RidgewayGirl's Categories, Part Two

Can you believe it's time for a new thread?

Currently Reading (or about to begin)




Yes, too many books, but it seemed easier to just add all the ones I was looking at at once.

Books with Titles



There's been some kidding about how to make one's categories easy to fill, but I do like this. I think that there are several books that I have right now that will fit this theme nicely.

1. Black Dahlia & White Rose by Joyce Carol Oates
2. NW by Zadie Smith
3. Tenth of December by George Saunders
4. How to Survive a Natural Disaster by Margaret Hawkins
5. The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton

Books where Someone Dies



Crime fiction is always the easiest category for me to fill.

1. Broken Harbor by Tana French
2. Man in the Woods by Scott Spencer
3. The Death of Sweet Mister by Daniel Woodrell
4. Close to Home by Peter Robinson
5. Notorious Nineteen by Janet Evanovich
6. The Hypnotist by Lars Kepler

Books by Dead People



You know, older books, where the author just got really old and died. Not at all a paranormal category.

1. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
2. The Collector by John Fowles

Books with Facts 'n Things



Non-fiction.

1. Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Age by Jonathon Keats
2. The Moon by Whale Light by Diane Ackerman
3. Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton
4. Them: Adventures with Extremists by Jon Ronson
5. Economix by Michael Goodwin
6. Image Before My Eyes by Lucjan Dobroszycki

Books to Read in Church



Books with a religious theme, books where religion or spirituality is a theme and books with a churchy word in the title.

1. Last Year's Jesus by Ellen Slezak
2. The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
3. Raised Right: How I Untangled My Faith from Politics by Alisa Harris
4. A Quiet Belief in Angels by R.J. Ellory
5. Salvation on Sand Mountain by Dennis Covington

Books Covered in Dust



Actually, I do dust my books. And I rearrange them enough to keep them from looking furry or causing anyone to sneeze. But some of those books have been dusted and rearranged several times, if you know what I mean (and I think you do).

1. The Female of the Species by Joyce Carol Oates (obtained July, 2011)
2. The Liars' Club by Mary Karr (owned before I joined LT and kept track of such things)
3. Raven Black by Ann Cleeves (obtained September, 2011)
4. Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon (purchased September, 2011)
5. How to be Alone by Jonathan Franzen (Added September, 2008)

Books with Due Dates

Actually, this is not a category for pregnancy guides, although that would be clever, wouldn't it? But also terrifying because I have plenty of children wandering around here. We might add a cat or two (but I would call that a cat-egory). And a non-pregnant woman reading pregnancy books would be creepy. Less creepy than a guy, but still. I'm referring here to library books, or books borrowed from someone or promised to someone else.



1. Glaciers by Alexis M. Smith
2. Afterwards by Rosamund Lupton
3. The Round House by Louise Erdrich
4. Astray by Emma Donoghue
5. The Burning Air by Erin Kelly
6. Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter
7. Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
8. The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout
9. Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris

Books to Talk About



Group reads, tandem reads and Early Reviewer books.

1. Black Irish by Stephan Talty (Early Reviewer book)
2. Lessons in French by Hilary Reyl (Early Reviewer book)
3. The Cat by Edeet Ravel http://www.librarything.com/work/13194798 (Early Reviewer book)
4. Son of a Gun: A Memoir by Justin St. Germain (Early Reviewer book)

Books to Read with the Title Prominently Displayed



Books that were shortlisted or that won awards. You know, the ones that theoretically might impress someone were they to notice you reading it. So probably I won't include Fifty Shades of Grey or anything by Dan Brown here.

1. A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
2. There But For The by Ali Smith
3. Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan
4. Dear Life by Alice Munro

Books that Go Places



Books set in a foreign country or written by a foreign author. A country can be represented only once.

1. My First Murder by Leena Lehtolainen (Finland)
2. Cell 8 by Anders Roslund (Sweden)
3. The Dinner by Herman Koch (The Netherlands)

It looks like you're progressing well. I had house guests most of January, so I got very little reading done.

Starred the new thread.

Glad I found you! I have gotten so dependent on those continuation threads to keep my starred threads marked.

Sorry, Lori and Julie. I should have used that. I will for part three. We are an active group this year!

Beth, I have to get ahead now! I suspect that I won't get much reading done this summer.

Found! Starred! Ready to continue with you!

*starred*, once again!

I'd really enjoyed Rosamund Lupton's first novel, Sister, which was a solid crime novel of the old-fashioned psychological suspense variety. So I was happy to pick up her sophomore effort, Afterwards.

Gracie's a comfortable mother of two children, one of whom, Adam, attends an expensive private school in London, and the other, Jenny, is working at the school as she prepares to retake her A levels. On the morning of field day, as she stands watching the children and her son has been sent to the school building with the daughter of her best friend to retrieve his birthday cake, she sees smoke rising from the building and, running over, finds the school on fire. She sees her son is safely outside, but can't find her daughter, who was working up on the third floor.

There's an odd twist to the narration of this story that took a little adjusting to; Gracie tells the story in the first person, from the events of the day of the fire and then forward as she lies in a coma in a hospital bed. She's able to roam around the hospital invisibly, and soon decides that it's vital to discover who set the fire and why. This really, really shouldn't work. I spent the first chapters wondering if Lupton had decided to write sentimental weep-fests instead of crime novels, but soon it became clear that this was a mystery and one full of possible suspects and motives. Lupton made both the unconventional set up work and when the culprit was finally revealed, it was both a surprise, and someone indicated from the beginning.

Stopping by to wave 'Hello' and to star your new thread!

And another book goes on to the wishlist! Solving a crime while confined to a hospital bed is one of those devices that always seems to work for me.

Look, guys! I finally managed to make a picture appear in a post! It's like I created sunlight or kittens!

Yay! I like the cover of The Collector -- that's the same edition I read :)

I think I've already added Rosamund Lupton to my wishlist, probably from when you read the last book, if not, she's being added now.

Hooray for adding pictures, looks great!

Wow! Nice work Kay!

Victoria, you of all people, know how absolutely impossible I had found this!

Ellen Slezak's collection of short stories, Last Year's Jesus, are all set in and around Detroit and feature characters who, like the city, are both down on their luck and hopeful things might just work out anyway. Beyond that, each story is entirely different from the one before. Some of the stories are heart-breaking, and remind me of Bonnie Jo Campbell's American Salvage, like in Lucky where mentally ill Trudger just wants to keep his job sweeping floors at the mall so he can maintain his precarious life outside of the hospital. Others have a wry sense of humor, like in Tomato Watch, where Lucy's long stretch of bad decisions have her unemployed, pregnant and spending the summer caring for her grandfather, who has planted tomatoes in the middle of her mother's well-groomed front lawn. Slezak writes about children with a pitch perfect touch, aware of both their dependence on people who are not always as reliable as their children need them to be and ever eager to hope for things to work out in the end.

I felt equally accomplished when II finally learned to post covers on my thread. And doesn't it look great!

"It's like I created sunlight or kittens!"

LOL!!

I will learn too. Some day. Some glorious day!

Afterwards sounds like it has an some interesting aspects to it, and by the sounds of it it's different from some of the other crime novels I've looked at. Might be worth checking it out - to the library. I do like the cover of the book. Thanks for the review.

Yay for figuring out how to post pics!

Thank you, all. I'm still quite smitten with my ability to put more than words on my thread.

Julie, Rosamund Lupton is a new author (Afterwards is her second novel), and I think she shows great promise. I've enjoyed both of her books.

Your thread looks great Kay!

I'll be waiting to see if the writing style of NW annoys you.

The Moon by Whale Light consists of four extended chapters by Diane Ackerman concerning, in turn, bats, crocodilians, whales and penguins. While each chapter contains quite a bit of interesting information about each animal, the real focus is on the dedicated people who have given their lives to learning more about them and to protecting each animal.

I like bats a lot because they eat enormous amounts of insects like mosquitoes. I also lived for a few years in a place where there was a bat colony living in the attic of the garage. It was a beautiful sight to see them emerging at twilight. Ackerman likes bats too. In Praise of Bats takes her to several places in the US, following Merlin D. Tuttle, a respected authority on bats and founder of Bat Conservation International. Ackerman goes to some remote places following Tuttle and others as they research bats, but the startling part is about how much the careless acts of people are causing the bat populations to decline and how vital bats are to the environment.

In The Eyelids of Morning Ackerman is willing to help researchers grab wild alligators in order to tag and weigh them, as well as help removing crocs from populated areas. It takes a certain kind of person to be passionate about crocodilians:

A tall, slender man with long white hair, translucent skin, and a gentle manner, he'd loved crocodilians for most of his seventy years and at one point had had the largest collection of crocodilians in the United States--in fact, a collection second only to that at the Berlin Zoo. What had made this so unusual was that he'd had it in the basement of his house in Detroit. His son tells a wonderful story about his mother during those years. The family swore not to talk about their collection of crocodilians and other reptiles, as it was illegal to keep them in suburban Detroit. One day, when his mother had her sewing group over, the ladies all plugged in their portable sewing machines and suddenly thirty male crocodilians began to bellow from the basement. Nonplussed his mother quickly collected herself and explained that the plumbing had been acting up for days, and to pay it no mind.

From there, Ackerman proceeds to the windy shores of a Patagonian bay where, in The Moon by Whale Light she watches right whales gather near a field station built by the New York Zoological Society. Here she meets other researchers including Tom Ford, who was studying the bacteria in the exhalation of whales. This meant attaching a petri dish to a fishing pole and dangling it over a whale's blowhole just as it was exhaling. She also gets into the water with the whales, who she describes as the size of "reclining buildings".

Finally, in White Lanterns, Ackerman visits the penguin nursery at Sea World, where she falls in love with a chick. And who wouldn't? I now would like a penguin chick of my own to cuddle. She also travels to the wild islands surrounding Antarctica in search of penguins where she discovers that fur seals are vicious and the chance of a penguin reaching maturity are fairly slim.

Ackerman is a good guide through the natural world. Cheerful, curious and always willing to do anything the researchers and conservationists are doing, her essays make for compelling reading.

I love Diane Ackerman's books. You're making me want to reread The Moon by Whale Light. She writes beautifully. Another one of hers I really liked was Rarest of the Rare.

I've read her Zoo Keeper's Wife about the Warsaw Ghetto and have Cultivating Delight in my TBR; now I'll need to add The Moon by Whale Light to my wish list.

Before they moved down the beach, the place we used to stay at in Mexico for vacation had an arch leading to the pool and the bats would fly out of there every day at dusk. We always tried to be at the bar by then so we could see them. We've even tried to put up bat houses in the trees here at hime to attract them, but that wasn't too successful even though we have seen them on occasion and once had one that flew out when we opened our umbrella on the deck.

