. These interactions make me love the city that much more, and I would still love going there even if most people were rude and unfriendly.

I would never assume that a black person would have a partner of the same ethnicity, as in my experience it is so often the case that relationships are mixed ones.

That's a fascinating comment, Rhian. Wow...I'd say that most people in Atlanta, and in the US in general, would assume that someone like myself would only be interested in dating someone of the same race, which is definitely not the case for me. My closest friends over the years have been mainly white, Jewish and Asian, but I've had best friends of different races since childhood, as I went to an integrated church and elementary school when we lived in the NYC metropolitan area, and my parents live in a nearly all-white neighborhood now (which they and I have felt very comfortable living in since we first moved there in 1976). I fully embrace my African American heritage, but I would never limit myself to people of my own race, or any other particular one.

>173 The_Hibernator: Actually, more than half of the babies born in the US are now "minority" or "mixed race"

I read about that, too. Americans under 35-40 in most areas are far more used to going to school or working with people of other races, and are far more likely to see them as equals rather than "others", IMO. I love seeing mixed race couples, and the beautiful multiracial children that they produce, such as those of my best friends in Wisconsin; he's third generation Chinese-American, and she was born in Liège, Belgium, although she received her PhD at Purdue University and taught at University College London before she moved from the UK after they became engaged. Here's a photo of the little cheeseheads that I took when I visited them at Christmastime in 2010:



>174 Nickelini: I don't think US TV reflects reality

Definitely not, and neither does Hollywood, despite its generally liberal leanings. Both forms of entertainment are ripe with stereotypes, which only feeds on the prejudices of those who don't interact with people outside of their own groups. That's one reason I was so pissed off with the movie version of The Color Purple, which portrayed all black men as pimps, liars and cheats.

I keep meaning to take a trip to Seattle and Vancouver. One of these days...

I think multi-racial children are beautiful, too. :)

I have to admit, though, that I'm shocked at how many dead-pan racists there still are in the US. I remember one Thanksgiving dinner my dad was telling us about this Christian minister he'd been chatting with on the internet. This guy told my dad that he may talk all high-brow equality--but you don't see him (my dad) inviting African Americans to his Thanksgiving dinner. This was heartily laughed at since we had both an African American AND a Bosnian (Muslim) at that particular Thanksgiving dinner. :)

>177 The_Hibernator: Wow. That's both funny, and incredibly sad, particularly since the racist is a "Christian" minister.

Three books were waiting for me in my mailbox: two were LT Early Reviewer books, The Patient Survival Guide: 8 Simple Solutions to Prevent Hospital and Healthcare-Associated Infections by Dr. Maryanne McGuckin, and Subduction by Todd Shimoda. The other was my long awaited copy of Bring Up the Bodies from Amazon UK, which I'll start reading tomorrow. Woo!

I have four unread LT Early Reviewer books, all of a sudden. I'll try to get to both of these books in June along with the one I was already planning to read this month, A Mind of Winter by Shira Nayman.

I keep meaning to take a trip to Seattle and Vancouver. One of these days...

Well, my family and I will be happy to show you Vancouver when you get here.

>179 Nickelini: Aw, thanks Joyce! I'll definitely take you up on your kind offer. I doubt that I'll make it there before next year, at the earliest.

>175 kidzdoc: Don't be silly, of course I want you to be happy and gruntled and kempt! I simply don't want to imagine the...*shudder* antics *belch*...that will lead to aforementioned states.

Do anything you like, just don't make me think about it.

#175 there's also very little black-white interracial interaction in social settings outside of the workplace

I worked in Bermuda for four months about 15 years ago on a secondment from my London office and I found much the same thing there. While people of different ethnic groups got on fine in a work situation, there was very little socialisation outside work. I found it noticeably different from London where work colleagues tended to socialise based on age or interests rather than race.

And if/when you come to Seattle, Darryl, I would love to spend time with you (including a visit to a bookstore or two, of course)! It's an interesting city; I experience it as quite diverse but I know my friends of color say it feels pretty white to them. Proving once again that the world looks different from inside different skin.

My grandniece and grandnephew, who are 1/4 Palauan, 1/4 of African descent, and 1/2 of German descent, are hands down the two most beautiful children on earth. No auntie bias here; I'm simply stating an objective fact.

I'm glad you got your copy of Bring Up the Bodies. I know you have been looking forward to that one since before it was published! I'm one of the many joining in the GR of Wolf Hall this month (and lurking on Ilana and Suz's tutored thread).

Well, today all 7 copies of The Song of Achilles are still checked out, and we are up from 14 to 19 holds here in the San Diego library system.

My husband and I got quite a few stares in Kansas in the 70s, even though we were in a university town, but right after we moved to San Diego in 1979, and were walking on the beach, a young white man walked up to us and said, "that just isn't right!" Now that I am no longer young and beautiful, we don't get that reaction any more. But my husband has always said that this area was/is more racist than Lawrence or Kansas City. There are a lot more of us now, though, than back in those years.

>148 kidzdoc: phy$ician haha, lol, *ooh my aching sides*

>156 kidzdoc: One comment I've overheard repeatedly, especially at work, is "I need a man to take care of me!
Wow, I have heard about these types, but never really met any. All my female friends are strong, independent and awesome, and wouldnt consider having a man to look after them. Like me, they would find that style of relationship very constrictive.

Is it really the last taboo, for a black man to be with a white woman? Wow, I can barely imagine. I guess we are pretty liberal in urban NZ........as is about to be illustrated by my next question.....
Have you considered bisexuality? increases your chances considerably ;)

>148 kidzdoc: phy$ician: that must be something like I tend to get with profe$$or. Don't get me started on the steroetype of the fat cat professor who only works 12 hours a week and gets summers off but makes a HUGE salary! If people only knew . . .

