Kristel's 1001 list

New for 2014:
Chronological order for 2014 was at 282, previous list http://www.shelfari.com/groups/11271/discussions/80654/Kristels-List-All-3-%28no...

283. Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys, ★★★, 1/1/14
284. Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau, ★★★, 1/10/14
285. All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy ★★★★, 1/12/14
286. The Daughter by Pavlos Matesis ★★★, 1/21/14
287. The Beggar Maid by Alice Munro ★★★★, 2/5/14
288. By the Open Sea by August Strindberg ★★★★, 2/8/14
289 Alamut by Vlaimir Bartol ★★★★★, 2/14/14
290. Max Havelaar by Multatuli ★★★★, 2/21/14
291. Ignorance - Milan Kundera ★★★☆, 2/22/14
292. Timbuktu by Paul Auster ★★★, 2/22/14
293. Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor ★ ★ ★ ☆ 3/8/14
294. The Country Girls by Edna O'Brien ★ ★ ★ ☆ 3/9/14
295. The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch ★★★★☆ 4/1/14
296. The Year of the Hare by Arto Paasilinna ★★ ★ ★ 4/5/14
297. The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek ★★★ 4/9/14
298. Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens ★★★★ 4/19/14
299. Eugene Onegin by Aleksandr Pushkin ★★★★, 4/30/14
300. Snow by Orhan Pamuk ★★★ 5/15/14
301. The Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers ★★★★, 5/22/14
302. Grimus by Salmon Rushdie ★★★ 5/26/14
303. The Shipyard by Juan Carlos Onetti, ★★★ 5/31/14
304. The Safety Net by Heinrich Boll 5/10/14 ★★★★
305. The Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel García Márquez 6/16/14
306. The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy 6/17/14 ★★★★
307. Cain by José Saramago 6/18/14 ★★★
308. The Lion of Flanders - Hendrik Conscience 6/22/14, ★★★★
309. American Pastoral - Philip Roth 7/5/14 ★★★★
310. To Each His Own - Leonardo Sciascia 7/7/14 ★★★☆
311. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett 7/9/14 ★★★☆
312. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute 7/17/14 ★★★★
313. The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields 7/26/14, ★★★★★
314. Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs, 7/27/14 ★★★
315. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, 8/2/14, ★★★★
316. Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 8/23/14 ★★★★★
317. The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman by Szczypiorski completed 9/6/14 ★★★★★
318. Waterland by Graham Swift completed 9/19/14, ★★★★
319. Remembrance of Time Past by Marcel Proust, completed 9/27/14, ★★★
320. Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset, ★★★★★
321. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
322. Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
323. The Birds by Tarjei Vesaas
324. Memoirs of a Peasant Boy by Xosé Neira Vilas
325. Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig
326. Late-Night News by Petros Markaris
327. Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan
328. Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day by Winifred Watson 11/4/14, ★★★★
329. The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy, completed 11/15/14, ★★★★
330. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, completed 11/20/14, ★★★☆
331. The Graduate by Charles Webb, completed 11/24/14, ★★☆
332. The Summer Book by Tove Jansson, 11/29/14, ★★★★☆
333. Elizabeth Costello by J. M. Coetzee, 12/6/14. ★★★★
334. Chocky by John Wyndham, 12/9/14, ★★★☆
335. The Passion by Jeanette Winterson, 12/16/14, ★★★★
336. Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion, 12/18/14, ★★★☆
337. Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote, 12/19/14, ★★★★
338. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, 12/24/14, ★★★★
339. Dead Babies by Martin Amis, 12/24/14, ★★★☆

Arcadia by Jim Crace
published 1992
3.5 stars

This work of fiction by the contemporary English Author, Jim Crace is definitely different. It is set in an unnamed place and is told by an unnamed journalist who tells the story of an aging millionaire’s quest to build a commercial center that will embrace the pastoral idyll. The beginning introduces us to Victor the millionaire and his able assistant Rook. The middle section is the story of Victor’s youth and the last part is the actual story of Victor’s vision and the building of the commercial center known as Arcadia. Arcadia means pastoral. Victor has a distorted vision of the country. He only knows the stories his mother told him as she forced him to nurse as a means to beg. Victor to wants to destroy the greengrocers outdoor market and create a modern structure that will emulate the country. This book is set in modern times but reading parts felt so old fashion. It is too abstract. With words and pictures created by words, the story felt like it was set in a simpler time but no, it is not, it is set in at least the late eighties. You really feel a little adrift without an anchor when you read this book.

Here are some quotes from the book;
"As he had scaled and silvered with old age so his taste for fish had grown."
“Migrated from the world of plants and seasons to the urban universe of make-and-take-and-sell.”
“Revenge is next to lust.”
“My allegiance is to what you want. The tallest building throw the longest shadows. Thus great men make their mark.”
And remember this book was published in 1992, “It can survive the full impact of an intercontinental airliner.” ….” wow, I really had to pause when I read that line.

This is not Crace’s best work but I suspect it was chosen for 1001 for its peculiarities. The characters are not people you feel attached to, in fact they are all pretty wanting.
Victor is socially inept man who lived on mother’s milk till he was six. Rook is a crook, aptly named after the bird. Some have said that the characters really are the communities. This could be any town, any place. It just feels so ambiguous. Arcadia is defined as poetic fantasy, represents pastoral paradise. Home of Pan. Crace's theme, according to Publisher’s Weekly, is the way cities corrupt men. And this by Library Journal; “More an extended prose poem than a novel, Arcadia reworks traditional pastoral imagery to subvert the dichotomy of town and country. Although countless passages of lush description beg to be read aloud, the overall effect of Crace's aggressive lyricism is somewhat numbing.” I included these last two reviews by others because they said better what I was trying to say.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Published 1969
3 stars
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the first of six volumes that make up the autobiography of Maya Angelou also known as Marguerite Ann Johnson. This is the years of three to sixteen and the birth of Marguerite’s first child. This autobiography gave me the closest picture of what it was like to grow up black and female in Arkansas during the thirties. Maya and her brother Bailey were very close. They were sent to live with the grandmother when they were three and four. Maya wondered what they had done wrong to be so rejected by their parents. Arkansas gave Maya her moral center and taught her to be wary of whites. In California she was able to find her strength as a African American woman. Ms Angelou’s love of literature was universal (not black or white) but something we as readers can relate. I believe that this book was included in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die because it was the autobiography of a Black woman. I also think the format of six volumes for an autobiography also makes it unique. It was enjoyable and fast to read but felt it was only a three star book .

Huh. I thought Boxall's list was limited to novels. Are there any other non fiction books of the list do you know?

Great reviews.

#4- There are multiple memoirs on the list- memoirs being in the fuzzy area between non-fiction and fiction, I find. Wild Swans is another that immediately comes to mind, but I think there are others?

In Cold Blood is another non-fiction that springs to my mind.

Before Night Falls and (I think) Cider with Rosie are also memoirs.

The Swarm by Frank Schätzing
3 stars
This science fiction eco-thriller was just barely a three star read for me. There are some interesting sections. The premise is of nature ,tired of humans destructiveness, goes on the attack was good and it was informative on how the ocean functions and the importance of the ocean to life on earth in general. The book takes place all over the world, wherever there are oceans. Characters were mostly scientists, military or political. Countries featured included Norway and Canada. The United States contributed the military and political characters and not in any favorable light. The presidential character was a caricature of Bush. This German author did not paint a nice picture of the U.S. The main story was interesting, there are many protagonists and minor characters that come and go (mostly die) and there was whole sections of just words, words, words. The translation was full of edit errors. The author brought in Samantha Crowe from SETI (Jodi Foster character in Contact). The book reads as if it was written for the screen and reportedly there is a film in the works.

I thought Boxall's list was limited to novels. Are there any other non fiction books of the list do you know?

Once upon a time we were keeping track of the non-fiction books here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/26925

The thread was last updated in 2008.

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
published 2011
3 Stars

The book is about Tony Webster who is a divorced, father of one adult daughter and one grandchild who having sought to live in peace is now seeking to make sense of his life. The title The Sense of An Ending is borrowed from Frank Kermode’s book, published in 1967 subtitled Studies in the Theory of Fiction, the stated aim of which is "making sense of the ways we try to make sense of our lives". The book is two parts, in part 1, Tony is reflecting back to 1960s and his four school friends and then they are divided as they head off to college. Tony has his first serious girlfriend, Veronica but things don’t go so well, they break up and that is the end. Later his best friend, dates Veronica. Tony marries Margaret, they have Susie and later divorce. Tony is now retired, divorced and a grandfather. The second part, Tony receives a sum of money in the estate of Mrs Ford. Mrs Ford was Veronica’s mother, this triggers Tony to begin to think about the past. He remembers things he hadn’t remembered for years and there is much he doesn’t know. In fact, Tony “just doesn’t get it”. The short little book is about life, death, aging and it is also how little things that don’t seem so large at the time can have big consequences. The book is also about memory and time. The book won the 2011 Man Booker. The two parts, both narrated by Tony with the first part, the imperfect memory of events as Tony has chosen to remember them and then Part 2 where Tony begins to see what he has chosen to not remember and how badly he has acted. This structure lends originality to the story. There are only Veronica and Tony in which there is much character development and mostly Tony. The other characters are only known as they have interlaced with Tony. None of the characters are particularly likeable. I did not like Veronica. Tony was okay and until he got to know him better. I liked his friend Adrian but we only know a little about him. Reviews have mentioned that this brief story uses languages with impact. There is tension and mystery. The reader is not sure why Veronica behaves in such an angry manner. I like reading books about aging and the aged. I compared this at times to Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout but don’t ask me how or why but maybe its just the inner narrative of older people. Its pretty philosophical and reading it again would be worthwhile. I wasn’t able to read it in one setting but it is a book that is made to be read from start to finish.

Rabbit is Rich by John Updike
Published 1981
★★★

The third novel in the Rabbit Angstrum series, Harry is middle aged, his son is away at college and he and Janice live with Janice’s mother. Harry is running Springer Motors and believes he is owner but really, he works for his mother-in-law and his wife. Harry has become obsessed with money. His son can’t make a decision and appears to be irresponsible (a lot like Harry) and he is also obsessed with the daughter he had with Ruth.
Rabbit is Rich was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction in 1982 and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 1981. Of the three that I have read so far, I liked this the least and I like Harry the least in this book. There is way too much sex talk and thoughts on Harry’s part and the words used are offensive. What Updike does so well is capture time. In this book, the reader revisits the first oil shortage, Carter administration, eighties inflation. It just wasn’t a very interesting time as the previous book but still a walk down memory lane. Harry does redeem himself with the last sentences of the book when he is holding his granddaughter.

The Magus by John Fowles
published 1966

The Magus was the first book John Fowles started writing but not the first he published. It is the story of Nicholas Urfe, a middle-class Englishman, single, self absorbed playboy set in post war period. Nicholas decides to go to Greece to take a teaching position in an all boys school where he becomes in an ordeal that is a nightmare and where the nature of reality is
questioned. There are many questions raised and reader be warned, left unanswered. The themes touch on freedom, power, knowledge and love. The novel is filled with tension that keeps you reading. A good knowledge of Greek mythology and Shakespeare’s Tempest and Othello and Jungian psychology will go a long way to adding to the enjoyment of this book.

Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
Published 1944
3 stars

Ficciones by Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges is really a work of a master. The work is a series of short stories by this incredibly intelligent author. These short stories have some common themes including libraries, books, philosophy, God reality and unreality. Borges was gradually growing blind and he also served as a librarian. The author was educated in Europe and while he is Argentinian his stories have various settings and various nationalities. He is truly a international author. The various stories that comprise Ficciones sometimes read as essays, are mixed with many non fictional characters and elements and require careful, slow reading and probably should be read many times to really appreciate the authors genius. I enjoyed some of these stories, some were difficult to read. I gave it 3 stars because I do think the author is great and that these stories represent a mastery and a forerunner of magical realism but it was also hard to read. I especially enjoyed Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius though it was struggle to read. I also enjoyed Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote, The Circular Ruins, The Babylon Lottery, Funes, the Memorious, Death and the Compass and Three Versions of Judas. Wikipedia provides a synopsis of each story and I found this very helpful.

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Original title Le Petit Prince
Translation by Richard Howard
IllustratorAntoine de Saint-Exupéry
rated: 5 stars

This book published in the United States in 1943 and France in 1944, by the French aristocrat, writer, poet and aviator while exiled in the United States after the fall of France. The story is a tale of loneliness, friendship, love and loss. The little prince has fallen to the Earth. He finds a downed pilot stranded in the desert without much water. A situation that had actually occurred in the author’s life. The story is set in the Sahara. The story addresses one’s life and how you choose to spend it. A key message is delivered by the fox. “you become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed” and “It is the time you have devoted to your rose that makes your rose so important.”

It took me a long time to finally get to this novella, children’s story with an adult message and social commentary but it was worth the read and I enjoyed learning about the history as much as reading the book. A delightful story of about staying connected to our inner child

Humboldt’s Gift by Saul Bellow
Published 1975, Pulitzer Prize 1976.

The novel tells the story of Charlie Citrine, a successful writer, who is reflecting on his own talents and life after his friend, Humbolt’s death. Citrine is involved with a young mistress who is leading him around by sexual promises, a wanta be gangster, the IRS and his exwife and her lawyers. Even his mistress abandons him. Charlie is alienated in Madrid when he discovered that Humboldt has left a gift. Saul Bellow is really writing about his friend, the poet Delmore Schwartz and the influence Schwartz had in his own life. Bellow writes about America and he especially likes to write about Chicago which he thought better represented America that New York City. This story is about a man of feeling and a deep thinker. Charlie is honorable and not greedy but there is greed all around him and it is destroying him Other themes are sex, capitalism, meaningless intellectualization, feminism and death. Bellow wanted to show the sense of crisis and despair and writes with great prose style and satire.

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, narrated by Simon Vance 13 hours and 39 mins
5 stars for the story and 5 stars for the narration

A story of the France before and during the French Revolution by Charles Dickens published in 1859 is my favorite Dickens right now. The two cities are London and Paris. The French peasantry had been abused by the aristocracy and revolution broke and the lives of aristocrats was in danger of the guillotine. The story follows several protagonist as is the usual with Dickens. Charles Darnay, a former French aristocrat who gave it up because he detested the way the aristocrats were behaving. He goes to London. Upon return to France because of a letter requesting his help. Charles is taken prisoner by the revolution and sentenced to die. Charles is married to Lucy Manette and has a young daughter. Syndey Carton is a dissipated English barrister who endeavours to redeem his ill-spent life out of his unrequited love for Darnay's wife. This book is a story of love and redemption. The DeFarges operate a wine shop and are revolutionaries. Madame DeFarge is constantly knitting but is very deadly character.
This was a audio/whispernet kindle book. The narrator did a superb job.

#251. Perfume by Patrick Süskind, translated from German by John E. Woods
Originally published as Das Pafum in 1985.

4 stars to 4. 5 because it is a book I will remember and therefore I will end up mentioning it and therefore others might read it.