Anyway, sounds like a good book.

For years he's been looking for something to put his madness into. And he found me.

John Fowles's first published novel, The Collector, tells the story of the kidnapping and subsequent imprisonment in a cellar of a young woman by the man obsessed by her. Brilliantly written, Fowles first tells the story from inside the kidnapper's head, which is an uncomfortable and unreliable place to be. Clegg is endlessly self-pitying and self-justifying. His actions are reprehensible, but he sees them as inevitable and reasonable. When the claustrophobia of Clegg's point of view becomes onerous, Fowles begins the story again, this time in Miranda's words.

Today I asked him to bind me and gag me and let me sit at the foot of the cellar steps with the door out open. In the end he agreed. So I could look up and see the sky. A pale grey sky. I saw birds fly across, pigeons, I think. I heard outside sounds. This is the first proper daylight I've seen for two months. It lived. It made me cry.

Miranda's lovely. I could see why Clegg fixated on her. The novel is set during the early sixties, when society was just beginning to open up and, as an art student in London, Miranda was exploring new ideas and ways of living when Clegg took her away. Terrified and confused, she nonetheless refuses to be passive. Locked in a poorly ventilated cellar, she is still able to live more fully than her captor.

I picked up Black Dahlia & White Rose, a collection of short stories by Joyce Carol Oates because of the title story, which is about the Hollywood murder of Betty Short, known as the Black Dahlia. Here, Short and Marilyn Monroe are roomates and aspiring starlets. Monroe is still innocent and holding to her principles, working hard at acting class and playing by the rules, such as they are. Short has been in town longer, is a lot less starry-eyed and more willing to take chances. Which didn't work out well for her.

The rest of the stories are astonishingly diverse. Usually, a collection of stories by a single author can feel repetitive, as stories repeat themes and word choices. JCO doesn't do this at all. The following story, I.D., is told from the point of view of a teenage girl pulled out out of her Atlantic City middle school by the police. Other stories deal with an English class in a prison, an Italian vacation, a meeting with a high school guidance counselor and a graduate school drop-out reconnecting with a TA who had helped her. Some are told in first person, others in third, but always from a close proximity to the protagonist, who changes dramatically in each story. The women are all insecure and several have Daddy issues, but all in very different ways.

There is a sense of unease running through each story or, at least, I spent much of each story waiting for something horrible to happen. Especially when things seemed to be going fine, or when the protagonist felt hope for the future. I don't think these stories are intended to make the reader feel comforted or secure.

How did I miss your thread? Great headings for your categories!

Just stumbled in, and found book bullets galore--I can already tell this is going to be a dangerous place for me! I've been meaning to give Oates another try for ages, so that short story collection might be just the thing, too...

Thanks, Nickelini.

Wave, JCO's short stories are very good, but creepy. I'm going to try a novel next.

Hmm I may have to add Black Dahlia & White Rose: Stories creepy or not, I love digging into new short story collections. And I may have to give John Fowles another try. Thanks for your review! And sorta thanks for adding to my TBR piles.

Sorry about that, Julie!

Zadie Smith's new novel, NW, tells the story of two friends, who grew up together in a housing estate in London, but have since gone on to live very different lives. Leah went to college up north and then on to work for a local government agency. She's the only white woman working there and she's married to Michel, a French-African hairdresser who really wants to start a family, while Leah still isn't sure, isn't ready and can't see why everyone else is speeding ahead with adulthood. Keisha renamed herself Natalie sometime before law school and married a guy with a public school education and money. She's doing very well for herself with her beautiful house and children as well as a successful career. But she's uncertain of herself, worried about whether she has a personality and genuine desires of her own. The two women still see each other, but it's been years since they were close.

There's an odd self-consciousness to this book, as though Smith is aware on every page that she's writing an important novel about class and ethnicity in today's Britain. It takes away from the characters and the story itself as actions, thoughts and events all carry the weight of representation. Something happens partway through the novel and it takes off despite itself, making for a very good book for a long stretch of its middle. There are some stylistic choices, too, that seem less organic for this particular novel than as ideas the author is trying out. Smith is an intelligent and observant writer, which makes what she writes very good indeed, but that very intelligence and awareness get in her way at times. This is a better book than White Teeth and I suspect that in a few more years, no one will be able to surpass her. She's just not there yet.

I'm somewhat ambivalent towards JCO. I loved Blonde, but nothing else I've read by her comes even close. She seems to me to write too fast, too much. But reading her in short story format feels like it could be my thing. Will have to give it a try!

Anders, I've had a long history of ambivalence towards JCO. She spoke at a college event once and was dismissive of one student's question. And she is never kind to the female characters she writes and they never seem, to me, to be fully three-dimensional. Maybe as a result of the speed at which she writes? But in the short story format, this is less evident, and the sheer imagination and variety of her writing shines. I'm going to try a novel next.

Paul is a man's man, the kind of guy romance novels like to feature. He makes a good living as a carpenter, making beautiful, custom-made pieces for his wealthy clients. He likes to walk in the woods, chop his own firewood and he's a caring partner and nurturing parent. He's with Kate, who found fortune and fame when she wrote an inspirational self-help book after finding God in AA. She's down to earth and so thankful that her life has made such a dramatic turn for the better. Together with Kate's daughter they live in a beautiful old house in a charming and small community in New York.

One day, after a few encounters with difficult clients in the city, Paul stops at a state park on his drive home to clear his head under the trees. There he encounters a man beating a dog. In a horrible, randomly escalating incident, Paul has killed the man and now has to live with the consequences.

In Man in the Woods, Scott Spencer has created complex and realistic characters in both Paul and Kate. They're people who have tried their best to lead lives of honesty and integrity, to care for the people around them, to be contributing members of their community and to love their families, but they're also subject to all of the ordinary doubts and weaknesses of being human. Kate may have a successful career as an inspirational writer and speaker, but she doesn't think she's any more spiritual or knowledgeable than anyone else. Paul thought he'd always just kind of get by, and finding his vocation and such a generous degree of stability is still new to him. The novel is less about the aftermath of a murder than the spiritual and psychological consequences for both Kate and Paul. Spencer took his time setting things up, letting the reader get to know the soon-to-be murdered man, making the altercation less random than it might appear. There is certainly a lot to think about here, and Spencer's less interested in answers than in having the characters struggle with the questions. Can a good man commit murder? How does the events of a few minutes change things? Does a single event negate Paul's entire life of striving for honesty and openness?

Definite book bullet on this one! On the wishlist it goes.

You make Man in the Woods sound very interesting. I should see if I can get my hands on it. :)

Shug, whose mother affectionately calls her sweet little mister, has been dealt a tough hand in life. He's thirteen, overweight and friendless, with an alcoholic and promiscuous mother and an abusive father his mother hints isn't really his father. They live in a small house in a cemetery, the rent paid in exchange for keeping the cemetery grounds, which falls mainly on Shug to maintain. His father, Red, is a petty criminal with a record who starts including Shug in his activities in that Shug is told which houses to break into and Red and his friend keep the proceeds. Set in the early seventies, The Death of Sweet Mister is a grim and heartbreaking story which should be hard to read, but Daniel Woodrell has given Shug a sweet, clear voice that speaks in the cadences of a poor boy in a rural community. Shug really is a pleasure to spend time with, even if there's very little happiness in his life. He does love his mom, who loves him in return and he's curious about the world around him.

Woodrell writes about poverty-stricken rural communities like no one else. He captures relentlessly hard-scrabble lives with compassion for their narrowness of circumstance and lack of opportunity. He also writes people who, even in the limited choices offered, consistently make the wrong ones. There's an inevitability in what happens to Shug, but this doesn't make the ending of this short novel any less surprising.

Ian McEwan's new novel is the story of an MI5 agent in the seventies who is part of a group trying to find and secretly fund writers. Serena was good at math in school, which caused her mother to push for her to apply to study math at Cambridge, rather than literature somewhere less exalted, as Serena would have preferred. Along the way, she has a relationship with a professor, which leads her to applying for and getting a job in the secret service. To her disappointment, women at that time were only allowed to be glorified secretaries and, in one memorable instance, cleaning women. Although Serena is less bothered by this state of affairs than her closest colleague, she's nonetheless pleased when she is given a small promotion and sent to offer a stipend to a new writer.

The setting of Sweet Tooth is fantastic. The Cold War was underway and the fabric of British society was fraying, with strikes and shortages lending an air of doom to everyday life. MI5 was competing with MI6, and both were eager to impress the CIA. Intellectual life favored the left, some of whom were allegedly funded by the Soviets, so the idea that funding writers who would be sympathetic to the right seemed perfectly reasonable.

Serena is a true believer in the dangers of communism and finds her work to be of value. Handed Haley's short stories in preparation to her visiting him, she's intrigued by his writing and attracted to him because of that when they do meet. There's a bit of distance built into the story, which is framed as having been written years after the events described, but the actions and feelings of the people involved benefit from the remove. I enjoyed this book, both for its descriptions of time and place and for the themes of the relationship between writer and reader and for the sheer unreliability of a writer's compliance to coercion.

I loved Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell and I have Sweet Mister on my wishlist, I just need to get to it!

I have Winter's Bone and will read it soon, although I'm trying to save it for next year.

Starred you and added the JCO!

George Saunders's newest collection of short stories, Tenth of December, left me wishing it had been longer. Despite including only ten stories, it was a diverse group, ranging from ordinary events in ordinary lives to futuristic and somewhat gory scenarios. The most successful stories were the ones involving the most pedestrian of characters. In Puppy, the strongest story here, a woman takes her two young children to buy a puppy. This story hits like a bullet, but only upon reflection. The title story is similarly strong. Saunders tells the stories in a claustrophobic first person stream of consciousness, which means that several paragraphs can go by before the reader can grasp what is going on, but he makes this work. Most of the stories contain a wealth of human frailty and emotion and a sense of connections between people missed or misfiring; the unseen emotion behind the callous act. Not all stories succeeded; My Chivalric Fiasco felt like David Foster Wallace channeled through Karen Russell. It was clever, but the cleverness took too much away from the heart of the story. Still, this is a fantastic collection of stories and I'll be reading more by this author.

#55 - Good to hear that's a good one! I think I learned about that on Steven Colbert a while ago, and it went on my wishlist. I'll definitely track down a copy now.