Darryl - Finally caught up on your thread which has gone ballistic. The comments on dating and "mixed" couples etc was of course interesting to an old romantic such as I. Being married to a Malay lady descended from Bugis pirates/privateers (she is just as scary as her ancestors were reputed to be) and who is imbued with an innate wisdom and determination, I have been lucky enough to benefit from our union with three mixed raced children who are both the joy of my life as well as the cause of most of my sleepless nights. I think it takes both parties in a relationship to invest themselves in it equally bet it man/woman, man/man, woman/woman, same race or mixed race.

I can identify with the comments on height - as a shortie (5ft 6 and shrinking) I only dated ladies no more than equal height than myself ; that's why I was far more lonely in Europe than in Asia!

>181 richardderus: Do anything you like, just don't make me think about it.

Fair enough, I think. However, I reserve the right to post photos of my future beloved on my thread.



Sigh...

>182 SandDune: I had heard that about Bermuda. I don't have a strong desire to visit any of the Caribbean countries, for that and other reasons.

>183 EBT1002: It's an interesting city; I experience it as quite diverse but I know my friends of color say it feels pretty white to them.

Interesting comment. That wouldn't matter to me, as long as that didn't mean that I felt like the "other" as a result, which I assume would not be the case in cities like Seattle and Portland.

>184 ronincats: I'm under the impression that San Diego is far more conservative than LA or SF, so I'm not totally surprised that your husband finds it to be more racist than KC or Lawrence. Of course, conservatism in itself doesn't necessarily imply racism. Most of the nurses I work with and who are Facebook friends of mine describe themselves as Republican, as does the mother of Brianah, the girl with spina bifida who appears on my profile page. However, many of these same nurses and Brianah's mother treat me with a great deal of respect and affection.

>185 LovingLit: All my female friends are strong, independent and awesome, and wouldnt consider having a man to look after them. Like me, they would find that style of relationship very constrictive.

I grew up with strong female models, starting with my mother, who worked while she raised my brother and I, and went back to school to get an associate's degree once he and I were out of high school. Her two sisters also have college degrees, and also worked for most of their lives, more out of a desire to have a fulfilling life that combined motherhood with the workplace. My father was the primary breadwinner, but he also contributed to household activities after he came home from work, including taking over the primary responsibility for cooking for the family once my mother resumed working on a full time basis. He (Chef Nick) continues to be the primary cook in the house, even though they are both retired; when I visited them earlier this month, I don't think my mother cooked dinner once! She's become a Pad Thai addict, as she ordered it on three occasions during my visit of just over one week, and made a meal out of it at least 5-6 times.

A good friend of mine, a young white nurse who was raised in a traditional and conservative Southern family, once asked me if I would "make my wife work". Stunned by the question, I replied that I hoped that my wife would want to work outside of the home, and have a life that didn't revolve around me and one that extended beyond the home and immediate family. She was a bit of a Southern princess then, but she's matured quite a bit since that time.

According to her and other women I've spoken with, the primary goal of many traditional Southern white women who attend college is to find a similarly traditional man with a bright future at that school or a neighboring one, and become engaged to him, preferably by the end of their junior year, a practice known as obtaining an MRS degree. My friend went to Auburn, a prominent and very traditional college in Alabama, and she said that many of her sorority sisters shunned her once she did not land a man by the time she became a senior. This sounds like something that would have been acceptable in the 1960s or earlier, but not when she would have graduated, in the late 1990s!

Is it really the last taboo, for a black man to be with a white woman?

Very good, Megan! I was waiting for someone to challenge me on my "last taboo" comment. You could certainly argue that it would be far less acceptable, certainly within the largely Christian black community, for a black man to come out as homosexual than to marry a white woman. In the US, whites and Asians are far more accepting of homosexuality than blacks and Latinos are, as a whole. Although my parents and family would want me to be happy with whatever I chose to do, they would almost certainly be far more disappointed if I married a man than if I married a woman outside of my race (which they probably wouldn't blink an eye at, as long as her family was equally accepting of the relationship).

Have you considered bisexuality? increases your chances considerably ;)

LOL! It certainly would, considering that Atlanta has one of the most vibrant gay communities in the South and that Midtown in general and my building in particular has a large percentage of openly gay men. I've had gay friends of both genders since childhood, when a slightly older boy from my church admitted to me that he was gay. I've never had a same sex relationship in my youth or been attracted to men, even those I admired for their looks and intelligence, so this isn't an option for me.

Ugh. I haven't done much reading during the past three days, as I've only read 200 pages of Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention during that time. I had hoped to finish it by today, and The Master and Margarita by Sunday, but I'll have to carry both books over to June. I'm enjoying both books, but I'm still too tired to focus on reading for more than an hour at a time. Fortunately I'll be off this weekend, after a long call (10 am to 10 pm) tomorrow.

>186 Cariola: Don't get me started on the steroetype of the fat cat professor who only works 12 hours a week and gets summers off but makes a HUGE salary!

What? That isn't true? Just kidding, I know that to be the case, particularly for full time professors in medical schools. One of my mentors at Emory, who works as a pediatric hospitalist at one of the other children's hospitals that is part of the organization I work for and is on Emory's campus, told me years ago that I made a good move to take a position at my hospital, as my colleagues there, whose salary is paid by the School of Medicine, make approximately 1/3 less than I do. My friend from the Bay Area that I'll visit next month completed her fellowship in Allergy and Immunology at UCSF (the University of California, San Francisco), and the department wanted to hire her once she was done, as she is very smart and speaks three Chinese dialects fluently, including Mandarin and Shanghainese. They offered her a starting salary that was probably less than half of what she was offered in the private A/I practice that she still works for, so she politely turned them down. I have no idea what other professors earn, but I would imagine that only a tiny percentage of them, at most, have become extremely wealthy on the basis of their university salaries. (I'm an adjunct professor at the two medical schools in Atlanta, Emory and Morehouse, but I only get paid for the lectures I give to the first year physician assistant students at Emory. The amount I earn from each lecture isn't enough to fill my car's tank with gas.)

