kidzdoc in 2013: Old World, New Imports part 3

The March of Progress, Atlanta style, part two

Aerial views of downtown Atlanta from the south

1958:



2007:












Currently reading:



The Other City by Michal Ajvaz
The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans by Lawrence N. Powell

Completed books:

January:
1. Quiet London by Siobhan Wall (review)
2. The Chip-Chip Gatherers by Shiva Naipaul (review)
3. Our Lady of Alice Bhatti by Mohammed Hanif (TBR) (review)
4. The Eleven by Pierre Michon (review)
5. Pediatric Advanced Life Support Provider Manual by Leon Chameides, MD (review)
6. Communion Town by Sam Thompson (review)
7. Damascus by Joshua Mohr (TBR) (review)
8. The Walls of Delhi by Uday Prakash (review)
9. Inspiring Quotes: The Greatest Quotes of Martin Luther King Junior by Martin Luther King, Jr. (review)
10. A Happy Death by Albert Camus (review)
11. Place of Mind by Richard Blanco

February:
12. Great House by Nicole Krauss (TBR) (review)
13. In the House of the Interpreter by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (review)
14. Bill Veeck's Crosstown Classic by Bill Veeck with Ed Linn (review)
15. Stone Upon Stone by Wiesław Myśliwski

Books acquired in 2013: (✔ = completed book, bold = purchased book)

January:
1. The Eleven by Pierre Michon (5 January; LT Early Reviewers book) ✔
2. Place of Mind by Richard Blanco (21 January; Kindle book) ✔
3. A History of the Present Illness by Louise Aranson (29 January; Kindle book)

2013 reading goals (✔ = completed goal):

1. Booker Prize group
     a. Finish reading the 2012 longlist
          Communion Town by Sam Thompson
     b. Read the entire 2013 longlist by year's end, and the shortlist in advance of the award ceremony

2. 2013 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature ✔
     a. Finish the shortlist in advance of the award ceremony in late January
          Our Lady of Alice Bhatti by Mohammed Hanif
          The Walls of Delhi by Uday Prakash

3. Orange January/July group
     a. Read the shortlist of the 2013 Women's Prize for Fiction (WPF) in advance of the prize ceremony, and participate in the LT Shadow Jury
     b. Read 8-12 or more books nominated for the Orange Prize or the WPF in any year, or novels written by women which would be eligible for the prize
          Great House by Nicole Krauss

4. Reading Globally group
     a. Read 3 or more books for each 2013 quarterly challenge
          *Central & Eastern European literature
          *Southeast Asian literature
          *Francophone literature
          *South American literature
     b. Read 6 or more books throughout the year for the 2012 4th quarter challenge, China & neighboring countries

5. Author Theme Reads group
     a. Read 4-6+ books by Simone de Beauvoir

6. Literary Centennials group
     a. Read books by Albert Camus throughout the year
          A Happy Death

7. Patrick White 100th 101st Anniversary challenge
     a. Read at least 1 of the 3 books that I own and was supposed to read last year: The Vivisector, Voss, The Tree of Man

8. Medicine group
     a. Read 12 or more books on medicine, science and public health throughout the year

9. African/African American Literature group
     a. Read 12 or more works of fiction from the African diaspora

10. Read Mo Yan group
     a. Read 4-6 books written by Mo Yan

11. Other
     a. Read books longlisted or selected as finalists for these other literary prizes:
          * Wellcome Trust Book Prize (medicine in literature)
               Our Lady of Alice Bhatti by Mohammed Hanif
          * National Book Award
          * Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards (African diaspora)
     b. Read more books spontaneously from my TBR collection:
          The Chip-Chip Gatherers by Shiva Naipaul
          Damascus by Joshua Mohr toward that end.

Planned reads for January (as always, subject to change):

Albert Camus: A Happy Death (completed)
Mohammed Hanif, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti (completed)
Nicole Krauss, Great House (reading)
Charles Lemert, Why Niebuhr Matters
Wiesław Myśliwski: Stone Upon Stone
Lawrence N. Powell: The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans (reading)
Uday Prakash: The Walls of Delhi (completed)
Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses (reading)
Bruno Schulz: The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories
Sam Thompson, Communion Town (completed)
Siobhan Wall: Quiet London (completed)
Can Xue: Vertical Motion
Mo Yan: Pow!

Shiva Naipaul: The Chip-Chip Gatherers (completed)
Pierre Michon: The Eleven (completed)
Leon Chameides, MD, et al.: Pediatric Advanced Life Support Provider Manual (completed)
Joshua Mohr: Damascus (completed)
Martin Luther King, Jr.: Inspiring Quotes: The Greatest Quotes of Martin Luther King Junior (completed)
Place of Mind by Richard Blanco (completed)

This message is still experiencing technical difficulties. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Love those pictures of Atlanta!

>5 avidmom: Thanks, avidmom. Except for the state, county and city government buildings in the foreground of both photos, the skyline of the 1958 photo has almost completely been replaced by the new skyscrapers.

I'm replying to posts on your old thread here--didn't want to get lost in the move!

Glad to hear that your shoulder is feeling better and that it may be a less serious injury than you first suspected.

287> My Achilles tendonitis is arthritis-related rather than due to injury. Apparently that bone spur I was complaining about months ago is not on the bottom of my heel but on the back, underneath the tendon. Thus, every time my foot bends when I take a step, the tendon stretches over the spur, resulting in OUCH! The podiatrist informed me that we should avoid surgery as long as possible because "it is very complicated, very painful, and has a very long recovery period." So far we have tried two different anti-inflammatories (the first made me terribly ill), custom orthotics, and physical therapy, which has involved a stretching routine done at home, ultrasound, massage, and electrotherapy. The results have been mixed. For a few days, I felt about 85% back to normal, then it was worse again. This just may be something I will have to learn to live with, since the surgery is no guarantee, and even if it did work, the spur could grow back again.

I would agree that A Suitable Boy is a must for your Indian TBR list. I have A Fine Balance in my stacks; I've heard wonderful things about it, but I've also been warned that much of it is hard to take, from an emotional standpoint.

It's really fun to compare those photos and see if you can find a few buildings that are still standing. What were once probably considered skyscrapers are now pretty tiny!

>7 Cariola: Thanks, Deborah; it's tough to straddle discussions between two contiguous threads.

My shoulder now feels normal at baseline, and it's only when I laterally extend my left arm or abduct my left shoulder that I'll get a twinge of mild pain.

That bone spur-induced Achilles tendonitis does sound painful. The comments from your podiatrist make sense to me, although I know nothing about bone spurs.

I thought that I owned A Suitable Boy; it could be in one of the boxes of old books that I haven't entered into my LT library yet. I'll almost certainly buy it if I can't find it.

The Georgia state capitol, with its gold dome, and Atlanta City Hall, the nearly equally tall building to the left of the capitol in both photos, were moderately prominent buildings in downtown Atlanta for many years, and the capitol stands out if you drive to central Atlanta from the south or east. From street level each building is impressive, but they have both been dwarfed by the skyscrapers in the Peachtree Center area to the north. Many of the buildings in the most central part of downtown, known as Five Points, are still there and are located between the government office buildings in the foreground and the Peachtree Center skyscrapers toward the back, but you have to look close to find them in the 2007 photo.

Hi Darryl, glad your shoulder seems better. And thanks for pointing out the gold-domed capitol. It makes it easier to have a reference point for comparing the two pictures.

Thanks Darryl, I can follow you now!

Hi Darryl!
Glad to see you back on your threads after a busy week- and thanks for the 2 recommendations you put up on the last thread for me. After much prodding ;) (so pushy!)

Our library system doenst seem to have All About H. Hatterr by G.V. Desani, which is a shame, but it wont stop me looking for it elsewhere.

Your aerials make me want to search for some of my won city, which has changed considerably since half the CBD fell down in the earthquakes. It is interesting trying to pick out the still-visible landmarks amongst what else has been built, or in our case, fallen over :)

>282 on previous thread: (I don't dare comment about the pushiness of Pennsylvania women.)
Duly noted. Just didn't want you to think I'd missed your snarky comment! And as you have experienced, we are even worse when ganging up with Canadian and Kiwi women.

>4 kidzdoc: boy does that image bring back childhood memories. Having grown up in the Pgh area, that used to be on in the mornings before Romper Room came on.
Just another (former) pushy Pennsylvania woman who thinks you should read A Fine Balance

Darryl - Somehow those photos don't do justice to the Atlanta traffic!

Darryl, back on your prior thread: It is indeed the case that I don't have an e-reader. The expense of dead-tree copies of a couple of books, They Were Counted by Miklós Bánffy ($40) and The Walls of Delhi by Uday Prakash (as you noted, $30) is the first circumstance pushing me to consider. I would be happy to spend an ordinary amount on either or both of these books, but I can't justify those prices.
Rats.

edited for clarity (I hope)

Glad to hear that your shoulder is feeling better, Darryl!

Need to catch up on previous thread still, but checking in here.

I spotted the golden dome in both photos at the top - but miss all the green in the second one that was there around the city in the first.

Congratulations on your new thread Darryl and I must say I am enjoying immensely your "March of Progress" theme. Have a great weekend.

Since you are reading the South-Asian Fiction prize short list I thought you might be interested in this article in yesterday's Guardian about conflict at the Jaipur Literature Festival:

http://m.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/jan/24/pakistani-writers-jaipur-literary-fest...

Hi Darryl *wave*, still trying to catch up, therefore I only stop by for now to wish you a lovely remaining Sunday.

To your question on my thread. Yep, all three of us got influenza :(. I had a fever for 5 days. I am glad I don't need to use my voice on LT as it still hasn't really come back. Very quiet Bianca, indeed *big smile*. I still feel awful, but at least the fever is gone. Unfortunately, on top of feeling horrible I got really bad sciatica pain as well. Alex is still not a 100% and his cough got worse again last week. However, he will go back to school tomorrow and I think we just have to be quite cautious, didn't help very much that the rest of the family succumbed to the flu :(.

Morning Darryl- Hope your weekend is going well. I love all this A Fine Balance chatter. I plan on hosting a Group Read of it in July. Interested? I know a few other LTers are game.

19> Thanks for that link. I searched a bit and found the interview with one of my favorite writers, Nadeem Aslam, here. There's a link at the bottom to an excerpt from his latest novel, The Blind Man's Garden, which comes out February 2 in the UK.

Yesterday was a bit of a blur, due to overall sleepiness and a mild URI (upper respiratory infection) that began in the afternoon. I took Nyquil before I went to bed, and proceeded to sleep for nearly 10 hours, after I took a two hour nap in the late afternoon.

My shoulder is about the same as yesterday, a bit stiff but only minimally painful.

I hardly read yesterday, but I'll finish A Happy Death, Albert Camus's debut novel, this afternoon.

>9 phebj: Thanks, Pat. It's easy for me to see the Georgia state capitol in both photos, and for everyone to see it in the 1958 photo, but I thought it might be hard to pick out in the latter one.

>10 xieouyang: Good to see you here, Manuel!

>11 LovingLit: Hi Ms. Pushy Megan! I hope that you're able to find All About H. Hatterr and English, August soon.

I hope that you do decide to post photos of Christchurch on your thread.

>12 lauralkeet: Pennsylvania women, especially the West (of) Philadelphia variety, are tough enough to deal with on their own. As my grandmother used to say, "I raised ugly children, not stupid ones."

>13 tangledthread: I remember Romper Room! That was probably my favorite TV show when I was a toddler, along with Winky Dink and Captain Kangaroo. I think Romper Room taught us the prayer, "God is great, God is good, and we thank him for our food, Amen."

>14 thornton37814: Right, Lori. Those photos don't show the traffic in Atlanta, unlike this one of the Downtown Connector headed south from Midtown, which isn't far from where I live:



Needless to say I only take the Downtown Connector on late nights, weekends and holidays, or if it's absolutely necessary.

>15 EBT1002: Ellen, one other option would be to download the free Kindle software for the PC or Mac, which will allow you to read Kindle books on your computer. Having said that, I love my Kindle, which I've owned for nearly two years. I didn't want one initially, as I didn't think I would use it and because I preferred to read print books. My best friend bought a Kindle 3G for his wife for her birthday in early January, despite her protest that she wouldn't use it. I was there for her birthday in 2011, and was at the house when it arrived. She grumbled about it initially, but within an hour of trying it she loved it, and began to download books for it. I tried it out that afternoon when she went to take the kids to violin lessons, and I quickly fell in love with it, too. Less than a month later I bought one for myself.

I know that others (including my best friend's wife) have had to get their Kindles replaced due to damage, but mine looks brand new and doesn't have a scratch on it, even though I almost always carry it in my shoulder bag on a daily basis. I did buy the cover with the built in light that Amazon sells with it, which is probably the main reason that it's held up so well.

>16 alcottacre: Thanks, Stasia!

>17 gennyt: Hi, Genny! Atlanta was described as a city in a forest, due to the rolling hills and extensive patches of green space within and outside of the city. There are far fewer green spaces now, but there are still far more than in most major US cities, such as San Francisco, NYC and Philadelphia.

>18 PaulCranswick: Thanks, Paul; I would wish you a good weekend, but I imagine that it's essentially over by now.

>19 SandDune: Thanks for posting that link to the Guardian article, Rhian. I saw it when I looked at the Guardian Review yesterday, but I haven't read it yet.

>20 drachenbraut23: I'm sorry to hear that you and Alex were felled by the flu, Rhian; when you described your symptoms on your thread that is the first thing I thought of. Is he able to receive the vaccine? We strongly encourage all kids 6 months of age and older to get it, especially those who have asthma.

One of the pediatric residents gave a talk at noon conference on Friday about a case of acute necrotizing encephalopathy (ANE) that resulted from a case of influenza A, a rare complication that most of us had never seen or heard of before. After hearing about this poor kid I was ready to get another flu vaccination!

>21 msf59: Hi, Mark; yes, I would be interested in a July group read of A Fine Balance. Thanks for mentioning it!

>22 Cariola: Thanks for that link, Deborah. I haven't read anything by Nadeem Aslam yet, but I'm very interested in A Blind Man's Garden.

22> Oh, you MUST read Maps for Lost Lovers! It's a sad but beautiful book.

21> July sounds like a time I would be able to devote to A Fine Balance, too. Count me in, please.

>25 Cariola: I'll add Maps for Lost Lovers to my wish list.

Diana had mentioned on her page that the list of finalists for the Man Booker International Prize 2013 was announced on Thursday. This biennial award is given to an author in recognition of her or his body of work to date.

Here are the finalists for this year's prize:

U R Ananthamurthy (India)
Aharon Appelfeld (Israel)
Lydia Davis (USA)
Intizar Husain (Pakistan)
Yan Lianke (China)
Marie NDiaye (France)
Josip Novakovich (Canada)
Marilynne Robinson (USA)
Vladimir Sorokin (Russia)
Peter Stamm (Switzerland)

I've read Three Strong Women by Marie NDiaye, which I reviewed for the latest issue of Belletrista, and Serve the People! by Yian Lianke; I enjoyed both books. This year I plan to Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke, and Blooms of Darkness by Aharon Appelfeld, which won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize last year. I own Home by Marilynne Robinson, which I bought because it was on sale at Borders a few years ago and I thought that I should read it, in the same manner that a child should eat more broccoli.

I haven't heard of Ananthamurthy, Davis, Husain, Novakovish, or Stamm, so I'm curious to learn more about them.

26> I am among the few who are not fans of Robinson. The only other author on the list whose work I am familiar with is Lydia Davis, who writes quite fine short stories.

Wow the Man International Prize has thrown up a lot of writers I need to get to. Have read nothing there, although Gilead is coming up soon.