I finished The Liars' Club by Mary Karr a week ago, and have tried to write something about it a few times, but failed to come up with anything that would do justice to this vivid memoir of growing up in an industrial town in east Texas in the nineteen sixties. I bought this book long before I joined LT, began it and then set it down and forgot about it, maybe because at the time I expected more shocking revelations in the book. Mary's parents, a oil worker and a deeply unhappy artist turned housewife, had a loud and volatile relationship, amplified by booze, but they did their best and loved their children and I needed an additional ten years or so to appreciate the damage that parents can do, when they love their children, but have their own dramas to attend to.

Karr's voice is matter of fact as she describes her upbringing, in which she lived in the loudest house on the block, the one that most kids aren't allowed to play at. She came out swinging, always ready to fight at a moment's notice. She loves her father, only to watch him distance himself from her, as fathers at that time did as their daughters aged. She had a more complicated relationship with her mother, who was stifled by the life she led, haunted by events of her past and overwhelmed by family life. Her mother's mother comes to live with them, a bitter old woman dying painfully of cancer and determined that the girls be beaten into obedience. Karr's mother, nursing her mother, caring for two small children and suffocating in the narrow confines of her life, behaves more and more erratically, until her actions blow the family apart.

The Liars' Club reminded me of both The Glass Castle and Let's Pretend This Never Happened and while the ending seemed a little too tidy, I have already gotten copies of the other two volumes in her memoir and I won't wait years to read them.

And I thought that the Liar's Club was a bunch of retired men sitting around heaving breakfast together at Hardee's while gossiping.

Ha! Actually, you're not far off. Karr's father took her with him sometimes when he'd be drinking with his friends and telling stories that Karr knew couldn't be true, involving as they often did the gory death of a relative she knew to be alive and so on.

I was thinking as I read your comments that it sounded a bit like The Glass Castle. I think you're right that sometimes we're not at the right place to read a particular book and might need more time and experience to appreciate it.

>55 RidgewayGirl: Lovely review! Very excited to know it's heading my way :)

Betty, it works the other way too, doesn't it? There are books I loved years ago that I would probably not like today.

I hope it reaches you quickly, Anders. Although knowing something good is coming in the post is also fun.

1. Supposing you'd just rescued a child from drowning, would you:
a) take the kid home to live with you? or,
b) take the child to the nearest police station or hospital? or,
c) call 911?

2. If that child told you he had been kidnapped, would you:
a) suspect the father because you'd read a newspaper article once about a guy who faked his child's kidnapping to get rid of him? or,
b) call the police?

3. If you suspected someone of kidnapping and murder, would you:
a) go visit them so you can intuit whether or not they might be dangerous? or,
b) call the police already?

3. If you were a wealthy business man whose son had been kidnapped, but was now returned to you, although the kidnappers were still free and knew your son might be able to identify them, would you:
a) wait a week after his return, then head to Home Depot for some new window latches? or,
b) have already had an expensive security system professionally installed?

4. If you made out with a guy, and there were *ahem* indications that he really got into it, when that same guy suddenly kissed you passionately a few days later would you:
a) be surprised because you thought he had liked you like a sister? or,
b) not be surprised at all, really?

5. If you were the owner of a successful marketing business generating millions of dollars, would you:
a) need help with basic computer tasks? or,
b) be proficient at the systems you needed to run your company and have a computer guy on the payroll for the other stuff?

6. If the father of the kidnapped child asked you to come live with them in their home in another city for a while would you:
a) move right on in immediately?
b) consider visiting when work is less busy and your own obligations allow? or
c) think that is more than a little odd and decline politely?

7. If you discovered emails from a guy's murdered wife in on her computer that might shed light on her final movements, would you:
a) email the people who had written her since her disappearance pretending to be her? or,
b) let the husband know about them, especially since you and he are sometimes making out, even though it always kinda surprises you?
c) seriously, the police exist for a reason!

If you answered a) to the above questions, congratulations! You're the author of Learning to Swim and your name is Sara J. Henry. In this book, Troy, the main character rescues a six-year-old she sees thrown from a ferry as it moves past the ferry she's on. She jumps in and rescues him, swimming back to shore. Then she decides that it might be his parents who threw him off of the ferry. Later, after he's moved in to her house, he tells her he was kidnapped. And then a thriller of sorts ensues, driven mainly by the utter, utter stupidity of the main character and unlikely plot twists that were nonetheless entirely predictable. All secondary characters exist only to help Troy out when she needs it, at which point they no longer need to be bothered with. Also, there's lots of stating the obvious, demonstrating areas the author researched and enough padding to make a decent quilt. Avoid this one.

That's hilarious! Yes, avoiding, thank you. :)

Great review of a book that I now won't be wasting my time on.

Excuse me while I dash over to remove this book from my wishlist...

It's only mid-March, but I'm nominating this for LibraryThing Review of the Year. Fabulous! Never heard of the book, forgotten it already.

BTW - your "phone the police already!" reaction reminds me of how I felt when I read a more respected book -- Highrise, by J. G. Ballard. The whole premise of the book relied on no one calling the police, although there were about a hundred people having horrible things happen to them all in one building. If I could get past that fact, the story was pretty good.

Great review! Thumbed :)

And there's the Hot Review - congrats!

What a brilliant review, wish I could thumb it twice!

Funniest review I've ever read on LT. Brilliant stuff!

Great review!

Another Hot review!

Well, that's overwhelming. Thanks, guys. It is easier to write a review for a book I dislike than for a book I love.

It is easier to write a review for a book I dislike than for a book I love.

I agree. I always have the most fun with my negative reviews

>74 RidgewayGirl: It must be because when something is funny you laugh and move on, but when something an author does is irritating it tends to build up to a grudge! Great review for a lousy book!

The book did manage to win two awards. I hate to think what the competition was like if this was the best of the bunch.

Carrie, there are also several laudatory reviews. I wonder if they read a different book?

Quick, someone, read the book, too!

Quick, someone, read the book, too!

I have no doubt that the same issues that bothered you would bother me, too, so I'm not going to volunteer!

Hahaha brilliant review! Avoiding that one.

yes brilliant! & cheered me up thank you. I am not brave enough to read that book sorry :) It won awards you know.... and gets 5 star reviews on amazon...

@ 63 -- Haha that was great. :) Congrats on the hot review!

Love the review! Thanks for the warning. I'll be staying away from this one :o)

Great review.

Great review Kay! Wish I were the witty.

So glad I found your thread! New threads are great, but sometimes it takes me awhile to find them.

I've finally figured out the publishing mystery! Books like Black Irish and Learning to Swim get published because some editors secretly love to read very amusing, very scathing reviews. Just think what a sad, serious place the world would be if there were no mediocrity to skewer.

Great review, but I'm wondering what you did in a past life to deserve such bad book karma. ;)

The Marriage Plot, Jeffrey Eugenides' new novel, tells the story of three college students attending Brown during the early eighties. There's a love triangle of sorts, anchored by Madeline, a reserved English major who chose her course of study because she loves to read, only to find that writers such as Austen, James and Eliot are distinctly uncool. She's not the kind of girl to embrace partying and she spends much of her time during her freshman year with Mitchell, a skinny, curly-haired boy who has fallen in love with her but, whether through sensitivity or insecurity, never makes his move. Then Madeline tries to join the cutting edge of scholarship by taking Semiotics 211, where she meets Leonard.

The boy without eyebrows spoke up first. "Um, let's see. I'm finding it hard to introduce myself, actually, because the whole idea of social introductions is so problematized. Like, if I tell you my name is Thurston Meems and that I grew up in Stamford, Connecticut, will you know who I am?"...When it was the turn of the boy next to Madeline, he said in a quiet voice that...his parents had named him Leonard, that it had always seemed pretty handy to have a name, especially when you were being called to dinner, and that if anyone wanted to call him Leonard he would answer to it.

The focus of the book is on the relationships that ebb and flow between the three, but each character is given the chance to tell their own stories with the point of view moving between them, sometimes circling back to revisit events from a different angle. Of the three, Leonard is the flashiest. Brilliant, charismatic and mentally ill, he takes up all of the space in whichever room he is in. He comes from a less affluent home on the west coast.

If you grew up in a house where you weren't loved, you didn't know there was an alternative. If you grew up with emotionally stunted parents, who were unhappy in their marriage and prone to visit that unhappiness on their children, you didn't know they were doing this. It was just your life...If you weren't a lucky child, you didn't know you weren't lucky until you got older. And then it was all you ever thought about.

Mitchell and Madeline are both naturally reserved and so take less space in company than Leonard, but are no less intense when they are telling their own stories. Mitchell is not sure what he wants to do with his life. He's been urged to consider divinity school by a professor, but he's ambivalent. He decides to spend a year traveling with a friend. He and Madeline aren't close anymore, but he hasn't entirely gotten rid of the idea of her. And Madeline's a mess. She graduates without a plan and takes a while to find what she wants to do.

The Marriage Plot is beautifully written. Eugenides leaves a decade between each novel and it is time well spent. There isn't a dud scene or an infelicitous phrase in the entire book.

I can't believe how many books you can juggle at once :) I am just a one book girl, it must be nice to have a book to fit your mood though. Do you sometimes find books jar, so its hard to move between them?

Claire, that is an anomaly. I just decided not to decide on which book was next and add all of the ones that caught my eye. It's fun so far.

LOL - Semiotics was the cutting edge of academia back then. ;) I had a friend who wanted to become a semiotics professor. Lots of call for them, ya know.

Poor English majors; they have a hard time finding work after graduation, don't they? Fortunately, I was a philosophy major.

heh I covered semiotics in my Media Studies A Level.. that's probably why I work in IT :) I think you friend just needs to write a few insanely complicated historical fiction novels and then sell the film rights for a film that stars Sean Connery :) yes OK the only person I know in semiotics is Umberto Eco :)

Seven Days in the Art World is a look at the world of contemporary art by ethnographic researcher Sarah Thornton. Each "day" comprises a long article about an aspect of the art world. I found it to be fascinating and surprising. You'll laugh, but I hadn't thought of the world of contemporary art as being quite so pretentious or as preoccupied with money.

The book opens with an auction at Christie's, in which one's importance is indicated by where one is allowed to sit. I'd always thought it would be fun to attend an auction. I don't think that anymore. This was a good opening for the book, illustrating how much art is just another plaything of the very wealthy. In subsequent chapters, Thornton looks at a class at CalArts in which students present their work for peer critiques; Art Basel, a Swiss art fair in which galleries have booths and do much of their year's sales; the announcement of the Turner Prize, a British art award which is as much a sign of prestige for artists as the Booker prize is for writers; ArtForum magazine; Japanese artist Takashi Murakami's various studios, in which his work is carried out by other artists and where marketing opportunities are pursued and, finally, the Venice Biennale, an international event for contemporary art.