This book was odd, really odd. I struggled with it because it was odd. The protagonist, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is not likeable. His mother planed to leave him in a pile of fish offal to die but he survived. She was beheaded, thus his name Jean-Baptiste, is a reminder of his mother and his last name means frog. But the oddest thing about Grenouille is he has no odor. He has no scent at all. Grenouille was born July 17, 1738 in Paris, France. While Grenouille has no odor he has an extraordinary sense of smell. The story follows Grenouille over the next thirty some years as he is rejected by the wet nurse, the monk, placed in an orphanage, indentured to a tanner and finally he manages to get into the perfume business where he is able to learn how to put his sense of smell to his advantage. During this early time, he discovers a scent that he “has to have”, the smell of a young virgin on the brink of womanhood. The next span of time, Grenouille takes himself into the wilderness where he spends seven years to avoid smelling any human smell. This section is very strange, there is a part that reads like Genesis and it reads as if Grenouille is a god, a creator. From here, Grenouille goes to Grasse (he has his papers as a journeyman perfumer) and he finds a business to attach himself where he learns more methods used in creating perfumes. He also finds a new virgin and again wants to capture that scent. Jean-Baptiste has also discovered he has no scent and therefore no identity so he begins working on creating scents for himself. He finds different ones that work for various occasions. He also decides to create a scent that will make mankind love him. Well that is enough, if this intrigues you, you will need to read the book. The ending is, well, it is a bit of surprise. One thing that also occurs, everywhere that Grenouille goes, death follows. The mother dies, the orphan mistress dies, the perfumer in France dies. The deaths are natural deaths but all odd deaths or deaths they feared the most.

************This section may contain spoilers not otherwise available in most areas**********

For originality this story takes 5 stars. I felt like there is so much there the author is trying to say through this story but what I feel is that it follows the life of Jesus only in reverse. Grenouille is introduced by his mother who is beheaded. He spends time in the wilderness but instead of resisting temptation, he goes with the grandiose. At this point he heads into his ministry. Instead of healing he brings death even though at first he often brings lots of money to those he joins. Instead of being rejected as he is taken to die (very similar to Jesus by the way) all people feel total love for him and want him.

Character development; yes Grenouille’s character is developed and through him we know some of the other characters but it really is a march through several characters lives.

The language of perfume and the business is very interesting. The writing is poetic at times.

Emotional impact. Because this is a bit of a horror in so many ways, there is not a feeling of pleasure nor is it a nice picture of people. It is also a mystery and the ending is truly unpredictable at least I think so. I think it is going to be hard to quit thinking about this story.

This book made me think about the killings by people who are bullied in school, shunned by society and have gone out and killed. The protagonist is not treated badly in general but he also is not especially noted. He is just easy to overlook. He has no scent, he has no identity. People pay no attention. He has no attachment to people. He hates how they smell. The only thing he loves is smell. The protagonist is a murderer but as in so many cases, he takes his reason with him and no one will ever know why.

Odd story, just odd.

252. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, translated by Mirra Ginsburg.
originally published in two issues of Moskva in late 1966 and early 1967, copyright 1967 by The Estate of Mikhail Bulgakov. 1937 but not published until 1967.
4 stars

The novel is a story with one storyline set in Jerusalem and the other in Moscow. The devil visits Moscow, a country that is identifying itself as atheistic. The setting is the 1930s, Professor Woland visits Moscow with his retinue of the ex choirmaster Koroviev, Behemoth the cat (a kind of Puss in Boots) and a reference to a Biblical monster, Russian word for Hippopotamus and the fanged Azazello. There is also Abadonna (death) and Hella (witch and vampire). The visit is to the literary elite of the trade union MASSOLIT. Not a real trade union but may stand for the Moscow Association of Writers. The second setting is Jerusalem and the characters are Pontius Pilate, Yeshua Ha-Notsri, Matthu Levi and Yehudah (Judas). The first book sets up the Variety Show that has women running the streets in their underwear and money turning into worthless labels. The second book really introduces Margarita, the mistress of the Master. She is invited to the Devil’s midnight Ball where she will be Queen to Satan. She enjoys her supernatural powers, learning to fly and control her passions and to obtain some satisfaction by destroying the home of a literary bureaucrat that has ruined the Master’s life. This ball coincides with Good Friday and the spring full moon. It is very interesting to look up The Spring Festival Ball at Spaso House and the Master and Margarita. This was a historical event that the author attended. There was decorations that created a forest of birch trees in the chandelier room, dining room covered with tulips and lawn covered with chicory grown on felt. There were pheasants, parakeets and zebra finches from the Moscow Zoo. The festival lasted until early hours of morning.

Margarite and the Master then die but are brought back to spend time in peace but denied light. They will spend eternity in the shadow region. This is a section of the book with many great quotes;

“what would your good be doing if there were no evil, and what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it?...”

“But, then, those who love must share the fate of those they love.”

“Everything will turn out right. That’s what the world is built on.”

There are several characters in this book, there are characters of Moscow and the theater, there are the characters of Jerusalem and the characters of Satan. The novel deals with good and evil. courage and cowardice and innocence and guilt. This is also a romance, a love story of the Master and Margarita. There are; light and darkness, noise and silence, sun and moon, and storms. Music and literature strongly influence the book. Characters are named after musicians, there are references to Goethe’s Faust and opera, Nikolai Gogol, and Dostoyevsky and even a reference to Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. There are strong elements of magical realism.

I felt this was a very original work. Some have considered it one of the best novels of the 20th century. The characters were very interesting, the writing was good. The characters were odd and the names being long Russian names added some difficulty but the author was able to make these characters interesting and to the point you actually engaged positively with Satan’s retinue. It is not a hard read as some Russian writing can be perceived. I felt that the translated I read was good though I have heard there is a better one. I just happened to own this one so it is what I read and I didn’t find it lacking.
posted 13 days ago. ( edit | reply | permalink | delete )

253. Villette by Charlotte Brontë
Published 1853, pages 608
4 stars

Villette is the semi autobiographical story of Lucy Snowe, a young woman of 23 who travels to Villette, a fictional town but modeled after Brussels, Belgium, where the author and her sister did travel for teaching positions. Ms Snowe does not know French, travels alone and is fortunate to find a position as a teacher in a boarding school because she speaks English. While traveling she befriends a young, shallow woman by the name of Ginevra Fanshawe, reunites with her Godmother and her son and becomes friends with M. Paul Carlos David Emanuel. She also runs into a former acquaintance named Polly, a serious young woman of high virtue. This is a Gothic romance and there are spectres of a nun and love that is met with adversity. Themes include the clash of protestantism and catholicism and gender roles and isolation.
This is the author's third novel, the first being Jane Eyre. The first is probably a better story in scope but this novel is enjoyable, the protagonist has many admirable characteristics and the men in the book are generally of good qualities. This novel was criticized at the time for not being suitably feminine in portraying Lucy Snowe, therefore I think the author was successful in getting her social commentary on the life of single women in Victorian England heard.

#254 The Temptation of Saint Anthony by Gustave Flaubert
Published 1874
Pages 236
★★★★

Saint Anthony or Anthony the Great was a Christian saint from Egypt. Flaubert desired to write an epic of spiritual torment that might equal Goethe’s Faust (German literature). The author spent a large portion of his life writing this story that is written in the form of play script. The work’s form influenced the development of modernist play-texts, notable the “Circe” section of Joyce’s Ulysses. The novel might also be called a prose poem. The work is a fictionalized story of the inner life of Saint Anthony a fourth century Christian. The anchorite undergoes temptations; frailty, the seven deadly sins, Heresiarchs, the martyrs, the magicians, the gods, science, food, lust and death, monsters and metamorphosis. I especially enjoyed the sections that included dialogue with Hilarion (satan and also science). There is a cast of biblical characters including Queen of Sheba and King Nebuchadnezzar. The section on Chimera and the Sphinx and all the monsters were the most confusing to me. I did not get the purpose of that section though did like the ladies, lust and death. My favorite was the exploration of the heresies. Vampires are even mentioned in this work. I had many sections I highlighted and here is one example, a quote from Hilarion--”My kingdom is as wide as the universe, and my desire has no limits. I am always going about enfranchising the mind and weighing the worlds, without hate, without fear, without love, and without God. I am called Science.” This was an interesting read, I gave it 4 stars. It would appeal to anyone interested in religion, hallucinations of the flesh or modernist poetics.

The Book of Evidence by John Banville

3.5 stars

published 1989

Narrated by Freddie Montgomery who is awaiting trial from jail for the murder he committed while stealing a painting from the home of family friend.

The first half of the book is a weaving of Freddie’s memories and current thoughts. We learn that Freddie is from Ireland but has been living in the California and on a island in the Mediterranean with his wife and son. Freddie gets into some trouble with gangster, owes money and is forced to go home to get the money. At home, Freddie finds his mother to be quite poor. She says she was forced to sell the paintings because Freddie has been living off his father’s money. This angers Freddie who feels his mother has squandered his inheritance. Freddie visits the neighbor, goes back to steal a painting and is caught by a young maid which he forces to go with him and later kills. The second half of the book tells of his arrest and his interaction with the legal authorities.

I decided to read this rather short book because of the controversy in the 1001 Books You Must Read Group. It was a 5 star book for one and 2 stars from the guys. First, I knew that the murder description was graphic and it was so (I skimmed quickly over) and that there was description of vomit and there is some sexual stuff too. The narrator is totally unreliable and self focused thus narcissistic is a good description as well as antisocial and has also been referred to as amoral. In his narrative, at times it would appear that Freddie is trying to blame everyone and everything for what has happened. I agree with John, there is no remorse. The last line, is remorse that he has not been respected more and admired more for what has happened and he has taken on the idea that he can give life back to this girl nor do we the reader ever know what is truth. Freddie’s reality is so distorted. The story was based on the 1982 incident of Edward MacArthur, who killed a young nurse in Dublin during the course of stealing her car. The phrase grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented (GUBU) was paraphrased from a comment by then Taoiseach (prime minister) of Ireland, Charles Haughey, while describing a strange series of incidents in the summer of 1982 that led to a double-murderer being apprehended in the house of the Irish Attorney General. Edward MacArthur was staying with the attorney general and later resigned after MacArthur was arrested. Banville was attempting to give his prose more characteristics of poetry. The book won Ireland's Guinness Peat Aviation Award in 1989 and was short-listed for Britain's Booker Prize. There is a sequel to this book called Ghosts in which many of the characters reappear. I liked The Sea better.

#258 Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, kindle edition and audio narration by Simon Vance
Publication date: 1719
****
A fictional autobiography of Robinson Kreutznaer, or Crusoe as he is better known, tells the story of a young man who wouldn't listen to his father and left home for the life of adventure. He was forewarned by his father and others that he should not go to sea or it would be his peril. Robinson doesn't listen and ends up a castaway on a remote island near Trinidad. The first part is Robinson's efforts to create his castle. The second part involves fear of others, cannibals and gathering of slaves and subjects. I enjoyed the first part of the book, the mastery of survival on an island where he finds himself completely alone. Crusoe starts out feeling sorry that he didn't listen to his father, then he begins to see God's providence in his survival and the mastery of the environment lead Crusoe to have a better attitude. The second part of the novel, where Crusoe begins to be fearful of cannibals deprives him of the peaceful life he had created. He has thoughts of killing the others and then of capturing others to be his slave. In the second part there is fear and there is the unfair mastery over other people. It certainly is a look at the imperialism and colonization by the British. There is a strong theme of repentence. The moral is that it is not enough to give God credit for the miracles or even to pray but Crusoe must repent of his wretched state and acknowledge his dependence on God.
Some thoughts of the book include the exactness of measuring and counting. The focus on eating or being eaten. When Crusoe finds the footprint he immediately becomes negative again. He is fearful and no longer trusts God. One could make a point of racism in this book written in 1719 but also I think it reflects the time and I think books should be judged by when they were written not by our superiority in the present. In fact I think this superiority that is often taken on isn't much better than racism of the past. It's still a value judgment. I actually think Defoe might have been making a political statement against imperialism, colonization and unfair treatment of others.
I enjoyed this adventure tale but liked the first part better than the second. I listened to an audio read by Simon Vance who did a good job of narration. The strong Christian theme reflected Defoe's Puritan beliefs.

#259. The Heretic a Novel of the Inquisition by Miguel Delibes
Translated by Alfred MacAdam
Published by the author 1998. Translated 2006.

5 stars

The story is of Cipriano Salcedo, citizen of Valladolid, Spain set in the 1500s. In fact, Cipriano Salcedo was born on October 31, 1517, the day Luther posted his Ninety-Five Theses. There is a brief introduction to Luther and Calvin and the Council of Trent. Cipriano’s mother died shortly after childbirth and his father never approached the son with anything but disdain. Cipriano was raised in the Catholic faith but along the way, without his fully realizing, he becomes a believer in the doctrine of beneficence. His desire for fraternity leads him to trust that others will stay true to their oaths. The author dedicated this book to his hometown of Valladolid in which he creates the landscape, the man and the passion. Cipriano is a merchant and the story of man’s freedom to think and the intolerance of mankind. The story does immerse you in the sixteenth century. I recommend this to anyone interested in the inquisition, the reformation or the 16th century.

Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis, translated by Carl Wildman
3 stars

Published 1952 and in Greece in 1946

What I really experienced in reading this book was great desire to be in Crete instead of Minnesota.

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
First published 1902
Pages 243
5 stars
Holmes is a rational detective who solves crime by using his reasoning. Dr. Watson is a man of science as well though not as astute as Holmes. These stories reflect the advance of science. The myth of the hound and supernatural speculations reflects the interest in spiritualism that also occurred during this time. The story is enjoyable and often considered to be the author’s best work. I give it 5 stars because it was a good read, interesting story and contributed to future detective novels as well as many movies and TV shows.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
5 stars

The story begins, “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley…..” and ends, “And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea.” This book has been on my TBR list for quite some time but always seemed to get pushed aside until this month and year. The story is a pretty good mystery and nothing more will be said that could give away any of the plot twists. The author has written many novels but this is her most famous. It was met with a lot of controversy and there have been charges of plagiarism. Many of her works have been made into movies. I did not like the characters in this book. I did not like the narrator. She seemed so pathetically weak and introverted. She does grow stronger as the story progresses. I did not especially like Maxim de Winter either for various reasons. I found it a little slow going initially. The second part of the book moves better. The ending is satisfying. I rate the book 5 stars because it is a good mystery, interesting twists and it has stood the test of time and controversy.

The Round House
published 2012
Pages 336pp.
Format: ☊ read by Gary Farmer

5 stars

Winner, 2012 National Book Award
Minnesota Book Award for Novel & Short Story 2013

Louise Erdrich is a Minnesota born and currently living in Minneapolis author. She has some Native American blood.

While some of the themes in this book are not new, the setting and the culture and the spiritual life of the Ojibway make this book standout. The characters are all well developed and the voice in my opinion is very Native American. I listened to an audio format read by Gary Farmer who also gave a wonderful rendition of Native American voice. I did have to increase the speed to 1 1/4 because he was a little too slow. It was perfect at the faster speed. The subject matter, a rape of a mother, gives this book emotional impact along with the PTSD that she experienced as well as the look into the life of the older generation and various other members of the tribe including the one white girl who was adopted by a Native American family. The ending is not to be given away but also hits with force.

