Ursula Is Hopeful about 2013

Hello everyone!

Last year I fell off the LibraryThing wagon, although not off the reading one. I didn't make it to 75 ... or to 50, ending up with 47 books read on the year. But I feel pretty good about what I managed to get through anyway.

My favorite read of 2012 was Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey, probably followed closely by The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. Those are both from the 1001 Books list, which I'm continuing to work my way through.

Currently, I'm reading the following: The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing and I'm listening to an audio version of The Great Gatsby, which is a re-read for me (I have had 30 minutes left to go for about 3 weeks and I just haven't gotten around to finishing it - argh!). I mostly try to keep one of the 1001 Books going at the same time as another non-list book.
I'm planning to be more active in the group this year, and I've gotten in the habit of reviewing the books I read, so I'll be sharing those.

And just to jazz up the place a little, here's a bit of art from the side of a vintage store in Denver.



~~~~January~~~~
A Study in Scarlet - finished Jan. 4 -
The Thirty Nine Steps - finished Jan. 7 - (review)
Crocodile on the Sandbank - finished Jan. 9 - (review)
Crash - finished Jan. 14 - (review)
Ship of Fools - finished Jan. 19 - (review)
Raylan (audio) - finished Jan. 22 - (review)
The Sign of the Four - finished Jan. 24 - (review)
A Clash of Kings - finished Jan. 25 - (review)
Cloud Atlas - finished Jan. 27 - (review)
To Say Nothing of the Dog - finished Jan. 31 - (review)

January Total: 10
January Stats

~~~~February~~~~
The Immoralist - finished Feb. 3 - (review)
The Stone Diaries - finished Feb. 6 - (review)
Cleopatra: A Life (audio) - finished Feb. 7 - (review)
Eat to Live - finished Feb. 10 -
Schindler's List - finished Feb. 11 - (review)
The Glass Key - finished Feb. 14 - (review)
The Thin Red Line - finished Feb. 18 - (review)
Anatomy of a Disappearance - finished Feb. 19 - (review)
Tarzan of the Apes - finished Feb. 23 - (review)

February Total: 9
February Stats

~~~~March~~~~
The Poisoner's Handbook - finished Mar. 1 - (review)
Winter's Bone - finished Mar. 2 - (review)
The Corrections - finished Mar. 9 - (review)
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - finished Mar. 14 - (review)
The Story of Lucy Gault - finished Mar. 17 - (review)
Tristram Shandy - finished Mar. 18 - (review)
Washington: A Life (audio) - finished Mar. 21 - (review)
The Black Dahlia - finished Mar. 25 - (review)
Antic Hay - finished Mar. 31 - (review)

March Total: 9
March Stats

~~~~April~~~~
Everything Is Illuminated - finished Apr. 6 - (review)
The Third Son - finished Apr. 8 - (review)
Cat's Eye - finished Apr. 13 - (review)
John Adams (audio) - finished Apr. 17 - (review)
Tomcat in Love - finished Apr. 18 - (review)
Scorpion Soup - finished Apr. 23 - (review)
Galore by Michael Crummey - finished Apr. 27 - (review)
You're Not Doing It Right (audio) - finished Apr. 28 - (review)

April Total: 8
April Stats

~~~~May~~~~
The Vast Unknown - finished May 1 - (review)
All the Names - finished May 5 -
Flaubert's Parrot - finished May 9 -
Watchmen - finished May 27 -
The Drunken Botanist - finished May 30 - (review)

May Total: 5
May Stats

~~~~June~~~~
The Absolutist - finished June 1 -
The Butcher Boy - finished June 12 -
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail - finished June 20 -

Pages read: 12667
Time listened: 98 hours, 52 minutes

Welcome!

Welcome back, Ursula - you were missed!

Thanks for the welcome drneutron and Crazymamie!

I fell down an internet rabbit hole last year and never seemed to get around to LT, but this year will be different.

January's gonna be kind of crazy because my kids have been here visiting and then I need to finish up some art I'm working on by the 15th, but after that it should be (relatively) smooth sailing.

I finished A Study in Scarlet today. It was ... not really structured at all how I was expecting. I didn't expect the book to sort of abruptly take a right turn into a fully detailed background story, but it was interesting at least. My next Holmes will be The Hound of the Baskervilles, but for the moment I'm going to take a break from that world and start something else from the 1001 list - maybe The Immoralist.

Finished The Thirty Nine Steps today. It was interesting, and pretty much a page-turner, but I didn't feel like it was anything particularly special. I've reviewed it.

I recently got access to the library's ebooks again and so I checked out Crocodile on the Sandbank because I didn't have to put a hold on it. I'll be reading that along with my continuing reading of Ship of Fools. I'm about halfway through that one now, and it's got kind of a huge cast of characters so it's not the most casual reading experience, you have to keep track of everyone.

Welcome back, Ursula!

Thank you for the welcome!

At the halfway point, I can't decide if Crocodile on the Sandbank is going to end up being a supernatural mystery or a Scooby Doo one.

I'm also trying to decide what book from the 1001 list to tackle next. I feel like I've been reading a lot of books written in or set in the late 1800s/early 1900s and I might want to read something on the more modern side before diving back into the past.

Hi Ursula,

from the 1001 list, you should try The Shining, Watchmen or The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Stephen King, Alan Moore, Haruki Murakami) if you are seeking for modern titles :)

>8 JqnOC: Thanks for the recs, but I've read all of those already. :) That means they're good recommendations, though, especially since The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is one of my favorites of all time!

I found, Ursula! Sounds like you are off to a good start. I decided last year to read all the Sherlock Holmes works in order, so 'A Study in Scarlet' is still fresh in my mind. Like you, I was completely taken aback by the abrupt veering into the background story. Not that it wasn't interesting in an of itself, but it seemed a touch out of place.

I like the artwork at the top of your thread. Isn't it funny how it's immediately recognizable even though the whole face is not there?

I thought The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was terrific too!

I hope you find something you really want to read soon.

Third book down: Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters. Review/thoughts here.

Well, that was a mostly charming, inoffensive little mystery. I might read more of them eventually. (Disclaimer: I often say that, but revisit authors relatively rarely in practice.)

rosalita: thanks for stopping by! Yeah, it was interesting to read, but at first I was wondering if I'd somehow clicked into another book by accident on the Kindle! And about the artwork, it's interesting to me how you can deconstruct things like the Mona Lisa that we're so familiar with even further and it would still be recognizable. Our brains are fascinating things, always looking for connections.

alcottacre: I gave that one to my boyfriend-at-the-time (now husband) to read, and he's turning into a Murakami completist. I think at this point he's read more of his books than I have. Thanks for the positive book thoughts ... I'll stumble on something I want to read eventually - I just keep going until I fall into something good!

I recently read a short essay by Andre Gide and would like to read one of his novels, so your mention of The Immoralist interests me. I'll be curious to see what you think, if you do decide to read it.

Linda: I will definitely get around to The Immoralist soonish. I got sidetracked with a different 1001 book for the time being (Crash), but I'll be ready to bounce back to the early 20th century soon. Literally the only thing I know about the book is that James Dean starred in a play version of it.

In other reading news, I'm closing in on the end of Ship of Fools and about halfway through The Sign of Four. I don't normally have 3 books going at once, but I was going to read the Sherlock Holmes short stories ... and then realized that they skip forward quite a bit from where I left off in A Study in Scarlet, so I guess I'm going in order for now.

Hi Ursula, I'm glad to see you back here again. It looks like I've read 163 books out of the 1001 books collection. Wow, lots of good reading left for me! I don't necessarily choose my books for that reason but I do like tracking them.

I hope you have a year of good reads!

Hi Donna! I can't resist a list. I have had the 1001 Books book since it originally came out and I've periodically made concerted efforts at adding to my total. I think I'm finally getting serious about it, but not so serious that I'm not going to read anything else or something crazy like that! I need some balance. But as I'm reading, I'm noticing interconnections and references in many places. For instance, both of my last reads, The Thirty Nine Steps (on the list) and Crocodile on the Sandbank (just for fun), mentioned H. Rider Haggard, who has a couple of books on the list. So I'm looking forward to delving into those pretty soon.

I hope your year of reading is going well, too!

#12: I enjoy the Amelia Peabody series, but Crocodile on the Sandbank is not the best book in the series by any stretch of the imagination. I hope it did not put you off giving the other books a try.

I've been reading the Sherlock Holmes stories in order as well -- it does make a difference, I think, as a number of them refer (even just in passing) to events of previous stories.

Love the picture!

alcottacre: It definitely didn't put me off, but I'm also just not much of a series reader. I'll go back and read at least another one or two, I just have no idea when I might get around to it.

dk_phoenix: I guess I probably wouldn't have minded it so much if I'd just jumped right in with The Hound of the Baskervilles or the short stories, but since I started at the beginning, jumping around after that seems weird.

banjo123: Thanks! I may put up more eventually, but currently I am taking a lot of photos on film ("do they still make that stuff?!") so I get less instant gratification than with digital.