Even as art itself is a constantly changing thing, how art is created, marketed, sold and resold hasn't changed. The most successful artists are as concerned for securing patronage and in marketing their image as they were in Renaissance Italy. And people have always bought art and, with their choices, indicated both their taste and wealth. If you have an interest in the subject, this is an excellent look at a world hidden from people who visit an art museum or gallery.

The Round House, Louise Erdrich's new novel, is a lot of things. It's a coming of age story, set on a Minnesota reservation during the summer of 1988. It's a crime novel, where a thirteen year old boy tries to discover who raped his mother so justice can be done. It's a wonderfully descriptive look at life on a reservation, with all its strengths and weaknesses but, at heart, it's a political essay about the failings of the justice system, especially as it applies to Native American women. The novel many have been set in 1988, but only this year some of the Congressmen voting against the Violence Against Women Act did so because they disliked the idea that a white man who rapes a Native American woman on Native American land, being subject to the laws of the reservation and potentially facing jurors who aren't all white. The tangled issues in The Round House haven't been resolved twenty five years later.

Joe's got a good life. His father is a judge and his mother works for the BIA, untangling webs of kinship to determine who has claim to Chippewa heritage. She comes home one Sunday afternoon badly hurt and life in Joe's house changes utterly. Joe has a large extended family that rally around and his group of Star Trek obsessed friends do likewise, but that can't assuage his need to see justice done. Erdrich paints an intricate picture of Native American life, from the stories his old grandfather tells and the preparations around religious rites and cultural celebrations, to the role of the Catholic church and the complicated lines of kinship that make everybody tied to each other. Erdrich also writes with both humor and empathy for her characters, from the ex-stripper who runs the local gas station and convenience store, to the priest who is also a Vietnam vet, to Cappy, Joe's best friend, who falls in love that summer.

The crime at the heart of the novel is overly intricate, but brings to light the difficulties of jurisdiction and the laws that have stripped the reservations of legal power. Despite the issues that Erdrich explores and clearly cares deeply about, the book never feels preachy or as though it were written to make a point. Mainly, this is due to the narrator and protagonist. Joe's thirteen. He's obsessed with sex and getting enough to eat and the time he spends with his friends is the most enjoyable part of this book about a boy suddenly having to confront the worst aspects of adulthood.

Wonderful reviews of both The marriage plot and The round house. Double thumbs!

Raised Right is less a memoir than a sort of explanation by Alisa Harris of why and how she walked away from the right-leaning politics that her Evangelical Christian upbringing traditionally embraced. Harris marched with an anti-abortion sign when she was a young child. She revered Ronald Reagan and believed fervently that when the Bible referred to the down-trodden and oppressed that it was talking about the owners of businesses bowing down under the weight of regulation. She wore a "W.2004" t-shirt in 2000. And then she reached adulthood and began to think about the beliefs she grew up with, both political and religious, and realized that they didn't always mesh.

I was raised in a household where politics was not something adults discussed with children, but our church was similar to Harris's. For me there were a combination of events, the end result was that I moved on and didn't look back until recently, when I discovered that this is a common event. So I was interested in Harris's story for personal reasons.

Harris is circumspect to a fault. She does point out that walking away from the expected political views results in people choosing everything from becoming a slightly more moderate Republican to moving very far to the left of the Democrats. She's trying to tell her own story and that of a larger trend in the same book and it leaves both subjects a little thin. Still, it's an encouraging book to those who don't believe the same things their parents do (God does not have a party affiliation. He may not even hold an opinion on capitalism) and an explanation of sorts to those who don't understand how anyone could consider themselves both a Christian and a liberal.

Raven Black is the first book in a four book series by Ann Cleeves set in the Shetland Islands. Taking place during the dark winter days between New Year's Eve and the local festival Up Helly Aa, the book begins with an island incomer finding the body of a teenage girl in a snowy field. Fran Hunter is an artist with a young daughter who has decided to stay even after her marriage to a local man has ended in divorce. There's a deep divide between the locals and the newer residents, with the newer residents never feeling entirely a part of Island life. Suspicion quickly falls on one man, although both the local detective and the head of the group of Aberdeen policemen sent to take charge are reluctant to rush to judgment. The only thing clear in this story is who isn't guilty, the confused old farmer who was also suspected of an earlier murder.

The mystery at the heart of Raven Black is not really the focus of the book. Instead, Cleeves focuses her attention to the unique life on the Shetland Islands. Isolated and swept by constant winds, the islands are a harsh place to live, but the islanders can look back at many unbroken generations. There's a small town feel to island life, with everyone knowing everyone else's business, but also a strong sense of community, forged over hundreds of years. The setting makes this book worthwhile and I plan to read the other books in the series.

Hi Kay:

I'm glad that you liked Raven Black. I've been meaning to read book#2 for a while now. I think I'll check the library for it soon. Thanks for the reminder!

Let me know when you get a copy -- we could read it together.

I loved the Shetland Islands series. Glad to see it is a winner for you too.

I'm glad you enjoyed Raven Black! I'm planning to read the 3rd book in the series next month.

Raven Black sounds fun - and as for semiotics, when I worked at a "marketing communications company" ie a graphic design studio with delusions of grandeur, we hired someone just out of college with a semiotics degree. Whiz kid who was supposed to be a trend predictor. His dead had been a big wig at a well-known food company which of course eased his transition into the corporate world. The kid was wired enough, creative enough and articulate enough to pull it off but I'm sure not many trend predictors survived the economic downturn. The company certainly didn't survive. I'll bet he's a high buck freelance consultant now.

But what does a female poetry major do for work?

Great to hear that the setting works for Raven Black, since it played a big part in my decision to buy it. :)

Carrie & Lori, I was worried that this would end up being a cozy, since it's compared to the Louise Penny books. But fortunately it wasn't and I'll read the second book soon.

But what does a female poetry major do for work?

I don't know, Katie, but when you find out, let this philosophy major know. : )

Eva, I think you'd like it. It's well written and the setting is fantastic.

The setting of Raven Black is quite the enticement! I seem to be on a Scotland and environs kick lately so I may have to add this one to the list as well.

Raven Black sounds like a book I'd like very much. I'll have to put it on my wishlist.

What do philosophy majors do for work? Well, one philosophy major that I've met runs a very successful wool company with gorgeous sweater designs: http://www.philosopherswool.com/. Coincidentally, their specialty is Fair Isle style sweaters. Weren't we just talking about the Shetland Islands? :)

LOL - I'll let ya know if I ever find out. I can't knit so...

The Devil Wears Prada meets Le Divorce in this coming of age story about a young woman who gets a job as the assistant of a famous photo-journalist in Paris, only to fall into the messy lives of the entire family. Kate's father died when she was a child, and during his long illness she had been sent to stay with relatives in Paris. A decade later she lands the job because of her French language skills. She's eager to please, reflecting back on each member of the family what they want to see, allowing them to confide far more than is appropriate. As for Kate, she longs for the illusion of belonging, every careless inclusion makes her feel as though she's part of the Schell family. Of course, as we know from literature, the servant is only ever let into a family so far, and no further, and that same servant is only viewed with affection insofar as she is useful.

Lydia Schell is a boss very much in the Miranda Priestly mold, knowing just how far she could push Kate, and when to drop some small nugget of affirmation. She has no trouble taking her daughter on shopping sprees for designer clothes or having her large apartment in the fashionable sixieme arrondissement repainted on a whim, but she charges Kate an outrageous rent for the small maid's room she's required to live in and berates her for her stupidity when the fruit Kate was sent out to buy for her cost more than she'd like. Lydia's by far the strongest person in the family, but each gets what they want from Kate, who isn't quite the doormat they believe her to be.

I enjoyed this novel. It doesn't break any new ground, or do anything original, but it does tread familiar ground in a pleasing and entertaining way. It might have been a stronger novel had the final events unfolded with a little more force - Kate repeatedly comes up against difficult decisions and then finds that the consequences are either softer than expected, or she doesn't have to make that decision after all. There's quite a few substantial ideas and themes presented and if they aren't always fully developed, it does mean Lessons in French was never boring.

What was boring, on the other hand, was the cover. And the title. Both were utterly forgettable, meaning that in a few months, even if I haven't forgotten the contents, the title will have been.

What had happened to me was not uncommon, I thought. Not in books or in life. There should be, there must be, some well-worn way of dealing with it. Walking like this, of course. But you had to stop, even in a town this size you have to stop for cars and red lights. Also there were people going round in such clumsy ways, stopping and starting, and hordes of schoolchildren like the ones I used to keep in order. Why so many of them and so idiotic with their yelps and yells and the redundancy, the sheer un-necessity of their existence. Everywhere an insult in your face.

And the shops and their signs were an insult, and the noise of the cars with their stops and starts. Everywhere the proclaiming, this is life. As if we needed it, more of life.

It's hard to review a book of short stories, especially without reviewing each individual story. Ideally, I'd have reviewed each story in Dear Life as I read it, taking the time to appreciate each well-written story as the individual gem it is. But life being as it is, and having immoderately consumed several stories a day, this just isn't possible. Alice Munro's stories are quiet in nature and are set in small towns and communities in Ontario. They take place at different times, but each deals in a different way with near misses; the couple who almost got married, the woman who almost left her husband, the man who almost went home. The emotions flowing through each story are strong, sometimes extreme, but the characters remain true to their self-contained personalities and a day of unbelievable anger and despair shows itself outwardly in only a hastily written letter or a sudden decision to jump from a local train as it slows for a curve.

It took a few stories for me to warm to the understated strength of Munro's stories, but soon it was took an act of will to leave spaces between each story. This is the first time I've read anything by Munro, but it won't be the last.

>96 RidgewayGirl: Sounds like an interesting and welcome book. To me, part of the rather left-leaning liberation theology strand of the Swedish Church, the American brand of Chrisitanity often feels very alien.

Too many short story books, too little time.

Exactly that, Anders.

Claire, after years of not reading many short stories, I've started the practice of having one on the go all the time. After all, it doesn't matter how long it sits between readings.

Kay> I completely understand what you mean about reviewing short stories. I tend to address each story with a sentence or two in a listed format when I do that and then make some overall remarks. I'm not sure that's a perfect method, but at least I will remember which stories I enjoyed and which I didn't.

Lori, I think I should just review each one as I read it.

I've had an interesting week. It's been spring break for the kids, who were found by a stray dog last Saturday as they and some friends played in the yard. She was very hungry and had a few cuts and abrasions, but was sweet-natured and desperate to be with people. So for the past week we've gone from a household that included two middle-aged dogs to a pack of dogs in a house that coincidentally included people and two very outraged cats. It was soon determined that while she had a microchip, the owner was no longer at the phone number provided. We're moving to Germany soon! And since she was clearly mostly pit bull, the local no kill shelter wouldn't take her.