Title: Cryptonomicon
Author: Neal Stephenson
Publication: 1999
Pages: 1130 pages, appendix 9 pgs
Genre: fiction, techno thriller, science fiction, historical fiction
My Copy: kindle and paperback edition
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

A story set in alternating time periods of WWII and the nineties during the internet boom. It is a story of cryptography and high tech finance with a scoop of military adventure, conspiracies and great escapes. The back of my book states imagine Tom Clancy, William Gibson and James Michener working together and you get the idea.

Book: A Visit From the Goon Squad
Author: Jennifer Egan
Published: 2010
Pages: 274
Genre: fiction, Punk Rock Music, Psychological Fiction
My copy: Library book
My rating: 5 ★★★★★
A series of interconnected stories of a wide cast of characters who all have some kind of connection to each other, covering five decades with the backdrop of the music industry and covering locales such as New York, San Francisco, Africa and Naples. I loved this book because it is about time. I like stories about time. The title, A Visit From the Goon Squad, is a reference to time. Time is a goon and it beats you up. This is a work of originality. Not that interconnected stories have never been done but all the elements of this story; the interconnects, time as a theme, shifts in communications, use of texting and slide shows all come together to make this a unique work deserving of a Pulitzer Prize. There are many characters but they are all connected on some level, they don't even know how connected they are or how much they have impacted each other. I liked many of them and the way Egan developed them was very different and fun. The language was fresh and changed over time and with various characters and finally progressing to texting and to power point. There was a lot of emotional impact for me. The passing of time is emotional, the hurts, the tragedies and the victories.
I liked these quotes; Ms Egan uses a passage from Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time to introduce the book "Poets claim that we recapture for a moment the self that we were long ago when we enter some house or garden in which we used to live in our youth. But these are most hazardous pilgrimages, which end as often in disappointment as in success. It is in ourselvs that we should rather seek to find those fixed places, contemporaneous with different years." and "The unknown element in the lives of other people is like that of nature, which each fresh scientific discovery merely reduces but does not abolish."
Pg 174, "...she'd felt the passage of time." The slide show of Pauses (wonderful), pg 269, "times a goon", and page 259 gives a most wonderful (probabably exaggerated for effect) description of today's relativism.

Book: Mrs. 'arris Goes to Paris
Author: Paul Gallico
Published: 1958
Pages: 157
My copy: Library
Rating: 3.5 stars
Why: BOTM July 2013, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
Genre: fiction, sentimental, humour

This is not a great literary creation but it is an enjoyable story with a moral that can be read in a sitting. The characters are all simple and the story itself is simple, sentimental and fun.

Book: Mary Barton
Author: Elizabeth Gaskell
Published: 1848
Pages: 487, includes Introduction, bibliography, prefatory note on background, note on text, the book and Appendix 1 and 2 and Notes.
Genre: fiction, 19th century fiction, British literature
My Copy: Penguin English Library paperback
Rating: ★★★★
Ms Gaskell's debut novel of life in Manchester, the seat of industrial life in England in the 1840s. Ms Gaskell endeavors to write a story that takes no sides as she compares life of the worker and the factory owners.

Book: Neuromancer
Author: William Gibson, Canadian author
First published: 1984
Pages: 261
Genre: Science Fiction, Cyberpunk, dystopia
My Copy: paperback, Ace
Reason: BOTM for 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, July 2013
Rating: ★★★ and 1/2
Awards: Hugo, Nebula and Philip K. Dick

This debut novel, written by William Gibson is the first and possibly the best cyberpunk novel.

Book: The Diary of a Nobody
Author: George and Weedon Grossmith
First Published: 1892
Pages: 136 pages
Genre: fiction, humour, British Literature.
Why: BOTM August 2013, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die.
Rating: ★★★
English comic novel set in 1890's is a novel of Charles Pooter, a clerk. Through its humor the reader gets a picture of 1890 and what it is to be neither upper social or lower social class. Remarkably, could fit yet today.

Book: The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Author: Mohsin Hamid
Published: 2007
Pages: 184
Genre: Fiction, Pakistani Americans, Race Discrimination, Self-perception, psychological fiction
My Copy: ILL
Why: 1001 Books You Must Read BOTM, August 2013
Rating: ★★★
Awards: the novel was shortlisted in 2007 for the Booker. It won the Anisfield-Wolf Award for Literature. The Guardian selected it as on of the books that defined the decade.
The novel was engaging in that there was a building tension but I found the monologue a bit tedious and it left me feeling disturbed. Changez seemed like a nice enough guy but he grew more and more distant and angry. He had good manners but the hostility was just there under all the nice and polite manners. Erica was mentally ill and fragile. She became more and more withdrawn, representing Changez’s relationship with America. The American was depicted as ‘nervous and distrustful’. Jim was Changez’s boss at the company and he was depicted as a man who was an outsider but successful, unmarried and possibly gay. Changez and Erica change over the course of the story from a couple who looked like love and a future together might exist to estranged isolation from each other. This is a psychological fiction with emphasis on what is going on internally with Erica, Changez and the nervous American. There was mounting tension as the story progresses. This quote pretty much describes the ambiguity of the story; “....the prospect of sugaring your tongue before undertaking even the bloodiest of tasks cannot be entirely alien to you.” The structure is a frame story; we have the story of Changez talking to the nervous American and then we have the story of Changez’s immigration to America, his success at school, first job and love affair with Erica.

Book: The Tin Drum
Author: Günter Wilhelm Grass, translated by Ralph Manheim
Audio, translated by Breon Mitchell, narrated by Paul Michael Garcia
Published: 1959
Pages, 589
Genre: fiction, German literature, magical realism, Danzig Trilogy
My copy: library book, switched to audio ⅓ into book
Why: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, August 2013 BOTM
Rating:★★
Awards: winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature

I also can say that the author is extremely talented wordsmith. Here is one example, ...and there deposited the hollow metallic cylinder, slightly tapered at the front end, which had lodged a lead kernel until someone with a curved forefinger had exerted just enough pressure to evict the lead projectile and start it on its death-dealing change of habitat. (all to say an empty cartridge that someone had shot from a gun).

Another example of his writing, “when every male who could stand halfway erect was being shipped to Verdun to undergo a radical change of posture from the vertical to the eternal horizontal”.

“China crying out for a bull” and

“even bad books are books and therefore sacred”

I just wish I could have liked it but I couldn’t. I didn’t like reading it and audio was just a way to bulldoze my way to the end. I didn’t like the sexual innuendos. They were quite clever though. Oskar had no redeeming qualities and most of the characters were grotesque. I can’t recommend that anyone should read this book but if you really like reading all kinds of magical realism, and you have an interest in the history of Poland and post war Germany perhaps you would like to tackle this one.

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
Published 1955
Media type: audio, read by Kevin Kenerly
Genre: fiction,crime novel, series, psychological thriller
Pages: 252 pages
Why: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, September 2013 BOTM
Rating:★★★
I gave it three stars. It was readable, there really is no character that the reader really gets attached to and the story is set in the fifites when American's who could afford it were going to Europe and just hanging out.

Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Format: audio, read by Simon Vance, Kindle whispersync
Published 1891
My rating: 5 ★★★★★ both book and reader performance
Pages 405
This book by Hardy comes to me highly recommended by others. Even though this book is set in the 1800s, I felt that it was still very relevant today, though I would hope women would not be this self sacrificing. Hardy wrote this novel, a social commentary on the lives of nineteenth century English Women. Hardy is an excellent author. His characters are well developed. His writing is full of beauty and skill. This is the second book I have read by him and exceeded Jude the Obscure which I also enjoyed.

Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) by Robert A. Heinlein
Rating:★★★
This is the story of the Man from Mars, Valentine Michael Smith. Michael is all human, the off spring of the first humans to land on Mars. They never made it back home and Michael was raised a Martian. Michael is brought to earth for the first time ever where he encounters a culture and language foreign to him. It is a futuristic novel, looking at the earth in the future. Some things are very futuristic but mostly the novel is the author's excuse for a drawn out social commentary on love (free love) and religion. The story itself had some interesting parts and some of the commentary was also interesting, but enough already. This story could have been a 100 pages less. I thought I was going to give in 4 stars but because it just took tooooo long to finish, it ended up a three star. This book is suppose to be the author's masterpiece. It is suppose to be the father of all sci fi. It supposedly was an incredibly popular novel though I never read it before. It is quite dated. You have to remember that it was published in 1961 so the author was probably working on it in 1960 or even earlier. It is considered a look at the hippie generation; free love, communal living etc. It treats women as pets and servants to men. The book made a good discussion book however, if curious to know more, stop over at 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die and read the discussion questions.

The Blindness of the Heart (2007) by by Julia Franck
Rating: ★★★★
The story of a young woman in Germany from WWI to after WWII. Helena is the youngest daughter of a Jewish mother and German father and tells the story of how Helena survived Fascist Germany and multigenerational trauma. This is not another Holocaust survival story. Helena is raised protestant. She and her sister study to be trained nurses. This book examines the decadence of the twenties and the fall of Germany's economy and the forces of the political climate. There is a great deal of drugs and sex in this book and it made me think of the play Cabaret which I think was set in the same basic time period of the late twenties. The events are portrayed through the eyes of the well developed characters. this quote from a reviewer really says it well, "What is so clever about Franck’s characters and plotting is that she shows the women maturing without any sense of political awareness. Although they see Lotte Lenya in Brecht and Weill’s The Threepenny Opera, the larger political struggle, between Communism and Nazism, hardly touches them. The rise of Hitler is so understated that its gathering momentum gives the book a compulsive charge."

The Remains of The Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Published 1989
Pages 245
Rating: ★★★★

Adaptations: The Remains of the Day (1993)
Characters: Miss Kenton, Lord Darlington, Reginald Cardinal, William Stevens, Mr. Stevens
Genres: Fiction, Historical novel
The Remains of the Day is Kazuo Ishiguro's third published novel. The work was awarded the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 1989.

I liked the story, Ishiguro is a good writer. This is the second book by the author for me. I enjoyed this quiet, reflective book. Stevens is not the most likeable character. You want to tell him to quit being so obtuse but still he is a sympathetic character. I think liking Downton Abbey made reading this book quite enjoyable.

carry me down by M.J.Hyland
Published 2006, Great Britain
Pages: 334
★★★1/2
Genre and tags: fiction, coming of age, family relationships, mental illness
Reason read: 1001 Books, BOTM October 2013

The book was written in 2006 by Hyland, a female author born in London of Irish parents. She was born in 1968 so that makes her 48 at the time she wrote this book. Maybe she was influenced by Edna O'Brien's book. The story is of an 11 year old soon to be 12 boy who lives with his father, mother and grandmother in Gorey, Ireland. He is different than other children. John Egan is big for his age. He is an only child and he is fascinated with the Guinness Book of World Records and would like to visit Niagara. I thought the book was interesting. I found it engaging and easy to read. The flawed characters were interesting. The short bits of reading helped make the reading go fast. I do think the author may have overdid the freudian stuff and that in 1970's there might have been less emphasis on Freudian and more on interpersonal and family relationships so perhaps her psychological stuff was a bit off. Asperger's really wasn't the thing then either but the character of John sure was more autistic spectrum. I suppose he really was just neurotic because his parents were a mess. I think the author failed to develop some points of the story. I thought page 100, "My head, as though filled with helium has nothing in it to carry me down to rest, to dark, down to sleep. " (referring to the title) never got fully developed. *****potential spoiler**** Yet, in the scene where the mother can't sleep, John is seen trying to assist his mother to the dark, down to sleep.****spoiler over***** I give the story 3.5 stars. I think that I will remember this story.

Les Misérables (1862) by Victor Hugo
My rating: 5 ★★★★★

I’ve listened to an abridged copy of this a few years ago, saw the play while in New York (a few years ago) and now I’ve listened to the full book. I’ve enjoyed each one. What an absolutely great story of lives lived during epoch changing events in history. To read the abridged or to see the play is truly entertaining but the reader misses the context. This does remind me of Tolstoy’s War and Peace but a much better story. The characters in this book are complex and wonderful; Valjean the escaped convict with a need to redeem himself, Cossette his adopted daughter, Inspector Javert who only knows justice, Marius the idealist. Through these characters we see Paris, we see the revolution, the streets, slang and the sewers among many other subjects that Hugo shares his meditations. The title is a also a key, Les Misérables, tells us that the story is about the miserable. or the poor and homeless people. That this is a story about the poor and homeless makes this a timeless story. This story could occur anywhere but Hugo makes Paris alive in this story. I liked the Rose translation but the narrator George Guidall made this story. His accent was perfect and he made the characters alive and individuals. I can highly recommend this audio version of Les Mis.

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
Author: Haruki Murakami Jay Rubin (translator), Philip Gabriel (translator)
Format: ☊, Narrated By Allison Hiroto, Marc Vietor, Mark Boyett
Copyright date: 2011
Genre: Fiction, Japanese Literature, Magical Realism, Alternate history
Characters: Aomame, Ushikawa, Fuka-Eri, Tengo Kawana, Shizue Ogata, Tamotsu Fukada, Professor Ebisuno, Komatsu, Tamaru
Pages: about 1000 Length: Listening time: 46 hrs and 50 mins
Rating ★★★★

The story takes place in Tokyo in 1984 and like other books by Murakami has many of the same themes, symbols and imagery. Music plays a big part in the author’s books, and he makes reference to many composers and musicians of the past, ranging from Bach, Vivaldi and Leoš Janáček (his Sinfonietta popping up many times at crucial points in the novel) to more contemporary artists such as Billie Holiday, Charles Mingus and The Rolling Stones. The song Paper Moon is an Asian song and also has a major part besides the Sinfonietta. Besides music there are many references to literature such as Chekov, Tolstoy, Hemingway and Proust.

The story is a love story, a mystery and suspense novel, a parallel universe and also has a lot of philosophical and social commentaries and it is a fine example of Japanese magical realism.

I really enjoyed the story and thought it was his best work but maybe I am wrong. Some reviewers think it is his weakest. It was suspenseful, pulled you in and you wanted to keep reading to learn more of the mysteries which were slowly revealed.

What I didn’t like would be the strong sexual content that you get in a Murakami novel and I also thought the ending was weak. Where it should have been the most tense, it was actually quite uneventful. Some things were left unexplained so that could also be bothersome though I didn’t find it that annoying.

I thought the narration was good. The story was back and forth between narrators with most narration either by Tango or Aomame but also Ushikawa.

This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski
Translated by Barbara Vedder
selected and translated by Barbara Vedder
Published 1959
rating: ★★★★
Pages: 180.

These are short stories inspired by the author's experience in a concentration camp. Mr Borowski is Polish. He is not Jewish. He was in Auschwitz and Dachau for the final few years from 1943 to 1945. He worked there and had it better (a relative term) than the Jewish people who came to Auschwitz. He committed suicide in 1951. Borowski actually ended up arrested because of his girlfriend and that is why he ended up in a concentration camp. He was not a member of a dispersive group. He had only gone to the place where he was arrested to check on his girlfriend.
Here are some elements in these short stories:
pg 115 For a day may come when it will be up to us to give an account of the fraud and mockery to the living--to speak up for the dead.
you are not likely to trip if you stand on the shoulders of men who have influence
pg 121 hope (good and bad) the harm of hope.