#20: I understand the not knowing when you are going to get around to reading something. That happens to me all the time!

... Especially now that I made it to the front of the holds list for A Clash of Kings. I read the first one last year and I found it deeply flawed but okay. Fantasy is out of my usual reading purview. but I picked it up to see what all the fuss was about. Then my husband and I got the Game of Thrones series through Netflix (we're almost done), and I figured I might as well read the second one to prepare for the second season, whenever it becomes available.

I finished Crash this morning. Reviewed here. It was a study in style and detachment, with perhaps a side of misplaced attachment to technology. Most certainly not a book for everyone.

Hi Ursula, stopping by your thread to drop off a star. Happy reading in 2013!

Hi Ursula - You're off to a good start. I am going to read my first Murakami soon; my book group chose Kafka on the Shore for our Feb. read.

>24 JechtShot:: Thanks! Visits and stars are always appreciated!

>25 BLBera:: I hope you like it. That was my second Murakami, after The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I'm hoping to fit more of his books into my reading this year.

Some of what I do when I'm not reading:



Meanwhile, I'm continuing through A Clash of Kings and have somehow also found myself at the front of the 250-person-long wait list for Cloud Atlas. (It's a mystery to me how that happened, some kind of glitch, I guess?) So it's going to be a busy 3 weeks. Also near the end of Ship of Fools - these books with giant casts of characters all at once will be the death of me.

Ursula, that is a beautiful drawing! You are a talented artist, something I always wanted to be. Thank you for sharing your artistry with us.

Thank you so much rosalita! Drawing and reading are the two things I've done pretty consistently through the years.

Finished Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter. About fools on a ship, unsurprisingly! I guess it's like life on a ship - sometimes engrossing, sometimes tedious, often ugly. Not my favorite read, but not awful. More detailed thoughts are in my review.

Onward.

Ursula, great review of Ship of Fools, thumbs up! I don't foresee adding this one to my wishlist, but I did enjoy reading your thoughts on the book.

Hi Ursula - Nice drawing. Nice review of Ship of Fools. I've liked some Porter stories I read, so I might give this a try some day.

>31 JechtShot: Thanks! I try to give an idea of what a book is like, as well as my opinion. That way people can get some feel for if it's a "different strokes for different folks" sort of situation.

>32 BLBera: Thank you! I picked up Ship of Fools because I knew Porter was on the 1001 List, but that's not the one on there. Didn't matter though - the other reason was because the book came up in a Jeopardy clue and I'd never even heard of it.

Hi Ursala! Nice to meet you, thanks for visiting my thread! A Study in Scarlet is an interesting read so far and I kind of enjoy the old fashioned phraseology. My eldest son read and loved all of the Sherlock Holmes series when he was young teen, so I thought it well past time I read on of Arthur Conan Doyle's books. I'm not sure if I'll read them in order - I might read The Hounds of Baskerville as I've read that it is quite interesting. It's also on the 1001 list , not that I follow that especially, but it's nice to get one of the 1001 books under one's belt here and there.

>34 vancouverdeb: Deb, nice to meet you as well! I kind of wonder how I skipped reading them when I was a teenager since I went through Agatha Christie and Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason books along with many others. I wasn't going to read them in order - I actually intended to just read the ones on the 1001 Books list (besides Hound of the Baskervilles are the short stories in the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes collection), but I figured I should start at the beginning. And then since there was only one more between that and Hound, I just went ahead with it.

I hope you enjoy Cloud Atlas. I have read it twice and loved it both times. It is one of those books that you take something different from every time you read it, I think.

>36 alcottacre: I'm enjoying it quite a lot, although portioning it out a bit as I find I am devouring it when I do pick it up to read.

Oh, and also the Australian Open continues to cut down on my bedtime reading time. Back to normal next week, though.

I was doing a bit of an experiment, trying an audio book. I have tried listening to them before, but mostly the time I had then was while I was driving to and from work. My experience then was that either I would miss my exit because my attention was being held by the book, or I'd get home and realize I hadn't really heard any of it at all. But I have been watching tv shows and movies on Netflix while I draw (doing something else at the same time helps keep me from pausing every 30 seconds to go to some site on the net), and although it's been working pretty well, it's best if it's something I'm not that tempted to really watch. So it seemed like an audio book might be the answer.

My first attempt was with Elmore Leonard's Raylan. I am a huge fan of the TV show Justified and so I figured this would be a light thing to listen to.

The listening-while-drawing part was a success - I was able to follow the book and still get work done. The actual book was less so. I didn't particularly like the narrator, and I also don't know that Leonard's dialogue-heavy style really translates well to audio anyway. But overall the experiment can be considered a success: I'll probably (one day) go back and read the stories with the origin of Raylan's character, and I'll also be trying something else on audio.

I guess that counts as book 6 on the year. It feels sort of weird to count a book that I didn't physically read, but I'll have to get over that feeling if I intend to continue consuming books in that format.

Ursula, as far as I am concerned audiobooks count every bit as much as a paper book, or an ebook. So, congrats on No. 6, although I'm sorry it wasn't a completely successful audiobook experience. Some books just don't seem to lend themselves to the audio format, and sometimes the narrator isn't able to do the book justice. It sounds like you have a good setup for future reading/listening, though, if you can find a good book!

rosalita: Well, exactly. As I was thinking about it, I would definitely feel like it counted if someone read it out loud to me ... and what is an audio book if not precisely that?! Next, I'm going to try some non-fiction, with Cleopatra: A Life by Stacey Schiff. I figured it was a good way to get some non-fiction in because I don't really feel like I'm up to alternating a book like that with A Clash of Kings and Cloud Atlas - I have my hands full enough as it is!

I have found audiobooks to be a good way to absorb more dense or complex books, for some reason. I'm not sure I'd have finished Beau Geste to this day if I'd waited to read it on paper.

I'm finding that I'm taking in the information better than I thought I might (I don't think of myself as a very auditory learner). Also, it's surprisingly all right to listen to while I run. I always figured I needed music for that, or that my mind would wander or something. You know that commercial where the guy is going for a run and he's listening to Moby Dick? That seemed like a terrible idea to me before, but maybe I'm a convert.

And toss another book on the "finished" pile - I came to the end of The Sign of the Four today. Now I'm finally ready to read The Hound of the Baskervilles, although simultaneously not ready at all. I'm kind of Holmes'd out at the moment. I didn't really review this one because talk about beating a dead horse! However, I also like to listen to myself type, so I at least had to say a few words about it.

Tonight, I finished A Clash of Kings. I liked it less than the first one, which pushes it below the point of "average" for me. My not-really-a-review is posted. They don't still pay writers by the word, do they? Because that would explain some things about this one for me.

But hey, I finished it, and now on to greener pastures. What those are, I haven't entirely decided yet. Still reading Cloud Atlas, still listening to Cleopatra: A Life. Nearly finished with another drawing.

Also tonight, I watched the movie version of The Thirty Nine Steps. It bore only a passing resemblance to the book, but had a surprising (to me) amount of humor to it.

Loved your "not-really-a-review"! I haven't read this one yet, but is still in the queue. Guessing I will chuckle a bit when I get to the unnecessary descriptions of woodland creatures. Thanks for the laugh!

"Ways to make the book shorter:
-cut ridiculously unnecessary descriptions. Example - someone saw a rabbit, "brown and fat. It had long ears and a twitching nose." Yes, I know what a rabbit is. I don't need details unless it's 8 feet tall, purple, or has 7 legs

>44 JechtShot: Ha, thanks! I mean, seriously, we know what deer and rabbits and whatever are. Save the detailed descriptions for the dragons or something!

Hope you enjoy it when you get around to it - at a glance, the reviews seem pretty mixed. But like I said, I'll probably read the next one anyhow. He's managed to hook me on the "wanting to know what happens" front, even if I'm not really sold on the writing.

I am not touching the George R.R. Martin books until he sees fit to finish the series. I hate that he leaves his readers hanging for years on end.

>46 alcottacre: I guess if they keep on renewing "Game of Thrones," he'll sort of have a deadline to finish. I have no intention of reading them any faster than is required by the series. They're not very good.

But they make a good TV show!

However, I also like to listen to myself type
This made me laugh and shake my head in recognition, Ursula. I've never managed to phrase it so elegantly, though.

rosalita: Good to know I'm not alone! (Where would the internet be without people like us?!)

Book #9 down is Cloud Atlas. Wow.

Oh, you want more than that? Well, I loved it. Not quite unreservedly, but pretty close. You can read my kinda-review if you're interested. Aside from what's in there, I just want to say again that I'm so grateful for keeping myself in a bubble regarding what goes on in most books. I had the vaguest idea that this one had something to do with reincarnation and that was it. Being able to just fall into this one and go along for the ride was a great experience.

Next up ... ? I've got a couple of holds that came through from the library - To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis and The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett.