>187 PaulCranswick: Oh, I can imagine SWMBO (I can't remember her name, now that you only refer to her by this nickname!) in a pirate outfit! As others have said, your kids are stunningly attractive, which may have more than a little to do with your sleepless nights.

I think this discussion proves my original point, that it's amazing that you can find so much time for reading. All the dating sounds exhausting--much more so than marriage, children and the whole catastrophe.

Who is that lovely lady? She looks to be the perfect Mrs Kidsdoc :)
Thanks for your generous responses to my points- I love your thread right now, there's s much going on, and very comprehensive discussions.

Re: dating in general, luckily us NZers just dont do it. To me it is some mythical American TV show thing that I cant even imagine.

Congrats on your well-deserved promotion!

>190 banjo123: All the dating sounds exhausting--much more so than marriage, children and the whole catastrophe.

And about as enjoyable as dental work, IMO. I'd much rather meet someone on a casual basis, with no expectations, become friends, and see if there is mutual interest and attraction.

>191 LovingLit: That's Sadie Jones, author of The Outcast, Small Wars and The Uninvited Guests. Please ignore the obvious wedding ring that she is sporting.

>192 Whisper1: Thanks, Linda. It will look good on my C.V., but that's about it.

Darryl / Megan - hahaha I'm glad Megan jumped in with misplacing Sadie Jones before I made the mistake myself. Who said bookish ladies are unattractive?

>194 PaulCranswick: Who said bookish ladies are unattractive?

Not me! I can think of several very attractive authors, including Madeline Miller, Zadie Smith, Jenny Erpenbeck and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Last summer I posted a TIOLI challenge for 'hot' authors, and we came up with a nice list of cuties, both male and female.

Darryl...I write from New Orleans where I think of you and your fond memories of this exciting place.

Dinner at Pat O'Brien's was fun; lunch at Mulates afforded the opportunity for the students to experience fried alligator.

I think their favorite thing is the fact that they can walk down Bourbon Street with a hurricane drink in hand. I was with them the night we had dinner at Pat O'Brien's, but last night they went by themselves. They are so enamored with the place that they hang out there during the day between sessions.

I feel like the cop on the old TV show NYPD Blues...I simply say "Be CAREFUL out there!"

#175 and 195 - I'm in for a November meet-up in Chicago!

Very bummed I missed the "hot authors" challenge last summer - it was before my time. Two words: Colson. Whitehead.

I have a question to those discussing relationships by degree.
If a good looking young man with an IQ of 130 ish had a ( VERY) good job,
was self taught in several languages, as well as self taught in playing any of ..
well quite a few musical instruments and was clearly knowledgeable in many
areas were in your circle, would a degree still be required to make him worthy of
consideration for a relationshp? Or would a degree be necessary ?

I am overcome by curiosity.

Kath--I don't need my man to have a degree. All I want is a man who can allow me to be myself without losing confidence in HIMself. My experience is that men without advanced degrees tend to feel a little insecure in a relationship with women who make more money or have higher education than they do. Clearly this is not the case for every man though! There are some perfectly confident men without college education, and some very insecure men with advanced degrees. Everyone has insecurities, I just don't want to deal with insecurities about ME. It makes me feel like I have to change who I am in order to salve their bruised egos. He doesn't even have to be the "perfect" man you just described. :) Though being able to hold an intelligent conversation is a must!

>194 PaulCranswick: Who said bookish ladies are unattractive?

I will add Jhumpa Lahiri to your list, Darryl--a very beautiful woman.

198> I'm not a "degree snob" and have several friends who don't even have a college degree, let alone an MA or PhD. Conversation and shared interest is the key. The problem, as stated in 199, is the frequent insecurities. I've seen too many marriages fall apart when the woman gets involved in an academic career and the man has a 9-5 job.

After reading all the conversations above I've come to the conclusion that my husband must be peculiarly lacking in insecurities. He gave up work to look after our son after I went back to work after maternity leave, and remained working part-time, maximum two days a week, until our son was six. I remember some shocked silences when we told some of our friends what we were going to do, as he had always come over as very career orientated up to that point. But for us it just made sense - we didn't want to leave our son to be cared for full-time by somebody else and we couldn't afford for me to stay at home. For us it worked really well.

Re: degrees, I don't think I'm a deficient conversationalist, and I don't even have a high-school diploma.

Well, all of this has been fascinating. If anything were to happen to Himself, I know for certain that I would never want to marry again. Even the thought of going through any kind of dating process...gack... never mind the thought of doing relationship angst. Hive inducing thoughts! We get somewhat set in our ways by our middling years, so using what precious time there is left of my life's thread to hash out compromises or adjustments, well, that's time that could be better spent curled up with a good book or going out to dinner with a friend. Or travelling! I think people with rich internal lives and deep curiosity about life don't feel bored or lonely the way others might. So I'm solidly with the "better off alone than miserable with someone" group.

Bravo for Miller and love the orange dress!

ETA: Richard, you can string a noun to a verb with the best of them. And I sure can kill a thread!

Additions to my comment in 199, just so you can get an idea of how bad this can be: I once had a series of three or four "arguments" with a boyfriend about whether Stephen King is a genius or not. I'm sorry, but his metaphors fall flat for me, and the man needed to get an editor to shorten his books! I had no idea how angry my boyfriend-at-the-time was until he went home one day and threw out his COMPLETE collection of Stephen King novels. That may be an extreme example, but I NEVER want to go through that again! I was fine with HIM liking Stephen King. I just didn't like King myself. *shrug*

Also, re: MRS Degree….I had a friend several years back who was very upset about her medical school interviews. Apparently, she had told all the interviewers that she planned on being a housewife after finishing med school. She was insulted when one set of interviewers practically patted her on the head and said “You’ll make a fantastic house wife.” I tried SO HARD to keep a straight face and almost told her that maybe next time she shouldn’t mention the whole house wife thing…but then I realized that if she doesn’t know how big of a mistake that is, it’s probably BETTER that she tell all her interviewers that. It’ll save everyone a lot of time and money (especially her).