I must say it does seem a pretty self-indulgent list. The prize is meant to award a writer for a body of work. Intizar Husain has only four published works generally available, Yan Lianke not many, Josip Novakovich is not even read in Canada to any extent and Lydia Davis?! C'mon get real! A good writer of short stories but is she on a par with others of the genre? The Indian and Israeli are also strange choices. Sorokin, Stamm and Robinson have a fair body of work but I am sorry I think the list is obtuse, but fascinating!

I thought that I should read it, in the same manner that a child should eat more broccoli. No, no....you should read it because it's a beautiful book.
Signed,
ANOTHER pushy Pennsylvania woman, who loves Marilynne Robinson

I would take broccoli over Marilynne Robinson any day . . . .

>29 laytonwoman3rd:, 30: Ooh! Pushy Pennsylvania women debate!

31> Wanna join in?

>27 Cariola: I'll definitely read Home at some point in the near future, as I would like to read most if not all of the Orange Prize winners. I have all of the winning novels from 2004-2012, and of those nine I've read all but three, We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Road Home and Home.

I'm completely unfamiliar with Lydia Davis; thanks for your comment about her short stories.

>28 PaulCranswick: I have no comment about the worthiness of any of these writers for the prize, as eight of the 10 are unknown to me and I've only read one book each by the other two. However, I'm always glad to see new names put forth, even if they are completely unfamiliar to me. I rolled my eyes when Philip Roth was selected as the 2011 winner, as he was already well known and probably didn't benefit one iota by winning, except for another feather in his cap and a few more dollars in his pocket. I won't go out of my way to read any books by these authors, except that I will read Marie NDiaye's latest book when it comes out this spring, and I had already planned to read Blooms of Darkness by Aharon Appelfeld and Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke this year. As I've said, I do enjoy South Asian literature, so I'll keep my eye out for books by U R Ananthamurthy and Intizar Husain.

>29 laytonwoman3rd: I'll definitely read Home, as it would only be fair to give the book and its author a chance.

>30 Cariola: I would take broccoli over Marilynne Robinson any day . . . .

I hate broccoli, although I love practically all green vegetables; it gives me indigestion. I'll take Marilynne Robinson over broccoli any day.

>31 lauralkeet:, 32 Uh oh. I'm not taking either side in this debate!

>32 Cariola:: Yes! I loved both Home and Gilead. I have Housekeeping on my TBR, and if I'm not mistaken my copy came from Linda (laytonwoman3rd) !

pushy pushy pushy ...

Catching up here Darryl and glad to see that your shoulder is improving! :)

Housekeeping was the first of the three Robinson novels - utterly wonderful. I haven't gotten to the other two yet.

Broccoli is Belle's (my youngest) favourtie vegetable, just saying. Can't stand it either.

>35 lauralkeet: Hmm, maybe I'll decide to read Home this year after all.

>36 TinaV95: I have more mobility in my shoulder, which is good. Unfortunately I've managed to re-injure it twice, once yesterday afternoon when I fell asleep during a nap with my arm extended over my head, fully abducted. That position didn't hurt, but when I adducted my shoulder I had the same grinding and clunking sensation with a lot of pain at about 120 degrees from vertical (see diagram below). I did the same thing this morning when I woke up; I reached for the alarm clock, felt my shoulder joint pass over the injured area with the same odd clunk, and had severe pain again until I re-adducted my shoulder.



I strained my rotator cuff years ago, and it was nowhere near as bad as the pain I'm experiencing now. I'll find out what the extent of the damage is tomorrow morning, after I see the orthopaedic surgeon, who fortunately is a "shoulder guy".

I finally ran into one of the pediatric orthopaedic surgeons in the doctors' lounge at work today, along with the ortho fellow. When I described my injury to them they both cringed, and the ortho fellow replied "ouch". Fingers and toes are now crossed for a good report tomorrow!

>37 ffortsa: I hope that I like Marilynne Robinson's writing as much as most of you have.

>38 PaulCranswick: Thumbs and all digits down to broccoli. Oddly enough, I love cauliflower. Similarly, I love zucchini, but I hate yellow squash. Go figure.

Hi Darryl. Hope you get good news at the doctor tomorrow!

I was just over on Jennifer's (whitewavedarling's) thread and she reviewed Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness by Rita Charon. I've never heard of narrative medicine before and was wondering if you were using that approach with your patients because it sounded like maybe you were.

Hi Darryl, I've read all three of Marilynn Robinson's books and enjoyed them all but I loved Housekeeping best. I envy anyone who will read A Fine Balance for the first time. I am determined to read A Suitable Boy this year. I think he has a new book coming out this year that may be either a companion book or a sequel called A Suitable Girl.

I hope there's an easy solution to your shoulder problem. I had both of my shoulders replaced in 2010/2011 because of severe and debilitating arthritis pain. I'm sure you have a different problem but I do understand the pain you're probably experiencing.

I also just read Jennifer's review of Narrative Medicine and thought of you, Darryl. Your shoulder sounds very painful; will be thinking of you tomorrow and hope you get a good report from the shoulder guy. Btw, love the March of Progress, Atlanta Style at the top of your thread.

Darryl, I'm very curious about The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans. It is now on my tbr list.

I'm sorry you are having health issues and hope you are feeling better soon.

Sending all good wishes.

>23 kidzdoc: Oh.My.Goodness.
That is a crazy looking road system!
Thank goodness we only have good ol State Highway 1....one lane most of the way and even one-way bridges!

>40 kidzdoc: broccoli:yum
Cauliflower: yum
heated pineapple: YUCK

37> I have Housekeeping in the stacks somewhere, and, if it's anything like the movie, I suspect I will like it MUCH better than Gilead or Home when I get around to it.

>41 phebj: Thanks, Pat. I just left a lengthy message on Jennifer's thread about Narrative Medicine, a book that I'll plan to read in the next month or two.

>42 brenzi: Thanks for the recommendations of those books, Bonnie. My shoulder pain is far less significant than yours, as I'm free of pain with most normal activities, as long as I don't extend my arm or abduct my shoulder too far.

>43 lit_chick: Thanks, Nancy. My appointment is at 7:45 am tomorrow, and I'm off from now through Friday, so I should be able to post an update by midday at the latest.

>44 Whisper1: I had meant to finish The Accidental City this weekend, but I hardly read anything. I should be able to finish it by Thursday, so that I can count it for January.

>45 LovingLit: Megan, if you think the Downtown Connector is crazy, you should see Spaghetti Junction, which is just north and east of the city:





Heated pineapple sounds absolutely horrible.

>46 Cariola: I'll just stick with Home for now, but I'll read her other books if I like it.

#39: Ow, Ow, Ow! That is all I have to say.

>48 alcottacre: And that's all I was saying this morning and yesterday afternoon...

#49: I bet! I hope the pain has subsided (at least a bit) by now!

>50 alcottacre: It has. I haven't had any significant pain since this morning, when I extended my arm while I reached out to turn off my alarm clock.

ye gods... No wonder I hate Atlanta. We are busily searching for something new for Adam.. not in Atlanta.
He loves his job, but is looking to move closer to family...

Glad to see that your pain is subsiding..

>52 mckait: Fortunately I rarely have to go through Spaghetti Junction. I doubt that I've been on it more than 10 times in the past 15 years.

Charlotte? Richmond? Those are the two medium sized cities I can think of off the top of my head between here and Atlanta.

I'm back from my ortho appointment. The surgeon agreed, I definitely have a rotator cuff injury, either a severe sprain or, most likely, a small tear that probably won't need surgery. He prescribed PT (physical therapy) 2-3 times per week for the next 6 weeks, and I'll see him again in 2 weeks. X-rays of the shoulder did show evidence of an old injury, probably a shoulder separation, which must have happened when I hurt it playing volleyball at work in the late 1980s. I thought it was just a sprain at the time; it must have popped back into place just after I injured it.

He offered me a cortisone shot in the shoulder; I declined, as it sounded gruesome and because my baseline pain has decreased and my mobility has improved significantly since last Tuesday.

*gentle happy dance*

Glad you don't have to have surgery! I hope the PT helps.

Oh, yay for *gentle happy dance* Darryl. Enjoy a few quiet days off.

Good news then from the ortho. Hope your PT is Helpful and at least somewhat convenient. . .

Hooray for the happy dance of no surgery and PT!

That's good news, Darryl! I'm sure that's a load off your mind. PT is a hassle, but it's better than surgery and PT.

Good news on the shoulder! My doctor offered the cortisone shot as well, and when I said that it sounded painful, she said "I've given thousands of shots and it hasn't hurt me at all." (Gotta love a doc with a sense of humor)

I thought this was an interesting article suggesting that your traffic is not going to improve any time soon.

Spaghetti Junction looks, surreal! Utterly alien to me. Wow, now's where I would post a tranquil 2 lane road meandering through native forest, with the coastline on the side. But that would just be mean - and miss representative as well! Ad Im sure Auckland has busy mulit-laned roads ;)

#46. There's a MOVIE?? *scuttles off to investigate* Hmmm...there is, but Netflix seems not to know about it. Maybe I'll just re-read the book, while eating some roasted broccoli with lemon juice and grated parmesan cheese.

Darryl, I missed the initial chapters of the shoulder saga, but I'm glad to know it's feeling better, and doesn't need surgery.

Glad you don't need surgery, Darryl, and that your pain is better. I've never had a cortisone shot but I know some people swear by them. I'll go look for your comments on narrative medicine over on Jennifer's thread. And that picture of Spaghetti Junction is scary. I remember being caught in something similar outside the Dallas-Fort Worth airport trying to find our hotel in the middle of the night. It felt like we just kept going around and around.

#47 ...Spaghetti Junction reminds me of what used to be called the Mixing Bowl in the Northern VA/DC area. Several millions of $$ later, they have untwisted it, and now traffic flows much more smoothly. It's still a terrifying section of road, but no longer nearly as confusing as it had been.

Shoulder.....I had a cortisone shot for a small rotator cuff tear about 9 years ago. It was a miracle shot, not painful, and it certainly relieved any pain allowing me to continue to reap the benies of PT in a much more comfortable manner. I haven't needed anything else except maybe an occasional ten minutes of heating pad or some naproxen ( once every 3 or 4 mos) since. So if Doc offers again......think about it. I think it might beat out having surgery for sure.

Cortisone/steroid cocktails are so unpredictable. I had great success with a cortisone shot into my bursa sac (under my IT band). Relieved all my pain. But I had a shot into my hip joint, experienced a cortisone flare (very painful), it took five days to kick in, and lasted about a week. Bummer.

If my PT ends up not working, the next step is the cortisone shot. But the podiatrist warned that it could weaken the tendon, so I am trying to avoid it. The PT might give you electrotherapy with a cortisone solution. It seems to be helping me.

Wow Atlanta's roads are to be avoided at all costs. My least favourite of England's big cities to visit must be Birmingham which has its own version:

The view from my front yard at 4pm M-F:



The Southern State Parkway. Now visible thanks to "improvements" that required them to raze ~2 acres of second-growth pine scrub that hid it before. *sigh*

>54 Samantha_kathy:-59 Thanks Samantha, Nancy, Brenda, Diana, Joe and Rhonda. I'll start PT tomorrow; we'll almost certainly be under a severe thunderstorm and tornado watch shortly, as a line of storms with tornadic activity is currently in central Alabama and is headed our way later this morning. Fortunately the orthopaedics group has a PT facility in Midtown just over a mile (5 minute drive) from where I live, so I won't have to make the 11 mile trip (25-40 minute drive) to the location close to work on my off days. I'm working Friday-Sunday, but I'm off for two weeks after that. I had originally planned to go to San Francisco, to see the Chinese New Year celebration on February 10th, but I'll stay here instead.

>60 Oberon: Thanks for that article, Oberon; I'll spare everyone a lengthy statement about the problems of Atlanta's traffic and lack of mass transit options. Fortunately I can take MARTA, the city's heavy rail system, to and from work. The Medical Center station about 1/2 mile from the hospital, and I can take the Children's shuttle or walk to the hospital from there; I live about 1/4 mile away from the Arts Center station, which is three stops to the south. However, very few other people in my group live near a MARTA station, and their commute times would be far longer if they used public transit rather than driving their cars.

I was unaware of The Atlantic Cities newsletter, so I've registered to receive it. Thanks again!

Yep. The alarm on my weather radio just went off; we're now under a severe thunderstorm warning. I'm sure there will be several more watches and warnings between now and this evening. Fortunately I don't have to go outside today, as I can call into my group's monthly meeting this afternoon (which will take place when the largest line of storms is supposed to pass through the city).

>61 LovingLit: Nearly half of my drive to and from work is on a winding two lane road (Peachtree-Dunwoody Road) with relatively little traffic; otherwise the drive would be an 11 mile slogfest. I avoid the major highways, but the roads I have to take are feeder routes to the interstates in addition to carrying local traffic in two of the city's most densely populated neighborhoods, so heavy congestion during the morning and evening rush hours is unavoidable.

>62 laytonwoman3rd: Thanks, Linda. Thumbs down to roasted broccoli, though.

>63 phebj: Thanks, Pat. I have had cortisone shots before, for treatment of de Quervain's tenosynovitis in my left wrist years ago, which helped a lot. If my shoulder still feels the same in two weeks I probably will agree to a cortisone shot in my shoulder. I've also developed a case of trigger finger in the PIP joint of my left pinky finger over the past couple of months, so I might need a cortisone shot in it as well. Fortunately I know several of the local adult hand surgeons, as they see our patients as well.

I haven't been to the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, but I understand that the road system there is hideous. Your story reminds me of the last time I visited a friend from residency, who lives and works in Chicago. She picked me up from O'Hare Airport, and while we were talking I noticed that we passed the same building (the Allstate Arena, I think, where DePaul plays its basketball games) three times before she realized that she was going in a loop around O'Hare. She was a bit agitated after she was given a ticket by a Chicago police officer at the airport for having an expired license tag, and she was fuming about that as she was driving. I broke up the tension by telling her that I hoped we could go to the Loop, but that the loop we were in wasn't the one I had in mind.

A tornado has been sighted just west of the city, along with 60 mph winds in the storm cell surrounding it. All of the four major television stations (ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC) have interrupted their regular programming schedules to focus on the severe weather that is approaching the city.

>64 tututhefirst: I've heard about the Mixing Bowl, from one of my cousins who used to live in Alexandria, Virginia just south of Washington. I've never been on it, but I have had to drive on the Beltway a couple of times.

Thanks for the information about the cortisone shot. I'll definitely opt for that if it means avoiding surgery. I continue to have good and improving mobility in my shoulder, and I'm completely free of pain as long as I don't aggravate the strained or torn area.

>65 labfs39: I've heard of reactions to cortisone such as the one you described, but I didn't experience it when I had the two (or three) shots in my wrist.

>66 Cariola: Thanks, Deborah; that's good to know.

>67 PaulCranswick: That looks like a slightly miniaturized version of Atlanta's Spaghetti Junction, Paul. I doubt that I would ever willingly drive in the UK (due to the left-right thing), but I'll certainly avoid Birmingham if I ever have to.

>68 richardderus: Lovely view. It looks as though two men have decided that it would be faster to walk than drive.

Is the Southern State Parkway different from the LIE? When we lived in Jersey City we'd spend a weekend in Montauk once or twice a summer, but I haven't been to Long Island since the early 1970s.

>68 richardderus:. I'm so sorry Richard! What a horrible bit of scenery to have to look at every day . . .

Darryl, Bummer about changing your San Francisco plans. I guess you are just going to have to make those trips to PT very interesting for your adoring fans! : )

Stay safe today . . .

Yikes, tornado news sounds bad. Please stay safe Darryl.

I hope the tornado passes you by. Stay safe!