Ursula - Cloud Atlas is one I think needs to be read more than once. There's so much to notice, think about, etc. Wow describes it perfectly. Did you see the movie? I thought it was good... considering that I never thought the book could be made into a movie.

I didn't see the movie - I suppose I might eventually, but I really, really, really hate Tom Hanks, so I also might not.

I don't like the idea of books that need to be read more than once, but I can see that it might be rewarding to read this one again someday.

>27 ursula: nice drawing

Thank you very much, Paul!

Looks like I will probably close out January with 9 books finished. To Say Nothing of the Dog is moving along quickly, but I don't think I'll get through it in the next day.

Welcome, so read on till you have something to say about that dog...

Oh, there's plenty to say about the dog!

I may actually finish it today after all.

The other thing I want to try to do over the next few days is transfer over books and reviews I'd posted on GoodReads. I had a while when I used that site exclusively, and it's driving me crazy that things are split between here and there.

How about that - I did finish it after all. My review is up.

So let's talk about January.

I finished 10 books. There's no way I'm maintaining that pace for the duration of the year, but it's a nice cushion at least.
I read 1 physical book (Ship of Fools), 1 audio book (Raylan), and 8 books on Kindle.
Books were by 9 distinct authors - 7 men and 2 women.
My reading totaled 3001 pages and 6 hours, 16 minutes of listening time.
The earliest work was from 1887 (A Study in Scarlet), and the most recent from 2004 (Cloud Atlas).
This month, it was 100% fiction.

You have done well. If that's your pace there is no reason why you should change that.

Did you actually read a first edition from 1887 of Doyle's book or just stating the first year of publishment?

Well, I don't think it really is my pace as I've never in my life read more than 50 books in a year. Though I realize this year could be different. I'll just leave it at this - I'll be surprised if I manage to keep that up.

Nah, just going by year of publication. I'm not into antiquarian books and don't care at all when the actual editions were published.

Today, I finished The Immoralist, which I found surprisingly enjoyable (somewhere I'd gotten the impression that this was an unpopular book from the 1001 list). My review is posted. It's not long, but for the click-averse, the gist of it is that I appreciated the descriptive writing, thought it posed some interesting philosophical questions, and marked quite a few quotations. Here is one:

"I hoped at first to find a rather more direct comprehension of life in one or two novelists and poets; but if they really had such a comprehension, it must be confessed they did not show it; most of them, I thought, did not really live - contented themselves with appearing to live, and were on the verge of considering life merely as a vexatious hindrance to writing."

While listening to Cleopatra: A Life, I googled around for some info about her children and ran across this article from last year about a sculpture of her twins. Also contains 2000-year-old spoilers for what happens to her kids.

I expect to finish The Stone Diaries today. We'll see how the last little bit goes, but I don't think it's going to end up something I like very much. After this, I'll start on The Glass Key, which has been waiting patiently, but the library loan will be up soon.

In other news, a couple of days ago they identified the remains they thought were Richard III. Seems like they are, indeed, Richard III. And yikes, that is definitely a very curved spine.

Blargh.

Finished and reviewed The Stone Diaries.

Onward.

Ursula, I couldn't even finish 'The Stone Diaries' so I feel your pain! Bravo for slugging your way through it. Your review really captured the things I didn't care for about the book.

rosalita: Thank you for saying that! I read some things about the book, and some reviews, and I was starting to think maybe I was just crazy. I know that it's not a one-book-fits-all world, but sometimes you start to wonder if you're just missing something. I even spent a while this afternoon contemplating the blurbs on the book and trying to mold my perceptions to make them describe my experience of it ... it didn't work. ;)

I just finished listening to Cleopatra: A Life. I'll pull together some coherent thoughts later, but for now I just have to say: Mark Antony was kind of a dope, wasn't he?

I wish you a quiet weekend

Thank you, Paul.

Weekends around here are much like any other day, as neither my husband nor I have M-F jobs.

In reading news, I posted my thoughts on Cleopatra: A Life - review link above in message 1.

Also, I finished reading Eat to Live and will be embarking on some dietary changes based on that, as well as trying out some of the recipes in the book. The author's bottom line is that we should all be eating much more fruits, vegetables, legumes, etc and a whole lot less (or no) dairy and meat. And a lot less grains too, but it's not necessary to cut them out completely. He advocates having the majority of your calories come from foods that have a high nutrient-per-calorie ratio, and it's pretty hard to argue with it when you put it that way.

Alas, I love cheese far too much to give up dairy!

>69 thornton37814: Me too. I can't imagine giving it up completely, but I'm going to come close for now. In theory, if you eat the high nutrient-per-calorie foods first, you'll have far less room for the other stuff, so we'll see if that makes it okay or leaves me feeling deprived.

Oh dear, not getting any yoghurt or cheese ?? what should I east then. If my wife wouldn't cook Korean I would live from those life saving ingredients. Well, I better not read that book ... or maybe just then when eating fondue or raclette?

Yesterday I didn't have any cheese, though I had a minimal amount of yogurt. I wouldn't have thought I could survive it (or want to survive it ...) but honestly, I didn't miss it. Ask me again in a week. :)

On a more serious note, I finished Schindler's List yesterday. I am the only person on earth who hasn't seen the movie, so I can't compare it to anything. The book was interesting, but I didn't really feel much from it or get involved with it. As I said in my review, I really think that my lack of a response to it has to do with my visit to Dachau a couple of years ago, which affected me very much. Reading this just pales in comparison.

You are not alone in not having seen Schindler's List...

I haven't seen it, either!

I saw Schindler's List years after it was on in the cinemas, and I thought I was the last one!

Ursula, I read your review of The Stone Diaries, which I have seen around LT...I think I'm just going to cross it off my "maybe" list, as it seems to be exactly the sort of thing I wouldn't like :-)

Paul, Rosalita - I guess there are 3 of us in the club after all!

Susan - My husband said, "how did you manage not to see it?!" But I think it came out in Oscar season 1993, when I was pregnant and didn't really feel like going to see it. And after that, I was just never in the mood to rent it.

The Stone Diaries was a situation where I kept looking at the blurbs on the book and the text on the back and trying to relate what they said to the book, but I just had to conclude they were reading something different than I was.

Here's one for the ages: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/feb/13/libraries-horrible-histories-terry-d...

Children's author Terry Deary says that libraries are "no longer relevant." He continues on to say that authors need to get paid, and they're no longer "Enid Blyton, middle-class women indulging in a pleasant little hobby."

Book #16 on the year, and #105 for the 1001 list down: The Glass Key.

I didn't like it. There's more Hammett on the list, so we'll see if I like that any better when I get around to it (sometime between now and when I die). My review is up.

>77 ursula: I am still a librarian and I don't see how students would survive without our services. And I remember having come across many books I borrowed as a child from our local library. Why read Terry's books when they are not in the library?

#77: I read the article yesterday, and the furore of comments underneath it, but I can see his point although I don't agree with all of it. Mostly, while I do agree that we are no longer in the impoverished Victorian times when few people had access to education or books, there are still a lot of people who fail to take advantage of what education has to offer, and whose children grow up in homes where books and learning aren't valued. And it's the children I feel sorry for. They shouldn't be punished because of their useless parents. If libraries disappeared they would have nothing, even though technically so much is available online, and for ereaders etc. If books and education aren't prioritised in a house, all the money will go on other things and the books may as well be on the moon. But books for free when other types of entertainment aren't free - yes, I see his point, and as a heavy library user who could actually afford to buy anything I wanted, I do feel guilty about making the library choice.

#80: Hear, hear! Although my mother was a reader, my father was decidedly not, so if I wanted to read anything when I was a child that was outside of my mother's scope, I had to have a local library. I use my local library to vet books - to see if a book is one I would like to have for my personal library. I certainly cannot afford to buy every book that is in the BlackHole!

>80 susanj67: We may not get other entertainment for "free," but we certainly do get it for greatly reduced prices - renting movies or using services like Netflix or whatever cable providers is one way. I can pay $10 a month or whatever to watch as many movies as I want instead of paying $15 each for the DVDs or movie tickets. And just like with libraries, someone has paid for them somewhere, but it's considerably less than what would be paid for all the individual DVDs. I guess if we had to pay a monthly fee for libraries (besides taxes), perhaps the cap on earnings from them could be raised, but the model would still be the same.

Also, he should be happier about libraries than used bookstores, where people actually get to keep his books and he gets paid nothing for every sale.

>77 ursula:, 81 As a kid, my parents were readers, but I read at a volume that exhausted the limit on my child's card every time and they had to check out the rest on theirs for me. We would have been buried in books in short order had we bought them all. My daughter was the same way.

Well, we don't get libraries for free. Here in central Maryland, the library costs are included in the county budget, funded through property and income taxes. If I'm going to pay for it anyway, I'm darned well going to use it!

>83 drneutron: Well, exactly. And that's why I said if we paid for libraries in some way other than taxes - because we are most definitely already paying for them. But I guess this guy would rather close them all down and spend the money somewhere else?