Chiming in on the very interesting conversation regarding if a degree is necessarily an integral part of a relationship, or some kind of requirement when searching for someone to date......

No doubt about it, we make our decisions regarding our values. If a degree is your benchmark then that is what you will aim for.

My partner is very educated. While I enjoy our conversations, that is NOT what drew me to him. He is a kind man who raised three children on his own back in the 1970's when it was unheard of for men to wrestle with the legal system and win custody in a court system that seemed to award custody to the woman whether they were capable of loving the children or not.

Kindness is my benchmark -- not degrees. Who wants to be with a highly educated person if he/she is not kind? Who wants to be with an educated person if they cannot defend you and support you in emotionally difficult situations.

Forget the big words and the mensa plus, give me kindness and niceness any day and I'm hooked.

A friend once told me that she would not date a person if he was overweight, or bald, or not incredibly handsome. When I told her my criteria of someone to love was someone who was kind, who would not back stab, who would be honest, who would have integrity, who would not change like a camelon or go with the pack in herd mentality in the company of others who were nasty and thus become that way, she then scoffed at me.

She did indeed get her wish. She has a very handsome man. He belittles her. He makes fun of her in front of relatives. He cheats on her and then lies about it.

I think that is an incredibly high price to pay for her need to have a trophy man.

Well said, Linda dear.... as always. You are a wise and gentle woman.

206> Oh, needless to say, there are many other qualities I'd look for in a spouse besides shared interests and good conversation, kindness being one of them, being secure in oneself another.

And of course, priorities change as we get older. For example, back when I first got married at 21 and was young and naive, money was not a concern. But after years of living on the edge of poverty, then doing it again post-divorce to get through grad school, I never want to be in that place again. Which doesn't mean that money itself is an attraction, just that being solvent is a practicality. I'm not rich by far, but I never want to repeat those days of having to decide which utility not to pay when the car needs repairs.

That is VERY true Linda. :)

As I said, a degree is not necessary for me, it's simply a good gauge of what I'm looking for. Which is a man who can hold an intelligent conversation, who likes me for who I am, who loves kids, and who has a kind heart. :) Oh, and who is single...I'm not into married men, either. :) Really, loving kids and having a kind heart are more important than intelligence to me....and appearance doesn't even hit the list--though in some ways appearance is an indicator of how a well man takes care of himself....which might be an indication of how well he'd take care of a family. But maybe I over-think things?

Okay, I think I am now officially overwhelmed by the conversation, but I have to say that Sadie Jones is incredibly beautiful. I'll arm wrestle you for a date with her, Darryl.

Oh wait, I guess she gets to make that choice for herself (and, as you've noted, has apparently already done so). Ah well, back to ordinary life.

Wow what a cerebral-ized discussion about the laws of attraction! Guess I'll step in here and echo Tina Turner with "What's Love Got to Do with It?"

Daryl, I'm reading a slim little volume of nonfiction you might like: Ignorance: How it Drives Science by Stuart Firestein. Despite being a professor of neuroscience at Columbia, the guy has a way with words and a sense of humor too!

>196 Whisper1: I'm glad to hear that you're having a great time in New Orleans, Linda! I've never had dinner at Pat O'Brien's, as we went there for the drinks (hurricanes and mint juleps), and not the food.

I hadn't heard of Mulate's, so I had to look it up. It didn't come to New Orleans until 1984, three years after I ended my unsuccessful academic endeavor at Tulane.

Alligator tail is delightful!

Have you had beignets and café au lait at Café du Monde? How about muffulettas at Central Grocery Co.? Although I haven't been to the restaurant in the French Quarter, I loved the NYC branch of K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen when it existed for a few years in Greenwich Village. Mother's on Poydras Street and Johnny's were my favorite po'boy restaurants, and I loved the sandwiches and burgers at The Camellia Grill in Uptown NO, on Carrollton Avenue just after the St Charles streetcar turns off of St Charles Avenue onto Carrollton. And Tipitina's, on Napoleon near Tchoupitoulas, is a must for live New Orleans and Louisiana music.

I hope to go back there this fall, as the AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) National Convention will be held there in October.

The discussions of interracial relationships and New Orleans remind me of something I observed on a visit there maybe 30 years ago. We were sitting in a street-side cafe, next to a table of very rowdy, off-duty policemen, when a car drove by with a black man and white woman. Their reaction was to take down the license plate and loudly make it clear that they would be following up later. Being from the Northeast, I was in utter shock.

On that same visit, an off-duty policeman fatally shot an individual who was having a grand mal seizure on the street, claiming he felt threatened. It was on the news one night and never mentioned again while I was there - no follow-up investigation?

I have never been able to bring myself to return to New Orleans, although I'm sure that's an unfair assessment of the city. Hopefully things have changed since.

>197 DorsVenabili: I'm definitely interested in a Chicago meet up in November. I'll have to see what my friends' plans are for that weekend (November 10-11) before I'll be able to commit to a date. I think that her cousin's wedding is on the 10th, but I don't know how long they plan to stay in town, as they'll have to fly back to LA soon after the wedding, unless they plan to spend several days there.

I would like to do another "hot author" TIOLI challenge this summer, probably in July. I have to ensure that it's different from last year's challenge, though. Maybe I can change the rules, so that only authors that weren't selected for last year's challenge are eligible this year. I know that Sadie Jones was one of the chosen authors (by yours truly, naturally). Checking...nope, Colson Whitehead wasn't selected, so he would be eligible (and I haven't read his two most recent novels, Zone One and Sag Harbor, so I'd be interested in reading either or both of those books).