Reading these stories opens up your eyes to the horror of captivity and slavery. This experience would be psychologically damaging. The fact that the author committed suicide is not a surprise after reading these short descriptive stories of the author's experience.

Book: The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
Published 2005
Pages 252
Genre/subjects: Fiction, authors, immigrants, Loss, Poland, Jewish, New York

Rating: ★★★★★

Why: BOTM, 1001-Books November 2013

Characters: Leopold Gursky, Bruno Shultz, Isaac Moritz, Alma Mereminski, Mordecai Moritz, Alma Singer

The novel, written in 2005 by Nicole Krauss, the wife of Jonathan Safron Foer is the story of Leo Gursky author of The History of Love which he left in the hands of a friend for safe keeping. Leo is a Polish Jew who lost his girl friend when she immigrated to America, his family when the Germans invaded his town and his friend Bruno. Leo finally makes it to America to find he is still very much alone. He is an old man, his only son has never known his biological father. Leo is waiting to die and fighting against being invisible.

Within this work there are many references to authors such as Russian author, Isaac Babel, Polish author Bruno Shultz especially his collection of short stories Street of Crocodiles, passing reference to Cervantes, and references to James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Antoine de Saint Exupéry, and Leo Tolstoy. The book references a book by the same title. This book is about writing and authors and is a book within a book.

Another thing that helps this book stand apart is the graphic designs and structure of the book. The dedication page gives us four pictures; the authors grandparents and the statement “For My Grandparents, who taught me the opposite of disappearing and For Jonathan, my life. In the book, the main character tells us about pictures and how they are proof of life. Chapters have titles and little icons. The first chapter has a heart and the title THE LAST WORDS ON EARTH. In that chapter we learn that Leo had a heart attack and expects to die suddenly any day and fears that he will die alone. Opening the chapter, the first sentences tell us this, ***When they write my obituary. Tomorrow. Or the next day. It will say Leo Gursky is survived by an apartment full of shit.**** You can tell that this sad and melancholy work is full of wonderful humor that makes the reading easier.

When I first started reading this book, it made me think of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Everything is Illuminated then I noticed the introduction for our discussion questions that the author is the wife of Jonathan Safron Foer and that he wrote his book, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close at the same time as Ms Krauss wrote her book. They both have young characters who are looking for someone and who encounter old men. They both mention locks. Both books have unique typography.

I liked this book and will give it 5 stars but I did find that I was often confused by the number of characters, non characters, shifting narratives, etc. This is a book that it would be well to read more than once. There is so much here that you can’t really take it all in on one reading.

Book: A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man
Author: James Joyce
☊ narrator John Lee
Rating: ★★★

A debut novel by Irish author, James Joyce, it is considered to be a Künstlerroman (artist growth to maturity) in a modernist style and is told in third person and free indirect speech. The subject matter addresses intellectual, religio-philosophical growth of Stephen Dedalus who eventually rebels against Catholic and Irish conventions. In this novel, the author uses the techniques that he more fully uses in Ulysses and Finnigans Wake. Stephen attends a Jesuit run school where he is bullied by the other students. His father's debts interrupt his education but then he attends college on scholarship. Stephen’s name and character represents James Joyce the author and Daedalus from Greek mythology.

Overall the story was okay. It was quick, I didn’t mind the style but it didn’t make me anymore eager to tackle Ulysses and Finnigans Wake. The narrator spoke with an Irish accent and did a good job with the reading of the story.

Book: The Namesake
Author: Jhumpa Lahiri
Published: 2003
Format: Kindle
Rating ★★★★

Genre/CATs: fiction, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, India, Immigrant experience, family relationships

What the book is about: The book is about a woman from India who marries by arrangement and then comes to America to live with her husband. She has two children. Mostly the story follows the oldest, the son. The story is of the experience of immigration, children born in America who take on ways of the land where they are born. The title tells us of the importance of naming their son for the parents, his rejection of that name. Their son is named Golgol through a series of events that prevent his parents from naming him they way he would have been named in India.

This is the author’s debut novel and is set in Calcutta, Boston and New York City. Her writing is nice and easy and this is a fast read. The characters are well developed and the story puts you into the heart of this family that struggles with adapting to a new culture and raising children who live in the world of their parents in the home and the America outside the walls of their home.

Book: Thérèse Raquin
Author: Émile Zola
☊ : Kate Winslet
Published: 1867
Pages: 240 pages, 8 hours listening time
Rating: ★★★.5 stars

The story is of a young girl, daughter of the brother of Madame Raquin and a woman from Algeria who is brought to Madame Raquin to raise after the mother dies. Madame Raquin has one son Camille Raquin who is sickly and spoiled. Madame Raquin marries her son and Therese to each other. Therese later becomes involved an an affair. The story is about the affair and murder. The author’s purpose in writing the novel is to “study temperaments” Therefore there is a detached and scientific approach to the story and the work is considered an example of Naturalism. Themes include punishment and imprisonment, temperaments and the interaction of these temperaments. Therese is melancholic, Laurent is sanguine, Camille is phlegmatic. It was made into film, TV and theatrical adaptations.

What I liked; it was a story easy to follow, the characters were such that it was hard to like any of them. You want to feel sorry for Therese and Laurent is detestable. Madame and Camille Raquin have little to evoke any sympathy. Still the story is good. The narration by Winslet is very good. Her voice is clear and easy to listen. I give it 3.5 stars. It would have been higher except for its detachment. The author studies adultery and murder and the devastating effects it has on those that make that choice. Of the three temperaments, Camille’s was the easiest to find merit. He was rather spoiled but he had a desire to work and work he found and work he did. More than what can be said for Laurent.

Book: To The Lighthouse
Author: Virginia Woolf
☊ narrated by Juliet Stevenson
Published: 1927
Pages:
Genre: novel, modernism, stream of consciousness
Why: 13x13 challenge, book published in 1920s.
Rating: ★★★

Thoughts/quotes: A novel that takes place on the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920 and is mostly told through the thoughts of the characters.

Plot:
Part I: The Window--summer home in the Hebrides on the Isle of Skye. This section involves the thoughts of Mrs Ramsay and involves son James and her husband and a planned trip to the lighthouse. She assures son that they will go and the father says the weather will be bad and the trip will not happen. Lily Briscoe is visiting. She is an unsure artist.
Part II: Time Passes-- time passes, deaths happen. WWI begins and ends. Mr Ramsay is adrift without his wife.
Part III: The Lighthouse After a long time, over 10 years, some of the family returns but not Mrs Ramsay who died. The long delayed trip to the lighthouse occurs. James relationship with his father improves. Lily finally completes a picture she had started and has made progress as a painter and as a woman.

Themes/Symbols:
Complexity of experience
Complexity of human relationships.

Review: Story of the Ramsay's starts and ends on the Isle of Skye in Scotland told mostly in stream of consciousness. First we are introduced to the Ramsay's as husband and wife/mother and father. The Ramsay's have a good marriage. Mrs Ramsay is a strong woman in her way and holds the family together. Son James loves his mother but dislikes his father. A trip to the lighthouse cannot happen because of weather. Life is interupted by WWI. Several people die and no one returns to the summer home for 10 years. Finally the family does return and the trip finally occurs. The narration shifts from person to person, started with Mrs Ramsay and ends with Lily Briscoe, an artist and strong independent woman who has not married who achieves her vision. This story is somewhat autobiographical of Virginia Woolf's own life. She is what I would categorize as a "woman's" author.

Book: Regeneration
Author: Pat Barker, female, English author
Published: 1991
Format: paperback, bookcrossing book, 225-117786314
Rating: ★★★★★

Genre/Tags: fiction, historical fiction, WWI, psychiatry, anti-war, shell-shock

The story is based on real historical facts/persons. The real life encounter of W.H.R. Rivers (anthropologist, psychiatrist) and Siegfried Sassoon at Craiglockhart in 1917. When I started to read this book, I assumed Pat Barker was a man because I knew that the trilogy was a war story. I also assumed it was fiction and then discovered that these some of the characters in the story were real persons. Sassoon was a poet and also a brave army officer who came to the conclusion that the war should be ended. I knew about shell shock, now called PTSD and have seen documentaries of WWI victims. I knew about the gas, I had an great uncle who suffered from exposure to gas in WWI. I know quite a bit about psychiatry as it is my field. I found this book to be well written, the protagonist is Rivers and he changes as the story unfolds. I would be able to recommend this book. I am not certain the remaining two books are as good as I have not heard as good reports on those.

Book: The Bell
Author: Iris Murdoch
Published: 1958
Rating: ★★★★★
Genre: fiction, British Literature
Why: 1001 Books, Random list

I wanted to get to this book all year and I truely saved the best for last it appears. This is a great story, good character development and an interesting story. The book is published in 1958 and to some extent that is obvious but it also is not dated in many ways. The story is set in a lay community outside of an abbey of cloistered nuns. A new bell is to arrive for the nunnery and thus the title of the story. There is also a myth about the past bell which is said to be lost in the lake and if you hear its ring there will be The characters are all misfits in someway and thus they are drawn to this lay community because they don't fit in. Three people are merely visitors to the community, The errant wife, the cruel and cold husband and the boy who is heading off to engineering college. The reformed homosexual leads the community, there is the novice who has schizophrenia and the innocent youth and the alcoholic. The themes is the struggle of sex and religion.
A quote, pg 165 "Our actions are like ships which we may watch set out to sea, and not know when or with what cargo they will return to port".
Also another book with some psychiatric history. This book is written in 1958. It mentions insulin shock treatments and even mentions that "insulin was making her fat". It also mentions drugs and it was about this time that Thorazine was being used.

Book:Good Morning, Midnight
Author: Jean Rhys
Published: 1939
Pages 115
Rating: ★★★

The title of this story is taken from a title of an Emily Dickenson poem and Ms Dickenson wrote great depression poetry. The time period is between the wars in Paris, France. The protagonist is Sasha Jensen who is alone and depressed and drinking a lot. Sasha has left her home in England with a man that she knew she shouldn’t marry. This story explores the difficulty of a woman’s life that chooses to go against the conventional. Some notes; in the beginning, Sasha tells us that she has “arranged her little life”, eat, eat, drink, sleep. It is obvious that she is depressed and probably tried but failed to commit suicide. She worked in a dress shop like that visited by “Mrs ‘Arris” but couldn’t keep that job, well quits before she can be fired”. Her self esteem is really very poor and hard to know if how she is perceiving it is really reality. Another person tells her that people really aren’t bad they are just “struggling so they are egotist”. With her depression, we see Sasha trying to cope by thought stopping,distraction, setting a plan and sticking to it, using logic and of course the negatives of drinking, sleeping, taking sleeping pills. Some quotes;
“Every word I say has chains round its ankles; every thought I think I’ve thought I think is weighted with heavy weights.” and
“It is not that these things happen or even that one survives them, but what makes life strange is that they are forgotten.”

Well it was a read to get this year started but not a happy one. But one Random selection down. Yea!!!! Its okay as far as the writing. I liked Wide Sargasso Sea better.

Book: Exercises in Style
Author: Raymond Queneau
Translator: Barbara Wright
Published: Original, French, 1947
Rating ★★★(for unique, for translation)
Tags/categories: writing, experimental, French Literature, humor
This book really is not a novel in my opinion but it is included in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. It is what it says in the title, a couple of paragraphs about an encounter on a crowded bus by the narrator is told repeatedly 99 times in different styles.
I guess that this would be a good translation. Barbara Wright won recognition as on the list of the 50 Outstanding Translations of the Last 50 years. The narrator has done a good job in translating this work and described it as great fun.
The book has linguistic knowledge, ingenuity and humor. It could be interesting to a person studying writing and it certainly gave good examples of things like onomatopeoeia, past, present, passive and even mathematical.
Raymond Queneau is a poet, scholar and mathematician. He is also a linguist and study of language.
The initials for each of the Exercises were done by Stefan Themerson and are unique enough that I think he deserved recognition. They are naken figures doing callestenics in the shape of the first letter of the word.

Book: All the Pretty Horses
Author: Cormac McCarthy
Published: 1992
Pages: 302
Tags/Categories: 1001 Books, Fiction, Western, Horses, Coming of Age
Why: BOTM for 1001 January 2014, Adventure tag for PBT
Awards: National Book Award Winner for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction
Rating: ★★★★

The story is the first book of the border trilogy and it is the story of John Grady Cole, 16 year old boy whose life is coming undone. He wants nothing more than to live on a ranch and be around horses. His parents divorce and his mother sells their ranch and that is the end of ranching. John leaves with his best friend and they take a trip into Mexico. This story takes place around 1948. McCarthy writes beautifully and you can see the land through his prose. His characters are achingly human. The dangers make the story compelling. What I didn’t like is the use of occasional Spanish when they had to be speaking Spanish most of the time. I found myself using google translate a lot. Sometimes you could know what was the intent but not always. This slowed up the reading and could be distracting. Its a pretty good modern day western and not as violent as McCarthy can get.

Book: The Daughter
Author: Pavlos Matesis
Translator: Fred Reed
Published: 1990 and translation published 2002
Format: ≡
Pages 214
Genre: Fiction, Greek Literature, WWII, 1001 Books
The story of the occupation of Greece by German's and Italians during the Second World War. The lives of women and their children is difficult. They are starving and there are abuses toward the residents by the occupying troops. Rarau, the daughter tells the story of her mother who takes an Italian lover. This is also Rarau's story.
The story is immediately engaging but becomes difficult as it progresses. What makes it difficult. The narrator starts with a young girls life and the hardships of occupation. This is all engaging and reminds the reader of Corelli's Mandolin by de Bernières but as the story progresses, the narrator becomes increasingly unreliable and it is hard to know what is real, what is exaggeration and what is psychotic.
There were characters in this story that were likeable. It is a short in length and may very well be worth a reread. I much prefer de Bernières book over Matesis but Matesis is probably closer to reality and actually written by a Greek author.

Book: The Beggar Maid
Author: Alice Munro, recipient of the 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature
Published 1977
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
Tags/Categories: 1001 Books, women writers, Canadian literature, short stories
Source: library book
Why: BOTM 1001 Book February 2014, Bingo (short stories)

This is another book of short stories by Canadian author and recipient of the 2013 Nobel Prize for literature. Ms Munro writes this feminist work about Flo (the stepmother) and Ruth (the stepdaughter). The stories are all loosely connected and march through life stages of Ruth. In the beginning Flo is a big part, then Ruth is married, has a daughter and seeks a career. Ruth is always striving for independence but always needy, seeking male approval through a series of relationships with unavailable men. Ruth is rather thin skinned and overly sensitive. Mostly people have had some pretty negative things to say about this book. They don’t like the characters and felt that Ruth was rather flat but for me she seemed to fit the feminist role of a woman in that time period. I think Ms Munro writes well. I don’t particularly like feminist works, I didn’t approve of Ruth’s behavior but I didn’t find it unbelievable, in fact it was too believable. What I really liked about the book is that it did a great job of depicting the process of growth of a child of a stepmother in a rural small town, young woman who achieves a scholarship and leaves the rural small town, eventually obtaining a career and then finally returns to take care of things for her aging stepmother.