#83 + 84: Yes, I take your point about "free" - libraries here are funded at least partly through council tax, which is a levy based on the value of a property, but somehow I know that if all the local libraries closed tomorrow, my council tax wouldn't go down by a single penny :-) They would just spend the money on something else, and the library debate in the UK at the moment is focused on whether there are better things to fund, like home care for the elderly (a commonly-cited example) or more frequent rubbish collections (some places now only collect domestic rubbish once every two weeks) and so on.

Councils finding it difficult to balance their budgets have suggested closing libraries on the basis that they are a "nice to have" service but not essential, and I suppose it depends on how you define "essential". For me they are not essential, but just a nice thing to have, but I am in a very different position from a high school student living in an overcrowded tower block with nowhere to do homework. In my borough there are no closures planned, but they have cut back on skilled staff a huge amount, and put in lots of computers which are always much busier than the books. And then people say there shouldn't be computers, because there are many other ways to get online, and so on, and that people should learn to prioritise their spending and not expect the government or local councils to step in and pay for everything. So Mr Deary's comments were made in that context, but he sounds like he's been waiting for an opportunity to make them for a long time!

Susan - I was originally going to say something about closing them down and saving some money, but ha - I know that would never happen. I can't imagine having trash picked up only every 2 weeks!

In our old neighborhood, the library was open something like alternating Thursdays and Mondays from 2-6 (it seemed at least that arbitrary). I do get what the guy was saying, to a point. It just seems that getting rid of libraries would result in Deary not getting paid from the library or individual consumers. I don't use the library because I'm too cheap to pay for books; I use the library because I'd rather eat. In the times that I haven't used the library I simply haven't read much. You're right that the definition of an "essential" service varies according to where you fall on the food chain. Even given what I said, I don't really consider libraries essential. I just also don't see them as some sort of force for evil, existing mostly to cheat authors out of their royalties.

To me, it's an age-old argument that you see in pretty much every creative field. People complain about someone printing out a 5x7 version of their painting to put up on their cubicle wall at work. It's terrible quality, it's not at all the same thing, they're stealing from me! Guess what? The person who does that isn't your customer anyway, and never would have been, because they either don't have the money or they don't put any value on owning the actual artwork.

And all of that was more general thought than direct response to you, so please don't feel I'm taking issue with you personally. :)

Well, I'm getting close to finishing my current books but it'll be another day or so. In the meantime, I did finish a drawing.



It's Rosie, the cattle dog owned by my husband's parents. We also have a cattle dog, though the two aren't related.

I don't always work in pencil, it's just the momentary trend apparently.

>87 ursula: You truly have a talent, Ursula. I think it is most difficult to capture the essence of a living being and you have done so wonderfully!

Thank you, Linda!

Today I finished book #17, The Thin Red Line. I have had this book sitting around for quite a while. I had started it twice and never gotten very far in it. You know how it is - sometimes you put a book down at around 20 or 30 pages in, and you just can't seem to get back into it when you pick it up again. This was that book for me. Since I'd read the first few pages a number of times, I just jumped in at that point for this attempt and it paid off.

I'll leave the bulk of my thoughts in my review, but I really liked it. It was probably just a tad too long, but otherwise I have no complaints. Jones uses an interesting number of new compound words, and I found them very effective for some reason - things like "sunblazing," "penancemaking," "daydreamnightmare," "eyebeating light." Maybe the best advertisement for the book is Jones' dedication, which reads:

"This book is cheerfully dedicated to those greatest and most heroic of all human endeavors, WAR and WARFARE; may they never cease to give us the pleasure, excitement and adrenal stimulation that we need, or provide us with the heroes, the presidents and leaders, the monuments and museums which we erect to them in the name of PEACE."

Ursula, your drawing is just beautiful! Simply stunning, and I love that it's done in pencil. Thanks so much for sharing! And I loved your review of The Thin Red Line - thumb from me. I have that one in the stacks - I'll make sure to get to it sooner rather than later.

Beautiful drawing of Rosie the cattle dog. You have such talent!

Re: 'Thin Red Line', I have had a paperback copy of that book for eons and never gotten around to reading it. I think it was my father's, originally, and he left it behind. That dedication makes me a little queasy, though; it sounds like the book is a glorification of war which I definitely would NOT like. So maybe there's a reason I've never tackled it.

What a beautiful drawing!! Pencil is a good medium for you!

Mamie, thank you so much! It might take a bit to get into ... like I said, I tried a couple of times and this was my third "okay, either I read this or I pass it over" attempt. But it definitely clicked this time, and it doesn't take 100 pages to get going or anything!

rosalita, thank you! And oh no, no -- that's not at all how I read that dedication. I read it with Catch-22 levels of sarcasm. As I said in my review, this book is a far cry from Band of Brothers. And don't get me wrong, I loved Band of Brothers, but I also don't buy into the idea that everyone was a hero driven by high principles.

coppers, thank you too, I appreciate it!

Ah, OK. I'm glad I was just missing the sarcasm. I do that sometimes. :-)

rosalita: Well, after reading your message, I asked my husband to read the dedication and tell me what he thought it meant, and he was torn between taking it literally and taking it sarcastically, so maybe it's just my natural bent to take things that way. :)

I thinking assuming sarcasm as the default is a very healthy attitude and probably saves you a great deal of stress!

Book 18 was Anatomy of a Disappearance. I read In the Country of Men years ago when it came out, but I don't remember much about it except that I liked it, and I liked Matar's writing. The new one has beautiful writing, definitely, and that carried me through easily to the end, but it was a frustrating experience in terms of story. I know that that's the point, that feeling of unfinished and unresolved business that remains after someone disappears from your life (particularly, I'm sure, if it's your father when you're a teenage boy), but it's not comfortable examining someone's absence, the edges of their being.

Hi, Ursula ~ Wanted to stop by your thread to see what you are up to and to say thanks for stopping by mine. I read your first post and need to say that it isn't the number of books you read so much as how much enjoyment you get from reading them!

Your pencil drawings are stunning! You caught such a doggie expression on Rosie's face, and I could almost feel the wind blowing over the prairie when I looked at the drawing of the teepees. Thank you so much for sharing! I'll be back lots to finish reading all the posts, some of which interest me greatly (the one about not needing libraries ~ not needing libraries?!? ~ for example).

Storeetllr - I definitely agree about the books. The goal is a good way to get me to stay focused on reading, but aside from that the number doesn't mean much to me.

Thanks for the compliments on the drawing. You're not kidding about feeling the wind blowing on that prairie! The day we were there it was so incredibly windy and freezing ... and on the plains like that, there is nowhere to find shelter. The people who settled there were hardy, I can tell you that.

Finished Tarzan of the Apes yesterday. Among the things I didn't realize about the story:

- the apes aren't gorillas, but just some generic, carnivorous ape
- the elder Lord Greystoke is killed by these apes
- Jane's father was apparently crazy (I think he was actually supposed to be the absent-minded professor type, but the characterization of that went way beyond the pale)

I reviewed it. I'm not sorry I read it, but even with the cliffhanger of an ending, I'm not really interested in reading the sequels.

I just wanted to come back here and leave further thoughts on Eat to Live now that it's been a little bit eating pretty much according to his plan. The recipes are good, particularly if you already like vegetables (I don't like green bell peppers, but I'm otherwise good with them). If you're coming right from the drive-thru to eating like this, I imagine it would be kind of difficult - for me, I don't really care if something tastes like an exact replica of something, I just want it to taste good.

The results: I've lost 5.5 pounds in 17 days, and there are two things I'd like to say about that:

1. These aren't the pounds you lose quickly when you first start adjusting your eating; I lost those a few years ago through changing my diet and going to the gym. These are the ones that start to be a real struggle. In the previous go-round, I was at a plateau for probably about 5 months at my starting weight here.

2. I'm never hungry. I eat 3 meals a day, no snacks, and I only get hungry when it's getting to be about time for a meal.

I commented to my husband that this has been really easy, because there's no counting calories, there's no figuring out snacks, there's no working out how what you eat at one meal will affect how much (or more likely, how little) you can eat at another meal. Is it vegetable or a fruit? Eat it to your heart's content. Is it a "healthy fat" like nuts or avocados? Eat a little bit every day. Is it meat, dairy, eggs, etc? Eat a small amount a couple of times a week. I'm enjoying what I eat, I get to be full, and I'm confident I'm getting a billion vitamins every day. :)

Hey, 5.5 pounds in 17 days! That's great! I'll have to check out Eat to Live, though I already try to eat at least 6 servings of veggies and fruits every day, but I'm afraid I love cheese too much to give it up to the extent of just having a little every week. Meat, on the other hand, I can do pretty much without more than once or twice a month. I also like the no counting calorie bit. Anyway, good job, Ursula!

Happy new March to you

Streetllr: Thanks! Not having to count anything or think about any of that is just about the best part. What a hassle it is always having to figure that out. If you're already getting so many servings of fruits and veggies, you're at least halfway there to what he recommends. Then it's just cutting out sugar, etc. I'm sure it's not for everyone, but I was really sick of the stubborn weight near the end of the process and willing to try something very different to get rid of it.