These authors were chosen last July:

Alison Bechdel
Joseph Boyden
Jennifer Bradbury
Sandra Brown
Meg Cabot
Jacqueline Carey
Hamish Clayton
Delphine de Vigan
L. Divine
Patrick Leigh Fermor
Jasper Fforde
Joshua Foer
Atul Gawande
Alice Hoffman
Craig Johnson
Sadie Jones
Dean Karnazes
Benjamin Lacombe
Paul Langan
Gayle Tzemach Lemmon
David Mitchell
Patrick Ness
Matt Beynon Rees
Marcus Sedgwick
Zadie Smith

I'm sure that we can come up with a list of equally "hot" authors, such as Colson Whitehead, Eleanor Catton, Madeline Miller and others. So, I'll plan to do this next month.

Hi Darryl,

What is a hot author TIOLI challenge?

>198 mckait: Good question, Kath. If I substitute "woman" for "man" in your query, I would certainly say yes, that this person would be someone I'd be interested in. Educational achievement is a very important consideration in the person I would choose for an ideal mate (although it is irrelevant otherwise), but it isn't absolutely essential. Compatibility is the most critical factor for me, as I feel that my girlfriend or wife should be my best friend and most trusted confidant. We don't have to share the same interests, although I wouldn't want someone who hated to read or enjoyed watching reality TV shows on a nightly basis. She must be family oriented, and a good relationship with her parents and siblings is important. Anyone who doesn't like or get along with my parents (who are very easy going, tolerant and accomodating) is automatically eliminated. And, as I mentioned, financial stability is also essential, as I have no desire to pay off anyone's debt or assume financial responsibility for her or her family. I'd also want to sign a prenuptial agreement, to preserve my income in case of divorce.

>199 The_Hibernator: All I want is a man who can allow me to be myself without losing confidence in HIMself. My experience is that men without advanced degrees tend to feel a little insecure in a relationship with women who make more money or have higher education than they do. Clearly this is not the case for every man though!

Right. And, even some men with advanced degrees and high income can be intimidated by a woman with similar credentials. Many traditional Southern men prefer a stay at home wife who looks good and keeps a tidy house with "perfect" children, as I've heard repeatedly from my female colleagues.

>200 Cariola: Oh, yes; Jhumpa Lahiri is definitely a strikingly attractive woman:



And here's a photo of the aforementioned Eleanor Catton:



I'm not a "degree snob" and have several friends who don't even have a college degree, let alone an MA or PhD.

I don't think of myself as a "degree snob", although I am curious about the educational background of people I meet socially. I wouldn't look down upon someone who didn't have a college degree; however, I have found that several old friends of mine from high school who didn't achieve higher education are uncomfortable or apologetic around me, even when they have a stable job and family. (I think those of you who have met me know that I generally prefer to listen to others, as I'd much rather hear about other people's lives and careers than talk about medicine or myself. However, I find people who dominate a conversation and focus the spotlight on themselves to be quite tiresome after a short while.)

Having said that, essentially all of my closest friends are people I've gone to school or worked with, and I can't think off hand of anyone I'm close to who doesn't have at least a bachelor's degree. But, again, I wouldn't shun anyone who didn't have a BA/BS or advanced degree, either as a friend or a possible S.O.

>201 SandDune: Good for you and your husband, Rhian! I admire people who put their families above their careers, and I love seeing fathers who are dedicated to their children and know them well. Too often when I see a kid in the hospital, the father or husband of the child says, "Uh, you'll have to ask my wife (or her mother)" in response to questions, or is more focused on using a smartphone or computer during my visit. Sometimes the father is so distracted and useless that I just examine the child, and tell him that I'll come back later, when the mother is available.

>202 richardderus: Richard, I think the last phrase I would use to describe you is a "deficient conversationalist". I think that you're more intelligent than the majority of people with bachelor's or advanced degrees.

>203 tiffin: I thought you said you would soon leave your husband for me, Tui. :-(((

>204 The_Hibernator: I had a friend several years back who was very upset about her medical school interviews. Apparently, she had told all the interviewers that she planned on being a housewife after finishing med school.

Umm...with all due respect, this is about the stupidest thing I've ever heard of! What was she thinking? Did any medical school accept her? If I was on a medical school admissions committee and any applicant said that in a private interview, I would ask her if she meant what she said, and if she said "yes", I would stand up, shake her hand, and escort her out of my office.

>205 mckait: *now seizing after looking at the rapidly changing colors and images*

>206 Whisper1: No doubt about it, we make our decisions regarding our values. If a degree is your benchmark then that is what you will aim for.

Right. I was raised in a family (nuclear and extended) that valued education highly, as all but one of my aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews (~20 people in total) did not obtain at least an associate's degree. If someone told me about a woman that they wanted to introduce me to, and mentioned that she did not have a college degree, I would admittedly think less highly of them. However, if I met someone who I was attracted to or found interesting, the lack of a college degree would be less important than in the first scenario. I'm not sure if that makes any sense or not, though.

Kindness is my benchmark -- not degrees.

Definitely. I was completely enamored of the second (or third) wife of my older cousin (a Georgetown educated lawyer), who was a dermatologist in Washington, DC, had her own line of skin care products, and served as a consultant to several publications for black women. She was also stunningly attractive, and I looked up to her as a role model, as I was a medical student at the time. However, she was quite mean, petty and insecure (she was even estranged from her twin brother), and she was actually threatened by me, since she wanted to be the doctor in our extended family, even when I was a lowly medical student and a resident making an hourly salary that was barely above minimum wage. They divorced after a few years, and all of us, especially him, were pleased to see the relationship end. So, as we all know, money and education does not buy happiness.

>207 mckait: Well said, Linda dear.... as always. You are a wise and gentle woman.

Agreed!

A friend is a successful lawyer and has also taught community college and provided free tuition to students in Harlem who aren't doing well in school but who can't afford to pay for private tuition, and yet, every time he reads about someone who has multiple degrees and a PhD, he falls into a funk and moans that he hasn't done much with his life and that he feels inadequate because he doesn't have multiple degrees under his belt. Some people are professional students, but if they don't use their degrees to help better the lives of others in some way, I don't see the point of all those framed certificates on their wall.