But, in a huge stroke of luck for her, my SO has a co-worker who has been looking for a dog, something house-trained and safe for cats, which Patch is and so last night she left us for a new home with a yard and two people who have put a lot of thought into taking her. The kids cried and I miss her sleeping at my feet as I sit at the table with my laptop, but she'll be happy.

My old dogs are busy resting. They aren't used to keeping up with a young dog.

How great! I'm so glad you were able to find her a good home!
My parents took in a 3 year old Boxer a few months ago through a chain of friends of friends. Bottom line was she wasn't wanted anymore and my parents have always had Boxers. Their older one had passed away about six months ago and left a younger one depressed until her new "sister" arrived. They are ecstatic to have each other.

Boxers are amazing dogs! It's such a good thing when a homeless dog finds a home that needs a dog. And two dogs are easier than one, at least in my experience.

Great review of Raven Black and happy to see the stray dog has found a happy home!

A Quiet Belief in Angels tells the story of Joseph Vaughn, who lost his father in when he was twelve, living on a farm near a small town in Georgia at the very beginning of the Second World War. Later that year, the first girl is murdered. A Quiet Belief in Angels spans over three decades, some in more detail than others, telling the story of Joseph's difficult life and the way the murders haunt him. R.J. Ellory writes in an elaborate style that suits the time period and the narrator's own complex and confused view of events. This is an event-packed novel, including a monstrous serial killer, a coming of age story, a vivid description of a place and time, madness, false imprisonment, fame, love and retribution, it nonetheless loses its forward momentum a few times along the way.

Edeet Ravel's new novel, The Cat, tells the story of a single mother whose son is killed in a car accident. Beginning shortly after Elise returns from the hospital, the story is weighted down with an overwhelming grief. Already solitary by nature and her upbringing, Elise wants nothing more than to join her son in death, but the presence of her son's cat prevents her; she knows he would want her to care for Pursie. And so, painfully, Elise continues to live and slowly finds herself drawn back into the living world despite herself.

As you might imagine, this isn't a fun or comfortable read. There are stark and unforgiving emotions on display. I have a son just a few years younger than Elise and, like them, my son and I went to the Humane Society one afternoon to adopt a cat. But the emotions Ravel describe ring so horribly true that I don't think one needs to identify with the main character so much as to identify with her humanity and the pain she's enduring. Despite the subject matter, I enjoyed The Cat. Elise is prickly and unfriendly, but she's also capable of kindness and understanding. And the book ends on a note of hopefulness.

Thanks for sharing the story of your almost-adopted dog!

I enjoyed your review of Alice Munro's collection of stories. I've not read this collection yet but I've read several others by Munro. Who Do You Think You Are? (also published as The Beggar Maid) is a favourite.

Paulina, I'm definitely going to read any books by Alice Munro that I find.

The aftermath of Patch is that our two cats, who were until last week mortal enemies, are now co-existing peacefully.

It's been a long time since I've read Munro. You've reminded me of why I like her writing, and also why she makes me uncomfortable.

I read A Quiet Belief In Angels a couple of years ago and got really caught up in it, I need to pick up another book by that author.

You got me with The Cat (darn touchstones), but I think I will have to choose my reading time carefully as I don't do well with such emotional and personal emotions.

Katie, Munro's one of those authors that everybody means to read and enjoys immensely when they do, but there are so many flashier, less demanding books that it's easy to see the years fly by without reading her. I mean, I always meant to read something by her, in a sort of vague and well-intentioned way, but only this year did I get around to it. I'll read another this year, I promise!

I'm with you there, Judy. I need to be resilient and in the right frame of mind to tackle certain books. I still have Room on my TBR.

Yvvette Edwards's debut novel, A Cupboard Full of Coats, begins with an older man knocking on a London door in the pouring rain. The man is from the worst part of Jinx's past, the part involving her stepfather and the murder of her mother, for which she feels responsible. Lemon was her stepfather's best friend. Together, over the following days, they discuss their shared past.

Edwards begins her book by making Jinx, the narrator, unsympathetic and then works forward to make her actions and thoughts understandable. This is an uncomfortable book, with its theme of domestic violence tied to the coming of age of a teenage girl. Jinx may have made her home as clean and uncluttered as possible, but as Lemon cooks for her, her house fills with the tastes and aromas of her childhood, as the only child of an emigre from Montserrat, and with that the memories of when her mother fell in love with the wrong man.

Kay - I like the title of that book. With the cooking aromas, you've just about convinced me to add it to my wish list. I'll think about it.

Lori, A Cupboard Full of Coats isn't a comfortable read. But it is full of the scents and tastes of the Montserrat community in London.

>123 DeltaQueen50: There are many of those books that you just never seem to be in the mood for/ready for. But they are often very rewarding once you get over that threshold, aren't they?

Await Your Reply tells three stories that seem utterly unrelated for much of the book, so that I read Dan Chaon's book like I read a book of short stories; slowly, putting down the book between chapters, often for long stretches. Of course, this is a novel and the three different stories are each exciting and deal in some way with questions of identity and what it means to be lost. Ryan's a college student, but he's failing his classes and he's spent his tuition money, so when an uncle he'd heard about but never met shows up to tell him that he's his father, Ryan is ready to take off with his father for a cabin in Michigan without telling anyone. Lucy's parents died recently and she was living with her older sister while finishing high school. She falls in love with a teacher and they run away together to hide out in his childhood home in Nebraska. And Miles is always looking for his mentally unstable brother. He'll settle down somewhere, telling himself to forget Hayden and their shared past, but each time he receives a rare communication from his brother, he drops everything to try and find him again. This time it's a letter that draws him to the town of Inuvik, in the Northwest Territories.

For a stretch it doesn't seem possible to draw these different stories together, then they gradually reveal similarities and echoes of each other, until I could see a thread uniting them. For the last part of the book, the stories merged and parted, then united. Despite an intricate plot stretched from the tundra to Abidjan, Ivory Coast, the real strength of Await Your Reply is in the characters and how they relate to one another. How do we know who we are? If we assume another identity, are we the same person underneath? Which is quite a feat for a novel that features references to Lovecraft, a grisly mutilation, computer hacking and menacing Russians, among other things.

"What about Darlene?"
"When she was really living right, she drank it," he said.
When she was really living right, she drank poison. What a peculiar idea, the journalist in me thought. But who was I to judge?

The story begins when Dennis Covington, a freelance journalist, is asked to write an article about a trial taking place in nearby Scottsboro, Alabama, in which a preacher stands accused of trying to kill his wife with the venomous snakes he uses in his church services. Covington's coverage of this lurid story is the least interesting thing in Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia, but it forms Covington's introduction to a little known and oft-mocked sect of Pentecostal Christianity.

Snake handling began, not as a practice of the people living in the Appalachians, but when they came out of the mountains to work in the mill towns on either side of the range. Confronted with an alien culture, they fell back on their faith, creating their own version of Christianity. The first episode of snake handling occurred in 1910 and while the churches that practice it range from the Florida panhandle up into Ohio, the number of worshippers is small. They also drink poison and handle fire, but the focus is on the snakes, the rattlesnakes and copperheads and even cobras that they collect, keeping them in sheds or even in aquariums set on the kitchen counter.

It might seem odd that this small, tightly knit community would open their doors to Covington, who is clear about his occupation and about his intention to write about them, often bringing photographers with him to church services. But they believe as strongly (and probably much more so) in their version of the truth as any other believer. They are willing to travel for hundreds of miles several times a week to attend services in small, tucked away churches in forgotten communities all along the edges of Appalachia. And Covington is respectful and interested in their beliefs. So interested that he becomes, for a time, one of them, like an anthropologist joining in the private ceremonies of a remote tribe.

Snake handling isn't a safe practice, and there are few who haven't been bit, many more than once. Some seek medical help, but most don't and most have relatives who were killed by snakes. The snakes themselves don't fare much better. Snake handling isn't gentle, and the snakes aren't designed to be roughly shaken and jostled. Few last longer than a few months.

She had a video, though, of herself and others holding their arms and legs in the flame of the kerosene-soaked wick. That's what she was doing one July night after she'd sworn she'd never handle rattlesnakes in July again. She'd been bit the previous two Julys. "I decided I'd just handle fire and drink strychnine that night," she said.

Good idea, I thought. It always pays to be on the safe side.

The problem arose as Gracie tried to handle the fire with her feet. She lost her balance and fell on top of three serpent boxes. "I crawled on my knees and got every one of them serpents out," she said. "My friends said, 'Gracie, you said you wasn't gonna handle serpents tonight,' and I said, 'I wouldn't if I hadn't gotten in the fire.'"

It all came to an end a few years after he met those members of the Church of Jesus with Signs Following. The rapid inclusion of an outsider into a group of only a few hundred people, many of whom were related, caused a certain amount of friction. The connection was broken, finally, when he was asked to speak at one service and stepped over a line by contradicting the previous sermon, by his mentor, who railed against women, saying, A woman's got to stay in her place! God made her helpmeet to man! It wasn't intended for her to have a life of her own! If God had wanted to give her a life of her own, he'd have made her first instead of Adam, and then where would we be!" Covington counters that by reminding him that, after his resurrection, Jesus appeared first to a woman, who brought the news to the remaining disciples, making her the first evangelist. And, with that, his time with them came to its end.

At the height of it all...I had actually pictured myself preaching out of my car with a Bible, a trunkload of rattlesnakes, and a megaphone. I had wondered what it would be like to hand rattlesnakes to my wife and daughters. I had imagined getting bit and surviving. I had imagined getting bit and not surviving. I had thought about what my last words would be. It sounds funny now. It wasn't always funny at the time.

Wow, that sounds like quite a read.

Mel, I couldn't put it down.

Such a bizarre practice. Great review - adding my thumb!!

Two solid bookbullets right there. Both Await your reply and Salvation on Sand Mountain sound like amazing reads. Thumbing your great reviews!

In Son of a Gun: A Memoir, Justin St. Germain revisits his past in order to come to terms with his mother's murder by his step-father. Justin and his brother hadn't particularly liked Ray, his mother's last husband, but they'd liked him more than most of his mother's husbands and boyfriends and thought that they were happy together. Debbie had been in the military and she wasn't a passive woman. She'd left men when things turned sour, so why did she stay with Ray?