Book #10: A Happy Death by Albert Camus



My rating:

A Happy Death was Camus's first attempt at writing a novel, which he worked on from 1936-1938 when he was in his early to mid twenties. He (wisely) chose not to submit it for publication, but after his death in 1960, his widow (unwisely) decided to allow the unfinished manuscripts to be corrected and compiled into a book, which was published in 1971.

This book is based in part on Camus's early experiences, including his childhood in a blue collar neighborhood in Algiers, his early troubled marriage to Simone Hié, a heroin addict who was unfaithful to him, his travels to central Europe and Italy in 1936 and 1937, his confinement in a sanatorium for treatment of tuberculosis which he contracted as a teenager, and his return to Algeria in 1938.

The main character in A Happy Death is Patrice Mersault, a young office worker in Algiers who is bored and unsatisfied with his life. His current lover introduces him to Roland Zagreus, an slightly older man who has accumulated a large fortune but is unable to derive benefit from it due to an accident that led to the amputation of his legs. The two men become friends, and Zagreus shares his philosophy of life with the younger man. In his view, man is able to create personal happiness through money, which allows him time to achieve freedom from responsibility and the drudgery of everyday work:

"You see, Mersault, for a man who is well born, being happy is never complicated. It's enough to take up the general fate, only not with the will for renunciation like so many fake great men, but with the will for happiness. Only it takes time to be happy. A lot of time. Happiness, too, is a long patience. And in almost every case, we use up our lives making money, when we should be using our money to gain time."

Mersault decides to test Zagreus's theory, as he murders the invalid and takes his money. Soon afterward he becomes ill with fever and fatigue, but he decides to go to Warsaw. He is miserable there, due to his illness and to the squalid conditions that exist in the depressed city, and he leaves there to travel to Genoa, and eventually back to Algiers. He stays with three younger women in a house overlooking the city, which brings him some degree of pleasure but not contentment, and he marries a woman who he is physically attracted to but does not love. Later he purchases a house in a small village on the Algerian coast, which provides him with security and comfort, but he remains vaguely unsatisfied. His health worsens, and he realizes with the utmost dread and terror that death is slowly creeping upon him:

He realized now that to be afraid of this death he was staring at with animal terror meant to be afraid of life. Fear of dying justified a limitless attachment to what is alive in man. And all those who had not made the gestures necessary to live their lives, all those who feared and exalted impotence—they were afraid of death because of the sanction it gave to a life in which they had not been involved. They had not lived enough, never having lived at all.

For me, A Happy Death was difficult and, at times, painful to read despite its short length. I found Mersault to be largely inscrutable, and the female characters were poorly developed and portrayed as vain and shallow creatures. It is best viewed as a precursor for his first published novel The Stranger (whose main character is Meursault) rather than a unique work in itself, and all but the most ardent Camus fans should avoid it, unlike The Plague.

>71 brenpike: Thanks, Brenda. The tornado in Paulding County to our west has passed, but other tornadad es have been spotted in north Georgia and west Alabama, and we're under a tornado watch (risk exists for the development of tornadoes) until 4 pm, until this cold front passes through. It's unusually warm here, and although it's early in the year for this sort of severe weather, this isn't unusual for the Deep South (although most of us take this very seriously). All four TV stations continue to show nothing but live weather reports, particularly because another tornado has just been sighted in northwest Georgia and because the first line of severe weather has just crossed over from Alabama into Georgia.

>72 wilkiec: Thanks, Diana. My weather radio and cell phone will alarm if any tornado or severe thunderstorm warnings are announced for Atlanta. The metro area is under a severe thunderstorm watch, a tornado watch and a flood watch, meaning that conditions are favorable for these events to occur; a severe thunderstorm warning or a tornado warning means that a severe T-storm or tornado has been sighted and is in or heading to the particular area. The tornado that has just been sighted isn't in or headed towards the city, so a tornado warning was not issued for Atlanta.

>73 Samantha_kathy: There was a tornado warning issued for that first tornado that I mentioned, but the warning was allowed to expire as it fell apart before it reached the city. However, the risk of funnel clouds and tornadic activity will exist for the rest of the morning and early afternoon, and the worst weather is only now beginning to enter the state, so we won't be out of the woods for several more hours.

Book #9: Inspiring Quotes: The Greatest Quotes of Martin Luther King Junior



My rating:

This short e-book, which I borrowed from the Kindle lending library, is composed of several well known quotes and excerpts from speeches and letters by Martin Luther King, Jr., which will be familiar to most readers. This book may be of some interest to young readers and those who are looking for a particular famous quote or passage, but it is too simplistic and fragmented to recommend to anyone else.

Nice review of A Happy Death--I'll have to keep that in mind. I'm one of those people who are liable to fall in love with an author and immediately hunt down used copies of all of their work...since I loved The Plague and have The Stranger waiting, I'll beware that one...

Thanks, Jennifer. I'm a huge Camus fan, but I had a hard time with this book.

Yikes. The last tornado I just mentioned has caused "major damage" to several buildings and has flipped over several cars in Adairsville, Georgia, in the northwest corner of the state.

Agree with you on the Camus; it's really little more than an early draft of The Stranger, IMO. After reading The Plague, I went on to read Darkness at Noon, and although it's a very different kind of novel with a different focus, the core idea of the individual somehow maintaining integrity in face of oppressive events/circumstances, felt to me very similar.

I'm fine with warm pineapple, as long as it's inside pancakes and served beachside for breakfast in Thailand or Bali.

But I really don't understand -- is there actually a taste difference between yellow and green zucchini???

Some images from in and around Adairsville, Georgia, from WSB-TV:

A destroyed home:



An overturned car on Highway 140:



According to WSB, over 100 cars are overturned on a stretch of Interstate 75, and visitors in a hotel in Adairsville are trapped in the rubble. At the opening of the 12:00 news a WSB camera man captured video of the tornado, which looked very large. As I was typing this, the station reported that injuries have been reported. Wow...it's now showing a large building that has been reduced to rubble. This looks really bad...

Oh, no! Tornadoes suck.
Literally and figuratively.
Geez, kidzdoc, hope you have a lovely basement or sturdy bathtub to hang out in if needed!

Here's a link to WSB video of the tornado (which, fortunately, was well north and west of Atlanta and has fallen apart):

https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10102460945502349

And, the worst of the weather hasn't reached Georgia yet. Nope, I'm not panicking. Not a bit.

>79 Chatterbox: I read The Stranger years ago, but I will plan to read it again very soon, possibly next month, to compare it with A Happy Death. I hadn't heard of Darkness of Noon, but your comments have made me interested in reading it, as The Plague is one of my all time favorite novels. For that matter, I may re-read The Plague, even though I just read it again in 2011.

I've never liked pineapple, although I will eat it if I have to.

For most normal people, there is probably little or no difference between yellow squash and zucchini. I'll eat it, especially if the two squashes are mixed together, but I still don't like the taste of it. On the other hand, I'll eat zucchini until it's coming out of my ears.

Then again, I've never claimed to be normal...

>81 avidmom: Yes, avidmom. I live on the fourth floor of a five story building, which has two lower levels for parking which can serve as an emergency shelter. It will be a good couple of hours before the most severe weather approaches Atlanta, and I'll keep the TV on for the rest of the afternoon.

Do they just have different tastes for you?? (apologies for harping on zucchini in midst of tornado catastrophes...)

DaN is a different kind of novel altogether -- directly polemical, anti-totalitarian. But I would say that both were written with the same kind of focus of the individual acting within a society. Certainly, Koestler's book has stuck with me over the years, overriding some of the rather problematic issues with his personal life. Probably a great polemical writer, if not a great novelist. Definitely try the book; it's a short read.

Bad news: The most intense line of severe thunderstorms is just outside of central Atlanta. Far better news: the tornado warnings have all expired, except for one well south of the metropolitan area, which is about to hit Warm Springs, Georgia.

A quick (and easy) quiz: Which U.S. president died in Warm Springs?

>83 Chatterbox: Yes, zucchini and yellow squash do taste different to me. It's weird, I know...

Thanks for the comments about Darkness at Noon; I'll add it to my wish list.

Here comes the rain. Wow...I can barely see the high rise buildings across the street from me. I'm glad I decided not to attend my group's monthly meeting, which just ended 15 minutes ago, as I'd be in the middle of this mess if I drove home after it ended.

That would be FDR, who died in Warm Springs, GA. And no, I don't remember it personally.

FDR!

Darkness at Noon was Koestler's most readable, if not "best," book. Harder sledding, but better thinking, in the essays The Yogi and the Commissar.

>85 laytonwoman3rd: Right! I don't think there is anyone I know of on LT who would remember that...oh, except for one person, Esta1923, who will turn 90 this year.

>86 richardderus: Sorry sir, you hit the buzzer too late. Linda gets 50 points for the correct answer.

Thanks for the additional vote for Darkness at Noon.

Darryl, I loved the last line of your review of A Happy Death! That video of the tornado looked really bad and I can see why there were overturned cars on the freeway. From what you know of the other Georgia LTers, do you think they're in harm's way?

Richard, it really is a shame how clogged those meandering parkways around NYC have gotten. When we were first dating, my husband told me he could never live on LI because it made him claustrophobic and he was afraid he'd get trapped there and wouldn't be able to get off the island. Having grown up there, that had never occured to me but I can sort of see his point. There aren't that many ways to get out.

>88 phebj: The tornado warnings have expired in metro Atlanta, as the worst of the storms have passed through the area. So, I think everyone in the immediate Atlanta area (TinaV95, markon, wildbill, and JimmyChanga) should be safe, save for the possibility of flooded roads and homes in low lying areas.

There has been one confirmed death in Adairsville, and scattered reports of injuries and structural damage elsewhere in the metro area, but I think only one significant tornado has been reported in the area.

#87 Another LT'er of my acquaintance, almigwin, would surely remember as well. She's about my mother's age, and that's considerably under 90. Now, what can I do with my 50 points??

Darryl, the LIE is an Interstate loop, I-495. Our parkways are state highways, not federal ones.

Pat, I don't ever *get* that idea...if some disaster requires evacuation of the whole of Long Island, I promise you cars won't be used anyway. And to my way of thinking, the probability of such an event giving evacuatable warning is low. When the volcano on that Canary Island slumps into the sea, the 30-meter wall of water that smacks into us here is going to arrive in ~4 hours and it's unlikely we'll know it's on its way for 2 of them. *shrug* buh-bye now, Long Islanders! Not much to be done.

Too bad I got here so Late, I would have guessed Eleanor's husband as well.
I just talked to Adam, who is thankfully safe home.

RD.. OMG, I had no idea it was that crazy outside your door =8-O

>90 laytonwoman3rd: The 50 points can be used in the Bonus Round of questions. Or, you can exchange it for a $50 gift certificate for the bookstore of your choice, payable by Richard.

>91 richardderus: Thanks, Richard.

>92 mckait: I'm glad to hear that Adam made it home safely, Kath. The rain has passed out of the metro area, and I'm not aware of any other tornadoes other than the one that hit Adairsville. Here's a link to an article about today's storm from WSB-TV, which includes photos and videos:

State of emergency declared for Bartow, Gordon Co.

Planned reads for February (as always, subject to change):

Michal Ajvaz: The Other City (1st quarter Reading Globally group read) (reading)
Stuart Altman and David Shactman: Power, Politics, and Universal Health Care (Medicine)
Kwame Anthony Appiah: Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (TBR)
Louise Aranson: A History of the Present Illness (Medicine)
Noam Chomsky: Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire (November Early Reviewers book)
Mohsin Hamid: How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (January Early Reviewers book)
Rachel Joyce: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (2012 Booker Prize longlist)
Nicole Krauss: Great House (Orange January February) (completed)
Victor LaValle: Big Machine (African American literature)
Wiesław Myśliwski: Stone Upon Stone (1st quarter Reading Globally group read) (completed)
Lawrence N. Powell: The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans (American History) (reading)
Bruno Schulz: The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories (1st quarter Reading Globally group read)
Wole Soyinka: Of Africa (Black History Month)
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o: In the House of the Interpreter (Black History Month) (completed)
Bill Veeck: Bill Veeck's Crosstown Classic (completed)
Can Xue: Vertical Motion (4th quarter Reading Globally group read)
Mo Yan: Pow! (4th quarter Reading Globally group read)

>74 kidzdoc: what a shame! I hadnt heard of that book til now, but as suggested, I will avoid it.

Glad the tornado passed you by Darryl. You know something means business if they interrupt "your scheduled programming" to report on things.

Glad to have found another pineapple-hater (there arent many of us). It is possibly the only food I dislike.
I too love zucchini (courgette as we call it) in the extreme. Grated in salads, stir fried, in casseroles, baked, and they are also good in chocolate cakes even if you cant taste them at all, for keeping them moist!

>95 LovingLit: Thanks, Megan. The cold front has completely passed through, and it's 32 degrees colder this morning (34 F) than it was at this time yesterday (66 F). It looks as though the most intense line of storms is passing through New England now.

I don't hate pineapple, in the way that I hate broccoli, turnips and mirlitons, but I'll avoid it whenever I can (I'll eat it in fruit salads, though). BTW, pineapple slices on pizza is an abomination and a mortal sin, and whoever came up with that idea should be tarred and feathered.

All preparations of zucchini are delightful, as long as it isn't cooked to a mushy, tasteless pulp.

*tiptoes carefully out Darryl's backdoor, without mentioning fondness for so-called "Hawaiian" pizza*

Morning Darryl- Good luck with that challenging Feb reading list. I have only read Harold Fry, which is probably pretty lightweight compared to the rest of them.
The Street of Crocodiles is such a great title!

>97 laytonwoman3rd: *hides buckets of tar and feathers behind back, for future use*

>98 msf59: Good morning, Mark! And a cold one it is (18 F in Chi-Town at the moment, with a low of 3 F tonight, according to my Forecastfox app).

I'm working my way through last year's Booker Prize longlist, and I chose Harold Fry because it is probably the lightest of the ones I haven't read yet. I had meant to indicate in parentheses why I decided to read these books; I'll do that now.

I love the title The Street of Crocodiles, too! I've heard good things about the book, so I'm eager to read it.

I'll have much more free time to read in February than I did this month, as I have a two week stretch off from work starting on Monday.

Glad to hear that you don't need surgery- PT is good! It helped me.

Catching up. What are mirlitons and why are they hateful?

Interesting reading list for February. I'll be joining you on How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia if the book arrives in time.

BTW, pineapple slices on pizza is an abomination and a mortal sin, and whoever came up with that idea should be tarred and feathered. I couldn't agree more, Darryl!

Great list of reads you have planned for February : ).

Darryl....Harold Fry may surprise you.. On the surface it is fairly light and fluffy, but when it's finished, the reader may be subject to deeper thoughts and ponderings than expected. I'm anxious to hear your take.....

>100 torontoc: Thanks, Cyrel. I'll wait until Monday to go to my first physical terrorist therapist session, both because I have good mobility in my shoulder, and I'm a bit concerned that the PTs may go overboard and induce more pain and discomfort.

>101 AnneDC: The mirliton (also known as the pear squash) is an inedible and unpalatable vegetable that, for some reason, has found its way into Creole and Cajun cuisine. When I was a student at Tulane University in New Orleans in the late 1970s, I made the mistake of having Thanksgiving dinner with one of my aunts (who couldn't cook), who had a temporary falling out with her sister (who was probably the best cook in our family). The first aunt, instead of cooking Thanksgiving dinner as she said she was, took me and her sons to a friend's house, who served mirlitons instead of the usual Thanksgiving fare. It tasted absolutely horrible, and the woman was displeased that I was there, so I left abruptly and took the bus to my other aunt's house, where I had a delightful dinner with her and her immediate family.