Book: Alamut
Author: Vladimir Bartol
Translated and afterword: Michael Biggins 2007
Published, 1938
Rating: ★★★★★
Tags/Categories: 1001 Books, Slovenian literature, Iran, Ismaili,

This story is of Alamut and Hasan ibn al-Sabbah is set in 1092 in Iran and is the story of Hasan and his rise to power and control through young men trained to be killers willing to risk their lives for paradise.

Supposedly this is an allegory of Fascism. It was written in 1938 as forces were grabbing lands of the Slovenian people. Regardless, in the words of Michael Biggins “Alamut was and is simply a great read--imaginative, erudite, dynamic and humorous, a well-told tale set in an exotic time and place, yet populated by characters with universally recognizable ambitions, dreams and imperfections.” I couldn’t say it any better. I loved this story.

“Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.” The supreme Ismaili Motto, could very well be the motto that reflects our current times. This Hasan used anything and everything to gain his desire. He told them whatever they wanted to hear, “Because long experience has shown that men hold tightly to whatever they’ve invested their money in.” Hasan had believed there was no truth. He felt free to create a truth that served his purpose and he felt no remorse for using others for his gain. When we believe no truth then everything we want is permissible.

Book: Max Havelaar: Or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company
Author: Multatuli
Published: 1860
Rating: ★★★★
Format: ≡ - Kindle (very poor quality, the price is too high for the quality)
Why: Olympic Challenge, 1001 Books, Dutch literature

The story of Max Havelaar is a social commentary on colonialism as well as a political statement of the abuse of government and the ineffectiveness of Christianity without charity. The story is set in 1853 or there abouts in Indonesia (Java) at that time and is the story of why change is almost impossible in systems that are as large as governments and even a good person is basically unable to make any good change.

This is a 4 star read for me. I hated the poor condition of my kindle edition and having to constantly correct the typos and other errors in my head to make any sense out of some of the sentences but I fell for this social commentary of the abuse of people by colonialism but also by their own people. The book was a little difficult. I believe it is what is called a frame story. A story within a story. It seems like we had the story that was being told by Mr Drystubble (what a social commentary of whited sepulcher), Stern's story taken from Max Havelaar's (shawlman's notes) and then the story written by Multatuli as the author of the whole social commentary. Loved the love story, made me want to cry. Cry for the water buffalo and cry for the poor boy. That alone made this a 4 star story for me. I will never look at a water buffalo in the same way again.

I will never look at a water buffalo in the same way again.

I don't look at water buffaloes often, do you? Although when I was in Papua New Guinea when I was 19, I used to ride horses through herds of beasts that always included a few water buffalo, and I was the oldest person in the group . . . it was unnerving as I'd have had no clue what to do if anything went sideways. Luckily nothing did, but one does wonder when there are beasts with large rings in their noses.

Anyway, I've long been interested in Max Havelaar but haven't actually put it on my TBR. I was planning on buying the Penguin Classics edition. I take it from your comments that I shouldn't find the problems you came across if I purchase a quality print edition? If so, moving this up my wish list.

@Nickelini, you're right, not too many water buffalo in Minnesota.

Book: Timbuktu
Author: Paul Auster
Published: 1999
Rating:★★★
Tags/Categories: Fiction, novella, existentialism, afterlife
Pages: 181
Why: 1001 Books, random list, tbr for PBT

Timbuktu is a 1999 novella by Paul Auster. It is about the life of a dog, Mr Bones, who is struggling to come to terms with the fact that his homeless master, Willy Christmas is dying. The story is set in the 90s. The title comes from the name Willy has given to the afterlife and Mr. Bones is afraid that he won’t be able to go to Timbuktu to be with Willy.

My thoughts: The story is told from Mr. Bones perspective. It is the second book this year, having read The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein last December that is written from the dogs perspective. This one is similar in that both dogs are contemplating existential themes of the afterlife. Mr. Bones regrets that Willy didn’t teach him to read, Enzo wanted thumbs. Both dogs do a lot of thinking but Mr. Bone uses words like “peripatetic”. Now I have dogs and I believe they do learn a lot of human language as they live with us but I don’t believe they learn words like peripatetic. When you read Auster, at least in my experience so far, you know the ending isn’t going to be a feel good ending. I felt so bad that Mr. Bones was going to be abandoned in a strange town with no friends when Willy dies but the rest of the story loses my sympathy. It really goes on with the difficulties of adjusting to new families and the loss of Willy. The ending, and I won’t give it away, but it is an Auster ending.

Quotes that I liked:
“Even now, as I enter the valley of the shadow of death, my thoughts bog down in the gunk of yore. There’s the rub, signore. All this clutter in my head, this dust and bric-a-brac, these useless knickknacks spilling off the shelves.”

References to memory-- “wallpaper, background music, zeitgeist dust on the furniture of the mind”.

Book: Ignorance
Author: Milan Kundera
Format: ☊, Richard Hoxie
Published: 2000
Pages: 180
Genre: fiction, Czech literature
Why: Olympic Challenge, 1001 Books
Rating:★★★☆
Plot: Story of emigre's who left their country and the experience memory and returning to the homeland. The author really presents an essay with a story and compares it to the Odyssey and the homecoming.
Thoughts/quotes:
I liked it better than The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I liked the essay part of the story on memory and emigrant experience. I think the message that Kundera gives with his bits on sexual encounters are very real. He doesn't make it more than what it is. I could do without the detail but I appreciate what he is saying.

Book:Everything that Rises Must Converge
Author: Flannery O’Connor
Published 1965
Rating: ★★★☆
Format: ☊
Categories: short story, Southern Literature, Southern Gothic

A collection of short stories by Flannery O'Connor, often violent with Southern themes of racism and religion. The flawed characters populate almost every story and most end violently. The author writes well therefore I give it 3.5 stars. I listened to the audible edition read by several narrators. They did a good job of making these stories "Southern".

Everything That Rises Must Converge: The title of the book and first story. This story is of a college graduate who lives with his mother because he can’t make enough to live on his own. Violence.
The title Everything That Rises Must Converge refers to a work by the French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin titled the "Omega Point": "Remain true to yourself, but move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love! At the summit you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge.
Greenleaf: a woman owns a farm. Mr Greenleaf works for her but she feels he is worthless but her own sons will not help with the farm. They are lazy and disrespectful. Mr. Greenleaf’s sons bull keeps coming on her property and she wants Mr. Greenleaf to kill the bull. Violent ending.
A View Of The Woods: A grandfather owns land and keeps selling it. His youngest granddaughter is his favorite and he thinks she is just like him until he sells the ‘lawn’. Violent.
The Enduring Chill: a son who has been living in NYC returns to his mother’s home to die of what he is sure is a fatal illness. He really is a son who has failed to be what he had aspired to be. This one is not so violent, somewhat funny conclusion.
The Comforts Of Home: another man living with his mother. She brings home a juvenile delinquent girl. Son is angry, wants her removed from the home. Violent ending.
The Lame Shall Enter First: A widowed man and his young son who has not gotten over the death of his mother. This man spends time on other delinquent boys and neglects the needs of his own son. Sad violent ending.
Revelation: woman gets beat up by another girl in the doctor’s waiting room. This story is about seeing society through our own prejudices. Interesting story.
Parker's Back: A man with an obsession to get tattoos
Judgement Day: Old man goes North to live with his daughter. Tries to treat a Northern black man like he treats blacks in the South. This ends violently. Tanner just wants to get back South alive or dead.

O’Connor states this about her writing; "All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless and brutal."—Flannery O'Connor
I look forward to reading more by O’Connor. Short story is not my favorite format but her writing is good, though violent and characters are flawed. Ms O’Connor was a faithful Roman Catholic.

Book: The Country Girls
Author: Edna O’Brien
Published: 1960
Format: ☊
Rating: ★★★☆
Categories/tags: 1001 Books, fiction, Irish Literature, Coming of Age, Friendship, sexuality
Why: BOTM March 2014

The story of a friendship between two country girls as they enter adolescence in Ireland in the time period after WWII. Kate Brady and Baba Brennen are friends. Kate’s father is an alcoholic and Baba’s father is a veterinarian. Kate is poor and earns a scholarship to a Catholic school. They go together to school where their friendship is strained but then Baba wants them to get kicked out so they are expelled and leave for life in the city.

I actually enjoyed this story. It reminded me of Angela’s Ashes for some reason. I listened to audio version, read by the author. She isn’t the best reader nor the worst and her accent gave the story “place”. This book was banned in Ireland because of the sexual content.

Book: The Black Prince
Author: Iris Murdoch
Published: 1973
Rating ★★★★
Format: library book
Why: 1001 BOTM March 2014

First of all, let me say, I do not understand why people dislike this book.

That being said, let me say that I enjoyed this book and thought it was a great work. The reference book for 1001 calls it a literary thriller and I think that is accurate. It is a book of “what is the truth”. Yes, all the characters are flawed. I enjoyed so much how the author presents the story as a story being told by the main character Bradley Pearson, an older man with writer’s block. He tells us he is trustworthy but the reader soon realizes that he is unreliable and not trustworthy.
Other characters:
Arnold Baffin, a successful author, somewhat younger man. Arnold Baffin is untrustworthy, too.
Rachel Baffin, wife of Arnold, depicted as plump woman who is in the shadow of her successful husband who also is abusive and cheats on her. The only feminine female.
Christian, Bradley’s exwife (masculine name)
Francis, brother to Christian, gay, a doctor who has lost his license (feminine name)
Julian: only daughter of the Baffin’s (masculine name)

It is really a question throughout the book of where the title of the book comes from. The story is built around Shakespeare’s Hamlet, yet the black prince is not in that play. There is a murder, but then there is the question of who really is the killer. We have what the author (Bradley) tells us and then we have points of views by Christian, Rachel, Francis and Julian. I found it fun to try to form my own idea from what we are given. I believe that in general, Bradley has told the story close to the truth. I think Christian is way off the mark, I think Rachel is calculating in her response, I think Francis is the next who is closest to the truth and I think in what Julian has to say, you can surmise that there was something between Bradley and Julian from the fact that she repeats much of what Bradley has said and she never really says anything because she has learned that art is secret. It is very interesting that even though these people make Bradley into a unlikeable, awkward, unsuccessful man, they all claim that he loved them.

The novel is also unique for its structure. The central story is bookended by forewords and post-scripts by characters within the story. I think the differences in the various post scripts does represent a fact that reality varies from person to person. I think I liked this part the most but without the main story, it would not have worked. The themes of homosexuality along with Freud and phallic symbols and philosophy of truth, art are all a part of this story with a twist. I liked it, but it isn’t an easy or fast read but well worth it unless you have to have likable characters.

Book: The Year of The Hare
Author: Arto Paasilinna
Translator: Nøste Kendzior
Published: 1975
Rating: ★★★★
Format:library book
Why: 1001 April BOTM

Synopsis: Arto Paasilinna is a Laplander, born in Finland in 1942. He is a woodcutter, farm labor, journalist and poet and author of more than thirty novels. The short little story is the tale of a journalist who one day walks away from it all after finding a wounded hare that was just hit by their car. The adventure takes us through Finland with the man and the hare. He works in the forest, helps with various jobs and runs into all kinds of adventures such as forest fires, bears and ravens. It is a humorous story but also a story of a simpler life in harmony with nature.

Opinion: I liked the book because there was so much that brought back childhood memories. This story reminded me so much of my earlier life. My family lived in an area where Finnish people had settled and it is a lot like this land. My dad was best friends with a Finn. The hunted, fished and trapped together. My parents made fish soup and many other Finnish dishes. I took some Finnish cooking classes. The sauna is part of family life. I grew up with the sauna and miss it a lot. The Finnish people that I knew, knew nature. If you grow up in Finland maybe nature is just too much of the culture not to adapt quickly. The story seemed so very believable to me because of my life. Even in college I roomed with a Finnish gal.

Book: The Good Soldier Švejk
Author: Jaroslav Hašek
Published 1923
Format; pdf read on the i-pad in i book app
Why: Seasonal Read, 1001 Books/Jan, Feb, March 2014
Rating: ★★★

This is the story of Švejk, a Czeck soldier who tells of the glorious war (WWI). It is a biting satire/anti war book. While it is funny and satirical it also portrays the ugliness of war.

Opinion: While I liked this story, it was too long and I struggled to stay engaged. I wonder if I wouldn’t have enjoyed it more if I had read it on something else than the i pad. I think it would have been a great audio. I think I would have laughed a lot and people would have stared at me. It was just way too long and the author died before he completed it.
Švejk as an anti hero reminded me a little of A Confederacy of Dunces.

Book: Martin Chuzzlewit
Author: Charles Dickens
Audio book read by: Sean Barrett
pdf file: http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/dickens/chuzzlew.pdf
Published: 1844
Reason: 1001 Seasonal Read

Rating: ★★★★

The story: This is of the Chuzzlewit family and is a study of hypocrisy and selfishness and this book is a study of character. Some might say exaggerated but they do represent people in society. The Peckniffs and Sarah Gamp, the Jonas and the Martins Chuzzlewits. The book is called the last of Dickens picaresque novels. Another unique element is the American portion of the story which is a caricature of America. Dickens had just returned from a tour to the US and from this book, he was not impressed with us. Some could find this offensive but the more I read it the more I accepted that it did represent the US as a character that is no different that characters of England that Dickens has featured in his books. And last, this is a story of romance and endings that will not disappoint.

I am glad to have read this book. I needed to read about Sarah Gamp. Being educated as a nurse with a background of having worked in hospitals, Ms Gamp has always been a stereotype that I’ve encountered but hadn’t read the book. Dickens mentions that she was not atypical of attendants at the time and many hospitals were poor institutes at best.

Dickens never disappoints. It takes awhile to get into the rhythm of his books but they are always good. I have to say, that Sean Barrett did such a wonderful job of reading the story. Every character had their own voices, women were women (some were manly women) and men voices were men's’ voices except for the whiny barber. If willing to read a pdf file, the one listed above is of excellent quality and contains Dickens comments about the American part of the story.

Finished the novel in poetry, Eugene Onegin by Alexandr Pushkin. Very enjoyable. Love it. I had the library book with the Johnston translation but also listened to the free down load read by Stephen Fry. He is a great reader. Highly recommend it.

Book: The Nine Tailors
Author: Dorothy Sayers
Published 1934
Pages 350
Format: Kindle ≡
Why: Mystery CAT at LT
Rating: ★★★★
CAT/tags: mystery, golden age, bell changing, fen, British literature

Synopsis: This is a Lord Peter Wimsey mystery that takes place in the fens and involves bell changing (ringing) and has nothing to do with tailors.

I’ve read three Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries now and this is my favorite. I give in 4 stars for enjoyment but this is not a favorite for many and some feel the story is too slow. The details of the bells is a little complicated and probably results in people losing interest.

What I likes: I liked learning about the bells. I liked that the author seemed very knowledgeable about the subject of bell ringing. The story is set in the time period between the wars and mentions the influenza outbreak that did kill a lot of people. It touches on an environmental topic of what happens when man decides to change the course of nature. (draining the fen). The bells were used to announce a death. In these small communities people would no by the telling; thus the name “teller Paul” Paul being the largest (tenor) dedicated to St. Paul, and tailor being the dialect for teller.

The mystery and death is original. I am sure that is the reason that this was included in the 1001 books. It did win the Rusty Dagger award for best crime novel of the 1930s, British Crime Writers Association, 1999.