Darryl, Anthony Bourdain's on tv as I type and covering old haunts in NYC and he's just covered Russ & Daughters. Mmm.... I'm taking the train into NYC tomorrow morning to have lunch with a friend visiting from London, and before i head back to Boston tomorrow night, I plan to stop over at R&D to bring some of their smoked fish and whitefish salad home.

I thrive around bright, intelligent people. Working in academia I've met so many petty, nasty, mean spirited "intelligent" people that I've learned that degees are sometimes used as a hammer to make others feel less.

So many of my intelligent, kind, sensitive wise friends are not degreed. I love them dearly!

One of the smartest and kindest man I dated owned an electrical construction company. No one in my circle could beat him in trivial pursuit.

>208 Cariola: Which doesn't mean that money itself is an attraction, just that being solvent is a practicality.

Right. I couldn't imagine getting into a relationship with someone with chronic financial difficulties. Obviously many people will have temporary problems, if they lose jobs or a significant portion of their income, and that doesn't count, so long as it doesn't become a chronic problem. I'd also avoid someone who wants to live above their means, and would put me into financial difficulty, or someone who wants me to bail out a wayward sibling on a regular basis.

>209 The_Hibernator: A relationship with a married person is unforgivable in my opinion, and that would be the scenario that would be most offensive to my parents and family. I would consider marrying someone who was divorced, as long as she didn't have young children.

>210 EBT1002: I have to say that Sadie Jones is incredibly beautiful. I'll arm wrestle you for a date with her, Darryl.

You're on, Ellen! The winner gets Sadie. ;-)

>211 tangledthread: Ignorance: How it Drives Science sounds very interesting; I'll put that at the top of my wish list.

Despite being a professor of neuroscience at Columbia, the guy has a way with words and a sense of humor too!

LOL! I should mention this to my friend in Wisconsin; he's a pediatric neurologist at UW.

>213 Linda92007: I can believe those stories, Linda. I lived in New Orleans in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and the city was starting to become more violent and racially tense toward the end of my time there. The police chief of nearby Jefferson Parish was a notorious racist, and his views towards blacks were supported by whites, who feared an influx of blacks from the city. There have been several notorious episodes involving the NOPD since the 1980s, most recently the conviction of several officers of killing city residents in the aftermath of Katrina.

I haven't been back to New Orleans since 1990, even though it's a short distance away from Atlanta. I do want to see the city, and how it compares to my fond memories of it, but I also know that I'm bound to be disappointed and dismayed at what I'll see there, especially in the sections outside of the Central Business District, the Garden District and Uptown.

>215 lilianboerboom: What is a hot author TIOLI challenge?

TIOLI stands for 'Take It or Leave It', which was created by Madeline (SqueakyChu) in 2010 as a set of monthly challenges in which participants could post literary themes for others to try to match books to. Last year I created the Read a book by a "hot" author for the hot month of July challenge, for books written by male or female authors that participants thought were physically attractive, as a fun summer challenge. We posted pictures of these "hot" authors, and voted on which one was the hottest (Sadie Jones wasn't selected as the winner, so I don't remember who won). We had a lot of fun with it last year, especially posting photos of these authors, and I had intended to do it again this year.

>218 cameling: Some people are professional students, but if they don't use their degrees to help better the lives of others in some way, I don't see the point of all those framed certificates on their wall.

Right. This is more evidence that money and education don't necessarily buy happiness. I worked at the NYU Medical Center for several years after I received my bachelor's degree, in a research lab at the School of Medicine. Most of the people who worked there were unhappy and unsatisfied, and a couple of fellow research biologists I was friendly with decided to attend medical school there. They were busy, but were much happier overall, and this helped convince me to also pursue a medical career.

I'm taking the train into NYC tomorrow morning to have lunch with a friend visiting from London, and before i head back to Boston tomorrow night, I plan to stop over at R&D to bring some of their smoked fish and whitefish salad home.

Evil woman. Rub it in, why don't you? That's okay; I'll be up there in two weeks. I was going to go to San Francisco on June 16, but I remembered that June 17 is Father's Day. So, I'll spend that week with my parents instead. I'll probably make a quick visit to NYC during the week after Father's Day, and come back the following Friday (June 22).

I'm still planning to go to London from June 24 to July 7-8, to attend the London Literature Festival, but I haven't made reservations yet. I'll do that later today or tomorrow.

>219 Whisper1: I thrive around bright, intelligent people. Working in academia I've met so many petty, nasty, mean spirited "intelligent" people that I've learned that degees are sometimes used as a hammer to make others feel less.

I've definitely noticed that tendency in academia, Linda. That's certainly the case among some members of the department of Pediatrics at Emory, which makes for a moderately toxic environment. I'm glad that I'm a "member" of the department, as an adjunct professor, but I'm even more glad that I'm removed from the politics, infighting and back biting there.

>219 Whisper1: Working in academia I've met so many petty, nasty, mean spirited "intelligent" people that I've learned that degees are sometimes used as a hammer to make others feel less.

That is SO true. And is one of the reasons I decided NOT to be a tenure track faculty member. I just don't want to be involved in all those petty politics. I'd rather have a career where I'm intellectualy stimulated AND happy (and have freetime to pursue my own interests and spend time with my family)!

ETA: Ironic that I spelled "intellectually" wrong.

a good relationship with her parents and siblings is important.

A big yes to that! And I also think how her family gets along with each other is important. I would have spared myself a lot of unhappiness if I had been smart enough to realize that a man I dated in my 30s, who had a bad relationship with his family, meant trouble in the long run. And, vis a vis the degree discussion, this man and his mother looked down on his father, who was the smartest and nicest person in the family, because he was an auto parts salesman. Too many warning signals I didn't see back then.

That said, some families are poisonous, and the best thing a person can do is distance himself or herself from them instead of getting trapped in their poison.