Paul: Thank you, happy March to you. Ours came in like a lamb!

Info on February:

I finished 9 books. Probably could have made it to 10, but I was focused on other hobbies the last couple of days.
I read 3 physical books, 1 audio book (Cleopatra: A Life), and 5 books on Kindle.
Books were by 9 distinct authors - 7 men and 2 women. (same ratio as last month)
My reading totaled 2573 pages and 14 hours, 16 minutes of listening time.
The earliest work was from 1902 (The Immoralist), and the most recent from 2011 (Anatomy of a Disappearance).
This month, it was about 80% fiction/20% non-fiction.

Finished The Poisoner's Handbook this afternoon. It's a pretty quick, light read - if you're not disturbed by reading about the medical examiner grinding up organs, boiling them, mixing them with acid, etc. Personally, I read while I ate lunch.

Prohibition and the age of anything-goes patent medicines made for such a dangerous time that it's a little surprising any humans are here to read this book, honestly. If people weren't willingly risking poisoning themselves with who-knows-what the amateur distillers were offering, they were being unwittingly poisoned by their medicines or jobs. Or maybe maliciously by their children or wives.

My review is on the book page.

Second book for March down, and 21st book overall: Winter's Bone. I didn't really feel anything about this book, which is a shame. I occasionally enjoyed his turn of a phrase, but I didn't get involved with the characters or the story. I'm still going to see the movie (eventually, it's somewhere on the Netflix queue) - I'm curious how the story was translated to the screen. My review is on the book page. I was going to give it 2 1/2 stars instead of 3, but I didn't dislike reading it, I just wasn't drawn in by it.

My goodness, I'm stuck in hell. I mean, I'm just annoyed. I am 2/3 of the way through everything. I hate those stretches where you just aren't finishing anything.

I am right there with you!

Oh, that doesn't sound too well. I wish you a good weekend - surely you will finish that off!

Mamie: I'm getting closer, but still not quite finishing anything. Argh! Hope you're making some progress too!

Paul: I think I'll manage to finish the weekend. ;) Today is a snow day - it should snow the whole day, and we're forecast to hopefully get 10 inches.

As a general update on my results with Eat to Live - it's been 30 days and I've lost 7.5 pounds and feel great. I'm not completely following his plan for "aggressive weight loss" (I probably eat slightly more grains than he recommends) because I don't have any need to lose super-fast.

Hi Ursula - just dropping by and completely get what you mean about being stuck in reading hell - hope there's a breakthrough soon (Not advice, just sharing, but when it happens to me - I pick up one of the Harry Potter books and read for fun). Good luck.

Hi Ursula, now it caught me. #110 was my last activity here on LT before I went to bed and had a fever (39°). Since then I am bed just getting out for the, you know, necessary stuff. I didn't go to work and will not till Wednesday (hopefully).

You don't sound so bad now, so I am pleased. We have no snow here, a little sunshine and mostly grey clouds. So I will not missing anything staying inside.

tandah - well, I finished one, so that might be the beginning of a breakthrough, if not the entire thing. I am not a re-reader, but I definitely do look for something that should be lighter and more fun to get me past the block, so it's the same principle!

Paul - I'm so sorry to hear that! Fevers make for a miserable time. The grey clouds are okay with me if there's snow falling, but grey just for its own sake isn't much fun. I hope the weather and your health improve together so you can get out of bed and enjoy some sunshine!

Reading hell is starting to be climbed out of now that I've finished The Corrections. I gave it 2 1/2 stars because I felt like there were some decent moments, writing, etc, that made me want to keep reading and see if it recovered, but overall it didn't. So anyway. My review is up on the book page.

Now the next finish I'm really hoping for is the Washington biography. I am not unhappy with it, but due to sporadic listening, I feel like I've been immersed in a real-time account of Washington's life.

Book 23: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Eh. The best thing about it might be a tie between the cover and the title. My review can be found here.

March hasn't been a particularly stellar reading month so far, either in terms of quantity or quality. It happens.

Book 24: The Story of Lucy Gault. It was on the 2006 list for the 1001 Books. I don't think I'll forget this one for a while ... much to think about in terms of how chance directs our lives and how we hold ourselves back. My review is on the book page.

I've thumbed your 'Lucy Gault' review, Ursula. You made it sound very intriguing!

I loved The Story of Lucy Gault. Nice review!

rosalita, thanks! Intriguing is a good word for the book, so that makes me happy.

Linda, thank you! I can definitely see how it wouldn't be the book for everyone, but it was a hit for me.

Hm, I seem to have gotten a little behind on doing more than updating the top post here. Book 25 was Tristram Shandy, which I enjoyed more than I expected to. For some reason, I thought it would be considerably more difficult to get through.

The would-be Book 26 was The Emotional Lives of Animals but I abandoned it at about 50% done. It was just annoying and boring me at the same time - not a good combination!

And yesterday I finished and have now reviewed the audio version of Washington: A Life.

So I guess really I'm at 26 books, in terms of what I've made it all the way through.

I really liked your review of the Washington book, Ursula - thumb from me! I have that one in the stacks, and I would dearly love to get to it this year. Nice to know that the audio is good because I was thinking about getting that from the library so that I could switch back and forth between versions depending on which was more user friendly at the time. Like you, I think that audio versions lend themselves nicely to non-fiction. Hope you have a weekend full of fabulous!

Thanks, Mamie! I really enjoyed the audio - I haven't listened to enough to be any sort of expert but the narrator had a good voice and didn't go too far into impersonating Washington when quoting him, but did enough that you could tell it was a quote. I hope you do get around to it, it was quite an entertaining story (which isn't necessarily what I'd expect out of George Washington).

We're having a weekend full of fabulous ... snow!

#120: Ursula, I'm in awe of you finishing Tristram Shandy!! I started it a few years ago and got a little way in but just couldn't understand it. I think I need one of those sets of notes, or maybe a tutored read. It does look like a lot of fun.

Awesome snow! We're getting sleet, but parts of the UK look like your photo.

Susan, I don't think it really deserves awe - I think I probably have a different reading style than a lot of people. If I don't understand something, I keep going for about half a page. If I still don't understand what's going on, I look back over it to see if I can sort it out as well as to see if it seems to be important or is just adding color. If it's the latter, I just keep going and put it out of my head. I'm positive I missed references and the like in Tristram Shandy, but it didn't affect my ability to get through the book on a level I could understand.

It's how I managed to work my way through the first few Patrick O'Brian books despite not knowing the mainsail from the mizzentop. I just kept going, and eventually it started to create a picture in my head.

Ugh, sorry about the sleet. We seem to rarely get that sort of thing here. I guess it might have something to do with not being near any water. Or some other weirdness involving downslopes or upslopes from the mountains.

Mamie's photo of her kids on Easter made me go looking for one of my favorites of my kids, which also happens to be an Easter photo.



They're only 16 months apart, but Emily was so tall that people often thought there was more distance between them (to be fair, Jacob is also leaning here. But still.).

What a cute photo, Ursula!

Thanks! Sometimes it's hard to remember they were so small. :)

I LOVE that photo, Ursula! Thanks so much for sharing! Those smiles are just so sweet - my two middle children are close like yours, just fourteen months apart, but Daniel is the older one and Abby is the younger one.

Wonderful easter-photo, Urusula :)

Some good classics you have covered this year - and working steadily on 1001 Books I can see. I will wait with Corrections after your review - I had my doubts anyway - Tristam Shandy I must get to soon.

No five star reads so far this year... - hope you'll get to one soon.

Thanks, Mamie! I can't imagine having 2 kids who are so close together ... and having other kids besides them! It was an adventure at times, that's for sure.

Carsten, thank you! I have been working on 1001 Books, kind of more even than I intended to. Keeping one going at all times gets me through a surprising number of them. Maybe I won't have to live as long as I thought, haha. The Corrections seems to be one of those love-it-or-hate-it books, although I'll admit I've seen more hate-it than love-it expressed. And you know, I hadn't noticed that I didn't have any 5 stars yet, but I don't have any complaints - Cloud Atlas and the Immoralist were both pretty close.

Finished and reviewed The Black Dahlia. One star, and I'm not quite sure why I gave it that many.

Shaking it off and moving on.

That's a lovely Easter picture to share.

Sadly you were disappointed by The black dahlia - I read quite a good review, but that was apparently someone very different from you. You better move on to something else.

Oh dear - I have that one in the stacks.

Thanks, Paul. I need to get them to do a similar pose now - it would be pretty funny to see.

Mamie, as Paul says, there are plenty of reviews on the other side of the divide (not that I'm the only one who didn't like it, either!). I was surprised it didn't work for me, but it definitely didn't.