I also sometimes like a book because I like details about the author. Dorothy Sayer was the daughter of a Rector and grew up on the Fens at Blutisham. She was famous for being a playwright, writing Christian essay and she is mostly known for her status as one of the women mystery writers of the Golden Age. She started to translate Dante’s Divine Comedy and she considered it her best work but died before completion.

I love the tidbit about Dorothy Sayer! Thank you!

Book: Grimus
Author: Salmon Rushdie
Published 1975
Format: paperback, pages 319
Rating: ★★★

The debut of Rushdie was a fantasy novel which follows Flapping Eagle to Calf Islandlooking for his sister Bird Dog. Flapping Eagle has the gift of immortality which really is not something he desires but it makes it possible for him to make it to Calf. Calf is where people who have immortality go to live. The story touches on a variety of mythology of Sufi, Hindu, Christian and Norse and many concepts and philosophy. It was not well received but it isn't hard to read. It's not Rusdie's best but it's not the worst either.

Book: The Shipyard
Author: Juan Carlos Onetti
Published 1961
Uraguay
Rating ★★★

The story involves a bankrupt shipyard on a river off the coast of the Atlantic in South America. Larsen has returned from banishment (referred to as the Bodysnatcher) but the reader knows little about this man, he is older and paunchy. He probably was a womanizer of some sorts. The season is winter in the summer hemisphere. The story is bleak and dreary and the people are living in hopeless conditions pretending that things will get better or simply pretending that their situation is not real. The cover of my book compares Onetti to Faulkner. As an author, he is good with words and creates atmosphere well. This is a quick read, no more than a novella.

Great thread with lots of useful reviews. The Nine Tailors is also a favorite of mine and although Sayers did not entirely finish her translation of Dante, she did complete Hell and Purgatory (with amazing introductions and notes) and after her death a colleague finished Paradise. All three are published by Penguin books. I read them in high school because I was such a fan of her mystery novels!

Book: The Autumn of the Patriarch
Author: Gabriel García Márquez
Translated: Gregory Rabassa
Published: 1975
Rating: ★★★★
Why: World Cup, GeoCat

This book is a masterpiece of the run on sentence, paragraphs without end and magical realism. It is about a dictator of an Island in the Caribbean. There is several chapters and I believe each chapter repeats the previous one with maybe a shift in the emphasis or characters but all are about the dictator and his mother. The dictator sees himself as eternal and God and his mother as a saint. This has been described as having endless layers and I think that is very true and that this books probably should be read many times. Really, whether you like magical realism or not, this author was a master at his craft.

Book: The Safety Net
Author: Heinrich Böll
Published: 1979, German
Why: World Cup, 1001
Rating: ★★★★

The story is about security. There are many characters in this book, some are family, some our business people, some are political, some are law enforcement. This is Germany from the time period following WWII to the seventies. Security would seem to be a good thing but security robs you of your freedom. You no longer can move about freely or enjoy things like birds flying. Only one person enjoys the security system and that is the one who sees it as a measure of her importance. The rest struggle with the loss of their freedom. Though this book was written in 1979 it addresses issues of today; terrorism, political security, freedom, environmental abuse for the sake of energy, I’ve read two books by the author and both books address the pressures of newspaper and law enforcement on the human spirit.

The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy
Rating ★★★★

The third book by Thomas Hardy for me. I like his writing. This one is set in the Woodlands and involves people who make money from the timber industry. Giles has been led to believe that he and Grace will be husband and wife but Grace’s father backs out and convinces himself that his daughter needs to marry up and not beneath herself. Grace has been educated in boarding schools. This story is very much like a modern day soap opera. Grace marries the doctor, the doctor is unfaithful. Grace wants a divorce but is denied it. The doctor returns to her, she rejects him but he doesn’t give up. This book doesn’t have the same amount of tragedy found in his other books but still it is enjoyable.

Cain by José Saramago
★★★
The story of Cain after he kills his brother and is condemned to wander. In it several Old Testament events are visited. Cain is constantly challenging God as is common of man.

The Lion of Flanders by Hendrik Conscience
★★★★
Story of Flanders and the oppression by France set in the time of knights and nobles and the people who run the shops such as the Butcher and the tailors. I think this is a must read for those that like tales of knights and historical fiction.

American Pastoral by Philip Roth
Published 1997, 2014, June BOTM ★★★★
This story is set in the late sixties and early seventies in Newark, New Jersey and reflects the social upheavals of the time. It is a framed story. The first chapters we are introduced to Zuckerman (author) and his admiration almost worship of the Swede, a high school athlete. At a reunion, in which Zuckerman is a speaker, he learns that Swede is deceased. Zuckerman, always curious about Swede begins to imagine the life that Swede lived as it was impacted by his daughter's decision to bomb the local post office. The rest of the book is this imagined story (which Zuckerman publishes) of Swede.

The story is accurate historically for the Newark riots of 1967, Watergate, the Deep Throat movie (the first x rated movie that we all flocked to see publicly) as well as the Black Panthers, Weathermen and Angela Davis. LBJ is president and the US is deeply invested in sending soldiers to Vietnam. The main character, Swede, is based on a real athlete that attended Weequahic High School. I really wondered if this school was made up. The "equa" in the middle made me think that the author was saying something about these Jewish kids attending school in the US. I do think there is more in this story than the historical events. It is a story of Jewish American who marries an Irish Catholic girl and the changes in the family from the grandparents who came to the US, sold gloves on the streets and finally established a factory business. The family erodes or changes from all Jewish, to the boys marrying Gentile Girls to the daughter who is not Jewish or Catholic and abandons all the family values and hates her family for having a profitable business.

The title American Pastoral, does it refer to the immigrant experience for the Jew who came to the US and found peace and the life without persecution? Towards the end, the author mentions Thanksgiving as the true American Pastoral. A time where everyone can come together whether they are Catholic, Jewish, or Gentile. Thanksgiving really is the best holiday. I liked this story. It was engaging and the characters are well developed. You forget that this is just Zuckerman's imaginations and that we really know very little about Swede or his daughter Merry. Compared to the other book by Roth that I've read, Plot Against America, I liked this much better. I will read more of Roth at some point.

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett, 3.5 stars

This novel is a classic from 1929. The detective is Sam Spade located in San Francisco and one of the first hard-boil detective genre. Spade and his partner are hired by a woman and soon his partner is dead. This woman isn't telling the truth, uses her feminine whiles to get her way and Sam has to dig for the clues to who murdered his partner and why. Of course it all involves the Maltese Falcon. It's a quick read. I liked it much better than The Thin Man. This book is one of the 100 best on the Modern Library list.

To Each His Own - Leonardo Sciascia, Adrienne Foulke, W S De Piero, W S Di Piero
kristel's Rating: 3 1/2 stars
Bookshelves: read, mysteries, 1001-books, world-literature
Read on: Jul 7, 2014 - Jul 7, 2014

A literary crime novel by Sicilian novelist Leonardo Sciascia. An anonymous letter arrives to the pharmacist and it states "This letter is your death sentence. To avenge what you have done you will die." The pharmacist can't think of anything that he has done and decides it is a joke. He and his hunting doctor friend are found shot dead on their hunting trip. The police can find no reason and therefore blame the pharmacist of an affair with a young girl who was picking up prescriptions frequently, ruining her life and the pharmacist widow's life. A high school teacher with a literary bent, notices a clue and out of curiosity begins to seek out more clues in the mystery. His amateur sleuthing results in unexpected, tragic results.

The story was published in 1966 in Italian and it was translated to English in 1968 under the title of A Man's Blessing. The edition I read was published in 2000 and translated by W. S. Di Piero. It is a very quick read. I read it in a day (I am not a fast reader). It is 158 pages.

Book: A Town Like Alice
Author: Nevil Shute
Published 1950

Rating: ★★★★

This World War II post WWII is a romance story set in Malaysia and Australia with short visits to England. The heroine, Jean Paget is one of the strongest female protagonist. Joe Harmon is an endearing Aussie who is not above stealing, and the trustee,Noel Strachan is a lonely widower. While this is a romance, it is also strong on themes of economic development. The author is an aeronautical engineer and airplanes are abundant in the novel as well. The story is told through a narrator (Noel) who really is reminiscing and sharing from letters he has received or visits he has had.

The story is nice. The characters are likeable and there is no horror, violence or sexual depravity which makes you wonder how this made it on the 1001 books you must read before you die list. I think it is there to give the reader a break from all the difficult books. Really, I wouldn't want to make people avoid reading books from 1001. They are generally excellent, thought provoking, discussion stimulating works.

*****spoiler****
In reflecting on the book, Joe is crucified by the Japanese for stealing chickens. Later we again find that back in Australia, Joe and other ranchers are accustomed to stealing un branded calves from each other. In fact it's a game to see who can outdo the other. This may have been a reason for Joe's carelessness in stealing Black chickens. Shoes and foot wear have a lot of coverage in the book; barefoot when marching was better than shoes. Ice skates representing youth and fun and absence of responsibility. Boots too large representing the new role not quite fitting yet. Rain, water, food, health, disease all having equally important features.

Racism: yes, this book was written in 1950 and reflects that time period world view. I think it would be a mistake to think that a person writing in the late forties would have the same enlightenment and "language" that we have today. I think the book was authentic. That is how it was. Segregation was the norm. I thought it showed a lack of racism when Jean wanted to know if the Natives would be able to buy ice cream in the parlor. When told that it probably wouldn't happen (seems there wasn't a law against it), she then chose to build the parlor such that they would have access to the ice cream. I thought her behavior toward the people of Malaysia, Japanese soldiers and of Australia Aborigines showed that she wasn't racist.

Book: The Stone Diaries
Author: Carol Shields
Published 1993
Tags/Categories: fiction, 1001 Books, women, Canada, Canadian Literature, Manitoba, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Indiana, Orkney Islands, Florida
Awards: Pulitzer Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award
Why: July 2014 BOTM
Rating:

This is a fictional autobiography of Daisy Goodwill Flett, the daughter of an orphan Mercy Stone. Everyone who comes to live at Stonewall Home is given the last name of Stone. Daisy’s mother dies at birth, Daisy is raised essentially by a foster mother until her foster mother dies when she is 11. She then lives with her father in Indiana. Daisy gets a college education, marries, becomes a widow. Her father remarries, she is getting too old to stay in the home with her father and his new wife so she goes back to Canada to visit the son of her foster mother. Daisy is ordinary. This is the story of her life and her losses.

I loved this book. I was immediately engaged. What I liked is that I thought the story was very accurate in its historical representation of the evolution of a woman’s life. Daisy’s mother grew up in an orphanage. She knew nothing of relationships between people let alone between a man and a woman. She didn’t know a thing about sex or pregnancy. Daisy grew up in foster home and never knew the bond of daughter mother. She went to college, unusual in her day, she was smart but she never thought of doing anything but being a Good Housekeeping wife and mother. The decades were represented through Daisy but we the reader shares the changes these decades made for women through the lives of Mercy, Daisy, Alice and Victoria (niece). Victoria would be the woman most aligned with my own time capsule. I like books that deal with aging and the aged including dying. This books ending chapter are choppy but I think the author was intentional. Thoughts for the elderly probably drift and end abruptly and never settle or stick.

This book also has very good prose. I loved the sentences. There was many quotable parts but I didn’t write these down.
I liked the Epigraph
nothing she did or said
was quite what she meant
but still her life could be called a monument
shaped in a slant of available light
and set to the movement of possible music

(From "The Grandmother Cycle" by Judith Downing, Converse Quarterly, Autumn)

...the moment of death occurs while we’re still alive. Life marches right up to the wall of that final darkness, one extreme state of being butting against the other.

This book in some ways reminded me of Wild Swans (true story) because it is an account of generations. At times this book seemed so real, to the point that there are real photographs in this book, but it is fictional. I think it is historically accurate as to the changes that occurred from 1905 to 1990s. I will be hanging on to this book; it was too good to get rid of it.

Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs, narrated by James Slattery
Published 1914
Rating ★★★

Well, this is a simple childhood story, I don't really need to review it as we all are probably familiar with it. My generation grew up watching TV movies about the ape man. I liked them a lot back then. My granddaughters have sat in front of the TV watching Disney DVDs. Tarzan is the orphan child of Lord and Lady Graystoke who were put ashore after a mutiny on a ship they were sailing. Lady Greystoke dies when Tarzan is a baby and Lord Greystoke is killed by an ape leaving the infant boy in the crib. The female ape who's baby is dead exchanges it for Tarzan and thus Tarzan is raised as an ape. He teaches himself to read English. The story is one of survival, adventure, combat with nature and romance. It is surprising that the book has lasted because it also can be described as racist and sexist. On another level, the book idealizes man's relationship with nature versus civilization. You have the contrast of Tarzan and Clayton. Tarzan who ate by the laws of nature and Clayton who ate with the manners of society.

Finished Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Stevenson, classic literature, British mystery, use of Double, duality of man, good and evil. A quick read, don't know why it took so long to get to this one. ★★★★

Cancer Ward by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
Translated from Russian by Rebecca Frank
The Dial Press, Inc. New York 1968

This is the second book by Solzhenitsyn that I have read. I really enjoy his writing. The first book I read was about life in the prison camp, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Solzhenitsyn was born in southern Russia in 1918. Communism had taken power. The author fought in WWII. Solzhenitsyn was arrested, stripped of rank and decorations for derogatory remarks about Stalin in letters that he had written. He was sentenced without trial to eight years of forced labor followed by exile. His first book, One Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovich came from his experience in a Siberian labor camp. He served four years of his eight years in a research institute manned by prisoners as a mathematician. This led to the second novel, The First Circle. I haven’t read it yet. In 1953, Solzhenitsyn was released from a labor camp and entered “eternal” exile on the edge of the desert in Kazakhstan. He taught school. While in the labor camp, the author was operated on for a tumor but not told the nature of his ailment. He suffered extreme pain and recurring illness. He was treated in Tashkent for cancer and he recovered. Out of this experience came this book.

The story takes place in a hospital in a place similar to Tashkent, 1955. Stalin died in 1953. After this there was amnesty for prisoners (only petty criminals). In 1955 there was a startling event. The old members of the Supreme Court were dismissed. De-Stalinization had begun. This event is part of this story. Some other themes include “sincerity in literature”, the tragedy of biology when biologists were purged, the expediters of the black market system, Another major theme is the women in Russia. Women did men’s work. Most of the country’s doctors were women. Russia had lost twenty million men in the war. There was a shortage of men. Women were doomed to loneliness. Vera, one of the doctors in the story, talks about this shortage and how the men that are available prefer to marry women much younger than their own cohorts.

I also enjoyed this story for the medical aspect. This looks at the early treatment of cancer and while it is not necessarily accurate, I think it did an excellent job of representing medical care in the fifties. The treatments were harsher than they are now (they still are harsh). Radiation was done until there was serious side effects and a necessity to stop. There is reference to herbal treatments; birth tree mushroom and issyk-kul root. A person with cancer will seek out these treatments because with the diagnosis of cancer, everything must be tried and people do feel safer with herbals and naturals even though their safety isn’t always anymore than the medicines. The hope and fears of the various men on the ward are accurately described. The characters are people from various nationalities and walks of life, The doctors are women and the nurse is studying to be a doctor. The orderly who cleans the ward is a woman, exile.