I'll have to ask Jane (janepriceestrada) if she or her family (who live near New Orleans) eats mirlitons, and what she thinks of them.

>102 lit_chick: Thanks, Nancy. I'm a fan of basic New York or Philadelphia pizza from local pizzerias, made to order and with few if any toppings (pepperoni or extra cheese, but not much else). I nearly gagged when I ate my first (and last) bite of Hawaiian pizza, and I'd rather starve than eat a slice of pizza with weird toppings on it.

Ellen reminded me that February only has 28 days, so I'll have my hands full in trying to read all of those books next month!

>103 tututhefirst: I suspect that you're right, Tina. I did describe Harold Fry as light, but I was internally comparing it to more challenging books such as Umbrella and Communion Town, two other books that made last year's Booker longlist. I expect that I'll like this book, and that, as you said, I will take something substantial away from it.

>103 tututhefirst: I agree with you about Harold Fry Tina.

I was going to ask about the mirlitons as well. Never even heard of them!

BTW, pineapple slices on pizza is an abomination and a mortal sin, and whoever came up with that idea should be tarred and feathered.

Hallelujah!

*reserves scornful look for lovers of Hawaiian Pizza, leaving tarring and feathering to the less faint of heart*

>105 brenpike: I'm glad to know that you have the same positive opinion about Harold Fry, Brenda.

>106 SandDune: Mirlitons are best kept secret IMO. I think that evil woman served us stuffed mirlitons, while saving the turkey, stuffing and usual fare for her family.

>107 LovingLit: Thanks for the vote of support, Megan! As long as you hold down the Hawaiian pizza lovers I'll be glad to do the tarring and feathering.

I like mirlitons when roasted, and pineapple on mushroom pizza is delish. Harold Fry was a boring waste of my eyeblinks. Having now been as contrarian, if honest, as I am able to be, I shall go and have a mirliton for my supper.

A good day to you philistines.

>109 richardderus: I like mirlitons when roasted, and pineapple on mushroom pizza is delish.

*prepares more boiling tar*

*leaves out a heaping plate of freshly cooked bacon for the Long Island Philistine*

*tosses carefully prepared dummy into thread testing for boiling tar rain*

*snaffles bacon*

Oh, my those images of damage are rather frightening. I hope PT works for you.

I've had multiple cortesone injections. They work, but you are right -- they are painful.

#111 Here, Richard...have a corner of my heat-resistant, non-stick, flame retardant Cloak of Invisibility (embroidered with pineapples wrapped in bacon). There's safety in numbers. And I'll just take a smidge of that crispy sidemeat off your hands...

>113 laytonwoman3rd: Thanks for the shelter and all, Linda3rd, but hands off my bacon!

Fine, just burn then.

Nothing to add but mentioning I've had a few hearty laughs at this thread! :)

oooch owwwowwwwowww *crunch munchmunch* ooooo owowowowow *crunch crunch*

>111 richardderus: Curses, foiled again!

>112 Whisper1: The storm damage was bad, but it could have been worse. Thankfully there were no other fatalities, and it seems that only one person was seriously injured, an 80 year old woman who risked her life while shielding her 2 year old great grandson from harm as their home was lifted from its foundation and deposited nearby as a result of the tornado. According to WSB-TV, the boy suffered a broken leg but may be released from the hospital as early as today, but she will need extensive surgery and will have to stay in the hospital for much longer.

ETA: Thankfully the dozens of cars that flipped over on Highway 140 and I-75 came mainly from a local auto dealership, including the one in the photo I posted. So there were no serious injuries as a result. However, the photo emphasizes the advice that drivers or passengers should leave their cars if they are in the path of a tornado, and seek shelter at the lowest possible point, such as a ditch on the side of a road.

I've had two or three cortisone shots in my wrist. Yes, they were painful at first, but this soon wore off and, for me, the benefits outweighed the risks. I'm not opposed to getting one, but my shoulder feels so much better now that I don't think I need one yet.

>113 laytonwoman3rd: Oof. The thought of pineapple wrapped in bacon has induced intractable nausea in me. Okay, you two win.

>114 richardderus:, 115 Uh oh, bacon fight!

*reheats tar to pour over grappling Hawaiian pizza lovers*

>116 TinaV95: I'd advise fleeing this thread if you're a fan of Hawaiian pizza, Tina.

>117 richardderus: ROTFL!

I'll be curious to hear what you think of Soyinka--I read one of his other works and have been meaning to wander back his way...

It always impresses me how organized you are on your plans for books to read. And always such a nice variety! :)

I'm glad to hear your shoulder is feeling a bit better! Perhaps you'll take this as a warning the next time you think of getting into a drunken bar-brawl.

>117 richardderus: it was worth it though, wasn't it?

:)

>120 whitewavedarling: I'm looking forward to reading Of Africa, Jennifer. I read his earlier memoir You Must Set Forth at Dawn, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was fortunate enough to see him speak in person in Oakland, CA, where he read several excerpts from the book, including a humorous episode that occurred when he was in Stockholm to give his Nobel Prize address. That author event was the most unique one I've ever attended; he was given a flowery introduction by one of his countrymen, which was followed by a tribute by dancers and singing musicians, as several dozen Nigerians in the audience stood and sang with them. I captured it on my digital camera, and I should still have that video on my old laptop. I'll see if I can retrieve it and post a link to it here.

>121 The_Hibernator: Thanks, Rachel! I usually read about 1/2 to 2/3 of my planned reads in any given month, but it gives me a plan and a goal to aim for. I didn't finish Great House by Nicole Krauss as I had intended to, but I should finish it tomorrow, especially if I don't have to go into work or only have to see a few patients as the backup doctor. I'm less than halfway through, and it is superb so far.

I was wearing an arm brace last Wednesday and Thursday, so practically everyone at work asked me what had happened. When I told them about the fall at home that led to the rotator cuff injury most said that I needed to come up with a better story. I decided to try to claim with a straight face that I was injured in a bar fight, which was met with looks of skepticism and bewilderment, so I had to go back to the original story.

>122 LovingLit: No it was not, my dear Megan! Such a meanie...

Bar fight, huh? Ya, somehow that doesn't jive with the pic you've posted on your profile page of the big cheese, LOL.

>123 kidzdoc:: Instead of a bar fight — which, quite frankly, I, too, would raise an eyebrow over (having seen the Cheesehead profile picture) — you might want to talk about how it was late at night in Strand Book Store, and there was this signed edition of a hitherto-unpublished Khoury, and this Visigoth-looking fellow thought he saw it first, but was obviously deluded because you were clearly there first...

I loved your comments on Wole Soyinka's talk, Darryl. How fortunate you were to experience that! I haven't read anything by him yet, but just added both of the books that you mentioned to my wishlist. Have you read any of his plays or poetry? If so, any recommendations?

That sounds wonderful! I'll keep my fingers crossed that the link shows up...

Well, I certainly fell behind on this thread. I hope you've recovered from the sofa incident over at my place.

Some of the photos you have here, Darryl, make me feel a little bit better about the notorious Seattle traffic. We have a bit of water here, so the city is hourglass shaped. While that worked well for the likes of Sophia Loren, it's less ideal for moving people in vehicles from one side of the city to another. Of course, as a "local" (I think after five years I get to say that), I just avoid certain parts of the city at certain times of the day. Unless I'm on a bus with a good book, in which case I can say "Traffic? Bah. Traffic doesn't scare me."

I've copied the list of Man Booker International Prize nominees, thinking I'd like to read at least one work by each of them. Marilynne Robinson is the only one whom I've already got covered.

I heard Wole Soyinka speak about eight years ago, but it was not nearly exciting as the lecture you attended. I did it enjoy it, however, as he spoke about memory in literature and history, which is a very interesting topic.

I read Death and the Kings Horseman last year. IT was very good and I would love to see it performed.

pineapple slices on pizza is an abomination and a mortal sin, and whoever came up with that idea should be tarred and feathered.

I agree with that sentiment. Bacon on pizza is however, a heavenly addition.

I really, really hate tornadoes. We never used to get them here but they've been happening since the globe has been warming.
Pizza: vegetarian only, pls & tks. Really hate pepperoni. Bacon bad for me ticker. But roasted veggies, goat's cheese or feta, mmmm.
Those rush hour pics are awful...Richard, your front yard?

Darryl - I've had a cortisone shot before and I would do anything to avoid getting another one. Of course that might mean I ought to stop injuring myself so often... hmm...
I hope your shoulder recovers soon. PT is never fun, but look at Claudia... she's doing great now since she stuck to the program.

How about this... if you follow instructions from your Ptherapist and keep up with the therapy until your shoulder heals, we won't send Hawaiian pizzas over to you. I'm not a big fan of pineapple either, except when my mom makes pineapple tartlets. Then I like them because she cooks the pineapple into a sort of carmelized jam and then bakes them in little ultra-buttery tart-like cookies,

>132 tiffin: The parkway is about 1000ft from the front curb. When it was built in the 1940s, the houses across from this one were razed and the trees allowed to re-colonize. By 2000, it was a nice second-growth wooded area. Then the parkways people "improved" it and the damned highway is now visible again.

"Progress." Like your tornadoes, Tui, I can do without it.

Grilled pineapple is really, really good. But probably not on pizza.

It's good on vanilla ice cream!

Note: Do not put vanilla ice cream on pizza either.

>136 Cariola: LOL

136> Should we check your temperature? I mean, I think you might be delerious to even think such blasphemy (to both the pizza gods and the ice cream gods) as "vanilla ice cream on pizza"! ;)

Apparently I am irredeemable but pepperoni and pineapple are my favorite pizza toppings. Now, they are my son's favorite too. I have apparently scarred him for life.

In my defense, I worked in a couple of different pizza places while working through school so I tried lots of different combination. Pepperoni/pineapple stuck.

>136 Cariola: - 138 Sure, no vanilla ice cream on pizza, but what about pizza ice cream? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/10/pizza-ice-cream_n_2271658.html

I've made my own pizzas for a long, long time. My little kid (when he was little) asked me once if he could help me put the "pizza bologna" (pepperoni) on the pizza.

My tastes in pizza is pretty traditional, but I do love a good pesto pizza. Unfortunately, I'm the only one in my family who does. The thought of pineapple on pizza makes me cringe.

Sorry but all this 'pineapple on pizza' is just .... well ... disturbing - anyone knows its 'just wrong' ... surely??!!

Woo! After a busy (but not crazy) long weekend and a switch with one of my partners (who asked to take my upcoming Wednesday overnight call in exchange for working one of her weekends in March, which I readily agreed to), I'm now off from clinical duties for the next two weeks.

My shoulder was doing great on Thursday and Friday, but I managed to re-injure it on Friday night while I was sleeping. It's back to being moderately sore again, so I definitely won't travel anywhere this month, and I'll make an appointment to see a physical therapist tomorrow or Wednesday.

I jinxed myself by my earlier comment that I hadn't been sick since September. I contracted a viral URI (upper respiratory infection) a few days ago, which has turned into laryngitis, sinusitis, bronchitis and an asthma flare up. However, I can rest and recuperate at home, so life is good!

I haven't had time to read anything the past three days, but I plan to finish Great House by Nicole Krauss later today.

>124 lit_chick: Nancy, no one else at work believed the bar fight story either. I need to change my image...maybe I'll start going to some of Atlanta's more notorious clubs, like the legendary Magic City, where local and out of town professional athletes go to hang out and get arrested for brawling or committing other civic offenses.

>125 TadAD: Tad, that's a much more believable story.

>126 Linda92007: I haven't read any of Wole Soyinka's plays or poetry collections, Linda. I'll have to look for them on future book trips.

>127 whitewavedarling: Jennifer, I'll look for that video later this week. I uploaded it to an old (but still working) laptop via Picasa several years ago, so it should still be there. I just have to figure out how to transfer it to a format that can be viewed online by others (Facebook?).

>128 EBT1002: How is public transportation in Seattle, Ellen? I would assume that it's far better there than it is here.

Your goal of reading a book written by each of the finalists for this year's Man Booker International Prize is a laudable one, and a great idea. I think I'll do the same thing; since it's a biennial award, I think I'll read books by five of the authors this year (NDiaye, Appelfeld, Lianke, Robinson, ?Husain) and ones by the remaining five in 2014.

>129 labfs39: Lisa, that lecture topic by Soyinka would have been interesting to me as well. I'm glad that you were able to see him in person.

>130 banjo123: Rhonda, Death and the King's Horseman is probably the Soyinka play that I'd most like to see. I missed seeing it at the National Theatre in London four years ago, as the performance closed before my summer visit that year.

>131 mckait: I agree completely, Kath. Bacon is one of the few desirable toppings for pizza. Then again, bacon is a desirable topping for nearly everything.

>132 tiffin: Tornadoes scare me half to death. They can appear anywhere and at any time conditions are ripe for their formation, often with little or no warning. In March 2008 a tornado touched down in downtown Atlanta on a busy Saturday night, after the tornado watch had expired for the city, three miles south of where I live. I was watching a college basketball game on TV that was being played downtown, when all of a sudden the lights flickered, and material from the ceiling of the Georgia Dome fell part of the way down (fortunately no one was injured). Within a minute or two the game was interrupted by a news bulletin, which indicated that an EF-2 tornado had just passed through downtown, which was packed with tens of thousands of people attending sporting events and tourists in and around CNN Center and Centennial Olympic Park, which are both a stone's throw from the Georgia Dome:



Miraculously only one man was killed downtown, when a building collapsed onto him. Had the tornado passed a couple of hundred feet to the south it would have directly hit the Dome and Philips Arena, where probably 30,000-40,000 people were attending college and professional basketball games, which could have been catastrophic.



I like vegetarian or white pizzas, with feta or goat cheese, spinach, etc.

>133 cameling: You can send all of the Hawaiian pizzas or Spam that you like, Caroline. Don't count on me eating any of it. The tarts you described do sound delightful, though.

>134 richardderus: Thumbs down to "progress" and especially to tornadoes!

>135 banjo123: Thumbs down to grilled pineapple as well.

*reaches for Pepto-Bismol*

>136 Cariola: Hmm...you might get me to try pineapple on vanilla ice cream, Deborah. Wait...I'm forgetting that I'm lactose intolerant. Pineapple on ice cream made with soy or almonds, perhaps?

>137 EBT1002:, 138 LOL on the thought of ice cream on pizza! I'd probably like that better than pineapple on pizza.

>139 Oberon: Pepperoni is another acceptable and preferable pizza topping. Please tell me that you wouldn't eat both pepperoni and pineapple together!

>140 avidmom: Blech to pizza flavored ice cream! However, the Broccoli Rabe, Potato And Rosemary Pizza underneath that photo looks heavenly:



Oh, wait...broccoli. Ick. That has to go. Spinach, potato and rosemary pizza for me, please.

Pesto pizza: yum.

>141 roundballnz: Thank you, Alex! I'm glad that you're in the camp of right thinking people.

Okay . . . That spinach, potato and rosemary pizza looks delish!

Broccoli rabe resembles broccoli only slightly. It's a hybrid of asparagus and broccoli introduced by the Japanese, and IMO it and Toyotas form the backbone of a decent apology for WWII.

I'm with you, RD. And while I don't prefer pineapple on my pizza, I do favor it all by itself. I'd go with the goat cheese, and a lot of other pizza toppings, as long as the pizza ends up spicy. No pesto, thanks - it often contains nuts of some sort.

Of course, I haven't had pizza recently because I can't eat the dough. When we used to get it at work when staying late, I would just eat the cheese. Yummy anyway.

I hate tornadoes. They are like sharks: there's no reasoning with them.

>148 tiffin: LOL --- just so!