I also didn't enjoy The Black Dahlia. I actually gave up on it. I don't remember how far in I made it, but I just couldn't keep going. I was surprised, because it sounded like something I would really enjoy. One of the things you mentioned in your review was the period slang, and I think that was what finally made me give up, I thought he was trying too hard in that area.

staci: "trying too hard" hits the nail on the head. It just felt like he was afraid if he didn't say something "period" in every sentence, the reader was going to forget it was the '40s.

I'm in the middle of a bunch of books again, although I'm not that unhappy about it, just realizing it's going to take a while to get to the end of anything if I don't focus on one soon.

We took the dog to the park this afternoon, much to her enjoyment.

Wonderful perspective - like it - hey, you should learn from your dog: intense focus on just one thing :) I know the feeling of joggling between several books. I do it a lot, and have usually one or more "slow-reads" going.

Thanks, Carsten! And a good point, every once in a while the dog can provide a good example.

This instance of juggling books came about accidentally - I had planned to listen to the John Adams audio book, but then I wasn't allowed to put it on my iPod, so I had to download a different one for my running. And then I was reading a book on the Kindle, but my husband is also reading one on it, so I had to pick up something else in physical form. But I don't like reading nonfiction at bedtime, so I had to pick up a fiction book in addition to the one I already had started. And then I remembered I was intending to read a Huxley book this month, so I had to start that, too.

You know how it goes. :)

Hi, Ursula ~ Just came over to say Happy Easter and stayed for awhile to catch up on what you've been up to all March. Cutest Easter pic ever! There's one of my daughter on Easter that I loved around here somewhere. You've inspired me to look it out and scan it so I can post it on my thread. Also cute pic of your doggie. Agree with Carsten that it's a great perspective!

I wasn't thrilled with Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children either, but I think I gave it a 3. And I could not even get through The Corrections (stopped when Chip was fantasizing over lunch of cutting his arm off at the elbow ~ ugh).

On an unrelated subject, are you still enjoying the Eat to Live eating plan?

Storeetllr - I'd love to see the picture, I'll stop by!

I think I might have given Miss Peregrine a lower rating out of disappointment because the beginning felt so promising, and the concept was good. As for The Corrections, I don't even remember the part you're talking about but I also know the (first) moment when I seriously considered dumping the whole thing, and it was also due to an "ugh" feeling. :)

On Eat to Live - yes! The last couple weeks have been a little slow on the weight loss front since we had a dinner out for our anniversary and also had to go out with a friend of my husband's. The actual eating I did on those occasions wasn't so terrible, but since I don't normally have any salt on a daily basis, having it in those meals really made for a lot of water weight retained. I'll hopefully be back to normal at today's weigh-in, but I've lost at least 10 pounds since Feb. 10. Last night we had one of the Eat to Live recipes for dinner - veggie enchiladas. They're one of my favorites, and I have grown up with meat-filled, cheese-drenched enchiladas! (Confession: it's actually one of the recipes we don't make vegan - we do use real (low-fat) cheese instead of the soy cheese called for, but the amount is minimal, so it's still a huge change.)

That's wonderful, Ursula! Glad to know you are doing so well! Congratulations! I keep meaning to start the book (and a healthier eating regimen) but, you know, things happen and then it's "oh, I'll start tomorrow..."

Thank you! I am, in fact, back to where I was before the last dinner out, so that's good. 10 lbs down. My plan is to do the stricter form of the eating plan until I lose what I want to lose/it stops working for me/my body gets to its comfortable place, and then to modify it slightly for slower loss/maintenance. I'll be honest, though, there aren't any things I'm really craving. I made some delicious carrot cupcakes a couple of weeks ago and sent some to my daughter at college - she loved them, too! She was surprised when I told her they were dairy-free, sugar-free, gluten-free, egg-free cupcakes. :) Of course, for her, I made some dairy- and sugar-filled cream cheese frosting to go on top of them, but that's fine, too!

Well, whether or not you choose to go with the Eat to Live plan, I am totally willing to recommend (or not) the recipes in the book that I've tried. And yeah, I definitely know about the "I'll start tomorrow" thing - it's been a process for me, starting with realizing that I really can't eat the way I did for the first however many years of my life and get away with it. From there, it's been a couple of years of eating healthier and healthier.

Managed to squeak in one more for March: Antic Hay by Aldous Huxley. I quite enjoyed it, and found it easy to get through although it is not exactly plot-driven. My comments/review are posted.

March Stats:

I finished 9 books again.
I read 7 physical books, 1 audio book (Washington: A Life), and 1 Kindle book (Winter's Bone).
Books were by 9 distinct authors - 8 men and 1 woman.
My reading totaled 2750 pages and 41 hours, 53 minutes of listening time.
The earliest publication date was 1767 (Tristram Shandy), and the most recent 2011 (Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children).
This month, my reading was again about 80% fiction/20% non-fiction.

interesting stats

It's been slow going for some reason, but I finally finished the first book of April, Everything Is Illuminated.

I'll post a review later, I want to think about what to say first. But I can say now that I didn't like it much, and it felt like a chore getting through it.

Stopping by to say hi! I had to chuckle when you said on my thread that you will have to get used seeing the name Ursula a number of times when you read Life After Life by Kate Atkinson. Yes you will, but in a good way. By the same token I would be amazed to the name Deborah as a main character inn book! :) It was a popular girls name in the !950's and early 1960's in North America - but not much used now. I guess I could go and read the Book of Judges if I really wanted to see my name in print! :) It's a great book- Life After Life - I hope you enjoy it!

Cute dog! I have to give mine her supper.

Hi Ursula - I loved Everything is Illuminated - though read it about 4 years ago. At the time, I thought it was a really great book - but since the movie came out, feel like it's been panned and have doubted my initial enthusiasm. Look forward to hearing your review.

>148 vancouverdeb: There's no way to repopularize my name, as it's never been popular (unless you are in Germany or Scandinavia or somewhere ... and even then, I'm pretty sure it's relative). I remember the Deborahs, they were all my friends' older sisters or maybe aunts. I grew up in the era of Heathers, Jennifers, and Michelles.

>149 tandah: It's always a disconcerting feeling to see a swing of opinion on something you really liked. It makes me wonder if my taste is somehow "off." (Although I am a big believer in the idea of "you like what you like".)I posted my review, but my main problem with the book was the way Foer used the device of the letters between Alex and Jonathan to point out his own cleverness. It made me feel like he doubted the intelligence of his readers and wanted to make sure we didn't let any particularly poignant moments or good turns of phrase pass us by.

I think reading it on the heels of The Corrections was unfortunate, too - that one made me wonder if Jonathan Franzen had been potty trained too early, and this one made me wonder if Foer had some traumatic "I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours" episode in his childhood.

Ursula, so you don't like books written by guys named Jonathan?

I personally really liked The Corrections, but I have a soft spot for writers who have an unpleasant side, and cop to it. Also, since I work in the aging field, I like novels that involve caregiving. I have always had a gut feeling that I'd dislike Everything is Illuminated and you have added to that feeling. I really don't like feeling emotionally manipulated.

>151 banjo123: Ha! I almost made a joke to that effect, too. :) I liked The Corrections more than Everything Is Illuminated, because I felt like Franzen tackled some interesting issues, and the father's situation was definitely at the heart of that. I think the father (Alfred? I can't remember) was probably the only character Franzen really liked.

I agree that I don't like feeling toyed with. I mean, it depends on how it's done and in what spirit - I can enjoy a tearjerker even if that's clearly manipulative just by its nature - but pulling the rug out from under your readers just for laughs is kind of rude.

Yesterday and today - about a 50 degree drop in temperature, too - from the 60s to 13.

Also, I finished The Third Son from Early Reviewers but I haven't written up a review yet. Edit - now I have. It's here.

Nice review! I put The Third Son on my wish list, because I have an interest in Japanese occupation.

Love the pictures--that is crazy!

banjo: It definitely gives you a good feel for what was a very unsettled time.

And the snow pretty much melted away yesterday, but it's still a pretty cold one today - 26 now, should get up to 49.

Wow Ursula, you've had a great reading year so far!

I enjoyed your reviews of Ballard's Crash and Gide's Immoralist, both books waiting around at home for me to eventually get to them. Unfortunately as I'm travelling at the moment my sadly neglected library at home is out of reach and they will just have to wait a bit longer.

I also liked the samples of your art you have shared; 'Rosie the cattle dog' is my favourite so far.

Cheers!

Great photo Ursula - but a 50-degree drop in temperature? Brrrrr!

>156 Emrayfo: Thanks (on all counts)! I don't know that Crash would make a great travel book anyhow - it's the kind of book that I would feel uncomfortable reading on the plane. I just imagine someone glancing over and constantly seeing words for genitalia and bodily fluids ... on the other hand, it would probably (hopefully) keep my seat-mate from starting a conversation!

>157 tandah: I like the fact that we can have those sorts of drops (and warm-ups). Weather here is crazy, so it's hard to get bored. I mean, okay, I wasn't exactly thrilled about 15 degrees, but it didn't last that long. We've had a few nice days, and now our 5-day is again full of rain/snow mix, snow, snow showers. By next weekend we will hopefully be back to sun.