There were many great quotes and the author’s prose is wonderful. His descriptions bring the scenes to life.

“he was saying dangerous things, no only things one shouldn’t repeat to anyone, but things one shouldn’t even listen to.”

There is a great section on optimism. The Kadmins are exiled in the same place the main character is exiled. He describes their joy in life. They experienced joy in exile because in exile they could appreciate what you would not think to appreciate in plenty.

“It is not the standard of living that makes us happy, it is the way we feel, the way we look at life.”

“---man is always happy if he wants to be and no can stop him---”

“it took a misfortune for fresh air to blow into their life”

“--if we first cease to love animals, will we not cease to love people” (the significance of the Kadmins dog being shot by people in the village. The dog was like their children

“A man sprouts a tumor and dies--how, then, can a country live that has sprouted camps and exile?”

I rate this book; ★★★★★

great review. I read this many years ago now but it still stands out as one of the best I've ever read. I think you'll very much enjoy The First Circle when you read it. If you can face the length and breadth of his Gulag Archipelago, it is a chilling read (non-fiction).

my reviews
http://johnandsheena.co.uk/books/?p=6 Cancer Ward
http://johnandsheena.co.uk/books/?p=21 The First Circle

The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman by Andrzej Szczypiorski
Translated from the Polish by Klara Glowczewska
Originally published in 1986

Rating ★★★★★

REVIEW
A story of Poland told through several stories of people who are living in Warsaw, Poland and generally is set in WWII though it does span over several years and into more modern times. Poland is made up of many peoples who have identity with Poland; the Polish, the German, the Jewish and Russians. The characters were all intimately presented and we get to know their inner thoughts and how others see them. The author gave each person their unique voice but also was able to speak through his characters to give the reader insight into Poland.

OPENING LINE: The room was in twilight because the judge was a lover of twilight.

QUOTES:
But God is merciful to those who seek Him, even if they search for him in such peculiar circumstances,named the world's filth and indignities. Pg 30

Christians considered themselves superior,perhaps precisely because although being in the minority, they nevertheless felt themselves to be favored by the world. Pg 86

The sky always seemed to him dirty. Pg152

What has become of our freedom if we cannot be ourselves? 160

They took away the right to be herself, the right to self-determination. 192

*****CLOSING LINE: But it's possible that she would have felt the same sense of relief at bringing into the world a son.

RATING: excellent

FINISHED: September 6, 2014

Book: Waterland
Author: Graham Swift
Published: 1983

Rating ★★★★

REVIEW
I started this book expecting I might dislike it. I did dislike the topic of incest but was key to the story which is really a detective story and so much more. A fictional autobiography being told by Tom Crick as he teaches his students about why history. It is meditative; exploring fate, responsibility and history. Tom tells the story of his family’s roots and the Fen area of East Anglia. It also is a story of storytelling.

OPENING LINE:
Epigram: Historia, -ae, f. 1. inquiry, investigation, learning. 2. a) a narrative of past events, history. b) any kind of narrative: account, tale, story.

“And don’t forget’, my father would say, as if he expected me at any moment to up and leave to seek my fortune in the wide world, ‘whatever you learn about people, however bad they turn out, each one of them has a heart, and each one of them was once a tiny baby sucking his mother’s milk….’

QUOTES:
Until a series of encounters with the Here and Now gave a sudden urgency to my studies. Until the Here and Now, gripping me by the arm, slapping my face and telling me to take a good look at the mess I was in, informed me that history was no invention but indeed existed — and I had become a part of it.

Supposing it's the other way round. Supposing it's revolutions which divert and impede the course of our inborn curiosity. Supposing it's curiosity — which inspires our sexual explorations and feeds our desires to hear and tell stories — which is our natural and fundamental state of mind. Supposing it's our insatiable and feverish desire to know about things, to know about each other, always to be sniff-sniffing things out, which is the true and rightful subverter and defeats even our impulse for historical progression.

Children, only animals live entirely in the Here and Now. Only nature knows neither memory nor history. Man man — let me offer you a definition — is the story-telling animal. Wherever he goes he wants to leave behind not a chaotic wake, not an empty space, but the comforting marker-buoys and trail-signs of stories. He has to go on telling stories. He has to keep on making them up. As long as there's a story, it's all right.

WORDS:
Fen: a type of wetland, fens are a kind of mire.
Fabianism: British socialist organisation whose purpose is to advance the principles of socialism via gradualist and reformist means
Atavism: tendency to revert to ancestral type. In biology, an atavism is an evolutionary throwback, such as traits reappearing which had disappeared generations before.
jingoism: patriotism in the form of aggressive foreign policy. Jingoism also refers to a country's advocation of the use of threats or actual force

CLOSING LINE:
On the bank in the thickening dusk, in the will-o’ the wisp dusk, abandoned but vigilant, a motorcycle.

RATING: very good

FINISHED: 2014-September

Remembrance of Time Past, Marcel Proust, read by Neville Jason

I started reading this with Swan's Way but after that I switched to the audio read by Neville Jason who did an excellent job. It runs to 150 hours of listening. It took the narrator 45 days to complete the unabridged recording. Did I say that the narrator was 78 years old when he recorded this. The only other long complete recordings would be the complete Harry Potter, running 125 hours. (maybe this is not true anymore). The story follows the narrators life as he grows up into an adult and occurs in the Parisian high society. It was written between 1909 to 1922 and published 1913 and 1927. Historically the time period is the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War to the reverberations of the First World War. The writer is the master of the run on sentence. A single sentence can fill a whole page. Mr Jason did an excellent job of reading these long meandering sentences. The narrator also did an excellent job with the many characters. This is a French book read by an English narrator (he states he can't do French Accents) but he develops the characters.

What I didn't like: I had no appreciation for Marcel's love affairs. He was so immature and self centered. A lot of the story centered on homosexuality. Marcel did a lot of observing of other peoples lives.

What I liked; I liked a book about memory and aging. The character of the narrator is introduced to us as a boy who can't stand to be separated from his mother, through time we see him grow old until the last part where he reflects on aging. I thought this last volume was spot on in most ways. I liked seeing the process. As a child, there was not much history even though history is always occurring. As Marcel the narrator ages, he is fascinated by planes and there are zeppelins. The Dreyfus case also occurs and so the book addresses Jewish history and in the end of the book there is the intro of World War I.

I gave the book 3 stars and I don't see yet where reading or not reading this book is of any importance other than bragging rights but a lot of times with books like this, that opinion changes with remembrance of things past.

3 stars

Book: Kristin Lavransdatter
Author: Sigrid Undset
Published 1920

Rating: ★★★★★

Review: A story set in the 1300’s in Norway, telling the story of Kristin Lavransdatter from her childhood as the spoiled daughter of Lavrans to her old age in the cloister during the Black Plague.

There are three parts to this book; the Wreath, The Wife, and The Cross.

First Sentence When the earthly goods of Ivar Gjesling the Younger of Sundbu were divided up in the year 1306, his property at Sil was given to his daughter Ragnfrid and her husband Lavrans Bjorgulfson.

Last words Without thinking, they both walked as lightly and carefully as they could in the new snow.

I enjoyed reading about Norway, family life, Catholic Church and the plague. I thought the author did an excellent job with making the people real. They were fully developed characters and very real in their weaknesses and strengths.

Rating: Excellent (5 stars and a favorite)

Read: I started in July and finished in October, 99 days but I took many breaks. I do recommend the Nunnally translation. It won the PEN translation prize.

Book: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Author: Mark Twain
Published, 1885, first published in UK, 1884

I listened to the audio read by B. J. Harrison

I thought I had read this before, but now that I have reread it (or not), I can’t say that I remember a thing. This is an adventure, a quest, of Huckleberry Finn, a poor motherless boy with a drunken father who beats him and his adventure on the Mississippi River with the runaway slave, Jim. Jim is running away from slavery because he fears being sold south but ironically Jim and Huck head off, going further and further into slave country as they go down the river.

OPENING LINE: You don't know about me, without you have read a book by the name of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," but that ain't no matter.

QUOTES: "All right, then, I'll go to hell"- and tore it up.”

CLOSING LINE: I been there before.

The importance of this book is that it is the first American novel written in the vernacular of the characters living in the area along the river. It is a story about slavery but was written after slavery was abolished. It is a satire of entrenched racism. This book has been banned and may even still be banned because of its language and use of the racial slur “nigger” or more politely said, “the n word”. The book really is antiracist. Huckleberry Finn spends time on the raft with Jim who he promises not to turn in. Huck feels he is sinning by not turning in the runaway and finally reconciles by saying “all right, then, I’ll go to hell”. While on the raft, Huck gets to know a black man.

MY REACTION: as I said in the beginning, I was surprised not to remember anything about this book. I must have only read Tom Sawyer. so glad I decided to reread. I think it is definitely a young person’s novel. I liked the first part best, the trip with Jim down the river and I liked the part least where Tom joins Huck and play the prank on Tom’s relatives. The use of the “n” word is so frequent and with our current awareness that this word is distasteful, it was distracting. Because it is a classic adventure story that occurs on the Mississippi River, I do think it holds a special place in American literature. What I liked best was the River, the Mississippi River is such a great river character in literature.

I rated it 3 stars, mostly for enjoyment factor, I think it just didn’t work as well as it would have would I have been reading it in sixth grade.

Book: Solaris
Author: Stanislaw Lem
Published: 1961

Rating: ★★★★

I listened to the audio book which was released in 2011 and translated by Bill Johnston, providing the first actual translation from the Polish to English. The other translations were translated from the French which was translated from the Polish. This translation is also available in an e-book and is approved by the Lem estate. The audio was narrated by Alessandro Juliani and I think it was well done.

Lem the author, wrote a philosophical novel but Solaris also is a science fiction novel and it explores communication with an alien. The book starts with Kris Kelvin’s arrival by spaceship Promethus to the space station of Solaris. Solaris is an ocean and its atmosphere is not oxygenated. As Kelvin is flying to Solaris he misses several things he had hoped to see, the book starts with failure to perceive and communicate. When he arrives he is greeted with confusion, decline and disorder. One scientist is barricaded in and another is drunk and afraid. The man that Kris was to work with on the station has died.

May contain spoilers*************************
The people on the space station have “visitors”. Kelvin notices child sounds coming from the room where Dr. Sartorius is hiding. The other, Dr. Snaut talks about visitors and Kris notices his bloody knuckles. Kris also sees a giant black woman who is connected to the dead scientist. Soon Kris is visited by his own, Harey. We soon learn that Harie had been Kris’s partner and that she suicided after Kris had left her and told her she wasn’t brave enough to kill herself. Kris discovers the injection site where the poison was injected and her dress has no zipper. The ocean is creating these visitors from reading their minds. Kris understands this but becomes attached to this Harey.

There are many philosophical themes in this book, one being a defective God.

Themes: failures to perceive, breakdowns in communication, puzzling nature of reality and limits of science.

First sentence: At 1900 hours, ship’s time, I made my way to the launching bay.

Last words: I knew nothing, and I persisted in the faith that the time of cruel miracles was not past.

Comment on movie: I have not seen the movie. I understand George Clooney plays Kelvin. I also understand that the movie was close to the book but did not capture the author’s vision and therefore this is one case where reading the book may be beneficial to understanding the movie to its fullest.

Opinion: Very good

Read: October 2014

Book: The Birds
Author: Tarjei Vesaas
Translated: Torbjørn Støverud and Michael Barnes
Published: 1957
Rating: ★★★★

Review: The story is of two adult siblings living in a rural setting, Norway, though I don’t think it actually ever says it is Norway so this story could occur anywhere. There are two withered aspen in front of their place that others in the area refer to as Mattis and Hege. The two siblings. Mattis doesn’t know what this means. It is obvious that Mattis is a grown man but he thinks like a child. Mattis has some kind of cognitive disability. I think he might be considered autistic in this day but when this story is set, he is thought of as ‘simple’. Mattis has some misperceptions and feels others make fun of him. He has a lot of anxiety. We only see Hege from Mattis perspective and by what she says. Hege is growing old, she is trying to care for them by knitting sweaters. They must be in a tourist area. It's very quiet and beautiful. Mattis enjoys sitting on the water in his leaky boat lost in his thoughts.

First sentence It was evening.
Last words. How big or small that bird was, you couldn't really tell.

The story is about death; the woodcock, the aspen tree. The landscape is a big part of the writing.

My Opinion: Very Good
Read: October 2014

Book: Memoirs of a Peasant Boy
Author: Xosé Neira Vilas
Translated by Camilo Ogando Vásquez
Published: 1961, Buenes Aires, Argentina

This is a story of Galicia, an area in NW Spain, isolated and poor. It is the notebook of Balbino, a peasant boy. He writes about his day to day experiences and his musings. Balbino is very smart, his thoughts are full of richness and they give the reader a picture of this area and life. We know that Balbino was able to go to school. He also does some substitute teaching. He talks about the unfairness of having to take abuse from the landowners mean son. The joy of his friendship that is interrupted when the boy moves to America with his parents. He often mentions that he is a boy not meant to have good fortune. The author is Galician but he moved to Argentina before writing this book. Galician is a separate language and people from Spain. The author wrote in Galician. It was translated to English.

First sentence: I am….Balbino.

Quotes:
“Our life will keep on fermenting with strange, borrowed yeast.”

“because time both treats injuries and make trees rot.”

Last words: Let him take it away.

Rating: Very good, four stars from me, because of the poignancy of the story.

Some great review here. I'm glad you liked Kristen Lavransdatter as much as I did. Makes me think that I should look to your five-star reads for some more books I'd like.

seems the three of us have that one in common. I also saw that you rated Solaris highly. I have that here beckoning me over to the bookshelf now and then. It looks like it deserves a read.

Book: Kiss of the Spider Woman
Author: Manuel Puig, Argentinian
Published 1976
Translated from the Spanish by Thomas Colchie

Review: The story of two men in a prison in Argentina. One Molina who is there for sexual crimes and Valentin, there for Marxist revolutionary activity. The story starts with another story; the story of the Panther woman. During the imprisonment, Molino tells Valentin various film stories; The Panther woman, the Leni the spy, the Spinster, the Ugly Maid, and Zombie Woman, and last the Singer. Structure wise, this is a uniquely written book. The author tells it with dialogue, using -- to indicate a change in speaker. He also uses the subplots with the various movies and he also uses footnotes both actual (Freud and not factual, Taub). There is also italicized words that represent stream of conscious.

First Sentence: --Something a little strange, that’s what you notice, that she’s not a woman like all others.

Quotes:
“In a man’s life, which may be short and may be long, everything is temporary, nothing is forever.”
“It’s a question of learning to accept things as they come, and to appreciate the good that happens to you, even if it doesn’t last. Because nothing is forever.”

Last words: “No, Valentin, beloved, that will never take place, because this dream is short but this dream is happy.”