Having read through some of the most recent posts, now I'm craving pizza. Spinach, red onions, feta cheese..... YUM

Darryl, the bus system in Seattle is pretty good and we have a gradually-expanding Light Rail system which is helpful if you're trying to get to the airport or the stadium district or the main downtown hub. I ride the bus to work almost every day.
And we thank the bus driver when we disembark.

>146 richardderus: *guffaw* (in a good way)

Hi Darryl, sorry to hear you tempted fate, and lost, by mentioning that you hadnt been sick in a long while. Maybe you forgot to touch wood after typing that? :)

Anyway, I hope the symptoms clear up for you asap.

>149 EBT1002: And we thank the bus driver when we disembark.
We do too! As in Chch-ians, I cant say the same for other cities, not having travelled on their buses enough.
I always love letting the bus go first too, in traffic, and getting that wave from the driver, or the "double blinker" kudos :) Im a sucker for instant gratification.

You mean I'm not alone in my love of pesto pizza?!?!
*wipes away tears of joy*

tiffin & kidzdoc, you might like this recipe:
http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/Roasted-Veggie-Pizza

One of my faves that I rarely make because I don't want to eat the whole thing by myself.
Maybe I will make it and eat the whole thing by myself anyway.
I'm hungry.

Hope you feel better soon, kidzdoc!

Hi Darryl, I was away on vacation to Kerala for 10 days and missed a lot of conversations here esp. Regarding the the Indian novel. I'm amazed that no one mentioned The God of Small Things. It won the Bookers and is set in Kerala.

Book #12: Great House by Nicole Krauss



My rating:

Finalist, National Book Award (2010)
Shortlist, Orange Prize for Fiction (2010)

"I inherited it {the desk} from the former owner of the house. And I began to think about how I hated this desk. I wished I could get rid of it, and yet something in me wouldn't allow for that. It'd be a waste. You'd have to chop it up to get it down the stairs. It was built into the room and all that. So I began to think about this idea of the burden of inheritance. Now as I said at the same time I was a new mother, and of course I wasn't writing about furniture, I wasn't writing about physical objects really. I think what I thinking about was the idea of what is it that our parents pass down to us emotionally in terms of moods, griefs, sadnesses, angles at which we view and face the world and what then do we pass down often unknowingly to our children. This became a subject of great intense importance to me as I was facing the idea of bringing up my own child."

     —Excerpt from Conversation: Nicole Krauss' 'Great House', PBS NewsHour, October 22, 2010

This difficult but brilliant and affecting novel consists of four sets of disparate characters, who all share a direct or obscure connection to a writing desk, which is imposing and overwhelming in size and filled with secret drawers and odd features, yet intensely memorable and deeply comforting to those who have possessed it.

The 'Great House' of the title refers to the school built by the 1st century rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai after the destruction of Jerusalem during the First Jewish-Roman War, in which Judaic law and religion was re-established:

Two thousand years have passed, my father used to tell me, and now every Jewish soul is built around the house that burned in that fire, so vast that we can, each one of us, only recall the tiniest fragment: a pattern on the wall, a knot in the wood of a door, a memory of how light fell across the floor. But if every Jewish memory were put together, every last holy fragment joined up again as one, the House would be built again, said Weisz, or rather a memory of the House so perfect that it would be, in essence, the original itself.

Great House consists of two parts, with four chapters for the four stories in each part, followed by a short chapter at the end of Part II that helps link the characters together. In the first chapter, "All Rise", a middle aged woman speaks to a judge about her life as a writer, her failed relationship with her husband due to her need for solitude and devotion to her work in exclusion of him, and how she came to acquire the desk, and to give it away. "True Kindness" is an emotional and internal plea by an old man to his estranged child after the death of the man's wife in Israel, one filled with intense hatred, bitterness and love. In "Swimming Holes", an Englishman recalls his long term marriage to his eastern European Jewish wife, who emigrated to the UK at the onset of World War II and withheld her past life and its secrets from him until the end of her life. Finally, "Lies Told By Children" is narrated by an American woman who studies at Oxford, where she meets and falls in love with another student, a rootless young man who is crippled and fortified by his intimate connection with his sister and his overbearing father.

Each of the major characters in the novel share a need for solitude and an inability to establish trust with the person who is most dear to them. Unrequited love is the necessary result, along with grief and regret for what was lost to them. Past memories resurface frequently, which are generally unpleasant and only add to the characters' loneliness and despair.

Great House requires substantial attention and work by the reader to connect the characters to each other, which seemed to me as though I was trying to build a single puzzle from pieces from four different puzzles mixed together and scattered in different rooms of a large house. I suspect that the novel may hold different meanings for each reader, based on their own histories and experiences, and that a second reading of the book would be rewarding and enlightening. It is a beautifully written book, whose characters deeply touched me, and I am tempted to immediately start reading it again to find those missing pieces.

>145 brenpike: That pizza is one of the most enticing ones I've seen recently.

>146 richardderus: Thanks, Richard; I hadn't heard of broccoli rabe before. I love asparagus, so the broccoli rabe can stay (although spinach is fine, too).

>147 ffortsa: Goat cheese is definitely good on pizza, and most other things. Why can't you eat pizza dough, Judy?

>148 tiffin: I hate tornadoes. They are like sharks: there's no reasoning with them.

LOL! The same could be said for toddlers and extreme right-wing Republicans (who often act like toddlers).

>149 EBT1002: Yes, this pizza discussion and especially that photo has me craving it, too.

People in Atlanta and San Francisco often do greet the bus driver on entering and thank him or her on departing the vehicle. I wasn't used to this at first, but I have been doing it when I go to SF (it's very rare that I take a city bus in Atlanta). I'll also thank the train operator when I take the subway from the airport, as I normally ride in the first car and pass by the operator before the train pulls out of the station.

>150 LovingLit: *pouts at Mean Megan*

I was due to get sick; practically everyone at work has had a bad cold over the past two months, and sometimes our office sounded more like a sanatorium, as two of my partners and the hospitalist fellow all had asthma attacks with their URIs. My illness is far less severe than theirs, and I'm feeling much better today.

>151 avidmom: I like traditional and white pizzas better, but I do enjoy pesto pizza, too. Thanks for that recipe; I might give it a try this week or next.

>152 mausergem: Thanks for mentioning The God of Small Things, Gautam. I haven't read it yet, though. Hmm...I know I have it, even though it isn't in my LT library (I've just added it).

Please tell me that you wouldn't eat both pepperoni and pineapple together! Yes. Yes I would. Sweet and savory---a classic combination. Oberon, you may call me anytime you need a like-minded pizza buddy. I work on the fourth floor of a building with a pizza place on the street level. I don't know how it works, but when they're baking the pizzas down there, I can smell it in my office, and it drives me crazy. Talk about subliminal advertising! They make an amazing eggplant parmesan pizza, and a good roasted veggie pizza, but I may need to suggest they add a pesto sauce...

>155 laytonwoman3rd: Glad to see I am not alone! The pizza snobs were starting to bring me down.

Pineapple and prosciutto on a white pizza. Num num.

Interesting. On my Club Read thread the discussion has been about my review of Great House. Here the only topic of discussion has been pizza and what toppings are acceptable. I'm not sure what to make of this, but I suppose I'd better order a variety of pizzas for y'all.

I've thumbs-upped you review, Darryl, but I dislike Nicola Krauss's writing and felt it impolitic to say how deeply I abominate her in light of your paean.

>159 richardderus: Hmm. Which is more offensive: pineapple & prosciutto on white pizza, or abomination of Nicole Krauss? I vote pizza. ;-)

ETA: Thanks for the thumb!

Oh, I almost forgot. I've been posting daily tributes to my favorite authors from the African diaspora for Black History Month on my Facebook page. I didn't think to post them here, as y'all are a very well read bunch and are probably familiar with many of them. Should I post them here? (This question is especially directed to my peeps who follow me on LT and FB.)

#161 Yes, definitely post the daily tributes here, Darryl!

I just thumbed your review of Great House which I thought was excellent. I'll probably give The History of Love a try first since I own a copy and have read mixed reviews of Great House.

On the pizza discussion, I have never been tempted to try a Hawaiian pizza although I like the separate ingredients well enough. Somehow the combination sounds bizarre.

>162 phebj: Thanks, Pat. I'll go ahead and post them here. My focus is on living authors from the African diaspora who I am familiar with and like, but who are probably unknown to the vast majority of casual readers, such as my non-LT friends on Facebook. The LTers who follow my thread will have heard of many of these authors, which is why I didn't originally think to post them here. Ideally I'd like to choose 14 female and 14 male living authors, but I may need to come up with 2-4 more female authors to achieve that balance.

I had also read mixed reviews of Great House, but I seem to remember that Rebecca liked it. I had intended to read it for Orange January, but it took me longer to finish it than I thought it would. I also wanted to read it because it was the only book from the 2011 Orange Prize shortlist that I hadn't read yet. I read the 2012 Orange shortlist last year, and I intend to read the inaugural Women's Prize for Fiction shortlist this year.

I tried Hawaiian pizza once, and I nearly gagged on the combination of pineapple and tomato sauce.

My first notable author of the day for Black History Month is Natasha Trethewey, the current United States Poet Laureate, who is also a professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University. Ms. Trethewey was born in Gulfport, Mississippi in 1966 to an African American mother and a Caucasian father, who were illegally married at that time. She earned degrees from the University of Georgia, Hollins University (where her father Eric Trethewey is a professor of English and an award winning poet) and UMass Amherst. She was named the 19th US Poet Laureate in June 2012, and she officially began her duties in September.

Ms. Trethewey has published several books of poetry, most notably Native Guard, the 2007 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, which describes her mother's life and untimely death. Other notable books include Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, an elegy to her home town and the devastating impact that Hurricane Katrina had on it; Bellocq's Ophelia, a poetic description of the Storyville prostitutes famously photographed by E.J. Bellocq in New Orleans in the early 20th century; and her latest collection Thrall, which tells the stories of mixed race figures portrayed in paintings throughout history. Ms. Trethewey is one of my favorite living poets, due to her unique ability to give a voice to the forgotten characters she describes, and I have read and would highly recommend these books to fans of modern poetry and to the general reader.

My featured Black History Month author for February 2nd is Wole Soyinka, the 1986 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and the first writer from the African diaspora to receive that honor. He was born in Abeokuta, Nigeria in 1934 and received degrees at University College, Ibadan and at the University of Leeds (UK). His 1957 play The Invention was performed at The Royal Court Theatre in London, as was his 1959 play The Lion and the Jewel. He returned to Nigeria to teach as he continued to write, and he was imprisoned for 22 months from 1967-68 during the civil war between the Nigerian government and the Biafran people. After his release he returned to the UK, where he continued to write plays, poetry and novels and briefly served as a lecturer at the University of Cambridge.

Mr. Soyinka continues to write, teach and lecture in Nigeria and around the world, and he continues to speak out against tyranny and oppression in his home country and other African countries. Other notable works include his memoirs Aké: The Years of Childhood, You Must Set Forth at Dawn, and his most recent book Of Africa, which was published in 2012; his plays Death and the King's Horseman and Kongi's Harvest; his novels The Interpreters and Season of Anomie; and his poetry collections A Big Airplane Crashed Into The Earth and Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known.

I was fortunate enough to see Mr. Soyinka lecture in person several years ago in Oakland, California. He is a genuinely warm and very humorous man, and he had the audience laughing and applauding throughout his talk. May God bless Wole Soyinka with many more years of good health and productive activity!

The featured Black History Month author for February 3rd is Edwidge Danticat, who was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti in 1969. Her parents emigrated to NYC when she was a young child, and Edwidge was raised by her aunt and uncle until she joined her parents in America at the age of 12. She received a BA at Barnard College and an MFA at Brown University. Her master's thesis formed the basis for her first novel Breath, Eyes, Memory, a haunting story of a young Haitian girl who struggles to overcome her troubled past and personal demons to make her own way in the world. She has won and been nominated for several awards for her novels, short story collections, and nonfiction works, including a National Book Award nomination for Krik? Krak!, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Brother, I'm Dying, and the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature for Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work. She has taught at NYU and the University of Miami, and she has been praised for her support and advocacy of the Haitian people living within the country and abroad.

February 4th's featured author is the Kenyan novelist, playwright, essayist, activist and professor Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, who is frequently mentioned as a finalist for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was born in Kamiriithu, Kenya in 1938, and was baptized James Ngũgĩ by his parents. He was strongly influenced by the Kenyan fight for independence from the British that began in 1952, as his parents and older brother were actively involved in the movement. He was educated at Makerere University in Uganda and the University of Leeds in England, where he wrote his first novel Weep Not, Child in 1964, the first novel from a writer from East Africa to be published in English, which was harshly critical of English colonial rule in Kenya. He later wrote The River Between (1965), a novel about the Kenyan Emergency (which was referred to as the Mau Mau Uprising by the British colonialists), and A Grain of Wheat (1967), a searing novel about the Kenyan independence movement and its troubled aftermath. At that time he changed his name to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, in a repudiation of his English first name and in order to embrace his Kikuyu heritage. He also began to write in his native Gĩkũyũ language, and he encouraged other African authors to write in the language of their people rather than the language of the European colonialists.

In later years he became active in protests against Daniel Arap Moi, the Kenyan dictator, and he was imprisoned after the publication of his play I Will Marry When I Want, which was critical of the Moi government. While he was in prison he wrote his next novel Devil on the Cross, using toilet paper in his cell.

After his release he lived in exile and ultimately left Kenya. He continued to write, and he taught at Yale, NYU and the University of California, Irvine, where he serves as a a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature and as the Director of the International Center for Writing and Translation. His most recent novel is Wizard of the Crow, a biting satire about a fictional African ruler, which is one of my top 10 favorite novels of the 21st century. I have just started his latest book, In the House of the Interpreter: A Memoir, which was selected as a finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography.

Today's featured author for Black History Month is a writer that more of you will be familiar with, the British author Zadie Smith. She was born in NW London to a Jamaican mother and an Anglo British father. She read English literature at King's College, Cambridge, and in her senior year she wrote her first novel, White Teeth, which was both a critical and a financial success. This hilarious and bittersweet novel about two best friends, one Anglo and one Bangladeshi, and their families in postwar England won five literary awards and was selected as one of Time Magazine's 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. Her later novels have also been well received; On Beauty won the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction, and The Autograph Man won the 2003 Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Literary Prize in 2003. Her latest novel, NW, published last year, was chosen as a finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, which will be awarded later this year.

Ms. Smith currently teaches fiction at NYU, and previously taught at Columbia. She has written a book of essays about writing, entitled Changing My Mind, and she is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and other literary publications. The current issue of The New Yorker includes her newest short story, The Embassy of Cambodia, which can be read for free via this link:

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2013/02/11/130211fi_fiction_smith

I'd love to see your tributes here, Darryl.

ETA And then...I had your thread up on my screen about 90 minutes ago, and then posted when I came back before refreshing. So they are already here!

Darryl....thanks so much for posting your tributes. Lots of food for thought, and many book bullets. and BTW, great review of Great House, a book I abandoned when it first came out, but which I have on my Nook so that some day I can take that grand chunk of time I think it deserves to puzzle through it.

Speaking of noted black authors, I see that Jamaica Kincaid has a new book out, See Now Then, her first in ten years. I listened to an except at audible.com, but I think I'd rather read it in print. (Kincaid is the reader. I find that often authors aren't the best choices for readers, and I think she would lull me to sleep.)

Terrific review of Great House Darryl. I read The History of Love quite a long time ago and didn't really care for it so I never had an interest in GH but you have certainly piqued my interest.

And thanks for reminding me of Zadie Smith. I've actually met her and she's as lovely in person as her picture indicates. I have Changing My Mind but she makes many references in it to books I've yet to read so I'm saving it until I get a few more of them under my belt. I love her writing.