Update on my reading - I finished Cat's Eye last night, and I'll write up a review today. "Children can be cruel" is a common phrase, but I really think girls have a special way of being cruel to each other. I wonder if boys feel the same, and it's just a function of what you experience as a child. In any event, the book has given me a lot to think about also in terms of memory and the role it plays in our lives, as well as the way that we experience moments with people, and yet can never really know how different that moment might have appeared to each of us. I don't know if I'm expressing that very well, it's just some muddled thoughts that hopefully I can sort out a little better as I muse over them.

I've started Tomcat in Love by Tim O'Brien. I picked it up last night before bed and was reluctant to put it down, so I imagine it will go relatively fast.

I look forward to your Cat's Eye review!

News is percolating, and changes are coming ....

But meanwhile, I'm still reading. I'll finish the audio of John Adams today, and quite possibly also finish Tomcat in Love today, the latter of which has been a very fast read. I got my March Early Reviewer book today, The Vast Unknown, and I'm super-excited to dive into that ASAP. And I want to throw in another 1001 list book somewhere; I'm getting twitchy at not having one going right now!

Almost up-to-date on reviews. I need to write one for Tomcat in Love today. The others, as always, are linked to from Msg. 1 of the thread.

Reading time may get a little precious in the upcoming months ... my husband and I are going to be undertaking a huge downsizing in preparation for a move. A huge move. In entirely not enough time.

Sounds like some major priorities are to be taken in a hurry - sorry about the timing, Ursula - hope the best for you and your husbands move.

Moving is always such a huge pain, especially where downsizing is also required. But like a good spring clean, hopefully after all the hard work, stress and difficult decisions you will feel a little freer and less encumbered by 'stuff'. I know that I tend to collect all sorts of stuff at an alarming rate, much to my girlfriend's consternation.

But most importantly, does this mean you have to downsize your library as well?

All the best with your moving endeavours!

>163 ctpress:, 164 - I will still find time to read, or I will lose my mind! :) But I can't use it to procrastinate or I will get way behind and ugh, there's nothing worse than throwing things into boxes and donation bags at the very last second (ask me how I know ....).

Library has been downsized over the last few years anyway, but yes, number of books will be further reduced.

We will have about 30 days to get rid of/pack/store everything so that we can leave here to head to California for my son's high school graduation, and then it will be anywhere from a couple of weeks to a month before we are on to our ultimate destination: Belgium.

So, a really big move!

My husband and I watched the movie version of Winter's Bone last night. I felt pretty much the same way about that as I did about the book - it was okay, but not great. I felt like a lot of the motivations were missing from the movie, which left her interactions with her younger siblings and Teardrop sort of adrift in terms of meaning. But Jennifer Lawrence was pretty great, so I guess I can see why she got an Oscar nomination.

You are moving to Belgium? Wow--that's a big change.

Ursula, I meant to say that I really liked your Cat's Eye review!

banjo: Yes! Huge change. I only left the country for the first time in my entire life in 2011 (2 weeks in Germany).

Emrayfo: Thanks, I liked yours better. ;)

Hej Ursula, welcome in Europe! That is a big change and will cost some time and sweat till it's through. I wish you good decisions on what to do with what...

Thanks, Paul! The time is finite, the sweat not so much. ;)

April Stats:

I finished 8 books this month.
I read 3 physical books, 2 audio books, and 3 Kindle books.
Books were by 8 distinct authors - 6 men and 2 women.
My reading totaled 1882 pages and 35 hours, 25 minutes of listening time.
The earliest publication date was 1988 (Cat's Eye), and the most recent 2013 (both The Third Son and Scorpion Soup).
This month, my reading was 75% fiction/25% non-fiction.

Slowly adding reviews for the books I've read recently. I put up a rather short one for Galore, another short one for Scorpion Soup, and a longer one for You're Not Doing It Right. That leaves me with one more to do, for my ER book, The Vast Unknown.

Meanwhile, we made a first (of many) run to the Goodwill and I'm making progress in paring down some of my art supplies. Much more to be done there, but I'm going to try to work at it steadily so that I'm not left in a panic at the end. (That's always the plan with every move, but I have yet to successfully execute it.)

Wish you a good start into the new working week. Hope your planning follows your steps (or the other way round?)

Thanks, Paul. I feel like we've got a pretty good handle on at least some stuff now. I've sent off my birth certificate and marriage license to be officially approved, and I've got a copy of my divorce document coming to me now (I cannot believe they need this, it's from 1997 and I have never once needed it before now, including when I got remarried). My husband has filled out all his info for the university in Gent and they will send him back what he needs to take to the Belgian consulate.

On the other front, I'm slowly making dents in the mountains of stuff (and we just moved last year, at which time I got rid of a lot!). I am currently grateful that hard drive space is so cheap, because it means I can scan a lot of papers (knitting and crochet patterns and other ideas I've clipped from places) and throw them all away.

And in the world of reading, I now have 3 reviews I need to write - still the one for the LTER book, and I've added All the Names and Flaubert's Parrot (my first 1001 list book for a while) to the to-be-reviewed queue. I hope to get to at least one of them today. I keep telling myself that once we are gone from Denver, I'll be in California for a few weeks with nothing to do but write reviews, but I like to do them as close as possible to when I finish the book, so I don't really want to put them off for weeks.

Hej Ursula, good to hear of your progress, you're getting there. You seem to be scanning quite a lot.

I agree with you, better do the reviews close to finishing the book. Keep going and use your time wisely :)

Good luck with the ongoing move preparations! It looks like you are taking a very smart and measured approach.

I think I should borrow your scanning idea myself. I know my girlfriend would be pleased if I could reduce some of m my accrued papers, clippings, notes etc!

You sound so organized! I wish I was like that. I look forward to reading your reviews.

I am trying to be organized and measured! But I know from experience that no matter what, the last week will just be a frenzy of getting rid of everything however I can. It makes that more bearable if I've already done a lot the way I really wanted to. ;)

Emrayfo: Honestly, I feel kinda stupid for not thinking of/doing the scanning earlier. It seems so obvious now .. there's no real reason I need the physical paper, and that makes it possible to have your cake and eat it, too (keep it and get rid of it). Better late than never, I suppose!

Well, it's done. We're in California, where we'll be for a month. It looks like our flight to Belgium will be on June 26. My son's high school graduation is this Wednesday (May 29), and then we'll spend some time hanging out with them when we can before we leave.

I finally finished a book, Watchmen. I still haven't managed to write any reviews yet, but I'm just starting to feel recovered after all the moving stuff and then the drive out here.

Hej Ursula, good to hear from you again - enjoy your son's graduation.

You've completed your unpacking! Well done. You've earned a little Californian sunshine.

Now you'll just need to do it all over again in reverse (but hopefully on a smaller scale) in a months time! : P

Thank you, Paul and Charles! And yes, it will be on a much smaller scale in a month's time! And yet, after feeling like we'd gotten rid of pretty much everything, there is still more here than I expected. Well, I guess that's what this month is for - downsizing yet again.

Graduation is sort of a torturous process - speeches and the reading of hundreds of names (he has a large graduating class) - but of course it's good and important to be there. Just like with my daughter's, I'll try to keep track of how many kids have the same name as mine. My daughter's name is Emily, and my son is Jacob; both names hit number 1 in popularity right around the time they were born. I lost track of the Emilys - we'll see if I can do better this year with the Jacobs. :)

Downsizing works best done in successive cycles, definitely. At least that's my experience. I think that's because so much if it is about judging relativities, and the finer gradations of distinction only become readily apparent once the more extraneously offensive clutter has been dealt with. And so on. This way you can continually refine, asking yourself between competing objects, "What is important" or "What do I actually need/want".

Congrats to your son! I think Jacob is a great name.

Thank you, banjo! Everyone else has thought so for the last 17 years, too! (I can't remember if it's finally been replaced as number 1 or not.)

Surprisingly, there were only a couple in his class. 6 or 7 Emilys though.

Charles - I think you're definitely right, that it works best if you can do it more than once because it makes the relative value a lot easier to see. After living here a month and tripping over everything and having nowhere to put most of it, I think I'm going to be very willing to pare it all down quite a bit more!

Here I am with Jacob at his baccalaureate (kind of the pre-graduation ceremony, a couple of days before the real thing):

Went book shopping with my daughter today. I ended up buying one book, but came back with two because I borrowed The Golden Notebook from her.

I've finished another book, The Absolutist. I really enjoyed it, but I haven't gotten around to writing any sort of a review yet (it can get in line with the rest). I'm determined to do those soon, though. Any day now.

Hi Ursula!

I look forward to those reviews when they come, but make sure you don't feel rushed, us LTers are a patient lot, especially when real life keeps demanding to be attended to. BTW, great self discipline with buying just one book! For reasons I have made obvious on my thread I will have to buy NO books for a little while. Luckily Peru is not giving me too many opportunities on that front (though plenty of others on arguably more important fronts). I've also just hit 26 books read for the year and another not far away - yay!