Rating: ★★★☆, very good

Read: October 2014

Book: Deadline in Athens (Late-Night News)
Author: Petros Markaris (Greece)
Translated by David Connolly
Published: 1995

Review: The story is a police procedural featuring Costas Haritos and the first of a series. The homicide squad chief is called to the scene of a murder. A famous woman journalist has been killed in the TV broadcasting studio just before she was to go on live with some sensational news. It becomes a struggle between the media and the police. The media is at odds with Haritos and he is nearly suspended. Of course there are twists and turns, the investigation is going in several directions. Is it a spurned lover who murders Janna? Is it an angry pederast that Janna’s journalistic investigation put in prison? Is it the Albanians and foreigners involved in illegal selling of organs and children? The killer can come as a surprise though I have to say I had suspected this one.

First sentence: Every morning at nine, we would stare at each other.

Quotes: When you’re a young woman, it’s your mother-in-law who doesn’t want you; when you’re old, it’s your son-in-law. The best age is between forty and fifty. It’s the age when they want you, but you don’t want them.

Last words: Till the next batch of stuffed tomatoes.

Rating: Very good, ★★★★

READ: October 28, 2014

Book: Bonjour Tristesse
Author: Françoise Sagen
Published: 1954, in French
Translated by: Irene Ash

Categories and Tags: 1001 Books, France, Father-daughter relationship

Review: a story written by a young woman about a time when she was 17 on holiday on the French Riviera with her playboy father and his girlfriend. A tale of self absorbed adolescence rings still true today. It is the author’s first novel, she was 18 when it was published.

First sentence: A strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sorrow.

Words:
demimondaine: sexually promiscuous
Cassandra-like: to feel ignored

Quotes: All the elements of a drama were to hand: a libertine, a demimondaine, and a strong-minded woman.

Last words: Something rises in me that I call to by name with closed eyes. Bonjour, Tristesse!

Rating: okay, ★★★, the rating respects the talented writing by this young author, age 18. The narrator annoyed me.

Read: 2014-Oct

Book: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
Author: Winifred Watson
Published: 1938

Categories/Tags: 1001 Books, Cinderella, romance
Themes: Women having second chances, adapting to change, moving on

REVIEW: This an enchanting tale that takes place over 24 hours. Miss Pettigrew is a middle aged (40) spinster who has been working as a governess and a pretty poor one. She doesn’t like the work. Sent to the wrong address, Pettigrew finds herself on an adventure with a rather amoral nightclub singer. Miss Pettigrew experiences a side of life she would have never imagined herself experiencing including drinking, make-up, dressing up in silk underwear and evening clothes and a taxi ride. This is a fairy tale with all the makings including the “they lived happily ever after”.

FIRST SENTENCE: Miss Pettigrew pushed open the door of the employment agency and went in as the clock struck a quarter past nine.

LAST WORDS: “I think,” said Miss Pettigrew, “I have a beau at last.”

RATING: very good(4)★★★★

READ: 2014-November

I happened upon "The Blindness of the Heart" in a library when I was out of town, so could not borrow the book. I had read 40 pages and was obsessed with it so I ordered it so I could finish it. I thought it was absolutely brilliant and unlike anything else I had read. I have not talked to one person I know who has even heard of it so it is nice to see that someone else appreciates it!

Book: The Forsyte Saga
Author: John Galsworthy
Audio read by: Fred Williams
Published 1906
Pages: 800
Tags/Categories; 1001 Books, Edwardian Years, England, Family, Marriage and Divorce

Rating: excellent 4.5 ★★★★

Review: This is the story of the Forsytes of England during the Victorian, Edwardian, and post WWI years and specifically about Soames’ marriage to Irene and how it affects the whole family for several generations. It is an interesting look at a family but also about a historical time and changes that occur. Changes in the roles of men and women, changes in transportation, changes in manners. This is a story which is mostly told through inner dialogue as the family has so many secrets and things they won’t talk about. The audio was well done. The narrator had a nice English accent and was able to give the characters their own voice.

First Sentence: Those privileged to be present at a family festival of the Forsytes have seen that charming and instructive sight--an upper middle-class family in full plumage.

Quotes: When a man is very old and quite out of the running, he loves to feel secure from the rivalries of youth, for he would still be first in the heart of beauty. (indian summer of a forsyte: I)

Last words: And only one thing really troubled him, sitting there--the melancholy craving in his heart--because the sun was like enchantment on his face and on the clouds and on the golden birch leaves, and the wind's rustle was so gentle, and the yew-tree green so dark, and the sickle of a moon pale in the sky. He might wish and wish and never get it--the beauty and the loving in the world!

Read: 2014, October/November

Book: Fingersmith
Author: Sarah Waters
Published 2002
Tags: 1001 Books, Historical Fiction, Mystery
Rating; ★★★☆> good (3.5)

Review: The story of two orphans, Sarah Tinder raised in the Borough, Lant Street, near the Thames. The other orphan is Maud Lilly, raised at first in a mad house and later around age 10 by her mother’s brother at Briar. Sarah is the fingersmith, a thief, a person good at stealing. What comes into the house on Lant Street, does not leave the same. The first part really ends with a twist. I was quite surprised and was really liking the book. The next part was not as entertaining, mystery does continue to build but this is where we learn more about Maud and her situation. It is unsettling. The next part again gets better. I like the sections where Susan is the narrator best. She is a very sympathetic character.

First sentence: My name, in those days, was Susan Tinder.

Quotes:
“Everything that came into our kitchen looking like one sort of thing, was made to leave it again looking quite another,”

Last Words: She put the lamp upon the floor, spread the paper flat; and began to show me the words she had written one by one.

Finished: 2014-November

>106 Kristelh: Agreed. I loved the first part and then got a little tired about all the convoluted twists and turns. I know it was supposed to be an homage to the Victorian/Dickensian novel but it was a bit too much. I still have an overall favorable impression of the book, though.

Book: The Graduate
Author: Charles Webb
Published: 1963

Review: This is the story of a young man who has just graduated from an eastern college and has everything before him including a grant to go on for his graduate degree. He is smart, good looking and in an existential crisis. His parents are wealthy (obviously) and indulgent and proud until they realize their son is a lazy slob doing nothing then they get a little concerned. I disliked Ben from the beginning of the book and nothing changed at the end. I didn't like his parents and found it hard to believe that his parents would behave the way they did in the early sixties. If you think about 1963 and the author writing this story which was the post war era and perhaps the beginning of changes in family life then maybe the work deserves recognition but I really don't get why it was included as one of the 1001 books. The author's writing is sparse and reminded me of Hemingway a bit. It really was a book made for the movie even though it wasn't the author's intent.

First Sentence: Benjamin Braddock graduated from a small Eastern college on a day in June.

I have no quotes or any special works from this work.

Last words: The bus began to move.

Rating: 2 1/2 stars

Book: The Summer Book
Author: Tove Jansson
Translated from the Swedish by Thomas Teal
Published: 1972
Categories/Tags: grandmothers, aging, relationships, islands, environment, philosophy

Review: This is a tale of a grandmother and her 6 year old granddaughter who spend summers on an island in the Gulf of Finland. The little girl is Sophie, her mother is dead and her dad is there also. The intro is by Esther Freud and added to the enjoyment of this book. The relationship between the two is not perfect and I like that. Grandmother has her bad days and she doesn't pretend otherwise. She admits to her problems and sometimes she acts like the child. Grandmother in her wisdom recognizes the fears of the granddaughter. There is a lot of philosophy in this book as well as humor.

First line: It was an early, very warm morning in July, and it had rained during the night.

Quotes:
Grandmother walked up the bare granite and thought about birds in general. It seemed to her no other creature had the same dramatic capacity to underline and perfect events -- the shifts in the seasons and the weather, the changes that run through people themselves.

We get comfort when we die, thats the whole idea. You can believe what you like, but you must learn to be tolerant.

Smell is important. It reminds a person of all the things he's been through; it is a sheath of memories and security.

Last words: "Isn't that funny," Grandmother said. "It's only my heart, it's not a herring boat at all." For a long time she wondered if she should go back to bed or stay where she was. She thought5 that she would stay for a while.

Rating: ★★★★☆

2014-November

Book: Elizabeth Costello
Author: J. M. Coetzee
Published: 2003

Review: I enjoyed this one. It is the second Coetzee for me. In this book, the author writes about an aging woman author. He covers topics of realism, African literature, animal rights, humanities, religion (Gods, God). These could be essays rather than a complete story but they are connected by the protagonist, Elizabeth, who is telling or thinking the essays. I found it interesting that this male author chose a woman to write about writing. I also learned that Coetzee, considered to be an author of South Africa, lives in Australia. Elizabeth Costello lives in Australia. This book examines African literature and whether African literature is different because the African tells the story from oral traditions. The animal rights section wasn't so good and as those that heard the essay were offended, it was offensive. The argument of humanity verses religion was most interesting. The author examines Catholic religion and humanity through a visit to African by Elizabeth as the guest of her sister, who is a Sister (nun). Mostly this book is about writing. It names many authors and works and Elizabeth is most famous for a book that she wrote about Marion Bloom, wife of Leopold Bloom, principal character of Ulysses by James Joyce. Which will be the seasonal read in January.

Themes
African literature
Animal rights
Textual studies...classics, humanists
Crucifixion

First line: There is first of all the problem of the opening, namely, how to get us from where we are, which is, as yet, nowhere, to the far bank.

Quotes and words:
She is even cruel, in a way that women can be but men seldom have the heart.

Or has evil become colorless and odorless, like so much of the rest of the moral world?

Words:
Factotum: A factotum is a general servant or a person having many diverse activities or responsibilities.

Dogsbody: a person who is given boring, menial tasks to do.

Novel:
Nobel Prize-winning South African author J.M. Coetzee argued that, “The word novel, when it entered the languages of Europe, had the vaguest meaning; it meant the form of writing that was formless, that had no rules, that made up its own rules as it went along.”

Exiguous: small in size or amount

abattoir: slaughterhouse

Last words: Drowning we write out of our separate fates. Save us. Your obedient servant, Elizabeth C. This 11 September, AD 1603.

Rating: very good(4)★★★★

Read: 2014-December

Book:Chocky

Author: John Wyndham

Published: 1968

Review: This is a story a science fiction story. A family; mother, father, adopted son and daughter who live in England. One day, the father notices his son having a sort of debate with noone. He is just turned 12 but all of a sudden seems to have an invisible friend like his sister did when she was small. The father and mother both deal with this situation in their own ways but also are obviously very loving and supportive of their son. The theme is that of aliens or extraterrestrials and their interaction with others. Another theme included a critique of wasteful use of finite energy sources with inefficient engines. “Most of your power is being used to build machines to consume power faster and faster, while your sources of power remain finite.” The author also briefly touched on the dangers. The government and/or big business wanting to take advantage of a small boy and an alien to the point that they kidnapped him and did medical procedures without the knowledge or permission of his parents. Its simple little story both entertaining and fun. It was written in the early years of environmental concerns and big brother government.

First words: It was in the spring of the year that Matthew reached twelve that I first became aware of Chocky.

Last words: They had made a nice job of it. It looked just as if it had always been inscribed: Awarded to Chocky for a valorous deed.

Rating: I liked this story, it was easy to read but simple almost written more on a child’s level. I'd rate it very good, good (3.5) ★★★☆

Read: 2014-December

Book: The Passion

Author: Jeanette Winterson

Published: 1987

Tags: 1001 Books,

Review: The story is set in the time of Napoleon and features Henri, a young man who loves Napoleon and cooks for him and a young woman Villanelle, from Venice who loses her heart to another woman. Henri and Villanelle meet up in the snows of Russia. It is a story of passion. Passions of Napoleon, passions of Villanelle and passions of Henri. The writing is beautiful written and of a style, magical realism.

First words: It was Napoleon who had such a passion for chicken that he kept his chefs working around the clock. What a kitchen that was, with birds in every state of undress; some still cold and slung over hooks, some turning slowly on the spit, but most in wasted piles because the Emperor was busy.

Quotes: “I'm telling you stories. Trust me.”

“I think now that being free is not being powerful or rich or well regarded or without obligations but being able to love. To love someone else enough to forget about yourself even for one moment is to be free.”

"the difference between inventing a lover and falling in love. The one is about you, the other about someone else."

Last words: I'm telling you stories. Trust me.

Rating: very good(4)★★★★

Read: 2014-December

Book: Play It As It Lays

Author: Joan Didion

Narrated: Laauren Fortgang

Published: 1970

Review: This is a story about “nothing”. Set in the sixties and mostly hollywood, the story tells about a young woman’s journey into madness. There is nothing happy about this book and thankfully it is short. I wanted to read it because I loved Ms Didion’s book, A Year of Magical Thinking which was a memoir. This was a novel. Still, Ms Didion’s writing is delivered. I like her writing. This story is told in every increasing sparseness as the protagonist slips further and further into depression or madness. I would compare this to The Yellow Wallpaper and The Bell Jar.

First Words: What makes Iago evil? some people ask.

Quotes: One thing in my defense, not that it matters: I know something Carter never knew, or Helene, or maybe you. I know what "nothing" means, and keep on playing.

Last Words: Why, BZ would say. Why not, I say.

Rating: good (3.5) ★★★☆

Read: 2014-December

Breakfast at Tiffany’s

by Truman Capote

Narrated by Michael C. Hall

Published: 1958

Rating: good (3.5) ★★★☆>

The story of Holly Golightly (traveling). This is another of several books for me that features despair and nothing. Holly had no attachments, nothing was permanent. She was an identity she created as she went. She never names her cat. Her life was not permanent. The narrator tells us this story, he is unnamed aspiring author (could it be Truman Capote). The various characters had funny names Trawler, Tomato, Spanella. This novella is a quick and interesting read but more famously known for the movie of the same title starring Audrey Hepburn. It’s the third work of the author’s that I’ve read and I’ve enjoyed them all.

First Words: I am always drawn back to places where I have lived, the houses and their neighborhoods.

Last words: Flanked by potted plants and framed by clean lace curtains, he was seated in the window of a warm-looking room: I wondered what his name was, for I was certain he had one now, certain he'd arrived somewhere he belonged. African hut or whatever, I hope Holly has, too.

If you want to read this, there is a pdf file available on line

Read: 2014-December

Blood Meridian
Author: Cormac McCarthy
Published, 1985

Rating: very good(4)★★★★
Category/Tags: 1001 Books, American literature, Western, violent, historical fiction

Review: This is a novel of the American West, the true story not the romantic story. In the style of McCarthy, it is violent and sparse, Biblical tone and in the style of no punctuation that McCarthy is known. It follows the Kid who leaves home at 14 and joins up with a gang that is murdering Indians for their scalps. It is based on the historical events that took place in 1850s along the Texas-Mexico border. I asked myself, can this really be true or did the author use poetical license so he could sell books. This is what wiki has to say… “McCarthy conducted considerable research to write the book. Critics have repeatedly demonstrated that even brief and seemingly inconsequential passages of Blood Meridian rely on historical evidence. The Glanton gang segments are based on Samuel Chamberlain's account of the group in his memoir My Confession: The Recollections of a Rogue, which he wrote during the latter part of his life. Chamberlain rode with John Joel Glanton and his company between 1849 and 1850. The novel's antagonist Judge Holden appeared in Chamberlain's account, but his true identity remains a mystery. Chamberlain does not openly appear in the novel.”

Themes: Man is violent, the war like nature of man.

First Sentence: See the child.

Last Words: He says he will never die.