>153 kidzdoc: Great House requires substantial attention and work by the reader to connect the characters to each other
This puts me off, Darryl. Even though you say it is worth the hard work.

>158 kidzdoc: sorry your review got ignored for pizza discussion ;)
I only just got here though, so please dont blame me ;)

Darryl, adding my thumb to your review of The Great House. Excellent!

i took a long nap after my cold/sinus infection worsened and a developed a 101 degree fever. I'm feeling better now, but if the fever comes back I'll prescribe an antibiotic for myself. Fortunately there is a 24 hour CVS about a mile from where I live.

>169 ronincats: Will do, Roni. I decided to post those daily Black History Month bios for my Facebook friends, who are mainly people I work with and former undergraduate, medical school and residency classmates. I also copied the idea from my work partner who I share an office space with; she has been posting similar (non-literary) Black History Month bios on her FB face for the past two years.

>170 tututhefirst: You're welcome, Tina! I hope that you get some good book recommendations from my mini-bios, and I look forward to your comments about Great House.

>171 Cariola: Right, Deborah. Jamaica Kincaid is high on my list of favorite authors from the African diaspora, and I had already planned to write a mini-bio on her later this week. See Now Then is one of the 2013 books that I'm looking forward to reading, and I see that it just came out yesterday (Tuesday). I'll buy the print edition later this week or next week when I go to Barnes & Noble.

>172 brenzi: Thanks, Bonnie. I don't have a strong inclination to read The History of Love, so I probably won't read it, at least not anytime soon.

I'd love to see Zadie Smith speak in person. I haven't read Changing My Mind yet, although I think I've read several of the essays contained within it which appeared in The New York Review of Books. I'll read her New Yorker short story later this week.

>173 LovingLit: That's definitely understandable, Megan. Great House would be difficult for people with very busy schedules and limited time to spend on a book that requires close concentration on a daily basis, such as mothers of small children.

I wasn't the slightest bit offended by the lack of comments about my review of Great House; actually, I was tickled by the continued conversation about pizza toppings here, and the difference in the messages posted in my 75 Books and Club Read threads.

>174 lit_chick: Thanks, Nancy!

>175 kidzdoc: ah no! That is a pain.
*off to check up on how hot 101 degrees (I presume F) is*

Huh- 38.3 deg C, that's warm enough to be a major irritation. Im glad you have access to antibiotics if needed. Are you allowed to prescribe things to yourself? I assumed there would be some bureaucratic nonsense making you jump through hoops or banning you completely.
That is, unless....you are pretending to be Little Darryl from down the block, a child who needs antibiotics? lol

PS and CVS would be a chemist/drugstore?

Great review of Great House Darryl - I'd thought it sounded interesting but have read quite a few less than complimentary reviews which had put me off. I might give it a go when I've got the time to give it the focus it needs.

Your Black History Month author profiles are very interesting. So far I have only heard of two of the authors.

>176 LovingLit: Right, Megan; 38.3 C. Fortunately I've been afebrile since this afternoon, so I'm not inclined to start an antibiotic at this time. I can prescribe medications for myself, as long as it isn't a narcotic or one that would require prior approval from my insurance company. I've self prescribed my asthma medications for many years, and I'll show the pharmacists my Georgia medical license if they have any questions, which they usually don't. The pharmacists have several methods to confirm my identity, including my National Provider Identification (NPI) number, my Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) license number, and my office phone number, along with my state medical license number, and I can provide all of them off the top of my head.

I avoid taking antibiotics unless absolutely necessary, and I think I've only been on one once in the past 12-13 years. If I put myself on an antibiotic it would be amoxicillin, a generic medication that is dirt cheap in the US (a 30 day prescription costs $4 in many supermarkets and pharmacies here).

Yes, CVS is the leading pharmacy store in the US, and it seems as though there is one every mile or so in central Atlanta.

>177 SandDune: Thanks, Rhian. I didn't read Great House over the weekend, as I had to work, and I'm sure that I missed some connections that I would have picked up on had I read it straight through without interruption.

I'm glad that you and others are enjoying my Black History Month bios. I'm inclined to do the same sort of thing for women authors (more for my Facebook friends than my LT friends), Asian American authors, and South Asian authors sometime in the future.

If you thought your Gangnam dance was the bomb, wait until you see this:

Baby dances to ‘Gangnam Style’ in car

just read your review for Great House. Sounds like you enjoyed it more than me, I admired it but just couldn't get the characters. it did make me want to read more by Israeli authors as the parts set in Jerusalem did appeal.

pizza - I like mine simple and authentic.

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At 181 messages, I'm just going to give up on catching up with this thread, Darryl, and see what happens next!

I'm glad the author spotlights made the transition from FB to LT! And, I should note that I added Great House to my wishlist based on your review, but had nothing else to say at the time, so I didn't come out of lurking when I did so! Hope this finds you feeling better...

I find that often authors aren't the best choices for readers I agree about that. In fact I've given up on more audiobooks read by their authors than I have finished. I have a similar experience with poetry readings. The poets themselves are so often dreadful at bringing out the rhythm and beauty of their own work...puzzling.

Darryl, I'm enjoying your bios very much. So far, I know of everyone you've featured, but have only read Danticat and Ngũgĩ. When is it I can retire, again?

Hey Darryl! I hope that you feel better very soon. And that you get some nice reading time out of your rest. I've been enjoying your bios as well. I was just looking through my list of planned reads this month, and realized that several of the "Black History" books I chose were written by white authors. Hadn't even thought about it. Ironic, isn't it? :) I'll see if I can fix that.

I haven't gotten much of anything read so far this month, anyway, because I've been in and out of the hospital since Friday. We had a thaw-freeze and dad fell down and broke his hip, and then all the other family members (except me and the 9-year old) also fell and bruised themselves on the same icy driveway at some point this weekend. What a mess winter makes, eh?

Get better!

I'm enjoying your tributes to black authors, Darryl. I look forward to reading about my favorite, Toni Morrison.

I'm glad someone else liked Great House as much as I did. As you said, it's not an easy book to read but so worth the time. I liked A History of Love even more. On my second reading of it, I began to think of Nicole Krauss as brilliant.

The picture of Atlanta with the black cloud over it looks apocalyptic. I am more in awe of tornadoes after seeing the destruction in Joplin. We have so many watches and warnings here in SW Missouri that I was getting rather lax about retreating to the basement. Not anymore.

I hope you feel better soon, both shoulder and sinus infection. How handy that you can prescribe your own drugs!

Today's featured author for Black History Month is the Kittitian-British novelist, essayist and professor Caryl Phillips, who was born in St. Kitts in 1958 and emigrated with his parents from that tiny Caribbean island to the UK later that year. He grew up in Leeds and read English literature at Queen's College, Oxford. While at Oxford he directed several plays, and he became a playwright after graduation, when he moved to Edinburgh. In 1980 he traveled back to his home country, and that journey inspired him to write his first novel, The Final Passage, a bittersweet account of a West Indian woman who emigrates to London to seek a better life, where she experiences love and freedom but also finds heartache and racial prejudice.

Phillips first received critical praise for his 1991 novel Cambridge, which concerns the tragic life of a 19th century Caribbean slave. He moved from the UK to the US, where he taught English literature at Amherst College. While there he wrote his most acclaimed novel Crossing the River, a symbolic work about three siblings captured in west Africa, who each appear in a separate period of time in US history. This novel won two major literary awards and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 1993. His most notable works of fiction include A Distant Shore, a stunning and award winning collection of short stories about the immigrant experience in the UK; Dancing in the Dark, a fictionalized account of the life of Bert Williams, an early 20th century African American entertainer who found success by dressing in blackface and participating in minstrel shows; and Foreigners: Three English Lives, another fictional account of the lives of three black Britons whose lives ended tragically. His collections of essays include A New World Order, an examination of the meaning of home in increasingly international societies, and Colour Me English, his latest book, which combines deeply personal essays and analyses of the writers who influenced him the most.

I was fortunate to be in London with Mr. Phillips was interviewed by the dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson at Foyles Bookshop, where they talked about Foreigners and their experiences as black Britons. Although I found his latest novel In the Falling Snow to be rather disappointing, Caryl Phillips is probably my favorite living writer from the African diaspora.

Darryl, I'm loving these featured authors segments and you've been picking great pictures to go along with the descriptions of their works. So far, I've heard of all of them with the exception of Wole Soyinka. So what is your favorite book(s) by Caryl Phillips?

In case anyone is interested, I've found a better link for the hilarious video of the Gangnam style dancing 7 month old:

My little girl Amaya peacefully sleeping...until her favorite song comes on!

Today I finished In the House of the Interpreter by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, a memoir of his high school years in Kenya during the Kenyan Emergency (also known as the Mau Mau Uprising), and Bill Veeck's Crosstown Classic, this month's free e-book from the University of Chicago Press, which is taken from Veeck's autobiography. I'll review both books tomorrow.

>180 avatiakh: Kerry, it sounds as though I did enjoy Great House more than you did, as I found its characters to be very memorable.

>182 rebeccanyc: Fair enough, Rebecca.

>183 whitewavedarling: Thanks, Jennifer. I do feel better today, as my fever hasn't returned and my cough has significantly improved.

>184 laytonwoman3rd: Interesting comment about poets and their inability to speak the power of their written words, Linda. When I worked in NYC I used to attend spoken word performances at the Nuyorican Poets' Cafe, as a friend of mine would perform her work during the weekend poetry slams. I thought that most of the poets, who were mostly non-published poets, were able to express themselves well in front of an audience, as were the poets whose talks I attended at Pitt (which has a very strong collection of poets amongst its faculty and alumni) and at a bookstore in Pittsburgh that regularly featured local and visiting poets.

>185 The_Hibernator: Thanks, Rachel. I'll be interested to see which Black History books you decide to read. Certainly white authors are capable of writing outstanding historical books about blacks that are well received in the African American community; Rebecca Skloot (The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks) and Taylor Branch (Parting the Waters: America in the King Years) come to mind immediately. And, some black authors have come under harsh criticism for their historical books; the most recent example I can think of is the late Manning Marable, whose award winning biography Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention has been vilified by some black historians.

I'm sorry to hear about your father's injury! I hope that he's doing better, and that the rest of us are not badly injured. My father (who lives with my mother in suburban Philadelphia) puts out rock salt to keep ice from forming on our front path, driveway and sidewalk, which is even more important now that both my parents are in their late 70s.

>186 Donna828: Thanks, Donna. Actually, Toni Morrison will not appear in my selection of Black History Month, for two reasons. First, she is already well known to most people and particularly avid readers like ourselves; my focus this month is on authors who aren't as famous, so writers like her, Alice Walker and Maya Angelou won't be included. And, even if she wasn't so famous, she isn't one of my favorite authors; I want to choose writers who I like, preferably ones I've read at least two books by.

Even though we're not in Tornado Alley as (I think) you are, we've had some deadly tornadoes in Georgia in the 15 years I've lived here. Although I might snicker and deride the locals for freaking out whenever there is a possibility of snow, I take any information about tornadoes very seriously.

>188 phebj: Pat, my favorite books by Caryl Phillips are A Distant Shore, Dancing in the Dark, Foreigners and Colour Me English; they are all brilliant.

I should have also mentioned that Mr. Phillips currently lives in NYC, teaches at Yale, and is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books.

Interesting to hear that Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention hasn't gotten high approval ratings from black historians - I am actually reading it right now! :) I'll look up the complaints about it later. I was also hoping to finish The Autobiography of Malcolm X while I was at it.

We had rock salt on our driveway, but it kept re-freezing! Either it was too cold or we just didn't put on enough, I guess.

>191 The_Hibernator: Yes, there has even been a book published specifically to rebut Marable's biography of Malcolm X, entitled A Lie of Reinvention: Correcting Manning Marable's Malcolm X, which has the following description:

A Lie of Reinvention is a response to Manning Marable’s biography of Malcolm X, A Life of Reinvention. Marable’s book was controversially acclaimed by some as his magna opus. At the same time, it was denounced and debated by others as a worthless read full of conjecture, errors, and without any new factual content. In this collection of critical essays, editors Jared Ball and Todd Steven Burroughs lead a group of established and emerging Black scholars and activists who take a clear stance in this controversy: Marable’s biography is at best flawed and at worst a major setback in American history, African American studies, and scholarship on the life of Malcolm X.

In the tradition of John Henrik Clarke’s classic anthology William Styron’s Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond, this volume provides a striking critique of Marable’s text. In 1968, Clarke and his assembled writers felt it essential to respond to Styron’s fictionalized and ahistorical Nat Turner, the heroic leader of one of America’s most famous revolts against enslavement. In A Lie of Reinvention, the editors sense a different threat to an African American icon, Malcolm X. This time, the threat is presented as an authoritative biography. To counter the threat, Ball and Burroughs respond with a barbed collection of commentaries of Marable’s text.

The essays come from all quarters of the Black community. From behind prison walls, Mumia Abu-Jamal revises his prior public praise of Marable’s book with an essay written specifically for this volume. A. Peter Bailey, a veteran journalist who worked with Malcolm X’s Organization for Afro-American Unity, disputes how he is characterized in Marable’s book. Bill Strickland, who also knew Malcolm X, provides what he calls a “personal critique” of the biography. Younger scholars such as Kali Akuno, Kamau Franklin, Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, Christopher M. Tinson, Eugene Puryear and Greg Thomas join veterans Rosmari Mealy, Raymond Winbush, Amiri Baraka and Karl Evanzz in pointing out historical problems and ideological misinterpretations in Marable’s work.

Book #13: In the House of the Interpreter: A Memoir by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o



My rating:

Finalist, 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography

The latest book by Ngũgĩ picks up his life story where his childood memoir, Dreams in a Time of War, left off. It is April 1955, and the Kenyan Emergency, also known as the Mau Mau Uprising, is raging throughout the country. The Mau Mau, a group of Kikuyu freedom fighters, are at war with the colonial British government in an effort to achieve independence, after repeated cries to address grievances against their people were systematically ignored. The Mau Mau specialize in lightning quick strikes against the colonialists and Kikuyu supporters, which spread terror throughout the country. The British Army responds by fighting the Mau Mau in the forests and jungles, while cracking down harshly on the Kikuyu villagers who they suspect are supporting the freedom fighters.

Ngũgĩ's older brother Good Wallace has fled to join the freedom fighters, after he barely escaped with his life from an attack by local police after he visited his family in their home village of Kamĩrĩthũ. The townspeople and local officials are aware of Good Wallace's participation in the Uprising, and the family's activities are under surveillance.

As the book opens, James Ngũgĩ, the author's baptismal name, has returned from his first term at Alliance High School, the first and most highly regarded secondary school for black Kenyan students. His excitement at seeing his family again is quickly lost, as his home village has been razed to the ground, unbeknownst to him. He is eventually directed to a home guard post that has also been given the name Kamĩrĩthũ, which is essentially a concentration camp comprised of people from several nearby villagers, under guard by the British Army. Those who are loyal to the colonial government receive better housing and more freedom, and families like the Ngũgĩs are relegated to substandard living conditions and are closely monitored.

James wears his Alliance uniform proudly outside of the school grounds, as it is widely recognized as a mark of success by fellow Kikuyus, and he views it as a sort of talisman that will protect him from suspicion or harm by British soldiers. The school was founded by European missionaries and modeled on schools for the education of Native Americans and African Americans in the post-Civil War South, particularly Tuskegee Institute in Alabama and Hampton Institute in Virginia. During Ngũgĩ's years at Alliance it was led by Edward Carey Francis, a visionary Englishman who transformed the school from a largely vocational one to an institute of higher learning based on rigorous study within and outside the classroom that would mold and generate the future leaders of the country. Black teachers from across the country worked alongside their European counterparts, and as a result Alliance students were self-confident, intellectually minded, and prepared to attend university or serve as teachers and leaders within their communities.