Less a murder mystery like My Dark Places than an attempt by the author to find a place to put his rage and unresolved questions that dogged him for a decade after his mother's death, Son of a Gun is a hodge podge of memories, history of his hometown of Tombstone, Arizona and account of his own search for the reason behind her murder. It really shouldn't work, but maybe because of the author's willingness to be honest and the admiration he feels for his mother, a woman who loved him and who always fought to keep her head up and her optimism intact, this book is worth reading and hard to put down.

Astray is a collection of short stories by Emma Donoghue, which I intended to read slowly, allowing each story a day or two to settle before reading another one. That's the ideal way to read a book of short stories, and one that I'm rarely able to manage. Astray was gulped down over a few days, grabbing moments as I got them, sometimes reading a few paragraphs while I cooked dinner and supervised homework and when time permitted, reading several stories in one sitting. This book deserved better than that, but Donoghue should really have not written so beautifully, or with such heart or at least chosen less interesting characters.

This is historical fiction, each story based on an article in a newspaper, a locally published family history or a surviving letter, and each story about loosing one's moorings and going out into the world, sometimes for a better life, a different life and sometimes because of circumstances. Beginning with an Elephant, having been sold to an American circus, who refuses to be parted from his keeper, to the final story of two sculptors who, having lived and worked together all their lives, are now parted by the ill health of one of them. Donoghue takes the snippets of historical record she finds and makes vivid pictures of lives she imagines.

My favorite story takes place in 1735, and concerns a young lawyer who sees his chance of improving his circumstances when a naive young widow asks him to settle her husband's estate. That it's based on actual events makes it that much more fun.

I keep hearing good thinbgs about Donoghue, and this sounds very interesting. I beg to differ when it comes to short story reading, by the way. I find I much prefer to read two of three stories in a sitting, letting them juxtapose in my head, especially if you feel there's a thought to the collection. But I agree that I often read short story books waaay to quickly.

I've read collections of short stories where the quirks in the author's writing became apparent when reading several stories at one sitting. The bones showed. And there's something so thoughtful and respectful about taking each story as a whole and letting it settle in. I love that. Of course, unless the collection is mediocre, I'm unable to read like that for more than a few days. And Donoghue's book was too good to savor.

I've begun Philip Pullman's new version of Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm and since I'm reading it with my son, I may manage a reasoned pace. We don't stick to just one story, but after a half hour my voice tells me to wrap it up, so that will have to do. It's an excellent collection so far, and we're enjoying the less well known stories as well. Max is old enough to enjoy the less bowdlerized versions, although he was a little shocked at the point in Faithful Johannes when to restore Johannes, the king had to kill his children and sprinkle the blood on the stone Johannes had turned into. There was a happy ending, but that bit was gruesome.

Such a glowing review for Astray that it had to go on my list! I love a good short story collection and I'm always looking for new authors in the genre. Thanks!

I've only started reading short stories in the last year or two, but this sounds like an excellent book to take BB with. Going off to add to my wish list and recommended by LT list

I'm excited to hear that Pullman's Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm is so good. It hasn't checked out as well as I'd expected it to when I ordered it, but the people who have read it said that it's wonderful. I think several others have been holding off until summer to read it.

Lori, the complaints I've encountered are from people who would have liked original stories loosely based on traditional fairy tales, like in My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me. Pullman here retells the stories faithfully, sometimes drawing together versions for a more complete picture, but without playing around. He also adds a bit at the end where he lists different versions and discusses them, which I'm interested in, but my son is not.

Betty and Jennifer, I think you'd both really like Astray.

I don't read a lot of short stories, but Astray strikes me as a collection I might like. I've added it to my library TBR list.

Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm is on my wishlist and it sounds like it'll be exactly what I wanted it to be - thanks!! :)

Pullman here retells the stories faithfully, sometimes drawing together versions for a more complete picture, but without playing around. He also adds a bit at the end where he lists different versions and discusses them

Oh, that one was on my wishlist, but I think it's time to move it to the TBR pile. It sounds like one that I need to have in my fairy tale collection. Thanks for all your helpful comments.

edited to add: drat! Softcover doesn't come out until October

I'll have to consider Astray for my short-story collection category. Great review!

Gulping down a short story collection can be risky - I am reminded of my similar, but less successful, experience with Mieville's Looking for Jake, where I just went too far too fast. It sounds like your 'devour it now' approach didn't cause you any digestion problems at the end of the book!

Adding Astray to the future reading list.

Carrie, Paulina, Lori -- the stories in Astray were each very different, but had an underlaying feel of melancholy -- I guess the sort of things that make the papers or stick in one's mind aren't the cheerful, ordinary things. And there's a theme of being unmoored, of journeying or surviving upheaval.

Joyce and Eva, I love a well told fairy tale and this collection is making me very happy. My son has gone off camping for the week-end, and I'll be out of town for the beginning of the week, so I'm forced to wait.

I'm really trying to not buy books. I won't be bringing even my entire TBR with me to Germany, so why on earth would I be adding to it? So I did happen to go by the local Friends of the Library book sale today, almost accidentally, and while I did find a few books, I managed to only get five.

I found a Rebus my LT catalog says I neither own nor have read, so I picked up Resurrection Men. There was Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, which I also don't own and since P.G. Wodehouse's series is worth reading every few years, I bought that one, too. Then I got Dan Chaon's You Remind Me of Me, because I just finished Await Your Reply and liked it a lot. A Month in the Country has gotten some very good reviews and I've wanted to read it, so I had to pick up the pretty nyrb edition, didn't I? And finally, just yesterday A Blade of Grass was reviewed over on Club Read in such a way that I had to add it to my wish list. And there it was on the shelf at the sale. Destiny, I tell you.

It was all very satisfying.

Those all sound like necessary purchases to me!

Glad you found some that you knew you wanted. My Friends of the Library sale is tomorrow. I do not have your restraint.

I have Astray on my TBR list. I love short stories, and so many including yourself have said how good the book is. Now the debate is - to buy or to borrow......

Carrie, this is the place to find an understanding ear regarding book buying!

Oh, have fun, Jennifer! Will you post a list of your findings?

Julie, my library had a copy out in the new releases area, which is why I read it now. The problem with the library is that they often have books that I would like to keep, which they frown upon.

I managed to stay strong. Even drove right past it on Friday night and just kept on a'truckin.

"I managed to only get five"
Such great restraint! :)

You're going to love Resurrection Men - the dialogue and police banter in that one is pitch-perfect! ETA: And, yes, that one was absolutely a necessity to buy!

I've read collections of short stories where the quirks in the author's writing became apparent when reading several stories at one sitting. The bones showed. So true! Astray is going on my WL if it made you gulp it down whole.

>151 mstrust: I brought home 34. What, was I suppose to just leave them sitting there?

Now I don't feel as bad about the 12 I picked up last weekend a pet refuge sale. The LS that really gets me bad isn't until June tho.

A Month in the Country is on my TBR list. I'm jealous you found such a bargain on it. At least it is available at my library so I really don't have an excuse to not read it except the "so many books, so little time" one.

34 is a perfectly reasonable number of books, if one is not moving! I'm not sure if it's good or bad luck to be missing the mammoth sale we have here in August. With that one, at the end, you buy a paper grocery bag for $10 and fill it as full as you'd like.

That was a good sale this past year! It was such fun to meet up with you all.

How to Survive a Natural Disaster was a frustrating book. There was so much potential and the writing was adept, but the book was too short to do what it seemed to be trying to do. Margaret Hawkins tells the story of a family disaster (not natural one as the title suggests) through short segments, each narrated by a different family member or neighbor, including the family dog.

There's a huge amount going on in each person's unusual life, far more than can be described in the few pages each character is given to narrate. Even the dog, Mr. Cosmo, a three-legged geriatric weimarainer, has unique talents and an out sized personality. Add into that an outrageously precocious child who wants desperately to go live with her father and wealthy grandparents, an adopted baby who doesn't speak, but who can understand everything, to the point of being able to know what her birth mother did after they were parted, a slacker artist who goes along to get along, but whose real passion is cooking and who found he loved his wife's children with all of his heart, a woman who undergoes emotional crisis after emotional crisis, a grandmother who smokes, plays cards and can nurture everyone except her daughter and a neighbor whose husband died and who has been hiding in her house ever since. That's a lot for a single novel to hold, let alone one as slim as How to Survive a Natural Disaster, especially when the book hints and foreshadows the coming disaster relentlessly so that when it finally arrives, the paucity of description is less important than it's anti-climactic effect.

Hawkins creates wonderful characters. They seem a bit much all in one place, but each is so huge and vivid, I'm surprised that she didn't use each as the centerpiece of their own book. There are also a thousand pages worth of themes hinted at but not explored. What does it mean to be a family? What role does religion play in forming who we are and what we expect? Can a family formed from parts of other families be as strong? I can add another dozen big ideas to this easily.

In the end, this is the beginning of what could be a very good story.

Peter Robinson has a long running series of crime novels set in the Yorkshire moors. They're good, but not great; atmospheric and interesting without breaking new ground. Close to Home, the thirteenth installment, was a solid offering. Banks begins this novel on vacation in Greece, but he is called home again when the body of a childhood friend who disappeared when they were both sixteen is found. He doesn't know what he can do to help the local police solve the cold case, but he knows he has to try. At the same time, his former subordinate is called in when another teenage boy goes missing.

Sorry the disaster survival book didn't meet its potential. That's always frustrating. I've been meaning to try a book by Peter Robinson. I have a few in my wish list. This would be a good month, wouldn't it? After all, the "R" up in the AlphaCat Challenge. Adding it to my library list. I need to go there in a bit anyway. I think that I saw my cross stitch shop post that the local Embroiders' Guild is having a stitch-in there today. It might be fun to go see what they are stitching too!

Lori, if you have the choice, start with Peter Robinson's In a Dry Season. It was nominated for an Edgar and won several other awards, including a Barry and an Agatha. There's backstory, but nothing that complex or that remains unexplained. Robinson is good at putting in that one paragraph that sums up things well enough for new readers without being redundant for those following the series.

In Unfamiliar Fishes, Sarah Vowell gives the history of Hawaii the same treatment she's given to mainland American history. If you've read her books before, you'll be familiar with her style of rigorous research combined with strong opinions and a passionate love of history. The story of how these Pacific islands went from being a group of warring kingdoms to becoming an American state is interesting and complex.

Missionaries from New England brought more than Christianity to the islands. They also imported their culture, architecture, capitalism and style of government. There's no question as to their devotion and sacrifice and Vowell has a real soft spot for those dour missionaries building saltbox style houses and dressing the Hawaiians in petticoats and stockings. Vowell has much less of a soft spot for those grandsons of the missionaries who parlayed the American government's dream of expansion into an uncivilized land and power grab.