When I was in taking the Bar, there was an elderly gentleman in my class who already had a medical degree and an engineering degree. He said he worked after graduating with each degree to make enough money to pay for his next degree. He was a rather annoying individual because he would invariably pepper conversations with us (he was in his 60s and we were mostly in our younger 20s) with comments about how much harder his other degrees had been and that we shouldn't moan about the Bar courses.

London will be electric over the summer as preparations for the Olympics heat up. My cousin who works in the city has already been informed that their company will be closed for 3 weeks so they don't add to the strain on public transportation and the roads.

>222 The_Hibernator: I'd rather have a career where I'm intellectualy stimulated AND happy (and have freetime to pursue my own interests and spend time with my family)!

I completely agree.

>223 rebeccanyc: I also think how her family gets along with each other is important.

Definitely. One woman I dated constantly complained about her parents, and how shabbily they treated her as a child in comparison to her brother. Her folks couldn't have been any nicer to me, and her mother would often invite us to have Sunday dinner with them. I loved going, because I liked them, and because her mother's cooking was even better than my mother's (and she's exceptionally good). Sadly, I think they enjoyed having me come over more than seeing their own daughter.

>224 cameling: That elderly man (not a gentle one) sounds incredibly obnoxious.

London will be electric over the summer as preparations for the Olympics heat up.

Right. I had heard and read about that, too. One thing I'm considering, although it may sound a bit crazy, is to travel from Atlanta to San Francisco on June 25 (since I won't be going there in two weeks), visit my friend from medical school for a few days, travel from there to London in time for the London Literature Festival, which begins on July 3, and then return to Atlanta on July 7-8. However, the thought of a SF to London flight is not an enticing one, as I imagine that would take 11 or 12 hours nonstop.

#214 - I still have to read John Henry Days and The Colossus of New York and then I think I'm a completist (expect for random essays not collected). He's also an amusing Twitterer, if anyone likes to follow authors.

Sigh:

>217 kidzdoc: I lost contact with her a few years after that incident, but she continued trying to get into medical school and wasn't accepted as far as I know. She had other eccentricities too. :) She was intelligent, just not sensible.

ETA: HA! I just Facebook stalked her. She is INDEED in medical school now!

>227 DorsVenabili: I do own John Henry Days (which wasn't in my LT library, so I've just added it) but haven't read it yet. I enjoyed The Colossus of New York, which may be my favorite book of his. I could read John Henry Days, but I'd rather read Zone One or Sag Harbor first.

How about this? What if I make my challenge one that matches the author, rather than the book? I don't think that's been done for multiple authors before.

>228 The_Hibernator: I would assume that your friend stopped mentioning that she intended to become a housewife after she graduated from medical school. Good luck to her!

Dating? Ack! I'm with whoever said somewhere up there that I'd rather meet and get to know someone and then have a relationship grow out of that.

And while I value intelligence, you don't need to have a degree to prove that you have it, and emotional stability & sensitivity are just as important in my book.

>230 markon: I'm with whoever said somewhere up there that I'd rather meet and get to know someone and then have a relationship grow out of that.

That was me, I think.

Emotional stability and sensitivity are absolutely essential to a good and long-term relationship.

Great discussion here as usual. Hot authors listing had certainly got me looking wistfully at some of the author pages. My own vote for hottest would go to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie but that could also be because I love her books so much! - I appreciate beauty but still dream of my wife (honest - and just in case she's looking!)

On education - I don't think a piece of paper maketh the man - my best staff for example has a diploma not a degree. The smartest lady I know is SWMBO and she left school early(ish) to support her family.

Have a great weekend.

I looked through my author picture gallery and pulled a blank. I didn't realize I read so many old men with wild facial hair.

>233 Nickelini: LOL! That sounds like a good idea for a future TIOLI challenge: Read a book by or about someone with unruly head or facial hair. David Foster Wallace, Boris Johnson (the mayor of London), Walt Whitman and Friedrich Nietzsche with his out-of-control mustache come to mind immediately. I'm sure that this group could come up with some better candidates; I suspect that we won't have many takers for Nietzsche or Boris Johnson.

233> I had the same problem, although I did find one hottie on my list: Nadeem Aslam. He seems to be a very private person; there is very little about his private life in any of the online bios, so I don't know if he's straight or gay--but he is pretty gorgeous, in any case. Here is a link to an interesting interview.

#235 - Never heard of him, but I agree with your assessment that he is indeed a hottie. Is he a good writer?

Maps for Lost Lovers was an extraordinary book, beautifully written. The interview tells you something about the intensity of how he writes. I have two others, Season of the Rainbirds and The Wasted Vigil, in my stacks.

>233 Nickelini:: well that made me laugh!
>235 Cariola:: good pick, Deborah

By gum, I am stuck. Can't think of a single one.

#229 - That sounds good.

If I could make a suggestion, although I liked them both, I would definitely read Sag Harbor before Zone One. I really think you'll like it. It's warm, touching, and funny...especially if you grew up in the 80s.

>232 PaulCranswick:Hot authors listing had certainly got me looking wistfully at some of the author pages. My own vote for hottest would go to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie but that could also be because I love her books so much!

She's definitely in my list of favorites, for her beauty and, especially, for the quality of her work.

>235 Cariola:, 236 Nadeem Aslam is one of the more handsome authors I've seen. He's also received critical acclaim, with Maps for Lost Lovers nominated for several literary awards, including the Booker Prize and the IMPAC Dublin International Literary Award, and The Wasted Vigil also receiving the same treatment by IMPAC Dublin two years ago. The latter book is already on my wish list. I'll look at the interview that Deborah posted shortly.

>237 Cariola: I'll have to add Maps for Lost Lovers to my wish list, as well.

>238 tiffin: Tui, you can't think of a hot author, or one with unruly facial hair (or both)?

>239 DorsVenabili: Thanks for that suggestion, Kerri. I'll plan to read Sag Harbor next month. I probably won't get to both books, though.

I'll definitely create another "hot author" TIOLI challenge for July, and create a separate thread for it, so that TIOLIers and non-TIOLIers can participate.