James grows in confidence during his Alliance years, under the influence of his teachers and close classmates, as he excels in his studies, writes his first short story and becomes a respected Christian teacher to children in a distant village. However, he is deeply conflicted between his education, which is heavily focused on England as the center of the world and colonialism as beneficial to the citizens of the British Empire, and his people's desire for freedom and his concern about Good Wallace, who was captured and imprisoned by the British Army, and his mother, who was detained and tortured while he was there. He graduates second in his class, takes on a temporary teaching position, and is accepted into Uganda's Makerere University, one of the most prestigious post-secondary schools for African students. However, in the aftermath of his acceptance to university, he falls into a dangerous situation that threatens to overturn all of his hard work and success.

In the House of the Interpreter is named in honor of Edward Carey Francis, who viewed Alliance as a modern version of the Interpreter's House in the 17th century novel The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan, a place "where the dust we had brought from the outside could be swept away by the law of good behavior and watered by the gospel of Christian service." It is a valuable and detailed though time limited view into Ngũgĩ's formative years, and the experiences during a time of personal and political upheaval that penetrated the fortress of higher learning that Alliance represented to him and his classmates.

#187 Now I have heard of Caryl Philips, and I actually thought I had one of his books but on checking I don't seem to have. I like the look of Foreigners: Three English Lives. Is that one that you've read Darryl?

>194 SandDune: Yes, I did read Foreigners: Three English Lives, Rhian. And, I was fortunate enough to be in London when Caryl Phillips discussed the book at Foyles, alongside Linton Kwesi Johnson. I had read it, so I was able to ask him several questions about the book and its characters. The three men, all real black Britons, were an assistant to the lexicographer Samuel Johnson, a highly regarded boxer from the 1950s who defeated a much better known American boxer (either Rocky Graziano or Sugar Ray Robinson, I think), and a young man from Leeds who was murdered there in the 1970s or 1980s. All of the characters met tragic ends, so it isn't a light book, but it was a superb one.

ETA: The English boxer was Randy Turpin, "who was considered by some to be Europe's best middleweight boxer of the 1940s and 1950s." He defeated Sugar Ray Robinson to claim the world's middleweight championship in July 1951 during Robinson's European tour, but Robinson reclaimed the title in a rematch at the Polo Grounds later that year.

Book #14: Bill Veeck's Crosstown Classic by Bill Veeck with Ed Linn



My rating:

This excerpt from Bill Veeck's autobiography Veeck--As In Wreck is the February free e-book from the University of Chicago Press, which consists of two chapters from that book. Veeck (1914-1986) was a famous baseball innovator and owner of three professional ball clubs, who was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1991. He is best known for planting the ivy at Wrigley Field, the longtime home of the Chicago Cubs; signing Larry Doby, the first African American to play for an American League team (the Cleveland Indians) in July 1947, several months after Jackie Robinson integrated the National League in May of that year (with the Brooklyn Dodgers); using the midget Eddie Gaedel as a pinch hitter for the woeful St. Louis Browns in 1951; and his disastrous 1979 promotion "Disco Demolition Night" while he owned the Chicago White Sox, which led to a riot in the stands and a forfeiture of the game.

Veeck was a colorful and controversial figure, and I thought that this excerpt would be an entertaining short read. It consists of two chapters, "The Battle of Wrigley Field", which describes his early career spent working for Chicago Cubs owner Phil Wrigley, his successful idea to cover the outfield wall with ivy, and his failure in getting Wrigley to install lights for night games, which was mildly interesting, and "Chuck Comiskey and the National Debt", a dreadfully boring financially based discussion of his acquisition of the Chicago White Sox in the late 1950s. These chapters were poorly written and massively disappointing, and I'd only recommend this excerpt to the diehard fan of either Chicago baseball club.

My author of the day for Black History Month is Aminatta Forna, who was born to a Sierra Leonean father and a Scottish mother in Glasgow in 1964. She and her family traveled to Sierra Leone when she was an infant, and her physician father was imprisoned and later hanged for his political activity during the country's civil war. This became the basis for her 2003 memoir The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest. She and her mother returned to the UK, and she received a law degree from University College London. After her graduation she served as a Harkness Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, then returned to the UK to work for the BBC as a reporter, where she also completed three documentary films, "Through African Eyes", "Africa Unmasked", and "The Lost Libraries of Timbuktu". She also established the Rogbonko Project to build a school in Sierra Leone, and she oversees several other projects to benefit the poor in that country.

Ms. Forna is the author of two novels, Ancestor Stones, which won three literary awards, and The Memory of Love, an outstanding book set in the aftermath of the Sierra Leonan civil war, which won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best Book Award in 2011. It was my favorite novel from that year as well.

Ms. Forna is a Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University in England, a judge for this year's Man Booker International Prize, and a frequent contributing writer to several publications and radio and television stations in the UK.

Thumbs-upped your reviews, "like"d them, and shared your Forna quickie on FB.

Thanks, Richard!

After several encouraging messages on my Club Read thread I've decided to write mini-bios of authors during South Asian Heritage Month in May, similar to what I'm doing now for Black History Month. I'm not sure that there are 31 lesser authors whose books I've read and enjoyed, but I'll bet that I can come up with at least 15-20 of them, and possibly reach 31 if I include famous and deceased authors.

RIP Donald Byrd (1932-2013), one of the greatest jazz trumpeters of the 1950s and 1960s, who was one of the very few hard bop musicians to have a successful career as a crossover artist in the 1970s and beyond. He was born in Detroit, joined Lionel Hampton's band while still in high school at the famed Cass Technical High School, and after graduation moved to NYC to attend the Manhattan School of Music. He became a member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers after the tragic death of Clifford Brown in 1956, then served as a co-leader of the influential Jazz Lab alongside the alto saxophonist Gigi Gryce. He was a popular sideman on dozens of albums on the Blue Note Records and Prestige Records labels during the mid 1950s to mid 1960s, performing frequently with John Coltrane, Hank Mobley, Red Garland, Jackie McLean and Kenny Burrell, while recording well received albums such as "Fuego" (1959) and "Free Form" (1961) as a leader.

He received wider attention and critical acclaim upon the release of his 1963 album "A New Perspective", which featured a gospel choir alongside a hard bop septet; the song "Cristo Redentor" (Christ the Redeemer) was one of my favorites as a young child.

In the 1970s he embraced the jazz fusion movement, recording with the Mizell Brothers, and he later created his own band, the Blackbyrds, which released several popular albums, including "Black Byrd" (1973), the best selling album in the history of Blue Note Records, "Stepping into Tomorrow" (1974), and "Places and Spaces" (1975).

From the mid 1970s to the end of his working life Byrd spent his time teaching, while he received a master's degree and a doctorate from Columbia University. He taught primarily at North Carolina Central University, Rutgers (my alma mater), NYU, Howard and Oberlin.

Donald Byrd died at his home in Teaneck, NJ on February 4, at the age of 80, but his death was not announced publicly until today.

YouTube: Fuego

YouTube: Cristo Redentor

YouTube: Places and Spaces

I am also enjoying your Black history month bios. I have had Color Me English on my to-read list for a while--now I really want to read it! Maybe next month. Great review of In the House of the Interpreter.

What is your opinion on the Malcolm X biography controversy?

>201 banjo123: Thanks, Rhonda. Colour Me English is one of the best collections of essays I've read recently, along with The Memory Chalet by Tony Judt and Writing in the Dark by David Grossman.

At the moment I don't have a strong opinion on the Malcolm X controversy; I thought that Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention was a very well written and researched book. I suppose I'll have to read A Lie of Reinvention to see what the fuss is about. My off the cuff thought is that many of Marable's critics prefer to focus on Malcolm's separatist beliefs that he held for most of his political career, rather than the more moderate, assimilationist stance he held toward the end of his life, particularly after his pilgrimage to Mecca and his conversations with Islamic intellectuals in the Middle East.

Oh, I guess that means I will be on Marable's side. I am intending to read the book, but haven't gotten there yet; so I base all my opinions on the autobiography. I know that is less than accurate in a number of respects, but the end, with his Haj, did seem so real.

>203 banjo123: Oh, I guess that means I will be on Marable's side.

I agree with you, Rhonda.

I know that Marable was considered an excellent and distinguished historian and that he researched this for a long time; sadly, he died just before its publication.

ETA I've had the book on the TBR since it came out.

Interesting...serendipitous...that you should be having this conversation about the Marable book. I was talking with a friend of a friend of a friend at a party and we got around to the 60s. I mentioned that I actually knew very little beyond popular myth/culture about the major figures in civil rights. He mentioned the Marable and Lewis' Biography of a Race as books he had enjoyed reading. Have you read the latter?

>205 rebeccanyc: Right, Rebecca. It's a shame that he wasn't alive to appreciate the accolades and awards that came after he wrote this book. I was unfamiliar with him before this book came out, and I suspect that many other people were, too.

>206 TadAD: I did read W.E.B. DuBois: Biography of a Race sometime in the 1990s, but I don't know if I finished it or not. I did enjoy what I read, but I was probably in medical school at the time it came out and I couldn't devote much time to pleasure reading then. I still own it, and intend to read it and W.E.B. DuBois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963, the second volume in David Levering Lewis's biography of DuBois. I'm all but certain I have that book as well, but it isn't in my LT library. BTW, each book won a Pulitzer Prize and at least one other literary award.

207 I had heard of him because he was a Columbia professor. I'm pretty sure I read both volumes of the DuBois biography, but I'm embarrassed to say I don't remember much of them, so maybe I only meant to read them!

My author of the day for Black History Month is the author, playwright, filmmaker and lawyer Patrick Chamoiseau from the Caribbean island of Martinique, who is one of the leading Francophone authors from outside of France. He was born in the Martiniquan capital of Fort-de-France in 1953, and studied law in Martinique and France. He became well known in his country, an overseas territory of France, when he and two other authors published a manifesto entitled "Elogé de la créolité", which questioned the relevance of négritude to the people of Martinique. The earlier theory held that racial unity amongst the varied members of the African diaspora was the best method to counteract the hegemony used by France and other colonial powers to subjugate the people of foreign lands, whereas créolité argued that French Caribbean colonies such as Martinique should examine their relationship with the mother country separate from the French African colonies, due to their unique elements and difficulties.

Chamoiseau's literary focus is on the people of Martinique, in particular the narrative stories to which he was exposed in childhood, and the history of the conflicted relationship the island has had with France. His first book was Chronique des sept misères (Chronicle of the Seven Sorrows), a novel about a marketplace worker that is enriched with magical realism and influenced by characters from Creole folktales. His second book, Solibo magnifique (Solibo Magnificent), is a tragicomic police procedural that is suffused with Creole wisdom and experience. He first received critical acclaim upon the release of Texaco, the winner of the 1992 Prix Goncourt, the leading literary award in France. This novel is a narrative history of Martinique told through the eyes of a former slave, who founded a village on the grounds of an old oil refinery. Other books by Chamoiseau available in English translation include Creole Folktales, School Days, and Childhood, which all describe his early years and influences.

>208 rebeccanyc: David Levering Lewis also taught at Rutgers for 18 years (1985-2003), including the time I spent as an undergraduate student there; he now teaches at NYU. He wasn't well known until his first volume of the DuBois biography was published, though. I don't remember much about that book, as I'm sure that I read it very sporadically, and I suspect that I didn't finish it. I should start it again from the beginning, as DuBois is one of my favorite African American historical figures.

ETA: I intend to post bios of several more Francophone authors this month, in anticipation of the upcoming Francophone literature theme for the Reading Globally group.

I'm hoping you will do a bio on Victor LaValle. Do you take requests?? :)

>211 TinaV95: Yes, Victor LaValle is on my list of planned authors for the month. I'll probably do him on Sunday or Tuesday. I haven't finalized my list yet, but I still plan to alternate between male and female authors, preferably those whose books I've already read. I'll probably read his novel Big Machine next week, too.

My author of the day for Black History Month is the American novelist and professor Jesmyn Ward, whose second novel Salvage the Bones won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2011. She was born in DeLisle, a small town on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and received bachelor's and master's degrees from Stanford University and a master's degree from the University of Michigan. She decided to become a writer in her senior year at Stanford, after her brother was killed by a drunken driver. After she received her MFA from Michigan her family's home was flooded during Hurricane Katrina, forcing them to flee for their lives. This experience and those of her childhood were the primary influences for Salvage the Bones, a powerful novel narrated by an African American teenage girl living in coastal Mississippi with her troubled brothers and strict father, who decide to remain in town as Katrina approaches. The book touches on the lives families in rural towns, teenage pregnancy, love and desire, and the unrealized hopes and dreams of those caught up in a cycle of poverty, which is filled with unforgettable characters and superb writing.

Ms. Ward's debut novel, Where the Line Bleeds, describes the lives of twin teenage brothers caught in a cycle of poverty and despair after being abandoned by their mother and raised by their grandmother in southern Mississippi. She is currently working on her third book, Men We Reaped, a memoir dedicated to her brother and four other young African American men who died in her hometown.

Jessmyn Ward currently serves as an Assistant Professor of English at the University of South Alabama. She also writes poetry, which can be read on her blog at http://jesmimi.blogspot.com/.

Darryl, these bios are terrific. I know about half the authors you've mentioned so far, so it's a terrific education for me. Also, one of my f2f book groups has been mired in the (mostly dead) white men syndrome for a few months. I'll suggest some of these authors and titles for the summer.

>214 ffortsa: You're welcome, Judy!

According to Amazon, Men We Reaped will be released on September 17th, published by Bloomsbury USA. Here's a description of the book:

“We saw the lightning and that was the guns; and then we heard the thunder and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain falling and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped.” —Harriet Tubman

In five years, Jesmyn Ward lost five young men in her life—to drugs, accidents, suicide, and the bad luck that can follow people who live in poverty, particularly black men. Dealing with these losses, one after another, made Jesmyn ask the question: Why? And as she began to write about the experience of living through all the dying, she realized the truth—and it took her breath away. Her brother and her friends all died because of who they were and where they were from, because they lived with a history of racism and economic struggle that fostered drug addiction and the dissolution of family and relationships. Jesmyn says the answer was so obvious she felt stupid for not seeing it. But it nagged at her until she knew she had to write about her community, to write their stories and her own.

Jesmyn grew up in poverty in rural Mississippi. She writes powerfully about the pressures this brings, on the men who can do no right and the women who stand in for family in a society where the men are often absent. She bravely tells her story, revisiting the agonizing losses of her only brother and her friends. As the sole member of her family to leave home and pursue higher education, she writes about this parallel American universe with the objectivity distance provides and the intimacy of utter familiarity. A brutal world rendered beautifully, Jesmyn Ward’s memoir will sit comfortably alongside Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I'm Dying, Tobias Wolff's This Boy’s Life, and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Amazon: Men We Reaped

Darryl - I must say that your author of the day for Black History month is riveting. All of the writers I am familiar with except Patrick Chamoiseau and your short biogs of each are a pleasure to read.

Have a great weekend.

Btw Many Brits felt that Turpin was duped in the rematch with Robinson who got away with behaviour that would have certainly had him disqualified nowadays.

>214 ffortsa: one of my f2f book groups has been mired in the (mostly dead) white men syndrome for a few months
haha- I get that, sometimes you can get stuck on a roll, without even knowing it! Funny though, as your f2f book groups authors could also be describing politicians......

>206 TadAD:/207 I have a cute WE DuBois Penguin Great Ideas edition Of the Dawn of Freedom, it is a collection of essays, and was a great book to chuck in my handbag (or pocket) when needed. I found his writing formal/old fashioned and therefore not easy to get through.