Cheers,
Charles

Nice total, Charles! I have a box of books here that are yet-to-be-read. They're the ones I'm going to have to figure out how to take with us, or which ones I can take with us. So I'm definitely not lacking for material - one more seemed reasonable. Especially because I'm reading it now and then I'll lend it to my daughter.

Real life does have a way of demanding to be attended to! We are spending so much time now just trying to catch up with various friends and family members so that we're sure we're able to see them before we head out. It's not particularly hard work, but it's tiring. Last night, we visited my husband's grandma and I walked away with another book borrowed from her. This one was Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail.

Fighting to stay afloat in the reading world ... we are down to the wire now in real life. We are leaving in exactly 2 weeks, and we are still trying to get the final things needed to finish our visas. The FBI clearances, we can't do anything but wait for (they swear they'll be sent to us any day now), and the other big thing is a contract for housing in Ghent, which apparently is coming soon (possibly in the next couple of hours).

I did finish a book, and it's one of the 1001 Books, so there's sort of 2 birds with one stone. It was The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe. I saw the movie a long time ago and I remembered that it was bizarre and shocking and brutal. The book is kind of like that and kind of not, since you spend your time inside Francie's increasingly chaotic and disordered mind, and his view of reality is not exactly reliable.

Good luck with your final two weeks of preparations!

Thank you so much! Yesterday I had a major stress-related meltdown. There is just so much that isn't coming together, or at least that seems to come together and then falls apart again. For example, the last time they said they found housing for us, we said "yes, we'll take it!" and they said, "oh, we gave it to someone else, but our secretary is out looking at apartments for you now."

Of course, the big one was when they told my husband that he could either buy the plane tickets himself and they would reimburse him, or he could send them the flight information and they would buy the tickets. So he sent the info, and they didn't say anything for a week or so, or respond to inquiries. When they finally did, they said, "normally we could buy your tickets, but since you're traveling with your wife, we can't. You'll have to buy them and we'll reimburse you for one." Which they could have told us when they got the initial email, a few hundred dollars per ticket ago.

I could scream.

Also, although May was nothing to write home about, here are the numbers.

May Stats:

I finished 5 books this month.
I read 3 physical books and 2 Kindle books.
Books were by 5 distinct authors - 4 men and 1 woman.
My reading totaled 1517 pages.
The earliest publication date was 1984 (Flaubert's Parrot), and the most recent 2013 (The Vast Unknown).
This month, my reading was 60% fiction/40% non-fiction.

>192 ursula: What a nightmare! I hate incompetent bureaucracy. I hope it sorts out sooner than later. Would they put you up in a hotel until an apartment is finalised? Also, I can't believe they won't cover the cost of your ticket. Do they expect your husband just to spend all that time there by himself away from his family?

Yeah, they are going to put us up in a bed and breakfast for the last couple of days of June until the apartment is ready. But the real reason we need the apartment situation straightened around ASAP is because we have to have a rental agreement to submit for our visa application.

As for the plane tickets, tell me about it! I had asked my husband specifically if he thought it was going to be a problem since I was coming too, but they have known all along that he was bringing me and yes, one would think they would cover both tickets. Who asks you to relocate for 6 months or more without your wife?!

Apparently Belgium is known for its bureaucracy ... I don't have the best opinion of it at the moment!

Fingers crossed!

Hej Ursula, that sounds pretty - äh - exhausted, annoyed. Hope everything works out good

Thanks, Charles and Paul!

The adventures just keep coming ... We have been waiting on the results of our FBI background checks - you get fingerprinted, send them in, and they send back the results so you can send them to the consulate (seriously, we are nowhere near a paperless society, is what I'm learning from all of this). It takes 4-6 weeks, they say, so we did it as soon as we found out about the job, which happened to be May 1. The envelopes finally arrived from the FBI yesterday, but the one for my husband arrived in a different type of envelope than mine did. This turned out to be because his was the actual document we need, while mine was a rejection letter. My fingerprints were "not of a sufficient quality" for them.

Gee, I'm glad we waited 6 weeks to find that out. Including calls to the FBI to ask about them, at which time they told us both were being processed. Or, you know, not.

So that left me with no background check results to send on and 10 days before our flight leaves.

Cue complete freak-out.

Much drama has ensued, including me being fingerprinted a total of 6 times within less than 24 hours and much overnight shipping paid for and calls made and promises of more overnight shipping to come. It seems that we may be driving to LA the day before we leave to pick up our visas (about a 5 1/2 hour drive each way). Guess I should not count on that day for the usual last-minute, frantic packing.

Not much reading has been happening, as you might guess from all of that! But I am about 3/4 of the way through the Cheryl Strayed book and should finish it soon. Maybe I'll end up writing reviews on the plane, assuming I'm even able to get on a plane!

My goodness the time you've had!

I'm intrigued that you request the background check from the FBI and then you have to forward the results to the Consulate (same government! ). That's awfully trusting (and convoluted)!

I work for the Australian federal government and they are the ones that will forward your completed paperwork to the Federal Police and receive your results, which makes a bit more sense to me (I don't particularly want to play gopher in the middle of someone else's process).

Good luck Ursula!

Tell me about it! :)

Well, the funny thing is that they won't actually let you leave with a printout of your fingerprints (although they will let you leave with the ink impressions of them). If you do the electronic version, they will send them to the FBI directly. But either way, the letter from the FBI that says you're clear or whatever comes to you, and it's your responsibility to get the letter to the appropriate authorities. They're going to the Belgian consulate here in the states, though, so not the same government.

Meanwhile, I'm going through my things again and leaving behind more stuff. It's a lesson in beginning minimalism, this moving overseas thing.

Finished Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. It was okay. Some of it was entertaining enough for me to read passages out loud to my husband, so that's good. Some of it made me want to slap her for managing to be simultaneously so over-prepared and completely unprepared for such a huge undertaking. (Trying to carry 3/4 of an REI store on your back isn't the same thing as being prepared!)

It was amusing to me that I got the book from my husband's grandma, who just said that she'd enjoyed it. So I was a little surprised when the author talked about doing heroin for a period of time and other things that seem non-grandma-friendly. And I know, it's not like I expect to turn Victorian in my attitudes if I should become a grandma one day, but still - it caught me by surprise. I told Morgan, "you know, you have a pretty cool grandma."

Now I'm trying to read The Golden Notebook, which my daughter lent to me. I'm hoping I can finish it before we leave so I can get it back to her.

I had to accept defeat for now on A Storm of Swords, because it hit the 3-week ebook loan period from the library and I was only at 75%. I will get back on the waiting list and finish it whenever. I had to do the same thing with the first book.

Well. It's done. Or at least I'm in the new country and city.

Gent is gloomy, but then so were Seattle and Frankfurt. Just one of those days I guess. :)

Welcome in Europe. I hope you can accommodate to Gent

Thanks, Paul! I am working on it. Monday will be the day when we really start in on it since that's when we get our apartment (we're in a B&B till then). Looking forward to trying to settle in. :)

Whew!! Lots of hassles, but now you have made it! I hope you enjoy your time in Belgium.

I really liked Wild. I think I've done enough stupid things in my life, that I enjoy reading about other people's mistakes.

Thank you, banjo!

I also can relate to the feeling you describe ... stupid loves company. ;) I feel less dumb about some things I've done when reading some memoirs, haha.

I read some comments on the book where people slammed her pretty thoroughly for not doing her research and being prepared. I get that point of view, to an extent, but I can also understand the value of throwing yourself into something without knowing how hard a test it will be. And she did attempt to be prepared, at least concerning equipment (I mean, that turned out to be not entirely positive, but she tried).

Hi Ursula - you made it! Welcome to the European time zone - LT is usually spookily quiet at this time of the morning. Good luck with the apartment. I hope it has everything you need and you can soon get back to reading instead of dealing with officialdom.

Thanks, Susan!

It is definitely strange having most people I know asleep for the majority of my waking day now. It will take some getting used to. I'm reading now, as I wait for my husband to return with the key to the apartment, so that's good! I thought I'd get some reading done on the plane(s), but traveling makes me so tired that I mostly slept. But I'm getting close to finishing Let the Great World Spin. It'll feel good to finally finish something.

We have a little more officialdom to deal with - we have to register with the city government within the next few days to start the process of getting our Belgian ID cards. But that should be it for a while, I will be very glad to be done with governments, bureaucracies, and paperwork!

I bet you heaved a great sigh of relief your first night in Gent! Getting to the apartment will be even better. Well done, Ursula.

Hej Ursula, how was your moving in into your apartment? Have a little flower to put on the table:

Thank you, Charles! The apartment is ... well, it's student housing through the university, so it's kind of institutional. But at least it's a real home base for the moment and we can take things out of suitcases.

Paul, the moving in was easy (bringing what fits into suitcases and nothing more sure simplifies moving!). A flower is just what we need to make things a little homier, too. :)