I'll just say hi. The whole topic of relationships and dating...

Well I tried to write my opinion about it, but it's all just too bleak.

*sticks head back into the sand*

I finally finished Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, the Pulitzer-Prize winning biography by Manning Marable that was published less than one week after his death from complications of sarcoidosis. It was a dense book that seemed to be twice as long as its 600+ pages, but it was a very readable book, which will likely stand as the definitive biography of the former black nationalist leader. It's a great companion to and, in some ways, a rebuttal of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and it is a valuable addition to American history. I gave it 4.8 stars, and I'll review it later this week.

I'll start reading Bring Up the Bodies shortly, but I'll start one of my LT Early Reviewer books, The Patient Survival Guide: 8 Simple Solutions to Prevent Hospital- and Healthcare-Associated Infections by Dr. Maryanne McGuckin, first.

>241 Smiler69: Uh oh. I sense a lengthy diatribe about dating is forthcoming from Ilana, once she reemerges.

No. No no. I'll save it for my therapist. You really don't want to hear what I have to say about dating and relationships.

I'm too young to consider I may never experience a real, rewarding and healthy relationship with a life partner, but I've just given up hope. It's much better this way. Clinical depression is no place from which to be considering embarking on a meaningful relationship. But yes, oh boy, I'll certainly have my memories... though I'd willingly get rid of them if I could.

*sticking head back into hole in the ground*

>244 Smiler69: I'm reasonably young too, but I CAN say: The bigger your mistakes the more you learn. Embrace knowlege and use it to create happiness. :)

>244 Smiler69: Dear Ilana, I hope that, when you are in a better state, you are able to establish a meaningful and fulfilling relationship in the future. You deserve it.

>245 The_Hibernator: The bigger your mistakes the more you learn.

Definitely.

Friday, June 8th is my sixth Thingaversary. I'm told that I'm allowed to purchase one book for each year, or six in all (or is it that each of you has to purchase six books for me?). So, I've come up with a list of six books that are at the top of my wish list:

1. The Dream of the Celt by Mario Vargas Llosa: My favorite living author's latest novel, which will be released in the US in English translation on Tuesday.
2. Absolution by Patrick Flannery: This novel has been widely praised and touted as a good candidate for next month's Booker Prize longlist.
3. God's Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine by Victoria Sweet: A recently published book about Laguna Honda Hospital, a long term care and rehabilitation facility owned and managed by the city of San Francisco, which was one of the last almshouses in the US, until a reorganization brought greater fiscal stability but led to fragmentation and disruption of patient care.
4. The Tree of Man by Patrick White: I want to read a second book for the Patrick White 100th Anniversary Challenge group this year, and I'll read this along with The Vivisector, which I already own.
5. Head Off & Split by Nikky Finney: Last year's winner of the National Book Award for Poetry.
6. Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith: This year's winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

I'm having second thoughts about going to London later this month, due to concerns about how crowded the city will be. I'm still leaning towards going, but I may choose to go to San Francisco for those two weeks instead. If so, I'll wait until then to get most of these books, particularly the poetry books and God's Hotel.

>246 kidzdoc: Looking forward to your thoughts on Absolution.

So I have to put off reading Kapka Kassabova's Reconnaisance till next month so I can add her to the 'hot authors' list. I think Philip Ardagh would win every time for one with unruly facial hair.

Thanks Daryl. Goodness knows I've made some monumental, soul-destroying mistakes in my life, which is probably why I need these years away from the regular flow of life to take in all those monumental lessons I still need to assimilate from all that. Between this discussion and the one that's been going on on my blog tonight, about the relative merits of making art for those of us who can't aspire to be remembered for our endeavours... makes for a melancholy night. But Sunday nights usually are anyway.

Wouldn't it be great if Thingaversary meant everyone gave the celebrant x number of books? Nuts! But now you have a good excuse for splurging on books!

You couldn't PAY me to go to London this summer, with the swarming crowds everywhere. But then, I'm a bit phobic about crowds. I'll be interested to see what you chose in the end as a vacation spot. Whichever way you go, I wish you a great time.

>247 1morechapter: Will do, Michelle. Several people that contribute to the Booker Prize speculation thread have spoken highly of it, and at least two 75ers have also liked it. I'll read it this year, definitely sooner if it's selected for the Booker longlist.

>248 avatiakh: Kapka Kassabova is quite attractive. I'm unfamiliar with her, though.

I have several good options for hot authors for July. I might end up choosing Iranian author Dalia Sofer, the author of The Septembers of Shiraz, as she would qualify for Orange July (longlisted in 2008) and the upcoming Reading Globally third quarter theme on Middle Eastern literature, along with the "hot author" challenge.



Other possibilities off the top of my head are Leah Hager Cohen, for The Grief of Others and Eleanor Catton, for The Rehearsal; these books were longlisted for the Orange Prize in 2012 and 2011, respectively.

>249 Smiler69: I've made one major mistake due to a failed relationship, as I've probably mentioned in the past. Fortunately I was able to dust myself off, resume my college studies, and find the success that I would have had if I hadn't gotten all googly-eyed over that girl.

I'll have to look at your blog, but not tonight; it's after 11:30 pm, and I have to work tomorrow.

Caroline made me think twice about going to London this summer. I'll definitely go in September or October, and I had originally intended to spend my two week break (June 25-July 8) in San Francisco, but the lineup of the upcoming London Literature Festival was very enticing. I would have a more relaxing time in San Francisco, and the weather will almost certainly be much cooler and less humid there than in London. I've been to SF so often in the past (2-4 times per year since 2001) that I know where to go to avoid the hordes of tourists that will certainly be there this summer; I can't say the same about London, although I've been there four times since 2007. I would also like spend time with a good friend of mine from medical school, who lives near San José; last year was the first year I hadn't seen her in nearly 15 years. Hmm...I think I'm progressively talking myself out of going to London until the fall. I'll make up my mind in the next couple of days.

Time for a new thread again...