Vowell clearly enjoyed her time in Hawaii, but her real strength lies in her love of Puritans and stern men in uncomfortable hats.

I'll have to get a copy of that for my next Hawaiian vacation (not that I have one planned any time soon). I love to read books set in the place I'm traveling to, and I've seen Vowell on Jon Stewart/the Daily Show and she's always so entertaining and informative all at the same time. Thanks for the recommendation.

Funeral Music is the first installment of Morag Joss's mystery series set in Bath, England and centered around a young cellist named Sara Selkirk. This was a solid mystery novel and, given that this is Joss's debut novel, the series is sure to improve over time. I liked it, but I prefer her stand alone novels, which are grittier and more interesting.

I'd like to try one of her stand alones. Where would you recommend I start? I think Puccini's Ghosts and Among the Missing have both been on my radar at some point.

I haven't read Puccini's Ghosts, but Among the Missing was very good. It was a sadder and grittier book than Funeral Music - similar in tone to Barbara Vine.

I have Puccini's Ghosts somewhere in the TBR pile. Who knows when I'll get to it. Every time someone mentions a book or author in my TBR, I get the urge to read that book; if only I read that fast.

> 171 - LOL, so do I!

The Burning Air is a typical crime novel of the sort currently being written by British authors. Erin Kelly's book has the same feel as books by Rosamund Lupton and S.J. Bolton; solidly plotted and ably written suspense stories centered on a family. In this book, the MacBrides have always led comfortable lives. Well educated and well off, they have a weekend home in an isolated renovated barn, where they meet one Guy Fawkes weekend to scatter their mother's ashes. There are cracks in the family veneer; the oldest daughter's marriage is on shaky ground and the son's brought his new girlfriend along, disturbing the usual balance of things. They are, as is expected in this kind of book, about to be menaced by a malevolent outside force that will test their bonds.

For the most part, I enjoyed this purely escapist read. It certainly flew past and I was never tempted to just put it down and do something else. Kelly keeps the tension going for the full length of the novel and there's a clever twist a few chapters in that turned the picture of what was going on on its head. The villain is sympathetically portrayed, at least in the book's first half, which added depth to the events. But in the end, the book was disappointing. I won't hint at the outcome, but I will say that I think that the author pulled her final punch, lessening the impact of the ending, which was one of the tidiest conclusions I've encountered. I think I've also grown weary at the tired set-up of the charmed and well-to-do family menaced by someone who is poor and had a bad childhood.

Way back @ 108 -- glad you liked Lessons in French more than I did, RG! And I also bought the NYRB edition of A Month in the Country at my recent library sale! Great minds, am I right? :)

How funny, Christina. I would have liked Lessons in French much less had it been set somewhere other than Paris.

I'm back -- we spent last week in Munich house-hunting and getting things organized for our move there in a few months. There's a lot to do! But we found a house -- a small row house that has enough room for a guest room and is just three blocks from an U-Bahn station in a quiet area. I'll be posting erratically until August, when I hope we'll be settled in and back in a new routine.

I brought far too many books, then on the return flight hit that bizarre long fiight thing where one ends up watching movies one would have no interest in on the ground. I started with Crazy, Stupid, Love, which at least I had not seen, progressed to Moulin Rouge, a movie I love, but have seen many times and then went on to watch Pretty Woman for the poignant scene in which they did not let her shop. Luckily, the plane then landed, saving me from who knows what else. The last time I did that flight tired and stressed I watched The Lake House over and over. Fortunately, it wasn't available this time.

I did read two books and should finish a third today. I'll review them soon, but now to spring the dogs from prison (the kennel) and continue my attack on the vast piles of laundry.

How exciting and exhausting! I hope you'll love your new home. It's been so many years since I was in Munich but it's a beautiful city. You'll have to post pics when you have time!

Welcome back! Glad to hear you found a good house. :)

On my last transatlantic flight I watched movies that I'd already seen, figuring it was ok if I slept through them, but of course I stayed wide awake the whole time. Sigh.

I have a hard time sleeping on flights. It always seems that the captain has to let us know we are going to have turbulence, or the turbulence is over, or some other intrusive piece of obviousness that wakes me up.

Glad to hear you found a new house! Funeral Music sounds good. I visited Bath several years ago and loved the city so I'm sure I'll enjoy a mystery set in that location.

The house sounds like it's in a great location. I'm glad you know where you'll be landing!

I had trouble finding movies I wanted to watch on my trip to Germany last summer. The flight over was particularly difficult. I just wasn't interested in most of the choices. I ended up partially watching and partially sleeping through Singin' in the Rain and watching an episode of Downton Abbey. The choices were a little better on the way back. I watched The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and We Bought a Zoo. I had trouble with the controls on the side of the seat. If I moved the wrong way (which I did more than once) I'd bump the controls and switch to a different movie, the inflight map, or some other menu.

I traded in my copy of The Lake House when Lori & I went to the used bookstore on Saturday and used my trade credit to buy more books.

Kay> We need to get together before you head back to Germany! Glad you found a house.

We do, Lori! I think it's our turn to brave the mountain passes.

Carrie, you watched the movies that I would have watched had my brain not gone into airplane mode. On the flight over, I watched a serious German documentary about the mountain climber Reinhold Messner.

Rabbit Princess and Mamzel, I'm with you on the not being able to sleep, but somehow manage to do so anyway. Why do they wake everyone up an hour and half before arrival just to serve breakfast?

Paulina, I am so relieved to have found a house. It's one less thing to worry about. Now the movers visit on Wednesday to see how much they'll have to move (they will be shocked by the sheer quantity) and I need to clear out a few closets so that they look less appalling. Then the house has to be tidy enough to be seen by potential renters. I'm hoping it all gets done.

Jon Ronson has lately joined David Sedaris as people I like to hear talk. He has a knack for getting people to tell him things that you would think that they wouldn't want to reveal to anyone, let alone a journalist. But he's the least threatening person alive, with a quick wit and a deep interest in what people have to say. In Them: Adventures with Extremists, Ronson takes on the lunatic fringes of society, from racists to jihadists, a radio talk show host to a guy who thinks that there is a secret alien race of large lizards controlling the world.

It's entertaining and disturbing all at once, with a reminder that sometimes there's a grain of truth in the fantasies of the paranoid and that how you think you're presenting yourself and your views is not necessarily how they are seen by others, especially when you're the Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and you're trying to present a more likable image to the world.

Janet Evanovich's comedic series about hapless bounty hunter Stephanie Plum are utter, utter fluff. So much so that there's no need to read them in any order. In Notorious Nineteen, she and her sidekick Lula are doing exactly what they've been doing for several books, and Stephanie's personal life is exactly where it always is. The series is great fun, and easy company, but I could just as easily been reading any other book in the series.

Glad to learn that your house hunting trip to Germany was successful! I don't have too much trouble sleeping on planes, but it needs to coincide with my usual sleeping time - I have been awake for the past 16 hours and my body is ready for sleep - or else I am wide awake for the whole flight.

Happy to hear you've found a place to live in München! Keeping my fingers crossed for a problemfree move too.

>175 RidgewayGirl: I hate how moving pictures tend to consume my attention over worthier things. I don't even konw how many nights in hotel rooms i've spent never even getting to the book because I've been caught up zapping between reruns of sitcoms. I'm one of those people who need to place myself with the back to a turned on TV in a bar, or I'll be completely out of conversation to watch some random sports event I'm not even interested in instead.

Nice to hear you've found a place, Kay. I can't imagine the hassle of moving. And didn't you mean you were picking up the dog from doggie camp? Love the Plum books for pure escapism. Seems that's the ony one of her series books that I like.

Happy to hear you've found a place to live in München!

I'm excited for you and your place too--isn't it nice to know exactly where you're moving to? It even helps with packing. I'm really looking forward to hearing your reports.

The mention of Munchen reminds me of a frustrating evening at the Milan train station. We were trying to go to Munich, and had a train time, but on the board at that time they said the train was going to Monaco--where we had come from that morning and didn't want to return to. Even with my husband speaking fluent Italian (with the correct accent) we couldn't find the right train. We knew Munich and Munchen, but he had to ask a lot of people before someone told him that in Italian, the name of the city is Monaco de Germania. Of course. We came so close to getting on a train to Moscow, hoping it would drop us off in Munich. We were so relieved when we found the correct train and it was a German train and not Italian. "Finally!" we thought, "they'll know how to run a train service in an organized, logical way. And they did." Although my husband was born in Canada, his family is very Italian and he has spent a lot of time there. It's not a logical country. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

Great news that your house hunting trip was a success. One less thing to stress about. When is the actual moving day? I hope we don't have to suffer without your presence for very long, my wishlist will be going into withdrawal pains!

Thank you, all. With six weeks to go, things are going very quickly now.

Betty, I once called it dog prison in front of my son when he was about five. I now refer to it as dog holiday aloud, but prison in my mind -- even if the dogs love it there.

Joyce, that Monaco di Germania thing throws me, too. We found when traveling with young children, that north of the Italian border the people weren't friendly, but the restrooms were spotless. South of the border, the restrooms were appalling, but the people were all delighted to have toddlers rampaging around. Also, the coffee is phenomenal. Train strikes in Italy are also fun--they occur without notice, stranding us once for a few hours in innsbruck.

Judy, the movers come the third week in June, with the kids and I going over around the tenth of July.

Train strikes in Italy are also fun--they occur without notice, stranding us once for a few hours in innsbruck. Ah, yes. The famous Italian train strikes. I haven't met one of those, but a French train strike once marooned me in Perpignan in the middle of the night.

#190 South of the border, the restrooms were appalling, but the people were all delighted to have toddlers rampaging around. - we had two weeks in Italy when my son was six months old. He had real withdrawal systems when we got home from the lack of complete strangers coming up to his pushchair in the street and making a fuss of him.

>190 RidgewayGirl: Once when my wife was in Rome, the local bus drivers were performing a go-slow protest. What they did was following all speed limits and traffic rules - to the result that all time tables were utterly shot to hell :)

Traveling in southern Europe with a baby or toddler is fantastic. We've had quiet meals together because the restaurant owners took our child into the kitchen and entertained her all evening. She's been serenaded by fado singers in Portugal. In Italy, an old woman took her into her bakery and returned her with a bag of treats. She became quite used to a fuss being made over her learning a few words of the language of whatever country we were in. It did encourage her natural tendency toward not being shy.

My son, who is nine, tried out his German in a sports store right on the Marienplatz (Munich's central square) to ask if there were any shirts with the name of his favorite soccer player on them. He was polite and was rewarded with a free poster of his hero. Seriously, that kind of thing does more to instill both independence and politeness in children that anything a parent could do.