Is Jesmyn Ward the author of Salvage the Bones? Ooops it just popped up in the touchstones that she is. I loved that book (Salvage the Bones), and will definitely read her memoir after it's published.

Really interesting information about Jesmyn Ward. I haven't read any of her books. Was there some violence against animals in Salvage the Bones? I thought I remembered something about that and I avoided the book. I will definitely be looking for her memoir when it comes out later this year.

Hi Darryl, I'm joining in the praise for your Black History Month bios. Great stuff! I loved both Aminatta Forna's The Memory of Love and Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones and will be on the lookout for her memoir.

#219 Salvage the Bones was an amazing novel, Pat. But dog-fighting was an important element of the story.

Daryl, thanks for posting francophone author bios. I am keeping track of them for the 3rd Quarter Global Reading group.

Coincidentally, I just checked Salvage the Bones out of the library. I hate dog-fighting, but I can handle violence in novels, if it is well-done.

>219 phebj:: which is why I knew I couldn't read it.

>216 PaulCranswick: Thanks, Paul. I'm glad that you and others are enjoying these bios. Patrick Chamoiseau is an underrecognized author even in the Caribbean, probably because he is from a very small island and writes in French.

I hadn't heard of Randy Turpin before I read Foreigners, and I had no idea that he defeated Sugar Ray Robinson, whose career I'm moderately familiar with. I can't remember any details about the Turpin-Robinson rematch at the Polo Grounds (the former home of the New York baseball Giants, who moved to San Francisco after the 1957 season), so I don't know if Phillips mentioned Robinson's behavior during the fight.

That reminds me; I own the biography Sweet Thunder: The Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson by Wil Haygood, which I haven't read yet.

>217 LovingLit: Megan, the book you mentioned contains four chapters from The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois's most famous book, which was published in 1903. I found that book to be extraordinarily visionary and prophetic, although it was difficult to read due to his writing style. I own W.E.B. Du Bois: Writings, a Library of America collection of Du Bois' books (including The Souls of Black Folk), essays and articles in The Crisis, the magazine of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), which he founded in 1910. This book is over 1300 pages long, and I've read some but not all of it. I have too much on my reading plate this year, but next year I'll plan to read that book in its entirety, along with David Levering Lewis's two part biography of Du Bois, which I've put off for far too long. (Hmm, is it too early to make reading plans for 2014?)

>218 arubabookwoman: I enjoyed Salvage the Bones too, Deborah, and I'll definitely purchase Men We Reaped once it is published.

>219 phebj: Yes Pat, one of Esch's (the narrator's) brothers (Skeeter?) owned pit bulls, which he bred as fighting dogs. Unfortunately this is a common pasttime of young African American males in the rural South; I'm sure nearly everyone has heard of Michael Vick, the NFL quarterback who served jail time for his role in sponsoring an illegal dog fighting ring.

IMO this shouldn't put off people from reading this important book, as it does reflect an unpleasant reality and because Ms. Ward doesn't glorify or condone this activity. There certainly are topics that I find distasteful or difficult to read about, including slavery, child abuse, and particularly rape and violence against women; the only child of our next door neighbor in my home town was raped and murdered by her first boyfriend several years after we moved from New Jersey to Pennsylvania. (After I saw the ending of the movie "Looking for Mr. Goodbar" I was very traumatized and couldn't sleep for several days as a result.) I also have a hard time reading 19th and early 20th century books which reflect the racial prejudices of those eras. However, I'll try, not always successfully, to read these books with an open mind.

>220 brenzi: Thanks, Bonnie!

>221 laytonwoman3rd: Right, Linda,

>222 banjo123: You're welcome, Rhonda. I'll write at least three more bios of Francophone authors this month, who will all be eligible for the third quarter Reading Globally group read of Francophone literature.

>223 tiffin: Tui, I suppose that people who would be very disturbed or offended by dog fighting would probably be better off avoiding Salvage the Bones, but they would be missing out on a very well written, eye opening and educational novel.

Darryl, this is the first time I've checked in on your thread since you started the Black History Month bios and I'm really enjoying them. I know most, but not all of the authors you have highlighted so far. I'm less familiar with poets, in general.

Regarding Salvage the Bones I echo your comments encouraging folks not to be put off by the fighting dogs content. I am one who actively shies away from violence against animals. I have a very strong emotional reaction to animals being harmed in any way and I loved Salvage the bones. Ward handles the dog fighting in a way that helped me understand this "pastime" and I was touched by the odd juxtaposition of Skeeter's love for the dog and his desire for her to win horrible, desperate fights. It seems to me that much really good literature deals with some of the most painful subjects. This novel is no exception. It didn't change my thoughts or feelings about dog fighting one whit (any more than reading Bastard Out of Carolina changed my thoughts and feelings about child abuse or reading To Kill a Mockingbird changed my feelings and thoughts about racism and Jim Crow). That's certainly not what Ward (or Allison or Lee) is trying to accomplish.

Thanks for taking the time to post your bios here since I tend to avoid FB. I'll look forward to May's installments, as well!

Today's featured living author for Black History Month is the novelist, biographer, music critic and public intellectual Albert Murray, who was born in Mobile County, Alabama in 1916.He graduated from Alabama's Tuskegee Institute, where he was introduced to another promising student, Ralph Ellison, author of the groundbreaking novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953. The two men would become close friends for many years after Ellison left Tuskegee, and their correspondence to each other during the 1950s is preserved in the superb book Trading Twelves: The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray. Ellison and Murray discuss Ellison's novel, the life of the writer, the nascent civil rights movement, and especially jazz. Both men preferred more traditional swing and big band music played by Duke Ellington and Count Basie, and rejected the bebop style of jazz performed by Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis and others that was taking hold in NYC at that time.

Murray, like Ellison, left Tuskegee after graduation to move to New York, and earned a master's degree from NYU in 1948, while serving as an officer in the United States Air Force. He began his writing career in 1962, and published his first book The Omni-Americans: Black Experience and American Culture in 1970, in which he criticized sociologists and public intellectuals who portrayed African Americans as a uni-faceted and simplistic group, and successfully argued that they were as diverse and multi-layered as any other people, and were not substantially different from white Americans in their beliefs, hopes and dreams. The book includes the famous statement "the so-called black and so-called white people of the United States resemble nobody else in the world so much as they resemble each other."

The following year Murray published South to a Very Old Place, a memoir of his experiences in Northern and Southern cities before and after the civil rights movement, which reads as a jazz inflicted train journey from New York to Memphis via Greensboro, Atlanta, Mobile and New Orleans. His first novel, Train Whistle Guitar, was released in 1974, the first book in a vibrant tetralogy that also included The Spyglass Tree, The Seven League Boots and The Magic Keys. The protagonist of all three novels is Scooter, a boy who grows up in a small Alabama town in the years following World War I, attends college elsewhere in the state in the 1930s, and joins a traveling jazz band during the Swing Era.

Murray did not receive much critical attention until he was acclaimed by the critic Stanley Crouch in the 1980s. His other works include the nonfiction books Stomping the Blues and The Hero and the Blues, which both describe the effects of the blues on literature and society. At the age of 96, Murray is fortunately still with us, and his novels and nonfiction books remain widely available in print and electronic formats.

Morning Darryl- Hope you are having a nice weekend. I was also a big fan of Salvage the Bones. I think Ward is an important "new" voice. I definitely NEED to do a reread of Invisible Man. It's been WAY to long!

>227 msf59: Good morning, Mark! I agree; Jesmyn Ward is an important new voice, and that is the whole point of this exercise, to do what little I can to promote authors like her and Albert Murray who I am familiar with that have received critical praise but little public recognition. For a while I thought I might have difficulty selecting 28 authors, but as it turns out I've come up with 33 so far. As I mentioned above, I plan to do the same thing in May, for South Asian Heritage Month; I think I can come up with 31 authors who live in or are descended from the region, although I suspect I'll need to include deceased writers to reach that total. I'll start working on this list of authors over the next week.

I'm with you; I also need to re-read Invisible Man, hopefully in the summer or fall of this year.

Hello Darryl, tooooooooo much to catch up. Will do so slowly, therefore - I hope you do have a lovely Sunday Darryl :)

>229 drachenbraut23: Thanks, Bianca; it's good to see you back here!

Albert Murray has now landed solidly on my "must read" list. You're a heckuva resource, Darryl. I've marked every one of these bio posts as "favorites" so I can find them and re-read them to remind myself of the authors I'm not yet familiar with.

I also want to re-read Invisible Man - first time I read it was in college in the 60s. Unlike Clinton I was reading in the 60s, not inhaling. I just got me a copy about a month ago and it's in the pile to be read.

>232 xieouyang: Oh, come now. Clinton didn't inhale. I refuse to believe it.

Whoops; I almost forgot:



>231 laytonwoman3rd: Thanks, Linda. I've read Trading Twelves and South to a Very Old Place, which I loved, and Train Whistle Guitar and The Spyglass Tree, which were good (especially the first novel). I should resume reading the tetralogy at some point, though.

>232 xieouyang: Manuel, Clinton was inhaling in the 1960s? I thought he was studying diligently at Georgetown and Oxford and participating in numerous co-educational actvities.
,
>233 The_Hibernator: Right, Rachel. He didn't inhale, and he didn't have sex with Monica Lewinsky. No way.

Heya Doc, swoopin' through

>235 richardderus: *hides small children and animals, waves overhead at swooping Richard*

I'm a little past 1/3 of the way through Stone Upon Stone by the Polish author Wiesław Myśliwski, my first book for the Reading Globally first quarter challenge (20th/21st century Central and European literature), which is narrated by a poor farmer in a small village in Poland. It's a tome at 534 pages, but it's very readable and quite good so far. I'll finish it either this evening or sometime tomorrow.

OK, you guys--Darryl, Ellen and Mark--have convinced me to give Salvage the Bones a try.

>224 kidzdoc: David Levering Lewis's two part biography of Du Bois
That one sounds interesting too.
I also heard about WEB DuBois in The Warmth of Other Suns.....in the context of one of the case studies fathers was in dispute with him over the running of a university....I could be getting this wrong...but it was interesting for me to make that connection.
I remember learning about the NAACP in high school - the acronym runs so smoothly off the tongue!

Yes, I think it might be too early for formulating reading plans for 2014, Darryl! At least far to early to be writing them down. Ill forgive you for the thoughts crossing your mind, but please dont solidify until at least December ;)

Invisible Man: on the WL- for this year, not 2014 ;)

Hello Darryl - meant to be a flying visit, but I quickly got caught up in your Black History Month bios - thank you so very much for sharing them! I own/have read many of your authors but was delifghgted to add a couple of books by Caryl Phillips to the Book Depository WL.

Today's Black History Month author of the day is the American award winning poet and professor Toi Derricotte, who teaches at the University of Pittsburgh (a.k.a. Pitt). She was born in Detroit in 1941, to a very light skinned Creole mother from Louisiana and an undertaker from Kentucky who was African American, but was also light skinned enough to be able to pass for a Caucasian person. However, both of her parents were active in the civil rights movement when they met in the 1930s, and Derricotte was raised with a strong sense of racial awareness and pride, although she could also pass for white.

She received a bachelor's degree at Detroit's Wayne State University in 1965. Her undergraduate years were interrupted by an out of wedlock pregnancy, which caused her to leave school temporarily and live in a Catholic home for unwed mothers, alone from her family, close friends and lover. This experience and her decision to give birth without pain medication formed the basis for her powerful poetry collection Natural Birth, which was published in 1983 and re-released in 2000, with a special dedication to her son.

She moved to New York in 1967, where she was active in the Black Arts Movement but found greater kinship with the mostly white feminist writers and intellectuals in the city, due to her personal experiences. Her initial poems dealt with black women who were oppressed by gender as well as race, and in 1978 she published her first book, Empress of the Death House. She received a master's degree at NYU in 1984, and in 1991 she began to teach at Pitt, where she continues to serve as a Professor in the Department of English.

Her other poetry collections include Captivity (1989), a look at subjugation through the experiences of African American women; Tender (Pitt Poetry Series) (1997), which deals with racial identity, particularly for light skinned blacks; and The Undertaker's Daughter (2006), her most recent book, which is an inner look at her difficult childhood and the life of her abusive and troubled father.

I first became aware of Ms. Derricotte as a medical student at Pitt, as her memoir The Black Notebooks: An Interior Journey was published to critical acclaim and local attention during my senior year in 1997. I was deeply moved by her story of childhood abuse, personal difficulty in fitting in and being accepted due to her race and natural shyness, and her dogged determination in overcoming obstacles to find personal and professional success as an adult.

In addition to her body of work and teaching responsibilities, Ms. Derricotte is also known as the co-founder, along with poet Cornelius Eady, of Cave Canem, a foundation that nurtures and inspires African American poets. Two anthologies of poetry have resulted from this foundation's work: Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade (2006), and The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South (2007).

I finally finished Stone Upon Stone by Wiesław Myśliwski today, a sweeping epic narrated by a remarkable but flawed man in a poor Polish village during most of the 20th century. It was superbly written, expertly translated and compelling, despite its length (534 pages). I'll review it tomorrow, after I finish my next book, The Other City by Michal Ajvaz, a whimsical look at the city of Prague. I enjoyed the opening paragraph of Ajvaz's novel:

I was walking up and down the rows of books at the antiquarian bookseller's in Karlova Street. Now and then I would take a look out the shop window. It started to snow heavily; holding a book in my hand I watched the snowflakes swirling in front of the wall of St Savior's Church. I returned to my book, savoring its aroma and allowing my eyes to flit over its pages, reading here and there the fragment of a sentence that suddenly sparkled mysteriously because it was taken out of context. I was in no hurry; I was happy to be in a room that smelled pleasantly of old books, where it was warm and quiet, where the pages rustled as they were turned, as if the books were sighing in their sleep. I was glad I didn't have to go out into the darkness and the snowstorm.

>237 phebj: Great, Pat; I look forward to your comments about Salvage the Bones.

>238 LovingLit: You're right, Megan; it's too early to discuss 2014 reading plans. I'll wait until the summer to do that.

Hmm, I wonder if there is enough interest to do a group read of Invisible Man? I admittedly have a poor track record with leading group reads of indivicual books, though.

>239 PrueGallagher: You're quite welcome, Prue!

What a terrific review of The Great House. I'm thumbs up #12!

So sorry that you are still in pain in your shoulder. I hope PT helps.

Darryl, I'm looking forward to your thoughts about Stone Upon Stone as I just picked it up from the library a couple of days ago. I hope I can get to it before it's due back. It's a tome, alright.

Sending you a Richard-esque healing *whammy* for your shoulder.

>242 Whisper1: Thanks, Linda. My shoulder is slowly improving, and I think it will be back to normal, if not better than what I thought was normal, due to an old sports injury, in the next month or two.

>243 EBT1002: Ellen, I gave Stone Upon Stone 4½ stars for now, which is close to its average rating of 4.46 stars on LT. It's very readable despite its length, and I would have finished it much sooner if I had been as focused on it as I was last night and this morning.

Richard-esque whammies sound worrisome, at least the ones he's sent my way in the past. The last one he sent was the cause of my severe upper respiratory infection and asthma attack when I was in London last September, which also caused flooding in southern England.

*gunning for GR of Invisible Man- not to be confused with HG Wells' one......*

>245 LovingLit: Anyone else interested? When would be a good time to read it?

I'm in for a group read of Invisible Man . . . March or April?

>247 brenpike: Brenda, April would probably work best for me, although I could read it in March if that was better for you, Megan and anyone else who decides to join us.

Hi Darryl. Just popping in to tell you how much I'm enjoying your incredible thread. Love the author bios and the great reviews.

>250 kidzdoc: Thanks, Peg!