March's AwardsCAT featured The Morning News Tournament of Books and I followed this year's tournament with the same level of interest my brother brings to the NHL play-offs. There's a similarity to sports competitions here, with books pitted against each other by a judge, followed by a winner being declared, color commentary from the hosts and the best comment section I've found on a website. While it's fun to gorge oneself on a previous year's competition, there's nothing like pouring a cup of coffee and opening up one's laptop, knowing how enjoyable the day's match-up will be. It did things to my wish list, too. The Tournament this year featured everything from Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies to Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn; a diversity of novels that had me considering books I otherwise would not have. In honor of The Tournament, I give you here my thoughts on two very similar books that I read because they were both contenders.

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter and Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple are alike in more than just the cover color. Both are episodic tales with shifting narrators that center around a search for someone, and in understanding why that person disappeared in the first place. Both are also compulsively readable, to a ridiculous degree.

Beautiful Ruins has the more sweeping and substantial plot, spanning several decades and with a large and colorful cast of characters. Primarily, though, it focuses on a young, dying actress who disembarks at a tiny fishing community one day in 1962 to stay in the small hotel there and wait for her lover, and on the young man who dreams of making his village a tourist destination. From there it journeys back and forth in time telling their stories and those of the people around them, ending up in present day Idaho, with plenty of side trips into Hollywood and the world of film-making.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette is set in Seattle, where a small family of a Microsoft developer, an architect fleeing her old life in Los Angeles and their precocious and brilliant daughter live in a crumbling old school. Bernadette hates Seattle, the rain, the earnest people and more than anything else, the parents of the students at the school her daughter attends, who encourage parental participation and are confused and angered by Bernadette's indifference, given that she's a stay-at-home mom. Bee, her daughter, is loved by everyone and, in turn, she's perfect, but still not enough to provide her mother with the fulfillment her former architectural projects gave her and Bernadette's life is a mess, as she feuds with her neighbor and alienates everyone but her daughter. Adding to her stress levels is her daughter's graduation present; a family trip to Antarctica.

Both books are perfect "summer reads", which is to say, they are both light and episodic, as suits a book written about the movie industry and the other authored by a former television writer. They're both well written and ably plotted, airy without being trite or whimsical, the kind of book that's easy to read under distracting circumstances. These are the books to read in a hospital waiting room, on a plane or sitting next to a pool full of shouting children.

In the end, though, I loved one and merely liked the other, even as I couldn't put it down. There's more parody in Where'd You Go, Bernadette and, despite my usual love of unsympathetic characters, I never warmed to Bernadette, whose problems were those of her own making, or her daughter, who was just too perfect to be interesting. Even at their worst, the characters in Beautiful Ruins never became strident or stereo-types, even the ridiculous Hollywood producer.

In any case, both books were entertaining in the very best sense.

Interesting comments! I'll be reading Bernadette soon--it's our June book club selection, which we voted on last September knowing that June was a busy time and most of us would need "perfect "summer reads", which is to say, they are both light and episodic, . . . (and) . . . well written and ably plotted, airy without being trite or whimsical, the kind of book that's easy to read under distracting circumstances. These are the books to read in a hospital waiting room, on a plane or sitting next to a pool full of shouting children." Not sure about it still, but it sounds like we picked an appropriate book.

My hold for Where'd you go, Bernadette? is now ready for pick up. Looking forward to reading that one. Beautiful Ruins sounds good too.... may need to think about that one for sometime this summer.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette is a lot of fun. Enjoy it -- I like the current tendency toward writing literate and thoughtful genre fiction -- in this case, the venerable beach read. And the Antarctica stuff is cool.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette sounds like a fun read. Many of my classmates at University of Waterloo's computer science program had worked for Microsoft, either in co-op or permanent positions, so I've heard a lot about the culture there. It'll be interesting to see the author's angle on it.

I spent much of the weekend packing away books. Deciding which of my books I won't need to see for two years is not easy, especially since the movers have said they don't mind moving all the books. My shelves look enormous without two rows (and sometimes three) of books crammed in! Seriously, there's now room for stuff other than books.

I'm going to try to finish up on Tuesday, if any of the local bookstores are willing to give me their old boxes.

If you're just looking for cardboard boxes, I find that the liquor store and the fruit stand are good sources--the fruit store in particular sometimes has orange boxes that are just right for books.

The bookstores get their books in boxes that are all the same size (with small variations) and fit books perfectly, whether hardcover or trade paperbacks. I'm hoping they'll let me have a few!

Where'd You Go, Bernadette sounds like the perfect book for the last few weeks of school - if it can be read surrounded by kids at a pool, it can be read amid Axe and flirting middle schoolers. Right?

Good luck with the box hunt! Bookstores scrunch all their boxes up pretty quickly. Wednesday was the new release day for Borders. I think that's an industry standard. Try Tuesday night/Wednesday morning.

#202 - I'm always on the lookout for a perfect box for my books!

Joyce, they're not too heavy when full, while holding quite a few books.

Katie, please don't tell me that Axe is still a thing in middle school! My nine-year-old discovered it this year and sometimes he is quite scented. He likes to layer the products. And thanks for the hint on when to ask -- I was going to go on Tuesday morning, I'll put it off a day.

Yes, the not too heavy part is important, isn't it!

Ah yes Axe in layers. That brings back memories of hazy teenage dressing rooms. *Cough cough*

Kate Morton is an author who was recommended a long time ago and I've finally read one of her books. The Secret Keeper is a old-fashioned story, told very traditionally, of a family coming together at the dying of the matriarch. The oldest daughter remembers a traumatic moment from her childhood, that has her wondering about the secrets that will die with her mother and sets out to discover what happened. The book jumps back and forth between her mother's young adulthood before and during WWII and her daughter's efforts to piece together the events of those days.

There's nothing new here, just an interesting story, peopled with pleasantly complex characters and well-written.

I received Morton's The Forgotten Garden as part of last year's SantaThing, it seems like she writes traditional, family stories in general so might save it until I'm in the right mood.

Yes, it is a book that will reward the right mood. I've been busy with the preparations for the move, and so a book that didn't demand a lot from me, while still being a good read, was exactly what I wanted.

I've read her first couple of books and enjoyed them both and have this one somewhere on the wish list. Both her other books that I read also went back and forth in time, so that also seems to be the way she writes.

Betty, I've set one aside to go with me to Munich. Of course, my initial plan to only bring what I could read in two years was blown out of the water by the mover telling me that they would not mind at all moving all my books. So now I'm bringing a few more than I could read in two years, just to give me a bit of choice. I'm pretty sure that there'll be a few books that I'll decide I must read right away that will be stuck in the storage unit, but I won't run out of books.

Also, my SO has expressed some skepticism as to my view that I won't be buying any books during those two years. He didn't say anything, but his eyes rolled around for a while there.

Good luck with the packing! I might have to agree with your SO...it sounds like you will be in Germany for two Tournaments of Books! I know that would shake my resolve.

I'm betting it's almost the same eye roll I get when I mention a library sale. I was going to say that if you got realllly desperate you could maybe find a book over there to buy ( or two or more), but I think you'll just stick to the ones you bring with you. (Just ignore aliciamay's remark about the Tournament of Books.)

Books for my kindle don't count, do they? It's not like they're real books.

And they don't add to the boxes you have to move!

->163 RidgewayGirl:
I'm in the middle of the second one and am enjoying it a lot. It's an area I know fairly well, so that is part of my enjoyment, but I am getting increasingly fond of Inspector Banks.

->175 RidgewayGirl:
Congrats on finding a house in München - so exciting now that it's getting so close!!! I watched new movies on my way to Sweden, but on the way back I settled in with a rewatch of the The Lord of the Rings trilogy since I was a bit zonked and I could tune in and out without getting lost. I can't sleep properly on planes, but I think I managed to slumber a little at least this time.

->200 RidgewayGirl:
"they don't mind moving all the books"
Ooh, tempt me not...! :)

I am sure you won't buy any books, Munich has no books whatsoever, in fact I think the whole of Europe frown on that sort of thing :)

Good luck with the packing & moving and nightmare of trying to choose which books to take with you!

I would hate to try to figure out which books to pack and which to leave behind.

The trick, for me at least, Lori, is to be in the mood to put books in storage. I went through many shelves being heartless (and now there are two books I wish I hadn't boxed and taken to storage), but have recently slowed down and have had a hard deciding to leave a book behind for two years. Even books I've already read. I'm going to clear out the spare room. I can be ruthless with everything else, just not books!

The Hypnotist is the debut novel of a new crime series. The detective involved is, refreshingly, not lonely or a drinker, but he doesn't work well with others, mainly because he's an arrogant jerk who insists on people admitting that he was right all along. The main focus of the story, however, is the man called in to help getting vital information from a young, surviving victim of a horrendous murder.

The Hypnotist is fairly typical of the "Scandinavian Noir" genre, with the plot displaying the typical errors of a debut novel, with people deliberately placing themselves in harm's way or neglecting to bring their cell phones with them in order to advance the plot. But it was a fun read, with plenty of action, in which the female characters were just as fully fleshed out and active as their male counterparts, and there was a real effort to make each character an actual person. I'll certainly pick up the next book in this series to see where it goes.

as someone who more often than not forgets to bring her cell phone, just remember if I'm involved in a mystery, it wasn't a plot device!

>222 majkia: Ha! I could move a story along with my habit of locking my keys in my car.

>221 RidgewayGirl: That sounds like a good one. It's going on the WL and thanks for the review.

majkia, ha! Well, there is a difference between really forgetting something you usually forget and doing so to advance the plot. Take Susan in Chelsea Cain's excellent series -- she'd forget her phone because that's what her character does, but when a super competent character does so because the plot demands it, I cry foul! I did like The Hypnotist, though.

Jennifer, I once locked my keys in my car, had someone break into it for me and then promptly locked my keys in the car again when I went to go thank them. I am so pleased that my current car does not allow me to do this.

First of all, a big thank you to Bragan for reading this first! Who would have thought that a survey of economics could be so fun to read? And who would have thought that comics would be a good way of teaching economics?

Economix is a look at the history and theory of economics. Michael Goodwin begins with early economic theories, from The Wealth of Nations to laissez-faire to Maynard Keynes. He then provides an economic history of the United States. All of this is communicated clearly and concisely in the format of cartoon panels, making the whole thing, well, enjoyable. I'm not sure that this is enough to get economics to shed it's reputation as the dismal science, but Economix did give me a greater grasp on what's going on. I'd like to read it again soon, but my father now has my copy. I'll get a good discussion out of it, in any case. He keeps texting me his thoughts on the subject as he reads.